Tubularsock

Tubularsock was sitting in his top floor corner office in his underground bunker overlooking Washington, D.C. from Oakland,CA and viewed this today, a cold and rainy time capsule.

Tubularsock grabbed his underground-telescopic-lens and took this shot.

The caption is: Plez, leaves me in peace.

With a hat tip to The Vigilant Lens http://thevigilantlens.com/

and his timely and oftentimes cryptic work. A pleasure to view.

Tubularsock is tired of the U.S. not condemning Israel for their continued murdering of the Palestinian people. Is this what Hitler taught Israel to do? To continue the Holocaust? Shame on you Israel, shame!

Tubularsock was sitting in his top floor corner office in his underground bunker overlooking Washington, D.C. in Oakland, CA when his telegraph started dot, dot, doting. Immediately Tubularsock thought “it must be an old message”. The telegraph hasn’t been used as a means of communication for a long time.

It was a message from the blog site http://wolfessblog.wordpress.com/ which is a great site to follow. It posts a variety of articles which cover a wide range of subjects. If the Huffington Post could do half as well Tubularsock would pay more attention to them.

The article that was posted under GUILLOTINE DETROIT WATER & SEWERAGE! was   from Common Dreams: UN to Detroit: Denial of Water to Thousands ‘Violates Human Rights’

The bottom line of this article was that the city of Detroit is shutting down the water to people that can’t afford to pay their water/sewage bill for a very odd reason, Unemployment.

You see the city has a poverty rate of 40% and a very high unemployment rate.

The United Nations was asked to look into this mess and has stated that ““The households which suffered unjustified disconnections must be immediately reconnected . . .”

Good luck with that.

The Detroit City Council has proceeded to approve an 8.7% increase in the water rates. And the Water Department has increased it’s disconnections in June to 3,000 a week!

But the U.N. has the nerve to believe that having water is a natural human right.

What will they think of next!

It is interesting to note that the power brokers in the city are aggressively pursuing  privatization of the cities water and sewage.

A Tube note: For an excellent researched post on this subject check out: http://shelbycourtland.wordpress.com  “Heads Up! I Am About To Go The Fuck Off! If You Have Delicate Sensibilities, Stop Reading!”

So Tubularsock has come up with this great protest idea that he is putting out to social activists in Detroit.

Have all those poor people that are affected collect in plastic garbage cans all their shit they can no longer flush and after three days take it and march to city hall with it in tow.

The name of this campaign ………  We Ain’t Taking Your Shit …. Here’s Ours!

Can you imagine 3000 a week in June. That is 12,000 shut offs. And say a family of four……. that is 48,000 shits! And that is a conservative estimate.

And just how long would the police force face off tons of shit. Damn the health risks alone!

And if you were arrested the benefits would be running water and a toilet that works.

Well enough! Tubularsock is going to go polish his telegraph key pad.

Last week l.l. frederick (http://llfrederick.wordpress.com/) reminded Tubularsock on a comment she made on Tubularsock’s post “THE RUSSIAN TAKE-OVER” about the Cavafy poem, “Waiting For The Barbarians” .

I hadn’t read that poem in years so I traced it down and Tubularsock felt that you may wish to ponder this poem a bit. It is not that you don’t already know the external/internal enemy concept but Tubularsock feels it is so wonderfully presented in Cavafy’s poem.

Waiting for the Barbarians

By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?

Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.

What laws can the senators make now?

Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,

and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate

on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.

He has even prepared a scroll to give him,

replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today

wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?

Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,

and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?

Why are they carrying elegant canes

beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual

to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?

(How serious people’s faces have become.)

Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,

everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.

And some who have just returned from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?  

     They were, those people, a kind of solution.

NOW HERE IS AN IDEA FOR YOU …………

This is something you’d probably wouldn’t do on your own but Tubularsock suggests that you print it out and read it aloud three or four times (or even more) until you get the timing down for yourself.

Sure, you can do this so no one else can see or hear you ……. but do it for the fun of it.

Tubularsock found for himself a much more powerful feeling from this poem than just reading it silently off the computer. Really, try it.

