Month: April 2018

Remembering Jesus

On April 10, 2018

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. —Gandhi

I am not a Marxist —Marx

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets—Matthew 7:12

(Something reminded me of this, so back to the top, even if I did just miss Easter. Originally published April 4, 2010.)

On this Easter Sunday, if you believe in Jesus, I tell you this: Don’t ask yourself what you think Jesus would do, because it’s clear most Christians don’t have the faintest idea. Instead, ask yourself these questions:

What have I done to Jesus?
What have those I support done to Jesus?

35 For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: 36 Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. 37 Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you: thirsty and gave you drink? 38 Or when did we see you a stranger and took you in? Or naked and covered you? 39 Or when did we see you sick or in prison and came to you? 40 And the king answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. 41 Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink. 43 I was a stranger and you took me not in: naked and you covered me not: sick and in prison and you did not visit me. 44 Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you? 45 Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen: I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. 46 And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.

Have you tortured Jesus? Have you bombed Jesus? Have you laughed when someone raped Jesus? Have you killed Jesus? Have you said “those animals in jail deserve to be raped and beaten?”

What have you done to Jesus?

What have you done to Jesus!

Jesus didn’t say to kill your enemies, to annihilate them. He didn’t say to beat them. He didn’t say your life was worth more than another person’s life.

What Jesus said is “what you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”

What Jesus said was

“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

I am not Christian. I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God, except perhaps in the heretical sense that we are all God’s children.

But I do love Jesus. I do respect Jesus. I do think he was a good man, and a good guide.

And it saddens me when those who claim to act in his name do exactly the opposite of what Jesus would want them to do.

If you do evil, if you rape, if you murder, if you bomb, if you kill, so be it.

But do not cloak yourself in the shadow of Jesus’s crucifixion, do not claim that you are his apostles. You, my friends, are the devils who quote scripture, the foulness that uses the words of a good man to cover your evil, that you may continue to rape, murder and torture.

The true church is the heart of any person who actually follows Jesus.

And if Jesus were to return today, he would say “I am not a Christian.”

The Postal Deal for Last-Mile Delivery for Amazon Is Bad

By Ian Welsh

On April 7, 2018

Comments

So, Trump has said that the US Postal Service deal with Amazon is a bad one.

It’s not costing the USPS more than the USPS makes, to be clear, and it isn’t the cause of the USPS’s problems: That’s a result of having to pre-fund pension obligations that no other government organization or private firm has to do, so that even though the USPS is operationally in the green, it shows as is in the red.

This was passed by a Republican Congress in an attempt to kill the USPS, which they don’t like on ideological grounds.

However, the USPS does under-charge Amazon and other companies for last mile delivery.

David Dayen, whom I respect, made the argument. This is an argument I heard before Trump was president, though this version is dated in 2018:

Nobody has the delivery infrastructure of the USPS, which visits 150 million locations 6 days a week. Shippers like UPS, FedEx, and Amazon pay the USPS to access that delivery network and have USPS carriers deliver their packages.

In other words, USPS is letting competitors use its monopoly infrastructure to offload their least profitable package deliveries.

You’d think this would fetch the highest rates for USPS’ network, but actually it’s the lowest. Who offers this kind of cheap service to the companies they compete with?

The competitors don’t really have a choice but to use USPS, they don’t have this infrastructure in place. And yet USPS gives it away for a song. The rate also appears to be flat regardless of size and weight of the package. Mail carriers are lugging around 50-pound bags of dog food.

The USPS is also severely undercounting these outside packages as a percentage of overall deliveries. The accounting on this is pretty wild. The economics of this makes no sense. While pre-funding retirement benefits is the sole cause of USPS’ financial woes, this appears to be a tremendous missed opportunity.

So, basically, the USPS could charge a lot more, and it would still make sense for Amazon and other private companies to pay what they charge, but the USPS doesn’t. It’s a bad idea, to people (especially Amazon) who can afford to pay more and who, no, aren’t going to replicate the USPS last mile delivery, because it is way expensive.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Secret Determinant of Your Survival in Catastrophes

By Ian Welsh

On April 4, 2018

Comments

The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The response to my article about how climate change is now unstoppable and people should consider what they will do to survive it included some questions of what those considerations should be.

