JHK’s Three-Act Play
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!
Patreon has apparently decided to take a bigger cut of your contributions and some of you are dropping out in protest. This only hurts your blogger, who works diligently to bring you this column twice a week. Your recurring contribution keeps the lights on here. In turn, I need to pay the web manager and the website-hosting server. Please give the equivalent of a cup of coffee each month to keep Clusterfuck Nation going!
The hidden agenda in the so-called tax reform bill is to act as stop-gap quantitative easing to plug the “liquidity” hole that is opening up as the Federal Reserve (America’s central bank) makes a few gestures to winding down its balance sheet and “normalizing” interest rates. Thus, the aim of the tax bill is to prop up capital markets, and the apprehension of this lately is what keeps stocks making daily record highs. Okay, sorry, a lot to unpack there.
Primer: quantitative easing (QE) is a the Federal Reserve’s weasel phrase for its practice of just creating “money” out of thin air, which it uses to buy US Treasury bonds (and other stuff). The Fed buys this stuff through intermediary Too Big To Fail banks which allows them to cream off a cut and, theoretically, pump the “money” into the economy. This “money” is the “liquidity.” As it happens, most of that money ends up in the capital markets. Stocks go up and up and bond yields stay ultra low with bond prices ultra high. What remains on the balance sheets are a shit-load of IOUs.
The third round of QE was officially halted in 2014 in the USA. However, the world’s other main central banks acted in rotation — passing the baton of QE, like in a relay race — so that when the US slacked off, Japan, Britain, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of China, took over money-printing duties. And because money flies easily around the world via digital banking, a lot of that foreign money ended up in “sure-thing” US capital markets (as well as their own ). Mega-tons of “money” were created out of thin air around the world since the near-collapse of the system in 2008.
And magically, with no negative consequences! Yet. Now, Europe and Japan are making noises about dropping their batons. China’s banking system is so opaque and perverse — because it is unaccountable except to the ruling party with its own agenda — that it’s quite impossible to tell what they are really doing, though the signs of mal-investment are obvious and startling. And the UK’s finances are tied up in its messy divorce proceedings with the EU (with the British standard of living dropping markedly meanwhile). In short, the torrent of global “liquidity” looks to be slowing to a trickle.
The expectation is that this would make stock markets go down and bond interest rates to go up (fewer buyers), perhaps a lot. The dirty open secret here is that these central bank interventions are the only means for keeping the capital markets up, and that the markets are just a Potemkin false front for Western economies that are drying up and blowing away. That is certainly the experience here in the USA, where banking hocus-pocus now accounts for about 30 percent of GDP, and most of that activity is either out-and-out fraud or swindling, or collecting rents and dividends on past frauds and swindles.
Dem/Prog America in its Silicon Valley gourmet employee bistros and Hamptons lawn parties thinks that the flyover Trumpist Red State world of meth, joblessness, and anomie is some kind of a Netflix hallucination. But no, it’s for real. The center of the ole US of A is hollowed out. The bad news is that it probably has enough juice left in its disaffected youth, and certainly enough weaponry, to start a very serious insurrection if it continues to get dissed.
Enter the joker in the deck: Bitcoin. Though it pulled back a couple of thou overnight, this strange investment vehicle blasted through $18,000-per-Bitcoin in the past 24 hours, roughly tripling from $6000 in one month. It even endured the hacking of one of its exchanges, NiceHash, where $70 million was looted without so much as a stutter in the upward thrust of the chart. Whatever else Bitcoin is — and I would suggest a “Ponzie,” a “mania,” a “con” — this thing is a message. The message is that financial circulatory system of the global economy is in some kind of distress. Another take-away is that the rush into Bitcoin represents a loss of faith in matrix of rackets that world banking has become, and a flight to perceived safety in a putative financial instrument beyond the clutches and the lying propaganda of nervous, self-interested governments.
For the moment, Bitcoin is doing the job that gold used to do: indexing the loss of value in paper currencies and the things that affect to represent them. Except that Bitcoin has no material reality. It is a figment of mathematics. The vaunted blockchain “technology” is just a formula for packaging information and assigning it to live in various places. It appears to have some worth as a ledger system, for keeping track of accumulated value in an allegedly transparent and honest mode. But the thing it is toting up and sending chits around the world for — Bitcoin — has no value in and of itself.
If “money” can be said to represent a future claim on work, or energy, or things that they produce, then Bitcoin is not money at all because it only represents energy burned in the computer exertions necessary to “mine” the Bitcoins. In other words, it costs a lot of energy to create Bitcoins, and there’s no claim on future energy, or work — it’s already gone. That energy use is catching the world’s attention and is beginning to look pretty profligate. Like, if Bitcoin happened to shoot up over $100,000-per-unit, it would hog an unseemly portion of the worlds electric power.
Anyway, that’s only one interpretation of the Bitcoin rush. In the end, I believe it’s simply telling us that the global financial system is headed for some serious trouble. It is vectoring right smack into the same lane as the gathering political crisis in the US government, as a fight to death between Donald Trump and his adversaries comes darkly into view.
Great Christmas Reading… JHK’s new book!
“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”
Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books
Other Books by JHK
| The World Made By Hand Series: | |
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
   |
|
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
|
|
 |
 |
  |
|
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
|
Order now! Jim’s new book
Click here for signed author copies from Battenkill Books
|
Order now! Jim’s other new book
|
Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
GET THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL PROVIDED BY SUBSTACK
You can receive Clusterfuck Nation posts in your email when you subscribe to this blog via Substack. Financial support is voluntary.
Sign up for emails via https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com
Ahh Friday!
Bitcoin…… yeah. I think bit coin may have about as much value as a pile of gold coins in the game “World of Warcraft”.
If your views on the financial markets are correct, and I think they are, the future is all about getting through the tough times to the actual recovery. About the best position to be in would be debt free and owning a good house in a low property tax area. The problem that I see is timing. You can know with certainty that something is going to happen but without knowing the exact timing, the information is almost useless.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kunstler’s colleague Dmitry Orlov, in his weekly posts, wrote about the dangers lurking in Bitcoin. His is a pay site, that only costs $1/month to join – quite a bargain. Anyway, after reading from these two esteemed writers, I know enough to stay away, far, far away.
Regarding Jim’s request for needed funds, I do feel bad that I’m not contributing. However, in my defense, I’ve tried three different times to contribute and have wound up so confused by Patreon that I have abandoned my quest in frustration. I’m definitely a technologically challenged senior citizen, and perhaps I’m the only one here dumb enough to not be able to figure it out, but that is my excuse. For what it’s worth, I do contribute to other sites that do not use Patreon without any trouble.
“my excuse”
Outsider,
With all respect, your comment outlines your reasons…not an excuse.
elsy,
Excuse or Reason? I’ve considered your suggestion several times, and it seems like a distinction without a difference. But good to know that the grammar police is keeping me on my toes.
Outsider,
A reason defines why something was done…an excuse, however, is an attempt to rationalize guilt…and by extension plead one’s case for mitigation.
We, in the military were taught never to make an excuse. If you think about it, there is a palpable difference between the two terms.
Perhaps you could get a young person to help you with this. Once you have your Patreon account set up, it’s easy to adjust your level of support and to add recipients.
It’s especially convenient if you use Paypal with it. You get an e-statement from both Paypal and Patreon, so there’s no mystery about the modest charge each month.
So, let me get this straight, you are taking economics advice from a writer who recommended sitting out the biggest bull run in years, and a guy who lives in a sailboat and probably owns nothing but a slide rule and a macbook?
You’re not just technologically challenged.
Nope,
“You’re not just technologically challenged.”
But . . . You are severely emotionally and psychologically challenged.
‘Fess up . . . what IS your problem?
Bitcoin is a Tulip bulb. Historically, if the price of anything rises as quickly as bitcoin’s has it will drop just as quickly.
There’s a lot of money to be made on the way up, just be sure you aren’t the one holding the bag when the price drops. It’s probably already too late. When the MSM starts talking about it the end is usually near.
How does someone short bitcoin?
IDK, but if you figure it out, let me know.
A bitcoin futures market is about to be born.
There, you will be able to short the futures contract.
However, there will be much higher margins required (word is, minimum 33%, or even higher) due to the insane volatility. And a few quirky rules that aren’t found in traditional securities markets.
Stay tuned.
To me, Bitcoin sounds similar to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme. Will the inventor(s) also wind up in jail?
Comex futures for cryptos?
