Can't we just drop Pee Wee Herman on Tripoli? Surely this shocking manifestation of everything toxic in America's existential zeitgeist arsenal would send the Gadhafi corps shrieking for the blank Saharan interior - somewhere between Murzuk and Timbuktu - where timeless dunes shift in the eternal wind, and the cares of modern life, armies, geopolitics, banks, bombs, and crusaders in red bowties are but grains of sand under the uncountable stars. To recline there, outside the tent, in the bracing chill of the desert night, against the warm backrest of a sleeping camel, with a glass of strong tea, would bring one into communion with the peace of Allah - don't you think?
But it appears we're going for the heavy ordnance instead, aided by the latest and greatest in video-gaming technology, and, by Gawd (yes, that one, ours, the one Michelangelo painted in Rome) we are going to give this cheeky Gadhafi fellow something like a Semtex colonoscopy and few around the wide world will shed a tear as he is translated into just another late-night snack for the rats and scorpions.
Good gracious what an exhausting month this has been!
Most remarkable in the tsunami of events last week was the peculiar dearth of actual reported news - as in hard, reliable information. CNN played the same loop all weekend of brave Japanese firemen marshalling outside the Fukushima reactors, trotting this way and that way in disciplined ranks, while alarms went out about radioactivity showing up here and there, in milk, spinach (did it grow overnight?), and on airline customers de-planing in the otherwise spotless reaches of Dallas, Texas. My correspondents tell me that the radioactive scare meme is way overblown, with the number of actual dead so far at exactly zero from the whole reactor event- and they may be right, or not, though it is hard to imagine no severe consequences at all over time from this disgusting mess. More to the point perhaps is the loss of about 30 percent of Japan's electric power. What will they do in the long agony of sorting things out there?
I have a peculiar fantasy about Japan. It burbled up in my mind even before the earthquake-tsunami-reactor disaster, and I conceived it in rumination upon Japan's weird twenty-year-long economic malaise, as the nation's population shrank, and its debt climbed to astronomical heights, and its young people lost heart, and it seemed just to go through the motions of whatever modernity required of them - ship the cars, package the robot parts, show up at the salaryman drinking contest, get stuffed into another late-night commuter train. I don't claim to be a Japan expert, but I think all this was getting to them in a deep, major way. I think they perhaps secretly longed to get back to something like an older traditional Japanese society - the one before car assembly plants, big steel ships, chain reactions, and fluorescently-lighted pachinko parlors, back to the society that blossomed and fruited in cycles of centuries on those beautiful rocky, sea-washed islands into a culture saturated in artistry - unencumbered by idiot religions or the bothersome neediness of other nations.
I can't shake the odd feeling that Japan was looking for a way to get back to the 19th century, and perhaps even deeper beyond that - to the dream-time before they made the fateful decision to industrialize. The earthquake-tsunami-reactor moment is their chance now to begin that journey. Frankly, I don't know what else they can do. Japan imports over 95 percent of the fossil fuels it uses (that would be oil, coal, and natural gas). Does anyone think they'll be able to continue that indefinitely? Sorry, I just don't see it under any circumstances. And, anyway, the geographic region where the bulk of the world's oil comes from is in the process of blowing up. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are like some kind of mansion where fire has broken out simultaneously in the kitchen, the conservatory, the media room, the master bathroom, the chauffeur's apartment over the garage, and the pool house, and whenever the flames are doused in one spot, they break out in another. Yesterday it was Syria and Yemen. Bahrain is under lockdown. The Egyptians are having second thoughts about the loss of a grinding stability, trouble is stirring up in Kuwait, Iraq is like a crazy person in the rubber room of history, and who knows what kind of spells the vizeer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is laying out in his Kevlar sanctum. There is just too much tension in the world and it is demanding release in the most vexing ways.
So, I can see the Japanese people - a deeply homogenous society - veering toward an as yet un-articulated consensus: let's just get out of the modern world. Let's go back home. Let's don the kimono and the hakama, get us some horses, sharpen the katana, and kick back in the chaniwa garden with a bowl of green tea - and forget about all that dirty, disgusting, dangerous, heavy manufacturing-for-export (to an insane world) nonsense. History may record their industrial adventure as a weird blip of activity in a much longer timeline. As it will for us and everybody else, I believe. In fact, this fantasy about the Japanese shrugging off the toils of modernity is exactly what all the other so-called advanced nations of the world will find themselves doing sooner rather than later as we all take the road back to a world made by hand. The Japanese may just be the pioneering exemplars of the universal process.
What we're seeing these days is an epochal unspooling of hypercomplexity. The world just can't take anymore of it. The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message. We'll receive it in the car-wash, no doubt. On our iPhones.
First!
The Libyan intervention is another sign of our increasing desperation to try to stabilize our failing economy and industrialized way of life.
Visit http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com for commentary on the coming dark age, as well as a path for preserving our important knowledge for future generations, when it comes time to rebuild.
JHK, great column this week. One thing though, sure you are not confusing Pee Wee Herman with Gilbert Gottfried? The latter was in the news for getting fired over his twit's on Japan.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-10-worst-gilbert-gottfried-tsunami-jokes
To answer the question: "How did the spinach become radioactive?", it's radioactive steam rising into the air and falling on the plants as radioactive rain, i.e. "fallout". Have we forgotten the bugaboos of the 'fifties and 'sixties which forced atom bomb testing into (mostly) deep holes in the ground?
As for the Great Unravelling (which is what I call it), it is proceeding apace. Just this morning some Yemeni General sided with the protesters. The big problem with dictators murdering many of their own people is that at some point, those soldiers doing the murdering receive phone calls, "You and your friends just killed Uncle, or Brother, or Sister. . ." And at some point the soldier, faced with either killing his own family or turning the gun on his hated officers, will do the latter.
Dictators can't kill TOO many people, or there'll be no one to dictate to.
There is an excellent book written just about Japan and the Edo period where the environmental changes required Japanese to use less resources, water, etc. It is JUST ENOUGH by Azby Brown. The blueprint is there for all of us.
I wish I could be so sure that the radioactive fears emanating from Fukushima were overblown. Cabinet Secretary Edano just said, "At the moment, we are not so optimistic there will be a breakthrough." What an understatement for fuel ponds naked to the atmosphere, Reactor 3 building blown to shreds, pressure building, grey smoke ascending and all that scary plutonium still inside, one hopes. It may be true that no one has died yet from radiation, but it looks like a large swath of Japan is going to be contaminated for a long time. I think the upshot will be that no one in Japan will trust authority for a long time either, once the full magnitude of the contamination is known.
Could Japan deindustrialize itself without reducing its population by a half (or more)?
I got a fantasy about Japan, too. I don't think it's very peculiar, though. It involves 18-year-old girls, school-uniforms, white, knee-high stockings and black high-heels. Know wut I'm sayin, Dawg?
JHK said: "But it appears we're going for the heavy ordnance instead..."
========
When talking about those going against Libya, let us remember who "we" are: Norway, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, and "us"
I think it's a mistake to believe that many Japanese would reminisce wistfully about their pre-industrial past. Japan was a land of frequent civil wars, rule by warlords, constant threats from any number of rival eastern powers, etc. Not a pretty picture.
"The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are like some kind of mansion where fire has broken out simultaneously in the kitchen, the conservatory, the media room, the master bathroom, the chauffeur's apartment over the garage, and the pool house, and whenever the flames are doused in one spot, they break out in another."
With all these "fires" breaking out in the mansion of the middle east.... I would think arson might be the cause.
Someone(s) going in there and setting them intentionally...making sure the "fire department" (ie; war machine) has to "be called" (summoned by the "UN")
Looks like the CIA fingerprints are all over the middle east... especially with our instant war against "Libyan oppression"... no doubt protecting "the people" will involve securing the oil......
When one totalitarian regieme has an uprising... the people might have grown their own balls... when it happens to two, it might be a fluke... but when 5-7 nations start in at the same time... that is part of the deception of warfare.
That's why Libya employs foreign nationals to man the army.
JHK, Kind of disappointed this week. Not your usual insight (Pee Wee come on) until the final paragraph. I foresee the Japanese people settling back into a pre 1920’s society, but do not be surprised if they start to quietly horde resources. I finally got my root cellar finished and all of my potatoes are about to go into the ground. I’m hoping I will be prepared for the long winter that is coming!
You're going to get a lot of flack for dissing Pee Wee Herman...and deservedly so! Rubens has been one of many comics who has exposed (so to speak) the ghastly nature of the American Cream Dream.
We can imagine anything we like but I don't think the Japanese, all 130 million of them, are eager to return to some quaint tea ceremony of a nation. Nostalgia is a strange narcotic, to be sure. It's why millions of otherwise illiterate, tea-bagging blowhards commune with the spirits of Frnaklin and Jefferson (with Fox-News chryons translating the incomprehensible archaicisms into the Deeply-Held Truths of electronic authority).
This was a quiet week in Saratoga Springs, someone's hometown. So, what passes for analysis starts off a diatribe couched in Kunstler's coquettish homophobia before collapsing into the logorrhea of a keyboard warrior devoutly wishing ruin on Israel's enemies. Yay for our team. Let's invite some Japanese to a Renaissance Faire so they can see how real Americans escape reality.
And we'll need to replace those 110 cruise missiles we fired into Libya, at a million a pop. No doubt there was some high-fiving going on at Boeing this weekend.
Love the image of PeeWee Herman as a toxic weapon, JHK.
The Oil Drum has an interesting article on the energy problems that the Japanese face.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7697
[What we urgently need now is fuel, heavy and light oil, water and food. More than anything else, we need fuel because we can't do anything without it. We can't stay warm or work the water pumps," said Masao Hara, the mayor of Koriyama city, in Fukushima prefecture.]
There was also discussion today on Morning Joe that Japan was gearing up to to export food, all vanishing in the radiation vapors of the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi plant.
To hear Sir Howard Stringer CEO of Sony (with whom I once went to the theater and dinner on a double date) tell it, all will be back to normal soon--Oh and better than ever. Some people don't quite read the writing on the wall.
The idea that the food is still within safe radiation levels or that nobody has died from the radiation is a false assumption. Radiation is cumulative throughout a lifetime, so this constant exposure will take it's toll.
Just like the effects of Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico, this is a living laboratory and the results may not come in for a long time...well after the cameras stop rolling. If someone dies from exposure to radiation and nobody sees it, did it really happen?
One more rumination of my own. I checked up on our old friend, Lockerbie terorrist, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and his alive and well living in comfort in his family compound.--hmm BP got its way, and Gadaffi got a good laugh, but I wonder how we feel about that.
Anyway today on MJ they were discussing Obama's advisors, many of whom are Clintonistas who won the argument over Gates in intervening in Libya to avert 100,000 deaths. Is that even an accurate potential?
The Japanese will encounter problems in their transition back to the good old days. People are stacked on top of one another 50 deep in Tokyo and other large cities. And the ancestral homeland is partly buried under hundreds of square miles of reinforced concrete and asphalt. How will they peel off the enormous cancerous growths of concrete and asphalt without the enormous amounts of energy from fossil fuels that put it there ? Without oil or electricity from nuclear power, how many Japanese can the land support ? Probably no where near the current population of 125 million...
On the dangers of radiation: leukemia and thyroid cancer don't show up right away. Let's ask Ann Coulter if she wants to go suck on an isotope.
I think you may be projecting your own yearnings onto the Japanese people.
There was a fascinating article on Energy Bulletin about Japan in the Edo period providing an example of a truly self-sufficient society. Japan's population remained relativley stable at around 30 million for centuries (as opposed to 127 million post- industrialization). It was isolated from the world, this provided all its own resources sustainably, utilizing waste in intelligent ways. Before industrialization, they had plenty of time to contemplate nature, art, poetry. That article is here:
Japan's sustainable society in the Edo period http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5140
The book it was based on is translated here:
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/009397.html
Some commentators have speculated that Japan has simply entered the post-growth phase earlier than the rest of the world, and could provide a template for how to do it. That article is here:
Japan: the world’s first post-growth economy http://makewealthhistory.org/2011/02/01/japan-the-worlds-first-post-growth-economy/
Already Japan is what is sometimes called "Demographic Doom" Maybe it's a natural reaction to overpopulation on an island. There has been much hand-wringing about this, but we all know this is what has to happen in every country if we are to survive. Japan is usually described as "futuristic". Maybe it's true, just not in the way most commentators think!
http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/whats-japanese-men
Walt says: "This was a quiet week in Saratoga Springs, someone's hometown. So, what passes for analysis starts off a diatribe couched in Kunstler's coquettish homophobia."
Actually, you're just plain mistaken, Walt. No undertone of persecution against gay anything. You must be preoccupied with something in your own head. But it's a rather scurrilous comment and if you serve up another one like it i'll just ban you from this blog.
--JHK
Question for all you articulate CFN readers: what is the opposite of Nemesis? Nemesis is that which initially provides something seemingly good (advantageous), but which ultimately leads to something bad (disadvantageous). In Japan's case, or so JHK suggests, the reverse may be happening. Something bad has happened which may lead to something good. The so-called cloud with a silver lining, maybe. I'm inclined to agree, with a nagging thought - that Mother Nature is blind when it comes to our "wishes" when she corrects excess. To wit, if Japan reverts back to a simpler, unhurried society, will there be room for all the current Japanese in that Nirvana? Methinks not.
There is just too much tension in the world and it is demanding release in the most vexing ways
Rode an electric bike this weekend, and it was pretty slick.
JHK Keep up the blog, excellent work, thank you.
I don't think Japan, like any industrialized nation, will willingly go back to the feudal-era level of economy. Lets keep in mind today's Japanese are modern people through and through. They would have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to that essentially stone age culture.
Second I see Japan moving towards a re-militarization and a 'new nationalism' after this event. They will align with UN/NATO forces to begin an desperate grab for resources around the globe. Japan has a long history of sudden nationalistic fervor during times of transition and pressure.
I only hope they keep their cool and maybe kick out their kleptocratic bureaucracy in the wake of these latest disasters, but history paints a different picture.
This reply concerns Asoka's comment on last week's thread at 1:54AM this date.
--------
In his typical fashion, Asoka speaks down to us from on high. One pictures a guru sitting in the lotus position on the mountain top espousing his optimistic beliefs with quiet equanimity.
But those views, if adopted, do nothing more than delay practical remedies (for resource depletion due to excessive population). Asoka supports population control on a global scale but he is powerless in so large a realm. But in a realm where he at least can cast a vote (the US) he is OK with a more than doubling of population. The one area in which Asoka is consistent is his lack of consistency.
Asoka's view of the good things that might happen to bail out the world are like the gambling addict pushing in all his chips and drawing for an inside straight, only with much lower odds.
P.S. A week ago Asoka had adopted the one-screen rule for comment length. That didn't last long. The comment to which I'm replying runs four screens.
Laughing said: "Could Japan deindustrialize itself without reducing its population by a half (or more)? "
==========
Interesting question, Laughing, touching on the question of carrying capacity (see my long answer to ProCon and Tripp at the end of last week's posts.
Given that Japan has a population density of 343 people per square kilometer (ten times greater than the USA population density) and imports 95% according to JHK, I would say population reduction would be a good thing.
By comparison, the USA has a population density of 34 people per square kilometer, does not import 95% and can certainly welcome more immigrants. The birth rate should go down though.
If, as the ancient Greeks used to say, that "art imitates life", then even a cursory glance at the art of Japan (namely popular anime, manga, and film) shows the populace to be deeply enthralled with both nostalgia for the past and a desire to return to their former island isolationism.
I appreciate your thoughtful essays each week, Jim. Gives me something to ponder when I'm out in the world, surrounded by the "zombies." I got a haircut Saturday and the gal saw the book I was reading (Peak Everything, by Heinberg) and she asked about it. When I explained the nature of the material she asked me, "WHY would you read that?" I was beyond speechless and realized her thinking is very typical of Americans. We are doomed. But in the meantime, I just keep calm and carry on.
where's the basement ?
Q said: "P.S. A week ago Asoka had adopted the one-screen rule for comment length. That didn't last long. The comment to which I'm replying runs four screens."
===========
LOL! Guilty.
It took that long to "dialog" with ProCon and Tripp ... and to counter their facile use of the concept of carrying capacity.
Some things just can't be explained in 140 words or less.
Jim, oh dear. Time does erase some of our fondest preoccupations. Like calling buildings we don't like "faggotry". Now, why would someone use an anti-gay slur to denounce a building? Oh, yeah. Because you were one honest enough to put your bigotry in bright lights and large font.
Oh whoa!!!........so many crisis' going on around the globe I bet Obuma and the crew are karefully going over the lot choosing which one to take advantage of......never let a crisis go to waste.........eenie meenie moe......
Who would not want to go home? But what home is there? As the Egyptians have found, and ergriefer points out, getting rid of one misery, one rapacious, grim, life and soul sucking political-economic system, in no way guarantee the next will be an improvement. Neither simplicity nor complexity seem to provide any kinder governance, nor do anything to mitigate human greed or cruelty. Many of us try to live quietly, like the Japanese, on the fringes, and not get crushed by the behemoths (governments, businesses, religious institutions) that rule and delimit our world, which live by no law but ones that they craft to forward their own interests, and who are merely the successors to the powerful entities our ancestors tried to not get crushed by. It is time to face the truth that many humans are predators - they will kill, enslave, steal, con - and they are insatiable . We may be entering a time of less complexity, perhaps, though almost certainly greater chaos, but none of it will eliminate powerful people and the harm they will inflict on all the rest of us who just want to go home...
"Flack for dissing Pee Wee Herman"...really?
It's the perfect weapon from a long US tradition:
Fat Man, Tall Boy, Pee Wee Bomb!
As for Japan, who got the first two of that trinity, their population is heading the right way for a simpler, leaner future: downward. They just have a head start on the rest of us.
Everything we're seeing is fundamentally caused by a combination of waaayyy too many humans on an increasingly industrialized planet. Read my lips, it's completely unsustainable and will come to no good end sooner rather than later.
Another excellent and articulate column.
The ultimate question is, WHEN will Amerika get it, and come to the mass realization that techno rapture, happy motoring, mall crawling, etc are not only non sustainable but also just silly, non productive fads in the face of REALITY:
1-chronic hunger, 2-the need for hard physical work to maintain one's family (i.e. out in a field, not in a cubicle), and 3-the need to continually fend off the inevitable mauruaders who would rather steal yours than grow theirs.
When we "get it," I suspect that our collective fall from our 1/2 century long manic episode into the depths of cultural and personal depression will be a sight to behold. It will be written about for decades in psychiatry and behavioral science works, assuming that we, as a society, maintain the ability to read and write.
After watching them rolling up their sleeves and saying, "This is the way it used to be", I had the same hunch you did, James, about the Japanese being mortally weary of upholding an untenable way of life. And many of them seem aware of the price that has, and will have, to be paid.
Their fear, grieving and release may be a mirror of ours.
Oregon
"what is the opposite of Nemesis?"
How about "a blessing in disguise?"
For one who has "eyes to read," the benevolent creation is always "writing" what is ultimately for the best in the big picture.
You are right. I too have met many who when you describe what is going on just seem to want to turn away. Like if you don't know about it, it won't happen. Dream on ! When it all hits the fan, it will be too late to get started. Get a bike and start a garden, learn to hunt and fish. Drop the weight down to high school levels and get off the prescription med's as well.
When talking about those going against Libya, let us remember who "we" are: Norway, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, and "us"
Ummmm.... not, really. The initial mainstream media reports that "France and Britain were taking the lead" were dead on arrival. The initial strike was carried out by over a hundred US-fired Tomahawk missiles with 1000-pound warheads. Period. End of story.
That is how modern war is waged. The fact that French pilots followed this initial assault is just for show - to make it look like the US isn't completely running the show and doing the heavy lifting.
Danish F-16s. Yeah, OK Buddy.
This is all just a smokescreen. Somebody convinced Obama, the Great Deceiver, that this would take focus off of the disaster that is his Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan? Didn't think so. But that's OK, neither does JHK.
Try reading this, if you want the truth:
Libya’s Slippery Slope
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/03/20/libyas-slippery-slope/
"Barely 24 hours after the first Allied air strikes, President Obama’s high-flying Libyan adventure is losing altitude. The smoke hadn’t cleared from the first air strikes when the head of the Arab League complained that “what happened differs from the no-fly zone objectives. What we want is civilians’ protection, not shelling more civilians.” Russia and China, who abstained at the Security Council, are already getting restless.
There’s trouble on the horizon."
JHK said: "Surly this shocking manifestation...."
Although "surly" is often an apt description of Boobus Americansis, surely you meant to use "surely."
Just don't call me Shirley.
JK,
Obviously you just don't get the whole "the glass is half-full" optimism.
Oh sure Japan has been "hosed" in some multiple manner of ways - but there are just so many ready-made solutions harking to bring about recovery to their shattered country-side.
For one this - they could become the biggest exporter of "glow in the dark toys." Take that lead-paint China.
[b]And on a more serious note, Japan in consummately positioned to become the entire world's [i]spent-nuke-fuel[/i] depository.[/b]
Just get up aside one of those big cracks in the earth and dump. See? Things ain't nearly as bad as you think.
Most important search term on Google:
"Grow your own food"
World's biggest distraction from real issues and the biggest threat to the Democratic Party ever getting any respect in the eyes of the majority of Americans:
Homosexual marriage.
Can't help but disagree with JHK on this one. China seems more than willing, not to mention able, to lend a heap'n help'n hand of hospitality...to Japan, that is, Arigami scultpture, reflecting pools, Shintoism. No way the Big Bankstah Boys are gonna let them go back to a simpler, quieter, sustainable life. No, these guys are going to turn the whole area into a mega theme park, complete with a huge, log plume ride called the Tootsinami, a fun house called the "House of Quake", and a fun house filled with mirrors where you see yourself literally glowing in the dark. Probably be called, "Radiation Shack". Let's never underestimate the ability of TPTB to make a buck from a catastrophe. The saddest part of this scenario is that only Chinese workers will get to run the rides. I imagine they'll give the Japanese the glorious task of cleaning/shoveling up the "My Little Pony" attraction, so popular with the wee ones.
Hey Jim;
RE: Japan
This morning on CNBC the 'Wizard of Omaha", Warren Buffet,was saying just the opposite of you. Right now he is ON THE GROUND in Asia, looking around, and he says the situation in Japan represents a unique BUYING OPPORTUNITY.
Just don't invest in Ag produce from around the melted down nuclear reactors, that's all.
Anybody know when our WAR CHIEF is coming back from Latin America? Evidently last night, as Tomahawk missiles (manufactured in Newport RI) were raining down on Tripoli, he and Michelle were learning how to Salsa, dancing the night away, if you will. Yeah, a good time was had by all. And the First Lady was planning on getting some shopping in today. I hope she finds some good stuff to buy.
This is s-w-e-e-e-e-t, as good as it gets!
Spring is here, but snowing like hell. There is no explaining the vagaries of New England weather.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I lived in Okinawa from 1956 through 1958. Our first home was a quonset on a hill above what was then Buckner Bay. For us, the living was idyllic, as we enjoyed northern California-like weather while we watched farmers in the lowlands around Yanabaru plant and harvest rice and sugar cane seasonally. The farmers in other parts of the island grew fantastic crops of lettuce and Asian apples, and their small towns were served by no less than four bus lines. However, as lovely as it all seemed, the people were working their rear-ends off to survive. From their hard-earned income they supported public schools which could be found everywhere on the island. We often helped local students with their English, and students studied like fiends. They schooled and studied to get away from the drudge-like life of their parents, looking to a more fruitful future. So, I don't think the modern Japanese, or Okinawans, or anyone else in less back-breaking drudgery-prone societies are going to consider falling back to the agrarian life a step forward. Having spent several subsequent years working on a farm, I, too, lost all desire to pull another cow's teet or shovel another load of manure. So, anyone who thinks going back (in reality) is desirable, is going to be very surprised when the denizens of modern society put up a fight in the slide backward.
While smokyjoe may have made the Pee Wee Bomb reference clearer (thanks), I agree with laughingetc. that it should have been Gilbert Gottfried, or maybe Ann Coulter. Ann Cluster Bomb.
Ah yes! I'll bet the Japanese can't wait to get back to the good old days. Subserviant women with no rights, no pesky democracy, the chance to cut your belly open if you've done something "shameful" with your only hope being that your partner cuts your head off before the agony causes you to make an embarassing sound. Current Japanese society may leave much to be desired but it's also left much that's undesirable behind.
Well, I don't know when they're coming back to the U.S., BUT I CAN tell you where our King and Queen WON'T be stopping on this particular whirlwind tour: JAPAN. Nope, not even Tokyo. I don't even think Air Force One will fly over it. Even if Michelle gets a hankering to shop in New Zealand.
OK folks!! So here we are again. Perhaps we are now starting to come to terms with the awful reality that even the best of governments is prone to deception, dissimulation, denial, delusion and, above all, self aggrandizement. It is in the very nature of hierarchy - political, military or corporate - to vacate individual liability, and make everything a function of the chain of command. In this manner, accountability never rests with anyone other than the players on the ground. The motives at the top of the system are always principled and high-sounding -- spread democracy, save the people or purify the race. Capitalism makes this especially so, because the underlying motives are always known but never expressed -- it's all a land grab for profits, markets and oil. Especially as things become more scarce (like food and oil), the pressure mounts to take as many of the marbles you can before there are none left to grab. Hierarchy, private property, and capital accumulation are what motivates this hegemony. And it will only get worse!
http://wp.me/p1lJ1g-3d
JHK is right about Japan becoming the first major industrialized country to withdraw from the games.
Pre Commodore Perry, they were totally isolated by their own wisdom and design. They have their own language.
Their own culture with incredible distillation and refinement.
They are an island.
Racially they are a coherent nation.
The stark lack of energy forces them into radical solutions without partial compromises.
Most importantly, their are a nation of old people, meaning that the small number of young Japanese will have the place to themself.
The news coverage of the reactor "troubles" was indeed troubling, and continues to be so. As time moves forward, it has receded from the headlines, as if the lack of a really cool explosion or mushroom cloud had doomed it to below the fold status. I can't tell, from day to day, what has happened or not, and if all the same doomsday scenarios still apply, or not.
Of course, this is not surprising. The Japanese are expert equivocators and the networks has so few boots on the ground that they can hardly cobble together a coherent story. Not that it's important or anything...
Myrtlemay;
I'm happy you're here.
How 'bout cooking up another one of those short stories, or 'vignettes' soon? That one yesterday was pretty good.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I don't think our King has received his orders yet on when he can come back to US, the marvelous "little people"- Munchkins in Munchkin Land. Chief of Staff (aka-the King's "handler") hasn't set a specific date on the Royal couple's return yet. William "Rasputin" Daly will inform the King and Queen when to return to the castle - seems there's still a bit of a dust-up in Libya- untidy things, these "operation freedoms" - Orwellian for WAR.
Unfortunately that blip of activity that WAS Japan, was really just a knee jerk reaction to the charm of the West (particularly the charm of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)... who could resist??
We are the pied piper and WE are doomed!!!
See what I mean -- http://wp.me/p1lJ1g-4e
VyseLegendaire wrote:
***Lets keep in mind today's Japanese are modern people through and through. They would have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to that essentially stone age culture.***
Not every culture in the world which didn't use cars and refrigerators is a 'stone age culture'. There were printed books in premodern Japan and court ladies there were writing novels. Please kindly refrain from using insulting labels of this nature. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Marlin554! I'll get to work on it. I think I'll start my own South East Post Chapter Post...might make me feel more "in the game" as it were!
"we are going to give this cheeky Gadhafi fellow something like a Semtex colonoscopy"
Actually the US would be giving him a C4 "colonoscopy" since Semtex is a plastique that is currently manufactured in the Czech Republic and the explosive that was supplied by the now defunct USSR to its erstwhile allies...like Gadhafi.
Semtex is what Libyan terrorists used to bring down Pan Am Flight 103.
I don't think that the Japanese will return to the good ole days anytime soon. They love their stuff too much, as do Americans.
What is different about Japan versus America is that they are a nation of community. We are a people of hostility.
The energy extraction war is moving forward. The new US-American development treaty is all about energy from Canada and the be-afraid-therefore increase security between the borders arrangement.
But, the show must go on, and Wall Street rallies once again. Bad news is good news for Wall Street. Just ignore the news. The casino is open for business.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
for news on Marcellus Shale--
http://moontownshippa.blogspot.com
West Coast writes (about Japan);
"The stark lack of energy forces them into radical solutions without compromise."
Well said, WestCoast. That pretty much nails Japan's dilemma. Jim points out in one of his books that the main reasons for the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 was to eliminate the US as a power in the Pacific, in order to gain unfettered access to the oil fields in Indonesia.
I would say that is qualifies as an example of a "solution without compromise."
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
If you want to see just how much development, how much has been brought in and built in Japan, do the following:
Go to Google maps. Type in "Tokyo, Japan"
zoom into the area around the port.
Envision what you are going to see.
New Jersey anyone? Rotting facilities, dirt, decay? Funkyness?
Click the the little yellow pegman that triggers the street view. Drag the icon to a street, especially one of the elevated roads crossing the water.
Go to the little box on the upper right that has the outward facing arrows. Click it.
This gives you a full screen view. Pan left or right using your arrow keys. Look at any of the streets around the port, or downtown etc.
Everything is immaculate. Brooks Brothers outlets, no litter, massive steel beams, roadways, concrete, steel. This has all been built since WWII.
Now for an interesting contrast, go to Mexico City and look at the streets in any of the neighborhoods. See a difference? One nation has no oil. The other had plenty.
Nice "Big Picture" thought this week, JHK. It's calmly considered.
On this:
"In fact, this fantasy about the Japanese shrugging off the toils of modernity is exactly what all the other so-called advanced nations of the world will find themselves doing sooner rather than later as we all take the road back to a world made by hand. The Japanese may just be the pioneering exemplars of the universal process.
What we're seeing these days is an epochal unspooling of hypercomplexity. The world just can't take anymore of it. The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message. We'll receive it in the car-wash, no doubt. On our iPhones." -JHK
That's where I believe it will take quite the effort of will to uncouple "ourselves" from useless and distracting technology. (It's obviously a fine way to keep the lumpen focused on the absolutely trivial, and far, far away from the absolutely essential; as the haircut anecdote points out.)
Also notice, just to the right of the last two paragraphs is an ironic manifestation of an unnecessary technology. Handy, yes, necessary, no so much. (I s'pose we should be aware of the trade-offs going on here: device made in [and supported by] hypercomplexity, vs. huge amounts of paper processing. Is it a "wash"?)
Every culture in the world has its good points and its warts. You can cherry-pick all the bad points and that will be what your picture of Japan is: a distorted and biased picture. Why not focus instead on the achievements -- the art, the literature etc?
I don't see either why a return to the old ways would necessarily entail picking up all the bad old things as well as the good old things. And finally, I think ANY social system -- even the Aztec system, be it said -- is a lesser evil compared to a social system which leads to global climate change, unprecedented mass extinctions, and the eventual death of BILLIONS of human beings through starvation and deprivation when the oil runs out.
Don’t see Japan going down to feudal ages without a fight. There are too many people stacked on top of each other to allow that to happen. But they are very, very civilized so the Japanese wait patiently in line. How long will they be patient? Poor devils. Many Japanese citizens are very elderly. 20,000 are estimated to be missing and/or dead. So the population will probably shrink a bit but will their demand for oil/gas/coal shrink? Probably not much. Perhaps the American car industry will pick up with the lack of serious competition. This is America’s opportunity to put out a quality car that lasts. Will the Big 3 do the job or will they foolish produce junk and ruin their chance to be No. 1 again? Producing super efficient vehicles is the ticket.
What if the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown triple happened here? There would be no shortage of heroes. On 9/11, hundreds of firefighters/police/rescue workers fearlessly went up the stairs of the World Trade Center while everyone else ran down. Hopefully, most of us would have the hero mentality and not the gun mentality of Me First (I’ve got a gun so Me First.) Let’s just hope Japan recovers and that this scenario doesn’t ever happen here. But with Japan’s plight and the continuing Middle East turmoil, things don’t look good at the moment. However, Detroit could be the key.
Sharply pointed story, SnS!
No dragging folks into a future they refuse to "believe" (kicking, screaming, or otherwise); we're going to have to leave them in their dying techno-topia and celebrity worship, I fear. Very sad.
Carry on!
...**not** so much...
This last week I showed my classes "The End of Suburbia" in which JHK plays a prominent role. One part of the movie that I always find disturbing is the section describing Cheney's "The War That Won't End In Our Lifetimes," i.e., the resource wars over oil. The last section watched the film on Thursday evening and then came home to find out that we had intervened in Libya. I wonder how many of them made the connection. I'll find out when I see them again tomorrow.
BTW, you aren't the only one around here using a science fiction theme for their blog about civilizational collapse; I just started one.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
"A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction."
I plan on doing reviews of blogs and sites about collapse and rebirth. Yours is on the list to be reviewed. So is CFN.
You are absolutely right James... now the Japanese can turn right back and regain what was lost in the mad dash of civilization...
http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365
...Also their fascination/obsession with total explosive destruction of modern society and its attendant infrastructure. (I just don't know where they think they'll find the resources for the ubiquitous glass domes over the futuristic city-scapes!)
Because of the name I use and my concern for the species that has overpopulated itself which I am a part of is an excellent question you ask. The Tech. freaks seem to think that technology will save us but they do seem to not see that everyone with a brain would rather have a world without this monster global economy rat race we have created and Mr. Kunstler said it very well with "What we're seeing these days is an epochal unspooling of hypercomplexity. The world just can't take anymore of it. The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message. We'll receive it in the car-wash, no doubt. On our iPhones. One of these days perhaps "wall street" and companies with profit first above everything else motive will see it but I really doubt it. These mutant business school robots have seized control of everything and we just stand around and bitch about it and every thing keeps getting worse. Really pathetic.
Okie and Wardoc
As Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme. Maybe we should look to prior times in history when civilization collapsed to see what happened and to get some idea of what we or our near descendants could be facing.
I read somewhere that the ancient Israelites took shape as an identifiable ethnicity in the period following the collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millenieum BC. Coastal cities that depended on trade were abandoned as trade collapsed. A collapse in literacy followed the collapse in trade and de-urbanization. People moved to hilltops, built walls and palisades, took up farming or herding or starved. Add to that an element of refugees from Egypt (the Exodus) and maybe from other places. From what I read, the ancient Israelites were descendants, at least in part, of the Canaanites.
In Europe, following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, the story sounds much the same: a collapse of central authority, a period of chaos, a collapse of trade and, as a consequence, an abandonment of cities, a collapse of literacy and numeracy. People built fortified hilltops for refuge, new armed gangs forcibly took authority from the old ruling elites, the Roman manorial system stayed much the same but with new Gothic landlords in many cases. And then, new kingdoms and eventually new nation states.
I'll bet that for city dwellers in both Europe and the Levant it would have been calamitous with huge numbers dying from starvation. I'll bet that in much of rural Europe life would have gone on much as it had for centuries except for new lords in the manor houses speaking a foreign language.
What does it mean for us? Mass starvation probably. If you're living on a farm, you might have to contend with starving migrants from cities. I agree there will be marauders and those trying to enslave and otherwise profit from the chaos. If you're a city dweller you will have a very very hard time. And maybe as communication, travel and trade break down the rise of new languages and new ethnicities, new authorities, new laws and rules of living.
"Radiation Shack".
==========
Clever post Myrtle. I especially like the above.
Nevertheless, I have my own obsessions to be concerned with and so must point out that its Log Flume not Plume. Although I suppose you could play around and call it a Log Phlume. (I once tried to get a set of vanity plates for my car that read PHUKEWE but some hawk-eye in Trenton caught it.)
I'm a Chinese living in Singapore. Have to say Kunstler's article here struck a chord deep in me. All too often I have dreamed as well of a return to the old ways of culture and simplicity, with Confucian scholars discussing poetry and philosophy in their studios, and farmers and their households living together happily in tightly knit, self-reliant communities. My fear in this respect is that before Asians can settle down to a new system -- which in my dreams will entail a resurrection of the premodern system, though preferably without the dross -- there will be years, maybe decades of chaos and suffering, and *I* might not live through it to see what will finally appear on the other side.
Kind of bizarre to believe that Japan made a "decision" to industrialize.
Their "decision" involved warships and Admiral Perry, as I recall.
'Wizard of Omaha", Warren Buffet
==============
Marlin, it's alliterative: "Oracle of Omaha."
Okay, Marlin, this one's for YOU!
Somewhere in Brazil, in a quaint, yet fashionable boutique on the Rua Visconde de Pirajá, Queen Michelle tries on one of many diamond and emerald encrusted tiaras. The King, none too pleased about this shopping excursion, paces back and forth in the shop, even as he eyes through the open boutique door, the majestic, slender, long legged beauty, clacking down the promenade in her six inch “fxck me” pumps. The King shyly looks away from her as the breathtaking vision flashes her long lashed, green eyes at him, carefully pulling back her titian tresses to reveal a tan, sinewy, swan-like neck. Her white, cotton cover up gives only a slight hint that she is indeed nude from the waist up.
Queen Michelle’s attention is briefly diverted from the Cartier cap so delicately placed upon her regal head toward the object of her husband’s roving eyes. The shop matron, sensing trouble, moves quickly, but not fast enough to stop the First Lady from flinging the bejeweled tiara directly at the King’s head. As luck would have it, the King sees the hurling headdress flying toward him and darts ever so quickly out of its path. In the strangest of coincidences, the lovely, long legged beauty sees the tiara, then bends down to catch it before it crashes to the sidewalk. Ever the gentleman, our King goes to the young lady to retrieve said crown, only to notice the girl’s nubile tan breasts, hiding beneath the soft material that separates her warm, young body from his. Her pearly smile meets his imperial gaze as she demurely hands the tiara back to the King. She turns away, continuing her stride, as the King slowly turns back, crown in hand, to see his Medusa snarl at him bitterly.
Queen Michelle caresses the tiara, which the shop matron has handed back to her, and says nonchalantly, “I’ll take three of these! Charge and send!”
First he wasn't a terrorist, then he was a terrorist, then he wasn't.
The US didn't blame Libya for the Lockerbie bombing until they wanted to attack Iraq, and needed Iran's backing.
The trial was decried by a Scottish court as a travesty. The appeal was thwarted by the release.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-dont-care-about-facts.html
apropos of nothing in particular:
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-20/
Also Charlie Sheen's live show is coming to Toronto after which, no doubt, we'll all be just a little bit stupider.
HI Jim and all,
Well the last week sure did turn out to be a primo week for seeing the sights of the long emergency. Plenty of thrills chills and laughs.
Ann Coulter tops out in the laughs department, that women really, as my dad used to say, "showed her ass". Wow Palin finally has some serious competition in the "Who's an idiot contest".
Major chills when the CEO of Tepco broke down weeping in a news conference that discussed real radiaton levels and chances for meltdown. Hara kiri anyone?
Pretty cool thrills when it was disclosed that the yakuza( Japanese mafia) was among the first to respond to the needs of the populace with food, water, diapers etc...with no thought for themselves as they did all this without any radiation protection gear. Who knew gang members would perform better than gov types, what a pleasant surprise!
And of course Obama is once again missing in action. That man appears to set up a lot of SEP fields, that is- somebody else's problem fields, (sorry Terry Pratchett). But is anyone surprised by that anymore? Sadly, I think not.
take care gang and appreciate the laughs while we can
loveday
An excellent job by Jim this week.
Your reference to Japan's deep -- perhaps latent -- desire for a return to a simple, happy, peaceful life really struck a chord with me.
I have recently started to suspect that a surprising number of folks in Western nations would welcome a return to simplicity, in spite of their iPads, in spite of themselves.
Sharp insight as always, Mr Kunstler.
http://www.goldsubject.com/
You'd think those government hacks in Trenton would have better things to do than pick on what you want on your plate ;)
JHK wrote: "back to the society that blossomed and fruited in cycles of centuries on those beautiful rocky, sea-washed islands into a culture saturated in artistry - unencumbered by idiot religions or the bothersome neediness of other nations."
=================================
Hmm, nice image, but also a culture with Samurais and their love of warfare. Not that other cultures aren't steeped in militarism, but we should retain balanced images of the past lest we become seduced by distorted but attractive memories.
Cheers
goldsubject wrote: "I have recently started to suspect that a surprising number of folks in Western nations would welcome a return to simplicity, in spite of their iPads, in spite of themselves."
====================================
I sometimes make a point of eating very simply prepared food just to make a temporary break with an overly complex modern world. Always tastes great, too.
Cheers
As much as I find your personal views a "bone of contention", that article by Justin Raimondo is an enlightening and incisive overview (as per usual).
Excellent recommendation; thanks.
Dude, what's the rest of it? After all of the blow hards on this blog, somebody actually didn't write enough!
"WHY would you read that?"
I ask everybody I see reading that shit the same thing. Who the fuck WOULD you read that?
Heinberg's books are horrible. I've never been able to make it through more than a chapter of that drivel in a bookstore. I hope to God you took it out of the library and didn't actually buy it.
But here, I'll answer the question for you for the next time some hottie asks: Because you are a sycophantic JHK dweeb and a douchebag who can't be trusted to do his own research on energy.
You "explained the nature of the material" to a "gal" that was cutting your hair? Oh my goodneth, aren't you the naughty boy. You must get laid a ton.
Some hillbilly is impressed with the fact that you actually know what a book is and you have to kill the deal by spewing your doom-laden zealotry at her. Nice.
Dear Mr. Kunstler:
You are truly an artist and a poet.
Pdog
"Don’t see Japan going down to feudal ages without a fight. There are too many people stacked on top of each other to allow that to happen."
===============
The national birth rate may in fact decline in Japan ... without a fight ... because Japanese women changed their views of gender roles during the boom.
Male-female differences in role expectations have contributed to marriage decline. I'm all for reducing both marriages and childbirths in every nation on earth as part of our energy descent strategy.
Japan's population growth rate is NEGATIVE at -0.278% (2011 est.)
Compare that to the United States POSITIVE birth rate at 13.83 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
SOURCE: CIA FACTBOOK
Our birth rate is still higher than the birth rate in many wealthy countries and FORTUNATELY we also have many immigrants entering the country.
So, we do not need to be worried about a birth dearth that would crimp ability to take care of our growing elderly population.
BE NICE TO IMMIGRANTS. THEY MAY BE TAKING CARE OF YOU IN THE HOSPICE OR HOSPITAL WHERE YOU SPEND YOUR LAST DAYS.
The cherries are about to bloom in Kyoto, no doubt people will set up their cameras,students will sleep out in the parks and saki will be warmed... At least I hope so.
Somewhere in Brazil, in a quaint, yet fashionable boutique on the Rua Visconde de Pirajá, Queen Michelle tries on one of many diamond and emerald encrusted tiaras. The King, none too pleased about this shopping excursion, paces back and forth in the shop, even as he eyes through the open boutique door, the majestic, slender, long legged beauty, clacking down the promenade in her six inch “fxck me” pumps.
"Don’t see Japan going down to feudal ages without a fight. There are too many people stacked on top of each other to allow that to happen."
===============
The national birth rate may in fact decline in Japan ... without a fight ... because Japanese women changed their views of gender roles during the boom.
Male-female differences in role expectations have contributed to marriage decline. I'm all for reducing both marriages and childbirths in every nation on earth as part of our energy descent strategy.
Japan's population growth rate is NEGATIVE at -0.278% (2011 est.)
Compare that to the United States POSITIVE birth rate at 13.83 births/1,000 population (2011 est.)
SOURCE: CIA FACTBOOK
Our birth rate is still higher than the birth rate in many wealthy countries and FORTUNATELY we also have many immigrants entering the country.
So, we do not need to be worried about a birth dearth that would crimp ability to take care of our growing elderly population.
THEY MAY BE TAKING CARE OF YOU IN THE HOSPICE OR HOSPITAL WHERE YOU SPEND YOUR LAST DAYS ... WELCOME IMMIGRANTS AND TREAT THEM WELL.
Queen Michelle’s attention is briefly diverted from the Cartier cap so delicately placed upon her regal head toward the object of her husband’s roving eyes. The shop matron, sensing trouble, moves quickly, but not fast enough to stop the First Lady from flinging the bejeweled tiara directly at the King’s head. As luck would have it, the King sees the hurling headdress flying toward him and darts ever so quickly out of its path. In the strangest of coincidences, the lovely, long legged beauty sees the tiara, then bends down to catch it before it crashes to the sidewalk
Ever the gentleman, our King goes to the young lady to retrieve said crown, only to notice the girl’s nubile tan breasts, hiding beneath the soft material that separates her warm, young body from his. Her pearly smile meets his imperial gaze as she demurely hands the tiara back to the King. She turns away, continuing her stride, as the King slowly turns back, crown in hand, to see his Medusa snarl at him bitterly.
Queen Michelle caresses the tiara, which the shop matron has handed back to her, and says nonchalantly, “I’ll take three of these! Charge and send!”
My children have recommended this solution.
Turn the TV off, and go to the spa. My wife and I will do.
Myrtlemay, have you created comments like these about other First Ladies of the United States ... and posted them on a public forum?
Just curious.
I sometimes wonder if life in premodern times was really always harder everywhere for everyone. Maybe in the sense that there was no modern dentistry, yes, I'd agree. But coming to things like FOOD, did all premodern people really have to work their a$$es off all the time to avoid starvation? From what I read, there have been premodern societies which enjoyed a great deal of material abundance, and members of these societies have been able to produce much high culture, or otherwise indulge in leisurely activities. Indeed I've even heard some claim that the people of the past actually had MORE leisure time than US, and LESS work to do.
Is our choice really that black-and-white -- between (1) having to work our a$$es off all the time to keep ourselves and our families fed, and (2) adopting the modern carbon-based system, with all its evils? I know, soon we'll have no choice, but what piques my brain for now is: assuming we still have a choice, is it really between a rock and a hard place, as I spelt out above?
I wonder...
" When it all hits the fan, it will be too late to get started. Get a bike and start a garden, learn to hunt and fish. Drop the weight down to high school levels and get off the prescription med's as well."
I never did get this rationale, commonly expressed on similar "doom" sites for lack of a better term. Unlike a bear loading up in the fall, many Preparationistas advocate training for the dire moment of food shortage as if "making weight" increases the odds of survival. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and actually reveals, in my opinion, a delusional fantasy of "survival" as sporting event, most notably, the "making weight" mentality of wrestling and boxing.
If you really were really serious about preparing for a dire day you would figure out how to carry as much weight as possible while still remaining healthy. You would take a cue from Wang Shu Chin-- 70 in the below clip--compare him to the average American of that age!-- and learn Nei Gung and how to generate internal body heat for those very cold moments of depravity and discomfort. Wang's Japanese students marveled at how they could warm themselves up just by standing next to their teacher in the freezing cold temperatures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVg6De9Rk0Q&feature=related
Barack and Michelle were just spotted on the beach in Ipanema!
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3336/3641998842_457cc72607_o.jpg&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/26281328%40N05/3641998842&usg=__LuR62bqDqzKjwp1A19LbX3CLl9g=&h=1916&w=1275&sz=1198&hl=en&start=166&zoom=1&tbnid=pervT9HveyrhYM:&tbnh=151&tbnw=121&ei=foSHTaOvFsPPgAf6yoXPCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dipanema%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1362%26bih%3D656%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=234&oei=LISHTaLCF8qBgAeP1onECA&page=10&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:166&tx=84&ty=37
Asoka, I don't know where you were the other week when a ripped Hillary a new one for speaking out against opression of free speech when a 70 plus year old guy, peacefully protesting amerikan agression in foreign lands, was forcibly removed by two thugs right in FRONT OF HER! She didn't miss a beat during her speech while this was happening. SURPRISE, ASOKA, IT'S NOT ALWAYS "a black thing" that I wouldn't understand.
This nostalgia for the past is more a dream than a reality.
We tend to idealize what we have not and see it much better than what it is.
Life was hard and people, normal people, were far from being happy ( at least NOT happier than today), since there was not enough food and the houses were not as comfortable as today.
And all this when the population was much less than today.
How could the earth produce enough food without fertilizers, without oil to run the machines?
There is nothing poetic in an empty stomach.
ROTFLOL! Good one, RT! And yet, so TIMELY!
JHK said: "...as we all take the road back to a world made by hand. The Japanese may just be the pioneering exemplars of the universal process."
============
How romantic! And improbable. There is no way back. There is a way forward, and it will involve a mix of clean alternative energy, energy not derived from fossil fuels.
Look at Japan's neighbor, China. Just a small example: wind energy capacity in China grew 22.5% last year.
Last year was not the greatest for project financing, and even though coal and natural gas remain cheap in leading power consuming nations, wind energy capacity in China still grew 22.5%.
Half of the entire freakin' world's added wind capacity took place in – wait for it - China.
Wind power growth supported by a super grid is only one part of China's plan. China has surpassed the US in terms of total installed wind power capacity. China has also become the world’s largest producer of wind energy equipment.
The USA needs to get real about a future without easy access to fossil fuels. Wind power is not a panacea ... wind power combined with a dozen other clean energy sources will have to be ... because we are facing 47 years of energy descent.
Hillary is not currently our First Lady.
myrtlemay, your talent for short stories might find some rich material in Sarah Palin's ongoing travels to India and Israel. "Hint"
Cheers
And the warship carried a miniature Cho-Cho train to dazzle and amaze.
Patrizia, do you perchance know of any journal articles or similar academic literature containing research work that confirms what you said on human life in premodern times?
Asoka, in all seriousness, I used to do a really good impersonation of Lady Bird Johnson when her hubby was President. Of course, most of the laughs I got were at cocktail parties where everbody was probably drunk and would have laughed at anything. And I actually did this crap while living in D.C. where my husband was a GS 13 at the State Department. I wonder if that's why we were never invited to the White House for din din.
I had a taste of farm work when I was a teen.
The farmer was a stern man of few words and uninterested in teaching. Mostly my work involved the application of brute force with bare hands or with the aid of pick, shovel and pitchfork. At the end of a day in baking heat and humidity I was exhausted, starved, parched, stinking and filthy from head to foot. I would go home, shower, eat and fall asleep in front of the TV. I didn't complain, I was just a kid and I earned some money and I was always worried about money. And some guys had it a lot worse ie the guys from my school that spent their summers working on tobacco farms.
Anyway, that experience left me with no illusions about how it is to farm. I would go home and forget about the place but the farmer and his wife were stuck there and they worked harder and longer than me.
Interesting choice of rebuttal, Jim. It's not often in this day and age we get an actual glimpse into the real nature and character of our entertainers, pundits, and politicos. When images are so tightly media-controlled and edited, or shrouded in PR or other mystery, anything can be sold to Americans.
Hell, remember 1988, when Corporate Media (already a walking corpse though no one could see through the "Weekend at Bernie's" disguise) sold the American Subjects that Barb Bush was a kind, matronly grandmother?
Now, time and a series of those "gurad letting down" glimpses have shown the woman to be a callous, cruel, aloof, aristocratic monster who has no problems seeing the peasantry suffer and die by the tens of thousands (perhaps millions, only Bar knows that) for why should she sully her beatiful mind with that?
Thus, I found it intersting and revealing that you looked right through this comment:
Yeah, I wouldn't want to touch that one either, as it makes your Righteous Indignation Play a bit tougher, since the marketing connotations of all those bloody murdered Palestinians would muddy the righteously indignant waters.
("Two Shots, One Kill" - Google it if you don't know what I mean plus you might want a t-shirt)
On a psychological and marketing level, you understand, you definitely made the right call. No one can say you aren't savvy.
I don't know and I don't care what specifically Walt took offense to, plus if I know my Internet Bloggers, you've already edited it out so I'll never see it anyway, but I found it very trite, hackneyed and pedestrian that you went right for the prefab off-the-rack Righteous Indignation Play just as fast as Beck or Hannity would. You also, from where I am sitting, chose the topic to be righteously indignant about BECAUSE it's an off-the-rack prefab "argument" that instantly gives you recognition and "PC" clout among most of your audience.
Shameful, but oh so very human. You let Vlad deny the Holocaust and me and others curse our heads off or stray into ruthless incivility as we please, but touch on the mighty ego of JHK and it's First Amendment Bombs Away!
If you want to ban me for my "scurrilous" comments, feel free to do so. I don't do much more than read your essays every week, anymore, and don't think I'd much mind being banned at this point.
In fact, next time I go to waste my time posting here and find I can't log in, I may wind up thanking you.
In either case, thanks for that really illustrative post. It keeps me in mind of a crystal clear universal human truth:
Everyone is human. No person, however far-seeing, perspicacious, intelligent and conscious escapes being dragged down by the meat-sock full of hormones, ego and infantile brain chemistry so readily exploited these days by the marketers, advertisers and PR "people", that we all carry around with us.
Even Buddha had feet of clay. Isn't that right, JHK?
This is why we live in the growing nightmare of a world Ed Bernays and Prescott Bush made.
James, it's like a cat stuck up a tree: the way down is not as easy or the same as the way up. If we really want a return to sustainable living without some horrendous crash, it's going to have to be managed, and over generations. That surely means some compromise using current technologies while population reduces in a demographically and economically viable way. Which presumably also means some New World Order of global government, which probably means something like Washington but worse. Keep crossing your fingers!
"I don't think Japan, like any industrialized nation, will willingly go back to the feudal-era level of economy."
The key word, of course, is 'willingly.' We are going there, too, though in our case the 'leadership' of the country (not the politicians) is willingly taking us back to feudalism. That is their favored polity. They get to be the barons and earls while the rest of us become (as if we haven't already) the serfs.
Thank you, Myrtlemay. That is all I wanted to know.
You'd think those living near that now radioactive hell hole would yearn for the 19th century, but more than likely, a return to thoughtless amounts of warm homes, clean water, and twittingly convenient electronics is more than likely the desire. Right up until the last slice of yellow cake they will wish.
Typing about tweeters, email, and even this blog, thoughts of revolution encouraged by the young, or old, don't account to much, here, or in middle earth, if a daisy cutter is dropped off.., nearby.
In terms of leisure, things have been going downhill for the last 10,000 years or so. Hunter Gatherers worked less than 20 hours per week. Of course they starved when things went bad, but so did the agriculturists and so might we in the future. And of course, the hunter gatherer lifestyle cannot support many people and requires a huge amount of land per person.
What made civilization and its specialization possible was the cultivation of grains - which can be stored and get people through the winter. This "excess capacity" of stored up bio-energy allows some people to focus on other things besides the day to day fight for survival. Agriculturalists work more than hunter gatherers but less than we do. Also a different rhythm: very hard at the planting and harvest, very little during the winter. With industrialism came the full blossoming of human perversity: some work 80 hours a week and some not at all because they don't need to or can't find any work. Any calls to cut back people's hours so as to even it all is met with outraged screams. Don't get me wrong: the lucky few who love their work should be able to work 80 hourse per week - but no one should have to just to suvive. The mandatory work week that allows for survival should be cut back to 25 hours or so. This would help the unemployment problem as well as foster more joy in society as people would have the leisure to cultivate the arts and watch more TV!. We need to bring back some of the hunter gathering way of life and high tech (well used) would allow us to that. I'm not predicting this: human cussedness is just too great - but that's what should happen. What will happen is another story.
Correction to first post:
This is why we live in the growing nightmare of a world Ed Bernays and Prescott Bush made.
should read:
This is one of the major reasons and paradoxes that explains why we live in the growing nightmare of a world Ed Bernays and Prescott Bush made.
Hey Cash, funny you mention tobacco farms. When I was a teenager in the CT. river valley all of my friends worked the tobacco fields. Piece-work, pick fast and make more money. it was hot, dirty, dusty, boring, and exhausting work. I can't imagine the pesticides we were exposed to. But it was money. Today the farms, what are left of them, employ migrants from the islands. They live in dorms for the season and then move on to the orchards. The kids around here won't do it. They are fat, lazy, and won't leave the AC. Mom and Dad are fine with that. Farm work is beneath "MY" kids.
Oh, and that husband of mine in later years asked for a divorce. I don't think it was because of the Lady Bird thing, but you never know.
Pee Wee Herman? My guess is you shouldn't have finished off that bottle of Clos Du Val last night.
As a poster here I don't know much about what might be going on between Kunstler and Walt, but I do think it was less than polite of Walt to speak of what Kunstler wrote at a certain pont as "a diatribe couched in Kunstler's coquettish homophobia." I wouldn't have been much flattered by such a remark myself.
If you dislike what someone wrote, the least you can do is disagree politely, as in "with all due respect, I beg to differ". It costs nothing to be nice.
What you won't like others to do/say to you, don't do/say to others.
I don't know that anyone will go back-to-the-land unless forced to. We have had the option to go back-to-the-land AND have our modern lives, but the majority of Americans don't grow so much as a tomato and believe food comes in cans or appears by magic on plates after we tell an aspiring actor what we want on the menu.
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/
Oh I know. Indeed I do. But high heels? Aren't you mixing metaphors/fetishes? School girls don't wear high heels, Grob San.
Apparently the girls themselves have become very weird: their favorite reading are male homosexual romances. The boys have become celibates. Manga has conquered all. Godzilla with his smirk and wink knew well what he was about. And who is to say that wind from Mothra's wings wasn't the real cause of the Tsunami? Did not a "Divine Wind" or Kami Kazi save Japan from the Mongols? Might not Mothra be warning Japan to turn away from a world gone mad? Did not Yukio Mishima warn the post WW2 generation when he saw the boys and girls begining to look the same? Yes, Yes, Yes, and again Yes.
Jim,
I am writing a novel at the moment started well before the Japanese tsunami and earthquake (I think the reactor disaster will be a relatively short term event, though it will certainly change people's thinking there), where I had in fact come to much the same conclusion. Realistically, I think that what will emerge is something closer to what I'd see as a "realistic" steampunk model, one where you have certain advances that continue.
I don't think the information revolution is necessarily going to unwind completely, nor is the genetic revolution, but what will happen is that these will tend to take place in isolated enclaves even as the society around them devolves to a more basic level organizationally.
