Is The Truth Stranger Than Fiction , Or Does Fiction Just Hafta Make Sense ? by out2theblack

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Is The Truth Stranger Than Fiction , Or Does Fiction Just Hafta Make Sense ?

POSTED BY: OUT2THEBLACK
UPDATED: Thursday, June 11, 2009 16:51
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VIEWED: 625
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 1:16 PM

"...To help finance the ever-growing debt, the Federal Reserve had decided to make the tactical move
of monetizing ever greater portions of the debt. The printing presses were running around the clock
printing the new style currency with enlarged portraits. The official domestic inflation rate had jumped
up to 16 percent at the end of August, 2000. To the dismay of the Fed, the economy refused to
bounce back. The balance of trade figures grew steadily worse. Leading economic indicators
declined to a standstill.

The Federal budget, instead of contracting in response to the scale back in the economy, continued
to expand, primarily because of the interest burden of the Federal debt which totaled nearly five
trillion dollars. Jittery investors increasingly distrusted the government, the stock market, and even
the dollar itself. In September, new factory orders and new housing starts dropped off to levels that
could not be properly measured. Corporations, large and small, started a massive round of layoffs.
The unemployment rate jumped from 12 percent to 20 percent in less than a month..."

All of the foregoing was from a work of fiction , that is more than a few years old...

The first chapter begins with a Roddenberry quote :

"...nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city
like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago--their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away
and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time you're going to have
riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to
provide us with goods and services, that you don't need nuclear warfare to fragment us
anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall."

- Gene Roddenberry

Strange , when one thinks about it...What do y'all make of this ?

Comments ?

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 1:19 PM

CHRISISALL

Strange all right. What was the story it's from?

The laughing Chrisisall

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 1:24 PM

OUT2THEBLACK

http://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Surviving-James-Wesley-Rawles/dp/156384
155X

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009 6:37 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Good to see fiction writers using Truth as routine backstory.

"Federal" Reserve Bank hires Enron PRopaganda hack
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/06/federal-reserve-to-hire-
ex-enron.html

Quote:
"Why shouldn't fact be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."
-Mark Twain, member of Bohemian Grove

Jewish "Federal" Reserve Bank chairmen at jewish Bohemian Grove homosexual nudist compound for ritual "mock" child sacrifice and snuff kiddie porn

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:56 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:

Good to see fiction writers using Truth as routine backstory.

Now if only you could learn from that example...

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:39 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Just noticed Amazon's ranking of this book :

#1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
#1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political

Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse is novel set in the near future that describes a full scale socioeconomic collapse. More than just an exciting read, it is packed with useful survival and preparedness tips.

And a couple of Reviews , from among the many :

"...Excellent work by Mr. Rawles. In it he explores the possibilities and what ifs of a total collapse of the civilized world that we have come to know and upon which we depend. Imagine, if you will, that the economy spins out of control and takes civilized society with it. Imagine this event making the Great Depression look like a walk in the park. How would one survive or thrive during such a chaotic experience? Can it be done alone? What are the real problems and issues that might need to be overcome? Mr. Rawles novel explores those possibilites. His information is well presented. Obviously a lot of thought and research went into this novel. It reads more like a contingency plan and less like some escapist fantasy. It beats any sci-fi novel hands down. I strongly recommend "Patriots" to anyone who's ever wondered what would happen should the day come when they dialed 911 and nobody answered.(Remember Hurricane Andrew and the LA Riots?) Read "Patriots" and find out. It is definitely time well spent. However, let me offer a word of warning. Pick up "Patriots" and you won't want to put it down until its finished! "

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"...This book is a real gem. It is both a gripping piece of fiction, as well as a useful resource on survivalism. I would not have thought it possible for a survival book to be so interesting, but this one really is. The storyline itself is very interesting and holds your attention, but in addition to that the book is full of little pearls of wisdom about how and where to acquire things that make one better prepared. When I was in the early stages of the book I was impressed by all of the references. Later when I was most of the way through the book and still kept finding more and more nuggets of wisdom I was truly amazed. The breadth of knowledge displayed by the author on a wide variety of subjects is truly amazing. This book is very well researched, and best of all, it is also very interesting to read. Several years ago this book might have been simply an interesting work of fiction, but now in the post-9/11 world it is something to think seriously about. Also, the opening chapter which focused on the start of the economic crunch reminded me of the summer of 1997 when Asia and Russia's economic crises coupled with the near bankruptcy of a large US firm called Long Term Capital Management and almost sent the world into economic collapse. Add to that some other recent events such as the bursting of the dot com bubble in 2000, the stagnation of the economy shortly after 9/11, and the high gas prices of 2004. It just goes to show, the circumstances in this book are quite possible, more so than any of us would like to admit. "

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Before I buy something, I ALWAYS look at the bad ratings! So being the contrarian that I am, I laughed my ass off over these....