There might be an indirect investment strategy. As explained the Bitcoin value is derived from the investment of electrical energy required to compute the blockchain, so, a Bitcoin short play might be identifiable as a Carbon credit long play, as long as Bitcoin doesn’t blow up. However, one might easily devise solar powered blockchain mining computers which, globally, will never have darkness. A Bitcoin economy would be as solid as the Sun. So, a solar energy long play could be another Bitcoin short play. But, at what point would the supply of real estate square footage required for the photovoltaics become critical. Then, a long real estate play might be a good Bitcoin short play.
One does not short Bitcoin until the CBOT or some other derivatives market entity or exchange is created ( and the rumor is that somewhere Money Masters of the Universe are working on just that, furiously.)
Instead one hacks the system and breezes away with tens of millions of dollars worth of the anonymous ether-based power-hog dinero.
And that is called making money the old-fashioned way!
As of December 10, 2017, there is a Bitcoin futures market in the USA.
Does anyone see a major disconnect between the wipeout of Puerto Rico, billions of dollars of damage to Houston, billions of dollars of damage to Florida from their Hurricane and the allegation that the US
economy GREW by over 2%??
And now we have Los Angeles on fire including mansions of the rich and famous…
“Oh yes my house burned down but the economy grew including my own finances because insurance paid to partially fix it!
And just look at all the jobs created for insurance adjusters, and major repairs!”
This is the fatal flaw in today’s alleged economic ledgers. Obviously there are huge stores of actual physical value being wiped out already from Climate Change caused by global warming and yet this destruction of real physical value is not counted?
How does that figure?
Wait until the price of oil goes back up…
@orbit7er
“Does anyone see a major disconnect between the wipeout of Puerto Rico, billions of dollars of damage to Houston, billions of dollars of damage to Florida from their Hurricane and the allegation that the US
economy GREW by over 2%??”
I claim no expertise in these matters (so await correction), but my understanding is that if a town is flooded, burned, razed in an earthquake, the rebuilding work counts towards GDP, even though a normal person would consider that some ‘value’ in a real, rather than economist’s sense, had been lost. The loss doesn’t show up in the GDP figures, just in people’s real lives…
I believe you are correct Greeny. Same with healthcare. Revenues contribute to GDP, even though most of it is fraudulent and/or marked up by obscene amounts. Lies, damn lies, and economic statistics…
Paying for these expenses are usually off-budget [the annual accounts don’t include them] Literally Trillions of dollars are not listed in the budget. Take the GFC; the Fed paid out $29 TRILLION to needy banks etc. That’s a third of the US’ total GDP, although spread out over 2+ years 2008-2010. Then we don’t find out how much of the military budget falls short of total spending, another Trillion or so? Then we have Disaster relief, more billions not budgetted in the annual accounts.
So all the kerfuffle from Congress over a balanced budget is just bunkum. There is no way the tax take can pay for this and no way it measures the real totals. In fact if Federal taxes really did pay for government spending [they don’t] the sum would swamp taxes.
No, all government spending is just marking up accounts at the Reserve, electronic entries, so coming from thin air creation.
What it means is that “free money” [it does have to match debts] Will never be a problem until the real resources it describes run out. We are using tomorrow’s resources today, so we bring catastrophe closer every day. Fun times ahead!
orbit7er,
You are correct, it doesn’t “figure” at all. It’s just a way to hang a big bag of “growth” lies onto. Replacing destroyed stuff is just that; to equate it with “further growth” of the Gross Domestic Product is asinine and fraudulent; it’s less than staying even.
@ozone
“Replacing destroyed stuff is just that; to equate it with “further growth” of the Gross Domestic Product is asinine and fraudulent”
Exactly. But that’s the way it’s done for GDP measurements. We all know it’s asinine.
Meanwhile, as we debate the esoteric matter of illusory “Bitcoins”, real politicians, with real bought-and-paid-for agendas, are passing real tax laws that will take away real health care and, likely, Food Stamp benefits and ultimately, the shiny conservative end-game, Social Security pensions from real citizens who, but the way, paid real money into their S.S. accounts but will suffer real pain instead as a result of congressional greed.
Guns, anger, scapegoatting and despair don’t mix well, so we are all likely to see some real interesting times, real soon.
For several years I have been explaining why Social Security is not a government welfare program and has no effect on the deficit.
Your comment indicates that you do not understand this. You believe that cutting Social Security would reduce the deficit, and that this is the excuse the right-wing nut jobs will use to cut it.
So instead of trying to explain why you are wrong, which is futile because this right-wing lie is almost universally believed, I would like you to explain why you think you are right.
You guys are both bashing conservatives so I’m puzzled by your animosity toward him. I would indeed like to know by what theory you contend cuts to SS would not reduce the deficit. I’m not advocating cuts to SS, I’m just saying your point makes no sense to me. The deficit is the $ the govt sends out minus how much it takes in. Less $ out means lower deficit. Maybe you are contending there’s some sort of dynamic scoring that must be included, but that’s a right wing concept and you don’t seem fond of the economic theories of the right.
lbs, I mean no offense, but you are a victim of the right-wing lies about Social Security. You believe that Social Security is a government welfare program, paid for with funds from the general revenue. It is not.
The best way I know to explain this is to recommend an excellent article by Malcolm Mitchell:
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/26/friends-like-social-security-doesnt-need-enemies/
“…No agency outside the Social Security system can receive or spend Social Security money. And nothing that happens in the Social Security system has any effect whatsoever on the federal budget…”
In that article there is a link to another article on the subject by Mitchell, and he has written other articles about it which you can find on that website.
Dean Baker has also explained why Social Security has no effect on the deficit, and why anyone who says it does is a fool, an ignoramus or a knave. Most of them are knaves:
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/lesson-for-reporters-social-security-does-not-add-to-the-budget-deficit
Come on James.
Not that I am a Trump hater ( which I am), I mean, I don’t believe that “getting” Trump is the most important thing for national salvation, but I don’t understand why you think that the “Golden Golem of greatness” has some kind of logical master plan for governance. Clearly, he does not. All that he does is try to break things.
The aim of Trump and his “base”, clearly, is to support him in his effort to break every program started since the new deal. That, and play golf. His base seems to have gone masochistic in that I can’t see how the latest abomination of a tax bill does anything but hurt them.
I believe that what has elevated Trump to the new “teflon president” is the all surrounding envelope of right wing media. Radio, TV, internet… Do you listen to this stuff? The base listens and watches this stuff all day, every day. I mean, it’s a year since the election in 2016 and they are still going after Clinton! And they believe in every kooky conspiracy that is propagated.
Rather than worry about Trump, maybe we should be more concerned about the health of the USA. Maybe Trump is a symptom of a more serious issue with America.
I was in a debate yesterday with a guy that does not support Trump and wants him out. I pointed out to him that he was legally elected. I also mentioned that the Democrat’s failure to uphold the “rule of law” is the root cause for the Democrat’s problems. Had HRC’s case been put forward to a grand jury, I bet she would have been indicted. This would have most likely caused her to drop out from the race and Bernie would have had the nomination. Does anyone think that Trump would have beat Bernie?
Eat shit you Democrats. This is your creation!
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Hillary being a dishonest slimeball is not a kooky conspiracy theory. JHK knows it. Even Donna Brazile, lifelong left-wing Democrat, knows it. Put away the bong pipe, and do some research!
Miner_Tom– Where do you infer that I think “getting Trump is the most important thing for national salvation” ??? Or that he has some “master plan for governance.” I never even intimated as much. You are reading with zero comprehension. — JHK
You did last week and I saw right away that miner_tom had spent more time writing his comment than what had transpired since you posted today’s article. It was not just his length that told me that. It is not the worst comment we have ever seen and it could have responded to last week’s, What Now? Perhaps the work of a newbie you scared away. The author could have been in high school just trying to get at the top of the list.
Staying on topic about bitcoin is going to be a bit hard. I go with the tulip comparison myself and see it as a phenomenon that is only tangentially related to the international accounting fraud of the banks.
People are afraid and trying to find things of value. What could be more enduring than something that does not exist. Bitcoin won’t corrode or wear away. I speculate and so does everybody else, as do you.
“In the end, I believe it’s simply telling us that the global financial system is headed for some serious trouble.”
Nah, bitcoin is such a complex phenomena people that can find just about any feel-good explanation they want. You, me anybody. Bitcoin is a complex phenomena with no easy explanations.
Nah, bitcoin is such a complex phenomena that people can find just about any feel-good explanation they want. You, me anybody. Bitcoin is a complex phenomena with no easy explanations.
My second to last sentence had an out of order word. Sorry.
Sucks syntax sometimes Mr. Dog.
Actually what you wrote makes plenty of sense either way.