In Japan, that's not going to manifest as the re-re-emergence of Samurai and Ronin, but instead I suspect it'll mean that the Yakuza syndicates may very well end up becoming the functional government, while MITA and the huge bureaucracies disintegrate into irrelevance. Why? Because the Yakuza know how to take care of their people, can effectively field private armies and in general are already large enough and established enough that it is not in their best interest for criminality to arise.
Eventually, of course, the emperor will marry a Yakuza leader's daughter and the transition will be complete (the Japanese are not about to abandon their emperor, and I suspect that over time that position will actually strengthen again as the country continues its downward spiral).
In addition to that, Japan will likely become far more isolationist, but that's going to be true of most countries throughout the world. However, Japan will be unusual there in that they've already begun this process. The Japanese population is declining because of an aging population demographic. The trinity of disasters will only accelerate that process - reducing the life expectancy of the most fragile, causing emigration of those who can migrate, leaving behind vast areas of formerly urban development that will never be rebuilt, and will ultimately be reclaimed by the growing Japanese forests.
Here's a sobering thought - Tokyo is unnavigable unless you travel by mass transit, but I suspect there are portions of that transit system that will never get rebuilt. This will quickly create villagification - areas that may appear to be connected from the air, but that in fact will become isolated islands separated by impenetrable urban ruins.
The Japanese understand that they are highly dependent upon petroleum for their current lifestyles. As the means to gain that petroleum decrease, it will reach a point where it is easier to change their lifestyles, and I think this process is in fact already underway.
Kurt
Maybe the Maoists in China were onto something when they made the intelligentsia get down from their ivory towers in academe and bureaucracies and bust their asses in the fields alongside peasants. It has one great benefit, you never again take food for granted. You know in your aching bones where it comes from. And you never again put down hicks from the sticks. As I said in a post a long time ago, I'll take one farmer in coveralls sweating his ass off shovelling shit in his fields over a thousand bullshit artists in cubes in air conditioned towers with their spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations.
Thanks, Vlad, that was quite helpful. Largely agree.
Would you perchance know of any journal articles or similar academic literature substantiating all this info on premodern life?
What's wrong with Pee-Wee Herman? That show was great satire.
I have to think the imagined wish of the Japanese to return to a feudal state is really JHK's wish to return to a feudal state. But, then again, nostalgia for a simpler time has existed as long as there have been simpler times.
And as an aside, why even bother with CNN or any TV news? The Internet allows you to completely bypass those outlets. Being in my early 40s, I instinctively turned on CNN when the Japan nukes first started blowing up and I caught an interview with the punk who exposed the existence of unreconstructed liberals at NPR. Then ass-cream commercials. Gripping video from NHK and RussiaToday was readily available online, and there is no end to the analysis available through blogs, podcasts and newspaper articles. Get with the times, James!
The cat himself doesn't know why he is up the tree. And admitting that he is afraid to go down if beneath his dignity. So there he sits making the best of it, pretending that it was his choice. When the firemen come to get him, he forgets that he doesn't know the way down and is afraid - he just gets down.
JHK said: "So, I can see the Japanese people - a deeply homogenous society - veering toward an as yet un-articulated consensus: let's just get out of the modern world."
============
Jim, just the opposite is happening. By the way: Japan is no longer "deeply homogeneous."
Local governments (and I'm talking about both urban and rural government in the 47 prefectures) increasingly have to take into account the linguistic needs of the growing numbers of foreign residents in their communities both at the national level (denshi seifu) and at the local level (denshi jichitai).
You can see evidence of this in how local administrations communicate with the public: by foreign-language provision on local government websites, by providing content for target audiences in translations, and by efforts to make Japanese-language information more accessible to non-native speakers.
Local governments increasingly have to take into account the linguistic needs of the growing numbers of foreign residents in their communities. "Homogeneity" is gone.
I welcome this development. Japan is not immune to internationalization, multiculturalism and globalization. There is no "going back" to a supposed golden age. As global citizens, we have to embrace immigrants, as Japan is doing.
It is one small blue planet we all live on, so let's get along and be nice to one another.
Multicultural Japan is leading the way, showing us how civilized people act.
Excellent post!
"If you dislike what someone wrote, the least you can do is disagree politely, as in "with all due respect, I beg to differ". It costs nothing to be nice."
=====
Welcome, SomeoneinAsia. Those are my sentiments exactly.
Of course, some here will say that the phrases you mention are inauthentic ways to disguise aggression. With all due respect, I beg to differ.
No I don't. I've gleaned it from many sources. It's well known but many specialists don't know it. Many here don't agree btw - they see the rise of Civilization per se as just a giant mistake. I see it as an important stage. I like the Science Fiction where a race lives simply but retains access to high tech. The best of both worlds.
The books of Jared Diamond are scholarly without being pedantic. If I remember corectly, he knows all about the agricultural revolution, excess capacity and subsequent humann specialization. The problem is that the specialization is both good and bad. It allows for poets but also for child labor in factories. Or in other words, voluntary specialization and involuntary - controlled by other people, serfdom and slavery. Diamond is good in that he doesn't pretend to know all the answers but presents the questions and the paths that lie ahead of us. We are at a cross road and he who chooses has trouble.
You had asked about teachers.
Theres an OK site called 'Sarlos reviews of Gurus'
And I avoid:
SRF
IYI
3HO
Sogyal rinpoche
Lama Surya das
Poonjaji
Andrew Cohen [etc]
Chidvalasananda
ad shanti
Ammachi
Chalanda ma
Byron katie
etcetc
Excuse me, but I do not fully understand what you say.
In Italy 100 years ago life was very hard and there was not enough food for all.
If you read the 19th century literature you will have a good idea of what was life before oil.
Hard work (when available) very scarce food and no comfort.
The rich of that time lived worse than the middle class of today.
The problem of we people is that all (me included) never se what they have, they only see the bad part of it.
And what you do not have, that looks always so much better.
Not all is bad in civilization.
There is also a good part, we live better, eat better, live longer.
When the meat was without hormones people couldn´afford to eat it.
When fruits were better than today, there were never enough for all.
And farming was a hard and consuming job.
Besides: there was no Internet, how could we live without Internet?
Mr Kunstler wouldn´t write his weekly post, I wouldn’t certainly know him, life would be confined in my town and probably quite boring...
Well, I definitely wouldn’t like to go back.
The present is good enough for me, I pick what I like and enjoy it. My life is very simple; I do not feel obliged to use all what 2011 can offer.
You can choose to live the way you like.
In the 19th century you had to live the way you could.
Someone,
I just did a quick google search on the village of Catalhoyuk in modern day Turkey. This was one of the earliest villages found to date and has been excavated and studied.
Here's a link. At the bottom of the article there's a whole bunch of references to academic articles. Maybe this will give you a start.
http://archaeology.about.com/cs/religionandmagic/a/catalhoyuk.htm
You might also want to do a google search on the city of Jericho. My understanding is that it also is a very ancient settlement going back a good ten thousand years and has been extensively studied and excavated.
asia said: "Theres an OK site called 'Sarlos reviews of Gurus'
=========
I can vouch for the accuracy of what asia is saying. I often go to that site:
http://www3.telus.net/public/sarlo/Ratings.htm
when in doubt about a guru. Sarlo's ratings have always led me to great experiences!
Thanks again for the helpful info, Vlad!
Will have to check out Jared Diamond sometime!
Quite a day in terms of international politics.
Protests in Syria around Deraa may be gaining steam.
Rumors of the death of Gadaffi's son Khamis.
Putin calls the attack on Libya a crusade.
The Prince of Bahrain accuses Iran of being behind the unrest in his country.
Yemeni generals defected to the rebel side.
Yes, watching the news is a form of distraction, but I have to say it is coming fast and furious at the moment.
Cheers
Wasn't this supposed to be the end of history?
Japan is determined to fight the blending that marks this dark age. As they "power down" in population, they have lead the world in the development of robotics. They are determined to resist the demand of the "World Community" to accept mass colored immigration. Who will take care of their old folks? They will themselves.
Europe faces disaster as the Colonel has threatened to unleash countless African boat people. It is exactly the scenario as described by Jean Raspail in his book "Camp of the Saints". Italy is already demanding that the rest of Europe take their share - in other words, already admitting defeat. They should turn the boats back to Africa. That is the answer, not demand that other countries share in their misery. If they need help doing THAT, they should ask for it and get it.
Japan has chosen the Path of Life and Europe, the Path of Death. Things are what they are because they're not something else. The Japanese are the Japanese because they're not Africans or Indonesians or Indians. Any changes that they make will come from themselves. They WILL themselves, as do all Superior Individuals and Cultures. The demand the mix, merge, become other, become the same as, become less - all of this is part and parcel of the Dark Age of Destruction. As if all Cultures are the Same! As if all Peoples are Equal! Democracy - the Triump of Ignorance over Knowledge, Weakness over Will.
Cash, yeah, what a joke that was. The moment I heard that quote, I thought "Bullshit."
Not very erudite on my part, I know.
Cheers
Patrizia, el tesis de la gente aqui en CFN es que el confort moderna de que tu hablas es solo posible con el petroleo, lo cual se esta acabando rapidamente. Lo que llaman "Peak Oil" y "Long Emergency"
La vida del pasado tenia sus dificultades, pero la vida hoy dia tiene otras dificultades diferentes en el estres, enfermedades, radiacion, etc.
Vamos a tener que aprender a vivir con menos energia. Pero no creo que tenemos ... no podemos ... volver a una epoca sin energia. Simplemente las fuentes van a cambiar y el petroleo, si es que haya, seria una menor parte de la mezcla energetica.
Lo siento que yo no pude escribirte en italiano ... pues el castellano es el unico idioma que tengo fuera del ingles.
Good to know we see eye-to-eye on certain things, asoka. :)
Okay, how about "with all due respect, I find considerable difficulty in accepting what s/he/you/etc said"? :)
You might want to follow The End Of Suburbia with Gasland and explain to your class how the big band aid of fracking averted interruptions in the gas supply.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged:
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Marlin, you mentioned some things here weeks ago about Teddy K.
Read Brimelows book.To keep the democrats in power he said:
'The Immigration act will bring in 5000 people total.'
Now, 100 million later, well!
And as for Abe wanting to unscramble the egg:
Lincoln's Ever Changing Views on Slavery
He told him that blacks were shipped here without their consent and now Lincoln wanted to ship them away as if they had never even been there. ...
www.lib.niu.edu/1997/ihy970230.html
Thanks for the info, cash!
Al, in ancient Greek mythology, Nemesis was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). I consider "the gods" to be the natural forces and cycles of nature, which human beings must respect, or face the consequences.
CORRECION
Pero no creo que tenemos que ... ni podemos ... volver a una epoca sin energia. Simplemente las fuentes van a cambiar y el petroleo, si es que haya, seria una menor parte de la mezcla energetica.
LOL! I'm good with that!
Ever read that J.G Ballard novel about the guy trapped on an island between two Free Ways? He crashed there and was stranded. The movie Crash was good too - the erotization of car crashes and death - very American with a Japanese flavoring.
I tend to agree with the idea that demography is destiny. What the places in question all seem to have is a large proportion of young people. To me there's no quicker route to mayhem than to have a large number of unemployed or underemployed and therefore poor and unmarriageable young men.
Young, energetic, frustrated, time on their hands and along comes a charismatic bullshit artist (like Hitler) who will solve the problems, restore their pride, give them a cause, a uniform and three square meals a day.
I think the problem of what to do with young men has been around since the demise of large herds of animals and therefore the demise of hunting as a way of life and the rise of agriculture. I think the basic problem is that we were hunters for three million years and farmers for only about ten thousand. Our evolution hasn't kept pace with our technology so we have the neurology of a hunter but the settled life of a farmer/city dweller.
Gee, westcoast, again this week you have to bring up the dreaded homosexual marriage. Get over it. Who gives a shit if two people of the same sex love each other and want to get married? There are a lot worse things about the Democratic party than their stance on gay marriage.
All I asked is whether you know of some books or articles by scholars who have done serious research on the issue regarding how premodern life was like and how it compares to today.
How representative of premodern life was life in 19th century Italy? For all we know, things might not have been so bad in some other premodern societies. To find out for sure, we need to do research. We can't jump to conclusions, can we?
You might like to look at Vlad Krandz's posts here. What he said on life in premodern societies is very interesting. For premodern farmers, yes, the planting and harvesting seasons were hard, but hey, winter was a big, long holiday. And they worked less hours a week than we do on average.
Vlad, Japan is already becoming a multicultural society. It is inevitable.
Thanks to an amendment to the Immigration Control Act in 1990 in Japan, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Brazilians of Japanese descent coming to Japan.
As a result, there is a large number of couples comprising Japanese and Japanese-Brazilian in Japan producing cross-culture kids born of these marriages. You cannot stop LOVE. You cannot stop miscegenation.
Cross-culture kids are the future of a new multicultural Japan. They are agents for a transition from a phobic monocultural system to a loving multicultural system in Japanese society as a whole.
Let's do some desalinization, and then we'll have something to drink. ;)
Cash wrote: "Young, energetic, frustrated, time on their hands and along comes a charismatic bullshit artist (like Hitler) who will solve the problems, restore their pride, give them a cause, a uniform and three square meals a day."
==========================
The weird thing is that after the carnage of the First World War, one would have thought that young German men would have been in short supply; a "missing generation" like the one France perceived in the 1930's.
I agree the presence of too many idle young men is an ideal recipe for organized violence of one sort or another.
An interesting statistics exercise is to take a given country over a given period of time and chart the military spending vs birth rate. If both are rising sharply -- watch out.
Cheers
I see you have your usual garbage mouth today.
Thought people might like this
http://www.stockportflats.org/ghost.htm
AMERICAN GHOST: POETS ON LIFE AFTER INDUSTRY
Lillien Waller
Accelerated by the Great Recession, late twentieth-century deindustrialization in the United States left many manufacturing cities, and their rural counterparts, economically battered by the experience of unprecedented joblessness, poverty, and depopulation. We characterize these locales as ghost towns, phantoms of a former glory, while often failing to acknowledge the people who fare the downturns and form the core of America's urban and rural cultures.
The nine poets represented in American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry counter such myopia in verse, with thoughtful reflections on the real costs of industry and its dismantlement--community life, personal identity, cultural traditions, and the natural world--in Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and beyond. This intimate collection culls inspiration from personal and collective experience, found text, and oral history, as it speaks to the complicated humanity surviving amid so-called ruin. American Ghost asks us to consider: what will sustain us? How will we sustain each other?
Poems by b: william bearhart, Suzette Bishop, Anne Gorrick, Randall Horton Denise Miller, Ruby Murray, Kate Schapira, Lillien Waller, Deborah Woodard. Photographs by Ruby Murray and Valaurian Waller.
You got oil, natural gas or nuclear energy to do it with?
Of course using natural gas to purify water polluted by natural gas extraction makes no sense. Anybody disagree?
OK, speaking of farming, I've decided to get serious this year about growing food.
I decided that I could live on potatoes and beans, both of which are purportedly easy to grow, although I've never had any luck.
With the potatoes, it's because I went with the "don't bother digging, just throw them on the ground and cover them with straw" advice, because it was easy.
But I never got many potatoes.
OK, this time I'm serious. So I bought 100 pounds of seed potatoes, waited until the freeze was over, the monsoon was over, and the ground was workable.
Yesterday. So I fenced off part of a pasture, with grass and goldenrod, and starting digging and planting. After hours of work, I had planted 45 potatoes. The first sack doesn't even look touched. And I'm running out of space.
For Tripp, or anyone who actually knows about these things - I have some mostly composted manure and woodchips that have been sitting since the hurricane 2 years ago. I plan to cover the potatoes with both of these things.
Which first? I've heard that potatoes like acid soil and don't like too much fertilizer, so I'm thinking the wood chips, then the compost.
Is this right?
I don't have much time to finish this project. Yesterday was nice, but today is hot and humid, and soon the ticks and mosquitoes will be out.
Agree. Multiculturalism is a good thing. (Provided the foreigners absorbed into the host country/culture are respectful of it, of course, who is sadly not always the case.)
Chinese culture was in a way quite multicultural from the start. Buddhism was not a native Chinese religion but its impact on Chinese culture was enormous. (Asoka might have played an important role in the spread of Buddhism to China. :)) Jewish communities thrived for centuries in China, too. And during the Tang Dynasty Arabs, Greeks and Persians were allowed to live in China.
The day we figure a non-fossil fuel and sustainable, clean, and energy efficient way to desalinate ocean water, I will jump up and down with joy.
As you probably already know, water scarcity is driving the rapid expansion in global installed capacity of desalination facilities. Conventional fossil fuels have been utilized as their main energy source, but recent concerns over greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have promoted global development and implementation of energy minimization strategies and cleaner energy supplies.
There are many factors to be considered:
-- energy efficient design and high efficiency pumping and energy recovery devices
-- advanced membrane materials (nanocomposite, nanotube, and biomimetic) and innovative technologies (forward osmosis, ion concentration polarization, and capacitive deionization)
-- and, of course, renewable energy resources (solar, wind, and geothermal)
I am confident that utilization of energy efficient design combined with high efficiency pumping and energy recovery devices will prove effective -- in full-scale applications
What a glorious day that will be for all of us!
That's what worries me so much: we may have lost a lot of the valuable knowledge on subsistance farming possessed by our forefathers...
Let's all contribute what we can to the realization of that, asoka!
On the other hand, we have a wealth of knowledge (and communication technologies) unimaginable to our ancestors.
The challenge is to use the best of both worlds, in a responsible, permacultural way that will have a small ecological footprint. I think we can do it.
I enjoyed reading about your potatoes.
I was never succesfull with much.
One thing I was able to grow was Zucchini.
I had so many we practically lived on them ( and few eggs and cheese)all Summer.
Another easy thing to grow is the small salad and tomatoes (if you do not have slugs).
I used to get rid of them with beer, but after a while it didn ´t work anymore.
I was also very lucky with strawberries.
You have to give a lot of water and take away weeds.
But, all considered, if you do it for fun, it is worth.
If you do it for profit, I guess there are still more profitable ways to make a living...
Once again the Kunstlermeister leaves me almost-almost!-silent in awe. He hit the nail and drove it home--what need have I to pound away? But being human and female here is my feeble strike (the hammer clutched up almost to the head):
Re the nuclear disaster in Japan, and commentator reaction to same:
First, nuclear is the greatest concentrator of power that mankind has created--and that includes money and religion. The mining of fuel, the original investment in plants, the technical safety concerns, and the problems of disposal all make this energy choice a danger to democracy as well as humanity. History teaches us that when a society is completely dependent upon a central entity that controls the power of life and death over its subjects (think irrigation systems in the first great civilizations), that the voices of the "little" men are seldom heeded. "Too big to fail" has often proved a recipe for failure. Yet everyone seems to be commenting, "yesyes we know all that--but there is no other way to sustain [the unsustainable?] our civilization."
Second, many of the commentators seem to confuse toys with progress, and complexity with satisfaction. For example, someone pointed out that cars kill more people than nuclear power, so why don't we quit driving cars?--in a very sarcastic tone. Several mentioned maybe we should go back to candles.
It's as if we must choose: nuclear--or the Dark of mankind's brutish beginnings--. But maybe our status as human beings and our progress as entities will in the end be determined more by our ethics and philosophies than our trinkets; by the beauty we recognize and savor. Let's hope so.
I agree, my parents were such people in Italy many years ago. Their life there was one of hunger and deprivation. However they built up a big store of knowledge on how plants grow, what type of soil and what types of conditions favour different varieties. Same thing for farm livestock. If things go south in a big hurry people like my parents will have the store of knowledge to survive and people like me (I was disdainful of such stuff) will starve.
Wow, Vlad, I agree with you for once!
We should cut working hours and have every able-bodied person working.
I am surprised that you would advocate a left wing position!
You have to stop playing pussy foot with every Guru who come along. As long as the Glove fits you must Commit! But choose wisely! Be lead by the Spirit even if It leads you to strange places. What if Asoka is your Guru? Will you accept your Destiny? Or perhaps I, Vald Kraznd am. Will you accept me and follow my commands? Look, I'm just doing what was done to me: two Hindoo Ladies tried to get me to become their disciple. I declined. They said I would come crawling back to them begging. Hasn't happened. What a joke they were. The craving for phowa comes in many forms.
The justification is based on something called 'R2P' Responsibility To Protect. Our fearless leaders can quickly text 'R2P' to each other on Blackberries to justify dropping a few cruise missiles on somebody's ass. In Libya's case it was 110.
Apparently this 'R2P' thing is optional and the American Public is left out of the loop.
I'm wondering if optional compassion / optional intervention might define tyranny. Wouldn't that be ironic?
This is very encouraging!
Reminds me of how the Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in peace in multicultural medieval Spain.
They shared poetry, music, art, architecture, theology, exegesis, law, philosophy, medicine, pharmacology, and mysticism. (The universities of al-Azhar in Cairo and Cordoba in Spain, both founded in the tenth century, followed the older model of the Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad, as places of shared learning among scholars from the three religious traditions.)
It is not "human nature" that prevents us from being nice to each other. We are social beings; we are wired to cooperate with one another for survival.
***The challenge is to use the best of both worlds, in a responsible, permacultural way that will have a small ecological footprint. I think we can do it.***
My fear is that before we can realize this we will all have to endure a long period of hardship -- which many of us might not survive..
Thought people might like this
http://www.stockportflats.org/ghost.htm
AMERICAN GHOST: POETS ON LIFE AFTER INDUSTRY
Lillien Waller
Accelerated by the Great Recession, late twentieth-century deindustrialization in the United States left many manufacturing cities, and their rural counterparts, economically battered by the experience of unprecedented joblessness, poverty, and depopulation. We characterize these locales as ghost towns, phantoms of a former glory, while often failing to acknowledge the people who fare the downturns and form the core of America's urban and rural cultures.
The nine poets represented in American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry counter such myopia in verse, with thoughtful reflections on the real costs of industry and its dismantlement--community life, personal identity, cultural traditions, and the natural world--in Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and beyond. This intimate collection culls inspiration from personal and collective experience, found text, and oral history, as it speaks to the complicated humanity surviving amid so-called ruin. American Ghost asks us to consider: what will sustain us? How will we sustain each other?
Poems by b: william bearhart, Suzette Bishop, Anne Gorrick, Randall Horton Denise Miller, Ruby Murray, Kate Schapira, Lillien Waller, Deborah Woodard. Photographs by Ruby Murray and Valaurian Waller.
"Reminds me of how the Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in peace in multicultural medieval Spain."
You were there?
Oh my deer, (I await hunting season), as I have said a hundred billion times: Fascism partakes of both the Right and the Left without being bound by either. In other words, it's not just a little bit of one and a little bit on the other. It stands above like the apex of an Equilateral Triangle. The focus of Capitalism and Communism is on Matter; the Focus of Fascism is on Man. Each Culture will have its own unique Fascism. In contrast, both Capitalism and Communism seek to crush all cultural and genetic uniqueness. Liberals bemoan the loss of animal and plant species - or even the many varieties of apples. But whole races of people being bred out of exixtence - Great.
And what of the greatest poet of all, Rod McKuen? Oh for a bottle cheap red wine, a loaf a wonder bread, and a volume of McKuen beside us in the wilderness.
Hello Wage, I grow lots of stuff this way. especialy suitable for potatoes. HUGE crops. You need the soil to fill them however and some people think them unsightly.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/sanders98.html
As long as the Brazilians are of pure Japanese descent, no harm is done. Maybe they will even bring some enrichment - like samba or something. The Japanese are masters of taking things from other peoples and making it their own - while remaining themselves. They choose what they take, how much, and what they do with it. In other words, they have a very strong immune sytem. Pathogens and Parasties are going to have to work very hard to crack this nut. If you love them, you will accept this. Foreigners who reside in Japan know that they have acculturated when they stop being bothered by the signs that say "No foreigners allowed". Love means sacrafice Asoka. It means letting the Beloved be what they are. You have alot to learn about Life and Love.
"the Focus of Fascism is on Man"
Is that man with a boot on his face?
Well-struck, Willow! :o)
"It's as if we must choose: nuclear--or the Dark of mankind's brutish beginnings--. But maybe our status as human beings and our progress as entities will in the end be determined more by our ethics and philosophies than our trinkets; by the beauty we recognize and savor. Let's hope so." -Willow
I would hope so too, but as more veils are dropped from the machinations of those that "run the joint", my hopes tend to grow dimmer and dimmer.
To continue on the present (profit-above-all) Cheney-course invites our extinction. Oh well, the Earth shall abide for another few million years or so [as a bio-sphere] without our foolishness; there's pleasure and peace in that thought.
***which many of us might not survive..***
After we are born, every single human being on the planet soon learns of their mortality. Nobody is getting out alive: with or without fossil fuels.
The challenge is to live in harmony with nature, in a loving, peaceful community, with the requisite self-knowledge to enjoy every minute of it.
I have lived in the Global South. They are much better at living happily than North Americans, Asians, or Europeans. They are happy without money; they are happy with money. They love to dance all night ... in their own homes. I experienced this ... in my own home.
This excerpted lyric from a salsa song (which does not translate well into English...hmmm?) says it much better than I can:
Siempre Alegre
(Autor: Manuel Jiménez)
(Canta: Sammy Marrero)
Hay que pasar la vida siempre alegre,
después que uno se muere de que vale,
hay que gozar de todos los placeres,
cuando uno vá a morir nadie lo sabe.
Coro:
Vive la vida, mira que se vá y no vuelve.
Sabroso siempre sabroso
por eso mismo no me voy yo de este mundo
si no me lo gozo.
Bohemio soy de corazón,
amo yo esta vida con loca pasión.
You can hear it sung by Raphy Leavitt y La Selecta here: http://bit.ly/glDJZ0
Ummm, I think so... but they say if you remember you weren't really there... so I'm not sure.
:)
RT,
When do you usually put in your seed 'taters?
(I'll be trying the tires again this year; too late last year; lots of nice tiny 'tater tots, and they did taste deeeeelicious!)
There was a post that said the US has room for immigration but it should lower birth rates. The facts are fertility in the US is 1.7 for whites, 2.3 for blacks and 3.0 for latinos. Replacement level is 2.1. So how quickly do you want white to decline? 1.0? 0.5? Forbid white to reproduce altogether to allow more immigration?
This mini-Renaissance was ended up by a wave of invaders from a new Fundamentalist Regime in North Africa - long before the Catholic Goths reconquered. A similar thing happened in old Iran. Fundamentalism is intrinsic to Islam - as can be seen by a brief perusal of the Koran.
I want ALL citizens to have the legal right (subsidized if they can't afford it) to: family planning services, contraception, abortion, vasectomy, tubal ligation, etc. in ALL cultural groups. I want the birth rate to go down for ALL groups in ALL nations. Our survival depends upon it.
So the Jews and Muslims chased themselves out of Spain?
CORRECTION
I want ALL human beings, documented or undocumented to have the legal right...
Two images stuck with me from Japan.
A tall skinny 20 something Japanese man with a little goatee. Think Japanese Hipster. He's emerging from the ruins with a tiny elderly lady on his back.
A young Japanese soldier looks terrified. He's struggling out of the ruins with an elderly man on his back.
Coming to a subduction zone, near you. Of coursed our elderly are so overweight, it will take a block and tackle to get them out.
I also noticed, looking at the ruins, that there is a lot of reusable building material about. I could see quantities of the metric equivalent of 2 x 4s (if they don't have to burn them all to keep warm) and intact roof tile. Smaller, more traditional houses. Maybe.
Shikata ga nai.
West Coast Chapter of CFN, Post 5
Western Pacific NW Division
Welcome back, Lewis! Hope all is well with you in your new digs.
You know you love it, you humorless, old bag.
Ooooooh No!
There goes To-Key-O
Go, Go, Godzilla!
You are just blindly reacting as per your conditioning. You are evidently content to be a Pavlovian Dog. There have been bad Fascist States - and good ones like Franco's Spain. In any case, Liberalism is an extravagance like junk food, escalators and all night street lights. It will disappear when the sanity born of scarcity resumes.
Note: I'm not talking of real Liberalism, the freedom of thought as advocated by people like Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. I'm talking about the cultural suicide cult that Turkle and Dale belong to.
Fascism, the conservative industrial state, may well disappear too. But the Ur Fascism that existed everywhere prior to Industrialism will just resume. Fascism so called, was just the attempt to retain these ancient cultural values within the Industrial State during modern times. A challenge and a challenge met so to speak. Was it perfect? No, but neither were pre-industrial states. How could they be perfect when Man is not? Liberalism is pretending that Man is perfect or perfectable without God - and then throwing away all the ancient safeguards like marriage or the old hard won rights like the right to own property or carry arms.
The Japanese have actually already retreated from the modern world once, in the late 16th century when they were first contacted by the Portuguese and Spanish and introduced to firearms. By around 1600 or so (not exactly sure of the dates on all of this) Japanese musketry was superior to European.
But then the samurai noticed, as the knights of Europe had discovered, that a matchlock musket in the hands of a peasant could bring down a samurai in his armor and his sword, without the lifetime of training in swordsmanship, martial arts, Zen, tea ceremonies, haiku composition and flower arranging, etc. that made a true samurai.
"No, we can't have this," decided the intellectual and political and military nobility, and so somebody decreed "there will be no more guns in Japan," and so there were no more guns in Japan for another 250 years. Just like that.
You’re a funny guy, Vlad, and pretty thick-skinned, too, because you’re still posting even though about a bazillion people are telling you you’ve worn out your welcome. I wish I had your balls, really I do. (But you’re still the only reason I bother to read the comments these days.)
Bad Kraps, you present gross misperception and error as wisdom.
Fascism was about men in the same sense that the Holocaust was about the Jews.
Some of fascism's fundamental tenants in practice were...
1) The ultimate supremacy and important of the state over the individual. (Hitler talked constantly about this and said the individual didn't matter.)
2) The superiority of a racial or national "in" group and the persecution of "out" groups. (I guess you like this part.)
3) A merger or at least close collusion between the interests of corporations and the state.
4) Various cults of personality at multiple levels (in Nazi Germany think Hitler and his cast of cronies or Mussolini in Italy).
5) War as a solution to the state's problems.
6) Contempt for democracy and democratic processes, i.e. "leader knows best" ideology.
7) Suppression of fundamental rights such as freedom of the press, expression, religion, etc.
8) Idealization of an "inner party" of true believers who garnered the attention, rights, accolades, and rewards of the society.
Now, in this context, how in hell you gonna cast Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy as some kind of humanistic Renaissance? Both were plainly against the rights of the common person. Yet again, you're just plain off your rocker.
Also, why are you always complaining about the agenda of the "global elite" when many of its tenants fit snugly into this framework? Shouldn't you be happy with your crypto-fascist international overlords?
I didn't say that. Your post wasn't about that nor was my answer. But yes, the Europeans took back what had been taken from them.
Man isn't perfect turkey. Look at what your Communism did in the Soviet Union and China. Look at what it's doing to the United States and Europe - flooding us with aliens. Fascism attempts to protect man against himself. Liberalism/Communism glorifies man - in order to enslave him. Look at how all these poor fools like you voted for Obama! You'll make a similar (Hillary) mistake next time because you refuse to even look at much less fight your conditioning.
Kraps, you are full of pie-in-the-sky burpings that have no correspondence to what fascism and other similarly totalitarian forms of government actually are in practice.
There were good fascist states? Like....which ones?
I know of some bad ones...
North Korea
Nazi Germany
Fascist Italy
Former Soviet Union (arguably)
Libya
To name a few.
And against this list of historically infamous unaccountable terror states you have...Franco's Spain?
Thanks - I think.
Wrong Turkey. Communism is not Fascism. They are your bad fruit not our's. Nice try Asshole.
"They love to dance all night ... in their own homes. I experienced this ... in my own home."
The Asoka Astaire interlude: taking a rest from the dipping and twirling to make multiple posts on CFN! Priceless
Ah, but here's where you go wrong (again).
Fascism and Totalitarian Communism are birds of a feather. They are virtually identical in their implementation and lead to the same things. Only the ideology is different. In practice, both are unrepresentative dictatorships based on an all-powerful state, whose leaders are able to use the whole society for their (often) insane ends. Instead of believing me (which you never seem to), please examine the historical record.
"Fascism attempts to protect man against himself."
How is this different from a communist/socialist nanny state? I can't believe you are unable to see the basic hypocrisy of your viewpoint that fascism is good and communist dictatorships are bad. It is a patently absurd contradiction.
And then we have your usual puke of fallacies i.e....
Communism and Liberalism are the same thing (they most certainly aren't).
Liberalism is ruining the world (it isn't).
And on and on...why do I even bother I wonder.
Folks,
With regard to Libya, let's remember some facts.
The opposition, as well as all of the civilians in Benghazi have been begging for this no-fly zone, in order to level the field against Gaddafi.
We also need to remember that Gadddafi WAS NOT installed by the US, and is about as popular around the world as Adolph Hitler was in 1939.
A no-fly zone doesn't mean an invasion
In this case, Freedom comes from the Musket not the Sword. But would the Latin be?
Vlad,
I also think its just hilarious that you are a self-described fascist and yet you live in a liberal, multicultural democracy.
If you think fascism is so freaking great, then please put your money where your internet mouth is and take the next boat to North Korea.
If not, then kindly shut your hypocritical trap.
Back to the world of Hokusai, please.
http://www.barnabys.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/hokusai_1.jpg
I can't shake the odd feeling that Japan was looking for a way to get back to the 19th century, and perhaps even deeper beyond that - to the dream-time before they made the fateful decision to industrialize.
Love reading this blog every Monday and the comments, but to me, you are not radical enough. The problem, as I see it is: the law, the governments and then money and it's step child, economics. Trying to reform society whilst keeping most of the system intact won't cut it.
Yeah! It's a scary notion but once it takes off we'll wonder why we never thought of this before. Incidentally the idea is not new; it's been around for more than 400 years and was tried again during the Spanish civil war in the 1930's. Every government even, the more benevolent democracy's, when it does arise, does it's utmost to squash it. Jack
Hey let's try Haiku ! I think that is 3 lines or is it 3 words ? It's short anyway.
I remember hearing this on the news :
That WAR is Gods' way of teaching geography to Americans'.
Same goes for Tsunamis', Earthquakes, disasters.
I SHOULD NOT admit this, but I Now know that Japan is Islands and Tokyo is on one of them.
And China and Korea are the Mainland.
And that New Zealand is not tropical like I thought it was.
Never too late to learn.
Probably lost a couple friends on here telling them that.
Hope not. :)
Also I heard it again on the news "It's worse than we / they thought." BULLSHIT, 'they' know all along, I mean WE know on here, even (I)! know how bad these events are, so the tone is calm, and cool when TS IS HITTING TF, and then days later they say "It's worse than we thought", and they say that cool and calm also.
It's like schizophrenic in a way.
It's worse than 'they' let on but always knew.
It happens all the time. Break it to 'em gently.
I hope this makes sense.
Gee, Are you British?
Tired of the Lip [and Libs] here?
Good narrative, Myrtlemay. You had my wife and I laughing like hell. Here's an example of fiction as effective as poetry in revealing truth with just a few hundred words.
There are some talented writers on this site ... Ibendite, Montsegur, and yes Vlad to name just a few of many. Myrtlemay you get the CFN Post 1 prize for fiction, if there was a prize for fiction. Humor goes a long way in times like these.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
The USA was designed as a Republic.
Not multicultural or multilingual.
Liberal? all too.
Talk multicultural to gangs, rioters and these folks:
National MEChANational Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) to Protest Arizona’s
The Philosophy of MEChA - About Us - 2009 National MEChA Conference
www.nationalmecha
I have a Black friend who speaks fluent Spanish.
I wont repeat the things he hears and understands when at hospitals in LA.
so much for yr:
BE NICE TO IMMIGRANTS. THEY MAY BE TAKING CARE OF YOU IN THE HOSPICE OR HOSPITAL WHERE YOU SPEND YOUR LAST DAYS.
You prefer Grape Kool-Aid or Orange?
Thanks, Marlin! Now for my speech:
"I'd like to accept this CFN Post 1 award, on behalf of everyone at CFN, all the writers, contributers, and adobe hut makers. But most of all, I thank Mr. JHK himself, who has not seen fit to ban me (yet). The old guy had a bit of a hissy this morning, dear me!"
MM
CFNation Post 3
South East Chapter
E Plurubus Unum
So in Colonial America for example - was it more "liberal" (pornography, gay marriage, minorities taking over, women kicking men out of their own homes and not letting them see their children) or was it more "conservative" (and therefore closer to what would now be called Fascism)? Sure there was freedom of speech and of the press, but you couldn't distribute pornography. Any teacher who taught that Whites were the cancer of humanity would be out of a job - not lauded as they are now. Anyone who thought Indians were the first Americans would be shunned. In short, Colonial America both before and after the Revolution, was far closer to Fascism than your "liberalism". Do you think Thomas Jefferson would approve more of me or you? Exactly.
Not ruining the world? The West will be over in another generation unless current demographic trends are halted in their tracks. It didn't take you people long at all.
Careful Myrtle 'respected patriarch' might have been a lot safer than 'old guy'. Are you dancin with the devil?
Thank you for those links to the articles about how the Japanese people lived sustainably in the past. It really was a world made by hand.
If the Japanese were so anxious to return to the 19th century, the small towns wouldn't be dying there quicker than they are in North Dakota. From what I read they're now filled only with old people, and everyone else can't wait to leave for the big cities.
Oh, by the way, the electrical situation in Japan is much worse than it should be. Apparently the Eastern half of the country uses 50hz power, like Europe, but the Western half uses 60hz, like the US, so they can't easily send electricity from the undamaged areas to the damaged ones.
Wagelaborer
Well taters are pretty easy, hills you know. Cut up a few taters with eyes on each piece throw them in the hole and cover. Then you have to go out, keep the growing potatoes covered( hilled up), next when the vines are nice and big you go out and pick potato bugs, they are nasty! Then just wait for your vines to die and wallah! dig the winter's supply of spuds.
Remember gardening isn't brain surgery and won't go radioactive on you. So have fun and practice practice practice.
good harvest
loveday
I'll bet your trains run on time. To bad you aren't on one.
Wow. That's neat.
That's funny. Except it doesn't answer why THE PULL. What is the pull? What is what that stands behind? Why make the effort save for the reckoning? What is the reckoning? Can it be glimpsed? For what do the bees labor? I think I heard it, but I can't be sure. For a moment I heard the reckoning, but then nothing. Goodbye.
I read that book years ago, and I laugh now when I think about it.
Thank you, Ripped. I have a few old tires lying around, but not enough for 100 pounds of potatoes! I will try the idea for a few though.
I am a little reluctant to drag home more tires. My husband thinks I'm a scavenger (and I am), and if it doesn't work out, we'll have a shitload of old tires on top of the other treasures I have found.
Also, I tried to cut a tire once and it had metal in it.
Thanks, also, loveday, for the encouragement. I just spent an hour and a half, and planted 15 more potatoes. I just keep telling myself that I'll be glad when it's time to eat them!
This latest display of military aggression into Libya by the government of the USA exposes in the extreme, the hubris and ignorance of the advocates of foreign adventurism.
Apparently nothing was learned from the opprobrium that Iraq and Afghanistan have become. Principal among the many missteps was the absence of a detailed understanding of the country and its culture the generals were entering and the forces they are about to empower. Eastern Libya, the locus of the rebellion that is now being defended, sent more foreign fighters per capita to join the Iraqi insurgency than any other region of the Arab world. Go figure…
The Turkish President said that Democracy is a Train and one can get off wherever one likes. Even Islam Central. The fools never learn. Of Hubris we are never in short supply but why? Well it's obvious that we are by far the most Promethean Race. I recently watched a show called "We Shouldn't Be Alive" - a few guys ran into trouble climbing one of the highest mountains in Alaska during the winter. It's not enough to climb a high mountain, one that's way north in Alaska, but it has to be during the winter too. Whites do crazy things just to see if they can. There are no limits. Limits are just self imposed and meant to be shattered. Pure Hubris. Add this Hubris to our Idealism which is itself a combination of Socialism and corrupted Christianity and the tale is set.
Lewis Lucan Books, this post is for you.
A few months ago my work was used on the cover of a poetry book of my college boyfriend who lives in Ithaca. Last week he did a reading and I wrote him an email to wish him my best. Here's part of what he wrote:
[The reading... It was a bittersweet event for me, since the current management of the store – the last independent bookseller in the area – is throwing in the towel and my reading was the final event under his management. (A sign of the times: the local Borders is closing, too.) The hopeful news is that the store may reopen in a few weeks as a collectively owned operation. A lot of us have pooled our resources to pledge ca. $250,000 to buy the place out. It would be a shame if a college town like Ithaca could support nothing but the remaining Barnes & Noble (which may be on shaky ground, too) and a few used book shops.]
The struggle for bookstores is going on around the country, even in college towns like Ithaca with Cornell and Ithaca College. Pretty sad. I am hoping it goes more to the issue of Amazon and Kindle and not that people aren't reading anymore!
Also LLB, check out the book I mentioned a bit earlier on the blog.re: American Ghost
100 years ago was not pre-industrial. Go back further and anthropologists say people only worked approximately 14 hours a week to supply their food needs. And lots of those societies had highly-developed civilizations/cultures, just not what we think of as civilization, with all our technological gadgets, books, TV, etc.
"How could we live without Internet?" you ask...I think we could figure it out.
Whats to learn? The agenda of globalism is to destroy cultural diversity. Understanding the country and its culture is irrelevant since Libya has only about six million people and according to the New York Times:
So, not to worry, soon Obama will be on the deck of an Aircraft Carrier wearing the Mission Accomplished t-shirt.
After that destroying the culture of a mere six million people should be a piece of cake. With all their oil funding the transition they can quickly be turned into good little consumers. I don't see it taking more than twenty Wall-Marts.
Add a minaret to each corner of the big boxes should make their conversion to the new religion easy.
Quarantine.
Vlad and Turkle,
I am enjoying both of your posts regarding macroeconomic political economic systems.
I would make one small request. Instead of making phrases like this: "a communist/socialist nanny state?" in which "communist/socialist" is blended together, as if they are similar or the same, could you please use the terms correctly?
Communism and Socialism are polar opposites.
Socialism is State control of the means of production: top down control.
Communism is radical democratic control by the people (the famous "dictatorship by the proletariat") : bottom up. Zero State control.
They are completely different ways of organizing means of production, completely different with regard to democratic involvement of the workers, completely different roles for the "State" (100% in Socialism, 0% in Communism because the State has "withered away").
The order of appearance, the evolution is
1) Capitalism; 2) Socialism; and 3) Communism.
The world has yet to see a true national communist system, although there have been many successful instances of local radically democratic communism (which were usually attacked and destroyed by Socialists, National Socialists, or Fascists)
Guy de soleil says, "Rode an electric bike this weekend, and it was pretty slick."
Electric-assisted pedal power is quite compelling from a minimalist energy standpoint. My point of view is as someone who owns a bicycle as main form of transport, saddlebags and racks as cargo capacity, and a kid-carrier trailer for everything else (which was pulled from a dumpster). I ride in the rain, snow, and sleet and face the insults of a society built by and for the comfort of women (and their cars). Third world citizenship is easy to achieve:
Car
Cellphone
Electricity/Heat
Internet Access
TV
Discretionary spending
Weekly automatic laundering
Daily showers
Discard any 7 of the above and you are there!
But the electric hybrid bike is the best downscale solution.
First off, its efficiency cannot be beaten by any other sort of non-human hybrid system. Second, most people simply aren't going to be able to physically hack it. They will have to have the electric system to make it.
Otherwise, it is achievable, and even desirable. I can't express how nice life has been without the car. Even if I live in an area that scores 5/100 on "bikability". Even if I sweat in my clothes, breathe foul exhaust fumes, and take forever to get anywhere.
Qtip's assessment of Asoka's immigration position: "Asoka supports population control on a global scale but he is powerless in so large a realm. But in a realm where he at least can cast a vote (the US) he is OK with a more than doubling of population." I rate * * * * *.
Asoka's population position aligns closely with Old6969. Asoka's position is "reasonable" insanity.
I wonder what all the people who have lost jobs due to immigration think, now that they're all "supervisors"?
asoka,
Primitive cultures were socialist. As Vlad pointed out, not until agrarian cultures did capitalism appear. ~*~
I'm doubtful of power assisted biking. Perhaps it entices a few timid people who otherwise wouldn't venture into that realm but no longer term consequences.
The hurdle for power assist is virtually the same for non-assisted. Getting up (from bed or office chair), facing the prospect of traveling exposed to the weather and the donning of clothes etc that entails, then braving the elements (weather, traffic, illusion of time barriers, etc).
The psychological reward that kicks in as the fresh air blows across your face and the satisfaction of used muscles nestles into your soul soon becomes addictive. It is hard for me to imagine that a healthy normal person wouldn't soon become contemptuous of riding a thing with a motor attached once they've overcome the hurdles it would take to ride even a power assist bike. ~*~
Evelyn,
I respectfully disagree. You are continuing the confusion between socialism and communism. Primitive cultures were communist.
Socialist economies are defined as "State control of the means of production." In primitive cultures there is no "State" (a recent invention)
SOURCE: A Glossary of UK Government and Politics, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburg, Scotland, United Kingdom
I don't think many Japanese are interested in reverting to a preindustrial culture and lifestyle. Most of what I've read indicates that Japanese agriculture is the province of the middle-aged and elderly, that the kids want nothing to do with it or with village life. Japanese kids aren't lining up to apprentice themselves to traditional craftsmen, either, although they sound a bit more eager for such apprenticeships than American kids.
It's true that Japanese youth are eschewing the salaryman/housewife model. They've seen their fathers or grandfathers get burnt out and their mothers or grandmothers meekly get bored to tears by domestic life, and they wonder what the hell the point of it all is. Especially given the economic deterioration and the general end of lifetime employment, they're not interested in going through the same rat race or Stepford Wife lifestyle.
So many of them have tuned out and dropped out, the girls adopting a Sex and the City lifestyle minus the sex and the boys holing up at mom's place to tend to their virtual girlfriends. At least that's what some in the Japanese press have been claiming.
I don't know enough about Japan to say how much they're exaggerating these trends. On the one hand, none of the Japanese I've known act like that, and the trends sound like just the sort of "kids these days" nonsense that I'd expect from Time or Newsweek. On the other hand, when a politically centrist magazine is exhorting kids to have more sex in order to improve their social skills with the opposite sex, something probably is amiss with the youngsters. So I'd say it's plausible that disproportionately many Japanese kids have shit for social skills.
If there is a silver lining in the tsunami and radiation disasters, maybe it's that it is forcing a cohort of youth to snap out of their self-absorption.
Maybe these disasters will also convince Japanese voters to purge their government of corrupt scoundrels. Most of the reform movements that I've read about sounded pretty ineffective; the same crony capitalists seemed to keep worming their way into government, and the corruption and special interest influence peddling have continued. Voters have usually tolerated this waste because the crooks have usually made things work; it's like Chicago, but with a better El and none of the Irish braggadocio. But when a corrupt public utility appears to be exposing an unknown radius around Fukushima to a Hiroshima-level public health nightmare, things no longer work.
Can Japan effectively shrink into an agricultural and small-industry economy? Probably better than most countries. There is still a vigorous agricultural sector, itself one of the beneficiaries of government waste and protectionism, and even Tokyo has not obliterated its own agricultural hinterlands; Google satellite images show smallholdings fifteen miles from central Tokyo.
As far as going all Tokugawa and partying like it's 1799, you just don't want to go there. Japanese feudalism was nasty, nasty shit. I think most Japanese would recognize this if they were faced with it, and would have about as much interest in restoring it as Europeans would in restoring vassalage and le droit du seigneur.
you say: I wonder what all the people who have lost jobs due to immigration think, now that they're all "supervisors"?
You could say unemployed supervisors but that would be an oxymoron.
Hello Wage, Keep up the good work, you are a true "ANGEL" if you can put up with the s**t in a modern ER, anyway, the best way to cut the tires for a potato stack is with a "sawzall", generic name for a handheld electric reciprocating saw with a good 6" all purpose blade.
100 years ago was not pre-industrial. Go back further and anthropologists say people only worked approximately 14 hours a week to supply their food needs. And lots of those societies had highly-developed civilizations/cultures, just not what we think of as civilization, with all our technological gadgets, books, TV, etc.
Yes, this is told so well by William Cronon in his seminal book Indians, Colonists and the ecology of New England. This under the emerging field of environmental history. In it he describes the contempt that the Calvinist Euro-intruders had for the male Indians. Viewed through the prism of the Puritanical eye males were lazy and good for nothing loafers. Convenient for demonizing. Never understanding the roles the genders worked out for themselves were finely tuned and worked well.The males were the hunters. Gone from the tribe for long and exhausting periods of time. Upon return, they would rest, appearing to the whites as malingerers. As such, the whites found it morally imperative to penalize them through exploitation and degradation all for exhibiting a leisurely cadence to the rhythms of quotidian life.
Well, you are talking about a modern definition of the term in a political context.
I was thinking more along the lines of it in a primitive format characterized by common ownership and cooperative management and allocation of resources with equal power relations and dispersed decision making having little hierarchical structure.
"Words, words... words are what you utter."
~*~
Your quite right about the electric bike in it's most simple form. The tendency is to use the motor and then not petal at all. Then all you have is a weak motorcycle with limited range.
A proper implementation will use a small computer that intelligently mixes motor and human power and not let the riders legs go to 'sleep'.
I worked out all the details and am pretty far along with a prototype. My problem is that I can't start a business by myself. Finding people who will work for a delayed rewards is very difficult. Even though rewards will be huge. I don't have money for wages and finding someone who will work for part ownership is hard. Everyone wants a paycheck now. Hard working dreamers are hard to find and rich dreamers with cash who don't want to work I don't want.
My electric bicycle will add five miles an hour to a riders average speed and will have a range of thirty miles. The niche market I see would be commuters who would use it to and from work.
"But in a realm where he at least can cast a vote (the US) he is OK with a more than doubling of population."
=======
I am not "OK with a more than doubling of population"
ProCon was asking what the maximum population of the USA could be. He demanded an answer. I did some research and decided on 200 people per square mile as a reasonable number.
The whole thing was in the context of a discussion of carrying capacity and immigrants.
My conclusion is that the USA can hold many more immigrants with no problem. Letting immigrants cross an imaginary line DOES NOT increase the global population.
My desire is that every group everywhere reduce their personal reproduction rate.
I did my part by having a vasectomy. You guys are taking cheap shots.
As JHK has pointed out, there is little that humanity at large is willing to do or will consciously make a choice to do to control its own population. Let alone making that choice over some rationale like overpopulation or resource depletion - these concepts are abstract for many, and misunderstood or denied by the vast majority even in industrialized countries that should know better.
The most ambitious program of controlling or shrinking human population was China's "one child" policy - a policy which could be enforced there, but would be unthinkable in anything less than a totalitarian regime. By choice, people will always procreate. Population only declines through external forces (infant mortality, lack of food, medical care, etc) and not through conscious choice. And even China's moderate success in population control is crumbling, as a growing middle class expects to raise a larger family that they can now support.
anecdotal evidence: The local-yokel TV news will interview one person (usually the least worldy and most inarticulate person in the city) and then draw some trend from whatever they say. I hate to use their anecdotal statistical model ('n=1') but my hillbilly neighbors have five kids...the ability to support kids (let alone tha ability of the planet to) never crosses their minds.
***there is little that humanity at large is willing to do or will consciously make a choice to do to control its own population***
===============
I must respectfully disagree. Based on the evidence, wherever women have been given the means and the information to decide if or when to have the next child, then family size has fallen, often rapidly, and most importantly: VOLUNTARILY.
In spite of a large unmet need for family planning, support for family planning efforts has collapsed and fertility declines in many of the poorest countries have stalled. Amongst some of the most vulnerable groups family size has risen.
The investment made in voluntary family planning will largely determine whether, in the next 50 years, the global population grows to something less than 8 billion or to over 10 billion.
The trajectory taking us to the higher figure could jeopardize any possibility of transitioning the global economy to a biological sustainability. Much precious time has been lost.
Almost all the additional growth in population will take place in the world’s poorest countries, and it is imperative that the international community act to improve access to family planning in those countries, within a human rights frame framework.
Unfortunately, even in developed countries like the USA certain political parties are now attacking and rescinding funding for Planned Parenthood. These are conscious choices.
In recognition of this week's Japanese return-to-simpler-times fantasy theme, please enjoy some 'Kool & the Gang':
"Get down, Get down...
Get down, Get down....
Jungle Boogie...Yeah..Yeah..
Jungle Boogie....
Get it on now....
Jungle Boogie...Yeah...Yeah...
Jungle Boogie...."
[Kool and the Gang]
SomeoneInAsia said:
“For premodern farmers, yes, the planting and harvesting seasons were hard, but hey, winter was a big, long holiday. And they worked less hours a week than we do on average.”
Garbage.
My grand folks tended their animals every day, milking, looking after the hogs, etc.
And, each morning before sun up, they would hand load with scoops (no augers available yet) their horse drawn carts which held about 40 bushels of wheat (a bit over a tonne, 2400 pounds).
They would either wheel it or sleigh it on snow, to town about 4 miles away to the local elevator for sale.
Then they would come home, have a late breakfast, and take another load in the afternoon to town, hoping to return before dark. IN our neck of the woods in canada, this may have been at 40 below.
This, was done so they could sell their produce, as well to send wheat to grist for the city folk to make bread.
All winter long.
It is not much different for modern farmers, who have to hold in condition their grain, so it does not spoil, so city folk can eat bread and have Cheetos with high fructose corn syrup. The only difference is that now it is more automated, and mechanized. And the volume of grain is likely 1000 x.
Those who are not farmers should get their facts straight prior to posting where real farmers lurk. My grand folks would be appalled at the disrespect.
jd
I've enjoyed reading your posts. I've seen how you've stood up to the doom and gloomers & displayed some optimism about man's ingenuity and future, post oil age. I never remember you using words such as "Libtard", "turkey" or "asshole" to describe posters whom you have a difference of opinion with. I feel you are fairly open minded and don't display a rigid mind set. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would be surprised if you used the ancient, historical or fable based writings in the Bible in order to understand or correlate to many of the issues of today.
Earlier, you spoke about desalination. I met with the CEO last Fall of a company in Albuquerque that is working on an advanced membrane technology (sorry I can't provide details, as I didn't write anything down at the party). It appears it is a way to get fresh water, not using osmosis, & requiring little energy.
I would like you and others here to examine this site, http://www.paloaltonetzero.com/, and comment back. I don't want to hear from survivalists or Armageddonists that object to any solutions posed to the dilemma of energy descent.
I wonder what JHK thinks of the 'Unabomber'?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
Wheres the comment about 'boots to the head'
or somesuch?
I have looked for awhile and cant find it..o well
The challenge is to use the best of both worlds, in a responsible, permacultural way that will have a small ecological footprint. I think we can do it.
=============
Memories of Mickey Rooney (Asoka) and Judy Garland (SomeoneinAsia): "Let's put on a show."
I've seen a product already that implements a thin motor placed into the downtube (that tube that goes from the seat to the bottom bracket) and connects via a gear attached to the bottom bracket's internal spindle. It provides about 200 watts for a time dependant upon how many Li-ion cells you want to carry. It can provide power assist to your own pedaling action.
Surprisingly, the world's greatest bicycle racing time trialist, Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, was the object of speculation that he used this motor last year during a race because he was so damn dominant. Nothing was ever proven, like many conspiracies.
yes , real farming is backbreaking work. I believe many of the posters here are urban know-it-alls with no idea of the human energy and animal energy involved. Some are wise, but many speak tall and have no clue! I work in an urban enviroment, we are so screwed in the coming decades.
Jim, great article.
As a Japan side note. I was talking with a friend of mine while riding a real bicycle, and he seems to think the nuke plant could have been spared. If only they had better back-up systems. This person is not pro-nuke - but despite everything some people still think we can win against mother nature. I say, there are things you can do, but humans have no chance against the mother natures real force.
Like you have said, history doesn't care if you're in denial about Peak oil. It was something like that in the Nation video. Anyway, it just amazes me that humans think we can win, when in a fight with mother nature. The same humans that think technology will save us from Peak oil.
All I can say, is the real history of mankind is being written before our eyes now, what happened in past, will seem like a walk in the park - for those who can survive.
Or perhaps I, Vald Kraznd am.
=============
I can't speak for Asia but the last person on earth I could accept as my Guru or Destiny is someone who can't spell their own last name ... but, hey, maybe that's just me.
;-)
This is the correct link:
http://www.paloaltonetzero.com/
A comma got pasted in after the forward slash by accident.
"Based on the evidence, wherever women have been given the means and the information to decide if or when to have the next child, then family size has fallen, often rapidly, and most importantly: VOLUNTARILY."
Quite true, and a laudable goal. Greg Mortensen's work in Pak- and Afghanistan is proof that even minor improvements in education (particularly young women) gives them the benefit of power and choice in family - even in very traditional, very tribal parts of the world. The question is, will those that *make* sensible choices (on size of family) make up for the number who *don't make* choices? (like my hillbilly neighbors)
The idea of 8 billion people on a planet that groans under the strain of 6 billion...I'm flattened in my chair by the thought. Bill McKibben points out that for every citizen in China to have 3 more beers a year would take the grain harvest of Norway. (not that I'm singling out the Chinese for abuse, it's just an easy way to say '1x10E6 people')
We (humanity) are way behind on any efforts to control our population - and in the US we seem to be particularly backward on the subject of family planning. Dunno what it is, maybe some outdated baggage of religious heritage, or echoes of needing a big family during our agrarian period...some people equate the easy stuff (birth control, rubbers) as the tool of the devil.
Had your grand folks been paid twice as much for their wheat they would have only had to make the delivery trip every other day. They would have not had to grow as much wheat for the same reward. Life though still hard would have been better for them.
Pick up any item in the modern supermarket and figure out how much of the price of any food item is going to the farmers who grew it and to the workers who processed and packaged it. Profits on the item are not distributed equitably. The real problem is the system under which we live, how profits are distributed and not understanding the limits to growth.