I don’t want to go into the technicalities of survival preparation. There are plenty of books and blogs (prepper blogs) devoted to it.

But a lot of them miss the proverbial forest for the trees. Obviously you’re going to need the basics; obviously you don’t want to be in the worst places when whatever it is hits.

But less obvious is that the primary determinants of who survives will be social.

Strong and Wide Social Ties

Look, when the shit hit the fans, distribution is hard to entirely determine. Some people will survive, others won’t. Minus tons of money (not always as useful as one thinks, minus prep work) and maybe even with tons of money, what determines survival best is how many people care about you and want you to stay alive.

Are there people who will check on you? Share food and shelter and medicine if they have to? Find (or be) two strong young men and hump you out if necessary? Do people care?

If you don’t have a strong social group, and wider ties, if you’re essentially on your own or just with your immediate family (and it isn’t a huge clan), then your odds of dying or suffering going way, way up.

Don’t have this? Join a church. There are agonostic churches, by the way. Any functional church checks on its members, does visits, helps find jobs, etc, etc…This is a ready-made social group. Yeah, you have to do this stuff yourself, but it’s good for you to care for people and be cared for. When Emile Durkheim studied suicide in 19th century France, he found that atheists suicided most, followed by Protestants, followed by Catholics. This was based on social engagement (don’t transfer this direct, look for a church with social engagement).

If you absolutely can’t stand church, find some other close knit social group. People who look after each other.

Be On Good Terms with the Violent Authorities

Do the local cops like you? Do you give to the patrolman’s benevolent association, or whatever? Does the police chief know your name and care about you? If there is a local military base, are you on good terms there? If there is a local gang, are you on good terms with them?

I don’t care how many guns you have, or if you think you’re Rambo, organized violence beats unorganized violence. When shit goes bad, you want the people who are used to fighting as a group to think you’re a great person. You want them to defend you and not think of you as a victim.

You may have reason to hate some of these folks, those reasons may be good, but the best way to deal with an enemy is to turn them into a friend, and this is about survival.

Keep Your Resources Largely Secret

You aren’t Rambo, you don’t have an army at your beck and call, and you’ve done your work: You have food, water, medicines, maybe even power. Other people may resent that. They may ask you to share. You may not have enough to share with as many people as want you to share, and still survive. So keep it on the down low. I’m not saying don’t share at all, but conceal how much you have, and keep it hidden. Be smart about this, a semi-public stash you show to those you share with and a hidden stash are a good idea, for example.

Have Tradeables

In the old days, this used to mean cigarettes. In a crisis, it will mean medicines like antibiotics, drugs, medical supplies in general and anything else you can think of that will be in short supply and needed (iodine tablets for purifying water might be a hot item, for example).

You’ve got to be real careful with this stuff, see “secrecy” above. If people think you have a stash, and know who you are and where you’re from, this can go bad. Strong social ties, ties to the local violent authorities, and secrecy can protect you somewhat, but use your sense.

Careful Following the Crowd

Despite wanting to have strong social ties and all that, remember that the places that are worse to be are often the big center points: the stadium or whatever set up as a central distribution and camp out point. This is where the rapes and violence happen. You should prepare in large part so you don’t have to go there. If you do, visit only, don’t stay, and go in numbers with people good at violence and stay together. Dead serious on this.

Belong to an Organized Group

A good church qualifies, but any reasonably large group (50+ people) who are used to working together outside of work can qualify. When government fails, such groups, used to working together, can pull together. Bonus if the group tends to include people with technical, agricultural, and survival skills. Be on good terms with these people.

Concluding Remarks

The people who live, in good times and bad, tend to be the people who other people want to live. When established authority collapses, groups that already exist but aren’t dependent on that authority tend to take over; and yes, organized groups with guns tend to matter.