So complex, that nobody really understands it: computer freaks, economists, the Gubbermint, the Hoi-Polloi. Well, maybe the Evil Fuckers and the Criminals ( but I repeat myself) grok it, those who brought the thing to life and are using it to best advantage.
K-Dog,
I wrote a reply to JHK clarifying my blog post.
Sorry about the length of the post but as far as I can see, your post was as long as my original post. Am I wrong about that? If not, then we are equally guilty.
Also, insults are the way of the “high school” mind set. At 63 years of age, I don’t have that thin of a skin and I am not above clarifying my statements as well as having meaningful dialog.
Tom
miner_tom,
Glad you don’t have a thin skin but you were not appreciating the humor. JHK got a bug up his butt about your post. Why yours and not others more egregious who knows. You were just lucky to be his victim. Suggesting you were in high school (we are both of an age where we wish we were) was suggesting JHK was a bit unfair, you did not catch that. How would I have known how old you are?
My reference to your length was only to say I was not considering just the length of your comment. I saw evidence of thought in it. That would be a compliment. As to my length, knocking out 500 words can take me anywhere from three to twenty minutes. After writing several thousand comments I’m at least twice as fast as I used to be.
Hey, K-Dog and Miner Tom. I never made any such statement that getting rid of Trump would be the salvation of this country. Period. — JHK
No you did not. I wish it were that easy but Trump is a symptom not the disease.
Hi James, I never said that YOU believe “getting Trump is the most important thing for national salvation”. I was saying that “I” don’t believe that. I apologize if you took the statement in a way that it was not intended.
I have been reading your blog for many years and will continue to do so. Your blog post today ended with “fight to death between Donald Trump and his adversaries”. Perhaps that statement itself could be misinterpreted. I have read statements in that vein on your blog before. In the light of the the last quote one might (just might) infer that Trump had some legitimate quest that his adversaries would thwart.
I personally think that at nearly the end of our complex set of living arrangements, called industrial society, it is appropriate to have an “insane clown” as president. “They whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”. Trump appears to me to be as made as a hatter.
No, I don’t mean that Hillary (or Bill, for that matter) deserve anything other than derision. They should be tried for war crimes at the very least. I only mean to say that I see and hear a lot of distraction from what is currently happening in government at the moment. Lots of religious magical thinking and war hooping dominate.
I’d urge the President to play more golf. Play every day if your body hold up. Just as Obama should have played even more. As long as they are on the golf course, they are doing less damage to the nation.
BTW, the tax bill is a total scam that the people are apparently not buying. David Stockman has skewered it. These congressmen may be inept, but they can sure read polls. Pass this tax bill, and the GOP, will probably lose their majority. Trump will probably cost them that anyway.
All Trump wants is that tax bill to pass and take his BILLION dollar benefit for his estate. That’s all he cares about. After that he won’t mind if he’s booted out, it’s all about mo money mo money mo money for him and his clown car of a family.
Getting rid of Trump isn’t my main goal, my main goal is getting rid of his entire stinking administration who are out to gut just about all of our government in Bannon’s insane quest to “deconstruct the administrative state” just like his Koch bros pals want to see, i.e., the end of the New Deal and Great Society. Ryan has already announced that after the tax deal his plans for 2018 are to “reform” both Medicare and Social Security. The very people who voted for Trump are going to get screwed so bad it isn’t funny, but as long as they listen to Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Breitbart and the TV preacher of their choice they will be blinded by the reality until they find themselves out of money and shunned by their doctors.
Eat shit you Republicans. This is your creation!
My POV,
Ayn Rand disciple Paul Ryan better not be counting his chickens just yet. After the election next year it could be Princess Pelosi as Speaker all over again. Boy, I can’t wait.
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Mr. Gambini?
Vinny Gambini: Yes, sir?
Judge Chamberlain Haller: That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection.
Vinny Gambini: Thank you, Your Honor.
Judge Chamberlain Haller: [firm tone] Overruled.
I would not overrule any of your excellent and entertaining comment, but it reminded me of that. We can use a little comic relief.
However, I am leery about your reference to Social Security. I wonder whether you know that it is not a government welfare program and that it has no effect on the deficit.
The right-wingers have been lying for so long that Social Security is busting the budget that most people believe it. The worst part is that people who know better are willing to let people believe it. Then they can use it as a scare tactic against the Republicans. Even Bernie Sanders seems to be doing this lately.
Greetings Windward,
I don’t know if you are referring to me, but I’m well aware that Social Security is not adding to the deficit. In fact, it’s in surplus (for the time being anyway), and the excess is being used to reduce the actual shortfall. If it had been left as a separate fund, it could have paid for itself indefinitely. Politicians can never leave well enough alone.
outsider, I also have trouble sometimes figuring out the replies. I was replying to My Point of View. Glad to know that you understand how Social Security works. I suspect that most of us here couldn’t care less about the subject.
Did you see this:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/theological-scholar-explains-horrifying-reason-trumps-supporters-celebrated-armageddon-in-pensacola/
“…They believe that Donald Trump is God’s instrument to move us closer to the Rapture, the Judgment, and the End,” she wrote. “Because to them, that’s actually the beginning — the beginning of their reward and heavenly bliss…“
“…What matters is that Jesus comes back in Judgement,” she continued. “To these sorts of Christians, that Judgment is the only true peace. Everything is phony, deceptive, even evil. Millions of American Christians believe all this. Millions of Trump voters. Sacred history is unfolding right now because of Donald Trump and God. They’ve based their faith, their identity, their purpose, their eternal lives on these ideas. Trust me. There’s no arguing with any of it…”
You don’t seem to have any awareness of contemporary politics. One of the most prominent stances taken by Trump was his promise to not allow the Establishment Republicans to make cuts new deal programs like SS and Medicare. I swear, a lot of the political commentary i hear these days seems to have no basis in reality.
JHK, thank you for writing about things that matter. I’m tired of people arguing over how many genders there are (at last count 32) or wallowing in the self-loathing called “white privilege” (join us or be called a racist).
I suspect a planetary-wide financial collapse and all its lethal consequences will matter a great deal more to our lives than inventing new gender neutral pronouns.
The arguing over genders, bathroom bills, abortion, gay rights, etc, are all just a bunch of freak shows to keep the sheeple divided and conquered, to keep them busy arguing with one another over things that will not change while the pols do their dirty work of raping the U.S.Treasury yet again. That’s all it is, one big diversionary tactic after another…
Our government has never been very good at protecting us from all sorts of fraud until it causes a trainwreck, then they close the barn door after the horses have all been stolen…
After the planetary-wide financial collapse they’ll take turns at their 15 minutes of fame on C-SPAN to harrumph and act all outraged and declare “never again” and then go back to boinking their secretaries.
Is this the 21st Century “Shoe Shine Boy” stock tip?
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/pole-dancing-instructor-fins-success-with-bitcoin-helps-newcomers/
But she is not talking stocks.
Do you think the fact that nearly everything is made in China has anything to do with all this? Anything?
Funny you should ask.
https://youtu.be/esa-NM2jVvo
This Youtube is called ‘A 360 tour of a giant Chinese bitcoin mine.
James is right about huge amounts of CO2 being released into the air mining bitcoins. Rows and rows of old PCs stacked, cobbled and cabled together running algorithms as fast as they can. All trying out seeds to see if they yield a coin. Keep the buildings in the north of the country so they are easy to cool.
A similar situation is happening with shale oil. Massive infrastructure and expenditure needed to produce any result. Similar because nobody cares. What me worry?
Nice link K-Dog! Reminds me of Greer’s observations about peak abstraction as a society peaks and then begins to decay. Inconvenient facts get redefined and then gradually discarded altogether, as the culture’s foundational paradigms are revealed to be worn out lies, and mere enforced orthodoxy takes their place. Cognitive dissonance among the masses will grow and grow, until like all the other bubbles, it too will pop. Trump’s election indicates that that time might be a lot closer than many people think.
“Cognitive dissonance among the masses will grow and grow, until like all the other bubbles, it too will pop. Trump’s election indicates that that time might be a lot closer than many people think.”
YessireeBob’syeruncle!
This is why many of us are rooting for economic collapse to be the first domino to fall… and to actually be *acknowledged* to fall by the general population! A YUGE lesson about discovering the true value of things with less loss of life than the other collapse “options”. Very, very important for those of us who have dipped their toes into Orlov’s stages of collapse.
If you’re going to invest, invest in tangible, useful items. As to the abstract, I suppose gold and silver would be acceptable “stores of value” in their portability and representations of human labor/craftmanship.
If we are experiencing peak cognitive dissonance sanity I fear will result from a fall from a Seneca cliff. The first domino of an economic collapse you contend will tender a more gentle bell shaped glide from peak madness to sanity.