Radio and TV news is always talking about the productivity of the American worker going up like increased productivity is a good thing. But the American worker does not benefit from this increase so this kind of increased productivity is not a good thing.
Increased productivity without an equitable distribution of increased profit only winds the spool of hypercomplexity ever tighter.
I'm not far enough along with 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond to know if this is in the book or if it is an artifact of the National Geographic special based on the book but but apparently the Roman ruling class continued to maintain and even increase their luxurious life style, passing ever increasing taxes onto the backs of the poor as conditions in the empire deteriorated. The modern day equivalent would be an assault on the middle class if the face of record wall street profits and too big to fail bailouts.
Apparently when barbarians finally brought down the curtain on that show the most oppressed of the plebeians saw it as a godsend. That what was said in the National Geographic special anyway.
Two hundred watts maximum is pretty right on and makes for a small lightweight motor. A down-tube version is difficult to implement. I use a different method. I hesitate to give out more details in hopes of a future reward. I spent time effort and money to learn what I know.
Batteries of sufficient size would be impossible to hide in a frame and their weight would be a dead giveaway in any race.
That's just you.
K-dog,
if we agree, apparently for different reasons.
I commute by bicycle. Nothing compares to it in my life for shaking off the feeling I'm a rat traveling back and forth in the rut that leads to and from the cage to office and back. It invigorates, it energizes, it nourishes a sense of well-being.
The barriers one has to overcome to step into the lifestyle change are not primarily what makes the wheels go round on the contraption. It is those things I mentioned already. No matter how efficient, sleek, or affordable you make it to motorize, it kills the most rewarding part of the experience IMHO. It is contradictory. Like trying to invent a way to walk without having to use your legs. Whatever it ends up being it will no longer be called walking. Like inventing a device to pull back and release the bowstring for entry level archers is how I see it.
Q is gonna get you (Petal).
Off the topic at hand, but am intrigued by your work on the bike. Have you secured a design patent? It doesn't have the protections of a full patent, but can protect the overall appearance and form of your bike, if that's what's important.
The patent system is broken in the US...not a very friendly place for the individual anymore. Patents have become the domain of big companies ($$$) who use patents to beat each other over the head with. An understaffed patent office...a relatively benign effect of a federal gov't that's rapidly losing its potency and credibility.
We should cut working hours and have every able-bodied person working.
============
Your socialist manifesto above is missing its final four words: "by force, if necessary."
Nice weeks work, JHK. I like this part -
regarding hypercomplexity..."The world is telling us to cut it out or it is going to kick our upright bipedal asses. Of course, America may be absolutely the last society to get this message."
JHK, you are most likely correct that the US will be the last society to get the message. It is also quite likely that the US will take most (all?) of the rest of humanity down with it.
Right now, you see, we are in a "last man standing" race for all of the resources of the third world. Our competitors in the race are the Chinese and the Euro countries. A truly facile optimist would say the race will run for 47 years.
Exponential growth of populations, climate change, and destruction of global resources will likely lead to severe collapse in less than two decades. (Could be much less - given a few more wars and some more *unexpected* earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, or meteor strikes.
Regardless of timing, collapse will occur.
The surviving cultures will be those who held their populations in balance with local and sustainable agricultural practices. Here, the Japanese come to mind - providing they retreat from modern insanity in time.
The losing cultures will be those who allowed their populations to run ahead of the ability to feed themselves without modern agriculture and oil. Here, the United States comes to mind - or at least the "multicultural" remains of the US.
550,000,000 to 750,000,000 mouths in the US - living on a continent that can support fewer than 100,000,000 souls, sustainably.
Here, facile, deranged, and obsessive optimism comes to mind.
Yes pedal not petal.
Actually I agree with everything you say. Personal reasons having to do with someones health (not mine) forced me to drop my three/four time a week bicycle habit about six months ago. With local weather currently hitting highs in the low fifties and raining almost incessantly it is too hard for me to 'get back on the horse'.
When I am in the habit I know current conditions would not bother me but now the effort to just get moving is a barrier and the cold bites.
I'm waiting for weather to improve so I can get back to my 75 mile a week habit. I built my own bicycle from parts, it is a mountain bike with a touring handle bar and gearing like that of a road bike but with plenty of range to accommodate large hills where I live.
My version of an electric bike fully preserves the normal riding experience but since I'm riding for pleasure I don't need the extra speed.
My electric bike gives road bike speed to an upright posture and is intended to make a more useful bicycle, not a more pleasurable one.
I hate feeling my muscles deteriorate while I wait for better weather. It sucks.
"In either case, thanks for that really illustrative post. It keeps me in mind of a crystal clear universal human truth:
Everyone is human. No person, however far-seeing, perspicacious, intelligent and conscious escapes being dragged down..."
-hancock- in reference to JHK - regarding Walt
So, HC63, is this your swansong to CFN? It's a good one, although I must say to you, again, don't go. Reading between the lines of your posts, I'm beginning to believe that your Right Wing Authoritarians are indeed real - but they exist within the brains and spirits of almost all of us humans. Some very self-actualized types might fight against the tendency - but most of us get a little bit of power, and then want more power - and then want it all, society, and Planet, and all the rest - be damned.
You should be glad to know that I downloaded that Bob Altemeyer book that you linked to last week. I'll plan to reread it at my leisure off the hard drive of this battered old laptop, using my last functioning solar panel - or ounce of gas for the inverter - to keep the thing charged.
So post-collapse, and at least for a while - I can drink homemade wine and bay at the moon that you were correct about all those GD right wing authoritarians - and the mess we made of Civilization.
Very interesting, hey?
wait for your vines to die and wallah!
============
Oh God!! No! Please! Not again! It's voila
Perfect title for a less than perfect day.
At the end of day one of dairy operations the score stands:
Anna 2
Tripp 0
Our new Jersey cow pulled a Houdini this morning just before dawn, and I didn't get her back home until nightfall. The field milking in the neighbor's corral did not go at all well.
Sleep on it and try again tomorrow.
On a more upbeat but less hilarious note, we gave the horse and donkey their first herbal treatments this morning, and they both really enjoyed it. Mick the quarter horse avoided the chunks of garlic (great wormer - he must not have worms), but other than that...
"I hate feeling my muscles deteriorate while I wait for better weather."
Yeah, but that's part of the seasonal cycle that keeps us in touch with the sun, moon, and stars, and cold and heat, dry and wet, too.
If all we had was a climate controlled offering of sameness, what sort of fat gray creatures would we devolve into? Wait, don't answer that!
Fourth beautiful moonrise in a row right over my desk. We danced nekkid in the garden on the full moon proper. The rabbits weren't sure what to make of it, but they joined in, in their own hop-hoppity rabbit way.
Happy Vernal Equinox everyone! (yesterday officially I believe...)
ProCon said: "A truly facile optimist would say the race will run for 47 years."
==========
Good evening, ProCon. Thank you for the invitation to respond.
Peak oil only means we've arrived at the peak of production. It doesn't mean we have no more oil.
It has taken over a century to get to the peak. On the downside ride the estimate is it will only take 47 years to get to the point where oil use is no longer feasible.
The figure of 47 years is a rational figure, derived as an average from various peer-reviewed research articles, government reports, watchdog groups, blogs, and trade publications.
You are saying "severe collapse in less than two decades." Upon what evidence are you basing your estimation?
By the way, your closing comment: "Here, facile, deranged, and obsessive optimism comes to mind."
is quite strange. The difference between 47 years and two decades is about 20 years.
And you consider 47 years to be "deranged" optimism? I consider it to be quite pessimistic given that 20 years is the blink of an eye compared to the geologic rate of oil supply formation.
Until you explain yourself I don't know where your charge of "facile, deranged, and obsessive optimism" is coming from. I hope it is not from personal animus toward Asoka, who is a polite and rational fellow, much like a Southern gentleman.
CORRECTION
The difference between 47 years and two decades is about 27 years.
CORRECTION
And you consider 47 years to be "deranged" optimism? I consider it to be quite pessimistic given that 27 years is the blink of an eye compared to the geologic rate of oil supply formation.
It would seem to me that if the Japanese return to a simpler type of existence, it would require a mass die-off of a significant portion of the Japanese population. Can the Japanese feed themselves without fossil fuels?
Really, Grossdeutschland? My simple comment has provoked such an insulting reply? Your use of the "F" word was unnecessary, as was your comments on the frequency of my sexual activities. And you are wrong; I'm not a "naughty boy" at all. I'm just a mother of 4 young children who appreciates Jim taking the time to share his thoughts with the readers of his books. If you are not a fan of Jim's, why not go elsewhere where you can pursue your own interests? I'm sorry you are so filled with anger. Directing it at me is pretty sad. And as for Heinberg, why are you so angry that I find his books interesting? You have obviously had a hard life to seek out targets as you have done with me. I come here in peace and get attacked? Wow. I don't understand people like you at all.
Regarding the previous comments about farming (farm work is too haaard). Let's be honest. Americans are lazy.
I say that as an American,with a sedentary office job. I sit on my butt all day and honestly wonder how this was ever considered to be 'work'. How much physical exercise have you actually had today? Many of you- none- I will guess. This is pathological. Diabetes, heart disease and deep-vein thrombosis is what is killing us, not hard work.
My wife's parents are farmers in Nepal. They are in their 70's, healthy, and if their relatives are any indication, they will live another 10 or 20 years. They seem happy. This without a refrigerator, a vehicle of any sort, heating or air conditioning. They work hard, but not the sort of slave labor previous posters are describing. They have free time (most of the winter) they travel, they have an intact community. They stayed with us and some other relatives in the US last spring and hated it. They couldn't wait to go back.
While JHK (and plenty of others) may be romanticizing the pre-industrial lifestyle, farming on a small scale is not necessarily serfdom. Neither is it similar to the struggle of a 20th century family farmer struggling to make money on cash crops while being cut off at the knees by agribusiness.
I'm a city kid and I grow some (not all) of my food. I think it's dumb not to if you have two hands and a little land.
http://eighthacrefarm.blogspot.com
then not petal at all
============
Groan! It's pedal as in foot, as in pedestrian, as in bi-ped, as in pedophile ... no, wait a minute; strike pedophile.
Seriously Dog, I'm not picking on you. Nor am I picking on anyone else in particular when I highlight these errors. I just wonder why no one gives a shit. Maybe you can expound a theory.
And you consider 47 years to be "deranged" optimism?
-a-
No, you are a facile, deranged optimist because you think the agricultural landmass of the US can support 550,000,000 to 750,000,000 people.
The landmass of Bangladesh currently supports 130 million people
**Correction**... "comments" was meant to be "comment". (Just in case you like to attack people for their typos, as well.)
Thomas Jefferson was the most liberal out of all the Founding Fathers, so he is a bad example of someone who would supposedly agree with you. He thought that laws should have a built in expiration of 20 years and that each generation should come up with their own set of laws. He was also anti-Christian and said the Bible wasn't his book. He considered religion superstition. He would be considered liberal even today, so nice try attempting to paint him as an arch-conservative. Yet again, you're peddling chicken crap as chicken salad.
And frankly, I could care less what life and culture were like over 200 years ago in puritanical colonial America. Things change. Life moves on. We don't condone dueling with pistols to solve disputes (in most states at least), and we don't treat medical ailments with leeches. We don't allow people to have slaves. We don't put people in the stocks and throw rotten vegetables at them or hang people for property crimes. I don't share your starry-eyed nostalgia of that time, which wasn't as great or sophisticated as you seem to think.
What group do I belong to that is responsible for the demographic trends that are supposedly destroying the west? Is it the Vast Liberal Conspiracy, Vlad? If the West is under assault (a dubious proposition but I'll accept it for the sake of argument), what exactly do you expect me to do about it? What are you actually doing about it besides whining on the internet?
"Anyone who thought Indians were the first Americans would be shunned."
That happens to be a fact, bozo. Now whether or not "first dibs" has any weight on the right of habitation of a particular geographic area is a whole different matter. Clearly, in practice, it doesn't. Might makes right in that area.
Fascism is not conservative. It is actually quite radically transformative and destructive. German society was remade from top to bottom according to the philosophy of the Nazi Party. By the time the Nazis were out of power, when the Soviets were 50 yards from Hitler's bunker, their entire society had been destroyed. How is that in any way conservative?
Conservatism is mostly just a fear of change, or future shock (which was a term from a good book). Do I understand the tendency? Sure. It is scary when the world is quickly changing around you. I understand the desire to pick out a fixed set of moralities and behaviors and brand them as good and right and the new ones as bad and amoral.
But conservatism is not the way of the world. There is nothing constant but the change. Morality, culture, and behavior are always constantly changing generation by generation. Good luck in trying to get everyone to conform to Vlad's code of acceptably conservative behavior. It ain't gonna happen, nor should it.
the ability to support kids (let alone tha ability of the planet to) never crosses their minds.
==================
or, as we used to say, "a hardon has no conscience."
Barely.
And India supports a billion, on less than half the landmass of the US, with a smaller percentage of arable land.
Powering down will not be easy or without consequences, but the idea that life in third world is consistently wretched just isn't true. Many of those who won't make it will be because they couldn't be bothered to put down the Wii and do something useful until the electricity went out, and then it was too late.
A film I highly recommend (if you are sharing with a class) is The Age of Stupid.
"I just wonder why no one gives a shit."
Because most people aren't as pedantic as you, Q. Minor spelling and grammatical errors don't matter to them so long as the thought is clear. I'm not sure why they should matter. We're not translating War and Peace here or writing publications for Physical Review Letters.
I'm not a fan of unbridled population increase by the way. We're better off not having the population density of Bangladesh. I just think we need to be honest about what it takes to feed a person. Many of our needs in this country are wants that we would like to believe are needs.
Q, I know you were an accountant, but you must have been a high school English teacher in your past life. ;)
"The landmass of Bangladesh currently supports 130 million people"
-jeffz-
Will it support those people without oil?
Will it support those people without fertilizers?
Or pesticides?
Do they import zero food items to Bangladesh?
Do they have reserves for crop failure?
Do they have a plan for sea level rise?
Do you think 550,000,000 'Merkins will be willing to live on the average diet of Bangladesh? really??
When are you moving to Bangladesh, yourself?
Superbly written. This is quality American prose. I love to read your weekly roundups in this world of media blitzes.
You are right. Among the young in Japan, there is the desire to find something outside of modernity as it is. They have the best chance to do it and with a very sophisticated culture in tact. And as much as it looks like a city terribly stacked together, many, many people already work at the local level within the smaller neighborhoods that make it up. It's a mash-up of ancient and very modern. Old forms, new forms- all within the realm of possibilities. And recently we have seen the stoicism, but there is also a deeply humorous nature that we may see again when the time is right. Anyways, we can make something here that is beautiful. You have to have some optimism even if the narrative is looking bad. Change it.
Myself I have had a lot more to say lately and need to be simply more careful in reviewing what I wrote before I hit submit. Since this little box we all write in does not allow us to preview posts shit happens.
Not that a preview would have caused me to catch 'petal' necessarily. I obviously know the difference. That was just a brain fart from a brain made of meat.
Preview would be nice. You wanted a theory and you got one.
Having:
Add a minaret to each corner of the big boxes should make their conversion to the new religion easy.
Instead of:
Adding a minaret to each corner of the big boxes should make their conversion to the new religion easy.
Muffed up an entire post I made earlier today.
prog,
Most Bangladeshis are subsistence farmers who do not use any oil, fertilizers, or pesticides in producing their crops.
And, BTW, 550 million Americans does not equate to the population density of Bangladesh, not even close, as far as I know.
But the point of the poster was not that Bangladesh is some wonderful place to live or an example to be followed but that America has a long way to go before it will be over-populated according to the benchmark of the most densely populated countries on the planet.
America isn't even close to the population density of Europe, much less Bangladesh.
This isn't to suggest that I don't think overpopulation isn't a problem. I just don't believe there any realistic social policies that will solve it. Nature will by Malthusian processes. For individual countries to implement population control, they need two things: a) air tight borders and b) social engineering. Neither of these really fly in countries with any appreciable degree of freedom.
People want to screw and make babies. It is programmed into their genetic code. This is one of those evolutionary maladaptive behaviors that governmental policy will be unable to solve. Uncontrolled breeding like rabbits worked well as a survival strategy when humans lived in the wild and died at the rates of rabbits. Now, when most babies survive into adulthood, the resulting overpopulation may eventually imperil the survival of the entire species. The population pressures of humanity are already destroying many other species, most notably the collapsing ocean fish stocks.
But I'm not wringing my hands over this situation. There is pretty much nothing I can do about it.
Bangladesh is a convenient example. It's about the size of West Virginia and it supports 130 million people.
If they farm the way the rest of South Asia does, I'd say they use very little oil, lots of human and animal labor, and moderate amounts of pesticides, which yes, are made of or in factories powered by fossil fuel. A rise in sea level will be a disaster.
I don't want to live in Bangladesh. But it's untrue to say that the landmass of the USA could not support 550 or 750 million people. It probably will in our lifetime, as the other landmasses become increasingly unhospitable.
The quality of life in the US will probably more akin to that of Bangladesh.
http://eighthacrefarm.blogspot.com
ProCon said: "No, you are a facile, deranged optimist because you think the agricultural landmass of the US can support 550,000,000 to 750,000,000 people."
====================
ProCon, you are correct if the assumption is that the population will continue its current dietary intake. Stated simply, health would improve if instead of consuming 3,600 calories with half of it being empty caloric intake, the intake was 1,800 calories of nutrient rich food. That simple change would allow doubling the USA population on the current agricultural landmass.
Recent studies on nutrition have found that the majority of the population does not meet recommendations for all of the nutrient-rich food groups, except total grains and meat and beans.
SOURCE: Kevin W. Dodd, et al. "Americans Do Not Meet Federal Dietary Recommendations." Journal of Nutrition 140, no. 10 (October 2010)
You say you want to "dialog" yet you provide no data to support any of your assertions. Any credible scientist would be able to do so.
Your primary motivation seems to be shutting the door on immigrants.
See my last post was supposed to go to Q but since I now use Google Chrome to block all Wikipedia entries it went to THEBIGPIKTUR instead. I wont get into the details.
I did file a patent disclosure which by now has expired. That cost me $750 and I don't want to throw any more money down that hole, at least for now.
Details I'm not willing to disclose are novel enough so I'm not worried about someone else coming up with an idea so exact that I could be blocked.
Being blocked is my only concern. If anyone were to come out with a competing product I would just make sure mine was better.
If your only benchmark is whether people have enough to eat, then places like India are muddling along fine, at least for the moment.
But is this the only measurement stick?
What about the quality of life for individuals, which, contrary to a previous poster, is abysmal for many of the poorest people in overpopulated countries?
What about the diverse natural environments of this remarkable planet, which are under sustained assault throughout the globe?
What about all the health of all the other species with whom we share this globe?
Is it really a valid statement to say that a population is supported on a given land mass when it results in most other species being wiped out from that area?
Is the only measure of success whether we can continue screwing and producing more babies in perpetuity, even at the expense of every other living thing and natural environment on this planet?
Humans are very self-centered. The last several hundred years has been an apocalypse for many other species on this planet due to our behaviors. We were not put here by the Almighty to dominate this planet. To think so is a poisonous worldview that will ultimately lead to our destruction.
"since I now use Google Chrome to block all Wikipedia entries"
Uh....okay.
Asoka,
I'm going risk speaking for Procon on this issue since I think we have the same point of view.
We do not 'hate' immigrants. However an open door policy on immigration detracts from our ability as a society to make fundamental changes to our living arrangements as JHK would say. We need to make fundamental changes to our living arrangements in order to prepare for the long emergency.
Ever been to a meeting that can't start because newcomers keep arriving?
There is an element in our society that loves immigration, the ruling class. The ruling class loves it because with open immigration they maintain a labor market they fully control. Labor gets uppity and want unions, health benefits, higher wages then f-em fire em and bring in the new people. Thats how it works in America and always has. Immigration is an attempt to keep the middle class down, to keep them desperate and docile so they don't get in charge and make the changes we need to make.
We can't address overpopulation and create a sustainable stable society with an open door. It really is as simple as that.
An area may be able to support its current population for a finite amount of time. But it is a flawed conception that this can go on indefinitely without drastically altering the environment of that land. Intensive farming damages the land through increased salinity and top soil erosion. Eventually, the land cannot be farmed anymore. Northern Africa and the Fertile Crescent used to be the bread baskets of the world. They are largely deserts now, and this is not at all a coincidence.
Turkle said: "places like India are muddling along fine, at least for the moment."
==========
I have been to India several times. I have spent months there and have traveled the whole country.
What you say is true.
To the extent that India embraces organic farming and permacultural practices, food security will increase.
There have been studies comparing farm production, crop yield, input cost, and income in organic and conventional farming systems in three states of India: Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
The results showed that organic farming reduced the input cost without affecting the net margin in all three states. Things can actually be better without petroleum!
Total food production was found to be comparable for the two systems in two of three states. While yield of rice and wheat generally was lower under the organic systems, yield from intercropping food crops was generally higher.
The number of agro-ecological methods and percentage of farms practicing different agro-ecological methods were higher under organic systems than conventional systems.
These results suggest that organic farming has the potential to improve food security of small farmers by reducing indebtedness due to the lower cost of production without affecting total farm production and farm income.
SOURCE: Panneerselvam P, Hermansen J, Halberg N. Food Security of Small Holding Farmers: Comparing Organic and Conventional Systems in India. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture.
Thanks, Turkle...
I find it odd that the media overplay
here-and-now disasters and overblow
their degree of disastrousness while
underplaying intermediate and long
term problems.
That's part of their sensationalism.
They want babies with radiation burns,
homeless women and old men, and just a
bit of a scare that we can't eat Japanese
spinach for the next fifty years. Sheesh.
They want to "heighten your TV experience".
TV, while being all furrow-browed and "gosh
we're grimly concerned" is, in fact, part of
the problem, not part of the solution. They
only "inform" insofar as it coheres with a
good Nielsen rating.
I plan to drop my Comcast subscription after
the college hoops playoffs. The shit is
worthless.
E.
k-dog said: "We can't address overpopulation and create a sustainable stable society with an open door. It really is as simple as that."
===========
I can imagine this being said in 1850. Yet one hundred years later it turned out the immigrants who were so hated in 1850, who were seen to be a threat to "sustainability" turned out to be regular folk who contributed to the United States of 1950 and became respected community leaders.
I'm just saying the very same forces are at work against immigrants today and we will find that they too become part of the solution to making life better in the USA.
Oh, hell, I don't have to "imagine" anything.
Just look at the history of USA deportation laws in the 1800s. Immigration laws passed by the U.S. Congress then granted the federal government the power to deport immigrants from all racial and ethnic heritages including Chinese workers, contract workers, anarchists, and those deemed morally or physically unfit.
The Supreme Court upheld deportations under the Chinese exclusion law. Do you think the Chinese immigrants to the USA are a threat now, in the 21st century, or potential problem-solvers?
See how things can change in just one hundred years? The Chinese were condemned just as vociferously in the 1800s as the Latino immigrants are today. And just as wrongly.
I will never advocate closing our borders. I will never advocate keeping brainpower out of the United States.
We have enough problems that we can use all the brains we can get, regardless of skin color or national origin.
Excellent decision, E.!
I haven't had television for years now. I honestly do not know who or what a Kardashian is, nor do I care.
"I plan to drop my Comcast subscription after
the college hoops playoffs."
LOL!!!
since I now use Google Chrome to block all Wikipedia entries it went to THEBIGPIKTUR instead.
===============
I'm glad you wrote this Dog because you have misspelled the handle of TEHBIGPIKTUR.
This is exactly what I mean when I say people don't give a shit. I think it is pretty obvious that ...BIGPIKTUR intended his handle to begin with THE but he made a typo (TEH) and never even proof read it. Or maybe he did proof read it and said "what the hell, close enough for government work."
If you think I'm a pain in the ass about spelling and grammar, be thankful I'm not reffing "March Madness" playoff games. I'd be calling "walking" and "palming the ball" every two seconds. The fans would be furious. I wonder what Orion thinks about this.
You sure go that right. Want vs. Need.
We want too much. I believe.
You can't always get what ya want.
If less wanted more, more would have enough ?
I know some would say that is scarcity thinking.
I think it is realistic.
JonathanSS, thank you for your comments.
I like the energy conservation ideas. I like the aesthetics. But the prices are out of reach of most Americans. Still, I am a believer that every little bit helps and it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness. So, if people who earn $100,000 a year want to invest in a NetZero House, more power (clean and sustainable power) to them.
"...show up at the salaryman drinking contest, get stuffed into another late-night commuter train."
This is great stuff JH! I really do think the Japanese would be better to return to an earlier epoch in their very brilliant history. I would say late Pleistocene is best. After all, we would all be better off there and then.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/science-religion-and-the-curriculum-of-the-west/
"If less wanted more, more would have enough ? I know some would say that is scarcity thinking.
I think it is realistic."
========
Right on, Jackie. I think we will actually be better off when we need less, consume fewer empty junk foods and live in a way that conserves more energy.
I agree with you that it is the realistic thing to do.
lbendet: I jotted down the title of the book but haven't had a chance to check it out, yet. Thanks for the recommendation.
My last hurrah will be sometime late this summer. About the time my "entitlement" checks start rolling in. (I think us oldsters should CLAIM that word. Take it back from TPTB.)
I'll probably run a 50% off sale for a couple of weeks and then blow out the rest at a buck a book. So it goes.
Shikata ga nai.
"I would say late Pleistocene is best. After all, we would all be better off there and then."
==========
Have you considered the Jomon period? It was pretty happening, a nutty time but better than the Pleistocene.
The Earliest Jomon period site of Kakuriyama, Kaseda City dated to around 9800 cal. bp, and is thought to have been occupied throughout the year.
They didn't have the best housing: adobe mud huts, but they did have house pits, quantities of highly decorated pottery, and more substantial and durable site features.
The early development of sedentism in south-western Japan is associated with a warming trend in which deciduous nut-bearing trees replaced a coniferous forest. This warming trend began first in south-western Japan and progressed to the north east.
A second vegetational change (from 12,000 to 9000 cal. bp) brought a gradual increase in broadleaf evergreen forest with even more productive species of nut-bearing trees.
Local archaeologists have postulated that there was some stress associated with the shift from the hunting of large Pleistocene mammals to small mammals and plant foods. The availability of nuts is thought to have enabled the growth of a storage economy which supported substantial villages and led to the production of decorated pottery, personal ornaments and ritual objects.
SOURCE: Pearson, R. (2006). Jomon hot spot: increasing sedentism in south-western Japan in the Incipient Jomon (14,000–9250 cal. bc) and Earliest Jomon (9250–5300 cal. bc) periods. World Archaeology, 38(2
We've now had five straight weeks of massive protests in Wisconsin. I guess Gov. Walker was wrong when he said on his phone call that it would all just go away and people would get bored with protest. Maybe it's because Walker continues to commit illegal acts?
Anyone notice how *PEE WEE HERMAN* (the pROno theatrical RAINCOAT loozer) looks "exactly" like he did, 25+ years ago?!?
That's kinda scary. Someone doing genetic mutation experiments, *without* our knowledge?!...
Asoka!!! You! You! No, *you*!~
R U still wheeling around massive crates of *paperwork*, in your bid to be the *penultimate* master-debater? Do you really have any beliefs, other than there are two sides?!...
LOL! I'm agnostic today.
This was written by a resident of Sendai, hardest hit by the earthquakes.
Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.
During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.
Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."
Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.
We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on.
But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not.
No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.
There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun.
People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.
Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled.
The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.
And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.
They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.
Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.
Yes, I've used TV as a "Mesmer box" for a
couple of years now. After a long afternoon
and night of teaching, I come home and click
through the channels. All the Encore movie
channels. The Sundance channel. The crap
on the "premium" channels (Real Housewives
of ...?), the Indieplex channel, etc etc
etc.. After about half an hour of compulsive
remote clicking, I give up in disgust.
The movie channels specialize in running the
same repertoire of one and two-star films in
perpetuity. Let's say you just watched "Raising
Arizona" with Cage. You'll get FIFTY more
chances to see it in the next thirty weeks.
Even movies I like (like "Casino") are played
to DEATH. But most films are just proof that
Hollywood stars are money-whores who will work
with ANY script no matter how banal or vulgar.
Then they do a photo-op showing them feeding
a hungry child and we're supposed to buy into
this sanitized image.
Just TWO years of TV watching have utterly
convinced me that it's most a destructive
force in American life.
E.
But Buck ... I have "March Madness" and
I just can't help myself. "I've fallen
and I can't get up"!! :-) :-)
Cheers,
E.
The idea of a power assist makes all the difference to me, the difference between getting out to ride my bike or not.
Some of us are saddled with physical conditions and sufficient age to make the appeal of rewards from robust, physical exercise moot.
Some dogs suffer from a touch of dyslexia which may have a side benefit of making them highly creative individuals. If that causes THE to become TEH thats perfectly fine as we have no preview function. If you think attention to detail is a lost virtue then.........I agree.
I mentioned a week or so ago that as we age we can become despotic or wise. Or did I say wise or despotic as we age? I don't remember but regardless, it is our choice. If one makes the choice to become wise continued learning is key to that choice.
For some reason I was unable to learn grammar in school. No thats not quite right. The elementary grammar teacher I had preferred little girls a lot. Anyway I know the difference between a noun and a verb and thats about it. One of my current projects is learning grammar so I can write better. I welcome your corrections though I may say otherwise in my zeal to get my points across.
Did anyone catch it? It should have been fat man, little boy, pee wee bomb, no?
How about those bonsai plants, and, get ready to be happy, "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto from the sixties? If that doesn't cheer you up, you probably don't have a pulse!
Sayonara, zetsubou sensei, Mr.K! :)
K-dog,
Did watch the video link from last week, thanks!
LLBooks;
I take it you've closed your bookstore. Really sorry to hear that. Nothing good can come from independent bookstores shutting down throughout the country.
You know that Borders is closing, too. I drove by one on Sunday and the parking lot was full, vultures trying to score a deal most likely.
What's opening around here are tattoo parlors, fast food burger joints, and businesses where Polish ladies come around and clean your house cheap. And when one of these 'businesses' opens it is lauded in the local newspaper and by local Pols as an example of ongoing economic development. I'm not kidding. "We're coming back", that's the motto.
If you've left Washington State I hope it is off to someplace warm and sunny. That's what I plan on doing as soon as I can, live in a sunny, safe place and watch the world sink down by degrees.
That'll mean leaving my little farm here in CT, which won't be easy.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Yep,
I think that's why Tripp is moving heavily in the permaculture direction. A shipload less maintenance going on. Plus, a lot less worry in Georgia about providing wintertime fodder for the beasts. I was raised cheek-to-jowl with a [for profit] farm, so I'm eyewitness to the constant work involved. The man was trying to make a better life for his three kids, so they wouldn't HAVE to spend their lives in daily drudgery. (Died of a massive heart attack while harrowing a field. The old Oliver tractor just putted along to the tree line with a dead man in the saddle.)
Someone asked about adobe roof construction. Here is a video showing how Nubian vaulted adobe roofs are constructed ... and why (overpopulation, deforestation). This YouTube video is one minute long.
TUCSONSPUR, I'm very glad you liked it.
I live swing shift hours currently and it's providential your post should hang near the bottom of the list for me to see before morning post traffic picks up to bury it.
It is providential because I fired up Netflix with my late night dinner and the Netflix viewers preference algorithm had selected a new flick to suit my radical ass tastes.
I know you will like it.
The One Percent
"This 80-minute documentary focuses on the growing "wealth gap" in America, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune."
Jamie turns out to be a very cool dude. I gave his film five stars. I like being able to rate social conscience documentaries after I see them. I always give important ones with a sweet message of truth five stars and this one deserves all five.
Milton Friedman is extensively interviewed in this film and watching him makes it crystal clear why the other 99% of us are in the clusterfuck we're in.
I'm thinking of burning another 100 copies of
Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy to pass out but that's another twenty bucks out my pocket and I need to keep my powder dry.
Anybody who wants to fight the good fight and help mitigate the long emergency should watch both these films.
Albert CamusHave a great day.
Netflix Rocks
The link to the one minute adobe Nubian vault video: Sustainable Housing for families in Sahel is not going through. Google it or YouTube it.
"- but most of us get a little bit of power, and then want more power - and then want it all, society, and Planet, and all the rest - be damned." -PoC
I don't; and don't understand those that do. Take a vote.
E.
Better than March Madness!
Must See-TV
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
John Oliver demonstrates how America's freedom packages will turn any country's civil war into a catastro-tunity. (remember disaster capitalism)
When you get to the All New Videos go straight to John Oliver's segment it's about as brilliant as satire gets. I'm watching again online. It's moments like this that I think the cable package is worth it.
BTW I do agree that these movie channels rarely play anything I would want to see. So many amazing films have been marginalized and forgotten.
A guy I know is working on eliminating the "dead spot" on the crank. Pretty interesting from the strictly mechanical "cam" idear.
HAPPY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF OBAMA'S AFFORDABLE CARE ACT!
No death panels, no horrific new bureaucratic system, no bankruptcy, people are still seeing their own doctors, children are now covered until age 26, denial based on pre-existing conditions eliminated, etc. Bad news for all the critics of "socialized medicine"
Everything I wanted to say has been said already and more adeptly by "Warren Peace," so I merely recommend his comment above.
K-Dog,
Milton Friedman is extensively interviewed in this film and watching him makes it crystal clear why the other 99% of us are in the clusterfuck we're in.
Thanks for the good post re: movies we'd all like to see.
Yep, you see how the power elite used this guy to give credence to their highway robbery. What a system and its like their religion, now. They won't veer from it--they are getting too much out of it and couldn't care less what happens to anyone else.
They say, No man is an island....
Useful ponderings this week Jim, (thanks as ever)
And thinking of things liquid - seems the $dollar’s tanking - panic stations, sell, sell... SELL!!
Should make yer oil imports a wee bit more painful to bear - but then again when you magic cash out of pixalated thin air - who cares what cost eh? Just how deep a currency debasement p#ss away you go, is the defacto sign-o-the-times now - that and how really deep do you wanna keep going Mr O’barmy-man-obama, you and your Wall St based puppet string pulling masters... eh?
Interesting to note too, that our dear brother Colonel is probo using his ‘physical’ 143.8 tn gold horde to fuel his limpet like cling-on to power. So who’s buying? The abstainers Germany, Russia, China or India, many would defo go for a chance to buy a lot of that real soft shiny glittery stuff - nod, nod, wink wink - no questions asked... rank has its privileges!
*sniggers*
So bomb and no-fly-zone away you Anglo/imperialist boyz, Gaddafi's got loadsa-coackroach-shields and cash to burn through yet, before he finally caves in, and heads for a ‘friendly’ private jet accepting alternate state retirement...
But back to Japan, I tend to agree with you Mr. Kunstler (and the financial blogosphere at large) that the Jap’s great plight for quick rebuilding cash could topple things once more over - aka 2008 Bear Stearns style - though shares even in nuclear are rebounding today, go figure?
However a UBS trader said that last weeks deteriorating nuclear crisis had led to "near panic across local credit-default swap markets."
(Ouch)
So here we CFN’ers sit typing/wondering what can be dialled in next to accelerate TLE style ongoing challenges?
Me, I was sailing all this weekend, form Plymouth to Fowey, Friday to Sunday, albeit in the biggest Spring Tides for over 20 years - you could call it a super-moon pull - could this have had a bearing on recent Teutonic plate shifts, I wonder? NASA thinks not... but we do know our globe is not a fixed mass, no she like all ageing dames, Gaia’s prone to bulges and wobbles, so perhaps more atoll outbursts are still due to come?
As for me, I’ll sell my car this year and go a 2 wheeled simply Keira...
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/columns/belinda-white/TMG8396545/Keira-Knightley-turns-on-the-charm-and-her-leading-man-in-new-Chanel-advert.html
However I’ll be riding a BRaMMO Empulse, plug and play and two fingers up to rising petrol costs...
And what else can we have for distraction from all this doom-and-gloom? Well for those ageing long retired, baby-boomer 80’s city playa bankster types, why not tune into the Lynchian fest with Duran Duran tomorrow...
http://www.youtube.com/DuranDuranVEVO
For a wee, knees-up Hugo Boss clad together chance to hark back to those care-free times when the UK was still a major oil exporter, and banking was the only place to be, raking in those easy-money massive bonuses for a decade or more...
(While Neue Labour looked the other way)
And a wee postscript for Mr Marlin554 - we’re now mothballing decommissioning our type 22 Frigates - four in total will disappear over the coming weeks - HMS Campbeltown, Cumberland, Chatham and Cornwall in fact... F86 was playing in the Sound yesterday... what a racket her Spey gas-turbines make!! (They’ll be many a tear-stained eye in Devonport during April)
Why they going? Tis to reduce the deficit, think costs for saving those naughty banksters...
Austerity war measures for the growing body of poor and middle-class OECD masses – you bet!
Be seeing you...
The vision thing...
Think of this country as an image of double exposure. Are we a nation-state or an global trade zone?
Are we Chimerica or are we America? Who exactly does the ruling class in this country work for?--
Certainly not us!
Obama is in South America while waging a new war front for the corporate elite, while making the world a little more convenient for China.
The other day I mentioned that while Obama speaks of creating job opportunity by bolstering CAFTA, China who owns the Panama Canal, thanks to Carter is now making plans to build a railway for their goods in Colombia.
And speaking of war fronts, Obama has failed to explain what we're doing. What's the goal. Who is paying treasure and blood?
The European (France! + GB) were freaking out over their oil supply and we jumped!--They like us, they really do! But when the bill comes in, who's going to be on the hook?
As usual, we tried to hit Gadaffi in his compound but missed again---drat.
We haven't won a war since WWII and yet we keep jumping in as a war profiteer-entity for the global contractors. We tear down infrastructure and build it up again, creating work for our globalists.
So we can win some military battles, but without the vision thing (& real reasons) we can never win the war.
"Our problem is the un-sustainability of the world we have created, and we should be clear we can't solve this problem with the same kind of cosciousness that gave rise to it." - Einstein
Maybe taking a few steps back is not such a bad thing.
Wage,
Use the compost as a cover, or better yet mix it into the cover soil of your spuds. The compost will provide nutrients to the growing plants.
BE cautious using the wood chips. Chips are great for mulch to keep weeds down, and to keep water in, but with a very wide carbon to nitrogen ratio (C:N +/- 300:1), the chips can actually pull nitrogen away from the growing spuds. If the spuds are short of nitrogen during the bulking phase of the potatoes (after tuber formation, and prior to harvest) the resulting spuds can be small, and end up with hollow centers.
Compost good, chips maybe not so good. IF you must use the chips for the mulching effect, put them on the top of the soil after the compost is blended with the cover soil.
somehow i just do not see a Pulitzer in the above bloggers future
Have a go at it then. Share your knowledge.
"And a wee postscript for Marlin -- we're now mothballing decommissioning our type 26 frigates -- 4 in total will disappear ...
-Alexandra
Damn, Alexandra, we were counting on you Brits to help us rule the World. As the junior partner of course.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
in ancient Japan
they await the promised land
for the future man
Regarding the previous comments about farming (farm work is too haaard). Let's be honest. Americans are lazy. - jeff
Americans are lazy? Maybe. I would say they are unused to manual labour especially in the heat of summer.
...farm work is too haaard... You sound disparaging. Try working for a few months on a farm. Maybe you're a whole lot tougher than I think but my guess is that by the end of the first morning you'll be begging for mercy.
If you manage to stick it out a whole summer I guarantee that you will NEVER again take food for granted. You will know in your aching bones where that head of lettuce came from.
Read JDfarmer's post from Mar 21 8:31 pm.
OPEN THE BORDERS! WELCOME ALL WHO WANT TO LIVE HERE. STOP RESTRICTIVE IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW!
The American tradition is to receive those "yearning to be free." Some CFNers want to slam the borders shut, but any state trying to clamp down on undocumented immigrants will suffer economic consequences ... and taxpayers will end up paying more if anti-immigrant legislation is passed.
Indiana, for example, got a taste of forthcoming economic blowback when two organizations threatened to pull conventions from the state if enforcement legislation passed —- a costly lesson Arizona knows well.
Legislators in other states considering similar measures —- Nebraska, Michigan, Arizona and Alabama —- also heard from concerned members of the community this week who fear the economic and social damage these measures will cause in their state.
Although playing with enforcement-only immigration measures might have helped some of these state lawmakers light up their political careers, taxpayers are starting to realize that they’re ultimately going to get burned if they follow the anti-immigration ProCons of the world.
La Union Hace La Fuerza! Viva La Raza Humana! Eliminan Las Fronteras!
To be fair though aren't those Type 22's getting old? 1980s vintage aren't they?
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
-- Emma Lazarus, 1883
A furtherance of Max's Michael Betancourt interview is on Orlov's blog. Thought you'd want a peek. It's not long, and seeing it in print makes it even easier to understand the concept.
(2nd down: "Nothing Left to Steal")
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
Just got back in and found your post, Ozone what a lovely surprise.
Love Orlov's site, but haven't gone there in a while. It's areal treasure trove though. Copied the Ruppert, and Nuc meltdown 101!
Today when I turned on CNN the reporter had just experienced a 6.0 aftershock in Japan. It's still going on and the reactors are still dangerous and may be so much so that they won't be able to work there. Forget about going back to basic farming and fishing in Japan if they can't stop the radiation from spewing out. It's also in the surrounding water.
Max Keiser also had a great little blurb on the propaganda around Nuc Power in Japan yesterday. I'm sure it's still there.
It really speaks to Betancourt's assertions.
ProCon claims his objection to immigration is not racist. But non-racist restrictions on immigration are also immoral.
Whatever ProCon's motivation is, it is wrong to prevent people from moving from one country to another — either to stop them from getting out or to stop them from getting in.
If it is wrong to prevent a Texan from moving to New Hampshire, then it is also wrong to prevent a German from moving to Texas. The imaginary line separating Texas from New Hampshire is really no different from the line separating Texas from Germany.
Suppose that ProCon wants a job which he knows Tripp will also be applying for. It surely would be wrong of ProCon to go to Tripp’s house and nail the doors and windows shut and plant land mines and barbed war around the yard so that Tripp couldn’t leave. Yet this is exactly what we do to prevent Mexicans from coming to the United States to look for jobs. It is immoral.
I agree with your sentiments, and I'm just a student of espanol, but shouldn't it be "EliminEN (imperative) Las Fronteras"?
"Wow. I don't understand people like you at all."
Maybe that's because I'm not a person, I'm an anonymous screenname on a a blog called Clusterfuck Nation.
Seriously. You're on a blog called Clusterfuck nation and you are complaining about use of the word fuck.
People like me. You don't understand. Why doesn't that surprise me. You don't understand your own hairdresser.
No anger involved. It was a ploy to get you to try to say something intelligent in defense of Heinberg's writing.
You couldn't.
JHK says: "I can't shake the odd feeling that Japan was looking for a way to get back to the 19th century, and perhaps even deeper beyond that - to the dream-time before they made the fateful decision to industrialize."
=======================================
Jimmy boy, have you ever heard of "projection", that is, of the psychological variety?
You certainly have proven one thing, that you are not, as you say, an expert on Japanese History. Your utopian fantasy of a perfect past there has a comic book simplicity to it that betrays your foolish Luddite mentality. You'll be sleeping underground like Kacynski and his brother if you don't learn to manage your neurosis.
Mankind has only one course, that is forward to the future, whatever that brings.
Another small batch of imagery, chaos, and T. Rexian horsepower at:
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/03/k-t-boundary-revisited.html
The K-T Boundary Revisited.
Cheers!
shouldn't it be "EliminEN (imperative) Las Fronteras"?
=============
Yes, it should.
My bad.
Good catch.
Felicitaciones!
Nearly 1 in 5 Florida homes is vacant. Yikes.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-20-of-Florida-homes-cnnm-2507768369.html
At what point do we start giving away properties just to keep them maintained and try to stimulate local economic activity? In places like Florida it better be soon! Florida eats houses that aren't kept up. All of a sudden I'm damn proud I only lost 10k on mine...
You got it, K-dog.
Immigration isn't now, and never has been, about lifting any damn lamp beside the golden shore or wanting to add more flavors to our melting pot.
It's about cheap labor. The capitalists love it. And their media promotes it in hearts and flowers speeches that are total bullshit.
never has been, about lifting any damn lamp beside the golden shore
============
door
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors.
asoaka sed, "ProCon claims his objection to immigration is not racist. But non-racist restrictions on immigration are also immoral."
ergo, PRoCon is racist.
This argument has the form,
Immigration control is racist. Therefore, objection to immigration is affirmation of racism.
Yet,
Racism is defined as "the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other races."
By the very definition of the term "racism", it doesn't appear that advocation of limits to immigration fulfills the requirements of the term.
I is apparent that either Asoka is using words he doesn't know the meaning of, or is falsely attributing the term to an argument or arguers. In other words, dealing in bunk, (http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/03/everyone-poops-debunked.html) which is a form of disinformation.
He could either be aware of what he is saying is false, which makes him a bullshitter at best, liar at worst, or unaware what he is saying is false, meaning he is ignorant of logic, the facts, or both.
In other words he is either a malicious idiot, or just an idiot.
ProCon's objection to immigration does not fulfill the requirements of the definition of racism, as such.
Therefore, some objections to immigration are not racist.
Which means Asoka has committed the fallacy of composition.
Here is the MeCHA, NoBorders/ Aztlan, etc. generic debate position:
"Whatever ProCon's motivation is, it is wrong to prevent people from moving from one country to another — either to stop them from getting out or to stop them from getting in."
This is ad hominem, inasmuch as it addresses ProCon's "motivation", which is irrelevant.
"If it is wrong to prevent a Texan from moving to New Hampshire, then it is also wrong to prevent a German from moving to Texas."
This is your straw man argument... and it is all wet.
"Suppose that ProCon wants a job which he knows Tripp will also be applying for. It surely would be wrong of ProCon to go to Tripp’s house and nail the doors and windows shut and plant land mines and barbed war around the yard so that Tripp couldn’t leave..."
Straw, man.
"Yet this is exactly what we do to prevent Mexicans from coming to the United States to look for jobs."
Fallacy. In how many ways? As analogy, false. In actuality, false. In practice and application, false. Instead of tripping through a minefield, anyone can go to the INS website and see that there is a process for a whole range of participatory engagement within the US and its economy. Green cards, Pink Cards, Visas, Work allowances, citizenship applications, Join the Army, get a social security number programs...
This straw man argument is curious, because according to your previous week's citation, a study by academic liberal economists, which was funded to the tune of $500,000 by none other than Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, concluded that immigrants don't compete directly for jobs. (nicely affirming the World Bank's policies).
"It is immoral."
You are in effect, arguing, that limits to immigration are immoral because it is prima facie immoral.
You have not proven WHY it is immoral "...to prevent people from moving from one country to another — either to stop them from getting out or to stop them from getting in." (sic)
You're begging the question: WHY are limits to immigration "immoral"?
We're burning up waiting for your explanation of this apparently self-evident fact.
That's the slogan I try to live by, Jackie.
Live simply, that others may simply live.
What a canard:
This is, at the very least, an implied fallacy.
I'll give asoka the benefit of the doubt: Are you in fact saying, that because America once had a certain policy toward immigration, it should apply those policies today?
And such an argument begs the question, WHY should America hold such a policy today?
Thank you for the information, JD.
I had already started dumping wood chips, both because those previous reasons, and because it's easier to shovel and haul wood chips than half-done compost.
But I stopped, and switched to compost. I'm up to 76 potatoes, after 3 days of work.
In the meantime, I came into the house at 12:15 to make lunch. My husband came home and asked what they were dumping on the field next door.
???? So I went and looked. A giant tractor was busily dumping something (usually it's sewage) on the 10 acre field next door.
By 1:30, they were gone. One hour!
Fossil fuels are amazing.
I find it interesting that people post the most outrageously racist pseudoscientific bullshit on this blog, but accusing Mr. Kunstler of homophobia elicits a threat to ban.
I think you show a deep and fantastical ignorance here. No one wants to go back to the days of slavish feudalism that WAS the reality pre-WWII. There are so many bits of this little paragraph that can't be dignified with calls of malicious intent, they must simply be relegated to the trash heap of dumb. Here are a few:
* "ship the cars, package the robot parts, show up at the salaryman drinking contest, get stuffed into another late-night commuter train." Everyone thinks this is the Japanese reality. Everyone works in the car plant and lives in a wildly over-packed city. Yes, the Tokyo-Yokohama megalopolis is loaded with people, but there are a lot of rural, farming areas in Japan, not the least of which is the entire region that was so hard hit by this disaster. Dunce.
* "I don't claim to be a Japan expert" Smartest thing you said in the whole piece.
* "I think they perhaps secretly longed to get back to something like an older traditional Japanese society ... to the society that blossomed and fruited in cycles of centuries on those beautiful rocky, sea-washed islands into a culture saturated in artistry." "Mr. Clavell? Is that you?" This is just another bullshit fantasy about Japan in the Western mind; sitting on the shelf next to the one about makin' it with a Geisha.
* "unencumbered by idiot religions" 98% of Japanese are Buddhist and 98% are Shinto. Although largely secular in practice, this is a nation of pseudo-religion so ingrained that the few Christians there are can't find a grave site because graveyards are nearly exclusively run and controlled by Buddhist temples. The one reigning religion in Japan, however, is the one you seem to have based your career on hobbling: Consumerism.
* "I can't shake the odd feeling that Japan was looking for a way to get back to the 19th century" This sounds suspiciously like they welcomed this apocalypse.
* "to the dream-time before they made the fateful decision to industrialize" Don't we all wish Japan would return to this "dream-time?" The Emperor is God, Tojo is starting the war machine, and the Rape of Nanking is just a glimmer in the eye of a nation. Or do you mean the Feudal stuff that makes the idea of "19th Century" ridiculous because the reality of 19th Century living is synonymous with 18th, 17th, 16th, 15th ... not much had changed. Either way, ludicrous.
* "The earthquake-tsunami-reactor moment is their chance now to begin that journey" Fuck you.
How many books have you written GROSSDEUTSCHLAND?
Richard Heinberg has written several. His early works provide excellent introductions to Peak Oil.
'Peak Everything' assumes prior knowledge and new Peak Oilers would be better starting with 'The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies' I know because I have read both. The 'Oil Depletion Protocol' is on my reading list.
If Heinberg is such a shitty writer GROSSDEUTSCHLAND why do used copies of 'The Party's Over' start at over five bucks on Amazon.com?
Other authors with books six years old have books going for a penny and at least one of those books won the BOOKER prize. I know because I bought it last week.
You need to leave SitNSpin alone. You insult her with a crack about her sex life thinking she was a man. Then when she informs you she is a woman and a mother you come back at her with yet more vile.
Once again, you jump in and comment on others personal opinions. Are you a lesbian activist?
People like you are what has destroyed the viability of the Democratic Party with you handwringing and tacking on of your own personal social causes to those of the nation.
If someone wants to marry their dog, that is their business. Just don't expect most Americans to not burst out laughing that repudiate the loudmouths that promote that. There's a big difference between tolerance and promotion. You're in the promotion business.
"Women poets of deindustrialization"
Thanks for the laughs. Got a washboard and a clothesline?
Yo, Marlin; Thanks for the shout-out. No, the store is still open. The lease on this place runs til next February. I'm running Fri-Mon hours. I'll sell out the store during the summer when there's a few tourist bucks around.
I might stay here, I might relocate. Too early to tell. Way will open. Opportunities will present themselves. A farm couple I know would like me to move in with them. Nice folks, in small doses. And, I'm a rather solitary creature. I'm going to be doing a little house-sitting for them in the near future. Take care of the dogs, chickens and quail.
If I relocate, it will be somewhere in the wet. Western Oregon, Washington or the Alaskan panhandle. I don't think I can live without the damp. I'm a native, ya know? The thing about the weather here is if it's raining in winter, it's warmer. If we get clear sunny days, it's colder then hell. For a couple of weeks at a time.
So, in the meantime, I'm cleaning out a 15 years of stuff. I also lived here at the store. Camped out, I should say. The more stuff I get rid of, the easier it is. I may just boil it all down to a camper on the back of my (short bed) Ranger. The road to the auction is well traveled, these days.
West Coast Chapter of CFN, Post 5
Western Pacific NW Division
GUS44,
You have a point but there is nothing wrong with JHK defending himself and if he were to deal with all the: "racist pseudoscientific bullshit on this blog" he would not have time for anything else.
When you smell bullshit or see another poster being attacked unjustly, say something. I don't have the time to attack it all myself.
As I quoted late last night:
Albert CamusDoing nothing is being on the side of the executioners. My version reads:
k-dogPS: Another tattoo parlor opened at the end of my block. Around the corner is a new "Indoor Grow" store. Just noticed last night that in the next block south is some kind of store that has "natural medicine" in it's name. The last couple of months the medical marijuana folks have been trying to establish a beach head.
Not that I really care much one way or another about those businesses. It's the retail wave of the future.
Wage, I agree w/ jdfarmer. The chips are good mulch but they are not something to incorporate into the soil. I just read an article from Washington State U extolling the virtues of wood chip mulch. It seems that that the chips set up a nice little micro/ecosystem at the junction between the chips and the soil. Read about it in "The Informed Gardener" by Linda Chalker-Scott.
The best books out there on food gardening are by Steve Solomon. He wrote, "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening"; and "Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times". Both of these books give excellent instructions on growing spuds and all the other veggies for temperate climes. Steve's main emphasis is on food growing for home consumption, Long Emergency style!
The basic spud growing gig is to green up your seed spuds in bright light until they start to sprout a bit. While the spuds are greening, work up some nice compost amended rows out in the garden. When you are ready to plant, dig trenches about as deep as the shovel and space the seed spuds out along the bottom. Cover the spuds with an inch or so of the amended soil. As they grow, slowly add amended soil, keeping the growing tips a little above the soil line as you refill the trench. Hill 'em up a foot or so. Dig new potatoes when the plants bloom. Dig the rest as needed. Use wood chips between the rows.
Be sure to check out Steve's page ( for sure an OG CFN'r):
www.soilandhealth.org/05steve'sfolder/05aboutmeindex.html
DYFP
CFNation, Post 884
Cascadia
No wonder the bookstores are closing [even used b'stores]...what town or city are you in?
Is it true Emma wanted Zion TO BE ALL JEWS but that the US [in her plan] would be as poor and non Christian as possible?
You already corrected me on this long ago.
one correction per word please!
'Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines'
Doesnt surprise me at all!
Me, I live in LA, where a Lakers game will cause riot [read looting].
Figure it out for y'rself!
@ Cash....lol
*To be fair though aren't those Type 22s getting old, 80s vintage aren't they?*
Indeed, matey, but this bunch were all post Falklands skirmish, so well modernised and weapon’d-up - but what with our ‘fleet flagship’ mothballed too, HMS Ark Royal now gone - due to the rush of £1bn RN budget cuts, what will (actually) be left for her HRH’ness, madam lé Queen to physically review, come her Diamond Jubilee celebrations during 2012?
(I suspect the ‘colonies’ Navy’s will have to be quickly drafted in, and perhaps you Yanks will lend a carrier shock-n-awe group or two, or else twill all look a tad bleak, empty waved, drab, plain-n-silly)
But to lift spirits, Sir Donald’s ‘Leander g’ no doubt will be loaned/drafted in - with him being an active Commodore in the RN reserve an all - for her Maj’ to sail down the line and smile/grin in...lol
http://yachts.monacoeye.com/yachtsbysize/pages/leander01.html
But then why did our dearest reigning QEII loose her own toy Britannia back in 1997?
For that we have to look to the other UK potential oil region, The Falklands. Allegedly when the MOD requested her royal yacht as a ‘hospital’ ship during our last Argie bust-up circa 82’, with a polite shake of the hand and firm NO, the request was rejected and flatly turned down...
Consequently the Neue Labour axe quickly fell on that ‘perk’ of the royal job, but as a safe & secure state entertainment vehicle, it was what we Devonian locals would refer to as a ‘proper job’. And Marlin554, due to our length and girth of uber-maritime history, tis not in our nations heart-felt nature to play second-fiddle to any ole despot state... yours included!!
(Though a Euro NATO Navy, is no doubt where we’re all currently headed, with Norway too lending its fighter/bomber jets for the Odyssey Dawn Gadaffi party bash)
Me... I’m focusing next on procuring something similar to this, *sniggers* so as to be alongside the royal review afloat come 2012, fully aperitif/champers/anchored-up of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTknKkbXlU&
(So any donations to get me there will be gratefully accepted), to the usual Panamanian based offshore account naturally...
Finally, heave ho - to all you CFN’ers of a maritime persuasion - happy sailing y’all, and think hallelujah sail play, with the end of easy oil now long gone, you know it simply makes so much sense.
Bon voyage... et al!
Tattoo parlors? What could be worse? A few mini malls in San Jose are now sporting "Hookah lounges." Yuk.
I probably mentioned it before, but I told my kids if they get a tattoo, I'm not paying a cent for college. I said, "Go ahead, make my day, just know that you'll have $100K in student debt if you get a tattoo, instead of having your parents pay for it all. The choice is yours."
SJmom
I don't know, I was just commenting on her social class, she clearly was a 1 per-center. But her words, however applicable to the 1800's (and thats giving her the benefit of the doubt) don't apply now.
One in seven Americans is now living below the poverty line, one in four white children are living below the poverty line and one in three minority children are live below the poverty line.
We already have plenty of poor tired masses. We need to take care of our own first before we worry about the employment needs of the ruling class.
Our people need jobs and our society has a right to self determination without newcomers arriving with their ass kissing Stockholm syndromed cheer-leading of the Republican status-quo.
Haw haw haw. I think it's funny that Grossdeutschland thought Sitnspin was a man! I think Sitnspin is awesome, and I bet she has a skill that will be useful in the Long Emergency. I'm guessing....spinning. I'm learning it myself.