Tubularsock likes to pace the room while reading and change tonality until it is more like an oratory for myself. And the power of this work comes forth.

As long as we as a people can be maneuvered by the power structure that there is an ENEMY out there that we need to be protected from, then we’ll continue these constant wars. This works well in the divide and conquer technique and those in power (even though a small number) keeps the masses in chains of fear.

Now Tubularsock knows that YOU know this but so often we are in overwhelm that we forget it. DON’T! It will keep you from thinking that you’re the crazy one!

Peace ………..

Tubularsock has found the Associated Press report today shocking!

News photos digitally altered?

What will they think of next?

The images in question were released through the government-run Estudios Revolucion, an entity that distributes photos of Cuba’s top leadership.

“We have concluded that a number of official photographs of Fidel Castro were manipulated” stated AP vice president and director of photography Santiago Lyon.

“Removing elements from a photograph is entirely unacceptable and is in clear violation of AP’s standards unless we do it” Santiago Lyon did not say.

Now Tubularsock is a firm believer that under AP standards, photos must depict reality and cannot be manipulated to add or subtract elements that alter that reality. But the nature of reality is relative and one’s “reality” is not necessarily the same as the reality of another.

The photos under question show clearly in the original, high-resolution image files a thin wire snaking into Fidel Castro’s ear that was missing from the altered photo released through Estudios Revolucion.

Tubularsock wants to make it perfectly clear that ALL PHOTOGRAPHS within the pages of Tubularsock, “. . . first hand coverage, second hand news” are ALL original photos taken by Tubularsock himself with a standard flash camera used in the “good ol’ days” when the TRUTH of reality was real.

TRUST ME!

Wow. Tubularsock just picked up another part-time job. In this economy getting employment in a field that one is qualified to do is not always that easy.

So Tubularsock put out, yet again, another resumé and listed his qualifications.

First off Tubularsock wanted something in the field of JUSTICE and FREEDOM.

Standing all day on the job is acceptable.

Having people in your head from time to time between 9:30AM and 3:30PM is acceptable as long as they have made advanced reservations.

Being supported by a concrete reenforced supportive structure, helpful.

Being allowed to sleep on the job during non-public hours helpful.

Security protection on the job site acceptable.

Having no direct verbal-response required, handy.

Speaking and/or knowledge of the French language no longer required.

Only day off, Christmas is acceptable.

So, I start Monday ……………

WISH TUBULARSOCK LUCK ……………… NO ONE DOES IT BETTER!

Dawn was just crossing over into existence when Tubularsock heard a soft rap on the door of his top floor corner office in his underground bunker in Oakland, CA overlooking Washington, D.C.

Immediately after the soft rap a small bundle of papers were slipped under the door and true to form the messenger was so stealth that no traces remained of the visit except the bundle of papers.

 “Drat”! was the expression one would have heard being emitted from Tubularsock’s mouth “but there weren’t nobody around!”

Now Tubularsock has to admit that when it comes to Steamfitters and Boilermakers Tubularsock has limited exposure of just what they do on the job.

The only knowledge of steamfitting is when Tubularsock goes to the WestEnd Gym and attempts to fit into their rather small steam room. And as far as boilermaker all you have to do is bring up Dick Cheney’s name and it makes-Tubularsock-boil. So lets call this for what it happen to be ……… limited knowledge and experience.

 Well lucky for you and Tubularsock someone who does know the ins and outs of the Steamfitters and Boilermakers Trades has come to the rescue.

 Stamboul is a retired Boilermaker. He was kind enough to send Tubularsock the following information and it is a fascinating peek into refinery work.

Also Tubularsock in his previous blog post had stated that at times to save money the oil refinery will have the workers install smaller pipes in the run. This was incorrect. What they do do is slip in a lower schedule (thickness) pipe as Stamboul will explain. All pipes in a refinery are required to have a proper schedule (thickness) as designed for their use.

 Thank you Stamboul for this contribution and your insights.