But does the economic domino lead to awareness of the predicament or will scapegoats substitute for truth as they have so many times?
K-dog,
I take your point, and it *does* look like most would prefer to live and work in a fantasy bubble. On the other hand (four fingers and a thumb) economic woes are direct and can’t be ignored (as “money” buys the essentials for life for almost everyone). Hard lessons make for realistic work-arounds… sometimes.
“But does the economic domino lead to awareness of the predicament or will scapegoats substitute for truth as they have so many times?”
As you infer, “they” will certainly use the new and improved Great Wurlitzer (instantaneous media) in the attempt to retain their power, influence and wealth by pointing at our equally destitute neighbors as the reason for our troubles. Same as ever, right? Bernays would be possessed of a priapistic piss-stick in perpetuity, peering at this perfect people-persuader.
Weirdly, the radio is talking about a Sponge Bob musical in which a squirrel character, “Sandy”, who lives in a bubble, is *scapegoated* (quote, I swear) for warning of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. Graffiti on her bubble-house reads, “Land Mammals Go Home”.
I wish an economic crisis could spawn awareness but Bernays and crew managed to persuade the country to go to war in WWI with a country we did not have a problem with at all using only newspapers magazines and posters. People have not gotten any smarter since then. When Bernays was young Americans were actually more literate than they are now and since then technology has made media more seductive influential and persuasive. With our Wurlitzer media and video distraction critical thinking does not stand a chance.
The next economic crisis will be because rich people have had to pay too much in taxes. This will be widely believed, count on it.
I think I’d enjoy the musical.
Bitcoin is a precursor to all digitalized “money” and will inevitably lead to chipping of the general population. We already have chips in our car keys, in our credit/debit cards and in our pets. We are next and it will give the Government/Banking Goons total control and total power over ever aspect of every life. There will be no more hoarding of cash, PM’s, or assets. Chips will contain all of your “value” at all times and can be manipulated whenever and however it suits the needs of those in control.
Very true, Walter. It’s also possible to make chips capable of conveying various degrees of pain to disobedient folks. That will probably be a feature introduced later, since they wouldn’t want to alarm a docile population in the early stages of implantation.
Be a chip off the old block or else.
Actually, I don’t believe the banking goons give two shakes about anyone…especially not anyone in particular and they probably don’t care about whether you hoard money or get money through various unsavory means…they only want you to work, make money, spend that money, and if possible, borrow some more so you have to keep on working. Working at something is what they want. Look at productivity number over the last 40 years, and then ask yourself when was the last time they lowered the working hours…not in over 50 years.
Yes SuperDave they need little people to mow their lawns, run their sewage treatment plants, detail their fancy cars, so yes they want us all employed to be sure. But their greed has grown and their reliance upon the “economy” is diminished. They need us less and less to buy their stuff because, after all, they can simply print up whatever cash they need or steal it from our savings, pensions, or through taxation. They will always need slaves, but they will certainly not want to have to pay them for their efforts. Not in the future.
Ya know, this is not the first time that slaves were no longer needed. In the US, the food growing slaves became less needed due to the advent of tractors and we had a Great Depression in the US and world wide (along with other reasons), but the Russian solution to too many food growing slaves was to starve them to death. In the US we created social security and sundry other plans to deal with the glut…including reducing working hours. In the sixties, with the glut of warrior slaves and factory slaves, we sent a bunch to war and started the “Great Society”….and reduced working hours…what will we do now to reduce our remaining factory slaves and now fast food slaves…the robots (just like cheap chinese slaves, they are a coming, like it or not)
Robots are a great thing if they are used to serve man as in Japan. Instead of importing third worlders into work, they are staying strong and relying on machines that serve Them, the Japanese people, not just Japanese Corporations. This is the power of the real Nation State and the economic nationalism Bannon wants for us. Trump seems to share at least some of this vision. How much I don’t know – it may well vary daily, hourly and minute to minute.
Thus Japan, its Culture and Genotype are preserved, despite their below replacement birth rate and falling population. Not altogether bad as they were quite over-crowded. But bringing in the Third World would have ended them as a real Nation as it has us. They chose the Path of Life and we have chosen the Path of Death.
Well put, Janos. Recently Black Pigeon put out a video extolling the same thing about Japan. Outside of North Korea they have the most homogenous society in the world, and the people are not afraid to walk the streets alone at night. The sooner they kick the American troops out, who are no doubt stealing some of their best young women, the better.
I think you were doing fine when you started with don’t believe the banking goons give two shakes about anyone but you started to go off the rails when you started putting thoughts in their head.
They want more. More of everything, that is the common thread. More for themselves. If they could get more and more of everything by howling at the moon, that is what they would do. They are not thinking about you working. They are not thinking about you not working. They are not thinking about you at all. They are only thinking of today, themselves and opportunities to get more of everything.
It does not really get any deeper than that. They like politicians are not thinking about tomorrow. They have the mind of the crowd.
Yes K-Dog it is the “everybody gets a trophy”, “everyone is the center of the universe” mentality that has been pounded into the “educational” indoctrination of the youth for decades now. It permeates the society and sets everyone against everyone else. It permeates all ranks of the social chain and will insure that those at the top will stay at the top. Those underneath are far too busy nipping each other in the heels to do anything about how they are being used. In the end, no matter what the plan, those that survive will be neither the smartest nor the strongest. The survivors will be those that are most able to adapt to change.
Exactly. The bankers and wealthy aren’t going to spend a cent of time or money to implant chips in people (unless they can get the government to do it for free). They already have enough data on us to make their greedy plans work just fine.
Data on us is mined every time we use a credit card, a loyalty card at a store, watch a show, or visit a site on line. All that data, and so much more, is in the big data banks, mined constantly, sliced and diced by all sorts of criteria.
They don’t need the government to be big brother; THEY are big brother. They will maintain the ruse by paying wacko websites to keep pumping out laughable conspiracy theories designed to make up fear the government while they pick out pockets and take the proceeds off shore to avoid any and all taxes.
Meanwhile we pay through the nose for a massive military that is there to “protect U.S. interests” around the globe where the very same tax dodging obscenely rich make and stash the wealth they couldn’t spend if they had a hundred thousand lifetimes.
Russia, China, and Europe laugh their asses off at the idiot Americans.
@MyPointofView
Many of us are not laughing here in the UK. The UK has spawned the mother of all tax haven networks, starting with the City of London itself (I mean ‘the City’, not the city).
The whole Brexit fiasco was engineered by Tory ideologues who want (a) to make the UK subservient to the American corporatocracy, through a TTIP-type trade deal with the US which would allow US companies to sue our government in secret courts if Parliament passes any domestic legislation that just ‘risks’ harming the company’s bottom line, and (b) to turn the UK into a bargain-basement, low-regulation, race-to-the-bottom tax haven on the periphery of Europe.
People like the dangerously courteous Jacob Rees-Mogg, who looks as if he would be more at ease back in colonial times, even admits to (b) out loud.
The good news is that it doesn’t look like the EU is going to let them get away with it. Not that I am blind to the faults of the EU either.
GA,
Hello, again. Just a few months ago, I learned that there is a separate financial empire called the “City of London,” right in downtown London, that is its own little fiefdom, similar to the Vatican. I wonder, with the city now majority non-white, how long it will take the masses to storm the gates.
@outsider
White *British* people* are a minority (45%), not total white people. About 37% of those living in London were born outside of London, of whom about 25% were born outside of Europe. Lots of Londoners not born in the UK are from Europe, including Ireland. Lots of those from outside of Europe are North Americans, Australians, white South Africans etc.
I don’t think there’s much chance of anyone storming the gates. Firstly, there are no gates, and the place is just full of office blocks. Anyone can go there any time. It empties at the weekend.
And there’s no connection anyway between the racial demographics and the likelihood of any storming of the metaphorical gates.
Sorry that should have been ‘including 25% from outside of Europe, not ‘of whom’…
Sorry again! Perils of posting late at night…I meant 37% of Londoners are from outside the UK. Oh, and London has quite a few very white Russians with very big bank accounts and large property portfolios, who help distort the property market so that ordinary Londoners of any hue can’t afford to live anywhere near where they work. Or have to live in potential towering infernos covered in cheap flammable cladding that avoids rich people having to look at an ugly building that houses poor people. Although at least that problem is being addressed (the cladding, not the poor people).
Good comments, Green Alba, and I appreciate the stats. I was speaking metaphorically about “storming the gates,” as you recognized. But I was thinking somewhat about our Occupy Wall Street which happened a few years ago and was finally broken up by riot police. Perhaps, at some point, you’ll have your “Occupy City of London.”