And Grossdeutschland, what is it about Heinberg that you don't like? Have you read Bill McKibben's book "Deep Economy?" Have you read JHK's "The Long Emergency?" There are many well-written books out there that discuss the general subject of peak oil and fossil fuel depletion.
K-Dog: I very much appreciate your paraphrasing of Camus, and your urging others to speak out when they see some wrong-doing. It's uplifting.
One of my favorite lines on this blog is "You must be new around here."
It's used when those of us who have been here awhile get to show off, to some poor shell-shocked newbie, the thick skin we've developed toward scathing insult. This is doubly true if the newbie is female. There is little in the way of chivalry at CFN and what displays of it that do occur (as from the self-styled southern gentleman, Snowflake) are often roundly scoffed at.
When I arrived on the scene in the summer of '09 I was actually shocked (you know, with tingling skin and flushed face) to have someone (such as GROSSDEUTSCHLAND, in one of his prior incarnations) call me a MORONIC FUCTARD. For awhile I railed at such rough treatment but after a time that insult appeared trite as I noticed it was the default closing to many of Zzz's replies. (I believe Zzzzzz was his handle at the time.)
Anyway, today, in regard to JHK's threat to ban Walt, we have SomeoneinAsia quaintly suggesting "If you dislike what someone wrote, the least you can do is disagree politely, as in "with all due respect, I beg to differ". It costs nothing to be nice." which sounds like something out of Pride and Prejudice or Little Women.
And then k-dog rode in on a white steed to remonstrate Großdeutschland for a couple of stiff jabs he landed on the kisser of SitNSpin.
My message to these newbies and their defending Knights-in-shining-armor would be to hang in there and develop a taste for the well delivered insult.
Do not think for a minute that when Asoka feigns bubbly good cheer as in "Hi PoC!," or replies with mock politeness, or writes an entire long comment in a foreign language (probably with the aid of a translation app) that these are not intended as insults. As Asoka himself put it earlier today in advice to someone, such "politeness" will be seen as "inauthentic ways to disguise aggression."
Personally, I enjoy reading or delivering a clever insult.
But there weren't three hundred million plus people in the United States in 1883, were there Ese?
What do you know, more living in the past.
Now, while from your former missive, Cash got, "Aw, g'won, dat stuff is jest ob-so-leet, youse'll mod'renize", I got, "Sink me! Strike the colours ye lubbers, we can't afford these blasted guinea-gobblers na'more; Britannia no longer rules the waves! Have done and heave to!".
Sorry, but I'll not be contributing funds to purchase the uber-techno-yacht. ;o) ...It ever hurts to ask though.
Hey, those sails looked like spun-bond olefin fiber when the sun shone through 'em! If so, my idea of cobbling together an ice-boat with Tyvek housewrap for a sail just might work! (Sounds like a FUN suicidal pursuit; got the ideal body o' water [ice] situated right nearby. ;o)
My, my, my. It just goes to show- the most innocuous first-world conventions and habits- utterly irredeemable.
OK, well, thanks. I now have my potatoes mulched with compost, and the dirt I dug out to plant them topped with wood chips. (Or most of it).
Let them sit and green up! Who knew?
I was a bit surprised to open the bag and find them all not even sprouted. WTF? The potatoes I bought to eat are all sprouting. Shouldn't the seed potatoes be sprouted?
I should have gotten this plot ready last fall, but I didn't decide that this would be the year that the shit might really hit the fan until I read "Griftopia" a few weeks ago. The chapter on the new commodity speculation invented by Goldman Sachs made me very nervous, and that's when I decided to get serious about producing enough food to eat if the grocery supply stopped.
But it was below freezing then. I bought 2 50 pound sacks of potatoes anyway, and stuck them outside. Then I found out that they're not supposed to freeze, so I moved them on the south side of the house.
Then we had torrential rains. So there was really no time to get out and dig beds.
When I was digging into the compost, which was heavy enough anyway, I realized that the top was covered with heavy clay. ??? Then I remembered that my plan last fall was to sheet compost and cover it with the subsoil that I was digging out of a hole that will be my water storage area, if they cut off the water. I have found that compost doesn't grow much unless mixed with soil.
Then I forgot about my plan, and just remembered that there was compost there.
So I just destroyed my nice planting bed, in order to mulch my potatoes.
And I moved that heavy clay three times now.
"I was a bit surprised to open the bag and find them all not even sprouted. WTF? The potatoes I bought to eat are all sprouting. Shouldn't the seed potatoes be sprouted?"
No.
Most commercial seed potato growers treat seeds with sprout inhibitors so that the seeds don't start to grow prematurely, as once an eye sprouts, if the sprout gets broken off the potato is no longer viable as seed.
If you have seen commercial planters, there is a large chance of mechanical damage.
So your seed spuds are normal, and will sprout in the ground.
PS the sprout inhibitors are generally naturally occurring allelopathic chemicals, so there is no danger.
Nope, my handle is misspelled on-purpose. The last part is pig-German to reflect my mutt heritage and the first part is supposed to be a playful misspelling of 'the' (which was an amusing meme on The Internets a hundred years ago, admittedly a tired one now. For details look up on EncyclopediaDramatica.)
I am a pain in the ass about spelling, grammar, incorrect homonyms etc., myself. It speaks volumes about someone's thought process when they don't care enough to get the details right. If I see a tea-partier with "KEEP YOUR HAND'S OFF OUR HEALTHCARE" they lost half their diminishing credibility right there. I'll give someone half credit if they're not a native English-speaker because English is a pain-in-the-ass language to master.
"Personally, I enjoy reading or delivering a clever insult."
That's because you are a moronic fukctard.
Societies, like individuals, can go nuts. Mao's China, Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Revolutionary France, N//a/zi G e.rma.ny, to name a few. During the Great Leap Forward in Mao's China, the peasants were taught to believe that if they pulled the rice shoots up by hand that they'd grow faster. Of course, they killed the plants, and people starved. The people literally threw their iron cooking utensils into backyard furnaces in an attempt to make steel to meet Mao's steel production targets. And then there was "The Cultural Revolution"....
If American society went nuts, at what point would we know for sure?
Score for day 2 of dairy operations:
Anna:1
Tripp: 1
She was gone again this morning, but I found her more easily and got her back quicker, AND...I got a gallon of milk! She has the most delicious milk...
"KEEP YOUR HAND'S OFF OUR HEALTHCARE"
=============
Oh, absolutely TBP. I ended a friendship over an erroneous possessive.
got her back quicker, AND...I got a gallon of milk!
================
Tripp,
Is there any issue regarding pasteurization or the lack thereof?
D'OH!
...It [N]ever hurts to ask though.
What a difference a missed "n" can make, eh? ;o)
(Regarding the 'Orlov Trove')
Yes, as Tripp had said; finding such a large amount of material in such a short time should be a bellweather of sorts. (But it won't be to the blissfully slumbering exceptional-folk, of course.)
Hey, just for something fun and distraction-esque, check out my sister's place h'yar. (She ain't quite right... one a them "artist" types don'cha know; cain't never trust 'em... subb-VERR-sives!!! shhhhh, they'll hear ya! ;o)
Click on the different "troupes" for the little bio's. Damn; monkeys ever'where...
http://www.monkeyshinestudio.com/
Ps. That pic from the Northwoods Troupe of "Watermelon" sitting on the shores of Gitchee Goomee was taken on them very shores, I'll have you know.
;o)
More fun facts you have absolutely no need to file! (Mebbe in the circular one...)
Howdy JD,
Were your grandparents offspring of Paul Bunyan?
Based upon your story: "each morning before sun up, they would hand load with scoops (no augers available yet) their horse drawn carts which held about 40 bushels of wheat (a bit over a tonne, 2400 pounds).
They would either wheel it or sleigh it on snow, to town about 4 miles away to the local elevator for sale.
Then they would come home, have a late breakfast, and take another load in the afternoon to town, hoping to return before dark. IN our neck of the woods in Canada, this may have been at 40 below.
All winter long.
The only difference is that now it is more automated, and mechanized. And the volume of grain is likely 1000 x.
Those who are not farmers should get their facts straight prior to posting where real farmers lurk."
I agree folks ought to get their facts straight where "real" farmers lurk. By my calculations your grandparents had to have been growing about 700 acres (about 284 hectares) of wheat at about 15 bushel/acre (the average in 1900 was about 12/acre and in 1950 about 17/acre, today it is about 50/acre). Using 26 weeks of non agricultural activity in Canada during Fall/Winter/Spring and using 5 days per week rather than 7 of going to market activity we find:
26*5*40*2/15=693.33....
or about 700 acres of wheat harvested to obtain the aforementioned quantities of 80 bushels/day to market. 700 acres with mules, horses and or oxen I am impressed. Implied in your exposé is that your grandparents accomplished all of this sans any hired help.
I really enjoyed your estimate that a farmer today can produce 1000 times as much with his mechanized and automated farm. Lets see:
26*5*40*2*1000/50 = 208,000 acres at 50 bushels/acre. Now that is a goodly sized wheat field.
So you folks think JD is a real farmer, eh?
SNAFU
"Is there any issue regarding pasteurization or the lack thereof?"
If I wanted to sell the milk legally there would be. Georgia (the conventional dairy lobby) doesn't allow raw milk to be sold. Fortunately, I don't want to, I want to drink it all, and make butter and ice cream. Raw milk is a living probiotic whole food, the sort of thing Activia yogurt tries to copy in flimsy FDA-approved form.
It's an exceptional food, and you could just about live on it. I've heard all kinds of stories about it alleviating chronic intestinal distress, arthritis, allergies, and lactose intolerance. Especially the A2 genetic milk, which is what the program we're now involved in is breeding toward. I figure we'll have solid and predictable A2 genetics locked down right about the time the USDA becomes functionally obsolete.
Yes, and just more rhetoric from 'Mr Cut n Paste'.
I doubt many in US, including us College grads
know that crap wasnt on the statue when the French gave it to us!
What about planting 'eyes' ...taters that have been cut into pieces?
Seen Zero Hedge? A doomer site based on financial facts, not intuition:
"Bloomberg has just released a report that if and when confirmed should lead to the prompt engagement of harakiri by the Hitachi executives responsible for this unprecedented act of treason against Japan's citizens. Quote Bloomberg: "One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago. Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. in 1974."
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-smoking-gun-emerges-founding-engineer-says-reactor-4-has-always-been-time-bomb-exp
Barely!
Ive seen pics and those folks are thin!
Back when this Blog started allowing posts
I read a few and 'the fur was flying'.
Then ZZZ posted that phrase and I almost laughed.
The funniest thing the 'mommycreature' ever said
here that I read.
And:
'I can't speak for Asia',,,,DAMN RIGHT
Attention potato farmers etc.
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/potato.html
http://www.woodprairie.com/category/specialty-
potatoeshttp://www.pfaf.org/database/index.php
"So you folks think JD is a real farmer, eh?"
-snafu-
SNAFU - yeah, I have absolutely no doubt that JDFarmer is a real production farmer. His posts, going back for months have a certain "specific gravity," that can not be faked.
I have little doubt that you are a intelligent man, SNAFU, and most probably a engineer, as you say. I'll take you at your word that your trained and worked in rocketry.
JD's only error was his use of the words, "All winter long." You, SNAFU, took this as literal truth - as in, 7 days a week for the entire 3 months of winter. I'll agree with you that 90 days of hauling wheat like that would have required an absolutely huge MOUNTAIN of wheat, and an immense farm, to produce it all.
JD's grandparents may have done that. I've known several people from that generation who accomplished amazing things - from pure concentrated and persistent labor.
Or JD may have engaged in a little bit of hyperbole - or just repeated a family story - all the more true - more valid and believable - because of a little embellishment, perhaps?
==============
At least he wasn't launching a fire truck into orbit using a single 80 CF SCUBA bottle - as I heard as truth and accepted without analysis, hey?
Inside joke from last July - OK?
Regards, PoC
==============
Cutting seed spuds into chunks is old school. Old school isn't bad school but in this case it takes more time. Cut the potatoes into chunks with 2-4 "eyes" in each chunk. Put them on a tray in bright light for about a month to form a callus over the cut. Then they are ready to plant. DYFP
hey Ozone, I went on a call maybe 8-10 years back. Early in the season , a tobacco farmer, a migrant worker, not that it makes a differance, was preparing the fields for new crops. He caught his head in a tobbaco net wire. The tractor was probably 1/4 mile down the field. Stuck in the woods when we found it. It took us quite a while to find his head. Farming is not a piece of cake as some people believe. The CT. river valley still produces the finest cigar wrap tobacco in the world.
I'm enjoying your potato exploits, WAGE. And I'm enjoying the potato farming and digging direction that the thread is indulging this week, on your account.
100 pounds of seed potatoes, though, Wage!! You're going to be absolutely *covered freakin' up* in potatoes in a couple of months. Tell your spouse that the wife and I are bringing a truck when we visit for those mint juleps and that concert.
Or, since you are planning for TS to HTF this summer, with all those spuds - we're bringing a wagon. Or two bicycles.
Or, coming on foot - with a hunger for tubers.
-dig Tater, dig - dig Tater, dig!
Minor spelling and grammatical errors don't matter to them so long as the thought is clear.
============
The problem is, even when the errors are "minor," the thought often isn't clear.
I think writers have a duty of sorts to write in a way that doesn't force their readers to go back and re-read sentences two, three or four times to figure out the meaning. Virtually any comment written by Asia would serve as an example of the point I'm making.
Wow, Bustin - of all the people who I thought might rise to defend my honor - - It is you - on CFN.
"By the very definition of the term "racism", it doesn't appear that advocation of limits to immigration fulfills the requirements of the term.
It is apparent that either Asoka is using words he doesn't know the meaning of, or is falsely attributing the term to an argument or arguers. In other words, dealing in bunk..."
-bustin j-
Yeah - I'm gone from this blog for 18 hours and return to find that asoka is baiting/attacking me - with repetition!
And he's wrong, of course. His figures of 550,000,000 to 750,000,000 American style consumers in the US will be the end of -
How can any thinking person think that this - jam packed assemblage of humans on 6 continents - will end well for planet earth - or its human inhabitants?
No safety margins - few open spaces - ecosystem diversity gone - wall to wall people.
Hell has a voice on CFN.
Nice post, Wage, and worth repeating:
"Immigration isn't now, and never has been, about lifting any damn lamp beside the golden shore or wanting to add more flavors to our melting pot.
It's about cheap labor. The capitalists love it. And their media promotes it in hearts and flowers speeches that are total bullshit."
-wage-
Another CFN sponsored epiphany for me this week - asoka's right, but for all the wrong reasons.
We WILL get to 550,000,000 to 750,000,000 living bodies in the US, unless TEOTWAWKI happens first to derail this Free Market train. The corporate US is firmly wedded to a growth paradigm. Population growth is basic to all growth.
Only clear headed and politically active people can end this disaster - before it is too late.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
I've started contributing and donating.
Think about it - everyone.
Turk, I just went back to catch up on reading a few posts that slipped in while I was writing my post at 12:21AM.
Below is a paragraph from Snow that is perfectly understandable yet I would be embarrassed to have written. Such errors detract from a writer's reputation as an educated person. PoC has made the a vs an error so frequently that I suspect he actually, not metaphorically, has a tin ear.
I have little doubt that you are a intelligent man, SNAFU, and most probably a engineer, as you say. I'll take you at your word that your trained and worked in rocketry.
It's a smart man who agrees with me !
:)
Points noted, Q. That's the sort of useless quibbling that made me hate my English teachers from an early age. If you weren't one of them - you should have been.
Meanwhile, take a look at this:
"Below is a paragraph from Snow that is perfectly understandable yet I would be embarrassed to have written."
-q-
Read that sh*t a couple of times, Q. Then you also will think - of yourself:
-yet, I would be embarrassed to have written-
which
Believe it or not I actually worked on a Farm for a short time. couple a days. I was a teenager.
picking cherries. got in trouble cuz I was picking all the low ones, and not the higher up ones. that's what I remember anyway.
this was in the delta in california. HOT.
very hard work. couldn't do it.
I love growing my own veggies and fruit. no can do currently. I miss it.
I love lemon cucumbers. They grow and grow and grow, I got hundreds in my backyard, when I had a backyard, and a house. Also can grow UP on something, not just on the ground.
at the store ONE of them cost A DOLLAR, and that was last year.
Q said: "Such errors detract from a writer's reputation as an educated person."
============
Agreed. And he is dishonest. He claims to be a scientist and I now doubt that claim. He claims to want dialog. Yet when presented with facts he ignores them, and he seems incapable of presenting any credible facts from peer-reviewed sources to support any of his assertions.
I have provided an abundance of facts (with sources cited) related to crime, education, employment, culture, language, etc. showing why immigration is a good thing for the nation.
He presents nothing more than a link to an article in a popular magazine and advises readers to "make inferences." ProCon has lost all credibility in my eyes. He has become a resident impediment. I am done with him for a short while.
I do believe that I will write all my references to the Resident Impediment in the third person - for a long while.
I AM different from most, in many ways.
I did not want to get have a baby, so guess what? I didn't have sex (when I was a teenager). While most of my friends were out drinking and getting pregnant, and having abortions or babies. I didn't drink, so wasn't 'easy', like Montel said Beer is the leading cause of teenage pregnancy and that is true.
I would wish people would have more self control and then they wouldn't need planned parenthood. Yes I went to PP and was responsible, etc. I don't believe in abortion as birth control.
I do belive in it tho for other reasons.
I also think that people in Poor countries don't have that much to do so they have sex. Really.
And many think it's the duty to bare children bear chldren? for religious reasons.
Now don't get me wrong, I ain't saying I don't like sex, just that you really do have to be responsible about it. Too many aren't.
But that is just my way of seeing things.
That's worse than me. Yikes !
ProCon, after requesting dialog with me, you never responded last week to my post on the fallacies involved in your using carrying capacity as a reason to oppose immigration.
I do not allow cold calculations of energy and population dynamics to turn my heart against immigrants. I support population control on a global scale, especially among white middle class North American consumers who are consuming many times more than most of the world. I do not support slamming the door in anyone's face when it comes to immigration.
Of all people posting here on CFN, I would expect scientists like you to understand that when it comes to carrying capacity, the human-environment link is full of multi-layered processes. I would hope that you would not engage in "blame-the-victim" arguments directed at immigrants.
ProCon, you seem to be operating on this assumption: more people mean fewer resources.
You also did not respond to my earlier post today showing how easily the USA could support 660 million residents with existing agricultural land mass and with an improved state of health. I cited a peer-reviewed study. I provided significant valid data that cannot be challenged (unless you also want to challenge mathematics).
Your argument against immigration based on the concept of carrying capacity is flawed. What you may not be taking into account is the resilience of human beings, demonstrated over time by evidence of the ability of humans to change, and to adapt.
I apologize if that statement offends the mathematical sensibilities of your theoretical models. We are humans, not plankton. (no offense intended to plankton either; that was an inside joke: see Jared Diamond's article: Distributional ecology of New Guinea birds. ... The paradox of the plankton, in American Naturalist, vol. 95, 1973) I doubt anyone on CFN was reading Diamond in the 70s.
Carrying capacity is not fixed. Carrying capacity can change because relationships between humans and their ecological settings can change.
You seem to be making an assumption of an equilibrium: that more people mean fewer resources. The fact is that human populations can increase local biodiversity simply through their presence on the land (Tripp is my evidence for this assertion). The long-held assumptions that human habitation necessarily leads to deforestation and decreasing biodiversity, and the whole concept of carrying capacity, have been challenged by recent science.
In any event, carrying capacity calculation depend upon data not easily obtained, data that is elastic, such as the measurement of food resources. How do you classify plants that could be eaten, but usually are not eaten? How do we include plants that appear on the landscape irregularly, over longer time periods than twelvemonth cycles? Do we privilege caloric values over nutritional values (i.e., cassava versus beans)?
Carrying capacity as a concept is also unable to account for human preference in taste and labor expenditure and carrying capacity does not even address the issue of standard of living.
For example, population biologists (and their computer simulations) cannot explain why one group of people will eat flying termites, while their neighbors in the same ecological niche refuse. The reasons are complex, involving world views, historical processes, and other cultural phenomena that give food meaning.
Carrying capacity is an ahistorical view of a process that in fact fluctuates in short- and long-term time frames. Making statements about carrying capacity should be done with abundant caution.
You cannot create a carrying capacity equation that provides clearly defined measurements that successfully account for the significant, unpredictable variation found in any region large enough to support a local human population, let alone a nation (USA) or a continent (North America).
Jackie, we seem to be similar in many ways. I grew up in a fundamentalist family that did not approve of drinking. I was never interested in even trying alcohol. I did not give in to peer pressure. I have no idea what beer or liquor taste like because I've never had any. Because wine is similar to grape juice I did try it, but I didn't like it. I probably have about four glasses of wine a year, usually to be polite when served in an important dinner setting. And I don't enjoy them and usually get a headache from them.
Arnold Stang sez: Anyone who believed that the Earth is a living organism, i.e. Gaia, is a world-class fucktard.
Yes, a world class fucktard
"Arnold Stang sez: Anyone who believed that the Earth is a living organism, i.e. Gaia, is a world-class fucktard"
Anyone who believes it is NOT, grew up in a city, far "removed" from the nature upon which their life depends, with their head up their ass.
This planet may not be "life"... but it is quite alive, and to treat it like it was a dead place like Venus or Mars will prove fatal to our species.
KILL NATURE
KILL NATURE
I hate nature, it must be killed, demolished, it must be converted into another form of mass - energy. This will be done because science and technology will continue to develop even though all the slob environmentalists in the spoiled west like USA and EU want to go back to the stone ages, but we got millions of Indians and Chinese and Indonesians that wil force progress ahead, ever further, they don't have the puny sick minds of the scared west, afraid to continue what they started.
We will kill nature big time, split the Sun, actually nuke it to smithereens, split the earth, make it hugely radioactive, make it become one giant ball of skyscrapers, made out of extremely complex, artificial materials, we will become metal items, that live through electricity, we will eliminate all traces of Nature, that huge pile of crap that has always been the Mind's enemy: But we will dominate, Mind over Matter.
On another note, I notice how many want to go back to "hard work", obviously you didn't learn all the lessons I wrote on these blogs: We live in automated economies that has eliminated most real productive labor, let alone hard work, get over it. Work is no longer needed, maybe we need hobby factories to keep all of you busy building rockets and skyscrapers.
What you all really want is to beat up people because they are "not working hard enough", in the fields growing food. What puny right wing - conservative - violent perverts you all are. Instead of rejoicing that we are moving forward to a better life, you all want everyone to go back to the stone ages. What a bunch of right wing losers.
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174513
Westcost,
Corporate criminal acts when you realize what they have done. When you consider that the choices are always to go for substandard construction and materials. That's where the Milton Friedman model comes into play. Make the most money spending as little as possible. ---Disaster Capitalism indeed,
Here's the scary part. What is MOX? Plutonium-Uranium mixed oxide fuel rods!
From a site I discovered yesterday:
[SECRET SHIPMENT OF NUCLEAR BOMB MATERIAL FROM
EUROPE TO JAPAN
OVER the next few weeks, two ships carrying a secret cargo of dangerous, nuclear weapons-usable plutonium fuel will leave ports in Britain and France and sail around the globe to Japan. On board will be fuel containing more plutonium than in the entire Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons programmes.(1)
The two British flagged vessels, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, will leave Barrow in Britain and Cherbourg in France carrying the first commercial shipment to Japan of mixed-oxide (MOX) reactor fuel, made from plutonium and uranium. An estimated 446 kilograms of plutonium is contained in the 40 nuclear fuel elements – enough fissile material to construct 60 nuclear bombs.
The first plant to use MOX is scheduled to be Fukushima 1, plant. The date has been set to August 22nd, 2010.]
The spent MOX rods were kept on top of reactor 3!
Since there was no other place to put them, but on top of the building.
Any idea how scary this is? 24,100 years!
Japan is in a lot of trouble!
The USA could easily hold 40 thousand trillion people, each person can occupy 2 square meters with 10 story high buildings. Of course we could get millions of trillions with 100 floor skyscrapers, and going deep in the earth, you could get million floor skyscrapers: the sky is the limit. Everyone living in extreme virtual reality, super TV, chip implants in brains, Technological Singularity modified minds and neural circuits, you name it the sky is the limit.
And in fact, we need huge population explosions to colonize the Galaxy, we need machines that create trillions of trillions of people each second (the old fashion "natural way" is way too inefficient and error prone, a huge waste of time and effort...), we need to finally create Mind over Matter, BIG TIME.
Right Wing thug mentality: resources are scarce, there is not enough for everyone (except for me, me being the usual environmentalist blaming everyone else for using up resources), oil is running out, no more automatic farms, go work the food in farms (ask the (asian) Indians and Chinese how they like farm life, given that they do everything they can to work in slave factories instead, go figure...), people in cubicles don't do "hard work", back to the farm (why did we invent computers ? to automate work thugs), etc.
One more thing to West Coast,
I have a bone to pick with you re: Your comment yesterday on My Monday post concerning a book of poetry, "American Ghost" featuring a host of men and women poets.
You seemed to miss the point entirely and I'm not sure why you interpreted this book in such a wrong-headed way. I'm glad I amused you, but I'm afraid you didn't read it.
My point is that I posted this re: a blog JHK wrote in July concerning the upper NYS wasteland of former factory towns, which goes to the heart of our post-industrialized enconomy--You know the "service" economy.
What you don't understand about this model of rampant privatization is that our cities will lie fallow for some time. There will be no attempt to re-build and refit them into living centers anymore. The next step is to take these seemingly valueless areas and sell them to the banks for maybe a dollar. Big profits are made when areas are devalued and then sold for a song, then something far worse than taxes kicks in and they make a killing on "We the People".
The only counter to that is people in the are trying to make something new in the old decrepit areas that were once home to flourishing communities. That's what the book is about. Although there were more women poets than men, there is a mix.
On a different subject, all of this NATO, Libya war stuff is showing also what a huge clustrphk Europe is in general:
First off, it is even hard to define or delimit, where does it start or end ? from Portugal to Russia ? or is Russia not included ? or up to Belarus ? or only up to Poland ? what about Switzerland ? they aren't even EU, oh, but even Norway is not EU, some have Euros some not, what a huge ball of confusion!
Then they have different military systems, engagements, Germany and Italy are not allowed to fight because they lost WWII, France has atomic weapons and a strong "independent" military, the UK is a USA state all considered, etc.
And then there is the USA with their bases all over the place, so then Europe is a USA protectorate ? Or only some parts ? Oh but you got the "old europe" anti-USA and the "new europe" (ex-communists) which is pro USA and god knows what else!
Then the continent itself is so diverse with so many cultures, languages, really, the USA is at least one giant monolithic place compared. Each country then has different regions with their dialects, cultures, economies, etc. Just compare Italy's playboy 75 year old Berluska having fun with 16 and 17 year old girls to the women in power in Finland, Sweden and Norway. For the Scandinavians, the guy and the country seems like Mars, they are so totally different and apart as mentalities go.
I think Europe only exists as a USA protectorate, some kind of extended states of the USA: the USA culture, mentality, movies, ways of doing is the only thing that really unites the continent. And they save a lot of money on defense by letting the USA do all their defense work. Just saying...
Old6699 says: "The USA could easily hold 40 thousand trillion people..."
Tripp/ProCon say: 100 million, maybe 50 million would be optimal USA population
===========
There you have the extremists' opinions. Asoka's is the reasonable voice in the debate.
40 thousand trillion: Old6699
660 million: Asoka
50 million: ProCon/Tripp
The wise and measured, fact-based and science-informed, opinion of Asoka is that USA population should not exceed 660 million (twice our current population) given our population density.
And Asoka is the only one to provide the statistical methodology he used to arrive at his number, and the only one to cite peer-reviewed science to support his number.
In other words, stop the fear mongering and take rational pro-immigration steps. OPEN THE BORDERS TO IMMIGRANTS because we need all the brain-power they have to offer to solve our larger problems.
Interesting. For all of your eclecticism, you always struck me as being deeply conventional, nonetheless. And I admire that: the anti-authoritarian impulse can lead down some mighty painful roads, as so many trailblazers have personally confessed. The safe road is usually the smart road, and you're one very smart human being, Asoka. Thanks for the post.
Actually, there were 4 brothers and families on my grand folks farm, and they each had approximately 320 acres, farmed half and half (half crop, half fallow) so the annual wheat productions was +/- 640 acres.
And they had one of the only threshing machines in the area, powered with a steamer. They would harvest for neighbors and take wheat on trade for the labor. The threshing crew consisted of many more than just the families.
I don't recall saying there was no hired labor.
Sorry, the figure should have been 100 x, error in number of zeros. You will find a good average sized farm in Canada or the US (the ones that aren't doing it part time or as a hobby), to be in the area of 10-15000 acres.
And I would consider a 50 bu wheat crop a crop failure.
My farm is a paltry 2200 acres, but as a consultant I manage over 75000 acres in Western Canada.
I am impressed with your math skills though. Did you actually finish high school?
Something is immoral if an individual believes that it is. You may disagree, but you cannot say it is "illogical".
The validity of that belief cannot be proved or disproved by the cold, hard logic of the brain, because it is a feeling from the heart and the soul, therefore cannot be reduced to an algebraic equation.
However, you can use logic and reasoning to say that something should or shouldn't be illegal, or that we should or shouldn't enforce immigration laws with walls and fences.
But, I cannot use logic or "rational thought" to prove that my favorite color is blue, or that I love my dog.
The idea that someone should have to "prove" logically why they believe something is immoral is to reduce a human being to a cold, heart-less, soul-less abstraction.....a brain without a body.
Just a keyboard with a computer screen.
Old6699, once again, WTF are you talking about? Do you know? Where are you getting this shit?
Actually it might be pretty good science fiction in the mode of William S. Burroughs. He was a pretty strange dude, like you must be, who once shot his wife between the eyes with a Spanish astra pistol in Mexico City while high on Peyote.
Obama is a pretty inspirational and committed war leader, is he not? ... right in there with Alexander, Patton and Robert E. Lee. After I heard that speech and Q&A in El Salvador, Christ, I was ready to reenlist. All new recruits, I understand, are issued, along with a rifle, a 6 inch thick copy of the US EEOC manual. You need to learn that BEFORE you learn you chain of command and manual arms.
For any of you CFNers who want to know how bad life can get after economic and social collapse, read Michael Lesy's book, "Wisconsin Death Trip", UNM Press, 1972, based on a series of 1890's photos and newspaper articles, as well as some text, from the 'Panic of 1892', 'panic' being the term for 'Depression' at the time, in Black River Falls, WI.
In the late 90's a movie was made based upon this book. It has a pretty cool soundtrack by the NE band Static X.
Much of the book is photographs by contemporary photographer Charles Van Schaik, pictures of dead kids put down by cholera, typhus, malaria, starvation and murder ...a record of bankruptcy, madness, suicide, murder, alcoholism, armies of tramps (written about at the time by Jack London in 'The Road'), financial ruin, abandoned farms, abandoned kids, abandoned farm animals, abandoned towns, empty main streets, starvation, people freezing to death in their own homes, and 'rushing to the colours' during the Spanish American War to get out of there. And a whole lot of other bad stuff, too, that would be familiar to readers of 'The Long Emergency'.
Its all based on county and municipal records, and newspaper stories for 1890-1900. Its by far the most disturbing book I've ever read. Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' was pretty bad, but that was fiction. Events in Wisconsin Death Trip really happened.
Those years are overshadowed now by the Depression of the 1930's. This might be a book for CFNers to take a look at, and plan accordingly.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Oh yeah, one more thing about Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip". An important point is made by the author, in explaining the mass exodus from farms and towns in the upper midwest in the 1890s and early 1900's (which is still occurring today and is nearly complete) is that people were NOT IMMIGRATING TO THE CITIES, CHICAGO, ST LOUIS AND MILWAUKEE, necessarily to find work, no, they were going there to escape work ... the ceaseless drudgery and backbreaking labor of trying to wrest a living out of the earth, of life on the farm, isolated and stultifying as it was.
And these were mostly Scandinavian and German immigrants, and some Yankees, people used to hard work.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Yes, a world class fucktard
=============
How long ago was it we had a poster here named Tootsie who morphed into Großdeutschland? And now there's a hint ("fucktard") that Groß has become Arnold Stang.
If nothing else, OEO/Not/Tsa/Ling/Toots must be recognized for staying one step ahead of banishment and for his highly imaginative pseudonym creations.
Howdy JD,
I re-posted nearly your entire post did you read anything in it wherein you mentioned anyone other than your grandparents?
I rechecked the average wheat production per acre and found that about 50/acre today is average with some portions of Idaho (the highest wheat yielding area in the US) averaging about 80 and a few localities in Idaho reporting perhaps 150 bushels/acre. Fifteen bushels per acre from 1900 to 1950 is the published average for wheat production. Published wheat production per acre in Canada is about 70 per acre with some growers claiming 110 to 130 bushels/acre.
So using your revised harvest increase numbers 15 b/a * 100 = 1500 bushels per acre and you are questioning my math skills.
Your farm is about 7 times the size of mine; however, I am not farming mine.
Consultants in Canada are called managers? Interesting. We just call them consultants here.
Yup, high school, college (BS) some graduate school; you?
Perhaps as Progressor noted you were only engaging in a bit of hyperbole.
SNAFU
Marlin, thanks for this. It is the most optimistic post I have read on CFN in some time.
I can imagine the CFNers of 1893 saying over and over and over again: "we are so fucked" and saying all manner of apocalyptic things.
Better days were ahead for the people of 1893, though no one could imagine them from the opaque depths of their long emergency.
@ old6699, does yer (handle) mean mutual g#nital stimulation is no longer an option for yah, shame eh...? Yoga might help, could free-up yer myopic thinking too maybe... lol
Actually we play ongoing NATO war games loads over here in the Euro zone matey - so our armed forces are well integrated already – even old adversaries like the Luftwaffe & RAF. The UK miltel do winter training in Nogsville too, there’s a large under rock Naval interest in Stavanger to monitor what them pesky Ruskies are up to... with Brits based there.
We have open agreements on fuelling and armaments also, and yes we also share weapon systems with you Yanks - who are key strategic partners of the NATO alliance. And as this link proves, the French/Italians are helping us with long-range bombings direct from the UK to Libya right now, modern tech... eh?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8400487/RAF-Tornados-refuel-over-Mediterranean.html
We just need to shut down the brother Colonel's gold sales to cut off his cash line now, this will come shortly i guess?
Plus can deliver quite a punch without any help from you Americans at all, if need be, like we did successfully during the Falklands. You have quality kit for sure - but often make a real hash of it... like that Black Hawk debacle in Somalia not long ago, and when Bush 1 f#cked up spectacularly with Operation Eagle Claw, oh dear?
So with all our ‘quality’ Brit right-stuff background for putting-the-boot in hard, to ‘others' who hold key assets - we’re yer favourite pals when it comes to energy war skirmishes... forget that at yer peril.
So don’t knock what works so well for you gas-guzzling yanksters, eh?
And DO remember that you US folk have a gawd-given-right, and are super-needy, venal and entirely morally unencumbered, thoughtless energy pigs on mass (CFN’ers excluded), when it comes to your insatiable appetite for fossil fuels, as this article clearly points out:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100009856/a-global-energy-war-looms/
Cheers...
I'm not Zzzz, but I know who it is and I've always had a deep respect.
("and by the way... which one's Pink?")
You have no idea what my previous incarnations are. And besides, they are still alive and well. Not one has ever been banned. Probably because no matter what I say about JHK he has a respect for what I'm sayin. They were just sockpuppets I used on various computers or typepad-type accounts that this blog used at one time or another. I've forgotten the passwords or whatever.
But they will appear again when you least expect it.
I just like to do my part to keep some of you twits entertained. You seem to spend countless hours obsessing about us Original Gangsters. I'll throw you a treat once in a while.
Zzzz gets to the point and doesn't dilly dally or spend all day here or fanatize about a world populated by the likes of Richard Heinberg, JHK, and the corpse of Matt Simmons.
I've never read any of k-dog's posts, so much for a "remonstration." I probably won't in the future either - just now I skimmed a few sentences of one. He seems like a real douche.
Alexandra said: "we play ongoing NATO war games loads over here in the Euro zone matey..."
==========
TRANSLATION:
Our militaries waste the world's remaining fossil fuel resources at an alarming rate.
And you - our best NATO buddies - guided currently by the Obama-massiah, LOVE spending big cash on war making too.
‘For FY 2012, the President requested $553 billion for the Department of Defense Base Budget. This was only $4 billion more than the $548.9 billion requested in FY 2011, and $20 billion more than the $533.7 billion requested in FY 2010. However, total defense spending requested for FY 2012 was $881, less than the $895 billion requested in the FY 2011 budget. This was more than the $855 billion requested for FY 2010... tis a great business for those in the game though... eh?
(Energy wars are ON, all systems GO and I bet are here to stay)
As Heinberg predicted with one of his possible three emerging scenarios – we’re on the path of Last Man Standing - Gaddafi’s got in the way of that, and yer either with us or against us right?
So now we just wait till the Chinese join in, and once we’ve culled the 4bn peeps or so down to a more equitable 3bn quickly, we can get back to future tech driven basics... business more like usual.
It took the ‘pressure’ off back in the 1930s who’s to say it won’t work again?
"GDuetchland"? Wasn't that the name of an Nazi SS Regiment?
Didn't they get their asses kicked back into W Germany by Patton's 3rd Army in 1945? Or was it in the east by Zhukov's Red Army?
I know they got their asses kicked somewhere.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
If you are young and pretty maybe you can help me ease my mind ? But you are probably an old piece of crap...
The USA is the BOSS of Europe and you know it too well. They are the BOSS of everyone essentially because they have the biggest GUN. And you know that. So, go back in the UK and pretend to have some clout, I doubt you realize how much the USA commands the world. Granted, they lose a lot of wars, most are totally inconcludent, they mess up a whole lot, but they have the biggest GUN anyways.
Now, Right Wing Thug, make your government impose FREE SALARIES TO ALL YOUR PEOPLE AND CHEAP RENTS, AND HUGE PUBLIC - PRIVATE PROGRAMS HIRING MILLIONS TO COLONIZE THE GALAXY, TRILLIONS OF SKYSCRAPERS, TRILLIONS OF EVERYTHING.
Now, blow me and sue me...
thoughtless energy pigs on mass
============
I assume you were going for en masse but for whatever reason typed it phonetically.
inconcludent. Just learned a new word, thanks.
OLD6699 said: granted, they lose a lot of wars, most are totally inconcludent, they mess up a whole lot, but they have the biggest GUN anyways.
Earlier I made a case that we can win the military battles, but not the war, based in subterfuge.
It's not an imperative that we have to win the war as long as money is to be made. Through chaos one can steal. That's the global hegemony of financial and military dominance.
Please enlighten me.
"In other words, stop the fear mongering and take rational pro-immigration steps. OPEN THE BORDERS TO IMMIGRANTS because we need all the brain-power they have to offer to solve our larger problems."
We have plenty of unemployed brainpower laying about unutilized but more to my point where does the idea come from that immigrants have superior brain power than our own countrymen? That idea seems racist to me.
Another thing I want to know is where does the idea comes from that immigrants are here to emulate Mother Teresa and improve our country when in fact they are the first in line to steal your parking space? You got here first you can have it is a uniquely native characteristic, our culture.
More rudeness we don't need.
"If you are young and pretty maybe you can help me ease my mind ? But you are probably an old piece of crap..."
I wonder how the Saudi Arabian protesters are doing that nobody has talked about. Do they have room service in Saudi prisons?
We have plenty of unemployed brainpower laying about unutilized but more to my point where does the idea come from that immigrants have superior brain power than our own countrymen? That idea seems racist to me. - k Dog
You bet it's racist. And there's no point using elementary logic in this issue. I haven't read his posts for a long time but he used to mask his hatred of white people with a fake voice of sweet loving kindness and open armed acceptance of all comers so long as whites were submerged/displaced by the tide.
K Dog, old6699 is unhinged and needs help.
Yo, Marlin: I read "Wisconsin Death Trip" back in the 70s when it came out. In the last year, I read it again and saw the film. I think it attracted me as I had a lot of relatives living in Western Minnesota during that period.
Thanks for the new insight. I hadn't made the connection between the bank collapses then, with what is going on now. That's one of the reasons I keep reading this blog. New insights.
The "character" that stuck with me was the young woman who kept smashing windows. A very prim and proper young woman would ride the train into a town and start smashing the plate glass windows of businesses. She'd be thrown in jail, or hauled off to the asylum. She'd be calm, cool and collected and be released. Catch the train to the next town and start smashing windows. Over and over and over, again.
Yes, a few hinges here could use a drop of oil. But they squeak on.
Good link there thanks. "A global energy war looms" by Jeremy Warner. Jeremy's brilliant use of Reductio ad absurdum made his point very well.
Lets put this thing up on two feet.
For Europe, if they want to have clout, power, economic success and a future they must become exactly like the USA, a monolithic block of countries including Norway, Switzerland and all the others (possibly excluding only Russia) with one currency, possibly one language (English as dominant), one huge powerful central federal government, and they must implement all the left wing policies I described many times over in this blog: free salaries, cheap rents, public - private programs hiring millions for millions of things for the common good. END OF STORY.
(The languages could include at most German, French, Spanish, Portugese and Italian as those languages are also well known in North and Latin America).
As for the idle brainpower and hand power, I have explained many times that all these idle people could be put to work to colonize the galaxy, to build skyscrapers, etc. etc. No one seems to understand the real forces at play today: work has been eliminatd by Technology and Science, get over it, the only way to create activity for all those millions of idle workers worldwide is by huge programs, hobby factories, the creation of dreams, more science and technology. Nothing will happen unless a strong powerful government decides for all, AND ALL MUST OBEY THE CENTRAL POWER GOVERNMENT INSTEAD OF FIGHTING PUNY LITTLE WARS BETWEEN EACH OTHER.
Tootsie, tell the mom there to blow you and sue you...
k-dog said: "Please enlighten me...where does the idea come from that immigrants have superior brain power than our own countrymen?"
==========
You have got to be kidding, right?
The statistical evidence for superior educational achievement in math and science in other countries is undeniable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathematics_and_Science_Study
It has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with militarism.
We spend more on weapons than all the other countries of the world combined. Other nations have different priorities and they graduate smarter students.
Note for Cash.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/Canada/index.html
Not sure if you're aware of this resource. You will probably find some of the titles interesting.
Cheers
Cash said: "And there's no point using elementary logic in this issue."
==============
Cash, logic is not required. The data are clear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathematics_and_Science_Study
Ya'll real quick to call ol' Asoka a racist ... LOL!
Reality is that the United States placing 24th in math and science says nothing about race and a lot about national priorities regarding education and defense spending.
"The fact is that human populations can increase local biodiversity simply through their presence on the land (Tripp is my evidence for this assertion). The long-held assumptions that human habitation necessarily leads to deforestation and decreasing biodiversity, and the whole concept of carrying capacity, have been challenged by recent science."
No, it's been challenged by a tiny ragtag gang of permaculturalists. Last I checked the other 99.9% of the world's industrial population was still hell-bent on biospheric destruction.
Why do you think I waste so much time here at CFN? Because our survival depends on a whole bunch of us radically changing the way we do business. And I'm talking about just the people we already have.
@Old6699: You're a complete, utter, retarded, fucking moron. Are you just having us on? Or are you really that idiotic? I'm going to go with the former, because I refuse to believe that anyone is that stupid.
Asoka, when you got your vasectomy about 44 years ago I assume it was because you foresaw some sort of Malthusian dire straights ahead for mother earth, namely an issue with "carrying capacity." Either that or the whole concern-for-the-planet thing is an elaborate life-long cover story for some intimacy demon ... but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
But based on your argumentation of the past few days it sounds like your ominous view did not include the US but merely the REST of mother earth. So your sacrifice was for the benefit of the whole earth excluding the US, which you conclude is so far from carrying capacity that it would, in fact, BENEFIT from increased population.
That is what you now seem to be arguing for except that you want the increase to come via immigration rather than from within the cohort already here. How unnatural! And what a strange view of human nature ... to think that those already here would prefer that someone else's genes go forth into the future rather than their own. Since I know you are not that dumb I must blame it on ulterior motives.
I think you are one of those damned racists you revile. I think you read that CIA data you referenced yesterday the same way I did and saw that 15% of the US population is Hispanic (due to both legal and illegal immigration) and that that group is breeding at a rate approaching double the
non-Hispanic rate. I think you love the idea of breeding the whiteness out of the US and you couldn't really give two shits about carrying capacity. I think all that ginned up support for 660 million people is nothing more than a red herring and you are, in fact, a racist.
Q said: "I think you love the idea of breeding the whiteness out of the US and you couldn't really give two shits about carrying capacity. I think all that ginned up support for 660 million people is nothing more than a red herring and you are, in fact, a racist."
===========
Q., thank you for sharing your opinion.
The rest of CFN seems obsessed about racial and skin color. I am saying ALL groups should reduce reproduction rates. ALL groups should be allowed freedom of movement on Planet Earth.
No Fly zone means a place where you cannot fly.
The 1973 Nato resolution concerns exactly this.
Applied to Lybia means that nothing should be able to fly there.
The first French mission bombed the flying tanks of Ghaddafi.
The flying tank is a Ghafaddafi´s special invention, his secret weapon, something like Hitler´s V2.
Sarkozy was not deceived.
The second mission, Anglo-American destroyed TRIPOLI AND SIRTE; especially concentrating on Ghaddafi´s flying bunker.
Witnesses swear that Khamis, Ghaddafi´s son, was killed while trying to escape like Icaro, flying with false wings, violating the Nato resolution.
Should a hospital try to escape flying, you can be sure a tomahawk will immediately stop it.
CORRECTION
"CFN seems obsessed about race and skin color"
Tripp said: "Why do you think I waste so much time here at CFN? "
======
I don't know... but I'm glad you are here.
My, my... ole-sixty-sixer ninety-niner, what a coup de foudre schtick yous be, and of course I’m fully aware of how you Yank males in particular, all crave youth-obsessed culture...
*sniggers*
Oh dear did I ruffle yer goat like beard, and what shameless suggestiveness
you bleat of. No my dear I have a fair wee way to go yet, before I’m past it so to shriek. But I’ll give yer kind offer of libidinous necrophilianess a miss – but thanks for the thought!
And you be missing the point my dear chap, the Banksters and oligarchs be the BOSS of both Europe-n-the-USA, Wall St, London City Wall et al the companies and playas are all the same...
Moi a right wing thug? Wrong again... I’m apolitical as it happens, and the smart know it makes no difference now whom you vote for in fact, that’s been obvious for decades darhlink... and in my ideal world there would be no politico’s at all, and there’s not in international waters so to speak, a domain I’m happy to sail in...
As to TRILLIONS OF SKYSCRAPERS...?? Blow me down, I’m hoping far more for something more along the lines of Kevin Costner’s WATERWORLD!!
And if we keep warming everything up nicely as we are, and the sun gets super-active again that scenario should trickle along quite nicely...
Toodle-pip...
All the way down to the bitter end, the US armed forces are going to be some of the most resilient organizations, long after business as usual has ceased to exist. They are going to have the mandate of force and there is nothing that can be done about it. Posse's gonna commitatus.
Pet said, "RE: Potato eye slices: Put them on a tray in bright light for about a month to form a callus over the cut. Then they are ready to plant."
A month?? more like 48 hrs. This is an optional step at any rate. Make your chunks. Empty your mind. plow a furrow in a friable soil. Drop eye-chunks with childish carelessness 3-4 inches down. Cover gently with soil. Return to weed every 3 weeks. Mulch if you want AFTER potato shoots come up. Never use wood chips as mulch. It does absolutely nothing for tilth.
~~
I mused, taking a moment in reflection, based on the sundry posts on gardening this week, on the first salvo of an onrushing horde of the most garrolous, amateur, misinformed, hamfisted, pathetic, mediocre, clumsy, ill-conceived, unpracticed violence and disfigurement of hundreds if not thousands of square yards of natural capital across this great continent, ruined by the best intentions of an army of tips-trading ninnies, stalwart ignoramuses, naive fools, limp-wristed invalids, bored elderlies, indentured youth, intinerant immigrants, distempered children, and earnest ex-yuppies.
Its hard to imagine so fruitless an enterprise, as gardening, for a person to learn so little, while expending so much energy, while wasting so much potential, for so little economic or nutritional benefit.
How many pennies in a pound of foolishness?
Instead of embarking on a project to take advantage of the present moment, they waste time, the most irredeemable of all losses.
Why not get what is available today, which won't be available tomorrow?
After powerdown, there will be much digging and cursing and struggling with Earth. There will not be, then, the easy opportunity of information so close by, the time - NOW - which is so valuable, to gain NOW what THEN will be SO FAR OUT OF REACH.
The bottom line, fellow apes, is this: don't spend more than 15 minutes a day on your potato patch: your time will return far more value buying a 20 pound sack at the grocer's. Playing at being a third-world individual while living in the First is nothing but a conceit.
Far better to spend your time stretching that rusty body and conditioning those flabby muscles for the plows of future toil. Better to fill your mind with learned knowledge now than deploy your ignorance against famine in future twilight-besotted plain.
A toast:
To time, better spent, and nature, health, and limbs preserved!
Can't follow the link. I don't do Wikipeadia. Most of the contributors to Wikipeadia are on K-street now and I'm not playing that game.
You forgot to mention his flying house.
I take that back, you said "Ghaddafi´s flying bunker." That counts.
How about this.
I retract all my statements.
In response to the comment that pre industrialized farmers had the winter off.
They didn't.
They worked hard.
And,
I have a B.Sc. in Agriculture, Agronomy major, Soil Science minor. Member of 2 professional societies in Canada. No grad degree (i didn't see any point), but lots of professional development, courses (taken and taught) every year, in the 20 years I have been a consultant. And the 30 years I have been farming. Actively.
And, if farmers are averaging 50 bushels per acre of wheat, they have the wrong consultant.
Libyan opposition forces have heavy weaponry ministers and a prime minister now and six weeks ago they did not even exist.
This is enough to make me log off and plant potatoes.
garrolous
intinerant
==========
garrulous
itinerant
Otherwise, the post was brilliant ... though I don't think Tripp will see it your way.
No they didn't work hard during winter because they were self sufficient - they didn't have to keep selling their crops to make the rent, tax, bills, groceries - they grew their own groceries, chopped their own wood, had ancient rights to live on the land, etc. They typically would pay a tax in grain to the local Warlord or King. If such was overthrown, they would pay a similar tax to the new one. They came with the land in other words.
Perfect system? Hardly - sometimes the Nobles asked too much...And there always was the possibility of starvation of course - but that true of all systems and can't be held against any one. And of course they were peasants without too many rights other than to live on the land. But was it better than what happened to small farmers in the last century? In many ways it was. And this was just the medieval system. The times in which farmers actually owned their own land were clearly superior.
CFNER's Silver is on a tear! over 37 bucks an ounce,yipee!, I know I can't eat it. But still it gives me a warm-fuzzy-feeling!
The point is to make gardening mistakes now while there is still a generous margin of error. Tomorrown there may be no margin at all. From what I've heard, it takes at least ten years to even begin to know what you're doing. We may not have those ten years so we better start ruining ground right now. And what better way to get in shape for the new life than by doing what we will be doing then?
America lags behind other Western Nations in math and science largely because of our huge Black and Hispaic populations. A fairer judgement would be to compare our White students with White students in Europe. We are probably now behind them because of our social breakdown and malaise - why try hard when the jobs are gone or given to Asians? But the difference will surely still be much closer than when Blacks and Hispanics are factored in.
The Chinese and Japanese really are good at math - their creativity is the question. And India produces alot of smart, well educated, English speaking students - even though the average Indian IQ is only 85 or so. It's because of their huge population that we can get the cream of the crop - or so we think. Apparently there is alot of cheating here - fake degrees and what not. Indians get hired in IT and don't have the advertised skills. Hindus and Chinese have low physical crime rates - but they are no slouches when it comes to cheating and White Collar Crime.
Using chain migration, many elderly Chinese now retire here to full SSI benefits even though they never paid into the system. A Country crazy enough to allow things like this is not long for this world. Let no one shed a tear - the real America died generations ago.
And do you think Asoka's feeling of hatred for Whites are rare among Blacks? Among Hispanics? Among Muslims? Yet you trashed me for wanting to be ruled by people of my own race and culture! It's only natural to want to be with you own kind. No one else is guilty (or made to feel guilty!) about feeling this way - as you seem to realize. So take the next step: why should Whites be condmened for being natural either?
What of the consequences? Quite right, glad you asked: modern America, both Democratic and Republican - is built on the on going dispossesion of Whites. When it ends, so do they.
We should not fear this but welcome it - especially since the system is doomed from a technical point of view anyway. Whites have nothing to lose but their future chains.
Soak you need to try drinking - it will help get you in touch with your emotions in general and your feeling of hatred against Whites in particular. Consider it alcohol and ally in the Castendadian sense.
Okay jackwagon.Are you familiar with the Greek term hubris? Liberal fucktards, who believe that the Earth and Gaia are synonymous, are so conceited that they believe that humans can both cause and cure the ills of a PLANET. Good old Mr Sun has a greater effect on planetary bodies than anything humans can or will ever do. Ole Sol affected Earth's environment long before humans made the scene and will continue long after humans split the scene. Oh yes..don't forget that as things worsen economically do to Peak Oil and other natural and unnatural disasters, all the gains that women have made will gradually disappear as the physical prowess of Homo Agricola becomes the defining societal characteristic. I can hardly wait.
You remind me of some of the characters in C.S Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet" trilogy. The Italian Scientist villian cosidered life an infection and wanted to pave the whole planet over. This was supposed to be good for humanity (we couldn't even create a stable biosystem - everything died except the cochroaches) He was in the last book "That Hideous Strength". The other character you remind me of is Weston, a scientist with a grandiose vision to conquer the universe for humanity. In a meaningless universe, what else is there to do after all! Well alien races might object to such a project for one thing. And Humanity will have to be forced into it for another.
Correction of last sentence: Consider alcohol an ally in the Castenadian sense.
Don't be such a boor. Unpracticed you will starve like the rest of the unwashed masses. It will take every spare minute you have, in the garden and on the net, until the information network goes down, to master the art of feeding yourself without a fossil fuel subsidy. Your time would be better spent not making excuses for your idleness.
Yesterday I had the 1st operation in my life - nothing serious - but very painful, and I'm dosed with pain killers. So today I'm in a fever dream (aka being totally stoned, looped and heavily medicated). And as I lie in my bed, I think of other posters' fever dreams.
Like JHK's apparent fascination with our possible return to the 19th century. So opposite the fever dream of old6699, a strange amalgam of Clarkian thinking - 2001, Childhood's End and the 9 Billion Names of God - and the Matrix. BTW, old seems to be in a particularly foul mood today, as well as being looped out as me, but without the medication (I think).
I also think that Tripp is the most honest poster here for the purity of his fever dream: He talks the talk and walks the walk; and Q is really the most important, because with his unceasing vigilance (or vigilanteism) for proper grammar, he advocates for clear thinking, with which we so badly are lacking. And Myrtle May, if I could go back 50 years, I probably would have had a teenage crush on you, you hot shit.
Since I'm so drugged out, I can use this as an excuse for such a disjointed posting.
Selling any of that shit,hombre?
Your time would be better spent not making excuses for your idleness.
================
Bustin thrusts, Trippticket parries.
The whole point of massive immigration is to eliminate the White Race. Why else would any country with double digit unemployment allow it? There are other factors - Europe needed oil and had stopped having babies (so who would fund retirements) - but at least the latter is in itself an indication that suicide was already in the cards. Likewise, America seemed to need cheap labor for a time, now over. So if we were still healthy and in control, all these people would be sent home. But obvioulsy someone and something else is in control. All these extenuating circumstances hide the stark, existential fact of our Replacement - and also serve to hide those who stand behind the policy of replacement and those who think they wil benefit from it (like Asoka). The "something else" mentioned above is the mystery of our compliance with the Agenda - the poisonous mixture of not knowing and not caring enough to know, all of which are indicators of extreme decadence. It is natural for men to be vigilant as to their survival and certainly any degree of liberty requires it. All gone like a snuffed out candle.
The ultimate goal is a radically reduced world population a la the Georgia Guide Stones. To do that they first have to crush Western Civilization. Once that is accomplished, wind, weather, war, and famine will get them the rest of the way Home to eternal world dominance. Q realized the contradiction above. How clever they are to use Overpopulation to achieve Under population. But it's no mystery to a biologist - deer populations without wolves rise until they crash badly. The remarkable thing is their utter ruthlessness - so much so that the average American or European can't believe it and will only realize the Truth when it is too late to do anything about it - just like the financial crisis.
he advocates for clear thinking, with which we so badly are lacking.
==============
Thanks for the kind words Bean but your sentence above seems a little tangled up in its underwear.
;-)
Let me suggest a modest re-wording:
he advocates for clear thinking, which we so badly lack.
See, you just proved my point. And my underwear is not tangled. I think.
Mine, all mine!
Yup.
My grand dad would go into the bush with a team, wagon, and saw.
He would cut firewood, with his brothers, and sleigh it home, to heat and cook with. It was a family effort, much like we will need in TLE.
They did this many days of the winter. These were the days off, (weekends) when they weren't sleighing grain to town.
They also sawed blocks of ice, from the river, and hauled it home to the root cellars, lined with straw from the harvest, so they could keep meat and dairy cool or frozen, in the cellar, well into the summer.
But, in the early 1900's in Canada, they owned the land (homestead) so no feudal system was in place, they owned fee simple. We still farm some of the homestead land from 4 generations ago.
I am sure SNAFU has some sort of rebuttal to prove me wrong.
There have been a few references to the Gay Agenda in this blog this week. I hope a pray that an act of God diminishes the gay activitics plan to convert the rest of the country to their politics
'activitics...convert'.....You sound the ghost of Anita Bryant!
Ive been in ElLay for 31 years.