Want to live? Make it so you living is what other people want.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Making Sure YOU Stay Alive When Millions Are Dying

By Ian Welsh

On April 2, 2018

Comments

Okay, my friends, it’s time to talk seriously.

We are screwed, blued, and tattooed. We are so fucked that we can’t see straight.

The vast majority of people are in complete denial about the level of pain coming down the pike.

The combination of climate change and ecological collapse is going to hit us like a high-speed train carrying nitroglycerine derailing in the middle of a oil refinery.

The timing on this shit is unclear. I have seen coherently argued cases that ecological collapse could happen soon. Heck, I’ve seen cases that say it, er, should have happened by now.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Combine climate change with the way we have utterly fucked up our management of fresh water, and this is going to lead to, in a reasonable best case scenario, hundreds of millions of deaths, and a billion or so refugees.

The aquifers are being depleted in wide areas in China, India, America, and elsewhere. The groundwater is also being polluted.

No one is prepared and no one is doing sweet fuck all. I get chewed on for being “cynical,” but the people who are not worried are absolute fools and morons: Anyone who cheered the Paris accords on the environment was delusional at best. They had no enforcement provisions. Virtually no one was going to meet those goals AND the goals were insufficient to begin with.

We were told they weren’t going to do enough, and that the signing countries weren’t going to hold themselves to it anyway, and people pretended to believe this BS was going to make the least bit of difference?

Grow the fuck up.

Now, if you are not old or the sort of sick that means your lifespan is shit and your odds of surviving and major catastrophe are crap, or if you care about your children or some other people, you need to start taking this into account in your personal lives.

We are BEYOND STOPPING THIS.

It is too late. Too late.

Tattoo that into your brain.

Even if our governments suddenly were run by people who cared, it would be too late to do anything but prepare and try and reduce how bad it will be.

But they aren’t doing anthing, and they aren’t going to be doing anything soon enough. Heck, soon enough was about ten years ago, and that was optimistic to any sane person. By 2008, I was thinking “Yeah, we’re fucked, but maybe, just maybe, if we act now?”

Frankly, I was delusional. Hope’ll do that to you. Horrible drug. Obviously, our leaders are psychopathic douchebags with the planning ability of mythical lemmings (the real animals are not as stupid as the legend), and obviously most voters don’t take the issue seriously, and obviously nothing was going to be done no matter who was elected.

But, y’know, “hope.”

Alright, hope’s over. It died for me by February of 2009, on a bunch of fronts.

High-speed freight train, carrying nitro. Derailing. In the middle of your life.

I don’t know when this stuff will really hit. Probably someone has made the prediction that is right. But I do know it will hit. I know it will cause major wars between major states. I know it will cause waves of refugees in the millions. I know it will cause vast numbers of deaths.

This is obvious.

So take it into account in your planning of your life. I’m not talking politics in this post, that ship is done. Do what you can at the political level if you want, but I’m talking about your personal survival and that of people for whom you care most.

If you live in the most vulnerable countries and areas (for example, India will be absolutely creamed), take that into account. But also take into account we have a very fragile, just-in-time delivery system.

Are you on drugs? I mean that literally. Legal, psychoactive drugs, or legal, life saving drugs. The US had a major shortage of blood bags due to Puerto Rico getting hit by a hurricane because, hey, they were made there.

We have an intensely locally-concentrated production of materials that are then sent to entire continents and countries through fragile supply chains that end in warehouses that do not hold large stocks, because everything is “lean and mean” and “just in time.” Shocks hit a system like that, and there will be shortages. Medicine, food, fuel, and plenty of other stuff.

So start building in some ability to survive if you care about surviving.

And don’t allow yourself to go all delusional thinking it won’t happen. The best you can hope for is you die before it does. It’s a good bet for some of us. But if you’re young and healthy, or care about people who are, no.

Note: Yes, this post includes swearing. No, as a commenter you still can not swear. Also, comments suggesting that climate change is not real, etc… will not be approved. Further, apologists, that warmer climates are more lush in the long run does not change the short term catastrophic adjustments, where short term means decades to centuries.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.