Hi outsider
We had it much the same time as you I think 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_London
K-dog,
…And politicians (the handmaidens of the *truly* powerful) want power and adulation above all else. LBJ was an excellent example of the combination of ignorance and arrogance. …An earlier lesson in making the “facts” fit dead-wrong assumptions and predetermined conclusions. The dumb bastard figured he could win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese by killing mountains of them. Patently insane.
Excellent comment! In the movie “In Time” a 2011 dystopian sci-fi thriller taking place in a future where time is money and the rich live forever, clocks are embedded in the arm with time being extracted after each purchase or when one steps out of line. This movie might be s presage of things to come.
At present, the oligarchs want to live forever with a one-world corporate government (like in the movie “Rollerball (1973)) to keep the servant class populace in line. With the huge gains in tissue engineering, organ regeneration and stem cell therapies, which are cost prohitive to most of us, along with the planned collapse of the world monetary system, that future may be close at hand. However, all great advanced empires, such as, Egypt, Greece, Rome have fallen when the barbarians appeared at the gates!
Yes,
What is posted above in this thread is,
Bitcoin sounds similar to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme.
[No, it is not the same]
Will the inventor(s) also wind up in jail?
The inventors own the jail, the banks, etc.
The Banks are [imo] the ones behind BC. and will lead us into a cash less economy, eyescans or chips. Orwellian.
@ Walter
For years, I have read and enjoyed your comments almost as much as I enjoy Mr. Kunstler’s work. Your backround ,and perspective never fails to add to the subject at hand.
But…, Chip Implants ?
Please , get outside immediately , walk as rapidly as you can for 100 yards, breathing deeply, and consider the possibility that, apropos of the long standing contention of our host, that there will be no structure sufficiently organized for such a massive project. As we age, and our individual sphere(s) of influence decrease, things apart from us get larger, and seemingly uncaring; even malevolent. I too am occasionally prone to this, as are others here depending on the subject discussed.
I recommend, to you or anyone concerned enough to research the ontological value of money, that you take a look through “Does it Matter- Essays on Man’s relation to Materiality”- Alan Watts 1971.
After that, you should be able to confidently consign the 13th chapter of the rant of John of Patmos, also known as the Book of Revelation, and the atavistic fear that it engenders, to the appropriate place on your regarded, but rarely considered reference shelf.
Best of the rest of the year to you !
Cashless society.
Predicted long ago.
Schools now require vaccines for all students.
You need to spend some time listening to Katherine Albrecht.
Ohealihy,
You also need to spend some time listening to Catherine Austin Fitts who has been saying the same thing Walter is saying for quite some time. Zerohedge had an article yesterday that the Fed “made” Bitcoin. A good way to de-dollarize the system.
Good comment! Catherine Austin Fitts, who was the Asst. HUD Secretary under Bush Sr. tells it like it is. A one time insider who is a rare truth teller. She just reported that per an analysis done by Dr. Mark Skidmore at Michigan State, the Deep State Globalists have siphoned off 21 trillion dollars from HUD and the DOD between 1998 and 2015. In addition she stated that after the 2008 financial crisis caused by defaulted mortgage backed securities, the Fed created 29 trillion dollars out of thin air to prop up the too big to fail banks located throughout the world. To stop the foreclosures, which precipitated the crisis, they could have paid off every mortgage in America for 8 trillion. Remember when Rumsfeld reported that 2.3 trillion was missing from the DOD on 9/10/01. We are living with n perilous times!
Thank you OH for your kind words. As far as RF implant chips go, unfortunately they are real and there are many in power that want to put them into us in large numbers…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)
Not only did I work with a young man two years ago that had one implanted in his arm and showed it to us (from the Wisconsin prison system), but my brother was involved as a NJSP Trooper years ago and worked on a proposal to use this system to eliminate cash. Yes, if I said this in the 1950’s I would be committed or stoned to death, but unfortunately it is a reality today. We used to put RF id chips in the spines of our books to help prevent piracy back in 2012. My daughter has a Rottweiler that has two RF chips in her, one from the German government from when they were stationed there and one from the US Army. I also have a dog that came with a chip. It feels real weird, sort of like a grain of rice under the skin. It is the future, sorry for sounding too weird to believe.
Amazon now offers a lock and key to your home [so packages are not left out doors].
Bezos is evil.
How does someone short bitcoin? thenuttyneutron
First thing that comes to mind is that you entangle a few neutrons with a positive charge with the electrons in the bitcoin mining system and voilà – on the other side of the equation comes a quantum short.
If you want to be a little more conservative, probably would be a good idea to borrow a few bitcoins from your favorite broker and sell them, while maintaining a humongous margin – that thing is too risky, you may be getting margin calls every few nano-seconds.
Are you perhaps a physicist by trade Finca, or just an amateur enthusiast? I still contend that some good Caribbean ganja is a contributing factor, though. If it isn’t, it should be.
Did a rough back-of-the envelope calculation recently. If bitcoin were to replace all other existing “money”, the system – as it’s presently configured – would require over 8 times current total global electrical energy production just to keep it running.
Oh how smart you are not to buy into that bubble. No doubt you’ll let the next bubble go by, too. Must be awesome to be that smart. And all on the back of an envelope. Wow!
A new form of ‘money’ will appear.
BC is there to get the young primed for an official crypto and cashless society.
This has nothing to do with the US financial markets. The same people paying cash for real estate at 100% premium in Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, etc., are using bitcoin to transfer their money. All this means is that it’s becoming extremely expensive for them to transfer their hot money. But for obvious reasons they still prefer to go this route than expose themselves to the banks.
That definitely plays a large part. Not sure it’s the whole enchilada, though.
If it is being used to buy houses it must be making the transaction cheaper for the buyer somehow. There must be a benefit or it would not be being done. And it’s not the whole enchilada or probably even a small bite of it. akmofo tends to howl.
The benefit is that if you bribed the right people you won’t face a firing squad in Iran or your body being harvested for organs in China or having to deal with Putin’s thugs. You haven’t a clue, do you?
Great post Jim! Hadn’t noticed the Patreon markup, but it’s no big deal. My contributions have remained the same.
Excellent discussion of the Fed Ponzi and Bitcoin’s place in the firmament. In the end, Bitcoin is just another fictitious electronic commodity, which the electronically addled youth of our day mistake for something of “value” primarily because their parents don’t. It’ll go the same way all such speculative “investments” in due course.
Not that the stock markets are better in anyway of course. Much worse in fact, since they have the official stink of imprimatur on them to further enable the Wall St speculative theft operation. Valuation, as all things post-modern these days, seems to be purely in the eye of the beholder now. In the old days we simply called that searching for the next greatest fool, but apparently thanks to the internet and mass computerization, there’s no need to actually go in search of fools anymore. They come to you now – in droves!
Exactly how and when all this ends, it will end the way it was always designed to do: a handful of wealthy insiders will win the lottery (as if they need anymore!), and a whole lot of middle class speculators and pensioners will be wiped out altogether. Same as it ever was.
Will the wealthy “job creators,” fresh tax breaks in hand, then ride in on their white horses to resuscitate the world economy again, as Laffer’s infamous Trickle Down Economics would predict that they will? Will Ronnie Raygun and Margaret Thatcher rise from their graves and declare 1,000 years of peace on earth and good will toward men, regardless of race, creed, color, or economic status? NOT BLOODY LIKELY!
‘imprimatur’ I like it. You say,
“Valuation, as all things post-modern these days, seems to be purely in the eye of the beholder now.”
Yes the world is madly searching for value but can’t find it. Not enough to go around now so speculative bubbles build. Value should be attached to things that are actually needed and are useful but speculation in things that are actually worthless decoupled value from its logical foundations long ago. A thinking man thinks of value as encompassing far more than money, but the simple mind thinks money itself is value, that they are synonymous.
Thanks. Agreed on the concept of value. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been so bad with money? I’ve never truly valued it at all, but I love to spend it!
“Hadn’t noticed the Patreon markup, but it’s no big deal. My contributions have remained the same.
I saw that too. I contribute to a bunch of artists and authors with Patreon. But I realized that if I pulled the plug it would really just be hurting them.
Bitcoin really could be the source of the next financial crash. 1) Large numbers of “unsophisticated investors” buy it with debt, or with money they can’t afford to lose. 2) A Bitcoin exchange that isn’t especially solvent (covering exits using the money from new entrants, pyramid-scheme-like) receives a call they can’t cover. 3) Panic ensues, price plummets, those who can’t get out lose their shirts. 4) Defaults propagate in a chain reaction like 2008.
BC is too small yet to make a difference.
Wait till the Banksters unveil the SDR or whatever.