The last 20 the towns gone down, so many old Middle easterners and Rusiians here.
Move here and work the system.
A friend claims that a building on ViaDolce in Marina del Ray is all russian due to the russian mafia, its a public/low income building!!!
sheesh!
'huge population'...Indeed Microsoft looks for its 'off the charts IQ's' there..so many people.
And my realtor friend in Silicon valley says only the asians there have the million $ for a house, they pay cash..even if they have to live 10 or 15 to a house.
Well, yeah, Kunstler. It's an open secret that boomers have wanted to blow this shit apart for years - POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR? - APOCALYPSE? GOD'S FAVORITE DARLINGS GOING DOWN? COSMIC MORAL SYMMETRY AFFIRMED? CUNNING LABRYNTHS OF HISTORY? Well, you may be right, it smells REAL bad. But the suprise may be even uglier. This shit may hang on and torment you until you're dead. In fact, I'm sure it will. But you said what had to be said and you're a pretty good polemicist. But apocalypse? You think we'll be that lucky? Is this hobby horse your indulgence? I sure as hell find it real attractive.
See http://rockbottomreport.blogspot.com/ for further developments.
Bean,
I'll be experiencing the same as you tomorrow! (I already got my prescription filled)
I'm hoping I'll have as much fun as you apparently have had...Looking forward to experiencing some bliss.
----Ciao for now
L.
Hey now, take 'er easy, Q! Direct your gentle warpings toward the dear readers, not the drug-addled writer. (After all, he admits he's not going to be the clearest of thinkers with a proper dosage of analgesics in him. lol)
Keep 'zoned there, Beans!
Gads, LB!
Best of luck (and best of druggage) to you.
Entirely too much of these surgical shenanigans going on.
Knit well, youse peeples!
Asoka where do the 660 million Americans get there energy from?
You're very crotchedy this week - what's up? Is the old woman denying you entry again?
Asoka where do the 660 million Americans get there energy from? -ed
Why, beans of course; lots and lots of beans! Proper containment of the resulting methane could prove problematic, but technology will always provide. (Yeah, there'll be an 'app.' for that. ;o)
My mispelling was intentional - a technique whose principle is well known to hypnotists and salesmen - designed to get under Asia's conscious mind.
apparently apple has a new app for would be converts to heterosexuality - the tide is beginging to turn - courage! our opposition sink, we will win
You're very crotchedy this week
===============
crotchety
(reply to k-dog also re: electric bike prototype)
"Car
Cellphone
Electricity/Heat
Internet Access
TV
Discretionary spending
Weekly automatic laundering
Daily showers
Discard any 7 of the above and you are there!
But the electric hybrid bike is the best downscale solution."
Interesting. I went without a car since '93, and in '02, started using my old motorcycle (50MPG+), about 500 miles per year. It's an '81 Honda CM400 I bought used for $900 in '83 (2k miles), and I've consistently been able to haul loads of 100lbs+. I've still got my 18 gear mountain bike I bought in '92, with over 10,000 miles on it, and just replaced the tires/innertubes (only able to haul about 40-50lbs max).
As far as those 8 above, I'd be hard-pressed to eliminate TV/Internet, as they are decent info sources (use a DVR, pre-record important shows, ff through commercial fluff/subliminality). I'd give myself about 4.5-5.5 of those 8 (I like 55'F, shower once/twice a week, laundry load every 2-4 weeks). I went without hot water for 3 years; it wasn't really too hard, but a $200 40-gal water heater was hard to pass up.
Back in '83, I had a 70cc Honda Passport that consistently got 125MPG, and could do 45-50MPH. I'm thinking you could get an older 175cc manual motorcycle (5 gears), and bore it out to 250cc (100+MPG). I've been trying to shop for new bikes that get 70MPG+, but few make the mark, and even fewer allow for luggage racks/saddle bags/bungee cord straps (was looking at a 250cc Ninja for a while). So unfortunate, that most "work-horse" motorcycles seem to be from the 70's/80's. There are ways to condition "new" (rebuilt) engines in the first 300-1,000 miles with ordinary motor oil, then switch to synthetic, to allow for 100,000 miles, with little to no compression loss.
Don't stop now ! You were just getting good ! musta passed out from the meds ?
Hope your operation was a success ! I recently had one also where they cut into my guts. Scared me. Took out my gall bladder. Loved the morphine haze afterwards. Only way I can relax I it seems.
Anyway, Sweet Dreams ! Relax and get better !
"It will take every spare minute you have, in the garden and on the net, until the information network goes down, to master the art of feeding yourself without a fossil fuel subsidy."
I spent the last 20 years trying to figure out gardening. I've had a garden every year, with lots of tomatoes, but not much else really, other than spinach/mustard/lettuce greens, and berries. I've rotated crops, tried various root crops with minor success (potatoes/carrots/beets/turnips), but found it all required a lot of water, a lot of fertilizer, and some amount of "pesticide" treatment (an ammonia/dish soap/tobacco/coffee grounds spray treatment), as aphids are a major problem here.
My latest discovery, was that planting perennial herbs has a major beneficial impact for the rest of the crops. For the past 4 years, I've transplanted as much lavender/rosemary/sage/thyme/peppermint/spearmint as I could, across the entire garden (pseudo-permaculture?). I've even got some lemon balm, but it's way too invasive, so I avoid it. FWIW, I found that these herbs cut down on pests, and bring out beneficial "creatures" (emerald green frogs/ladybugs). Not only that, but I found that the past couple years, I've had to fertilize less, water less, and I've noticed native mushroom colonies have come back to my yard.
I've tried using peas/beans to produce nitrogen, as well as clover. This hasn't really been too successful, but eventually may pay off. I'm ordering some comfrey now, in order to produce *free* fertilizer.
Of course I compost - lack of solid carbon in depleted, concreted soils is a major problem today. This year is looking to be excellent - my properly appears to be swamped in ladybugs already, and last year I didn't notice *ANY* aphids. Slugs are a major problem here, but I haven't bothered with traps or sawdust for 15 years, and they seem to leave my tomatoes/lettuce alone. As long as I don't let the crops dangle on the damp ground, during rainstorms...
Unfortunately, the zoning here does not allow me to have a chicken coop, or other livestock. My sister, who lives 8 miles away, can - but not *ME*. I *SOOOOOOOOOO* wish I could raise chickens, but there's that little problem of the *LAW*.
I do compensate, with raspberry/blackberry bushes, blueberry bushes, apple trees, cherry trees, plum trees, pear trees, apricot trees, grape vines, and a few nut trees (filberts/walnuts). The raspberry/blackberry bushes have been consistent producers for decades. The trees still have a year or three to produce, but things are finally coming together.
Instead, you should be fighting the influence of Satan, who is causing you so much hatred and bigotry.
Plus, your grammar sucks!
Ixnei, I think that's wonderful. See, two decades of hands-on participation and just now figuring out what works for this location. It's like that everywhere. I study my ass off all the time, talk to old wives and seasoned area gardeners, watch YouTube, chat with like minds, read books as fast as I can manage with 2 very young children and a first year homestead (for each of the last 3 years;).
I hate the perception (almost everyone has) that gardening is simply a matter of tossing some seeds/starts out and applying a dusting of Sevin and 10-10-10 once or twice, and voila! Food for eternity. Right. These folks should feel free to keep thinking that, and I'll feel free to keep not handing out my address.
It does require some water until you build a decent humus bank (assuming that is a major goal of the post-fossil fuel garden, and it should be either way), but even more is used to get produce to market in the industrial system (this is just one of the myriad deal-breakers Old6699 has never even pondered). That long food chain/higher emergy thing again. Yes, emergy, with an 'm'. It is very wasteful, despite its assumed efficiencies. And without cheap energy, the whole system crashes. Oops. Shoulda read more about companion planting and C:N ratios.
Quick point to totally expose industrial farming: For optimal plant health the system's Carbon:Nitrogen ratio needs to be maintained at about 25:1. Most organic biomass is removed from conventional fields at harvest, but since the soil is flooded with inorganic nitrogen, charging up all the little soil critters, the microbes there still have to utilize whatever carbon is available to maintain the ratio. For a while this means breaking down humus, which also breaks down the soil's ability to hold water, and destroys the cation exchange capacity of the topsoil. Ever tried to grow tomatoes without any calcium in the soil? BUT, once the humus has been depleted, the only source of carbon left is...wait for it...your plants! And so tissue damaging pests and diseases run rampant. Aphids, rusts, viruses, you name it. And they are only doing what we tell them to do. We send out the "plenty of nitrogen here, time to grow!" signal, and they respond by activating, and looking for the necessary carbon to balance their activity. In this case, your broccoli. Kind of counter-productive, isn't it?
But it sounds like you're very much on the right track to me. Maybe some of the other numbskulls around here will heed your warning.
Cheers.
Fever dream or nay, I appreciate your kindness!
"(an ammonia/dish soap/tobacco/coffee grounds spray treatment), "
Sounds like Jerry Baker...
That's a pretty good analysis of our Resident Impediment, Q. I do believe he is one of those "damn racists," as you put it - in the post of yours that I linked to this post.
I suspect the whole - vasectomy for the good of Planet Earth thing - is a facade, anyway. It was certainly pointless in the face of the immigration policy he advocates.
"the US, which you conclude is so far from carrying capacity that it would, in fact, BENEFIT from increased population."
-qshtik, writing about asoka-
Asoka repeatedly ignores the FACT that third world immigrants to the US are quick to adopt the planet destroying habits of American society at large.
660,000,000 American consumers is an immoral idea that should be fought.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
Send money! They are a BBB approved non-profit.
==============
And from now on I will be attempting to follow the good advice of Hancock1863. I will talk about asoka - but I will no longer talk to asoka.
I will, occasionally, respond with "IGNORE the Resident Impediment" to his future posts to me - when they are especially impedimentary.
Good luck to you. See what can be accomplished with a good attitude? Even surgery can be fun!
Ah, O, I'm now clear-headed. Tomorrow I'll be downgraded to mere Tylenol. Bummer.
Robert Plant "Ship of Fools"
You are the master of crops - I'm still working towards that goal. No one wants to admit that "global warming" has anything to do with boiling off the solid carbon into deep space. I'd still argue, that the ozone hole(s) were the product of greenhouse CO2 outgassing (and not the CFC BS), and atmospheric expansion(thinning)...
They still cling to some *idealism* that it will all continue for millions of years. I'm guessing, that our CO2 outgassing, will result in a Mars atmosphere, in about 10,000 years (or *less*)... LOL, don't quote me on that *prediction*./././
As to asoka - he can't help it - he was the *penultimate* master-debater. He sees both sides of the *issue* as a reason d'etre...
As to asoka - he can't help it. He sees both sides of the *issue* as a reason d'etre...
==========
Ixnei, I have enjoyed your description of gardening experiences.
I think the phrase you were looking for is: raison d'etre
PRO-IMMIGRATION ORGANIZATIONS
http://www.publiceye.org/research/directories/immig_grp_defend.html
Interesting post, Vlad.
"So if we were still healthy and in control, all these people would be sent home. But obvioulsy someone and something else is in control."
-vlad-
But I disagree about who is really "in control."
The grinding force known as Free Market Corporate Capitalism is in firm control of politics in the US.
This includes immigration policy. Our economy is dependent on growth. Rising population is the only surefire way to maintain growth. Plus, there's the cheap and easily exploited labor that desperate first generation immigrants guarantee.
Cheap labor is the holy grail of Capitalism.
Proof - Consider that the National Chamber of Commerce was instrumental in derailing some of the latest restrictions on illegal aliens in Arizona.
The Green Party of California with their pro-illegal stance is an unknowing shill group for American Capital. Such a lack of consistency makes them useless to the debate about population and the environment - or an active impediment to this debate.
Ayup, Jerry Baker. He had some good advice, and it didn't involve major carcinogens. They did used to use Nicotine as a pesticide, before that total-poison DDT SH! hit the fan. GMO corn, *w00t*!!!
My surgery was more minor than yours; I didn't lose any body parts. Thanks for your concern.
ProCon said: "The Green Party of California with their pro-illegal stance..."
============
The Green Party of California is only one of many pro-immigration organizations:
http://www.publiceye.org/research/directories/immig_grp_defend.html
These are people with a heart ... and they deserve our support.
Oh, I gotta admit, I love the *SOCK PUPPETS*. Multiple aliases, who knows *who* is *who*. I'm the one who got FUXORED by the Patriot Act. I can claim that humility, to *be sure*. I believe there was a study years ago, that showed that 90% of the Patriot Act cases were *NOT* terrorist-involved (forget that source, LOL).
a dusting of Sevin and 10-10-10 once or twice, and voila!
================
Thank you for NOT saying wallah
No doubt that much of what's going on in the world is a push towards a one-world civilization, or in one word, globalism. But to me, it seems that rather than this being a conspiracy of the power elites to control humanity, it is the natural evolution of a meme that has risen along with the advancement of our world-shrinking technology. Or perhaps I'm being too naive to attribute this to plain old evil?
The Masons have dreamed about it for centuries and the Jews for ages. Alexander the Great tried to do it - but the time was not right. Now that the technology is there, people have wasted no time in going for it. And yes, it is evil, an imitation of the Kingdom as prophesized in the Scriptures. Satan is the "ape" of God or as Tolkien put it, Sauron cannot create but merely imitate.
Tragically, Knut the young Polar Bear suddenly died for unknown reasons. He was greatly loved and will be missed. Besides being a bear, he was a symbol of the Purity of the North, of Ultima Thule. Some say our race came from these Hyperborean Regions ages ago. The magnetic North is racing Eastward fourty miles per year. Great changes are coming to the Earth both natural and political. If current trends continue, the Whites of North America will have to flee across the Bering Strait and take refuge under the Sun in Siberia - if the Russians allow it.
Yes of course but the Capitalism is not merely an impersonal force - not at that level. It is controlled by men. For example the Chinese keep their currency artificially low in order to crush us. The secret is to make the other guy obey the laws of the market not you. The Elite want a completely new Order and consciously directed capitalism is taking them where they want to go. It's a train - just like Democracy. They plan to get off at a kind of high tech, low population Medevial Stop - with they themselves as the Lords.
Trump has my vote as of now if he runs. He's the only one to bring up the obvious and to say that we need to control the market. He talked about the T word, the most hated thing of all - Tariffs. And he was wise engough not to use the word which is like saying nigger. If something is that hated by the rich and powerful, you got to believe there's something in it worth checking out.
You are being too naive. Industrialism happened because fossil fuels allowed for easy exploitation of plentiful resources. Dwindling resources coupled with vanishing energy reserves combined with an unwillingness of those who control the means of production to change their ways resulted in globalization as we know it.
The lack of evolution of a mime has driven globalization. The torpor of power elites who are unwilling to change, who like things exactly as they are, who unequally benefit from profits has resulted in the current predicament.
Debt not wealth trickles down from the privileged few and those in power sacrifice nothing when the going gets rough.
It's not plain old evil for this evil is far more insidious. This evil will result in the end of civilization. Human nature prevents those in power from understanding for they are blinded by their greed.
Think entropy of a soulless corporate mime, not the evolution of it.
The world could have been localized and made sustainable. Happiness and prosperity could have been maintained for a thousand generations.
But this is not to be.
Instead we have the death of birth.
Someone ounce said the world will end not with a bang but with a whimper.
They were wrong for their will be many whimpers and many bangs.
Once not ounce Beat you Q.
If and when TLE arrives, people like Tripp won’t be breaking their backs in the garden--they’ll be teaching other people how to do it. Tenure of the soil, earned in advance.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/17/nuclear-future-beyond-japan/
This is an interesting article.
First because the allure of electricity at 1 cent per KW is a dream and second because it passed almost unknown.
Oil is big business, and atomic reactors are even a bigger business.
The idea that people could produce their own energy would destroy huge corporations profits.
I looked at the "one percent" documentary.
I think that it is quite illuminating in the fact that the main problem is NOT in taxes, the big problem is in having too few monopolists ruling the economy.
I could even agree with Friedman in the sense that investors shouldn’t be overtaxed.
The solution would be a big number of small companies which shouldn’t pay taxes on the investment.
The more invested the more jobs.
Imagine Microsoft divided in 100 companies.
They would produce more, work better, have lower prices.
Competition should be the controller.
The middle class is the secret of a succesfull economy.
Some comments on race:
I think that it makes many whites "feel good" that they support other races in a variety of socially and politically contentious situations. They are being so fair, so kind, and in turn hope to be liked and loved.
Many seem to lack any sense of something akin to biological imperative or a certain sense of territoriality. Maybe this is because there is no urgency, no immediate alarm bells warning that their race is in peril. Yes, there are racial clashes, a constant exchange of blows in the racial arena, but whites still remain on top overall. For now.
There is a parallel here to peak oil and TLE. The problem(demise of whites) is viewed as too remote, too far down the road. It is also thought, "ahh, that'll never happen."
Many don't care, and many are not historical realists.
It appears that the only possible solution is a race war, and soon, while whites still have the power. But here's the dilemma; I don't particularly want to kill people of any color. Multiply that sentiment by scores of millions and you have the inevitable; whites in only a small, small minority globally by the next century.
It truly does happen and on a grand scale and all we can do is hurl our voices through the media's machicolations. Demonstrate you say, vote you say,
organize you say? B______t. It'll take killing, and I'm not up to it. Are you?
Thank you Patrizia for, "No fly zone means a place where you cannot fly..."
Well, Beck has done it again! He has one Stephen Lerner(poobah at SEIU(or was), white house visitor, Left Forum speaker, Treasury Dept. visitor, etc.,), describing how he would collapse the US economy and banks through "mortgage strikes", "student loan strikes", and city and state debt "restructuring." I heard him and he was talking about an action plan, not theoretically.
Whatever one's political inclinations, wouldn't this hurt everyone who has money in these banks?
I'm no banksta lover, but geez...
Lovingkindness does not see color.
Oh, oh, oh - I had a dream!
Sinking from my eyes, like a *song*!!!
"I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are *KNOWN* to me"...
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174628&p=2208223
Right Wing thug says:
"Re: Europe is a USA state
Postby Silhouette » Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:37 pm
Are you a bot?
I only ask because you never engage with anyone - except this "Right wing thug" guy who is either from another forum or, perhaps more likely, made up by you. You post seemingly randomly about the same point every time, often without waiting for a response from anyone first.
And then you wonder why nobody really seems to be listening to your unoriginal social democrat reform demands, despite often (mostly...) agreeing with them. Maybe try a different more personable approach, if you are in fact a real person - communicate, don't rant and dictate."
I answer:
There is nothing to communicate with regards to Europe: they are all lost in their tiny - puny particular worlds - lifestyles, and their need to distinguish themselves against others. Like the Irish against the British, or the Swedish against the Greek. I hate all of this diversity, diversity kills the "common good", kills the possibility to be one huge monolithic machine that is out to conquer the universe. We need one strong government in Europe, one giant all powerful federal government that dictates and forces all the huge programs that must be forced upon all these puny particular cultures. Diversity is the enemy of progress.
And Europe must kill all of its own culture completely and adhere completely and totally to the American model and culture. Europe must just become a giant extension of America, enough with all of their diversity and particular culture. They must follow the only generalized and global culture that is needed and necessary: the culture of the USA.
By the way, notice that when one speaks English anyplace else in the world outside of the UK, the english is always a standard American type of NEUTRAL English that is easy to understand, clear and with no particular oddball pronounciations as they have in the UK. The UK must learn how to speak the real standard globalized English and get rid of all their queer accents.
So there, I said it, I communicated, see.
Also, to all of you phct*rds, as*wypes, ph*cw*eds, morons, etc. Read these posts and learn what reality is:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174642
and
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=174540
Oh well, I will just spell them out for all of you:
"1) Irreducible Complexity. Behe contends that certain system could not have developed by random mutation and natural selection because the individual components of the system offer no advantage to the organism and would therefore necessarily be discarded by natural selection. "
So do you think the model of the world you have in your brain, in the controlled environment of you own mind, is superior, knows more, is more complete, can predict what can and cannot be, as opposed to what nature or reality or the laws of physics (or whatever you want to call the universe) has given you ? Do you think your brain or even mankind's brain and knowledge, his language, his decoding of the world according to his internal logic, his sense organs, the way the world is organized and the way his mind - brain - sense organs and muscles interact with reality is a sufficient instrument to cover all possibilities ? Do you really think this total quirk of the human mind - brain is some kind of reference system from which to measure and decide what is intelligent and what is not, what can be and what cannot, what sequence of causes and effects are possible or probable and what are not "given the time frame" ? Exactly what is the time frame ? does more time make something more probable ? what if it was just an extremely precise sequence of events that happened one after another in such a highly coordinated way, in such a perfect way, as to have created life from scratch in a few days ? Can't be ? Who says ? What makes a process that can last a billion years more real or more probable than a process that lasts only a few days ? The number of years is some kind of gauge to truth ? A bigger number is truer than a smaller one ? Just because we are used to seeing things go through processes at a certain speed excludes that they can't go faster, even very much faster ?
The entire debate on evolution and intelligent design is so full of ridiculous assumptions of all kinds, is so full of illusions on our capability to model the world, on our capability to understand that which will forever be unknowable because the very nature of the sequence of events, ( if there was even a sequence, maybe everything just got together in one picosecond and created the first complete cell, who can exclude this? ) will be forever unknown.
The debates on ID and evolution are very fertile grounds for philosophical analysis of all kinds. Just because you assign a one shot guy in the sky that created life, do you think you explained it ? Or does a process that lasts billions of years following all our knowledge of physics and chemistry explain it ? Exactly what explanation will "comfort us" ? What movie do we want to associate with the beginning of life in our mind ? Why do we even need a movie or explanation ? And even if it was 100 % clear and explained, what if we weren't comforted at all ? What if it was not enough, what if it was never enough ? Exactly what do we want to get out of the debate ? I could go on forever, I just answered this because I'm bored. Check out all the threads I answered already, this issue has been beaten to death, I have been beating it to death for years, I created life, ok ? That is my explanation, I invented it and created it, now sue me...
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=174349
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?t=150714
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=167276
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=150657
and
I don't believe in an "external reality". What we have is only a constant act of measurements between items, of atoms between themselves. These items and atoms can be instantaneous will powers, emotional states, pain/pleasure states, judgements, thoughts, and memory accesses in minds/brains/bodies. Each item measures another item and instantaneously decides what program to execute: whether it is further analysis, further judgements, further logic paths and memory accesses, further pattern recognitions and or forced patternizations of that which has no pattern, etc.
So this creates a totally arbitrary reality - universe - situation of existence which does not depend on any possible denotation or metaphysical entity such as religions, values, laws, or anything that is assumed to last or be lasting or be somehow eternal or platonic. There is no outside, there are only relationships, constant measurements, constant interactions that then become memories and our mind tries to find logic and patterns in these recorded events, but they are all essentially dead events, events that no longer exist, that have essentially never really (what is really ?) existed but only in our minds, only in our assignment of forcing them to exist by memorizing them and creating their reality. In fact the real struggle is between what reality is, and that is only measurements and events and instantaneous reactions and actions, and our necessity to find some stable ground, to convert and translate them into some kinds of fundamentals: but there are no fundamentals, no stable ground, only measurements, actions - reactions, events, instantaneous pain/pleasure circuits that are activated.
There are no flags or symbols or denotations, no religions or metaphysical entities, in essence no real external reality: only relationships, only reciprocal measurements, each item measuring another item, each interacting with another item be it man, mind or atom. Information relationships, social behaviors based on imaginary and invented patterns are the only thing that really exists (but "really" doesn't exist), if even the word existence has any substance to it.
Hence, this is the reason why there are never ending debates on everything, never ending conflicts, left versus right, rich vs poor, any opinion or idea vs any other reciprocal or opposite or confronting opinion and idea: BECAUSE THERE IS NO FUNDAMENTAL REALITY OR TRUTH, THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES. AND BEING THAT THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES OF ANY KIND, EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY RELATIVE, EVERYTHING IS AN INVENTION, IS FAKE, EVERYTHING IS ONLY WHAT THE STRONGEST PARTY AT HAND FORCES IT TO BE (and it must always be forced into something or another, no matter what).
ABSOLUTES ARE FORCED, BY BRUTE FORCE AND POWER SINCE THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES: END OF STORY.
So there, I said it, I communicated, see.
And me thinks 66 of 99 yous be droning on, on and ever on like a ‘future’ operative of the excruciatingly ghastly BORG collective...
*diversity kills the "common good", kills the possibility to be one huge monolithic machine that is out to conquer the universe.*
(So cybernetically conformist)
We are ole6699, lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us.
Resistance is futile...
Nice... me, I think I’ll stick with the mongrel gene code, fully resistant irritating virus types. So as we Brit types might say,” reports of my assimilation have been greatly exaggerated!”
I hate all of this diversity, diversity kills the "common good", kills the possibility to be one huge monolithic machine that is out to conquer the universe.
Diversity is what makes life interesting and bearable.
Dreams and hope in a better future, a future that we can "make" is what makes progress.
Build a state where people are a part of a whole machine, make them numbers, and you will kill humanity.
They already tried the experiment, it didn´t work.
How could?
Life is not only having a place to sleep and something to eat.
Life is doing things you like, the way you want.
Life is playing your special role in this world.
Life is being, that special unique being everybody of us think he is.
125MPG. We are all asleep. *AT THE "wheel". Just keep on keepin' on, 12K/year - morons. You gotta suck it up, at 9MPG, *TO BE SURE*...
You are wrong: end of story. We need huge real ambitious dreams like trillions of gigantic massive steel - iron Zepellins inside the Sun and Jupiter, and well, you read my other posts and you can make up some even more ambitious ideas. This idea of individual dreams is a ripoff this capitalistic - free enterprise economic system deals to almost everyone except those very very few that actually implement thier dream. And then most of those dreams are just status relationships, getting ahead of the jone's etc. We need COLLECTIVE DREAMS.
Are you young and pretty or are you like Alexandra, an old piece of crap ? I would like to ease my mind, but can't find a way...
Anyways, not to worry, I am an Anonymous Coward and Shrinking Violet, but that's OK, I accept what I am...
"ABSOLUTES ARE FORCED, BY BRUTE FORCE AND POWER SINCE THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES: END OF STORY."
There are absolutes.
They are subjective absolutes.
What I feel IS reality.
It doesn’t matter if doesn’t exist.
The moment I see it, I feel it, it IS reality.
Brute force and power are natural exasperations of human nature. There are two only ways to survive: one is respecting others freedom and the second is killing everybody.
The second solution lasts as long as we are the most powerful.
But history teaches that sooner or later power passes from one hand to the other, so today you kill and tomorrow you are killed.
The only possible way is having rules that satisfy all and following them.
But history teaches too that there is ALWAYS somebody who knows better...
You will NEVER have collective dreams.
People are selfish, what they do, they do for themselves.
If you kill individualism and meritocracy you will have a society in which nobody has any goal.
If you are paid the same doing nothing or doing a lot, you just do nothing.
People do not work for collective ideals, they work for their own well being, they work to have a better life for themselves and for their families.
It is not that it couldn´t work the way you say, it just doesn´t.
Hello,
I'm and old poster here but haven't posted in a while..
Interesting to see some concepts about the ST Borg concept, I've e been thinking about it and I figure the Borg are like the corporate/military/industrial complex/American way of life. The Borg are the powers that be and are a completely artificial construct of only man + machine (metal + technology. No birds, or plants or anything like that, which actually probably would work quite well in space (it's the only way to stay alive in space. I'm not sure if it works so well on earth. I sort of see the Borg cubes as giant floating cities.
"Anyways, not to worry, I am an Anonymous Coward and Shrinking Violet, but that's OK, I accept what I am..."
May be I am like you, but I do not accept it...
I am NOT young, if I was, I wouldn´t be here, I would have better things to do.
And I do not believe any woman can be an old piece of crap, you can still be beautiful and attractive, even if you are not young any more.
Age can give you something more, for example experience...how to deal with anonymous cowards and shrinking violets...
OK. On the serious side:
"People are selfish, what they do, they do for themselves."
What they do, they do for some kind of imaginary goal anyways, all goals are always imaginary, denotations, something that is never really immediate. They are always some forms of abstractions: "bigger" car, "bigger" house because more comfortable, but mostly because of the status - social meaning given to these mostly symbols.
"If you kill individualism and meritocracy you will have a society in which nobody has any goal."
As far as I can see, in most of the developed world, individualism and meritocracy are an abstraction, can be really applied in very few endeavors, most jobs have been standardized, automated, and most individualism and meritocracy is reduced to power struggles and personality challenges, who can convince more people, who is a better salesman, who sells their activity better, who can give a better "presentation" of their activity, who is more popular and has more personality, etc. And in a world where work is becoming obsolete, not needed, automated away, where a Technological Economy is eliminating all real productive work, very little is left for someone to show "what they are worth": mostly what is left is fluff..
"If you are paid the same doing nothing or doing a lot, you just do nothing."
Most jobs today do nothing from the outset, work is not needed, most jobs can be described as "much ado about nothing", a lot of running in circles, a lot of fake activity, since the Technological Economy has and will increasingly eliminate most real productive labor.
"People do not work for collective ideals, they work for their own well being, they work to have a better life for themselves and for their families."
All ideals are abstractions and therefore always denotations, and, in a way collective: only the group is much smaller, only their family. So this can easily be changed and people can switch the denotation of their family to the denotation of their nation or humanity or Progress, or MIND OVER MATTER. You simply have to reprogram people's neural network.
"It is not that it couldn´t work the way you say, it just doesn´t."
It doesn't because the powers that be have brainwashed everyone that this can never work, but it works real well when there are wars, look at what huge collective action the Germans put forth during WWII, and imagine if they could apply that to rockets to Mars and similar. Even the US space program to the moon was a collective action that worked, and even the USA Military is a huge collective action. So it can work if it is desired, if there is a precise intentionality for it to work.
I just joke around about pretty, but the british lady started it ... anyways I still would like to ease my mind...
"I am NOT young, if I was, I wouldn´t be here, I would have better things to do."
No you wouldn't because we only process information at all ages, there is no essential difference with what one does, it is all in the imagination.
"And I do not believe any woman can be an old piece of crap, you can still be beautiful and attractive, even if you are not young any more."
The present dominating economic system with its culture of individualism and meritocracy and success considers everyone from age 0 to 100 years old an old piece of crap unless you become bill gates.
With a collective goal, we all become valuable and defined ...
As much as I like discussions, I understand this is a never ending...
The nice part of any kind of discussion is that at the end, everybody is still of the same opinion, a lot of words is said or written for nothing, some time has passed and nothing has changed.
As for the goal of reaching the moon, I even begin to have my doubts...
In the present dominating economic system there are still people who believe in Humanity and spiritual values more than money (and some of them even think Bill Gates a piece of crap...).
The truth is that in ANY system you have the stupids and the intelligents, the first won´t achieve anything, collective or individual, the seconds will achieve a lot being it collective or individual...
Howdy JD, Per your comment "I am sure SNAFU has some sort of rebuttal to prove me wrong."
I thought, obviously erroneously, that my reference to Paul Bunyan would alert you to my interpretation of that which you were purporting about your grandparents was tongue in cheek, yours'.
Whilst Q enjoys snarking about grammatical and spelling gaffs I take my delights in snarking about comments which, to borrow a Stephen Colbert coined word, contain “truthiness” issues such as that made mention of by Progressor whereby he posted that the compressed air in a SCUBA tank contained sufficient energy to propel a 40,000 pound fire truck 40 feet upward in one millisecond. Suffice it to say I disagreed vehemently and offered evidence to support my contentions.
If my needling irked you I apologize.
SNAFU
So then it is not a serialized labor activity where the efforts of each individual adds up to more and more. In fact, what we have today, is an economic - social system that must exert an extreme effort to repress and delimit as much serialized labor activity as possible, to create atomized labor processes, to create a system where all efforts effectively lead to nothing and nowhere, all efforts in different directions, a lot of efforts in contrasting opposing directions (office politics, wars, conflicts of all kinds, very slow cumbersome democratic processes, complex laws leading into a never ending array of disputes and fights, etc.).
The reason for this, is because with the present day knowledge and technology and the absolutely gigantic EXCESS PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY present in all productive segments and endeavors, we could easily, in a jiffy, give all of the basics, many many times over to 10 billion people with absolutely no effort at all. A simple home, running water, basic health care, food, a basic salary, electricity so you can watch TV 24 hours a day (another way to diffuse any possible serial labor process) is mostly all you need.
I like to bring the example of the Z80 microprocessor of the 70s, that was designed and built with only 10 man years by 2 scientists faggin and shima and a few draftsmen. That is a serialized process, all effort adds up, and that shows what huge productivity is possible with such tiny resources. Now, imagine what could be produced if all the office work of millions of workers worldwide were serialized, were constructive, added up. Science and Technology are endeavors that are somewhat serialized as in the knowledge adds up, but the political, contrasting will powers that must apply it is atomizing, is destructive. Consider all the idle labor worldwide, millions of people 30 years old and younger that have nothing to do but break up countries like Libya.
Software for example is not a serialized labor process, it is atomizing, destructive, a lot of effort contrasting other effort, in a never ending power struggle game of who sets the standards, who dominates the markets, whose operating system will dominate, android or apple, etc. A never ending array of new languages and systems to do the same old things that have been being done for 50 years. Imagine if all the software in the last 50 years were written in a clear PASCAL syntax, only one language and all the possible libraries of functions ever needed, it could easily be done, you would have 99 % of all software problems licked and you could go on to other activities, like going to Mars, creating ever more powerful supercomputers, etc.
So this blog, forums and all other information content on the internet is another way to create a huge amount of activity that does not add up, that is not serializing, that is not a serialized labor process. But we have so much excess capacity that we can write things forever, and in fact I predict that, if anything, information will be worth exactly zero in the future, we now have all possible information virtually for free from the internet, and it keeps on growing.
The real powers at work: Technological Economy eliminating the need for almost all real productive labor, Information saturation making all forms of information worth zero.
We need to serialize millions of man hours into huge - ambitious projects, Rockets to Mars, trillions of Skyscrapers, you name, if you can imagine it, no matter how far out and insane, it must be done, and will be done. AMEN.
Your "recipe" is intriguing.
We use a mix of tobacco and hot peppers in our "juice"; the munching critters don't seem to like the taste much; would you? ;o)
I does have to be applied often, but hey, I'm not trying to grow acres of cabbages and whatnot.
Tobacco....... hmmmmmm.
>It
Definitely comfrey this year, but it has to go in when it gets here. More snow last night, so I'm not making any bets for when that soil will become warm and "workable"!
I'll shoot for halfway through April as the end of winter. (Wishful thinking?)
Thanks, but apparently I'm not going to be covered with potatoes. I'm doing this all wrong.
And I read in the local paper that the lead singer is due to be released from prison this October.
You write well, but make no sense.
What information is so crucial now, that I must spend all my time obtaining it?
I mentioned that the reason I have, for the first time, attempted to grow potatoes, rather than buying them cheaply, is that I believe that the information I obtained through studying leads me to believe that commodity speculation, which led to widespread hunger in 2009, may have an impact on the good ol' USA this year.
How would you have me exercise? Drive to the gym?
Digging and hauling leaves me in excellent shape, enough so that when I party, I can dance as long as the music suits my tastes, long after others are driven by exhaustion from the dance floor.
I am enjoying life while I can. But I'm not ignorant enough to believe that my life is unaffected by the machinations of the ruling class.
Think of the citizens of Iraq, or Yugoslavia, living civilized lives, unable to imagine that the needs of the obscenely wealthy would destroy all that made life tolerable.
I am under no illusion that the US ruling class holds any special fondness for those born within these borders.
So I expect things to dramatically worsen. It may not be this year. If not, hurray!
But I will have the experience and hopefully, a store of potatoes.
Interesting that when they first started pushing Round-up, they called it "no till" farming.
Which I thought was good, until I realized what it was.
The field next to me has been Round-upped for many years. At first they did do the leaving of the stubs, but now they are dumping sewage on it, and then plowing.
This year, for one of the first years, there are no weeds growing at all now, in early spring.
One of the first years, the idiot farmer stopped to eat lunch under a tree of mine which was on the boundary. He left his round-up pouring out while he ate.
I was worried about my tree, even though Round-up was advertised as not harmful to woody plants.
The first year, the tree looked fine.
The second year, it had less leaves and they were sickly looking.
A couple of years later, it was completely dead.
"Digging and hauling leaves me in excellent shape, enough so that when I party, I can dance as long as the music suits my tastes, long after others are driven by exhaustion from the dance floor."
And if we can't dance at the doomsday ball whats the point in going on. None I can see.
Patrizia & Alexandra, coupla pretty smart broads? with interesting things to say in the CFNation ... but not so smart as to get into an online argument/conversation with the likes of old6699. That's akin to smacking your head against a brick wall real hard, in vain hopes that you can break down that wall.
Jeeesh!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
One of my very favorite malapropisms was when a friend mangled Emma Goldman's "if I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution", by saying,
"If you can't dance, you can't be part of the revolution".
I still laugh over this one.
"Technological Economy eliminating the need for almost all real productive labor, Information saturation making all forms of information worth zero."
You should read about potatoes.
It is not enough to know how to plant them, you also need to do it.
And without oil it is not going to get any easier.
Technology is a great thing, but we are not yet at the point the machines grow our food.
Manual work is not an option, all the information we can get can help for how, but not instead.
Anyway, as I said, this is just a kind of odd rumination.
I do not know Alexandra, but, as for me, I enjoy discussing and I have quite a strong head, do not care about walls, brick or whatever...
Sorry about your Tree, what a drag.
And thank you for the info.
Saw this saying :
Youth / Beauty is a gift of Nature.
Middle / Old age is a work or ART.
also remember Beauty is in the eyes of the beerholder. I heard that somewhere.
Our society worships youth. So it can be very difficult getting older and being treated as if you don't matter, or aren't even 'there.'
All this talk of brick walls. Does this mean some of us are here as thick as a brick or all we all just another brick in the wall?
America had declared war with Libya.... It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of oiland had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings k-dog
Shoot at her feet - she'll dance. As for me, I want to be the guy in the dark robe going around crying, "Bring out your dead". I'll do a little jig after everthing's finished up like in that movie the Seventh Seal.
What do you think of SEIU's little plan to bring down America? Are we on to you guys now or what? You've lost the element of surprise thanks to kick ass Right Wing Journalism. And if Holder refuses to do something - then the Regime is implicated themselves.
Vlad I argue against assumptions of racial biological superiority. Now calm down and read what I have to say.
Why do I argue with racist theories? Because they don't square with what I see as fact and common sense. For example, people talk about the abysmal state of Africa as proof of Black racial inferiority. But if Black Africa is three thousand years behind the times compared to other parts of the world, what about three thousand years ago when Caucasian Europe was three thousand years behind the times compared to the more advanced non White Middle East, China, India? Are you prepared to argue that, because of this, White Europeans were genetically inferior to non-white Indians/Chinese/Middle easterners?
Are you prepared to argue that Plains Indians were biologically inferior to central American Indians because the latter built spectacular cities and the former spent their time hunting?
And I argue with racist theories because we've seen repeatedly that there's pretty much no "bottom" as far as human behaviour is concerned. We know from experience where racism leads so we don't need to speculate on outcomes: slavery and holocausts are the two most obvious.
You have a problem Vlad or rather two problems. The first problem is human nature of which tribalism is a big component. The second is that, like it or not, for centuries you've had non-white people living in your midst. I don't need to elaborate on the whys. We're talking about tens of millions of people.
Now we can collectively do the wise thing and make the best of this situation which was a long time in the making. Or we can collectively do the unwise thing which, if history is any guide, is the far more likely outcome. Now you may not like this and I'm sure there are Blacks with long memories of what Whitey inflicted on them etc. But that clock ticks remorselessly on and the stuff that's raw in our minds goes out of living memory. Learn from history, don't re-live it.
So, once again, what the fuck has this got to do with oil depletion? Oil depletion has its societal aspects. When we re-localize my bet is that we re-tribalize at the same time.
So how ugly does this process get? How much ethnic cleansing comes out of this? I'm not optimistic, in the short term it will be bad. In the Balkans 20 years ago Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosnians living cheek by jowl for generations suddenly went nuts.
In the longer term things will likely settle down and human libido will do its inevitable thing. But why go through all the ugliness?
In Yemen, 52 unarmed protesters were killed and more than 200 wounded on Friday by forces of the US-backed and US-armed government of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
About 20,000 people chanting freedom slogans march at funerals in Daraa for protesters killed by security forces.
Oil is at $106.29 and rising.
Local residents say loyalist forces shell area near Misurata hospital and Libyan officials accuse coalition airstrikes of killing dozens of civilians.
US military officials deny civilians have been killed.
Mr Obama's war may have been a really bad idea. Too bad he has no interest in doing the peoples work.
Yeah and Loving Kindness starts at home: yourself and/or your family. So if you're a White Family you're going to be loving Whites first. And what is the Tribe but an extension of the Family? And the Nation but an extension of the Tribe?
You see the problem Universal Religions cause unless properly understood - and not appropriated by vicious power seekers? To have a Universal type morality means that you have renounced the ordinary world of duty per se and become a religious, a monk or nun or some type. What you are proposing carte blanche for everyone is just the morality for the very few. It cannot and must not be attempted by others - not in the unregulated way you are proposing. The old call in church for donations for the missions is about as justifiably universal most people are ever going to get. Tepid? Hardly - it changed the world gradually and without doing violence to the givers since it was volunary. Certainly trying to make people feel guilty by showing them compassion porn with the flies crawling on the little kids is monstrous.
The real question is about the violence that real (voluntary - not the State taking our tax money) giving does to the recipient. In parts of Africa, so many clothes are donated that tailors have been driven out of business.
My facts are a bit confused regarding the details but dead is dead and the fuse was lit in Brazil.
Lovingkindness starts at home but it does not stop there. It starts at home because if it does not start there it can't ever be found anywhere else.
Lovingkindness sees not color and is universal. It starts at home because it must, for if it does not start there it cannot be real.
Emma Goldman says it better than I:
Yeah, I'm guessing your White Supremacist parties are not much fun.
A pale imitation of the real thing.
Forgive my strident tone - the post was meant for k-dog. But since the mistake was made and you fielded it - the mistake must be played out. Nations cannot endure this level of mixing from radically different peoples. Let's leave the "intrinsic" part out for now since you don't accept it. Just accept the evidence from your eyes - it's not working. It was far too much too fast and the digestive system has broken. Now the immune sytem is breaking too - people talk openly about bringing down the Nation. We are going to split into many and it will be brutal. Whites are going to have to defend themselves - and in the process, will win themselves a Home. As will the Hispanics. And the Blacks. And maybe the Asians in some areas. The silver lining is there - a new and natural world with real Nations not the bullshit rainbows like the candy ass West has become in which Whites are the slated to become slaves.
One note on your equality: what you say is historically accurate but it is no proof of equality of all. Just because the Whites were behind the Middle Easterners does not mean the Blacks are going to catch up and surpass the Whites. Let's break it down: you lay down some correct historical facts and then an equate genetically the Indians of North and Central America - thus establishing that genetics is nothing and environment is all. But it just doesn't follow. The Blacks were in similar jungle environments to the Maya and mountain/jungle environments as the Inca - and did nothing at all in terms of Civilization. I'd say your facts support my thesis and not your's. In Philosophy, there are over a dozen logical fallacies. I forget what your's is called. So let's call it circumstancial evidence - not proof.
Whites came into the Roman Empire as slaves or mercenaries. The liked what they saw, not just as conquerors and rapists (altho that too) but also in terms of joining it as equal partners. Whether you like it or not, they succeeded in taking Rome and in conjunction with the people already there, ultimately created a new Civilization - Our's. The Blacks have shown a taste for our pleasures, luxuries, and women but have shown no similar ability or appreciation. Left to their own devices, they will wreck a White Nation in one generation as they are now doing in Rhodesia and South Africa.
Communists like Goldman seek to guilt trip the West into disarming and guilt trip us into letting millions of aliens swarm in and displace us. Her philosophy of "love" is a program of turning dupes into slaves. Meanwhile back in Isreal her co-ethnics laud her but feel no compulsion to do likewise. And she would not expect them to either.
Communists like Goldman seek to guilt trip the West into disarming and guilt trip us into letting millions of aliens swarm in and displace us. Her philosophy of "love" is a program of turning dupes into slaves. Meanwhile back in Isreal her co-ethnics laud her but feel no compulsion to do likewise. And she would not expect them to either.
K-Dog, I think civilians were gunned down in Bahrain as well as in Yemen. This all getting pretty close to Saudi Arabia, right next door, but, so far, nobody (in the media or Govt.) seems to be too alarmed. And don't forget the bomb set off yesterday at the bus stop in Israel, and all the incoming rockets launched from Gaza last week. Things seem to be spinning out of control like I've never seen before.
But here's the main question on MSNBC today: How will all this effect Obama's reelection chances? That' all that matters.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Al contraire mein Frau, we toast the begining of the end of the world. What could be more joyous - and thus more strengthening?
At MIT they say that dance is a vertical expression of horizontal desire. We shall dance even if only as skeletons in a Mexican Dawn of the Dead Mummery.
Thanks for this Mont. I just had a look through it. I will be spending many hours reading this stuff and ruminating.
Tomatoes up; broccoli up; cauliflower up; even IMPATIENS up (big surprise). A few stinkin' onions up. Keep warm little sprouties.
(No electricity used; just sun coming in the big window. Still, have to get serious about coldframes to hold more developed seedlings and keep them from the increasing vagaries of the weather.)
Looking forward to Anna's "dairy farm report", Tripp. ;o)
Emma Goldman was an anarchist not a communist and she wrote "My Disillusionment in Russia" in 1923. You paint with a broad brush Mr. Krandz and obscure many fine details. Details which make all the difference.
Concerning your obsession with color and for all the other supremacists out there be they white, brown, black or green. I have a simple question concerning your understanding of what is a common understanding of the bell curve of intelligence distributions.
Can two bell curves overlap?
Take your time, think it over.
Vlad,
Most modern Israelis have no use whatsoever for the likes of Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemborg or any other Jewish communists or anarchists from 100 years ago. They have enough to worry about with what's happening right now, today!
I'll say it once more, then drop the subject; Israel is a decent western country and a good ally to the United States. That's all I need to know.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Things seem to be spinning out of control like I've never seen before.
But here's the main question on MSNBC today: How will all this effect Obama's reelection chances? That' all that matters.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Haw!!! Good catch, Marlin.
Sorry for guffaw-ing, but in context, that's really darkly funny. The "Media's" tenuous grasp on reality seems to be slipping further and further. "Bring on the Distract-o-matic quick; the sheep might be awakening soon!"
Ozone;
Congrats! A job well done. So far. And no mean feat in this cold ass, hostile climate.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Vlad said: "Shoot at her feet - she'll dance."
============
As a lover of women I find this to be one of the most hateful things I have ever read on CFN.
Vlad is not only racist, not only does he believe might makes right, now he reveals himself to be sadistic, getting pleasure from terrorizing others.
Obama's re-election chances, I quite agree, thats all that matters to him.
As what is going on in the ME it's too much to keep track of.
The media and government may be alarmed but what can they say? Ahhhhh we really fucked up, sorry guys. I don't think they want to do that. They may not seem to be alarmed but I bet those blackberries are buzzing.
Oil is only at $105.96 it's dropped thirty cents in an hour. Someone needs to log on and explain how this trend means were all saved and that price fluctuations are normal.
We need some good news.
Good post Ozone But you say;
"The "Media's" tenuous grasp on reality seems to be slipping further and further."
I did not know they had a grasp on reality, I thought their job was to manufacture reality.
And the Distract-o-matic is broken. I know it's still early on the west coast but somebody better wake up Charlie Sheen.
Vlad wrote: "Al contraire mein Frau"
-------------------------------
Perhaps that should have been,
"Au contraire meine Frau"
although it would be more consistent to remain in French and substitute Madame for the German, which, by the way, would be more formally rendered as gnädige Frau.
Cheers
Hey, Janeane Garofalo!
"A couple of years later, it was completely dead."
If my neighbor did that to me, I'm not sure how I could hold back my hostility. Ain't that the sin of modern revenge?!...
I agree Asoka. Vlad's "Shoot at her feet" comment is really creepy. No doubt he desires to have unrightous dominion over the women in his life.
Jen
Vlad, there could be splits in the North American continent. The land area is too big, the population is getting too big, there are too many people with too many divergent economic and other interests, many regionally based (Red State vs Blue State), to govern from one national capitol. Oil depletion will exacerbate this problem IMO. And another thing, your federal govt (and ours up here) is such a totally fucked up mess that it's beyond retrieval.
But let's not kid ourselves, any time a country fractures into competing sub-states it comes with a cost in blood. Any exceptions? Maybe the Czechs and the Slovaks. Any others?
You want to see racially based "homelands" in North America. You have tens of millions of Black people, whose roots in the US go back centuries, plus Hispanics all mixed in with a White population. What you have is a recipe for a Holocaust. Brutal you say? Yes, to say the least. So how many people are you willing to see die to achieve this goal?
K-DOG, you said:
"It's not plain old evil for this evil is far more insidious. This evil will result in the end of civilization. Human nature prevents those in power from understanding for they are blinded by their greed.
Think entropy of a soulless corporate mime, not the evolution of it.
The world could have been localized and made sustainable. Happiness and prosperity could have been maintained for a thousand generations."
Just for a moment, let's think of the unthinkable. If the power elite get their one-world way, why does that have to be the end of civilization? Many elites appreciate good art. Think of the Getty museum. I certainly wouldn't want to live in that world, but globalization doesn't mean the end of the world, only TEOTWAWKI.
If someone from the 1600's got transported to the present day, they would feel that it was TEOTWAWKI. All I'm trying to say is, if you are against something, and that something comes about, life will continue. You seem like a good guy and I like your posts. Try being a little optimistic. Forget about what could have been and focus on what could yet be. Oh, BTW, with all due respect, the word is meme, not mime.
"We use a mix of tobacco and hot peppers"
I can't spare any peppers - I grow Habaneros @333k on the Scoville scale, and I never seem to have enough. But, ayup, they recommend cayenne pepper dusting for pests. Things are looking up finally - pest problems were an issue years ago; now I've got lady bugs (e.g. Johnson) on the case (LOL MERTLE!!!)
Well, he's not my neighbor. He leases the land.
And last harvest, he mangled a couple of cattle panels that kept my dogs in the yard.
This time, my husband called him and complained, so he gave us a couple of cattle panels.
He hadn't even noticed that he'd done it, or so he said.
Those fossil fuel powered farm machines are massive.
AND he has a foot fetish, not that thats such a bad thing by itself.
Cash,
You're welcome. You mentioned Vimy Ridge; the Great War histories can be found online at
http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/his/oh-ho/index-eng.asp
Cheers
"All I'm trying to say is, if you are against something, and that something comes about, life will continue."
Someone's very optimistic about our atmosphere. When we burn solid carbon into CO2, it becomes hot and boils up and *out*. Sure, when there *was* an amazon rainforest, some of this carbon might have been reclaimed. But that is no longer the case - we boil off all the solid carbon into deep space.
You don't hear anyone talking about this, do you? Even though it's almost a 40-year-old-issue (clearcut/slash and burn/cattle trample/concrete depletion)...
Cash wrote: "In the Balkans 20 years ago Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosnians living cheek by jowl for generations suddenly went nuts."
===============================
How true the saying at the time was,
the 20th century began and ended in Sarajevo
It is as if the city was a poster child of sorts for all the ills of 20th century Europe.
Cheers
Ok meme not mime, got it.
In general an optimistic vs pessimistic point of view is a tough thing to contemplate. I burn my brain trying to figure out whats better. Optimists get more done and are happier but pessimists see things more clearly but nobody likes them. Ahhhhhh, It's probably best to take the middle road.
Concerning the end of civilization. You said "let's think of the unthinkable" which means that we ignore resource depletion and the torpor of the power elites to evolve. Under these conditions life goes on and we will certainly have a galactic empire someday. But that's not going to happen.
I liked you mentioned someone from the 1600's being transported to the present day. I like to imagine myself that way. It keeps me questioning my point of view.
In real life I try and be an optimist more than a pessimist but not stray to far from the middle road.
Your point is well taken BEANTOWNBILL, thank's.
Addendum:
Gotta love how Vlad comes on, posting decent SH! for the first day (or two?), after JHK posts. Then, it's a total nazi racist *ULTIMATUM* flame-war.
Wonder why he's so into *hate*. I guess it's the *HUNTER* PARADIGM. Or, maybe, it's that locality (Alabama/Louisiana/Mississippi/Georgia/Texas).
Who knows - where's your atmosphere *GOING*? Up, and *out*?!?
Oh come now - gone to any big demonstrations lately? Ever not see the Commies and the Anarchists not working together? Crazy? Sure, what are the Anarchists doing working with the ultimate in big Goverment? Did not the Russian Commies use them and then purge them? But don't blame me for their stupidity - I'm just reporting what's going on.
Overlapping bell curves? Can you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
The curse of our modern age is that no one ever sees the big picture - except the Masters. You have been trained and shaped only to look at details - and to condemn those who try to tie things together.
How now my good Moor! You were thourougly outed as a Racist this week by the "community" - and now you are trying to get back into their good graces by trying to start a pig pile on me. Shame! You belong with me out in the Wastelands. We will become strong together my Brother. Let the Lapdogs lick each other sores - we will feast on Game.
Careful sister Jen. Wage is a wild one and I can talk to her like that. Alex too. I've learned your limits and wont. And I would never dream of talking to Jackie like that either. But I wont change just cuz you don't like it. She can tell me if she cares to. There are many "races" of women - just as many as there are men. IQ wise women vary less, but in terms of personality, just as much. Btw, what is your Teddy's name?
It already started - Whites have been ethnically cleansed from a thousand cities and a hundred thousand neigborhoods and towns over the last fifty years. And for what? Now the Blacks are returning to their Homeland in the South, their work completed. Fleeing the decaying cities in some cases, being ethnically cleansed by the Mexicans in others. You haven't heard? Do you still believe that you would? How many deaths? How should I know - some surely. The Feds will be against the Whites - that much we can say for sure. Maybe if the minorities are smart, they'll let Whites stay in their new Countries. I wouldn't reccomend it, but maybe for the super rich it will work out. There are still Whites in East Africa but all the ordinary Whites are leaving - nothing at all for the young, everything for the Blacks.
Don't blame us Cash. We will just demand what is our's and what is granted to all other's Peoples - the right of Sovereignty. Men gather together and form societies for mutual benefit - so how do we benefit from Mexicans? From living with Blacks? From living under this Regime? You tell me.
"we will feast on Game."
Ayup, never figured anything *less* from *U*. Where is *your* atmosphere *going*?!?
*UP*, and *out*?!?
And machines are built on Ix. But can a machine talk of love? Leonard Nimoy said there was no more need of hate - or love. Read the Founding Fathers and then come back and tell me that America was intended to be a race blind "proposition nation". It was created for "us and our progeny".
'to adopt the planet destroying habits of American society at large'
Yes despite what KPFK/KCRW say about this..
Speaking of destruction they destroyed our culture
as well.
Are you a clone of Q?
And Q, perhaps ZZZ has many names to post under here, so as those handles are banned ZZZ can still post w/o having to get new accounts.
Ive lost count of how many handles 'little Z' [your term] has already had busted here in 2 years or less.
LOL, He was speaking Spanish when he said that!!!
You deny me my answer - where is *YOUR ATMOSPHERE GOING*?
You think it magically stays there, as you superheat and exponentially spew CO2?!?
If you have an *answer*, let me know... Otherwise, keep your racist SH! to yourself.
Ahaha, this board is so buggy - I responded to Vlad K.
'went Nuts'?
NO! what happened is the system collapsed and those without food soon were at their [perceived]
enemies throats.
And will the USA be any different? when the welfare and SSI checks stop buying food?
1 in 7 on foodstamps!
All Groups? MS13
The Age of Bronze
Lord Byron
But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharness'd kings,
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawled of late,
Chain'd to the chariot of the chieftain's state?
Yes! where is he, the champion and the child,
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild;
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table earth-whose dice were human bones?
Reading the entire poem, I'm left with the thought
that maybe we can call this age, "Saying Goodbye to Byron." I'll leave it in English.
I'll bet that Mr. Kunstler is getting a perverse chuckle out of the actuality of some of us trying to communicate some reality-based stuff in between the constant showings of "Vladdie's [WhitesOnly] Funhouse".
My, oh my, the wasted bandwidth. But, instructive.
(Yes, I do believe that he's entertaining the wretchedness, just to see how we "deal". C'est la vie; c'est la guerre.)
I did not know [the Media] had a grasp on reality, I thought their job was to manufacture reality. -K-dog
Correct; thanks for clarifying! ;o)
Speaking of English, many,many years ago, while I was rather awkwardly trying to put the moves on a rather voluptuous, flush, upper East-sider, with more curves than a hula-hoop, she recommended that I learn Urdu, the predominant language of New York City taxi drivers. Yup, way back when. Not that anybody cares, but I struck out. I think she didn't like my sneakers!
Beck has done it again, Soros, Brazil drilling in the Gulf, etc.
Nato now taking over in Libya?
"Vladdie's [WhitesOnly] Funhouse".
Well, perhaps, "Vladdie's [WhitesOnly] Fascist Funhouse", rolls off the tongue more trippingly.
Will his show be the last one running (sans audience)? Brrrrr! Frozen bodies, piled high, while a capering madman on an empty soundstage tells the last joke about "the brown folk" over and over and over and over... and the camera's red LED flickers, fades, and winks out for the final time.
Buh-bye now...
Correction:
...an >otherwise
Gotta keep those visuals seamlessly engaged.
ahhhhhh, fergit it. ;o)
Well, the score on day 3 of dairying was:
Anna: 0
Tripp: 2
Although it was my first solo mission, and I only got half a gallon...
She got spooked by my dog today and wouldn't let me near her, so I let her rest. She's had a hard week. Back at the nipple twistin' tomorrow.