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Although this book has major flaws as a novel, it may appeal to some readers because the author obsessively insists on cataloging every object (often by brand and model) and survival technique used in the story. An egregious example occurs early in the book (p 88) when a passer-by is held at gunpoint while he is ordered to give a complete inventory of his backpack, for no evident reason other than that the author wants to catalog for the reader the contents of an author-approved bugout bag. It takes over half a page of text to do it. No one in the story seems to think this is ridiculous...

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However any hope I had for this book was pretty much dashed by the end of the second chapter and by the fifth chapter I had reached the conclusion that this was the worst book I'd ever read and possibly the worst book ever written. To call the characters undeveloped two dimensional carbon copies of each other would be an insult to two dimensionality. The book is northing more then the gun porn version of Penthouse Forum.

**************************

This has to be one of the worst edited books I have ever seen. You can tell it was written in the 1990s and updated recently; they mention the election of Barack Obama. But they did a lousy job of updating the text. ... For example on page 22, it says that Todd and Mary found the ranch on vacation trips to Idaho in 2001 (happily married at the time). On the same page it states the idea for a group retreat was formed in 2006, while Todd and T.K. were in college. ... On page 35, Kevin graduates college in 2007 and starts as a junior programmer. Next paragraph Kevin is starting SECOND career as freelance programmer in 2002. I guess he started his freelance in high school?

Also, Doug states his age as 22, but he was born a year after his parent got married, soon after his fathers return from Vietnam. Let's see...The Crunch hits in 2009, so that means Doug was born in 1987, that means his father got home from Vietnam around 1986 or so. Delayed demobilization? POW release? These are just a few of the examples of bad editing and updating.

Come on, the use of a simple whiteboard with a timeline drawn on it and used to update the text would have made this a much more enjoyable read. Any decent editor should have caught these errors and had them corrected before sending it to the printers.

***************************
This is such a dog. Never before have I written a review where I could find nothing good to say about a book. It is a stinker. I am a gun owner and a Libertarian, I love survival books, I love end of civilization books. I should have loved this book. But the author has no talent and is a kook. For any of you "mainstream" people out there, Rawles is not representative of Libertarians or gun enthusiasts. He represents a very fringe element. He no more represents Libertarians than Louis Farrakhan represents Muslims. Nope, not at all.

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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy

Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:37 PM

KWICKO

Thanks, Signy - You may have just saved me some money!

I actually never considered looking for the NEGATIVE reviews on stuff like this. That might be helpful in the future.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

"You're a idiot." -AuRaptor, RWED, May 27, 2009.

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:25 PM

BYTEMITE

You know what I said about the bailouts to some friends of mine? I said "These corporations are just taking this money for as long as they can, the greedy boardroom assholes line their pockets, then they'll cut and run. It's like ENRON, only now the government isn't even pretending that it disapproves."

Nice to know I was right on, that the Federal Reserve actually HIRED people from ENRON.

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Thursday, June 11, 2009 4:51 PM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Before I buy something, I ALWAYS look at the bad ratings! So being the contrarian that I am, I laughed my ass off over these....

************************
However any hope I had for this book was pretty much dashed by the end of the second chapter and by the fifth chapter I had reached the conclusion that this was the worst book I'd ever read and possibly the worst book ever written.

To call the characters undeveloped two dimensional carbon copies of each other would be an insult to two dimensionality. The book is northing more then the gun porn version of Penthouse Forum.

**************************

Thanks for the recommendation , SignyM !

I think I'll have to order it on this basis alone...

Also , now I can't wait for the movie !

As for you laughing your ass off ; from what I've heard , you can certainly afford it...

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