Casinos dont cause world wide dollar colapses.
The message is that the financial circulatory system is in some kind of distress. – JHK
Moribund I would say, near zero interest rates being a measure of the economy’s dangerously low blood pressure.
JHK gives due regard to the hollowing out of the economy in the middle of the country. Not that it matters to those fat and happy. Fly-over America is seen on the coasts as the abode of racists and morons and if they’re suffering, well, it’s what they deserve.
But there’s necrosis also in those bastions of – cough – “enlightenment”, for example, rampant homelessness in California, which is ludicrous given the proximity of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. And it’s not just the Left Coast, it’s the other side of the country too, which is just as preposterous, given the massive money flow into Manhattan and Washington.
Don’t the wizards running these places – and their acolytes and hangers-on – tell everyone that they’re the smartest, the most sophisticated purveyors of societal values? But if this is the case then how the fuck do so many people, many of them employed, find themselves living in tent cities right under the noses of these brilliant thought-leaders? Is homelessness one of those lofty principles?
People on the coasts look down on those living inland. Now, the interior may have been gutted first, but the coast-lines will catch up. People living in those urban bubble-la-la lands, given their exalted status as “educated” and “progressive” and “cosmopolitan”, think they’re immune to what ails fly-over people. I think they’re severely misinformed. Some of them say they see no evidence of conspiracy to deprive others of income and wealth. I think they’re willfully blind. They’ll be the next victims.
I’ve read that crypto mining consumes less total electrical energy than the huge amount consumed by electronic gizmos on stand-by power usage. Stand-by power for that instant start-up of the gizmo is high and that no work is actually being done by the gizmo itself.
So. . . it seems there is some sort of consensus that there is huge amount power consumed crypto mining? The planet cannot generate enough power to operate a crypto system? That’s the argument being made by some?
Is that actually true???? Check it out. . . using a pencil and the back of an envelope.
Whether or not the system can support it, the main point is that all this useless activity uses real resources to create fictional/notional resources that have no underlying value whatsoever and would in all likelihood vanish altogether into the ether from whence they came if/when the underlying power systems used to generate them ever fails. Add this to all the other pointless economic “activity” being perpetrated by the Wall St syndicate (HFT), and what we have, yet again, is more of Jim’s greatest “mis-allocation of resources in the history of the world.” Contrary to what the “Green Economy” people are telling us, electricity ain’t free and solar power and other renewables ain’t going to even remotely power the current insanely profligate global economy.
Correct, this useless activity both uses and misallocates resources.
The American and global economy is not workable from multiple perspectives, energy use and depletion being one, the hopelessness of alternative energy sources being another, the nonsense of a forever massive US trade deficit another, the peril of an unemployed-underemployed male work-force another. And, as you say, there’s an increasingly dilapidated electricity grid trying to power the whole mess.
Bit-coin is absurd, not only in its free-floating, internet based nature but also its susceptibility to cyber-theft. Say to me “encrypted” and I get visions of an overseas thief with information already in-hand.
That said, bit-coin is itself a symptom of an economy that, as JHK sez, is a Potemkin village of financial fraud and political malfeasance. Bit-coin isn’t just one thing, on the one hand it’s an attempt to preserve wealth by evading the limp, clammy fist of corrupt governments, but OTOH it’s a “greater-fool” scam and is itself subject to predation by corrupt financial players.
Silicon Valley rents are very high, hence the homeless population.
If rent on an ‘efficiency’ were $100 a month, how many homeless would there be?
volodya,
I assure you that the “coastal areas” are catching up very quickly! Just because there are pockets of extremely well-to-do, it does not erase the vast majority falling further and further towards the vortex of economic destitution and desperation. Heed not the happy-talk promulgated by the mouthpieces of the wealthy; shit is getting all-too-real in the disenfranchised boondocks (as JHK might tell you).
With the death of cash, money no longer has any meaning. A EMP or a careless keystroke by a bank clerk sitting in a cubicle could wipe you out. Fiat money comes from nothing and has nothing to back it up. I can think of nothing sadder than an octogenarian billionaire still chasing after MORE.
As sad as those octogenarian members of congress, clinging to their seats. Term after term, not making room for someone else to come up, and making decisions that can affect generations long after they’re moldering in the grave. Do they seriously think they’re indispensable? Do they have nothing else in life? Shameful and embarrassing.
Because they have sold out those they swore to serve, these scum realize that once they are dead, the real suffering shall commence so they fear it above all. They will do anything to put it off and are the ones pushing for the “live forever” technologies out of desperation. Their doom will come to them either in this world or in the next. Count on it.
Petro,
These old fossils are not necessarily an advertisement for term limits, but for AGE limits. The nation was finally spared the specter of 88 year-old serial sexual harasser John Conyers when he mercifully resigned – after 52 years in Congress! But, for example, we’re still stuck with aged lifetime pols like Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi (77), who can’t seem to get through a sentence without forgetting her words. Or the embarrassing “Impeach 45” Mad Maxine Waters (79). I’d propose mandatory retirement at age 70. These people are too stupid to know when it’s time to quit.
You are kind outsider to give them to 70. I think thy are pretty useless even then and that 65 would be pushing it. I agree wholeheartedly with you that they need to be thrown out or euthanized. Legally of course, we must maintain decorum at all costs.
Use to be Federal employees were obliged to retire at 70 but Jimmy Carter ended that so his mentor, Admiral Hyman Rickover, could stay in his job past age 70.
IIRC, railroad engineers on Amtrak and airline pilots still have a mandatory retirement age and that’s for safety reasons.
For congress, both term and age limits are in order, and they’d not get those fat pensions either after only 5 years. At most they deserve the same type of 401K that most workers get these days.
Capital markets and capital for markets are different things. The money flowing into “capital markets” is for investment in stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc. None of this is flowing into “capital for markets.” Banks are using excess “capital” to boost their stock price and profits for themselves rather than engineer economic growth by financing the development resources and plants to build things. That is the essential problem.
In the past, we saved to start a business and to build things. That was “capital for markets.” Low interest rates affects the savings rates because people want a return on their money which at least matches inflation. The combination of the repeal of Glass Steagall under Clinton and the low interest rate environment we have been in since Greenspan has turned all that upside down. Consequently, there is less capital available for business to expand or develop new products because it is being funneled to Wall Street.
That’s the great rip off. It all benefits the investing class and props up the markets where they are making a fortune and avoiding taxes. Dylan Ratigan called this the “extraction.” It is causing the middle class to shrink and eventually collapse. I won’t be around to see the final result because it is probably years into the future. But it will happen.
Nice summation. But no telling how long it will take. Could be years, might be months, or could be any day now. That’s the great wildcard, although I’m sure the money masters have a pretty good idea.
I dumped my bitcoins for quatloos.
Yes indeed – Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are a message as JHK posits.
The message is at least three-fold:
1. Many people will buy into a mania with anything, at exorbitant, or more, prices, that is displayed & exposed in the mass media – professional athlete jerseys, Beanie Babies, Dot,com bubble companies, among others of late, and now, of course, the extraordinarily valued cryptocurrencies.
See Gustave Le Bon on the behaviour of crowds and mobs.
2. There others who are more than happy to take advantage of the people in the first instance.
“There’s a sucker born every minute” attributed to David Hannum.
3. “The medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan famously stated. That so much electrical energy is required for just one of these units of “coin,” that it has been created by some anonymous, probably fictitious, entity; that is is the tip of the spear for cybernetic money. The message is loud and clear: get ready to abandon your cash everyone — you are going to get a crypto chip whether you like it or not.
The Evil Bastards who dreamed up this scam up are having a very hearty laff, a massage, and plenty of drinks while cruising the Med on a 40-meter yacht. Then, just before the shit hits the fan, a final time through the Suez canal (due to the coming conflagration in that neighborhood) on the way to the South Seas (Bora Bora, Cook Islands sorts of places.)
@pequiste
“Then, just before the shit hits the fan, a final time through the Suez canal (due to the coming conflagration in that neighborhood) on the way to the South Seas (Bora Bora, Cook Islands sorts of places.)”
Seems New Zealand is the destination of choice for the super-rich nervous about collapse and/or pitchforks:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Real estate prices are through the roof, partly because of this, which is why the PM recently planned to stop foreigners buying property to try to cool the market.
Others prefer to stay nearer home in a converted ICBM silo…
The new Federal Reserve Chairman is going to be juggling chainsaws with what’s on his plate.
And the only trick he’s got is to print money. One day, maybe one day soon, people will stop believing the bullshit the same way that people in the Soviet system stopped believing theirs.