Hi PoC. I decided to ignore Asoka awhile back after he insisted in deliberately misinterpreting my statements. Have you ever noticed that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, and yet wiser people express doubts?
CaptSpaulding, I remember when you did that. I encouraged and supported you in your decision.
PoC, I encourage you to follow Capt. Spaulding's excellent example.
Vlad said: "You belong with me out in the Wastelands. We will become strong together my Brother. Let the Lapdogs lick each other sores - we will feast on Game."
==============
Another creepy proposal, Vlad. What's with the "my Brother" all of a sudden???
Why might you want to get me out alone in your militia-ridden wasteland?
You do remember I am married to a Black goddess. I am decidedly heterosexual. Where I "belong" is with her.
"Feast on game" ???? You do remember I am vegan?
Creepy.
Tripp, with all due respect, I would prefer not to know the score.
From the very first day (Anna 1, Tripp 0) I knew you were eventually going to win.
I actually find it distasteful that you are imposing your will on a member of the animal kingdom for your own personal gain.
Bush: Invaded Iraq with boots on the ground.
Bush: Built big USA embassies in Iraq.
Bush: Occupied Iraq for years and years.
Bush: Went it alone, disdaining the UN, which condemned his invasion as illegal, in violation of the UN Charter the USA is signatory to.
Obama: No boots on the ground in Libya.
Obama: No USA embassies being built in Libya.
Obama: Leaving fight to NATO after two weeks.
Obama: Acted in coordination with United Nations.
Meet the new USA Commander-in-Chief.
He is not like the old Commander-in-Chief.
You mean Crap Pants?
Asoka, this one is just for you.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-03-23/problems-smart-grids
As Triumph the Comic Insult Dog might say, "It's time better spent pooping".
Thank you, Networker. I may have to change my position as a result of your persistent effort to educate me.
But Smart Grids may be little more than a Trojan Horse donned in a “green” hat.
May be... may not be
Little more... could be more
Trojan Horse... or not
Time will tell.
Here is a different link about international education efforts in math and science.
http://www.realonlinedegrees.com/education-rankings-by-country/
k-dog, I apologize for linking to Wikipedia in my first post. I forgot that you don't go there and it was a mistake, a bad mistake, for me to link to Wikipedia when other sources are available.
"But to me, it seems that rather than this being a conspiracy of the power elites to control humanity, it is the natural evolution of a meme that has risen along with the advancement of our world-shrinking technology."
For what it's worth, I think that globalism is the logical next step of 10,000 years of expansionary agricultural society (Galaxyism would be the next level, but don't get him started). But as I explained in my blog post on November 6th last year, "Why Neo-tribalism is Ultimately Inevitable in an Energy Descent Context," larger political/economic organization requires an exponential growth of energy resources to come about.
Up until peak per capita energy in 1979 that's exactly where we were headed. Following the overall peaking of global oil supply in 2006, the talk of one world order became the fancy of fools. We are still clinging to the peak plateau, but descent will begin in earnest soon, and not only will globalism be in the rearview beside space travel, but I would imagine we'll be well on our way into the first stage of balkanization.
For our part, we will be looking for our next village family in a couple of years, balkanization being a painful process I'd rather just skip altogether.
Did you read the part where I said she has had a tough week and I was letting her rest today? At the risk of losing milk production? Pretty mean guy.
Do you drive, Asoka? Do you eat soy? Why do you kill so many animals will nilly like that? At least I look my animals in the eye and take responsibility for their welfare. Cut the shit with the nobler than thou routine. It's old and wildly inaccurate. And I don't repeatedly post about your myriad fallacies either. Glaring as they may be.
Re: Round-up et al
It's the same with GMOs. They are supposed to deliver the same goods with fewer inputs, but they don't. They just make thing worse. Did you read Greer's latest article? "The Trouble With Vaporware." Pretty germane to this discussion.
Sorry about your tree. I'm thankful that this is the last year for industrial farming in the fields around our homestead. Next year they'll be under my control, and I'll let them go fallow for a couple of years before doing much of anything.
Tripp'ster is the organo-masochist!!! I love that guy; I don't even *know* him...
"Vladdie's [WhitesOnly] Funhouse". I did "have a laugh", OMG a mega laugh! Finally, a reason to enjoy living in these dire times.
No one wants to talk about how we're boiling off the atmosphere. I know, that's scary SH! It's *VERY* unfortunate that we've also pretty much clearcut the entire vegetative planet, at the same time... What happens, exactly, when you blow up a *MONSTER* balloon with super-heated CO2, and *pop*? Does it *MAGIKALLY* get absorbed into the ocean?!...
I'd give you yanks a garden report for the deep south, but it would just make you crazy. Planting corn, squash, and okra tomorrow, and I should have done it a week ago. First strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries are set (even a few figs), and a few cherry tomatoes are close to blushing.
That's all I'll say about that;)
Howdy O3, I probably won't be doin' the 'tater stacks till maybe 5/20. I still have 8-10 inchs of snow/ice on the main garden plot. still so deep because when I plow I dump all the snow there. It was maybe 8' tall back in Feb. That ground won't be thawed for another month. With all the snow we got I don't think the frost went that deep though. We'll have to play it by ear, so to speak. On another note. This blog is getting downright nasty as of late.
"At least I look my animals in the eye and take responsibility for their welfare."
This is a man after my *HEART*. Unfortunately, we continue to boil off the solid carbon into *deep space*, all the while...
We sit here and discuss/argue/pontificate - but the CO2 is still boiled off...
How long did it take for Mars to get that 10% atmosphere, consisting of *nothing* but *CO2*... We argue ourselves into our graves.
"It was the dancing When my little boy Dimitri died…and everybody was crying… Me, I got up and I danced. They said, "Zorba is mad." But it was the dancing… only the dancing that stopped the pain."
Nice post, Cash:
"When we re-localize my bet is that we re-tribalize at the same time.
So how ugly does this process get? How much ethnic cleansing comes out of this? I'm not optimistic, in the short term it will be bad."
-cash-
That's the nub of the argument that should be expressed on a website like this.
But, BUT - we're already tribalized, in these United States. The *ideal* of racially integrated public workspaces, and public spaces is deeply enough ingrained that it will not be likely to disappear anytime soon.
But most of our living is done at home, in communities that are segregated along racial lines. Even if a neighborhood is integrated by race - the individual houses are mostly segregated by race - and will be until the races miscegenate themselves out of existence in the misty future of unlimited energy.
==================
In an energy descent world, there will be an increase in tribalism. Does that mean a Balkanized US and racial warfare???
=====================
I will argue no.
First, nations/tribes/whatever - have to have defensible physical/geographical boundaries. Except for the occasional mountain range or river, the US lacks defensible borders that would facilitate racially based Nations.
Second, the US govt., with its strategic petroleum reserve and huge physical/economic/social power - and internal lines of movement, will likely be the LAST thing to collapse.
Third, most people want to live in peace. I saw it in the South of my youth. Despite the -sometimes- racial tension, almost all towns and cities had Blacks and Whites living in separate sections of the same area - and with very few problems.
=============
This does not mean energy descent will be easy or peaceful. It does not mean there will not be heartbreak, suffering, or starvation.
And the more souls in North America, without doubt, the worse it will be. (300,000,000 is already too many - 600,000,000 is insane) Support FAIR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_for_American_Immigration_Reform
And sorry about the Wiki reference, Kdog. I've been checking out FAIR and wanted to post some more info. They look OK, but I'll also contribute to something better to control population in the US - if someone on CFN can suggest a more effective organization for this purpose.
Tripp, just wondering if you believe there's intelligent life besides us (making the big assumption we are an intelligent species) in the galaxy or the universe? I ask because, if you think there is, then couldn't it be possible that those intelligent species may have overcome their own potential energy-descent limitations? Or would energy and resource limitations be a universal impediment to any sort of long-term technological advancement?
One primary reason Mars' atmosphere has dissipated is because atmospheric molecules can escape easier from Mars' smaller gravity well.
"...thus establishing that genetics is nothing and environment is all. But it just doesn't follow. The Blacks were in similar jungle environments to the Maya and mountain/jungle environments as the Inca - and did nothing at all in terms of Civilization."
-vlad - responding to Cash
Vlad, I think you are a little hung up on the concept of race. (no particular irony or humor intended, here - believe it or not, (chuckles!)) Race is an overlay - based on a short few thousand years of evolution - on the incredibly malleable human genetic pool.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Australia was empty of humans in 1850? until 20,000 white British prisoners were placed there - with no resources other than their OWN brains and brawn. (Apologies to the many CFN Aussies - it's a thought exercise, only)
What you misunderstand, Vlad - is the power of evolution AND what can happen in 5000 short years - time enough for 250 human generations.
Our 20,000 Brits would disperse and produce millions of descendants. The chances that 1850's British technology and IQ book learning would survive and thrive would be unlikely.
What is likely is that harsh sun in Australia would select the surviving generations with darker and darker skin pigmentation.
Regardless of other outcomes - the millions of British descendants/survivors - after 5000 years in Australia, would be much closer to Black in skin color, than they were to the original White.
(Maybe you could borrow olde69's time machine to take a look at these British descendents in 6,850 AD.)
Skin color is an interesting thing, Vlad.
But you try to make it a marker for every thing.
Complicated issues can be simplified too far - then they go beyond the point of usefulness, and into absurdity.
The only reason there was peace in the South of your childhood was that Whites had the upper hand. The only reason there is peace now is that the Feds do and the Blacks have been payed off at our expense. When either of those interelated factors begin to wane, so will the peace.
I like your thought experiment. Australia has very intense sun and the Whites who settled there are the fairest Whites of all (Celts). Thus they have the highest rate of skin cancer of anywhere. Without modern medicine and sun block, and living a very outdoor life - the Whites would definitely be selected for darker skin. I doubt that they would be Black in a mere five thousand years but your general principle is correct. But what you forget is that they would still be "Whites" or at least Caucasians. Some of the Caucasians of Southern India have thin noses, high cheekbones, and high noble foreheads - White Men in Dark Bodies. And they share our genetic heritage - much closer to us than to Negroes. And they have the large brain that is our heritage as well. There is much more to race than mere skin color Comrade Progress!
Oh Captain, my Captain - I hear your Truthful Bells
"Hi PoC. I decided to ignore Asoka awhile back after he insisted in deliberately misinterpreting my statements. Have you ever noticed that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, and yet wiser people express doubts?"
-CapS=
I won't be ignoring asoka, however. He makes me think, occasionally. He just posts far too frequently and derails too many good dialogs. And he's a complete and total expert on far too many topics. So I'll keep an eye on him and call him on it when he Impedes.
I will never again respond to him again directly, though. I will talk about him - but not to him, as Hancock1863 suggests. In fact you, my Captain, may receive some more information concerning what I think about asoka and his posts - perhaps later on this week or next.
Who knows the future - but this has possibilities.
asia wrote: "Are you a clone of Q?"
=================================
No.
Cheers
I forgive you for your hatred and racism. I know you are desperately struggling for social survival here after the drubbing you took the other day. This attack on me just shows your common humanity. Common to the core.
Why are you afraid to say shit, Ix? Is it a stage, something Freudian? Do you save your sh! in a drawer like Howard Hughes?
"It already started - Whites have been ethnically cleansed from a thousand cities and a hundred thousand neighborhoods and towns over the last fifty years. And for what? Now the Blacks are returning to their Homeland in the South, their work completed. Fleeing the decaying cities in some cases, being ethnically cleansed by the Mexicans in others. You haven't heard? Do you still believe that you would? How many deaths? How should I know - some surely."
The real story of what happened to Detroit....
...Or, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan... the true story of the worlds largest anti-white ethnic cleansing camp.
By Vlad Krandz
an exclusive for CFN
"Once upon a time, there was a gleaming city in the Midwest where white people made cars for white people. The city was beautiful, and prosperous, and filled with millionaires.
But what the people of the city didn't know, what they couldn't have known; was that centuries before an evil African Prince had plotted their enslavement.
The evil black prince lived deep in the jungles of Africa, and communicated with Satan through a bowl of water that worked like a television set connected to the underworld... the prince could gaze into the bowl and see hundreds of years in the future.
One night Satan reveled to the prince that there were white people, and right away the prince hated them for their freedoms, and most of all he hated them because they had jobs, jobs like cleaning hotel rooms, toilets, and even good paying assembly line jobs, they lived in little apartments, and breathed in fumes from the factory. Why the prince saw in the waters that the day would come that something named "crack" would be invented, if he didn't act right away, white people might even get in on that too. He had to act.... the evil prince hated the fancy white toilet cleaners and he asked Satan for help in coming up with a master plan to deal with the white menace.
"I have an idea" said Satan, "it will take about five hundred years, but I have an idea"...."we'll call it 'operation tar baby, by Uncle Remus' and it will wipe out the white man in about 800 million easy steps"... the evil prince listened intently as Satan told him that one day a bunch of white men would show up and try to make them work for free... the prince needed to convince his people to go along with that, to feign minimal resistance .. to become long term "sleeper cells" maybe more of a coma cell, and that they should pass his message as drumbeats and song down through the generations while they pretend to be happy about being taken to a plantation and doing free work.... because the plan would take time, hundreds of years maybe a thousand.
They played the victim very well... used it as the most effective weapon since the gelatin gun.... you see, these "Black People" pretended to be afraid of the white man... they would pretend to be dumb, and they MADE the future target (called masters) so crazy by playing dumb that some of the "FT-masters" were hoodwinked into beating them...thus offending northern white people so much that they would be fooled into slaughtering their own people, this was all part of the plan to make the white people have a civil war.
The rest is history... the black man pretended to cower in the corner shrieking "don't beats me"... and 640,000 white souls perished from the earth while the black man implemented the evil princes plan....
The evil prince is immortal, of course (which is why a certain somebody cannot produce a birth certificate) and he kept changing form through the years...(ever wonder why you never see Martin Luther King, LaToya Jackson, and Barack Obama together???)
But on to the master plan.... what Satan wanted was to have white people "enclosed in grassy compounds with high walls, that they can leave any time they want... forever hitting a little white ball in the grass with a stick whilst sipping single malt scotch."
And back to Detroit... where we see the grim result.
After the civil war the blacks secretly took control of the plantations and used them to grow drugs and became rich as a result, they then hired lobbyists who got them even richer by directing welfare money into their coffers... they then secretly bought Ford Motor company and gave themselves "jobs"... and that was their cover for moving into white neighborhoods to open the lucrative crack houses, liquor stores, pawn shops and "rows o ho's".
The white people who used to live in Detroit didn't move on to other places... oh no... it was the same kind of Genocide that you expect to see from a loony toons cartoon version of a southern belle fainting at the sight of a "Yankee"... only they died. With no white women left to reproduce, (the so called 'baby boom' was really a lie) the white men became old and were secured onto a compound called "Bloomfield Hills"... to take up golf.
In Camden, New Jersey the fallout was worse... the black people used their lobbyists in the government to force the factories to give them jobs they couldn't get fired from.... jobs in soup factories... when they got the cushy jobs they couldn't get fired from they just sat around... and ATE SOUP!..... well, between the black "workers" not working and eating soup... pretty soon Mr Campbell was dirt poor, and he had to open other plants... plants where people wouldn't gobble up all the profits!
Pretty soon he said that he just had to close the plant because it wasn't upgraded and the lazy black people got an extra bonus for closing the plant....unemployment!
But the big secret... what no one knows to this day, that I, Vlad Krandz will revel to the CFN.... is that Campbell's tomato soup.... IS WHITE PEOPLE!!!"
Robert Frost wrote a poem about that. After the death of his son, his wife caught him whistling and saw him smiling to himself. She was outraged. I can't remember the exact words so I can do it justice - something to the effect that every person handles grief in their own way and let no one judge another's strategy.
asia wrote: "'went Nuts'?
NO! what happened is"
--------------------------
asia, a couple of comments.
You are replying to a comment from a contributor to this forum other than I.
My take on the reasons for what happened in Yugoslavia is at first glance different than your view. Given enough discussion, we might arrive at a view of events that both of us could agree on.
I have, however, spent too much fruitless time in such discussions with other internet entities. So, anymore, it usually isn't worth my time, especially when a topic is emotional and shouting is common.
Cheers
Thank you - exactly. Whites don't exist, and therefore can't be persecuted. And if somehow, somewhere they seem to exist - well in good Red Queen Style they have to be made to stop doing what they're not doing. You and your ilk are the cream of the Red Queen's milk.
Nancy Pelosi on the Health Care Bill: "You have to pass it to know what's in it" -a fine "young" Red Queen who will ripen yet even as Whites ripen unto their destruction. She has such lovely children like Suburban Empire of whom she would be very proud.
What can I do - I'm a mongrel speaking mongrel in a mongrelized Tower of Babble world. The Tower's gonna fall Monty - watch out.
Also I have to throw in a bit of pidgin German - my audience expects it. You know the crowd - hating me gives their life meaning. Such is the emptyness of the liberal soul. the anti-fa's are post modern fascists * the weird grammar just hides their german jack Boot rigidity * the small caps just a conceit to hide even from themselves - their MASSIVE EGOTISM.
Oh yes! Not only do they now have nothing to do with Communism, they were in fact, victims of Communism. And in the last twenty years, they have become the main victims of Communism. Marlin: like me you are a man of the small presses. Wherever you got "Gruesome Harvest" get Jack Bernstein's "In Racist, Marxist Israel".
Ally? We know what they get, but what do we get out of the "alliance" Campaign Contributions don't count btw. As a military man, you must know about their attack on the U.S Liberty and their other attempts to get us into war with Egypt.
The Jews you meet may be mild mannered guys like Bill. But as I proved they will always support the fanatics with the superiority complex - one enshrined in their religion. Now the question: which group will dominate? The Liberal Israelis are like us - no kids. The ultra-Orthodox, settler types have huge families. The future of Israel belongs to them. And they are by all accounts an incredibly unpleasant lot - even to other Jews (they don't consider them Jewish, yet the liberals will always support them against us). The paradox: they learned Unity when they fought each other in Jerusalem even as the Romans beseiged the city. As they said, it was mindless hatred. Ever since they have tended towards a united front. In this is power, but it always leads to exploitation of other peoples which they can't criticize.
I've never met a Marlin but I remember Marlin Perkin in Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
"My take on the reasons for what happened in Yugoslavia is at first glance different than your view. Given enough discussion, we might arrive at a view of events that both of us could agree on."
I watched a documentary last week called "Worse Than War" by Daniel Goldhagen. He has studied genocide for years. In his documentary he explained the Serbs were split into two groups separated by a river valley densely populated by Muslims.
A strong man is characteristically behind a genocide and in this case that man was Slovidan Milocivich. Milocivich decided that he would use ethnic cleansing to unite the Serbs and set about stirring old feelings of hatred and distrust between the Muslims and Serbs.
He believed that he would be able to get by with it and nobody would stop him. There is no international body effective in stopping genocide.
Milocivich was totally evil but it is a mistake to think him crazy. The idea that the world would look the other way and ignore his actions has a lot of historical precedent.
The film made the point that the UN is horrible in stopping genocide as their mission is to preserve sovereignty.
Qaddafi is considered to be a class clown and is an exception to this rule. Like an errant student he has been suspended.
A Strange Taboo..
I wonder why no one ever talks about WORK - LABOR ? Exactly what work or labor do you think will be available in the future for millions of idle people in the world ? Exactly what need is there for millions of people working 8 hours a day for a salary at least sufficient to live ? Can you imagine a sequence of physical manipulations (as in a factory or farm ?) or a sequence of information manipulations (as in the "advanced" service - information economy ?) that must be performed for 8 hours a day and that is worth a living salary ? And those activities should be in some way all different and available for tens of millions of idle people worldwide ? Like all those unemployed in China, India, Africa (that are starting to become frustrated, since they got no WORK and no HOUSE) ?
The truth is the present Technological Economy along with its capitalist, free market, "meritocracy" BS is completely set on eliminating as much labor or work as possible, be it white collar or blue collar. And why shouldn't they ? Who wants to give a salary to a person for an activity of 8 hours a day ? If I can find a way, any possible way to not give that salary, I will, this is after all the religion of free enterprise, of competition, of the strongest and smartest winning. So how on earth can this system have anything to do with the "creation of jobs" if its one and only goal is the elimination of as much work as possible through optimizations, computers, robots, automation, third world slave labor, you name it.
The funny thing is, this Technological Economy needs to, wants, and will very efficiently eliminate as much work as possible no matter what, and in the meanwhile keep on chanting the mantra that we need more education, research, technology: the very items that are helping to kill as much work as possible.
But no one talks about this, it is a big TABOO, because then everyone would have to start taking a good look at their own work environment and start seeing how much work can really be eliminated, how fragile their own situation is, how fake and not needed so much work really is. And they would start to read the handwriting on the all: work is no longer needed, will become obsolete, get over it.
We, therefore need a new system of relationships, FREE SALARIES and CHEAP RENTS along with especially huge public - private programs hiring millions for huge ambitious projects like Rockets to Mars, high speed trains, Skyscrapers, etc.
I love psychology, and having worked successfully at creative director level for over a decade or so, twas my role to get to work the buttons that make peeps tick. So psychological projection gives great clues to poster‘s inner psyche’s...
*sniggers*
‘Are you young and pretty, or are you an old piece of crap?’
‘You know the crowd - hating me gives their life meaning.’
(To quote from but two)
The men I like to 'game' with personally, are usually well-mannered, erudite, cock-sure, comfortable in there own skins and enlightened beings. Preferably ones too that have ‘made’ it, so have nothing machiavellian lurking at the deep-core ego level or reptilian still to prove...
Sailor’s most of them now are for sure, the sea being one of the ultimate non-bulls#t environments, and negotiating a 20m+ wave storm... a cool nerve under pressure, steady hand on the wheel and fully honed seamanship senses are what you defo need for a best shot to make it through...
And being boat savvy too, means they’re usually men naturally very hands-on, great grin sense of humour clad and critically innovative – if something breaks – and you’re missing the right parts for repair, they’ll rig a temporary fix that works brilliantly well...
(These are skills set’s and states of adult male minds I seek out, respect and admire)
Guys - whom I have to fess up to - remind me somewhat of my own beloved Pa, a chap happiest tinkering/lurking down in his basement workshop/tool store making/creating cool stuff. But by weekday he was an uber-level, multilingual suit wearing bus’ CEO making/selling/marketing science tech internationally.
I think it no coincidence either, that Uncle Dmitry is a tell it like it is boat-based-bod too!
And one of the reason I hang around Mr Kunstler’s blog here is that there are defo some smart posting blokes here, so I can regularly glean keen thought through stuff quickly, and new knowledge I’m always eternally grateful for...
And I never tire of Jim’s thought process either, catch some good current thinking here my fellow CFN shipmates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5ZRbuOm8GM&
(And y’all have an absolutely spiffing weekend... eh?)
Oh, and a final link of the week for Vlad, twould seem Oregon based stupid white folk are doing a very good job it seems at fast self-destructing at the mo, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthpicturegalleries/8345461/From-Drugs-to-Mugs-Shocking-before-and-after-images-show-the-cost-of-drug-addiction.html
And some of em by chronological definition could be termed quite ‘young’ still, wouldn’t they? But they sure ain’t pretty...
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
Right Wing Thug says:
[quote="turtle"]Good topic.
Very serious problem.
Global population right now is out of control.
Maybe even more significant than climate changes.[/quote]
I answer:
I already explained many times that this kind of thinking is Right Wing Thug thinking by saying there are not enough resources available, check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174513
http://212.13.195.254/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=171623
and many other dealing with the Resource Scarcity Myths of the Right Wing.
The problem is never population or resources, it is purely intentional, purely power related, power struggle of rich beating up poor, the problem is that of a system that can give everything to many billions more people, but intentionally chooses to create fake scarcities as to get poor people fighting each other.
I will fantasize that you are really hot and have all the right qualities, etc. That you are my dream come true, but that I can't get you ever no matter what, that I have and will always have zero chance because I have none of the qualities and many others you desire.
Good, now I will get very frustrated as usual, try to rationalize this other lost chess game with life, and search forever around for some possible, very remote possibility that I will ever again be able to ease my mind that is constantly, for years now, playing this insane chess game, mathematical problems like game with philosophy, reality, the universe, and the laws of physics...
Life is a game of chess against god, you may win some hands, but in the end you can never win the game...
Old, Excellent post.
Whenever you hear the words "efficiency" or lean and mean operation, you know it's about the bean counter trying to cut the fat. Get people to work more than one job in their 8 hr day, etc. When Labor is seen as a deficit because the CEO must be a billionaire, you know where this game is heading.
Small competitive companies with some redundancies is how a population is employed. The other Verboten words are Milton Friedman, Chicago school of business and the philosophy behind the "Think tanks".
The other day, Chris Matthews played stupid once again asking does anyone know what philosophy is behind their thinking? As if he didn't know. Of course I emailed him, since he was asking and told him the facts of life.
--------
Yesterday it was revealed on MSNBC that the Koch brother's dad, Fred you know the guy that started the John Birch society? Worked on energy installations for Stalin!!!
from article:
[1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.]
Ha! Basically what I've been saying all along about this ism---It's reconstituted Communism. You can smell this system from a mile away. How ong do you think it will take the tea partiers to figure out that their platform has been taken over by these guys and their interests only?
see:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tea_party_financiers_owe_their_fortune_to_joseph_stalin_20100418/
I personally think intelligent civilizations come and go around the universe with some regularity. The reason I think we don't hear from them is that we may be unique in the fact that we invented the radio before the atom bomb. Complex civilations tend to be their own undoing from what I can tell. Just look around.
More from the front of Disaster Capitalism.
Anyone catch the Larry Kudlow CNBC comment about Japan? This is truly disgusting, but how telling..
Kudlow, btw converted from Judaism to Catholicism, but he still sure hasn't found god--except in the form of monetary wealth!
His quote concerning the Japan disasters: On "The Call' on Friday, Kudlow said the following, "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."
He meant every word of it no matter how he protests. This is the ism at work. If he could have created the tsunami he would have.
Thank you for the lack of garden reportage! (Although I'm happy for others' success, it sometimes makes me want to jump too soon. Jump, froggie, jump! ;o)
Besides, if I want to indulge in a bit of masochism, I can always look to the pictures on your blog. I really like the "helicopter shots" from the roof, BTW.
I'll have to be content with tending veggie sprouts indoors for now. That's where our asparagus came from (seed), so it does have its' long-term rewards.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
Right Wing Thug says:
"so are you saying there is no population problem."
I answer:
No, absolutely, THERE IS AND HAS NEVER BEEN A POPULATION PROBLEM. There has been this huge brainwashing that has been done to most people worldwide because it is so easy to imagine this fake linearity of more people meaning "less for me", more people meaning "things will run out". Never has there been a greater lie. Aside form the fact that there is no population explosion, the exact opposite has been happening for decades, population growth is very rapidly declining, we will not even reach a puny 15 billion by 2050, so go figure.
There has never been more resources available, more knowledge, more technology, more possible solutions to every possible problem you can imagine, read all my posts. We can easily host trillions of people in skyscrapers, can create all the food we need by genetic engineering, can mine the solar system, we can do everything.
And that is the problem: people for ages have been used to scarcities and limitations, but now that they have been completely eliminated by the application of Science and Technology to all productive endeavors creating an essentially Infinite Resource Society, we can't believe it, we can't accept it, we can't wrap our heads around all the possibilites that are available, so we go back to the resource scarcity myths, the peak oil myths (just skyscrapers could easily solve any energy problems by living, working and shopping in buildings where virtually no transportation, therefore gasoline is needed), the environmentalists long for the stone ages.
All these ideas are Right Wing, reactionary, conservative ideas that want to stop progress and go back to the past.
Millions of people are also very infactuated with imagined linearities that are no longer operating, like more work means more wealth, or "hard work" means more product, or more people will kill "the health care system", more people will mean "not enough food", etc. Nothing further from the truth, these are all simple linearities that people imagine, simple imagined causes and effects that do a great job of transfering wealth and power to the rich and capitalists while the poor have to fight an imaginary, fake, but imposed resource scarcity myth.
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174147
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174178
Wanted to say:
Just skyscrapers could easily solve any energy problems by living, working and shopping in buildings where virtually no transportation, therefore NO gasoline is needed...
Re: the carbon emigration
I have never heard this line of logic before, and don't have any thoughts formulated just yet, but it's obviously an important topic if what you're saying is accurate. I'll have to get back to you on it. To date, my assumption has been that the atmosphere is loaded with excess carbon (supported by the data that show CO2 levels rising steadily over the past century or two) and that we should be focused on moving it back into the soil where we could seriously use it.
Vegetarians/vegans:
Before I go plant sweet corn, popcorn, squash, okra, peanuts, carrots, quinoa, and bush beans;) I just wanted to toss out a thought to chew on today.
Vegetarianism, and veganism in particular, are completely underwritten by the fossil fuel subsidy. In a food system relying solely on Earth's background energies, animals would be a necessary fertility cycling component of your garden/farm. Asoka gets upset with me for milking a cow, not killing her, just milking her, and scoring a point for keeping her in her paddock, but at the same time that cow is turning solar energy and atmospheric carbon into soil humus (see last post). Which I consider to be the most important task of our age.
Without animal manures, food can only be grown with fossil fuel-based fertilizers. So remind me who is the real problem here?
Be back later to see what your thoughts are.
gardening "...it does have its' long-term rewards."
-ozone-
Indeed, O3. Heavy frost last night in the mountains, so my 'maters, corn, and squash will have to wait for a while.
I've got this great new patch of sunshine from our tree toppings this winter. So I'll be doing a couple of more raised beds, another fruit tree, and a few more blueberries and grapes.
I got carried away yesterday at the store and bought a $1.00 pack of every type of perennial herb seed they had on the rack. I'm planning to sow some of each out in a new raised bed and let them fight it out for survival all summer.
Some of CFN are fixated on the red/yellow/black/white human fight so much that they worsen the negative effects of too many Americans of all types.
I'll try to live my aggression vicariously this summer, through my fighting herbs.
And save cool and calm logic for the real fight.
RT,
Interesting you should mention the snow-pack as insulator.
I didn't quite get enough leaf mulch [about a foot and a half] on the parsnips before the serious snow set in. (Thought it would be counter-productive to mulch OVER the frozen snow; like packing ice in sawdust.)
The upshot is: in that raised bed [with our huge snow-pack] only the top 3" is hard frozen! That's how I got some parsnips out last week. Just got the point of the shovel through one small spot, and pried up a 2 ft. slab of soil. Man, those suckers are good after concentrating sugars all winter! Only yanked about 5 lb's and covered it again.
Here's my plan (jump, Froggie, jump!) for tire 'taters. Seeing as how the color and material is conducive to extra warmth, I'm gonna try filling the ground level tire about 3/4 full in the 2nd week of April, and see if it thaws the ground beneath, or insulates it FROM the sun. Here's hoping for some decent sun this year for my tiny experiment, and for everybody's thawing bones after a looooong winter. :o)
"Just skyscrapers could easily solve any energy problems by living, working and shopping in buildings where virtually no transportation..."
-old69-
Old, a serious thanks for writing a post short enough that I could read the whole thing without starting to fastscroll!!
And you make a good point about your skyscrapers. That idea would actually work, if somebody could figure out all the logistics of energy, food, water, and waste flows into and out of those huge, high buildings.
Some parts of some cities could now be considered *horizontal* skyscrapers - where your ideas are being tested, today.
For myself, I'll hope to stay out in the countryside, maintaining some of the diversity of the auld ways - just in case - you know.
And Speaking of Odd Ruminations....
Hey Uncle Remus, is the Empire jumping out of the briar patch and into the Tar, Baby?
Well we're already stuck in two fronts in our war on "terrorism" better defined as how to rearrange the world in the zero sum game for transnational corporations and natural resources. Just a step in the direction of David Rockefeller's famous quote in the globalism paradigm. Natural resources should be decoupled from their Nation states. (Gee on that note, can't wait to see which transnationals will start rebuilding our infrastructure. What subsidized foreign entities will we be paying tolls too, I wonder.) but I digress...
Of course we couldn't pass up another opportunity to get stuck once again--in a new front and with what (play) money are we funding this next boondoggle?
So as not to get the American people hysterical over more expenditures we have to borrow against our runaway train of deficits, they'll tell you they want other international actors like NATO and the Arab League to take up the leadership, but really, who's got all the assets?
Talk is cheap...that's about the only thing that is around here. The alliance has fractures in it already and as usual when you get war by group, they don't want to get Gadaffi. So you leave the beast in place--one with a real terrorism record, so what you have to go back an fight another day?
Just goes to show that no matter how they want to paint globalism as the great new world cooperative order--it really doesn't work in reality. But we'll just keep trumping this idea up. We've destroyed our own internal economy for it after all and there's no turning back.
Must be that old trick of using the tar baby to lure Bre'r Rabbit. Unsuccessful in Remus' world as Br'er is too smart to be tricked--not so much with us.
Now we have a new terminology for this:
No Fly Plus!
Wonder what PR firm is working on that logo?
he gets "....upset with me for milking a cow, not killing her, just milking her, and scoring a point for keeping her in her paddock..."
-tripp-
Good points, tripp. I had not thought about the necessary chemical fertilizers for veganism - but you are 100% correct.
More broadly, veganism is another of those things made possible by abundant energies - and especially by the global food economy and imports of food into the US.
My forebears in middle south Georgia - for whom eating local was mandatory - sowed turnips in the fall - JUST so they would have something green to eat all winter. Other than that, eating local meant pork, a little beef, and whatever farm produce they had managed to can or dry during the previous summer.
I was surprised that I'm far enough into the N Georgia mountains that my turnips stopped growing and almost died this winter. And O3 and Marlin are far enough north that NOTHING is gonna grow fresh for another month or two, sounds like.
Interesting, eh?
"I got carried away yesterday at the store and bought a $1.00 pack of every type of perennial herb seed they had on the rack. I'm planning to sow some of each out in a new raised bed and let them fight it out for survival all summer." -PoC
Sounds like a fun experiment!
As someone (Ixnei?) upthread had posted, their herb-plantings had vastly improved the ratio of insect pests to vegetable matter.
Hmmmm, more readin' to do...
On mammalian "pests". I BELIEVE [don't KNOW] that the dog, cat, and human pee cast around the garden beds may be beneficial in warding off deer, turkeys, etc.
Right Wing Thug says:
"too many babies. i dont want to pay for babies that
someboy else has. big problem in my state.
what is your solution."
I answer:
1) Cheap Rents, government built homes / homes are abundant anyways.
2) Huge public - private projects hiring millions for Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, etc.
There are not too many babies, look carefully at the numbers and don't be fooled. US population growth is way down compared to many other places. Don't believe the myth that people have too many babies, it didn't happen and won't.
What state anyways ? Most US states are practically empty compared to many other places worldwide.
There is enough for everyone.
Right Wing Thug says:
"we have gangs of young boys that are not working in my county. we dont have money to start a program.
what do you suggest for my county.
this is part of the world."
I answer:
The Federal Reserve prints trillions of fake dollars a gifts it to the rich, banks, capitalists with all kinds of abstract and fake excuses. Well Obama and the federal government should just take a few trillions of those dollars a start health public - private programs employing them all in ambitious programs like Rockets to Mars, High Speed Trains, Skyscrapers, etc.
Will obama do it ? does anyone think it should be done ? I doubt it, people have been way too brainwashed by all kinds of imaginary interdictions... But that is what should be done immediately.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
Right Wing Thug says:
"are you recommending a federal program for my county.
where will the real money come from.
should we go into debt for this program."
I answer:
There is no difference between real and fake money. Money is just a place holder. Beware, the entity of unemployment in the US and most of the world is now so high, that only huge public, government run programs can do anything.
So they start hiring these kids, start them in factories, start as many programs as possible, start right away, this will slowly help kick in the natural consumer economy of a place, things would improve, but people can't see that this is the only solution.
Nice post, Lbend -
A quick response and then I have got to RIP myself off this computer and get back out into the cold Spring sunshine for the rest of the day.
on globalism "But we'll just keep trumping this idea up. We've destroyed our own internal economy for it after all and there's no turning back."
-lbend-
Yeah, no doubt. And to look at it from another angle, think about this. Sometime between 5 Friedman units and 5 decades from now - our US will likely be as weak as Libya.
And I mean the US will be weak in comparison to China. So, I keep picturing a fleet of Chinese aircraft carriers off the coast of California. Which warring faction in the US would the Chinese back - and which would they bomb.
Would they be logical and try to split the US at the Continental Divide. Or would they take the BushII approach and form a split in the US along religious and racial lines. sarcasm alert - I can picture the Chinese backing the Southern Baptists against the muslim/atheist coalition. It would be great!! -
No, the Chinese will be logical.
And probably ruthless.
I'm done 'till tonight.
"That idea would actually work, if somebody could figure out all the logistics of energy, food, water, and waste flows into and out of those huge, high buildings."
Inputs and outputs? Fuck that, just genetically modify humans to not need to take a crap anymore.
Hehe, hehe, hey Butthead, watch what these liberals do when I call them right-wing thugs. It's like magnifying sunlight on ants.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
[quote]Whoa? This sounds a little crazy. I work 10 hours a day on average. No I am not constantly performing tasks for 10 straight hours, but some people (out on the product lines) practically are. I am in the office though so its a bit different of course and I while I do put in 10 straight hours of continuous reports or whatever, I am here on duty when needed when the situation arises which can arise at any minute and I am paid to be here. How do you think this isn't the case for most companies?[/quote]
I answer:
You know the details of all those reports, maybe they are not all needed. Of course the reason that you and the production people may need to work 10, 14 or even 20 hour days is exactly because hundreds of thousands are excluded from the labor process. This is done intentionally, to give the impression that there is all of this huge "hard work" needed so as to justify the capitalist, free enterprise system of slashing costs and making fewer and fewer people do more and more work.
I have analyzed this in some other posts, I have written a lot of them here and in kunstler.
But I know, I am pushing on a string because:
1) You can't solve all problems, everywhere for all people and for all time: in a sense there can never be a global solution, there must be a lot of different solutions to a lot of different specific situations. Each specific situation can always contradict any possible global solution, but this is done intentionally, to atomize work and society, divide and conquer the weak.
2) If everyone has been programmed and brainwashed worldwide in the last 100 years, that this is the only possible way to organize society, creating super workaholics, high unemployment, profits growing ever higher for fewer employers, that this is a metaphysical law, the we have all of these (imaginary) debts, that most people's minds cannot see any other possibility, well then so it be. There is not a chance in hell that anything will ever improve, it has been so deeply hardwired in everyone's mind that it is useless even discussing it.
"Would [the Chinese] be logical and try to split the US at the Continental Divide. Or would they take the BushII approach and form a split in the US along religious and racial lines. sarcasm alert - I can picture the Chinese backing the Southern Baptists against the muslim/atheist coalition. It would be great!! - PoC
Ha! I'm not so convinced that the Chinese need venture far from homey territory to have huge influence. Bribery is less messy [and more effective, IMHO], and their apparent preferred MO; it also has the side benefit of future blackmail opportunities. I'd say they'll have plenty to worry about in-country as well.
(We've got to stop thinking of their leadership as being as profoundly stupid as ours; it gets in the way of clarity.)
If they DID have to venture "out" (because of bio-cide, ect.), I think they'd take a tip from our secret warriors and arm ALL "sides", to ultimately weaken all factions that weren't into going along to get along. Then... swat the flies.
Why anyone would think free-thinking, MYOB atheists could be gathered into a bloc of commonality, is a bit beyond me; but let's just "suppose". ;o)
Atheists might be pragmatic, but I have doubts they'd make a "deal" with Space Ghost worshipers, especially those of the fundamentalist stripe. (To perhaps be [ultimately] RULED by these very death-cult idiots would pretty much be anathema!) ;o)
"Well we're already stuck in two fronts in our war on "terrorism" better defined as how to rearrange the world in the zero sum game for transnational corporations and natural resources." -LB
Niiiiiiice! Never seen it put so succinctly. Well done; put that one in the dictionary, under "GWOT".
(Yikes, snowing again... just a "sun flurry".)
Wow, K-dog, I'm truly surprised that you would fall for the "humanitarian" argument. Others, yes, but you seem more educated.
I have suggested Michael Mandel's "How America Gets Away With Murder" before. He is a Canadian law professor (Cash would not like him) who shows how the "humanitarian" excuse for breaking international law and destroying national sovereignty leads to a lawless world, controlled by the most powerful militaries, not the rule of law.
For a shorter explanation of why the US attacked Yugoslavia, try Michael Parenti.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html
We are seeing the same people in power now, using the same excuses, with the same results- backing and arming a group of "rebels", provoking state repression, then using the ensuing deaths as an excuse to release massive air bombardments, causing MUCH more death and destruction, ignored by the corporate media, and justified by the ruling elite.
But to fall for it-!!!!
I'm surprised.
The essay I linked to was apparently written in 1999.
Now we see what has happened in Yugoslavia - a massive US base (Camp Bondsteel, built on land stolen from local farmers), drug running and sex trading, poverty and misery.
Humanitarian? I think not.
From the essay, a prediction, now borne out. Remember that Yugoslavia, like Iraq, is experiencing birth defects and cancers from the depleted uranium bombs dropped onto them. Libya will now experience the same.
"We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO’s aggression. Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.35
National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world's richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years.36 It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead.
With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to “demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure” of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation."
CFNers;
Census is releasing data from 2010 census, announcing 50 million Hispanics here now, 18% of population, still growing by leaps and bounds.
The cable networks seem pretty happy at this turn of events. I'm surmising that they have investigated village life in in Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Guatemala etc. and compared it to town life in, say, Vermont or W. Mass. and found town life in US sorely lacking. Recreating Mexico or PRico North, and eliminating 'Anglo Culture' in the US is a necessary development in mankinds destiny. That's their conclusion and maybe why they're so gleeful.
Question, does any body here see the potential in the US for a battle of hegemony in the future between Spanish speaking Americans and English speaking Americans? How about in the near future when Whitey becomes the minority in the US?
My wife is a Spaniard and her relatives frequently visit here from San Sebastian and Bilbao, so Spanish is the language you here in the Marlin house most of the time.
As an aside, when these relatives visit, they are very worried about overstaying their visas, (3 months), which would disallow them from coming back into the country. I find this pretty funny considering the 20 million illegals here who could care less about Visas, the law, or any other Yankee bullshit.
Big trouble today in Syria, and the Reactors in Japan is a story that just won't quit. But the Dow is up nevertheless, maybe based upon all the good news out there.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Marlin,
The Market is based on disaster capitalism. (read Shock Doctrine) A few days ago I posted a very frightening discription of MOX. A mixture of spent fuel rods of uranium and plutonium sent to Japan from GB and France. They were being stored in Unit 3 reactor which they have discovered as a breach. The news couldn't be better for this business paradigm. That's what is also so very frightening about this pernicious form of Capitalism.
Thanks, progressorconserve and Ozone for your comments.
Wage, you're making some great points about the "humanitarian" war. We once were humanitarian, but not since the Marshall plan. We are Milton Friedman, now.
Hi Wage, maybe you're right I wouldn't like him.
I would venture that Parenti's never had the displeasure of fighting Yugoslavs. My Italian uncle (by marriage) spent years during WW2 in Yugoslavia fighting them alonside German units.
In the 1970s we were having a conversation about the sorry state of Italian politics because of corruption, gangsterism etc. My uncle's comment (having direct experience of their ferocity and fearlessness) was to bring into Italy 3,000 Yugoslav troops to clean things up. He had a very high respect for the Yugoslav ability to use arms.
It's always the Americans, the Americans, the Americans. I would submit that the crack up in Yugoslavia in the 1990s was because of age old Balkan rivalries that had/have pretty much nothing to do with the Americans or American machinations, that the Serbs, Croats, Albanians etc made their own beds.
Ethnic nationalism in the Balkans didn't originate with the US, its pedigree goes far back when the US was populated by gap toothed farmers busily encroaching Indian lands and fighting their own civil war.
You might also recall that the Turks ruled the area since before the USA was a gleam in George Washington's eye. If you want to blame the mess in the Balkans on an imperial power you might start with Ottoman Turkey as well as European powers (ie the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Italy, Germany) that were busy schmucking around in the area.
My recounting of my uncle's comment was to illustrate the fact that the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians etc were and are really tough people more than capable of creating mayhem. You might recall that they expelled Axis forces in WW2 on their own with limited support from the Allies.
Many Americans have axes to grind about their own country for reasons best known to themselves so we have them claiming that the evil Americans were behind this or that or the other event never suspecting that world events have a life and origin that has bugger all to do with the US.
I've said previously that it's an American conceit, that behind it is chest puffing American pride. That's fine, Wage you should be proud of your country, you have admirable and magnificent accomplishments. I admire the US immensely, I thank my lucky stars that you're our neighbour. But Wage, you grossly over-estimate your country's power.
Why did the the US and others bomb the Serbs? Who knows, maybe for their own interests and maybe it was for the sake of stopping the fighting and killing that seemed to keep going and going and going. In any case the fighting stopped.
Here's a link from a govt of Canada website on the Responsibility to Protect, a concept developed in response to the deliberate targeting of civilians in Kosovo, Srebernica and Rwanda. BTW this R2P was in large part a Canuck initiative.
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/glynberry/protect-resp-proteger.aspx?lang=eng
Montsegur, I'd be interested in hearing your own take on this.
I did not fall for any 'humanitarian' argument. The Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred in the (1992-1995) time period.
US and NATO force brought Slobodan Milosevic out of 'humanitarian' concern for Albanians in Kosovo in (1999).
If US foreign policy were based on 'humanitarian' concerns intervention would have happened seven years earlier on behalf of Bosnia-Herzegovina before the Kosovo situation.
Had the Kosovo situation never occurred Milosevic and Obama might be having tea in Belgrade right now.
I would have to go back and see if I jumped into a conversation inappropriately talking about Bosnia-Herzegovina when the subject mater was actually Kosovo.
There have been so many genocides it's hard to keep them straight. The worlds police force (US) would have done something about them had they real 'humanitarian' concerns.
Instead they were too busy eating donuts.
Your uncle was fighting with the Germans and their allies, the Croats, most likely, Cash, against the Serbs, who were massacred in WW11.
If you read the link I provided, you would know that the US in the 90s allied with ACTUAL Nazi allies (still alive), and then had the chutzpah to call Milosevich the "new Hitler".
US propaganda always calls the targeted leaders "Hitlers", but the outrageousness of allying with ACTUAL Nazi collaborators, and then projecting the Hitler name onto ACTUAL victims of the real Hitler is mind bogglingly brazen.
I would recommend that you read "How America Gets Away with Murder".
The responsibility to protect statement is clearly ridiculous and self-serving.
What about the million dead Iraqis? The unknown number of dead Afghans? The dead Pakistanis? The dead Congolese?
If no one can protect the civilian victims of US imperialism, then the "responsibility to protect" cannot be taken seriously.
It's like the "international community", trotted out by Clinton, as justification for the attack on Libya.
The international community is never the 185 countries of the planet.
It's always the US, usually Israel and England, depending on the target, and whatever other countries have interests in the target, or can be bribed to go along with the slaughter.
Vlad, "I never met a Marlin, but I remember Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom ..."
That's Marlin as in Marlin Rifles, best lever guns ever made, even better than Winchester. Being a westerner, Vlad, you must have run across a Marlin 336 or 1895 a time or two out on that range or in the mountains.
That reminds me, weather is warming up and will begin weekly trips soon to the range, practicing with my Marlin. Nothing more fun than that!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
"Management does not conspire to give the impression that there are long hours needed so they can hire fewer people so they can raise the unemployment rate or justify the capitalist system, how does that even justify anything? It really does make economical sense for the company. "
Another sophisticated masterpiece of the dominating capitalistic - free market economy ideology: the real intentionalities behind the economy are always hidden, invisible, no one can ever pinpoint them down, they are always automatic processes, the market, competition, etc. Everything is seen to be as natural as the laws of physics, no one ever notices them, let alone challenges them. If you try to challenge them they are conspiracy theories.
These real intentionalities are like a hidden layer of reality, like the matrix, but implanted in the minds of millions in the form of hardwired neural circuits. But the reason things are the way they are is because someone decides to make them that way, some will power decides that that is the way they are supposed to be, even though you can never find where or who this will power and intentionality is: and in fact it is in the brainwashed minds of millions of people who believe all this competition - productivity - profit crap.
And the employers are always logical, good guys, hard working guys doing "their best" to keep jobs.
The truth is if the jobs are not there, the government or even private entities should create them directly, but this is seen as some kind of sin.
Another thing that is interesting is that while the free market economists keep on using very global - generalized categories to describe the world, to force the world to abide to them, like competition, productivity, profit, innovation, as soon as the left wing wants to counter their global concepts with opposing global concepts like free slaaries and cheap rents, (or even the 35 hour work week) the left is accused of not considering all the specifics, of not being flexible, of not considering all the particular conditions on the floor.
So any attempt at explaining things globally by the left is communism or is something that can't work, but all the global explanations of the right and free market morons are always correct and natural.
I say we need all kinds of systems then, no one can generalize one size fits all, if the jobs are not there, create them, get a space program going, etc.
Check out hidden layers:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?t=142325
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=152219
Alexandra, are you still there ? So what's the deal, are you going to give in ?
By the way, I am not "COCK-SURE", but I have my own theory on sex too: most people are Impotent or Frigid but don't say so: but this is because the 2 concepts are imaginary - fake concepts, not present in nature. Normally 2 people like each other, get it going, sometimes really well, sometimes only barely once, sometimes a million times, there are no rules or patterns, or repetitve experiences, only events. But there is some kind of imaginary model people should follow, but this is impossible. I could go on, but my little personal puny war on Capitalism is already taxing me enough.
Anyways miss pretty, are you giving in because if you are not, I do not want to be disrespectful now, but you can blow me and sue me then. See, I said it, I can communicate too.
Today is a sad anniversary:
100 years ago a fire in a Triangle factory in New York killed 146 people. It happened on Saturday. It was a “short” 10 hours. workday. It was the beginning of unionized labor (that factory was the last non-union shop).
Now clock goes back.
What will burn next?
Probably union headquarters!
"Good points, tripp. I had not thought about the necessary chemical fertilizers for veganism - but you are 100% correct."
============
Vegetables grew on the surface of the earth before the oil age. Petroleum inputs are not required for a vegan diet.
A vegan diet does not have to include tofu. Soybean inputs are not required.
Animal manure can be collected. Caging, milking, or exploiting animals in any way is not required.
In terms of energy inputs, comparing the EROEI of animal husbandry versus horticulture, I'm pretty sure the vegan diet is going to win the argument.
Asoka said: "Animal manure can be collected."
=========
I consider human beings to be animals. With a vegan diet human waste is also fertilizer.
http://humanurehandbook.com/
Several years ago I shared this reference on CFN to the book, HUMANURE.
I can't seem to help myself, they just pop into my
head and need a way out:
To the tune of "Leader of the Pack", Shangri-Las;
I met him at
The skinhead store,
He was starting
A racial war,
That's when I fell
For, the leader
Of the pack...
Does anyone remember back during the
presidential campaign when Jesse Jackson,
thinking he was off camera, said of Obama,
"I'd like to cut his nuts off"? Why did he say that? Jealousy I guess?
I know that there are alot of tomato and potato people here, but I just can't dig it! The only garden I ever knew of was Ben E. King's in Spanish Harlem!
The US, while claiming to be protecting civilians, has dropped depleted uranium bombs on Libya, as they did on Yugoslavia and Iraq.
This is a war crime. This is a crime not just against current civilians, but against generations to come.
Where is the Committee To Protect now? Why is Obama not being indicted by the International Criminal Court?
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2321/27/
Hmmm. I'm not sure I follow you re the radio before the atomic bomb. Care to explain? And do you think an advanced technological civilization must be hyper-complex?
They follow Nature's Law: expand and take possesion of as much as you can. The motto of La Raza (The Race): For our Race everything, outside our Race nothing. And the Leftists and "Conservatives" prattle on and on about Nazism while a Non-White Nazism takes our Continent. Ditto in Europe with the Muslims.
Consider: first they claimed the Southwest - which I grant was once technically their's even though very underpopulated. Then they called us "colonists" and told us to go back to the 13 original colonies. Then they told us to go back to Europe - all in about the space of ten years or so. They will fill North America from the Pacific to the Atlantic and the Gulf to the Pole unless stopped. What is to stop them? They expand not only by their hard work, but because we are subsidizing them to have lots of kids. We are becoming a race of de facto slaves.
What Whites can't get: the nice ones support the radicals - who support violence. Whites just can't understand people who are in a really different consciousness. It never fails: the more a liberal prides himself on understanding other races, the less he really does understand. Assuming that others are just like yourself is not the same as trying to understand them - as really looking and listening. Conservatives do it too. And people who indulge in this obviously have zero appreciation of their own People - who become the bad guys in the story when they stand up for their rights.
But doesn't it seem that problems with atmospheric carbon and with soil depletion are ultimately the result of overpopulation and technological/industrial development? And if animal manures are absolutely necessary for petroleum-free agriculture/permaculture, wouldn't a much lower-populated world allow for animal domestication solely for fertilizer purposes?
As a vegan and a laisse-faire type guy, I personally don't have any qualms about others keeping animals for food. If you are correct, then I blame short-sighted humans for our environmental problems, not me, and so I feel perfectly ok with using up my share of the remaining petrochemical supply. Also, born, raised and living in a reasonably high-density city/suburban area, I cannot raise my own animals for manure.
I wish I lived in the country, don't think I could pull this off in the Apt. Tho some day we may have to.
I saw a documentary called CRAPSHOOT, about the same kinda thing. Taking care of sewage without WATER.
Cash wrote: "Here's a link from a govt of Canada website on the Responsibility to Protect, a concept developed in response to the deliberate targeting of civilians in Kosovo, Srebernica and Rwanda. BTW this R2P was in large part a Canuck initiative."
=======================================
The idea behind the initiative is sound. Professionally implemented, it would be representative of some of the better qualities of western military heritage harking back to those aspects of chivalry that were meant to protect those with little ability to defend themselves.
I would submit, though, that even such high-minded objectives have to be implemented with traditional approaches to conflict.
The operations in Libya today are a case in point. The operations have been implemented while apparently ignoring Clausewitz's maxim that "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means": that is to say, one wonders if there is an ultimate political goal in Libya other than the idea of "protecting civilians".
There is neither scope in such a goal nor an easily defined process for obtaining the goal - as was witnessed by the immediate unease of the Arab League once they realized that a "no-fly zone" also meant that Ghadaffi's air defenses would be attacked, and that "protection of civilians" meant attacks on Ghadaffi's means (military units) to attack the rebels.
Military units (especially air and naval units) make poor policemen, but from the desires stated by the U.N. in regards to this operation, it sounds like what the U.N. really wanted was a sort of police force to protect various elements of the Libyan population without really waging a war against Ghadaffi's regime.
Perhaps there are concrete political goals behind the military operations. But if they exist, my guess is that they are unique to the various nation-states involved as we have seen by the open bickering occurring between France and Turkey.
If NATO is to take true control of the operation, then it would, IMO, be advisable for the U.N. to issue a statement outlining the political objectives of the operation and what the spectrum of acceptable political outcomes are so that NATO has an idea of what they should attempt to achieve other than flying over the country and occasionally bombing targets on the ground.
Cheers
This is why they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize! After all War is Peace. The next time this Nobel Committee meets, they should be egged, caked, and tommatoed.
Eating vegetarian saves more land, energy, and water than any other choice you can make.
That's because livestock eat several times more grain than they produce as meat. So raising livestock uses:
* several times as much land to grow the grain to feed them
* several times as much energy to harvest the grain and transport it
* several times as much water to grow the grain and to water the animals
* several times as much pesticides, etc.
Worldwide petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 11 years if the rest of the world ate like the U.S.
The least energy-efficient plant food is 10 times as efficient as the most efficient meat food. A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.
Over half of the water used in the U.S. is used to grow feed for livestock. It takes 100 times as much water to produce meat than to produce wheat.
The water required to produce a day's diet for a typical American is 4,000 gallons. (It's 1,200 for vegetarians and 300 for vegans.)
Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day).
U.S. Livestock produce 250,000 pounds of waste per second -- 20 times as much as humans.
A large feedlot produces as much waste as a large city, but without a sewage system. Animal waste washed into rivers and lakes causes increased nitrates, phosphates, ammonia, and bacteria, and decreases the oxygen content. This kills plant and animal life.
The meat industry account for three times as much harmful organic waste as the rest of the industries in the U.S. combined.
It takes ten times as much land to produce food for an average American compared to a pure vegetarian. An acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef.
In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person).
Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds. For every acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.
Around 85% of topsoil loss is directly associated with raising livestock.
The USDA says crop productivity is down 70% as a result of topsoil loss. It takes nature 500 years to build an inch of topsoil.
Vegan diets make less than 5% of the demands on the soil as meat-based diets.
And what the UN wanted is clearly unrealistic and would only lead to chaos and Khadaffi killing his own people AND the "police men" Does anyone remember the debacle of the "Peace Keepers" in Serbia? They were untried Dutch soldiers, not dressed enough for the cold weather, given contradictory orders not to use their weapons except to defend themselves as a very last resort - the Serbs tied them near buildings and armaments as a deterrent to these being bombed. What humiliation and reckless use of young men! And think: what kind of Police are only allowed to use their weapons to save their lives? What's the point of even being there?
Fuck all that. If we have to do it (and I say no) let's do it already - which means bombing, heavy civilian casualties, and taking Khadaffi out of power dead or alive. Anything else is pussyfooting and pandering to Arab or UN hypocrisy.
Alot of people in Western Libya seem to support Khadafffi. Is there a tribal aspect to all this that we're not being told about - as there was with Saddam?
"— another setback that would mean radioactive contamination at the facility is more serious than once thought."
This is on Yahoo news. more serious than once thought. DUH.
fucking liars.
more serious than thought at first, they love that line.
hey i bought the iodide. bfd. who wants to live in a world that is radioactive.
i'll share with you but it's gonna cost big $$$.