 Let me tell you a story: After WW-2, many of the local home boys returned to Richmond, Martinez, Concord, Pittsburg and Antioch. Many were Italian and Portuguese and the refineries in the bay area put them to work. Back then all the refineries had excellent training programs and they all had their own Boiler shops on the premises. The new hires worked an 8 hour day then went to training school in the refineries for another two hours with pay. After a five year apprentice program where they were trained to be Boilermakers and steamfitters on the job, they graduated and were master mechanics.

When I broke into the trades in the late 70’s these men were unit foremen’s and supervisors. Working out of the Boilermaker’s Union for Union contractors hired by the refineries to do maintenance work, I came across these old paisans in the various units I worked in. Here is what I observed about them: they knew there units backwards and forwards; they were master mechanics, and believed in union craftsmanship and would never hire non-union workers to repair their units; they were hard headed son of a bitches and yelled all the time, but if you worked hard and knew your shit, they would back you 100% and finally, they believed in running maintenance and were constantly repairing their units when things went wrong. One more thing about them, they were able to make decisions on the spot and most of the time they were right.

Things changed around 1985. The refineries force retired all these guys, imported crackers from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana to run these units. These jerks didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, didn’t have the nuts to make any decisions without checking first with Houston or wherever and ran these units into the ground.

The refineries here made a concerted effort to take maintenance work away from the unions and hire nothing but non-union contractors. These contractors in competition with each other bribed the unit foremen and I personally witnessed this myself at Chevron, Shell and Tosco. The refineries took a position of no more standing maintenance work in the units, and let the units go to hell until they exploded and then let the insurance pay for the repair.

I’m not going to get into it, but I worked many of the explosions that killed workers especially at Tosco and the causes were mostly utilizing the wrong schedule wall thickness of the pipe in the repair.  

No one puts the wrong size pipe in, but they do cheat by using the wrong schedule and bribing the inspectors who x-ray the pipe.

Be careful what you read. By pure accident Tubularsock was sitting at a bus stop waiting and right next to me on the bus bench was a copy of the Oakland Tribune which is considered by the brain dead the “local” newspaper.

Now in truth it is made of paper and it is “local” but if one wishes to get into say something like journalism well ……….

But it was just lying there and Tubularsock was just sitting there and the bus wasn’t due for another fourteen minutes, if that really means anything anyway.

So Tubularsock casually reached over and picked it up. And it was only the front section and that was all. No advertisements, no sports page, no travel, cultural, or movie sections. Just the front page all alone on the bus bench.

And the dominate story on the front page was a movie review of a new film Lone Survivor. Which is a new movie about the same old propagandistic shit. The film is about the failed June 28, 2005 mission, Operation Red Wings conducted by SEAL Team 10.

A title that would have explained the truth of the operation better should have been Dumb Shits Die Defending Aggression. 

Not to give away the plot but they all got themselves blown to bits. Ok, except for Marcus Luttrell who to this day says he still struggles from survivor’s guilt.

If the guy would wake up to what he did by joining the military his guilt might just overtake him! But he’s still lost in his own ego shit.

The Tribune’s story covers some local boys that got themselves all dead and their parents justification why their sons aren’t at Christmas “no more”.

It’s this kind of bull shit that makes younger people gravitate toward “joining up” but this type of aggrandizement has always been used. Lattrell says that the movie is as real as it can be and war is the lowest common denominator but “It happened and that’s what I did for a living. It’s business as usual.”

And that should be the take away ……. It’s business as usual.

As for the parents rather than wake up to the fact that their children were gunned down by their own stupidity and the government that sent them there are war criminals seemed to have missed their sentimental brains. No they are being quoted about their loss like it couldn’t have been avoided.

Of course they still all gathered with long faces and grief-stricken at annual barbecues for SEAL families but they have NEVER faced the true facts …….. their sons were the aggressors and occupiers of Afghanistan and the Taliban lived there!

Will this ever change ……… not until those parents who have lost children face the facts that their government lied to them and pumped them all up thinking that their dead children are heroes. And what do they have to show for it?

A folded flag, a couple of medals, a coffin and some memories that haunt. A very poor investment if you ask Tubularsock. Maybe it is time for military families to wake up to the fact of what their loved ones are really doing! 

Not protecting America but protecting American Empire for the rich.