Pravda trumpeted economic triumph but empty store shelves told the real story. Pravda-ists in Washington and Manhattan can lie all they want but reality is right under everyone’s nose.
So, one day, maybe one day soon, that Fed Chairman’s chair will be empty and stay empty.
Exactly, JHK!
Since we all know that gold and silver have been monkey-hammered repeatedly in the paper market so that the stock market can appear to deliver the message that “all is well”, cryptocurrencies (and in particular Bitcoin) have obviously become the new ‘canary in the coal mine’. They seemed to be the way out of, or around, the corrupt and broken status guo.
But now there’s gonna be a Bitcoin futures market… I wonder why? (no I don’t)
Yeah, those gold and silver certificate markets are crazy. I have never looked into investing in gold or silver with these schemes because I would probably miss the fine print about not actually owning the metal and being able to take delivery.
I wonder how much the price of gold and silver would spike up if people could suddenly take delivery of the metal by turning in their certificates?
There’s an article in the NY Times titled, Liberals Need To Take Their Fingers Out Of Their Ears.
The article, true to NYT form, fairly oozes intellectual and moral superiority (none of which liberals possess but I digress) when they’re discussing red state people.
Liberals would do well to do what the article’s title suggests but I would make a further proposal: liberals need to pull their heads out of their asses. They’re not superior, neither intellectually nor morally, they just think they are.
How do we leverage Bitcoin, an abstract, cyber Pyramid scheme, into a discussion of the realities of the physical world such as Race? Easily. Gresham’s law as applied to modern urban America: bad races drive out good. And then the bads are inflated unto the skies, with Liberal White bureaucrats jockeying for power with the bads as chess pieces, the White team already knocked off the board.
Of course we must leave behind the morally neutral language of science (so called): this whole process is unspeakably evil. To use the phrase of Brendan Behan: They are attempting to elect a new people, both here and in Europe.
BC might be the good money and greenbacks the bad.
How do we leverage Bitcoin, an abstract, cyber Pyramid scheme, into a discussion of the realities of the physical world such as Race?
LOL!!! Now THAT was one helluva ham-handed segue, even by your admittedly modest standards Janos! Kudos are yours, my fine racist friend!
Janos needs no leverage to make everything about race. When you hear him complain the world is full of ignorant arseholes, you have to at least consider that every one of them has the same thing in common, namely that it was Janos they were dealing with.
Janos: “Of course I fall down when it comes to women – I want them to look good too. Old Adam is not so easily denied.”
Is this code for “I can’t get laid because I’m an obese neckbeard who expects to date supermodels”? I have no evidence for this proposition; it just feels right.
Benjamin Disraeli On Race
Posted on September 10, 2015 by Luke Ford
From Metapedia: “No one may be indifferent to the racial principle, the racial question. It is the key to world history. History is often confusing because it is written by people who did not understand the racial question and the aspects relevant to it… Race is everything, and every race that does not keep its blood from being mixed will perish. . . Language and religion do not determine a race–blood determines it.”
—British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister, from Tancred, (2 vols.; Leipzig, 1847), I, 169, reprinted in “Disraeli, Freud, and Conspiracy Theories,” by L.J. Rather, Race, Class and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Culture, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (U of Rochester P) 1991, p. 171.
“If ever the founders of the] great Anglo-Saxon republic [in North America] secede from their sound principles of reserve and mingle with their negro and coloured populations . . . , they would become so deteriorated that their states would probably be reconquered and regained by the aborigines, whom they expelled.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1880) in Endymion, reprinted in Toward a New Science of Man compiled by Robert Lenski, (Washington D.C.: Pimmit Press) 1981. p. 154.
“No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key of history, and why history is so often confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and the knowledge it involves.
—Benjamin Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (4th ed.; London, 1852) reprinted in “Disraeli, Freud, and Conspiracy Theories,” by L.J. Rather, Race, Class and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Culture, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (U of Rochester P) 1991, p. 170.
“The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.
—Benjamin Disraeli, reprinted in The Laurel Instant Quotation Dictionary, ed. Donald O. Bolander et al (New York: Laurel) 1969, p. 249.
Maybe you’ve heard of him, Elrond? One of the greatest statesmen of 19th Century, Britain. And one of the most famous Jews of his time? Race is much closer to being everything than nothing.
Of course the last quote is your motto. Blend everyone together and create a Utopia of Idiots. Create a desert and call it Peace.
Janos,
I’m struck by how much dumber our contemporary leaders are compared to Disraeli. If he said the same things today he’d be in jail for at least 10 years, or until he repented. Compare Disraeli with Angela Merkel, hater of her white countrymen, who has just been re-elected yet again! How many times is that? I guess the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan for Europe is not quite finished.
*yawn*
– Isaac Newton is accounted one of the greatest intellects in history because his Principia overturned millennia of dogma, and demonstrated that the earth and the heavens operate according to the same, mathematical rules. Otherwise he spent the better part of his life in fruitless studies of alchemy and the occult that are today no more than a curiosity.
– James Joyce was a genius who invented modernism by making literature out of his characters’ subjective, internal monologues. He was also turned on by shit.
– Raoul Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis. I heard he also once talked back to his mother.
Quote me no quotes, Janos. A mistaken and bigoted opinion is bigoted and mistaken, no matter how eminent the man who held it.
Disraeli was a product of his time, and a politician. He is going to say what will get him elected, including racist and imperialist crap. You quickly forgot what this racism and imperialism meant in reality. It meant two World Wars and Europe bleeding itself white. So much so they now need to import Muzzi slaves to take care of their dying continent. Even Moscow is up to its ears with Muzzies. How more stupid can you be?
Yes, ok Elrond, but then stop pretending that only “Nazis” who live in their mother’s basement believe race is important. Many eminent men did and do – including James Watson who knew and knows far more about genetics than you ever do or will. And just Whites? You know very little about the East Asian mind – easily far more racist than Whites both historically and in the present.
I don’t have to stop doing something that I’m not doing to begin with. When I’m dealing with you, Janos, I use language and facts with great, even insulting, precision. That’s because of how often I’ve witnessed your propensity to read your own interpretation into other people’s statements, in ways having absolutely no foundation other than your own prejudices.
To be specific, I didn’t say that only Nazis who live in their mother’s basement are racists. I said that bigoted and wrong opinions are wrong and bigoted. That’s not a statement about Nazis or basements. It’s a statement about opinions, which is not an accident. I framed it that way because the value of an opinion isn’t based on who holds it, but on the opinion’s relationship to reality, which is much more dependable. If the guy in the basement and the guy with all the letters after his name are both wrong, I can address both errors with the same degree of confidence. I am always damn sure of my ground.
Regarding James Watson, he certainly does know more about genetics than you or I ever will. This doesn’t immunize him against prejudice, being mistaken, or a propensity to take intellectual shortcuts. You might want to read that Wikipedia article I linked to about argument from authority. It tells how another scientist, quite eminent in his time, made the mistaken assertion that human beings have 24 chromosomes. This error was repeated and perpetuated by biologists for decades, including in textbooks. They worked day in and day out with 23 chromosomes right in front of them, and saw what they were prepared to see instead.
The reason I’m not a racist isn’t because of some caricature you paint, Janos. It’s because my values are the values of science. Opinions should be framed around facts, and not vice versa. I’ve seen you do the opposite so many times I’m not even bored by it anymore. Biological race is a folk concept, one born of primordial ignorance and primate territoriality. It’s as antediluvian as Ptolemaic geocentrism (but nowhere near as useful, since Ptolemy’s system made accurate predictions). And it has been the cause of enormous, tragic mischief for millennia. To carry on using it today, when we have an actual understanding of genetics and inheritance, amounts either to perfidy or buffoonery. It belongs in the recycle bin of superseded ideas, alongside phlogiston and the luminiferous aether.
No Elrond, race is a scientific reality, the natural variation in a species as it appears in different populations in different areas. Without this variation, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution would be nonsense. Watson believes in it and you admit he knows more than you about genetics. So you contradict yourself in saying it’s just a folk belief.
“How do we leverage Bitcoin, an abstract, cyber Pyramid scheme, into a discussion of the realities of the physical world such as Race? ”
Beam me up Scotty – NOW, PLEASE…
Yet you bemoan when the different race or populations of the snail darter are threatened, right? And in the grocery store, you carefully look for certain types of peaches or wine. It’s not one size fits all when it comes to your appetites or eco-ideology, no Maam! But People? Meh, they’re all exactly the same – except for your own who are shit and need to be replaced.
You are equal parts ignorance, inconsistency, hypocrisy, and to the extent you’re conscious – malice.