Point of information:
It was Robert F. Wagner as a state senator who investigated the Triangle fire, leading to many workplace reforms. As a U.S. senator, he gave his name to the Wagner Act, giving unions the right to collectively bargain.
Vlad Krandz wrote: "Alot of people in Western Libya seem to support Khadafffi. Is there a tribal aspect to all this that we're not being told about"
==========================================
Wouldn't surprise me to hear that there is. A glance at Libya's (partially) neat-geometric borders makes one wonder if the borders were drawn with any regard for the regions inhabited by the various tribes.
Cheers
When Qaddafi first accused the armed rebels of northeast Libya of being Al Qadea I dismissed it, thinking, geez, even Qaddafi is using the big boogey-man for his own purposes.
But, it turns out that West Point agrees with him!
Once again, as in Afghanistan in the 80s, and Kosovo in the 90s, the US is using its military power to back Al Qadea.
Unfuckingbelievable! And yet...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BEH502A.html
Whoops! Wrong link
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27760.htm
Once upon a time we had a healthy middle class, thanks to the unions which gave us fair wages, weekends, an end to child labor, worker health insurance, and a host of other things we have taken for granted.
Union members earning a living wage are not the problem.
The super rich not paying their fair share are the problem. Cut taxes for the rich and you will not get more employment. You will get the rich sitting on their money, hiding it in off-shore accounts for "tax avoidance." Remove the cap of $106,000 for social security tax payments. Put in place a transaction tax for every stock purchase. Make the rich pay their fair share.
You love Psychologoy? Let's go! Firstly, why the cruelty Ripley? Whites aren't doing well in Britain or America to be sure. But how could they? Their Elite have abandoned them. And corrupted them via the Media. If you are what are you purport to be - one of lower Elite either by birth or by diligence, then you should give a shit, but you don't. What's up with that? Is that why you feel the hatred - is it guilt? Are you good enough, alive enough to feel it?
So you want to get rid of the proles as if your own feet don't belong to you. And do what? Exchange them for a pair of Black and/or Brown feet? One of each maybe? And what pray tell, will that accomplish? The same eternal class problems will be there only exacerbated by Race and Cultural problems. You haven't thought it thru Alex - as usual. Look - along with the privledge come duties; along with the pleasures, pains. You want the first without the second. The joy of being better than others without the duty of taking care of them. The joy of good blood without the duty of propagating. You want to gallivant around when you should be home with five kids already. How else will England survive? And Europe? And the West? Is that it? You want the Muslims to do it for you? Oh vanity, are their no limits to your reign? I condemn you as the Emperor Augustin condemned the Roman Aristocrats of his time - the Roman Women most definitely not excluded.
ProCon, this was one of the funniest posts I have ever read on CFN! Thank you!
****I won't be ignoring asoka, however. He makes me think, occasionally.****
Thank you for that, ProCon.
****He just posts far too frequently and derails too many good dialogs.****
I will try to restrain myself and post less. Derailment is in the eye of the beholder.
****And he's a complete and total expert on far too many topics.*****
I don't know anything more than anyone else with the ability to read, think, synthesize, and regurgitate (also known as cut and paste) knows, assuming equal access to the Web.
*****I will never again respond to him again directly, though. I will talk about him - but not to him, as Hancock1863 suggests.*****
This was the funniest part, ProCon! It will be just like junior high school! We can form cliques and refuse to talk to each other, but we will continue to talk to others about each other. How adult!
By the way, how's that strategy working out for Hancock? His bogus claim was that I "need attention," so if I am ignored, I'll go away. Hancock was wrong, and so are you.
I will continue to read your posts with interest. And I will occasionally respond directly to you. To get your response, I will then read what you say to other people!!!! I am happy with that arrangement.
Are you a girl or do you just want to be? We're doomed but don't you mind. Go powder your nose - it's blinding me.
That's the one thing "Metropolis" didn't forsee - Metrosexuals.
Vlad said: "Whites aren't doing well in Britain or America to be sure. But how could they? Their Elite have abandoned them. And corrupted them via the Media. "
Vlad, are you sure you want to blame whites for the problems whites are having? There are darkies available in Europe; you could just as easily blame them.
Why aren't you claiming the "White Elite" is genetically inferior and that is why they have fucked up the white world (like you do for the rest of the non-white world so as not to mention white imperialism, white colonialism, white racism, and white ignornace)?
I think you are going soft on the darker races, Vlad, with your anti-white heresy.
Amy Goodman had a show on a recent Bangladesh garment factory fire, in which young women were locked in and burned, and others threw themselves from the windows and died in the fall.
They were making LESS than the garment workers 100 years ago.
Also, in Naomi Klein's "Disaster Capitalism", she talks about a horrible fire, I think in Indonesia, in which many young workers were killed.
She went to visit and the union organizers were under the impression that the fire deaths had caused widespread outrage all over the world, and she had to tell them, no, no one noticed or cared.
Sad.
Vlad said: "Are you a girl or do you just want to be? We're doomed but don't you mind."
==========
Another gratuitous anti-woman insult.
If tucsonspur "minds," what difference would it make? Can you guarantee anything with regard to minding? Why does it irritate you that someone who is doomed should not mind? What do you mean by mind, anyway? Are you some kind of liberal, Vlad, who believes minding will change things?
Oh, and the article answers the tribal question that others have raised.
'Without animal manures, food can only be grown with fossil fuel-based fertilizers..'
Granted some of what worms do is poop but having done my share of farming Id have to say:
Seaweed
mineral dust
mulch
compost
burying dead animals
No they awarded it because he is 'Magic'
10% black, 40% arab, 50% white
Their 'Magic' non negro!
As long as they don't make more than other people - and that they have to pay the same rates as other people too. Remember anything above that is coming from other hard working people. Goverment don't have any money of their own after all - it all comes from the people via taxation or inflation. Thus printing more up is no answer. And of course, public school education is largely a joke anyway. We would be better without these disemanators of propaganda.
I thought I could post less, but I have shown myself to be a complete failure! LOL!
Seen on a bumper sticker in New Mexico:
"Buckle Up. It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car
If the shoe fits [pun intended]
Gee where are my clothes made? In America
[technically territories that are US protectorates
in the pacific can put 'Made In America' in the label but the labor is slave]
In the scheme of things, not much, I admit.
Vlad said: "And of course, public school education is largely a joke anyway. We would be better without these disemanators of propaganda."
===========
Vlad, what would you consider the most effective way to teach children the truth about the Negros, and the Jews, and the Bilderbergers, and the Iluminati, and the wisdom of separating the races, and the proper role of women, etc.?
Wage,
"Once again, as in Afghanistan in the 80s, and Kosovo in the 90s, the US is using its military power to back Al Qadea."
Maybe Al-Qaeda is our own creation. Like in the "Forbidden Planet", the id is running free and very destructive.
I'll never forget the moment when I heard that we let Bin Laden leave Tora Bora, leaving his capture to the local warlords. Well that spoke volumes to me.
Nice slam,attacking my manhood. Lord knows, I've been fucked enough!
I'm aware that my posts seem flippant and feckless at times, just my way. Doesn't mean I don't take things seriously when the time calls for it. Keep up the good work!
In spite of the impression some may give, they are few rules on CFN.
Being flippant and feckless is definitely permitted! Even helpful, given we are facing certain doom according to the CFN dogmatists, whose mantra is "we are so fucked!"
Keep up the good work!
CORRECTION
there are few rules on CFN. Engaging in discussion of conspiracy theories a la 9/11 Truth is forbidden.
You deny that Whites even have Buddha Nature or Buddha Mind! Such is your racism!
Thanks! Glad someone has a sense of humor! Hint Dr Moe, Dr Larry, Dr Asoka (Curley) or do you want to be Schemp?
"Vegetables grew on the surface of the earth before the oil age. Petroleum inputs are not required for a vegan diet."
Enjoy hunting and gathering alongside the other 660 million people you want to bring into the country...
Any cultivated food, the kind that would support more than one human per square mile, requires either virgin land, animal manures, or fossil energy.
Again, an all-veggie diet is more harmful to the planet than an integrated one.
Thanks Asoka! Good question! The races should all have their own schools. Mexicans have the right to teach their children that Whites are evil and stole the Southwest - but not on our dime. Public Schooling is the god that failed. It lived up to worse fears of the old Elite that it would be become a system of propaganda. This began even before the invasion and before "civil rights".
Separate, private schools will help pave the way for the peaceful break up of the United States. People who can't agree should not stay together. Rigthly or wrongly - Blacks will never forgive us. They gain so much from our guilt! Ditto the Mexicans. Now would you stay in a relationship where your wife or girlfriend refused to forgive you? Even if you were guilty of what she said, sooner or later you would choose life rather than the living death of living with someone who hated you. Hopefully Whites will choose the Path of Life and Love and demand their Rights before it's too late.
"Granted some of what worms do is poop but having done my share of farming Id have to say:
Seaweed
mineral dust"
Well, I guess it's a good thing everyone lives in California, within walking distance of ocean and mountain! Because if you're not walking to it and carrying it home under your own strength you're using fossil fuels. Or draft animals. You ARE walking to the beach to collect seaweed, and up into the mountains to get mineral dust, and then carrying them home, right? Mineral dust in the lowlands is shite. You want the virgin stuff from way up high.
Oh, and one other quick question: all that stuff you put in your compost pile, you grew that without animal manures or fossil fuels, right? I mean, 'cause if not, that wouldn't really count, would it?
So, biomass from your own yard, clipped by hand of course, plus whatever you can carry in on foot from your 'hood. No wood chips obviously...unless you got a beaver handy. It could work for a while I guess. Until everybody starts hoarding their biomass.
And of course you are cycling your own wastes back into the system I assume. Otherwise you'd consume the mineral load in your subsoil eventually by flushing it down the toilet.
Thanks, great article. The situation is far worse than I feared. It usually is. Libya is divided by ethne (tribe), race, and theology. It is even as the Israelis said in their paper, "Securing the Realm": the Muslim countries are fragile and can be subverted. This apparently is the plan. But what makes them so sure that they can control the Muslim Brotherhood, the seed of the Caliphate? Just as they completed the Shiite Crescent, they may now be helping to forge the Sunni Caliphate!
"Eating vegetarian saves more land, energy, and water than any other choice you can make.
That's because livestock eat several times more grain than they produce as meat. So raising livestock uses:
* several times as much land to grow the grain to feed them"
Who said anything about grain-fed meat? You have to pay attention to the rest of what I say too. I incessantly promote pastured meats as a sound ecological alternative to grain-fed. But I'm not beating that particular drum with this question. Besides, you're giving me the establishement's statistics again. When did I ever respect the establishement?
You know what the inputs for my beef and dairy are? Sunshine and a bit of rain. Beat that with your tofu.
God there are so many comments on this blog. This one probably wont be noticed at all.
Reading World Made By Hand... love the book. I see it as sort of a fantasy of hope in the post peak world. I want to be part of that community.
The problem is... I am not part of a community, and I am like most other Americans: Individualistic to a fault. I have had a gut feeling for years that this culture is totally fubar, and something had to break sooner or later. I felt that way 20 years ago. Reading Jim's work only reinforces how I have been feeling all this time. I am not a joiner, or a follower of any dogmatic belief system. I am a realist. And realistically, this.. what we have now, can't continue. It's gonna go away.
I am not prepared for it in any plausible way. I am not hoarding stuff to help me survive any kind of theoretical collapse because I think it is pointless. What good is it to have a basement full of food and weapons and what not, if I am not part of a vital community? I have absolutely no real plan whatsoever. The only asset I have is that I can fix stuff.
Fuck all. This country is in serious trouble. We are all detached randomly hyper-connected by unsustainable technology.
Ken,
I think most of us are in the same boat. We are aware that a systematic breakdown in our way of life is going to happen one way or another and we are witnessing a lot of insults to this global sausage making enterprise in manufacturing and banking and energy awareness, but most of our arrangement are steeped in the model of our way of life. In NYC where I live there is a inter-connectivity of a public transportation system that works well for us, but our buildings aren't designed for low energy, so It's going to be impossible at some point to go on.
It's hard to make a move when you don't know what the timing is, so the idea is that because you are aware that this is taking place, you try to remain flexible with your choices on where to live etc.
Don't know how its going to pan out for us when the SHTF, but I always say to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
You are right!
The union headquarters will burn next, then your 40 hrs work week, then your pension, then your Social Security, and then the only free and proud standing alone will be the free market.
I will grant that eating veggie uses fewer resources than eating industrial meat mixed into your diet. But the status quo is not what we talk about in this comments section. We talk about how to survive in the post-peak world. We talk about how to make a garden grow without gas-based fertilizers. Manure being the only viable procreative (self-reproducing), integrated part of an alternative system, to my mind.
My question was, without fossil inputs, how will you grow your veggies unless you employ the services of animals? If the answer seems to be that we have too many humans to eat meat of any kind, then you may be onto something. But it isn't that we should all be vegan...
Because then we would ALL die. The soil would stop producing food in a year or two.
Ergo;) it's my contention that the vegan lifestyle is completely underwritten by fossil fuels (as is the industrial diet, yes). Unless you're doing it all yourself, dragging in biomass from the surrounding area, chopping it up by hand, recycling your excreta, capturing and recycling water...
My point is that if you aren't using what fossil fuel remains within your reach to create a life support system that can function without it, you are just another sitting duck.
Sooner or later the veggie lifestyle will be forced to fess up to the guv'nah. Won't that be a shocker for the phyto-pious? And by the way, I'm not picking on anyone out of malice. I'm just asking a serious energetics question, like I always do.
It reminds me of Farenheit 911, the scenes of Iraq before the invasion.
Everyone was going about their normal lives They knew that the biggest military power on Earth was threatening them, but what could they do?
Nothing. Just like us.
I know that it's only a matter of time before I get fired. What can I do about it? Nothing. It's all up to forces beyond my control.
No wonder people turn to religion. Wouldn't you like to believe that some all-powerful being had your back?
Ken, good comment, and it wasn't completely lost in the maelstrom that is CFN. Despair is a pretty common first emotion when you put your finger on what is happening. It's what you do after the despair that will determine your mettle.
Plenty of pointed fingers and excuses around here to choose from, however, if that's all you're looking for. Although it doesn't sound like it to me.
Asoka, I read your long copy and paste up-thread about the benefits to the land of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. But have you considered that when a non-vegetarian/non-vegan (a member of the vast majority), hosts a dinner party, a vegetarian guest is 5* times more problematic, and a vegan is 100* times more annoying than any guest who is free of these dietary foibles? I'll bet that has never crossed your mind.
It's not bad enough that a host must take account in planning a menu that some people are "intolerant" to everything under the sun - lactose, gluten, seafood, peanuts, etc (though half, I think, are neuroses) - but to top it off our host gets word at the eleventh hour that a male invitee wishes to bringing along his new vegan girlfriend, "if that's OK." (Does anyone know what the gender breakdown of these food Nazis is? I'd guess 9 out of ten are female.)
Now the host has to fret over what degree of nonsensical vegan orthodoxy this last-minute guest adheres to. We know, of course, a platter full of sizzling steaks might induce fainting spells but is cheese on the pasta dish out of bounds? Are butter and eggs in the dessert cake a no-no? Will she look askance at someone wearing leather shoes? And what if she spots a coat in the closet with a fur collar?
The goal of veganism is to neither harm nor exploit animals but tell me this ... did the vegan girlfriend above break the rules when she got knocked up (true story) and had an abortion? I guess you have to draw the line on orthodoxy somewhere.
* Q's wife's estimate
Otherwise you'd consume the mineral load in your subsoil eventually by flushing it down the toilet.
==============
Please Tripp, let's not bring Asia's bowel movements into the discussion.
;-)
"My point is that if you aren't using what fossil fuel remains within your reach to create a life support system that can function without it, you are just another sitting duck." -Tripp
Bull's-eye. Somebody give that man a hand-carved kewpie doll!
Why would I get in my fossil-fuel powered vehicle and drive 20 miles to an antique store to pick up a couple of two-man bucksaws? (Old, USED ones, no less.)
Wall decorations maybe? To weld into abstract lawn sculpture? Handy back-scratchers?
(Maybe it's because I'm having trouble finding NEW ones that don't look like they'd fall to fucking pieces with a little hard use.)
Axes, I've yet to make up my mind about. I really should just gradually get a couple each (carbon/fiberglass and wood handled) and stop waffling. Busted my share of wood handles (who hasn't?), but wood, I got... and my accuracy has improved considerably with the thought of having to replace a busted handle. Amazing, that little negative consequence motivation! ;o)
What about using shit as fuel? I've heard the East Indians do or at least did. What do you think?
Amazing story--a vegan getting an abortion. Talk about self-involved. My daughter has a vegetarian friend who is a pain. We simply don't invite her over for dinner.
Years ago, I took my son up to Spirit Rock Meditation Center up in Marin County for a Buddhist retreat. They only served vegetarian fare...and my son was starving by the second day--they gave us a three-hour break and we went into town and got ribs!
Jen
I have been reading CFN for a while now. The community thing is huge to me. It is sickening how the current culture in which I live lacks any kind of cohesive identity. It is reflected in the government's lack of ability to even acknowledge many of the real issues.
Intervening in Libya does nothing... period. It reminds me of the Stone/Parker "Comin' through to save the motherfuckin' day YEAH!" Team America parody. It's the very definition of insanity: Repeating the same painful thing over and over again with no real results.
My current goal is to figure out a way to make a much less consumerist living out in the country (without the obligatory commute to a city job). It is less about preparing for some kind of energy singularity, and more about my personal sanity.
Amen! What a hassle vegans can be!
My dad just got married, for the fourth time, about a year or so ago. Last fall his new wife's son was travelling through Ames, Iowa, where they live, from LA to Illinois for grad school and decided to stop by for...a couple of weeks. But he brought his vegan girlfriend with him. Now my dad is a swine nutritionist with a PhD from Georgia and a serious appetite for meat. And this girl basically couldn't eat anything they offered, but was able to clean out the entire freezer full of frozen berries and garden veg. The whole winter's supply for a north central Iowa winter.
Noticed.
As LBendet says, forewarned is forearmed.
(For example...) You'll be the one that notices when the riots are about to start, and you'll pack yer [meager] shit an' git.
Sometimes just having the awareness to keep from panicking and saving your skin IN THE FIRST INSTANCE is what makes the life and death difference. What to do after that? Who knows; stay flexible; options open. Others will wait around "for help to arrive" and be subsumed.
(I have a good anecdote on that, but this is too long already.)
You're an ingenious and intuitive fixer of stuff? Invaluable skill, don't pooh-pooh that one. (I don't have it in great quantity; pretty good wood-butcher, but complex machinery? Fah-get it! I usually end up breaking it further, unless it's a "replace the broken part with the unbroken proper replacement part indicated in the replacement parts manual".)
Knowing what COULD happen [without driving yourself crazy about it] while watching "the signs" (ensuing developments) will give you an advantage that others ignore.
"As a vegan and a laisse-faire type guy"
Those are two terms that are pretty tough to hang on the same signpost! So I'll just skip back over to the advanced civilization discussion.
My point was that when we listen for signals from aliens, we listen for radio waves. Our discovery of radio before nukes is as likely to be a fluke as anything. (Thank you, Snr. Marconi! And damn you, video!!) What was it? Just over 100 years ago? Not even a blip on the scale of evolutionary time. And how close are we to wiping ourselves out with a nuclear event?
But one thing that seems to be a constant among competing groups of animals is an arms race. And "advanced" societies, of whatever stripe, most likely get so good at weaponry, coupled with the typical jumpy animalian brain, that they wipe themselves out before they accidentally stumble onto radio technology.
Hence the deafening silence from outer space. We just might be unique in our discovery of radio before cataclysmic weaponry. [Not an idea original to me. This is just recalled from Jared Diamond's work.]
I got 5 quarts of milk today in the same time it took me to get 2 on Wednesday! So proud of myself...
One of the CNN idiots remarked how the Libyan Fighters always flashed them the peace sign. Now this is primae facie evidence of a ruined mind. How can anyone believe that men with guns slung over their shoulders going forward to fight and possibly die is flashing the peace sign? The idea of v for victory is just so alien to these twits that it never even occurs. Thus the ruined minds in the media endeavor to pass on the ruin to others. The Woodstock atmosphere is just so intoxicating that it interferes with any and all rational thought about what's going on. See Wage's excellent article. Many of the "protestors" have Al Quaeda sympathies and also have Tribal grievances with the Libyan Regime. Also they despise the Black Tribes of the South - whom Khadaffi embraces of course. So much for Woodstock.
There is a middle ground: the vegetarian Hindus kept cows for the milk, their muscle (pulling the plow) and for the shit. Thoreau said that posterity would look back on us (me too) the same way we look back on our cannibal ancestors.
"Amen! What a hassle vegans can be!"
-tripp, replying to Q, referencing asoka-
There are exceptions. I have known one or two vegetarians who adopted that lifestyle for a compelling reason related to health or moral conviction. In a logical world, people who are vegan would tend to be quiet about their dietary choices and fit themselves into whatever was offered for a meal.
I mean - come on people - if you are a genuine committed vegan - just find something to eat for an evening and *get over it.* At a meat and potatoes grill out, for example - scrape the insides out of a couple of Irish potatoes - and be damn glad you could stay vegan compliant and not go to bed hungry. People who can do that and not attract attention are pretty cool folks.
For the most part, though, when I encounter a vegan or vegetarian somewhere in public - it is because they are bitching and/or whining about something. They are trying to force the huge majority of meat eating humanity to *CONFORM* to a vegan/vegetarian diet - by force of their individual will.
Makes asoka a pretty good poster child for vegetarianism or veganism. These are just two more "isms" - where the whacked out adherents of a minority cult believe that the broad will of humanity must be FORCED to bend itself to fit the wishes of a tiny, vocal, and obstreperous minority group.
Only in America is this foolishness so widely tolerated.
- sarcasm waring - Yeah, I can see myself visiting a vegan household or vegan *country?* - and raising righteous Hell because they would not serve me meat, cheese, or eggs.
Who would be that stupidly rude?
Yet it's OK when the tables are turned and a vegan demands compliance with his/her dietary demands?
Amazing.
"We, therefore need a new system of relationships, FREE SALARIES and CHEAP RENTS along with especially huge public - private programs hiring millions for huge ambitious projects like Rockets to Mars, high speed trains, Skyscrapers, etc"
Put me down in the unemployment column when passing out the free salaries and cheap rent--I need to catch up on some personal hobby time.
Almost feel guilty interrupting the dominant Farmer's Almanac thread with my drivel but I just had a thought. It happens.
Since corporations are people with peoples rights shouldn't it be possible to charge them with treason or is this taking the analogy too far?
'Ruminations' eh.....
WAS THE WEST RUINED BY CATTLE?
According to a 5th[?] generation cattle rancher who had his herd in the open, yes.
Amazon.com: Mad Cowboy by H.Lyman
Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher who...
Yeah, but even hobbies cost money.
Gee...as a 40 year vegetarian raised on beef..
I have to laugh!........ 'its yr enzymes baby'
you are being controlled by yr desires [or the bugs in yr gut].
Never mind since the salaries are free I'll take a couple, one can fund the hobbies.
'vegans'
Substitute the word 'nigger' and repost..see how it reads.
"Why would I get in my fossil-fuel powered vehicle and drive 20 miles to an antique store to pick up a couple of two-man bucksaws? (Old, USED ones, no less.)"
-ozone-
Couple of funny stories about saws. I had an old great uncle who used to say not to worry about saws, plows, etc because, in his words, "Nobody will ever steal anything you have to work with."
And that used to be true - although it no longer seems to be true, since old saws and things are now worth real money as *art.*
But, due to collapsing and energy descended family farms - and my own packrat tendencies - I now own three (count 'em - THREE!), two-man saws of the type you are referencing, ozone.
Long story short - I went to a local Appalachian Trail festival last weekend in our little town's public square. And there was a man there, up from Atlanta, doing wood cutting demonstrations with two-man saws. He was good. He knew how to saw wood with a hand saw.
So I pointed at a saw and asked him politely how he sharpened "one of those things."
"Don't try to do it yourself," he averred. "Let me give you a business card." "I get my saws sharpened in California."
We're at a festival in small town rural north Georgia, right. I wanted to scream -
"Califoria??!! You SHIP your saws to *Cali-freak o' damn Fornia* to get them sharpened??!!?? Are you crazy?"
-PoC-
But that would have been rude.
So I took the man's business card and ambled away.
Wondering why no one between Georgia and California knew how to sharpen a saw.
Amazing.
'vegans'
Substitute the word 'nigger' and repost..see how it reads.
------------
I don't know asia. Vegan is not a slur with 100's of years of negative connotations.
And a man (woman) can't choose or change the color of his skin to fit into a racial slur. Diet is a choice. Being obnoxious about diet is just being divisive.
===========
What is yer point, asia?
Q, you are jumping to conclusions. As a vegan, I can tell you only assholes would insist that a non-vegan go out of their way to produce a vegan meal for a vegan. Not many vegans are food nazis. Food nazis exist in the non-vegan world, too. And, if a vegan doesn't force others to conform to their diet, or barely even mentions their veganism, why would they be annoying?
As far as 9 out of 10 vegans being female, that is a very prejudicial statement; do you know this for a fact? Last time I looked in the right place, I was a man and I'm a vegan. My experiencs with larger numbers of vegans occur only at vegan restaurants, and belieave me, the gender ratios I see there are closer to 50/50 than 90/10. When I'm in south Florida, I try to eat at my favorite gourmet vegan restaurant, called Sublime, in Ft. Lauderdale. The gender ratio is around 50/50.
When I'm in NYC, I like to eat at Candle 79 or Blossom and the ratios are the same.
Although some vegans avoid animal products because of their love for animals, many choose veganism because they feel non-animal food is healthier. What with all the hormones and other chemicals fed to our mass production animals, many vegans prefer food from lower down the food chain. And cow's milk is not natural for humans. Infants need to have mother's milk, which has evolved to provide the right mix of nutrients for humans. Cows have different biologies than people.
All in all, Q, you ought to get more info before you make statements like this.
Really? The die-hard posters on CFN feel a need to bash vegans/vegetarians or their lifestyle? The vegans I know are not sanctimonious and have a range of reasons; ethical, moral, environmental and health.
I'm completely on board with trippticket and his sustainable lifestyle. He raises and butchers his own flesh. How many others do the same? I'm not seeing too many hands.
Open your eyes to the dreadful conditions of factory farms. Could mankind design a more unsanitary or degrading environment in which to raise animals? 1000's of chickens in individual cages so that can't move stuffed into warehouses? Baby chicks having their beaks cut off so they don't cause damage through pecking while they are subjected to nightmarish conditions?
Cows standing in manure and fed an unnatural diet of corn in order to fatten them up? Kind of like the corn based diet of most adults. You a big fan of Taco Bell mystery meat, too?
These damn companies will take any measure they legally can get away with in order to reduce their overhead.
Thanks Bean. You said it with less anger than I did.
Well, that is one possibility out of many. Fermi's paradox (if there are aliens out there, why haven't we seen evidence of their existence?) lends itself to many fascinating explanations.
As far as me being a vegan AND a live-and-let live person, well, just suffice it to say I am.
Damn straight! Stupid humans. Why can't we all be alike?
I'm sure some vegans are like you describe, but most of the vegans I've met mind their own business and do scrape out the insides of potatos and keep their mouth shut (other than to eat).
You notice the vegans around you because they are the ones making the noise. Who you don't notice are the vast majority who keep quiet.
Jeez, you guys, stop being so intolerant.
I've followed a lot of your posts and find myself agreeing with almost all of them. Thanks.
I have to come clean here ... my son's girlfriend is a vegan (no, not the one discussed in my earlier post) but she is like a Catholic who doesn't believe the communion wafer and wine are ACTUALLY the body and blood of Christ, doesn't believe Mary was REALLY a virgin (you'd have to really be whacked to believe THAT), uses birth control, and going to church consists of watching 10 minutes of the Christmas midnight mass on TV. (BTW, I'm guessing Vlad is this type of Catholic.)
She's a watered down vegan who does not impose her food fetishes in any way on my wife, and my wife, ever the accommodating soul that she is, always makes sure there is some proper vegan approved fare for her to eat.
Besides NOT making a pain-in-the-ass of herself over food she has an enormous set of boobs so what's not to like?. (Note: An element of my on-line persona is to play the dirty old man;-))
lol...maybe not, the guy who makes my hobby toy said forget about it; he wants a free salary too.
asia said: "'vegans'
Substitute the word 'nigger' and repost..see how it reads."
============
Very insightful, asia.
And if you are Black, and a vegan, you can get blasted with both barrels on this forum.- Facts presented are labeled "establishment statistics." As if changing the label changes reality.
Veganism is not a religion. I haven't met any vegan evangelists or vegan complainers.
Veganism is a rational response to issues of resource
Ken Kurzawa wrote: "I have been reading CFN for a while now. The community thing is huge to me. It is sickening how the current culture in which I live lacks any kind of cohesive identity."
-------------------------------
Worth noting that many of the early immigrants to the U.S. were people who weren't particularly good at living cheek-by-jowl with their neighbors -- one could say they were antisocial in varying degree.
Americans love to talk about freedom, but mostly what they mean is being free of behavioral restraints imposed by the closeness of neighbors and enforcement by the authorities as a result of complaints from those neighbors.
It isn't that way in Europe; the people here have learned to live in closer proximity to each other. Large tracts of land are not settled just because it is there, and the borders of the villages and towns expand only very slowly. There is almost none of the build, exploit, and abandon cycle that one can see in many U.S. towns and cities.
In Germany, the U.S. notion of kicking children out of the house at age 18 is considered strange. The houses here often have at least three stories; as generations age, they move up one story. The old often don't go to special homes, and as the children attain adulthood, at least one or more of them remains in one level of a house shared with their parents, and often, grandparents.
People here don't move around a lot for the sake of jobs either (this is slowly changing, the forces of globalism are now able to shutter entire industries in single towns, leaving the workers less and less choice in the matter). The people have roots in towns, cities, or at most, small areas around towns and cities, and don't care to leave -- they know they have strength in their family and are loath to surrender that strength.
It is refreshing to see how other societies live, and to see some people holding onto older ways of thriving and living.
Cheers
Vlad Krandz wrote: "Thanks, great article. The situation is far worse than I feared. It usually is."
---------------------------------------
I find every time that I look at something in depth, it is more complex than I initially thought. There are enough parties in the Libyan tribal situation to make for complex relationships. My thanks to Wagelaborer as well for pointing out this article.
Cheers
Your comments rang all sorts of bells, here. All the stuff I read about making it through the Long Emergency is all about community, tribe, family, etc. But, I also am almost an orphan, have no progeny and am by nature kind of a hermit and loner. Someone once said, somewhere "Hell is other people."
(I'd look up the quote, but one of the current theories as to why posts sometimes disipere, disapear, dissapear, oh, fuck it' is that if you dip into Google once too often while posting (for a spelling error or citation, your post is sucked into the void. Key up Lenard Nemoy "Mysteries of Cyberspace.") Anyway...
So what's an old hermit to do? Something I stuggle strugle (fuck it) with. I have read about some monastic communities where people lived seperate separate and only gathered once a week for a religious service, or once a day for a (silent) meal. Maybe I could deal with that, if I could find one without the religion :-)
Me, I want to move out where I can see the stars. Watch the sky and all the things it does. Even in this small town, the light washes it all away.
Re: The West Point study about foreign fighters in Iraq. If anyone wishes to view the original report, it can be seen at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeignFighter.19.Dec07.pdf
Cheers
"No wonder people turn to religion. Wouldn't you like to believe that some all-powerful being had your back?"
Know what you mean, Wage. The problem with that is why are the conditions you're trying to survive so harsh to begin with?
Why are people getting away with gutting this economy and redistributing it around the world and not getting arrested for their obvious crimes and lies?
The whole belief thing is so unsatisfactory for me personally as it just doesn't answer any real questions. I always say whatever does the trick to get you through is fine.
I'm sorry about your job. Sounds to me that you are doing good in the world. I have a friend who's a nurse that does training for a pharmaceutical company. Don't know whether that's something you'd be interested in but maybe some kind of training would be a good next step for you. I think with your experience and caring there should be some option out there for you.
Good luck, though. Hope your job is more secure than you think.
This one is for Hancock:
"Van Jones hasn't let the right intimidate him. His electric presentations are helping to galvanize a movement to rebuild the American Dream. And the greater his leadership, the more the right recycles the slurs and lies, the more he ignores them, the more rabid they get. Breitbart illustrates the hysteria, labeling Van a "punk," "human toxin," and a " cockroach" in the course of a brief interview.
But the right has perfected the art of the big lie, repeating a falsehood over and over until people begin to think there must be something to it. Three big lies are deployed regularly in their attempt to discredit Van Jones. They get recycled through the right wing sound machine. Seldom heard is the truth. So here is the truth.
Right-Wing Slur: Van is 9/11 Truther.
Truth: Van Jones believes and has stated repeatedly that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation's soil were planned and carried out by Osama bin Laden and members of Al Qaeda. He never saw, signed, or endorsed any statement indicating otherwise. Six years ago, a group claiming to represent 9/11 families asked for his support and then attached his name, without his knowledge or permission, to abhorrent language that they never showed him. The group has since admitted they do not have his signature.
Right-Wing Slur: Van is a "Communist."
Truth: Van Jones is a leading champion of free market solutions and American innovation. His award-winning work is rooted in business-friendly, market-based ideas. His bestselling book, The Green-Collar Economy, argues that government should provide incentives for private sector innovation. Van has forged successful partnerships with green businesses and served on the board of a national business association. (And isn't this slur beyond its expiration date? The Soviet Union is no more; the Cold War is over. Global corporations vie to gain a foothold in China still governed by so-called communists. Can't we can the 50s calumnies now that we're in a new century?)
Right-Wing Slur: Van Jones is an ex-convict.
Truth: Van Jones is a law-abiding citizen and has never been to prison or convicted of any crime. Van's only scrape with the law was when he was wrongfully detained for four hours in a San Francisco warehouse where police held thousands of peaceful protesters in May 1992. A Yale Law student at the time, Van had attended the event as a legal monitor. In a lawsuit, he won monetary compensation for his false imprisonment.
Of course, refutation won't stop the lies, just as the right will never stop questioning Obama's citizenship.
But for those outside the circles of hate, understand the charges for what they are: A backhanded tribute to the past accomplishments and future potential of Van Jones as a leader and advocate for a better America."
SOURCE: Van Jones: The Right's Tribute
Howdy Wage,
Your contention that the military utilizes "depleted uranium bombs" begs clarification.
To my knowledge bombs are not manufactured using DU for the following educated guesses on my part. DU is about 2.4 time as dense as steel so the metal portion of such a bomb would weigh roughly 2.4 time as much as a steel encased bomb thus effectively reducing the bomb load of aircraft by approximately the same ratio. There is no logical reason to spread DU everywhere from the bomb blasts and if Air to Ground Missiles are used to destroy armor they are equipped with sufficient HE warheads to do their damage without resorting to DU.
Depleted Uranium (U238) is a dense hard slightly radioactive (half life about 4.468 billion years) metallic element that forms the bulk of naturally occurring Uranium (99.27%). It is used by the US military as a kinetic energy armor penetrator, primarily in Gatling style machine guns, 30, 25 and 20 MM, such as the Warthogs' 30 mm GAU 8 anti tank gun and as an anti tank, roughly 40 pound, projectile fired from 105 and 120 mm tank main guns. The tank fired projectile has a muzzle velocity of about 5000 FT/Sec which equates to a muzzle energy of roughly 15 million FT Pounds of energy (a 30/06 has about 3000). Upon impact some of the energy of motion of the projectile is converted to heat which ignites some of the U238 thus creating a cloud of U238 oxide which blows about. When I worked at APG, MD the building I worked in was adjacent to the main range where the US Army had conducted open air testing of many types of projectiles including DU. There were about 300 employees working in the building roughly half of whom were women a number of whom had worked there for more than 20 years. I did not know every woman who worked in the building; however, of those I knew about 7/8 had breast cancer (7/8 out of maybe 50/60 how's that for a cancer rate?). About the time I started working at APG (1987) the Army inaugurated the use of a gigantic igloo with a pyrotechnically actuated door which was slammed shut after a projectile entered the igloo, presumably prior to impacting the target, so as to contain the DU and its' oxides. As far as I know the US Army never acknowledged any possibility that the many years of open air testing of DU had anything to do with the abnormally high cancer rates among women who worked there; that is a surprise, eh?
The Soviet Union and now Russia had/has similar stocks of DU projectiles as do most of the Earths' armies.
SNAFU
I heard good news on NPR this morning for all creationists.
Humans currently out number Lowland Gorillas about 10,000,000 to one as of the latest estimate of the total number (700) of Lowland Gorillas still living in the wild.
Congratulations your god must truly be siding with you to rid the Earth of all primates with the exception of fucking humans.
SNAFU
http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2011-03-25/naomi-klein-totnes-movie
Must see Video discussing the new models we should embrace to go beyond the neoliberal model. It's about a .5 hr. but really worth your time!
Please take the time to see this. She discusses so much about what's going on right now.
Dear JHK,
You must have been in a good mood when you wrote this, because I walked away slightly less depressed than usual. In fact, I decided not to play World of Warcraft to escape reality, which I usually do after reading your blog. Thanks for all your hard work!
So I pointed at a saw and asked him politely how he sharpened "one of those things."
"Don't try to do it yourself," he averred. "Let me give you a business card." "I get my saws sharpened in California."
We're at a festival in small town rural north Georgia, right. I wanted to scream -
"Califoria??!! You SHIP your saws to *Cali-freak o' damn Fornia* to get them sharpened??!!?? Are you crazy?"
-PoC-
LOL!
Jeeeeebus, what's wrong with people? That doesn't sound like the very hardest skill in the world to master. Don't get me wrong, tooth "set" (side to side bend) is a bit tricky, but the sharpening of those giant teeth wouldn't phase me a'tall. A good flat file, a vise, attention to detail and patience should get 'er done without the UPS guy.
Talk about a HUGE carbon footprint for a muscle-powered pursuit! Yep, that IS crazy. Ya gotta laugh...
BTW, PoC,
Put files on "the list"; I always forget that one.
Even if we should have enough for OUR lifetime, gotta think of the chir'rens and neighbors (who won't think of that one either).
...and we wonder why PeeWee Herman is a fixture of American "culture".
Wonder no more; I send my saws to Disneyland to be sharpened by Walt's magical dwarfs...
One last thing.
Shouldn't "dwarves" be to "dwarf", as "wharves" are to "wharf"?
(7 "Dwarfs". Probably a patented Disney-ism from the fucking legal dept. at Megalo-Disney-Mania; "Controlling the entertainment media for the enjoyment and indoctrination of your precious wee ones! ...in Hi-Def 3-D!")
OZONE, get yourself some Collins Axes.That's what I used to clear this property here.
Starting in the 1st weekend in June, take a ride to the Newfane Flea Market in Newfane, VT, just north of Brattleboro. They got a shitload of axes there, all kinds, including hewing axes, real cheap, plus any other kind of handtools you might need. The place is a treasure. Last summer I needed a micrometer. At Newfane a guy had table full at $1 apiece. I bought most of them. If you hit it right, at the VFD down the road they will be having one of their Rib or Chicken dinner. Not to bust balls with my Vegan comrade CFNers, but that's good eatin'!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
One of my more paranoid white friends is saying that the Pentagon is now waging weather warfare to reduce the population of the world.
She says there are seven HAARP installations around the world. The chem-trails in our skies supposedly have made our atmosphere enhance the ability of HAARP to make every weather condition worse. White folks don't have enough trouble that they got to be makin' this stuff up?
Anyway she believes the Illuminati (which supposedly runs the Pentagon) will "enhance" a natural earthquake on the USA pacific coast (could be California, Oregon, or off Washington State) within one Friedman unit. My white friend also says other prophets are predicting a severe West Coast earthquake.
Is any part of this believable? (or them white folks crazy?)
Pure vanity Vlad, white women getting to play Earth Momma to the children, and the hapless men who are hectored into supporting such nonsense.
But what you will find with these "free thinkers" is an absolute complete lack of any sense of responsibility.
Bill Clinton's election made white women the swing vote, made America's politics like a day care center run by stressed out middle aged white women.
The black folk are going to have to stop with the anti-white hysterics. Today anti-racism is code word for anti-white and nothing more.
Mont, Re Libya
My gut feel is that nobody has thought through the point of all this. For reasons known only to our own Prime Minister a Canuck General is now in charge of enforcing NATO's no-fly zone over Libya, the US is still in charge of hitting ground targets, an Italian is commanding the multinational naval blockade. And Germany and Turkey won't go along until rules of engagement are "clarified".
To me this looks like a horrific muddle in the making. Too many cooks, too many countries, no clearly stated objectives.
Inevitably there will be boots on the ground in the form of, ahem, "peacekeepers".
And then what, another Lebanon or Somalia style debacle followed by an ignominious bug-out?
Insofar as R2P goes, this was a cynical and dishonest concoction of a country (Canada) that has next to no ability nor will to do anything about it. The consensus here is that the deliberate massacre of civilians in Kosovo, Rwanda and Srebernica was deplorable. And so what. Deplorable enough for us to shed our own blood and expend our own treasure over? Let's not be ridiculous. That's up to the Americans, whom many if not most Canucks (in the east at least), make a point of hating. We're big on hypocrisy and moral preening in these parts.
So why are we pissing away the lives and limbs of our boys and girls in Afganistan? To keep the US border open to our exports. Millions of our jobs depend on it so we had to show we're "on board". "On board" enough to go into Iraq? Nope. But enough to go where our leaders though it would be relatively "safe". An economic and political calculation was at the heart of it, nothing more.
For those who care about the middle east, it seems the local AQ franchise has taken some of Libya's MANPAD SAMs for themselves. Now a non-state actor has surface to air capability, while probably not much of a threat to anyone's military capability it could suck for some poor mopes in a passenger jet.
As Bill Lind wrote in the American Conservative the world's New Class is creating 4th generation warfare by dispossesing the nation state. This means plutocrats probably ought to equip the CO2 creating luxury personal jets with infrared jammers otherwise AQ might get them.
I agree with you. If there are any black folk who are engaging in anti-white hysterics, they got to stop it. Racism is wrong no matter who doin' it. Still, the world we have was mostly created by white devils who kidnapped, enslaved and exploited blacks, not by black folk who kidnapped, enslaved and exploited whites.
Newworld, aren't you one of those people who believes the USA southern border is wide open, like a sieve?
So now you say:
How difficult would it be for AQ to bring in MANPADs through a southern border tunnel?
And the fucking humans go right on fucking.
newworld said: "the world's New Class..."
=======
newworld, are you a conspiracy theorist? Is the "New Class" the same as the Illuminati? I know this is an odd rumination, but are they causing earthquakes and using weather as a weapon? Can you name names? Who is this "world class" of which you post?
k-dog said: "the no-fly zone is working"
=======
Rush Limbaugh said: "I want Obama to fail"
Later El Rushbo Majarishi explained, with one hand tied behind his back, that he meant "I want Obama's policies to fail"
The no-fly zone is Obama's policy.
I'm sympathetic to that A, blacks didn't line up for luxury class on their trip to America. Still "racism" has become part of a cargo cult religion for blacks, and I would say its first half life is over. The real evil one are the white anti-whites, no sense of perspective, pure sociopathic vanity and personal profiteering.
Yes, it's all gone terribly wrong. How is it possible that so many people are at the mercy of a very few?
How can the obscenely wealthy be allowed to destroy the lives of so many, just to accumulate more wealth?
How can we allow our very ecosystem to be destroyed, along with the oceans? We are now in a mass extinction event, and no one is able to stop it, because it would interfere with profits.
Unbelievable.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
Right Wing Thug turtle guy says, in the quotes, I answer under quotes:
"it is more efficient for one person to work a 10 hour day as opposed to two people working two 5 hour days doing the same job."
Two people CAN work half as much very efficiently without confusion if there is the real desire to do it, if there is a real intentionality: but this is always lacking, people suck. Anyways, you confirm what I say, labor will continuously be eliminated, better have 1 guy do the wrok of as many as possible, everyone else is a lazy slob. Remember also that large companies buy small ones, layoff a bunch of redundant people, and become even richer and a larger monopolist. The cycle goes on forever concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
"damn mindfucking quantity of inept management "
Shoot them, kill them, beat them up, put them in jail, fight, stick em, stick em.
"because Wanda over there is whining about too much work"
Shoot them, beat them up, put them in jail, fight, stick em, stick em.
"Labor is very expensive "
Kill labor, stick it to them, beat them up, but trillion dollar profits in banks not doing anything on behalf of the capitalists is not expensive.
"what about those guys that dont want to work."
Shoot them, kill them, beat them up, put them in jail, fight, stick em, stick em.
On these blogs/forums we got the educated ones that are for everyone against everyone, imagine all the normalslobs: rascists, blacks vs white vs muslim, etc. So kill everyone, fight everyone, nuke em all, nuke em, nuke em. Kill human nature, kill thought... War, war on all, kill all, stick em, beat them up all.
We should be working together to go to mars and many other great projects, we should be trying to get the best out of each other, we should be going to mars with rockets, etc. What do we got ? a bunch of craps, losers, people are worth zero, I hope you all beat each other up, total war of all against all, go on, beat each other up, fight, war, nuke them all, KILL KILL KILL.
How I hate people, they suck so much...
"The real evil ones are the white anti-whites, no sense of perspective, pure sociopathic vanity and personal profiteering."
===========
The Hollywood whites who are corrupting our youth? Or the ones Vlad talks about who imitate gangsta' culture in the white burbs? Which are the evil ones?
I'm pretty sure the only AQ in America today is headquartered out of the Hoover building, much like the neo-nazi menace you libs fear is run by provacatuers from the same outfit.
I have no real idea what is going to happen, I just happen to think that the New Class is destroying the old order but yet they have no real sense of what to replace it with besides fuzzy imaginations of Star Trek and Tom Friedman's flat earth.
Why are any of those slurs, Asoka?
I don't think there's anything wrong with being a 9-11 truther, a communist, or an ex-convict who has paid their debt to society.
Alexandra, I could really use some peace of mind...
I have heard people say things like that, Asoka.
They quote some paper from 1970 that says that the Earth has too many people as evidence.
I always ask, if there's a powerful conspiracy to reduce the Earth's population, why has the population more than doubled since it started?
We need a planetary effort to provide birth control and sterilization to all that want it.
But the insane religious people won't allow it.
They are calculated slurs, aimed at swaying a crucial percentage of congressional representatives. Congress is full of people who consider 9/11 truthers to be bozos, who still fear communism, and who voted to build more prisons and fear anybody who got out of prison after serving their time. They still don't want to allow ex-cons to vote, even after the ex-cons have paid their debt to society. Congress is sick and that's why the calculated (supposed) slurs, work.
Some people around here tried to start a Transition Town paradigm, but then not enough people came to the meetings, etc.
Thanks for the link.
I'm going to do some March Madness this weekend.
Plus my favorite non-white driver, JPM, just got the pole position at the Fontana NASCAR race. With so much going on, I may not be able to get back here until Monday.
I have enjoyed this week's posts, especially those from ProCon, Marlin, tripp, newworld, Wage, Capt. Spaulding, yamagata, lbendet, beantown, turkle, lewis, k-dog, and... oh, dear, now I'm in trouble cause I don't want to leave anyone out.
I enjoyed ALL the posts!
"Why are people getting away with gutting this economy and redistributing it around the world and not getting arrested for their obvious crimes and lies?"
The easy answer is that they control the courts and justice system but:
It's because ninety-five percent of everybody else is playing ostrich with their head in the sand. Half of those who aren't drinking the media Kool-Aid by the gallon don't give a rats ass what happens outside their personal two square food space anyway. And the better part of the enlightened few remaining don't have a clue about what to do.
So one percent of the population who are informed and care, who would like to make a difference can't. They find each other on the internet, but that's about it. In real life they pass like ships in the night.
So one percent of the total population, ninety-nine percent of whom are powerless landless modern day serfs stands ready to take on a one percent who has everything, controls everything and who stand as a group united in their rape of mother earth.
Numerically it's a pretty even fight but the odds of these good people every one of whom stands alone to battle and persevere against the united group who runs the show is zero.
And people here wonder why the universe is filled with only 'our' radio waves. The radio spectrum will be as empty as the Sahara Desert soon enough. Our dog has had it's day and night is falling.
This shit probably happens every time.
Thanks, K-Dog, Agreed.
I was responding to Wage's comment of the idea of God in your corner.
My point was that the conditions themselves point to the fact that we have wishful thinking in the aftermath of a bad occurrence instead of asking why it's allowed to happen to begin with.
If God is so great why did 10,000+ people have to die in Japan?
If you consider how awful it is to be a citizen of Japan having an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor disaster, why is that happening. So one person who is saved is a miracle? Why is God in their corner and not everyone's?
I don't want to appear as a curmudgeon, so I thought I would end the week with humor. Shout out to SJM51 who made mention of the hideous trend towards "ear gauges" last Fall in a post.
Once, here in SJ, I saw a teen with some ivory/wood monstrosity sticking through the enlarged holes in his earlobes. I said, "Hey, Tiger Woods called. He wants his golf tees back".
The "no-fly zone" (killing Libyans) may be Obama's policy, but the attack on Libya is part of an on-going plan to control the world's oil.
Obama is this term's puppet, but the policy continues.
Why would you support this puppet, when you didn't support the last one, who did the same things?
And he stabbed Van Jones in the back, supposedly bowing to public pressure.
Yet the Goldman Sachs employees remain in control of the public treasury, although the public does not approve.
Howdy Asoka,
Per your query: "Is any part of this believable? (or them white folks crazy?)"
Per Forrest Gump "crazy is as crazy does".
HAARP and contrail fear mongering has been a passion of the lunatic fringe of the UFO phenomenon for many years.
SNAFU
"The radio spectrum will be as empty as the Sahara Desert soon enough. Our dog has had it's day and night is falling.
This shit probably happens every time."
-kdog-
Interesting ideas, K. I don't know about intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe always killing itself off, though.
I can't help but think that the human species would have been better off if the Western European colonial powers had just *STAYED HOME* for a few hundred more years - and fought among themselves. Then things might have turned out a whole lot better.
It might have produced a change in human consciousness - that would have prevented the worst of rapacious colonialism and exploitation of environments.
Instead - Western thought came spilling into the Americas, finding them rich with resources, and nearly vacant, due to disease and lack of firepower among the aboriginal population.
So what eventually crystallized in North America became today's model of Free Market Capitalism.
This model is just an extension of colonial expansion - doing damage on a global scale.
===================
What looks most likely to *get* human civilization is not warfare, radiation, or any of the common terrors being considered by most of us.
What will *get* us is simple overpopulation - probably coupled to ecosystem collapses and plagues beyond the capability of modern medicine.
It may be too late for the species. All we can do is work for rational policies for our families, our own States, and our own Nation - and refuse to give up without a fight.
We can't expect the rest of the world to change if we don't make the first move.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
My religion has no invisible friends but is more advanced than secular humanism. God exists when people are compassionate to each other with lovingkindness in their hearts. Without people god is dead.
God exists in the relationships between people and has no physical manifestation beyond that. She operates through the window of the human soul, thats it.
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami happened.
I'ts a natural process that has been understood for a long time now. Man's failure to prepare for it caused the human tragedy, not gods failure to stop it.
The consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge means that it's all our show now. A god that intervenes in any way breaks the rules laid down in that story.
To think that god is in one's corner or even should be is passing the buck and is irresponsible.
God can only act through us.
What is yer point, asia?
Scapegoating of a subgroup,
Scapegoating - Wikipedia,
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame..
And the 'N' word is used by blacks, like the 'Q' word is by gays....
However when Jon Rocker used the 'Q' word the media had a field day.
'Again, an all-veggie diet is more harmful to the planet than an integrated one'
Lies Lies nothing but damn lies.
Indeed, a world of diminishing resources
WITH SKYROCKETING EXPECTATIONS [Chinese want beef and cars].
Being "anti-white" won't do any good. You keep reading about the ills in black communities like the rate of imprisonment of black youth, the drop out rate from school etc. To be fair after what black people have been through for the past several hundred years you'd expect a lot of really severe dysfunction.
But the clock keeps ticking. At some point the past is past and black people have to take the bull by the horns and move forward. Things have changed.
Wow, k-dog, you sure are pessimistic today. Things will work out. You just gotta look at the big picture. You, Wage and lbendet seem to be in the "grief" stage of denial. Or could it be the anger stage?
If there is no god, being angry about all the unfairness is a waste of emotional energy. Who says the universe must be fair or look out for us? Why is being on our own so frightening? The fact is, the universe has no concept of fairness and it doesn't care whether we live or die; it just is. Justice is a human concept, and as far as I know (as of now), we are the only globs of matter and energy in the universe that have a sense of justice.
Look at ants. They have been around for at least 160 million years. In any ant colony, the queen and some of her attendants live well; the other 99% lead crappy lives doing all the hard work. Yet ants have been extant for over 100 times as long as humans. Who says our kind of intelligence is a survival trait? We'll just have to wait and see.
So the other 99% of humanity are like the ant drones. But that doesn't mean we're doomed. The other 99 will never understand what's going on around them. Maybe we do have some "ant" in us.
If a lot of changes are going to occur, do you really care about the extinction of American Idol, network tv programming and the National Football League?
Or you can be like old6699 and hate everyone because they don't measure up to your expectations.
'The ultra-Orthodox, settler types have huge families. The future of Israel belongs to them. And they are by all accounts an incredibly unpleasant lot - even to other Jews (they don't consider them Jewish, yet the liberals will always support them against us'
Public Radio [either KCRW or KPFK] was celebrating one such in Zion, hes about 100,
WITH A 1000 LIVING DESCENDANTS..
gees..the worlds overpopulated [to the libs on radio] But Ruth Seymore or whoever 'celebrates' him.
Ruthie sure took over the college radio station.
And their latest scandal revealed the Head of Public Radios making 500k a year.
Score 1 for Vladdie
Bush waged war, a million in Iraq dead.
Govt has 2 jobs.... give work to the unemployable and to keep the population down thru war [or other means?].
Old6699;
You'd better get back on your medication, before it's too late.
Just a friendly tip ...
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
"If there is no god, being angry about all the unfairness is a waste of emotional energy. Who says the universe must be fair or look out for us? Why is being on our own so frightening? The fact is, the universe has no concept of fairness and it doesn't care whether we live or die; it just is. Justice is a human concept, and as far as I know (as of now), we are the only globs of matter and energy in the universe that have a sense of justice."
Couldn't agree more.
Some think that their will be 'justice' in the hereafter. I kinda don't. It's now or never.
There Is Right and Wrong. Sometimes real hard to 'turn the other cheek'. Impossible.
It is an impersonal universe. Seems to me.
Ah thank you laddie. You are an honorary Aryan, a Cow Worshiper, and a Vedic Soldier. The pipes swell, our Claymores shine, our Opposition sink - We will win.
As I've said in other posts, I think what's happening in the world is a sympton of future shock. Alvin Toffler wrote "Future Shock" a long time ago, and when I read it (and other books by him), it resonated for me.
We are indeed heading towards a one-world world. Whether this is a result of an evolving meme or a conspiracy of powerful people remains to be seen, although I'm leaning toward the former. If humanity survives the near future, we will do so as a global civilization. Sorry, Tripp, but this is where we part philosphical company. Humans aren't a species that moves forward by moving backward.
Whether we survive or not is an open question.
I read a book : When Bad Things Happen To Good People. Harold Kusher.
He explains it like first of all these disasters are not acts of God They are Acts of Nature.
God has no control over them. He doesn't cause an Earthquake to happen in a particular place for any reason, nature just is, and does it's thing.
But that "God" would be when the people come together to help the injured ones. The miracle lady saved in the earthquake, God didn't pick her, she got really lucky. Or unlucky however you want to look at it.
I think that when people think positive and even think that they are blessed, it can attract positive things to happen in their lives. Like attracts like kinda thing.
I do not believe that some are blessed by a god and that others are not. everyone is or everyone isn't. he doesn't pick and choose, if their is one, he or she or whatever. and there probably isn't.
Probably the only real justice in this world is the Charles Bronson type. And we all know we cannot take the law into our own hands.
me googling 'evolving meme.' loved that book.
I just don't seem to remember much. I have alot on my mind.
love your posts. thanks.
Does anyone remember that commercial the old lady is laying on the floor and she says "HELP I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP". (it's a commercial for that lifeline thingy you wear around your neck push the button it calls for help) well here
something funny I heard :
HELP I'M WHITE AND I CAN'T GET DOWN ! LOVE IT.
I am white and I definitely can't get down. Use to have fun trying. Disco. Yikes. White people CAN'T dance. for the most part. IMO. But it's all fun trying.
You know, Marlin, the guy's root philosophy isn't incorrect. Take away the manic phase of his bi-polar disorder and he's actually correct, IMO.
I can appreciate that he's very intelligent. Robert Heinlein, the famous science fiction writer (and either West Point or Naval Academy graduate, I forget which at the moment) used to say "don't put all your eggs in one planet". Stephen Hawking, a man of unmeasurable intelligence said that in order for mankind to survive, it must colonize space.
So rockets to Mars and other large scale projects are not wacky in and of themselves (although splitting the sun and placing skyscrapers on Jupiter ... well, what can I say?); just the scale is.
Before we can colonize space, we probably have to work on improving ourselves first. But you are right, he should be taking meds.
If you read the link I provided, you would know that the US in the 90s allied with ACTUAL Nazi allies (still alive) - Wage
Wage, I have another uncle by marriage (this one from Czechoslovakia) who made the comment that there were more Nazis outside of Germany than inside of Germany.
So what do you want to do Wage, kill everybody? At some point WW2 has to be OVER and the score settling has to stop. Otherwise the thing keeps going and going. And one of our own generals during WW2 (I think it was Guy Simonds, Montsegur, you might know of this fellow) made the comment that if the war had been lost by the Allies he might be the one on trial for war crimes. Nobody came of that thing with clean hands.
