President Death

Bruegel's Triumph of Death, detail

Praise be to Nero's Neptune. The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" - Bob Dylan

How bad is it?

At least 20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico. "Over 91 percent of normal daily crude oil production in the Gulf - 1.5 million barrels - is now shut down, and more than 83 percent of natural gas production." Ten or more airports face closure on account of jet fuel shortages. Service stations, particularly in the South, are running dry, due to panic buying and pipeline ruptures.

And oh, yeah: the computer modeling of a hurricane expert at LSU suggests there are over 100,000 dead.

A baby dies at the Superdome. A "renegade" bus of refuges is turned away from their next football stadium of absurd resort. Police officers are lying shot on the street and helicopters are reportedly fired upon. A healthcare worker, trapped in a hospital, gets cut off on CNN when she breaks down and it gets uncomfortably real.

Fall was already going to be a time of crisis for the "King of Vacations." The Plame indictments, if there are to be any, are likely to come down in the next six weeks. The window to broaden the war was closing. What they needed this Fall was not a pretext. What they needed was a greater crisis.

Those who still think that politics matter will take what cold comfort they can get from the hit to Bush's popularity. But History has left them behind. Such a thing as popularity lost its relevance at least two stolen elections ago. There's no supply-side downside to the loss of life. The victims are mostly "marginal," of colour. Less mouths to shelter and feed. This century will see many more cullings, some allowed to happen, some made to happen, and some that just happen. And maybe something else.

If it's true - if it's more than hyperbolic metaphor to call certain forces demonic, and there is an occult hand in the glove of power - then we need to consider the magickal value of so many lives sacrificed. As I quoted previously, the Order of the Nine Angles' A Gift for the Prince describes how human sacrifice "releases energy":

...and it draws down dark forces or "entities." Such forces may then be used, by directing them toward a specific goal, or they may be allowed to disperse over the Earth in a natural way, such dispersal altering what is sometimes known as the "astral shell" around the Earth. This alteration, by the nature of sacrifice, is disruptive - that is, it tends toward Chaos. This is simply another way of saying that human sacrifice furthers the work of Satan.

What energies are being released today in the United States, and throughout much of the world, by the labours of the Cheney-Bush cabal? Why does death always dog their footsteps? And what else follows behind?

How bad will it get?

It won't be the water, but the fire next time.