YES THAT IS IT ! I COMPLETELY AGREE.
That's what that book says.
I do believe in God, just not the story in the bible. God is IN people. Works Thru people and does not exist otherwise.
That's the way I believe in God.
Thanks for your explanation.
JB-CAT just messing around. me cat person.
Vlad and others here may find this editorial from today's NYT interesting. It concerns US immigration 100 years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26sat4.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
And to Asoka ... Bob Herbert, a relentless champion of all Black causes, announced today at the end of his op-ed piece titled Losing Our Way that "this is my last column for The New York Times..."
Speaking of lifeline, my mother-in-law wore one and fell down on a Friday or Saturday. When her helper arrived at her house on Monday, she found my mother-in-law on the kitchen floor. When asked why she didn't press the alert button on the device, she said she didn't want to bother anyone.
A friend's mother just passed away. What precipitated the final event was her falling down. She wore a lifeline device, too. But when she fell, she landed between some furniture such that the alert couldn't sound. These devices, while helpful, do not guarantee that someone will be alerted.
Unintended Consequences
As if we didn't have enough to think about...
I just got back from the farmer's market and was talking to a vendor who makes "rooftop" honey here in NYC. He had his portable bee hive and I asked him how the bees were doing. He said not too well, but better than last year. I asked him if he had seen Bill Maher last night.
Ellen Page was a guest and was discussing the bee die-off. They didn't seem to know why it was happening, but suggested that agribusiness and pesticides were at the heart of the problem.
The vendor says it's electromagnetic radiation from cell phone towers clashing the navigational ability of the honeybee.
As Ted Kennedy (means big head in Irish) said in one of his later speeches, "the dream never dies". The dream is to make Whites into slaves via the Welfare and Entitlement systems. And the top 5% of Whites can glory in their own morality and fairness in setting this all up. And their clients, the Blacks, Hispanics, and White Welfare Queens? Totally for it - 100%. Why would they not be, Cash? It's in their self interest. I mean it's not like they're NOBLE or something. Only the Noble reject things like this. And lastly, of course the Mandarins, the people of all colors who work for the Feds are for it - how could they not be? It's their job. Together, the Elite, the Mandarins, and the Clients form the Democratic Power Base. With Amnesty they will absolutize their Power and lock it in for good. Unless the Black Swan/White Man flies....
I have friends who believe exactly that also.
Some scientist predicted that west coast america will be getting the next huge quake, but the 'window' is NOW, and may even be over. The full moon passed. Still we are next in the circle.
He says the quakes are moving clockwise on the map. dot to dot. we are next.
I live really close to the ocean. I'd be history.
I don't know what to believe, or think.
I like the differing viewpoints and characters on this blog.
Time to get to work around this place.
C U guys later.....
Quite right Bill. Everything that's an eco-abomination is fine in deep space. We can't pollute that. As long as we get away from the Earth's orbit that is. There are many, many very disappointed folks out there who thought we'd be colonizing the moon by now and exploring Mars on foot. And from my perspective, Space might be a refuge for Whites from a World dedicated to destroying them.
What do you think of the Haredi and their future dominance of Israel? They already dominate the military - which explains much. The Rabbis say compassion in war is a Christain perversion...
You kill me. You're right, white people can't and probably shouldn't try. Especially white guys. Not enough moving body parts I guess. But maybe as you say it's in the eye of the beerholder (that was really funny). Personally I can't seem to get drunk enough.
BTW disco sucks.
Yes if voting was based on real qualification - knowledge and responsibility, and a track record of service - most people wouldn't be voting. And of those who did, there would be more men than women.
There could be three levels of citizenship to correspond to local, regional or state, and Federal or National. Everyone could vote locally. For State voting, a test would be required to show knowledge of history and politics. And for Federal one would need to show a dedication to the Nation via military or other kinds of service. This every moron and his brother gets to vote is crap. The Founding Fathers disagreed but their requirements excluded some good people since it was based on owning property.
lol, Bill, it's not the grief stage of denial. Denial, anger and depression are three of the stages of grief.
Grief is a normal reaction to loss.
I was at a party last Saturday and we were outside. There were a few birds chirping, and I brought up the question of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
Shouldn't there be more birds? One of the women there, who grew up here in one of the most bio-diverse places in the US, said that when she was a child there were many, many more birds.
As an atheist, I don't expect divine justice, or for the universe to be fair.
I expect people, banding together, to help each other through the harsh times in life.
Look at the earthquake in Japan and the earthquake in Haiti. The Haitian earthquake killed a lot more people.
Why? Because God hates black people? Because the universe hates black people?
No. Because Japan has building codes and abides by them.
Storing food, providing for children and the elderly, taking care of the sick and injured, providing water and sewage, all these things are products of civilized societies.
And all are under attack by rapacious capitalism.
That is what I object to, not living on a active planet spinning through a vast, impersonal universe.
You have to become the music and respond emotionally and via your propioception (body sense) simultaneously. Whites think too much - our glory and downfall. And because we think too much, we can be contolled by words (like racist) in a way that simpler more instinctual peoples simply can not be. East Asians have high IQ's but have retained this simplicity - their great strength.
Sometimes I think you're deliberately obtuse, Cash.
Did I say anything about killing everyone?
Yugoslavia WAS living in peace after WW11, until attacked by US and German interests in the 90s.
They use divide and conquer tactics, same as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya.
Croatians, Serbs and Muslims were living in peace. They even hosted the Olympics in Kosovo.
Then the imperialists turned upon them. Again.
The report being disparaged seems of worth - the disparager seems a typical useful idiot and intellectual whore. The Old Anglo Saxons were devoted to their nation, this twit is devoted to his career.
For old-
"Large scale housing construction has taken place right across the country. Every citizen has been given a decent house or apartment to live in rent-free. In Qaddafi’s Green Book it states: “The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” This dictum has now become a reality for the Libyan people"
For Asoka-
"Many years ago, Qaddafi told a large gathering, which included Libyans and revolutionaries from many parts of the world, that the Black Africans were the true owners of Libya long before the Arab incursion into North Africa, and that Libyans need to acknowledge and pay tribute to their ancient African roots. He ended by saying, as is proclaimed in his Green Book, that “the Black race shall prevail throughout the world.” This is not what many Libyans wanted to hear. As with all fair skinned Arabs, prejudice against Black Africans is endemic."
A different view of Libya before the attack began-
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/libya-getting-it-right-a-revolutionary-pan-african-perspective/
Dateline Syria:
Two reported dead as Baath Party buildings in two towns set on fire, protesters continue to defy security crackdown.
One of the oldest clichés of war is that truth is the first casualty. No it’s not. Journalism is the first casualty."HAARP and contrail fear mongering has been a passion of the lunatic fringe of the UFO phenomenon for many years."
Oh no, HAARP is real! Jesse Ventura proved it...;)
"Sorry, Tripp, but this is where we part philosphical company. Humans aren't a species that moves forward by moving backward."
No, we're just another biological population that will obey its energetic reality, whatever that requires of us. And believe me, what we're doing isn't anything like backwards. That's where we really part company, sir.
Rain's over for now. Back to building garden gates and rendering lard. See ya's.
As you know, I don't like organized religion, even that of the Jewish religion. So, in particular, it stands to reason that extremists in any religion would be more distasteful to me.
Despite your own beliefs, the average Jew has a harder road to travel than many other people, IMO. I base this on my own experience, having gotten into many a fistfight because I was mistreated for my religion.
To dress in 17th century clothes, which in our day and age doesn't look good, is to send a message, exactly what message I'm not sure, but it is not a positive one. Maybe it's just me for having been attacked so much that I don't want to stand out.
These extremist Jewish sects don't treat women as equals. Women can't even show their own hair and must dress to cover up their bodies. When women attend religious services, they cannot sit by the men, they must sit in their own special section off to the side or upstairs. It reminds me now of Muslim fundamentalists.
Their lives are not rooted in the 21st century, that's for sure, and that's one of my main objections.
On the positive side, they are a very tight, family-oriented community. I have a cousin who is Hasidic.
As far as their influence in Israel is concerned, I don't think a 17th century group leading a 21st century country is good for that country. I could say this for any religion. But please do not take my dislike as being anti-Judaism. I was born a Jew and will die a Jew.
As far as space is concerned, yes, it would give people of similar beliefs the opportunity to live their lives in one place apart from others. That would work in space, but it doesn't on Earth because we share the same planet. The scale is too small. So I can see a "Black" planet, a White planet and diversified planets. I can see a Muslim planet, a Jewish planet and a Christian planet, among others. That is what's so great about space colonization - the sheer size of the universe allow's everybody to live their own lives.
messed up the blockquote ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Wage, Wage, Wage who's being deliberately obtuse?
Do you seriously think that the evil Americans are behind everything that happens?
The US is a newcomer on the world stage. What you see happening in Europe is the same old, old, old movie replayed over and over and over: Latin vs Celt vs German vs Slav vs whatever Asiatic/Middle eastern tribe rumbles up on the borders. And it has been thus for the past 4,000 years. Did I say 4,000? Probably longer. Living in peace? Really?
lol, me too. I guess I got that really tangled up.
I agree with you that civilized societies ought to care for their citizens, but in practice, that doesn't always happen. Think of the resources sent to disaster- or war-ravaged countries that are held by the local powers that be and never get to their intended target.
I guess I've gotten so cynical as I get older that I really have no expectations for humans.
You are rational as an atheist, and that's a good thing.
I also agree with you that capitalism is rapacious, at least as it is today, but remember capitalism is just an economic system, not a living entity. It's people who are rapacious, really. And capitalism is not the only rapacious system. That's why I don't believe in government. A minimal one is probably ok. Why should we have to have a "government" to take care of people that need help? Shouldn't we do this on our own, as human beings? Apparently we are so flawed we can't.
Finally, I don't think I could survive for too long in a world without birds. The songs of these descendents of the dinosaurs are an important component of the Earth's beauty.
beantown said: "So I can see a "Black" planet, a White planet and diversified planets. I can see a Muslim planet, a Jewish planet and a Christian planet, among others. That is what's so great about space colonization - the sheer size of the universe allow's everybody to live their own lives."
==========
Promise? No redlining out the best planets to keep Blacks out? No environmental dumping of hazardous materials on the Black planet? (that is the practice of environmental racism)
No placing the Black planet far, far away from the Seven-Eleven planet or KFC chicken planets?
(not that I would ever eat KFC; what if God turns out to be a chicken?)
Please don't be upset by my feelings. It's ok to have different opinions (although I think you believe you don't have an opinion, you have facts). The future, which is bearing down on us, hasn't yet arrived and we shall see who was more accurate then. I do agree with you that we will obey our energetic reality. We just disagree with what that reality will be.
Asoka, try to picture infinity. That allows for all possibilities. There can't be redlining when there are 100 billion galaxies, most of which contain 100+ billion stars, many of which have several planets. The nearest star to us out of all these zillions is 5.7 million million miles.
And the KFC planet will be destroyed by the MacDonald's planet after a long and bloody war. Cattle 1, chickens 0.
Did the Celts have unmanned drones cruise missiles and the ability to murder from 10000 feet?
I'm actually beyond the denial and anger stages.
You may call it pessimism but turkeys are optimists who think everything is fine and dandy until the day before thanksgiving.
Yeah, some turkeys die, but the turkay species lives on.
Don't forget, Bill, that those Jewish men you type about won't even touch the hand of a woman.
I think it was Mel Brooks who wrote the "Jews in space" bit. Doesn't sound so bad. I can only imagine what the movie Planet of the WASPs would be like.
Couple of things, Bill:
Regarding human society based on insect society - with a queen at the top and millions of workers sacrificing to keep the top echelon going. I see that vision as a step backwards for humanity and "the eternal quest of all to live free..." sort of thing.
Also, I think comparisons to the social insects are way overblown to justify sacrifices on the part of the lower human classes. In a termite colony or an ant mound all the individuals are genetically identical. Death of an insect worker by overwork or starvation has no consequence for the colony as long as the queen keeps laying eggs and the food keeps coming.
============
And regarding:
"And capitalism is not the only rapacious system. That's why I don't believe in government. A minimal one is probably ok. Why should we have to have a "government" to take care of people that need help?"
-btb-
Capitalism is a system, no doubt. The problem is that it has become self-sustaining and multinational in scope. And it can buy off governments and harm people in the name of *profits.*
I think you're wrong about the *ideal?* of government, though. Organized properly, government is more than a system. Government is the will and collective capability of the people governed. And yeah, I get the irony of how far off the rails this idea has gone for us in the US.
============
Finally:
"But please do not take my dislike as being anti-Judaism. I was born a Jew and will die a Jew." -btb-
Amazing and intriguing thoughts, from my perspective, Bill. I was born a Christian. If I became an atheist (you are atheist, correct?) I would no longer be a Christian - under my use of the term. I'm not saying you're wrong, understand please. You're the Jewish guy, not me. Maybe you could explain your thoughts a little bit more for us.
What is it about your identity that allows a religious faith to survive or transcend your own atheism?
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OK - so actually, that was three things, Bill. LOL! Everybody have a good evening. I'll be back tomorrow.
One more thing to this discussion thread at large, and especially to the large contingent of atheists.
I was going to sign off for the evening by saying -
"Everybody have a good evening. I'll be back tomorrow, Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise." -PoC-
I stopped myself, because I didn't want to offend a particular atheist - one whose opinion I have come to value - BeanTown.
But, "Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise," was a very standard disclaimer by my the lifelong rural dwelling, and extremely devout Christians in my grandparent's generation.
It was a way of acknowledging the God was in charge - and that they lived a sometimes dangerous life in an environment where humans did not always have the final say.
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Their Faith could have understood and withstood an earthquake, 10,000 dead, and one survivor. Some of you posters seem to be confusing modern "prosperity Gospel" preaching - with a genuine religious Faith.
Come visit with me to any of 100's of little church cemeteries in my native state - and see so many heartbreaking little graves of young children - or of young fathers and mothers, "Lives cut short."
Almost all buried with some version of the words, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." "Blessed be the name of the Lord."
That's Faith. And that's the Faith I will draw on if and when TSHTF. Lake a lot of other things, real Faith like that has gone off the rails in the US, as of late.
That is all.
Sorry that happened to you Bill. Many Jews have never read the New Testament - the Taboo is still very strong even among the Reform and Secular Jews. I assure you that nothing like that was advocated by Christ or the Apostles - as opposed to what is taught in the Koran. Somehow our missionary impulse got mixed up with our warrior side. I can't imagine this is what Christ meant when he said go and teach all men.
Christians have suffered because of this too. Jews control Pornography in America and several of the big magnates have said they got into Porn as a way of degrading Christians. The founder of Screw Magazine said he used to get beat up by Catholic kids and he got into it a way of defying Christianity. Screwed up to be sure but being persecuted as a kid stays with you. The current craze against bullying might have some value if it wasn't going to be misused - which it will be.
My interpretation of 'the good dog willing' is every day we are alive is a good day. It can end at any time. The big dog gave it to us expecting only that we be kind to each other we should be thankful. It really is a pretty good deal.
Bean, I'm a scientist. There are no facts. Only ideas that seem to be supported more robustly than others.
Just finished watching a video I found a link to in a comment posted at the "Oil Drum", proclaimed to be the best Chernobyl documentary, released 2006. It is an eye opener!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiCXb1Nhd1o
I do not recall seeing a link to this video on CFN. If there be any among you who think the situation in Japan is being handled just fine, watch this video and you may just reconsider.
JHK if you watch this video, or have watched it, please let us know what your thoughts are about the conspiracy of whitewash which this Russian documentary contends exists concerning the magnitude of the Chernobyl disaster.
SNAFU
Starting in the 1st weekend in June, take a ride to the Newfane Flea Market in Newfane, VT, just north of Brattleboro. They got a shitload of axes there, all kinds, including hewing axes, real cheap, plus any other kind of handtools you might need. -Marlin
Thanks, Marlin!
It shall be done.
Sulu, set course for Newfane.
Course set, Captain.
Make it so.
The Ancient Egyptians reported that the Libyans were White Men - more fair skinned than themselves. Both the Arabs and the Blacks are johnny come latelies to Libya. Khadaffi was obviously pandering to world wide Communism and it's worship of Blacks. His bodyguard of fourty mostly Black Women was part of this too. "The Black Race shall prevail" - how do you expect Arabs to feel about a statement like that? I know how I feel about it.
Blacks say that Whites smell like dogs when wet - and thus don't like to take showers with us. In Roots, Kunta is told that the "tou-bob" smells like a Chicken. Great Black Minds ponder these important questions incessantly:
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2011/03/white_people_st.php
Concerning the elderly and falls. Tai Chi is the best thing going for improving balance and preventing falls in the elderly--a leading cause of debilitation and death among that age group. But don't take my word on it, Google the studies.
A former triathlete who had many over-training type injuries and symptoms observed the tai chi study group I belong to because he had read of tai chi's reputation for healing injuries. It was pretty obvious that he was very dubious that such a slow-moving form of training could provide him any benefit. So the instructor asked him to hold one stance for five minutes without moving. Within a minute his legs were quivering, his arms shaking, and his spirit looking to bolt, like a monkey looking for an exit branch. He had no ability to go inside of himself and become comfortable, either physically or mentally. Despite the "tri" in front of "athlete" his training was very one-dimensional and geared toward exterior striving-- further and faster.
Judaism has always had a strong biological aspect totally alien to Christianity -unfortunately! Thus they are protected ideologically against miscegenation while we are not.
God ended the World in the time of Noah because the bloodlines had become corrupted with the blood of the Nephilim (fallen angels) resulting in the race of Giants. - who being wicked, strong, and daring - were incapable of goodness.
Vlad said: "Judaism has always had a strong biological aspect totally alien to Christianity -unfortunately! Thus they are protected ideologically against miscegenation while we are not."
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THERE IS NO PROTECTION AGAINST THE FORCE OF LOVE.
There is no humane protection against miscegenation. Separation is abnormal. Falling in love is normal. And there are no "correct" people to fall in love with. Ipso facto, miscegenation happens.
All segments of the Jewish people recognize conversion as a legitimate pathway to Judaism, ipso facto, miscegenation happens.
In addition, the Reform movement defines Jewishness both by paternal and maternal descent. As long as one has either a Jewish father or a Jewish mother, or is a convert to Judaism, one is regarded as a Jew. Ipso facto, miscegenation happens.
Carlos Slim has 70 billion dollars: with 50 billion dollars you could hire 500 workers each in 1,000 distinct factories for 10 years at 10,000 dollars (1,000 x 500 x 10 x 10,000) a year, which would be a very good salary in Mexico, Brazil and India (and maybe even in the USA now), but Slim hogs the money up all for himself and everyone is proud of him, he "worker hard for his money". But labor is too expensive.
Even if 30% of people are carzy, lazy, whatever you still got 70 % that are decent human beings: and with all the idle labor available worldwide, milions would work for free just to have something to do, it is MUCH HARDER NOT TO WORK AND BE IDLE all day long than to be occupied. Just with hobby factories where people could put in the hours they want to work for free, for the "common good", like a 1 hour, or 2 or 3 hour shift (even without any pay, because they are bored), you could practically produce everything the world needs without even paying labor. But for the Right Wing Thugs, "workers are lazy", "people are crazy" etc.
The boredome factor: why is hire and fire so popular in the US, they kick people out of work with such pleasure it isn't even funny, as opposed to JAPAN or Europe where they are much more reluctant to fire ? because in the US it is fun, it kills the boredome, it makes for an emotional narrative, everyday is judgement day, it is a way of making the statement "we are not all equal", "I am better than you", so I can hose you, what pleasure, what fun. While in all truth for 99 % of the jobs people work, there is very little difference in performance between people (if they aren't crazy at least, but maybe they are all crazy), in any possible way to make someone "stand out", especially because it is all fluff, make believe crap, office politics, but for the Right Wing Thugs, it is part of "competition", may the "best man win".
But a lot of people worldwide may not by all this crap anymore, they may snap, like what is happening in the Middle East or North Africa. Why doesn't anyone ever ask how the situation of work and housing is in those countries, since that is what drives them to go in a civil war ? They don't have jobs, if they do, they can't pay a rent for a house because the rent is higher than their crappy monthly salary, so what to do ? Civil War, break the asses of the Rich Hogs.
Carlos Slim has 70 billion dollars: with 50 billion dollars you could hire 500 workers each in 1,000 distinct factories for 10 years at 10,000 dollars (1,000 x 500 x 10 x 10,000) a year, which would be a very good salary in Mexico, Brazil and India (and maybe even in the USA now), but Slim hogs the money up all for himself and everyone is proud of him, he "worker hard for his money". But labor is too expensive.
Even if 30% of people are carzy, lazy, whatever you still got 70 % that are decent human beings: and with all the idle labor available worldwide, millions would work for free just to have something to do ( I phantom 50 million idle people just in the USA from age 10 to age 100), it is MUCH HARDER NOT TO WORK AND BE IDLE all day long than to be occupied. Just with hobby factories where people could put in the hours they want to work for free, for the "common good", like a 1 hour, or 2 or 3 hour shift (even without any pay, because they are bored), you could practically produce everything the world needs without even paying labor. But for the Right Wing Thugs, "workers are lazy", "people are crazy" etc.
The boredome factor: why is hire and fire so popular in the US, they kick people out of work with such pleasure it isn't even funny, as opposed to JAPAN or Europe where they are much more reluctant to fire ? because in the US it is fun, it kills the boredome, it makes for an emotional narrative, everyday is judgement day, it is a way of making the statement "we are not all equal", "I am better than you", so I can hose you, what pleasure, what fun. While in all truth for 99 % of the jobs people work, there is very little difference in performance between people (if they aren't crazy at least, but maybe they are all crazy), in any possible way to make someone "stand out", especially because it is all fluff, make believe crap, office politics, but for the Right Wing Thugs, it is part of "competition", may the "best man win".
But a lot of people worldwide may not by all this crap anymore, they may snap, like what is happening in the Middle East or North Africa. Why doesn't anyone ever ask how the situation of work and housing is in those countries, since that is what drives them to go in a civil war ? They don't have jobs, if they do, they can't pay a rent for a house because the rent is higher than their crappy monthly salary, so what to do ? Civil War, break the asses of the Rich Hogs.
Yeah, Old
Britain is experiencing civil unrest because of the neoliberal austerity plan that is being imposed on them, contrast that with the Royal wedding--bad timing if you ask me.
I think the royals are going to experience a backlash that they never expected.
What's ahead for us?
Perhaps "Angry Birds" isn't just another video distraction. Could there be a not-so-well-hidden idea in those dollar-bill-green pigs getting bashed by those who have had their nest eggs stolen?
Cheers
Black Americans are as a whole, demonstrated via their political choices a failed people, but they are drug out for display whenever a white liberal needs something to bludgeon other whites. Jews in this country primarily came from the Eastern European cesspits where they were trapped by the tyranny of rabinical judaism a gangsterism of god and the majority populations who they competed with, and in three generations they have become the market dominant minority of the American empire. Why can't blacks adopt some of the better habits of the jewish-Americans?
As far as my concerns about black people in this country I'm done. As a WASP I'm worried about my kind whose only position in the caste system is the military 0-5 and below.
"Bullying", a large dose of irony in that 99% of the white anti-whites had to read and write a report on Stanley Milgram's take on the authoritarian personality, and then they turn around and become the biggest "anti-racist" bullies on the block.
I don't think they will get the message on either their i-phones or in the car wash. They won't get it until the banks kick them out of the house they have lived in mortgage free for the last year and a half while spending freely their unemployment checks at bars, restaurants and consumer electronic stores. When that party is over we won't have resistance, just crime and unrest...
We have a "government" because there are too many of us to help individually.
My Syrian co-worker once told me how in Mediterranean societies, widowers promptly remarried, but widows wore black for the rest of their lives, and never remarried, no matter how young they were.
I asked, but how did they survive? And he said that the rest of the villagers provided for her.
That's what Social Security does here.
You benefit from other people's labor. You could be dead of cholera by now, if not for people getting together and creating a water system. Would you really rather haul a bucket down to the Charles River everyday?
People grow your food and bring it to convenient stores near you. People provide you with electricity and a computer to chat with me on. People make sure that children are cared for.
People scoop those who have crashed their cars off the street (thanks, Ripped) and haul them off to hospitals to be reassembled.
People have always banded together to help each other through the vagaries of the uncaring universe, but we have really advanced in the last century, and have long, well-fed lives. (And yes, I know it's because of oil, but it's also social cohesion.)
Would you really rather live in a cave somewhere, gathering twigs to rub together for warmth, eating grubs and acorns, walking to a spring each day for water?
Because, if not, you are dependent on others for your sweet life, and the least you can do is pass it on a little.
"Scripture" from Ian Frazier for those of CFN's cadre of parental units. A pants-pee-er to child-owners...
(from, "Lamentations of the Father")
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97feb/frazier/frazier.htm
"They won't get it until the banks kick them out of the house they have lived in mortgage free for the last year and a half while spending freely their unemployment checks at bars, restaurants and consumer electronic stores."
There is a perennial theme to blame tattooed pierced video game playing dumfucks for the fragmentation and collapse of society on this blog.
Are you too blaming the victim? Employed people who pay mortgages are responsible and employed people who don't pay them are irresponsible, thats an obvious fact. Unemployed people who don't pay mortgages could be responsible or not, it's hard to tell. Can't pay without money no matter how hard you try. The average Joe doesn't have money without a job.
Blaming ignorant masses or the 'sheep' is an easy thing to do. To you the greater masses of people seem to be as dumb as bricks and your not wrong in thinking that but our society worships false gods and values the wrong things. I share your frustration.
But this is only half the answer and doesn't get at the root cause of why people are like the way they are. What caused them to be so dumb and clueless?
Our society runs on a flawed free-market capitalist economic model that produces winners and losers. Success is measured by money, nothing else. Winners need consumers to generate profit to maintain a privileged social status and life style.
Ignorant consumers are preferred, even required by the economic model that defines western society. Media cultivates ignorance and the memes of the false god of free market capitalism has woven the fabric of our society.
If an adult gives a small child matches to play with and the child burns down a house who's fault is it? The child or the adult?
We need to blame the adult not the child and we need to blame the system not it's victims.
Wage,
Exactly right. The government is supposed to be comprised of people "We the People" elect to represent us and further our objectives.
Without campaign finance reform, though we will continue to lose that relationship with our elected officials. They're getting away with blaming government while they continue to sway government to represent only their agenda.
Runaway costs in healthcare, no taxation of corporations and no regulation in industry and energy production and no barriers to entry are the hallmarks of a dying nation state.
There's a commercial that AARP put out showing a chicken coop where a retired teacher was found living before social security was enacted. Is this what people want? Do they want to pay out of pocket to support their parents in old age, when jobs are so hard to come by? At what point will reality strike?
Boston Bill,
I've been re-reading some CFN archival comments in an attempt to be a more careful & insightful poster. I am heartened by your us vs. them theme as postulated in your Oct. 20, 2010 @ 5:04pm in JHK's "The Surrealist Vista".
Regarding 2010 archives, I got a good laugh reading TzaTza (where's he now?) & eightm (now old6699) commenting to each other.
Look at the big picture, we have so much wealth and EXCESS CAPACITY (thanks to Science and Technology applied to all productive endeavors) that we can simply give free salaries to millions anyways, it doesn't make a dent in the system, that is why we can pay for millions of people retired (in USA, EU and JAPAN), 700 billion dollar military budget, etc. The system is so rich that all this talk of the freeriders and lazy slobs is irrelevant, ridiculous and not even applicable as people would work for free just to not be bored as the open source software movement demonstrates, and as the entire Internet demonstrates as most content has been created spontaneously like this content, etc.
People are always working "for others": their bosses and corporations, they are always working to get their MAN richer, and this is ok, as it is so twisted in their minds that they think they are working for themselves against all those lazy slobs outside who "don't want to work".
I saw the lybian guys on TV saying they are doing the war for Alah, for freedom, for democracy or whatever. So there you can see people do things other for themselves, but for common values, ideals, etc. The japanese technicians are "suiciding themselves" because of the radiation at their atom energy factory gone wrong, etc. I don't think the religious ideals are valid, but they are always ideals outside of oneselves, people do things for other reasons aside of from what the Right Wing Thug mentality of profit - competition - fire the slobs - labor is lazy and crazy affirms. I also don't think "freedom" and "democracy" are worth much (except as distractions from the real problems) when the real trigger of so much unhappiness in those and most countries is the fact that they DON'T HAVE JOBS AND THE POSSIBILITY TO RENT A HOUSE EVEN IF THEY GOT A JOB. But for some mysterious reason, no one ever talks about the JOBs and HOUSING situation in many parts of the world: I guess it is assumed that those are not problems, people can live without them as the Right Wing Thugs would like to brainwash everyone to think. And freedom and democracy simply mean you can talk about what is wrong forever, like I am doing, but you essentially will never be able to change anything anyways, as people are so totally brainwashed by all this profit crap.
Of course the USA Christian Fundamentalists are the greatest allies of the rich and corporate capitalists by saying everyone is a sinner, everyone is bad, deserves to be punished, must forever be guilty of a never ending list of sins. They love firing people, they love being fired, they love this way of life of beating up each other, just like god would and should do, since labor and people are all lazy, crazy slobs, that always "cost too much as in labor is "expensive"".
The brainwashing is so total and never ending it is incredible ...
I can concede 1 thing to the right: that maybe even if everything where exactly as I wished, people's brain mind are so contorted - divided - conflictual that no matter what, they would recreate conflicts all over again for all kinds of things in a never ending cycle, just like a fly trying to get out of a window. But that is why we must re-engineer the brain mind, technological singularities, change the circuits, kill free will, kill thought, kill human nature, etc.
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
The Orthodox don't want to mix with us because they consider us animals. The Conservative and Reform don't go so far but merely say that Jews are special and to breed outside is to throw away five thousand years of history. I can accept this and I feel the same way about Whites.
Blacks are eager to mix with Whites - evidently they don't think they have anything to lose. Then when some of the hybrids have high IQ's - they claim them for the Black Race! Let's call it genetic piggybacking. A few Black Leaders have called Blacks on this - such as Minister Farakahn. He is your King and you should listen to him.
America is going itself one arrogance farther than its one of thinking it can police the world: its vaunted belief that it can absorb the refugee offload from global overpopulation. We are already years beyond sustaining much of the qualities of life held to be American tradition and we're fastly approaching absolute unsustainability. Good bye to Christmas Yule log or wood fires for any reason, along with wildlife habitat and wilderness experince. Fastly approaching is standard of living predicated upon minimum caloric requirement in circumstances not different from rabbit warren or Nebraska cattle feed lot.
....which brings to ming the question, how receptive would America be to our over seas interventions if they were proposed with reliable projections about probable refugee influx that would follow in consequence? Hmmmm....anyone out there other than me see contradiction between the arguments for "bringing democracy to Iraq" and the numbers of Iraqi refugees we're now getting?
"... runaway costs in healthcare, no taxation of corporations ..."
-Ibendet
Ibendet, it wasn't widely reported but I saw last week that GE, Obamas favored corporation, and one of the country's largest, paid exactly 0 taxes last year, in fact earned a tax credit of $3.5 billion.
Isn't GE President Jeff Immelt heading up some Obama committee to 'create jobs' in the US?
Evidently there are good corporations (GE and Google) and bad corporations (Exxon/Mobil and Walmart). It all depends on which political party they donate to.
There is an anti-corporate bias on this site which I never shared. Maybe I should look into it more fully. My attitude about corporations has been neutral, perhaps naive, neither for nor against. I always figured if you don't like this or that company don't buy their product or their service. If enough people feel that way it will go out of business.
Corporations come and go. Around 1902 author Frank Norris wrote a book called 'The Octopus', about the Southern Pacific Railroad, which at the time was very powerful and controlled just about everything in Southern Cal. The S. Pacific still exists, but 110 years later what power does it have?
Walmart, GM, Google ... they won't last forever. Someday, sooner or later, they'll be gone. Markets change, conditions change, and that's it.
Government, Big Government, now that's a different story. They have the irresistible power of the law backing them up. Millions of police armed to the teeth, aggressive SWAT teams, prisons all over the place with a cell for every citizen, myriad pettifogging laws to trap the unwise and the stupid, an intrusive IRS who know to the penny how much money you have and where it is,
a bureaucracy matched only by the Soviets in the 1930's and Germany in the 40's ... it's the Government in my opinion, not the corporations, who will crush you and take everything you have.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
The cure would then be worse than the disease. Without free will, we are nothing.
But Kdog is there some kind of moral superiority to gutting someone with a spear or sword or beating their brains out with a mace?
These tribal animosities are extremely stubborn and long lived. The English and French have hated each other and fought each other for a thousand years and it's still going on here in boring old Canada at times violently. Why? Because of an imperial war 250 years ago involving France and Britain and other powers. It was settled with some land exchanges. France ceded Canada which they saw as unprofitable. It's been 250 years and the hate still isn't over. Our inability to solve this thing is our own fault. It's our responsibility and it's our failure and the US has nothing to do with it.
At work I knew two women from Croatia and with them every other word was "Croatia". People used to call the Balkans the "powder keg of Europe" and after knowing those two gals I can see why. I swear those two battle-axes could fire up a new Balkan war all on their own. My boss was Israeli. With him every other conversation was about Israel. He was and is obsessed with the holocaust (which cost him most of his family) and the Israel/Palestine conflict. In my parents' home country (Italy) the various regions (Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria etc) correspond to pre Roman tribal boundaries. PRE ROMAN. It's been 2500 years Dog and still those lines exist.
My point here and to Wage is that the old tribal drums still beat loudly in supposedly advanced and civilized Europe and Canada and all over the world. These peoples and their grudges and hatreds had their origin in the deep mists of time and had/have exactly nothing to do with the evil Americans and their machinations. A lot of Americans for reasons known best to themselves choose to believe that their own country is behind so much of the nastiness in the world. If only things were so simple. But they aren't simple. The world is a complicated place with many contending and mutually hostile ancient peoples with their own agendas of which Americans know nothing.
Oh, Yeah, Ibendet, I know we're supposed to be protected from the Govt. by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Does anybody give a crap about those documents anymore? Who has read them, or even know where they're located? I heard on the news friday that the FBI can now hold those suspected of terrorist activity indefinitely, and are permitted to question them for however long they want, and the suspect is not allowed counsel. On our side we have a few flimsy pieces of paper written in archaic English to shield us; Their side has armored cars, MP5 machine guns, automatic shotguns, hundreds of brutal prisons, literally millions of police agents, informers, trained dogs and a compliant media which serves as a propaganda arm and puts it all on TV with shows like 'Cops" and 'SWAT: Detroit', making it canned entertainment, presented for our viewing pleasure.
You tell me who has the advantage.
-Marlin
CFNation
New England Chapter
I understand your promotion of the concept coined speciesism. I first came across this term in the 1960's published book "Animal Liberation", and defined on dictionary.com as:
Of course, due to anthropocentrism, you received quite a few angry responses.
Doing my little bit to spread a little enlightenment among the dumb-fucks.
People come into my bookstore all the time wanting to trade dreck for the good stuff. I patiently explain that my landlord will not take books for rent.
People come into my bookstore and don't understand why I won't buy their dreck books. I patiently explain that I have to sell books in order to buy books.
Stunned looks of total incomprehension. So, I repeat myself slowly, using words with fewer syllables. Then I draw a picture.
Enlightenment (sometimes) slowly dawns.
Marlin,
I was referring to GE when I was discussing that they made a profit in the billions and paid no taxes. Supposedly they are working on wind turbines, but maybe it's the Chinese that are building them instead as they learn the technology. In any case I don't see people making things here. Nor will I.
There is a false argument built in here that discusses big govt or big transnationals. Why can't there ever be balance between the two?
I believe that as bad as the military industrial complex was in the 60's, no matter how you slice it, what was good for GE was still good for us. Why?
Because we still had the Keynsian model that allowed for shared wealth here and not the extreme balkanization with $Billions leaving the country for foreign investments.
Free trade with no barriers to entry means no jobs for you. And it doesn't stop with manufacturing.
You can't compete with slave labor. Our infrastructure and service industry costs are too high for us to work for as little as the BRIC countries.
As the Buppy I mentioned 2 wks ago from Goldman Sachs admitted when I brought that up, yeah, Americans are screwed.
Marlin,
Corporations aren't democratic either. They have no social responsibility and by law they are in the business of making money for the share-holders.
At some point in the future as Alvin Toffler claimed in Megatrends and the Third Wave, they will be more powerful than nations states. Who knows with all that wealth to protect and agendas they might be able to hire privatized armies to protect their interests.
With representative government, there's a fighting chance to regain your rights if you're willing to fight for them.
The first step is to identify what the issues are and then try and get a consensus. It's really your only chance.
Corporations won't set you free...
I enjoy your posts, Ibendet, informed and well thought out.
I got to know quite a few folks from NYC in, believe it or not, my time in the military. I'm not sure why, maybe from the crowded conditions, but they seemed to be a little above everybody else in the sophistication and knowledge departments. Many were officers.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Bill,
Qstip doesnt 'jump to conclusions' HE TAKES FLYING LEAPS.
And he has weird relatives or in this case a potential Inlaw.
the only thing worse than a post from you is when its DDOOUUUBBLLEEE
celebrating that level of breeding...while celebrating abortion here
KCRW..ruined by ruth seymore
It was set up for the College [crw= college radio workshop]
now the students are banned,,,and it remains on campus.
As a black gent walking on Pico Blvd was heard to say:
WE ARE NORTHERN MEXICO!
Thanks for that, Marlin
My ideal is to try to find balance between the extremes. There are good points to both sides, but we need to admit when something has gotten out of hand pull back and find a way that benefits the majority.
Problem is we are living in an age of ideology vs realities. When we are more in love with the concept and don't consider the real and often deleterious effects of the ideologies on ordinary lives, we can't answer the human part of the equation. Then we fail and our system cannot be sustained.
That's where we are right now. Energy depletion aside, we can't continue down this global economic path.
Sorry, Wage, but I'm a cynical man when it comes to people, and my life experiences have taught me that, so I won't change. It doesn't mean I dislike people, it just means they have to show me they deserve my trust.
Let's see, how has government earned my trust:
I paid a lot of my earnings into social security, and the feds took it and spent it on whatever they wanted to, and left IOU's in their place. Now they take money from my daughter so those funds go to me when I start collecting SS, thus placing me in the position of taking away my child's retirement money so I can live.
Lying to the American public about why we went to war in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan - And all for immoral purposes, too.
Bailing out bankrupt and corrupt businesses with the hard-earned funds of workers. Not prosecuting the white-collar criminals responsible for the failed businesses.
Spending hundreds of billions of our money on a so-called war on drugs, thus enriching drug lords; the CIA running drugs in Asia.
Forcing people to buy medical insurance, even if they can't afford it, and penalizing them if they refuse to buy it.
Groping us at airports and generally ruining air travel for the public.
And on and on.
Yes, people should help each other. I'd trust individuals and small groups of people to do so more than governments. Then I think of Kitty Genovese who was stabbed 8 times in New York City in 1964, screaming for help lying on the street until she bled out, with neighbors looking out the window and no one helping her
But, in spite of this, I'm still appreciative to live in our society. After all, we're just imperfect humans
"What is it about your identity that allows a religious faith to survive or transcend your own atheism?"
What I was trying to say is this:
After 2000 years of persecution, Jews have developed a very strong kind of group identity. Probably no other members of any religion have been persecuted non-stop for so long, and that forges extremely strong bonds.
So in being a Jew there is a 2000 year community aspect as well as the religious. When I say I was born a Jew and will die a Jew, it's not because I believe in God, but because I identify with the Jewish people and all their history. I could never turn my back on that. Let's be honest. When the SS comes for me in the night, if I scream I'm an atheist, you think they'll let me go?
Thank you. I had to go back and re-read it.
" The current craze against bullying might have some value if it wasn't going to be misused - which it will be."
Vlad, please clarify what you mean by this.
k-dog, great post!
old6699: individuals being productive is a threat to collectivism. But not to worry, the -isms are predicated on partial knowledge and subjective imaginations of group-linked STS wannabes.
Getting free means throwing off the programming received thru the ONE-eyed g-o-d and other outlets of assisted {s}l[a/i]ving.
"Runaway costs in healthcare, no taxation of corporations and no regulation in industry and energy production and no barriers to entry are the hallmarks of a dying nation state." -LB
The last act of a dying empire is to loot the treasury...
Guess what?
You tell me who has the advantage. -Marlin
In the end? Those that know their home-ground intimately. (...and are willing to be as ruthlessly cruel as their oppressing murderers.) Thus and always 'til all is destroyed, poisoned, and put to waste and death.
Just walked in and heard on CNN: Japan just had a 6.5 earthquake in the NE!!! How much insult can one country take?
We must STOP plate tectonics!
I'm in full snarky mode today. My husband was watching an Indy car race in Florida this morning. Six cars crashed in first 10 seconds of the race. Some Andretti spawn caused it, but he had a case of testosterone poisoning and blamed it on others.
Though I keep my mouth shut, I'm getting sick of all the college basketball games my husband watches. Glad when that will end. I just want to turn off that damn TV.
Jen
The last act of a dying empire is to loot the treasury...
Guess what?
Sadly, they'll come up with more ways to degrade this country before they're through!
###The last act of a dying empire is to loot the treasury...
Guess what?###
>>
LOL Yikes! I had thought that would be pretty much IT. ;o)
Perhaps the Masters of the Universe can add insult to injury, but we'll have to see. As I've said before, and I'll say again; the REAL pain ain't kicked in yet. Things are yet way too comfortable, as the consequences of all the shenanigans has yet to be realized. Think about it: how many people/families are ON THE STREET and hungry? It's not favella time in Rio yet. When it gets there, we'll see some shit worse than the brutal excesses of the Brazilians. (We're not as community oriented, and the cops here are still respected/obeyed.)
"As I've said before, and I'll say again; the REAL pain ain't kicked in yet."
It has in my wrists! I scored 7 quarts of milk from Anna tonight in one hour flat - fetch to release. Barely more than half the time it took me to get 5 quarts on Friday. Getting better, but my wrists are weak. Carpal tunnel-ish. I can hear the tendons click when I wring the tit. Time to step up the ginger, green tea, and B vitamin intake. Can you grow tea (Camellia sinensis) in your neck o' the woods? You may be too cold. I have 6 bushes in my garden, and look forward to being able to harvest some in a year or two!
Alright, let the "enlightened" (yet unsustainable) vegan flaming begin! Shit that crap is tiring. I wasn't telling anybody what to eat, just pointing out that veganism is wholly reliant on a fossil fuel subsidy.
From Joe Bageant's website:
After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas.
According to Joe's wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.
===========
We, of CFN, will miss you, Joe.
No doubt, Mr. Bageant. I discovered you too late to fully benefit from your marvelous life and philosophy, but I will try to make up for that in the years to come.
Bon voyage, dear friend.
That's very sad, his mortal coil gave out before he could finish what he had to say.
My copy of 'Deer Hunting with Jesus' ordered from Amazon.com is in route to me now.
His works can be found at: Joe Bageant
This is a huge loss, a mighty soldier of our cause is gone.
His family must be devastated, they have my deepest sympathy. I feel their pain.
His works can be found at: Joe Bageant
http://coldtype.net/joe.html
National Radiation Map Updated Every Minute, if you dont have it, get it here
http://nakedempire2.blogspot.com/
Howdy Tripp, You say: "I can hear the tendons click when I wring the tit."
I have milked/stripped many a cow and goat in my time and I have never heard of anyone using a wringing action when they milk a cow or a goat. The motion we pseudo Yankees here in northern NY use is as if one is attempting to squirt water out the bottom of ones hand when held in a thumbs up orientation. One is looking for a peristaltic wave type of motion starting with the thumb and index finger trapping the milk in the teat at the top nearest the udder and the rest of the fingers rhythmically closing in turn. With your grip relaxed gently bumping the udder with your hand as you prepare for the next peristaltic motion will simulate the bumping that a calf uses to coax its' mother into letting down her milk more readily. I believe you indicated that Anna is a Jersey in which case you should be milking out about one and a half to three times as much per milking as you claim to be unless you are drying her up/off . Normally dairy cattle are milked twice per day with the exception of the big commercial farms which milk three times per day taking 20 and more gallons per day from each cow and throwing them away after 3/4 years.
SNAFU
Vlad, of course you can burn dry cow patties for heat! They're mostly fiber. Although I read recently that something like 80-90% of the minerals in a cow's diet pass right through. Which would be one reason why the stuff makes such a great soil amendment.
So by my reckoning, a few cows grazing on grass could provide my family everything we need to live, without ever requiring another calorie of fossil fuel to be burned. Meat, milk, fertilizer ('cause beef jerky and milk alone would get pretty boring), draft power, and stove fuel. All from just a couple of acres of Nature's best solar collectors.
And you could do it even more efficiently with goats.
I think we determined that there is enough land on Earth for everyone to have 5 acres at the current population. Which is completely sufficient, minus our energy appetite. But even if, like some estimates say, only 2 of those 5 were useful for agriculture, that's still 8 acres for my family. Set aside 5 for a bull and 2 cows, breeding one of them every other year to stay in meat and milk, and we'd still have 3 acres for gardens and orchards. More than enough. You could also grow timber in the 5 acre pasture if you plant the trees thin enough to not block much sunlight. Maybe a pond for natural livestock water, with fish, frogs, and aquatic veggies as a bonus.
Not sure why everyone is so mopey. No, we probably won't all make it through this, but we could! If people got serious about what had to be done!
Bad choice of words I guess. I'm doing exactly what you're describing. It takes some focus to learn at first, but it's getting more natural. I only milk her every other day at this point, but that's only because I have too much to do right now, and I'm slow. I will step that up to every day soon. Probably never twice a day. She lost her calf a month or so ago, breach birth, and we're just keeping her flowing. By my account her milk production is heading the right way - 2 quarts Wednesday (not sure I drained her on my first solo mission), 5 quarts Friday, 7 quarts today. Seems reasonable. And she's kind of a small cow too. Good for a beginner.
Thanks for the tips! Shame about the modern dairy "efficiency" practices...
Hey Tripp,
How about if I send Asoka a copy of "Chicken Soup for the Vegan Soul." Maybe that will calm him down.
Jen
Understand that I'm not bragging about how much milk I'm getting, or how fast I'm getting it, in an absolute sense. Only compared to my prior attempts. The learning curve with a dairy cow is a little steeper than I anticipated. I'm just excited that I'm improving as fast as I am. I probably suck out loud compared to anyone of any experience. An hour for 7 quarts?? Fag.
Any thoughts on pyrethrin sprays for sucking flies? That's where I'm headed if no one has any dire warnings.
"Maybe that will calm him down."
Sounds great! Thanks, Jen.
I get a kick out of bringing in a load of milk too, especially as the amount increases each time, because we haven't gotten to the point yet that we've had too much, and I tend to lay off towards milking time so the kids have enough. Even if we only get 7 quarts every other day that's plenty to drink and make butter (we've discovered that Jersey milk makes nice rich yellow butter). Probably enough to make some cheese and yogurt too. We've got the soft cheese thing going pretty good - mozz, creme fraishe, etc, but I think we're ready for a cheese press to make hard cheeses. Can't wait to taste the first sharp cheddar on a little slice of farm sourdough.
SNAFU, you seem like a resourceful chap, you ever isolated a sourdough culture?
Future Babble
-KATHRYN SCHULZ
on FUTURE BABBLE
Why Expert Predictions Are Next to Worthless, and You Can Do Better
By Dan Gardner
NYT Book Review, March 27th
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/book-review-future-babble-by-dan-gardner.html?_r=1&ref=books
I recall reading that this has already happened; something about oil firms with their own helicopter gunships in west Africa. Protecting their interests, indeed.
Cheers
More on oil companies and helicopters. Not direct operation of corporate-owned gunships, but rather collusion between firms and national governments that produces the same outcome:
----------------------
The above from http://www.globalissues.org/article/86/nigeria-and-oil
Cheers
SCREAMING MAN HERE. GODAMMIT BAGEANT HOW COULD YOU LEAVE THIS HORDE IN THE HANDS OF THAT NEW YORK LIBERAL KUNSTLER? LAST I HEARD HE DIDN'T CARE A CRACKER ABOUT THE HOLOGRAM. THE UNWASHED ARE JUST DAMN STUPID IS ALL. THERE TO BE DISRESPECTED AND HATED FOR THEIR STUPIDITY. NO ONE IN CHARGE, JUST EMERGENT PHENOMENA. NOTHING TO SEE HERE. THE KUNSTLER CROWD, SO CLEVER... HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT TO WHAT THE ONE PERCENTERS THINK? WHERE'S THE LOVE IN THAT? WELL THEY'RE NOT GOING TO KILL THE SCREAMING MAN IN A HURRY. HE'S STILL HERE, AND STILL SCREAMING!
I am very sorry to hear that Joe Baegant died. I was quite fond of his writing. I used to be in a book club, and his was the first, and as it turns out only, book we read. (It turned into a social gathering).
There is a difference between people cooperating to provide everyone with a higher standard of living, and an oppressive State, with massive forces of repression controlling the population in the interests of the wealthy.
Weird that the "anti-government" folks focus on the repressive aspects of the State, and the "pro-government" people focus on the cooperative, people-centered kind of government.
I doubt that any of the "anti-government" people are more militantly anti-repression than I am.
I have resisted showing my ID, I have been threatened by the police for standing against abuse, I refuse to fly because of the indignities.
I consider myself an anarchist, in that I believe that every person should be free. BUT, people should cooperate to make life better for each other. We are, after all, herd animals.
The original cooperative impulse has been twisted into the massive US repressive apparatus being used to enforce corporate interests, first abroad, and now here at home.
That doesn't mean that we should give up on trying to make life better for our fellow human beings.
Too funny! I loved it, and I'm glad my kids are grown.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174649
Right Wing Thug says:
"well. when i say real money i am meaning money that is not borrowed.
and half of that gang of kids doesnt want to work.
they are stealing."
I answer:
Read all my previous posts: anyways, money doesn't mean a thing, money is just a symbol for human relationships, for human behaviors. There can be all the money in the world if it is needed for a precise goal, like when there are wars. Money doesn't run out just like relationships and interactions between people and groups of people can't run out.
Don't believe all the BS about debts, money , etc. There is only a precise intentionality of the FED to print trillions of dollars and give them to the banks and rich, end of story. That money could be given to teachers, people in new factories making rockets to mars, and millions of other things. The rich and capitalists just all hog it up, everyone buys into it, they all believe the BS all the economists and free markets gurus repeat.
People think that the way the economy works, all the rules of the economy, all the choices, behaviors and interactions are somehow "natural", the "only possibilities", the "only way things can work" since all the other choices have "failed" as those few puny and crappy experiments performed in Eastern Europe or Cuba as "communism" represents all and every possible alternative to this huge pile of crap we have today.
It seems like millions of even very educated people can't see that ECONOMY IS TOTALLY A MAN MADE ENTITY, AND AS SUCH DECIDED FROM THE OUTSET WITH PRECISE RULES AND INTERACTIONS. IT IS A FAKE MAN MADE ENTITY.
They can't see all the deliberate - political - ideological - and extremely biased and interest driven choices, set ups, patterns of behaviors, social organizations that are imposed upon millions worldwide in the name of some kind of imaginary "science" called "economy". Nothing further from the truth: just this simple idea can show how useless and false and totally irrelevant all the science of economy really is: After 50 years of PHDs from all kinds of top notch economy universities, after so much "research", so much effort by so many highly specialized and qualified "scientists" in this science called economy, we had the 2008 crisis, subprime loans, wars in Libya and on and on. Is that not enough to demonstrate what a fake and useless science economy really is ?
Don't you see the science of economy is simply a kind of religion imposed upon millions by thousands of high priest economists (that repeat forever the same old formulas, just like real priests, of competition - profit - labor is crazy and always too expensive - we need never ending innovation) in the name of some fake "objective" measures, but really meaning: the dominating social class will forever wage a class warfare on the weaker class to rob them in every possible way, until there is nothing left to rob. They already have trillions upon trillions of profit money in banks, not even doing anything or "investing" in anything (because there aren't any investments today worth making that gives a big enough "return" (what a moronic ideology!) ).
By the way the "return on investment" is just a very indirect and hidden way to find someone who can be robbed from essentially, as we have seen with the subprime loans.
"These extremist Jewish sects don't treat women as equals. Women can't even show their own hair and must dress to cover up their bodies. When women attend religious services, they cannot sit by the men, they must sit in their own special section off to the side or upstairs. It reminds me now of Muslim fundamentalists."
This may be a way to amplify sexual desire, as maybe the fear is that the desire may be too low to reproduce anymore. Same with the Muslim and Christian religion's total obsession on all things sexual.
Anyways, population growth is decreasing very rapidly worldwide, may just be a case - wondering ...
Also issues of "Mind over Matter" and "Instincts vs. Civilization", "Thoughts, thought patterns and Social Models and their influence on Sex" come to mind...
Some of you top philosophers- psychologists, etc. can develop large complex theories on it all, just like I like to do in my little ever losing war against Capitalism.
I was also reading that the retirement age "Must Increase" in Europe and JAPAN, etc. for the "good of the economy" while there are millions of young people 30 years or younger in all those Middle East - African nations educated and unemployed and ready for civil war. Wow.
This feeds into the desire to always find someone "at fault", someone that "didn't do their job" or "did something wrong". Someone to blame. This creates a very simple linearity in the minds of people, a very simple cause and effect, and reaction: punish the guilty, for example of "wanting to retire before their time, how dare they". This is so comfortable for the mind, now you can really beat them up, you found the flaw, you found the guilty, you can go fight em. Especially "they don't want to work, they are lazy". This mantra, they are lazy, or they are not "productive", or they "any possible excuse to beat them up" is so deeply ingrained in the minds of millions it is not even funny.
And yet, the modern Technological Economy has absolutely, virtually no relationship at all with any of this, the retirement age, hard work, and any others of so many imagined linearities are totally irrelevant to a system that generates way more wealth than it knows what to do with, automatically, because the scientists and engineers who designed all the mechanisms, REALLY DID DO A GOOD JOB, REALLY DID WORK HARD, SO MILLIONS WOULD NEVER HAVE TO AGAIN.
During happy times of peace and social injustice, children of the privileged classes learn to repress from their field of consciousness any of those uncomfortable concepts suggesting that they and their parents benefit from injustice. Young people learn to disqualify the moral and mental values of anyone whose work they are using to over-advantage. Young minds thus ingest habits of subconscious selection and substitution of data, which leads to a hysterical conversion economy of reasoning. They grow up to be somewhat hysterical adults who, by means of the ways adduced above, thereupon transmit their hysteria to the younger generation, which then develops these characteristics to a greater degree. The hysterical patterns for experience and behavior grow and spread downwards from the privileged classes until crossing the boundary of the first criterion of ponerology.
[The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic. Let us call this the first criterion of ponerogenesis.]
When the habits of subconscious selection and substitution of thought-data spread to the macro-social level, a society tends to develop contempt for factual criticism and to humiliate anyone sounding an alarm. Contempt is also shown for other nations which have maintained normal thought-patterns and for their opinions. Egotistic thought-terrorization is accomplished by the society itself and its processes of conversive thinking. This obviates the need for censorship of the press, theater, or broadcasting, as a pathologically hypersensitive censor lives within the citizens themselves.
When three "egos" govern, egoism, egotism, and egocentrism, the feeling of social links and responsibility disappear, and the society in question splinters into groups ever more hostile to each other. When a hysterical environment stops differentiating the opinions of limited, not-quite-normal people from those of normal, reasonable persons, this opens the door for activation of the pathological factors ...[Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology]
@ Situation Normal All F'#|\d Up
Many thanks for that youtube link to the Chernobyl Doc - very interesting viewing - key for me the current steel/concrete sarcophagus is now 2/3rds into its life-cycle, and due to ongoing radiation/weather wear-n-tear... will need to be supplemented pdq to stop further renewed leakage...
(BUT SHOW ME THE MONEY – HONEY!)
Also astonishing was the 500,000 manpower 'liquidators' including the Biro-robots used to shovel highly radioactive waste off the disaster site... the sheer size of the human-scale battle with this was under-reported globally for sure, that and a cost of 18bn rubble which could have been a contributor to the financial collapse of the USSR that followed.
Chilling too was the French govt - whom have a huge investments in Nuclear Fission - broadcasting to their nationals, no need to panic... all's well... please ignore the toxic waste cloud floating over-head...
Fast, forward to today... and the Japanese situation is for sure going to be similar no doubt, the true human cost of this tech' failure apparently a 'corporate' price that is deemed acceptable if we want low-cost electricity... for the must-have iPads/phones/infotainments/lcd TV's/play360boxes et al...
Then dial on top all the birth-defects and thyroid cancers to come, something that will once more be statistically swept under the carpet.
The political objective is always cheapest cost to enable short-term 'workable' majority vote in Obama's terms 2nd term re-election solutions... which is why during this current phase of complex USA societal collapse...
Many soundbite success will be wheeled-out as necessary, however the underlining anger, frustration and reality will continue to sadly bite...
HARD in fact!
Meanwhile anyone that challenges the status-quo is a liberal buyer of anarchistic insurgent hoaxes... resistance is futile you're either with us or against us...
Toodle-pip y'all...
You're right about their culture not being Stone Age. While backpacking around south east asia in 1967,with 11 of my closest bud's. I was able to observe these so called primitave cultures. They sure didn't live like we did back in the land of the big px,but they seemed to have what they needed. Their whole society was based on being self sustaining with a low ecological impact on their environment. They recycled everything they could. From spent shell casings to disgarded c-rat cans, there was always something it could be used for. And in our collective mind set we looked upon them as dumb fu*king gooks. Northwestern I Corp was and probably still is " A World Made By Hand " When I look back, what a joke ! They didn't need to trash the world to get what passed for the good life. So now 44 years later who's the fool ? It makes me wonder if and when things crash here, how many of us will be able to adapt to that lifestyle. I will venture to say "Not Many".