When I buy stuff at the grocery store I mostly prioritise the distance it’s come, e.g. I buy my wine from Europe, rather than New Zealand because I prefer it not to have travelled halfway across the planet. Likewise I’m not a fan of what I think JHK once called the 13,000-mile lettuce. I also prefer trade to be encouraged with my near neighbours because when the heyday of globalism is behind us, we’ll need our near neighbours.
The rest is your usual BS, which does not deserve the dignity of a response. My people are as good as any other people. Give it a rest.
An insult from you is a compliment, so thanks.
So you are against the British being put in line behind Immigrants for housing – even after waiting for years? I doubt it. How about Pensioners freezing to death? How do you feel about that?
Your people are “just as good” as any other? That’s not good enough, even if you really feel that way. Every people should have the right to be supreme in their own nation. And your first loyalty is to your own, not some ideology of sameness which you pretend is diversity.
Damn it, Janos, sometimes your concise comments just make too much sense. I don’t know why so few here seem to recognize your intellect. (And I’m not sucking up, just making an observation). Diversity Kills!
Thanks Outsider. Ever read Colin Wilson’s study of the Outsider call the Outsiders?
And stop making ridiculous assertions about what you think people do. I’m not the only one you have done this to. You make yourself look desperate.
Like I said, Janos, please stop telling me what I think. You don’t know what I think, unless I specifically spell it out to you. Just because your thoughts on anything could be predicted using a simple algorithm doesn’t mean that works for everyone else.
A young woman in England recently died on her own in a freezing flat. She was the mother of two children and not a pensioner. She had a home, but she didn’t have enough money to heat it properly so, so, like many mothers, she stayed cold during the day and put the heating on when her children came home. I did the same when my children were young. My husband at the time was a right moaner so I made sure the place was warm in the evenings when he was there and compensated by the kids and myself being cold during the day.
People other than pensioners can be cold – and in fact this year pensioners on average actually overtook people of working age in the UK in terms of their income and wealth. There are poor people in every age demographic.
And you shouldn’t believe everything you read about immigrants getting priority over other people for housing because it’s nonsense – nonsense propagated for a purpose. The Daily Mail is not the place to go for neutral facts. And if Maggie Thatcher hadn’t sold off the nation’s social housing in the 70s (when I was briefly working for a housing association, coincidentally) the housing crisis we currently have wouldn’t be nearly as bad.
Same thing in Sweden now. People wait years for public housing while immigrants sail right in. Some Swedes have actually been put out of their homes in favor of immigrants. And thus the Swedish homeless population is swelling. In one city, the Swedish Church has opened their churches as shelters – but only for immigrants. Now that’s a Christianity you Alba can believe in!
https://www.amren.com/ne‘
s/2017/12/homeless-swedes-cold/
Here’s the link. The above got messed up, perhaps by Alba’s witchcraft.
https://www.amren.com/news/2017/12/homeless-swedes-cold/
I’m a miner for a heart of gold. How about you? Do you want to look good or be good? Or which do you value in others? Of course I fall down when it comes to women – I want them to look good too. Old Adam is not so easily denied.
Neil Young also sang praises for miscegenation and is musically talented, not intellectually gifted.
LILLY BELLE YOUR HAIR IS GOLDEN BROWN
I SEE YOUR BLACK MAN COMING ROUND
I saw cotton
and I saw black
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
Lillie Belle’s daughter won’t have golden brown hair. She will neither look like her or be like her in terms of intellect and character.
Oh Christ! Now you guys are gonna send me on a Neil Young YouTube binge. I hope you’re proud of yourselves!
Regarding your declining Patreon support: I stopped supporting you at the $75 level for no other reason than the fact that you did not fulfill your promises to me. You still owe me a painting and a coffee mug.
Janos,
the Russian solution to too many food growing slaves was to starve them to death/ Nonsense. They were killed bc they were Christians.
Bitcoin “mining”. The term as used here, in reference to electrons chasing electrons between computer chips to create a coin, slights or trivializes the work of actual miners. Sweaty, backbreaking, deadly work.
Miners who worked the coal mines and were killed, like those at Monongah, W. Va. in the early 1900’s or at the Upper Big Branch more recently.
Miners who worked the great Comstock lode in Nevada, or the gold mines at Bodie, Cortez, or Homesteak. Or the world over.
In essence, the mind itself is being mined to create new “money”, which, in a certain sense can be viewed as mindless.
And yet the true miners of coal, uranium, gas, etc. provide the necessary energy for this “mineless” pursuit.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/13/us/u-s-mine-disasters-fast-facts/index.html
…rather than engineer economic growth by financing the development resources and plants to build things. –dumbedup
Do we need more things?
A few facts:
• In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resources base have been consumed.
• In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
• Forty percent of waterways in the US have become undrinkable.
• The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of
the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
• If everybody consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3 to 5
planets.
Do we need more things?
THE STORY OF STUFF
https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/
@Asoka
And 50% of the world’s solid waste, in particular, according to this:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/
And China isn’t going to take any more plastic waste:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/11/16/china-will-no-longer-take-our-recycled-junk/#5a531f402122
Although since the Chinese produce most of the world’s plastic cr@p in the first place, albeit at the behest of the rest of the world, at this point we need some international agreement on the general need for cr@p reduction (not holding my breath…). How that works when the economy, in its current form, only staggers on by means of the production of cr@p I have no idea.
Asoka,
…it’s good to be the hegemon….
I still contend that some good Caribbean ganja is a contributing factor, though. If it isn’t, it should be. Scratch
How dare you implying such a thing regarding former officer of the Soviet Army!
Only pure sugar-cane moonshine, double-distilled, 190 proof.
DO NOT put that in your bong then smoke it; talk about incendiary activities.
Finc,
You do know that 190 proof alcohol is poisonous if consumed?
What’s poison for the German is good for the Russian! (Old Army saying)
Finca,
I no longer wonder what causes the dementia that fuels your ravings. That kind of concoction would do just fine…
You might try the kooky (but harmless) shit that won’t eventually ruin your liver and end your sweaty life.
Bitcoin is just some shared fantasy or delusion. It’s a bunch of people getting together to agree that 2 plus 2 equals 4. Which I suppose is good, but it’s also very bizarre. There is no real value anywhere behind bitcoin. May as well all agree to use monopoly money now. It shares the same purpose.
Oh, just quit it, for crying out loud!
Money is just the most abstract and protected form of information about human economic activity.
Bitcoin is just as good for that purpose as any other entry records in the books of the Central Banks.
1945. Occupied Germany. Berlin. Whorehouse.
After a 2-hour entertainment, Russian captain dresses up and gets ready to leave.
“Stop, wait. And the money?..” whispers he girl
“Don’t you worry, baby! Russian officers do not accept money for that sort of thing!”
LOL! Nice, Finca!
Great… now that you’ve figured it out, maybe you’d have enough brains to realize the paper in your pocket is growing worthless every day and just maybe you should exchange it for something that isn’t.
And what, pray tell, are you exchanging it all for? Let me guess: Lil Deb Snack Packs? For heaven’s sake, don’t do it Lil Snack Pack! You’ll never be able to earn a properly denominated living from any man who’d have you!
It’s just amazing how different pictures of the world arise in the head if you read the media every day or if you read it from time to time. Literally, you can skip a few days and already have to make extraordinary efforts to restore contact with reality.
By the way, the opportunity to draw such conclusions is one of the main positive effects of the talk show on Russian TV, since only the contrast of personal impressions from cross-media analysis with total bullshit that experts carry on those talk show allows one to assess the scale of misinformation, victims of which become even the honest experts, and through them all other citizens of the Russian Federation.
I will try to demonstrate this on the example of the discussion about the “crime of the century” = the Jerusalem statement of Trump, which is now being held by all the channels without a break for lunch.
In the meantime, a simple question: what is the cause and what is the consequence – the conflict in Ukraine or the conflict around the Olympic Games in Sochi?
It would seem that the “annexation” of the Crimea caused fury of Richard McLaren and Co, but those who followed the events carefully remember that the rabies around the Olympic Games began before the Maidan. The Maidan began exactly when it began unexpectedly even for the State Department, which quite frankly planned it a year later, and the false start of Maidan, which made a bloodless return of Crimea possible, was provoked by a man named Edward Lucas, one of the chief editors of the journal Economist. And that’s all. Everything turns upside down, or rather, from head to foot!
https://www.rt.com/news/russia-ukraine-secret-deal-879/
When we do our property swap I’m going to offer you my translation/writing consultation services for a nominal fee as well. I’m often, with considerable effort, able to decipher what you’re getting at Ol’ Finca, but I think I can improve your blogoshere commentary ROI roughly infinity percent overnight with only minimal effort, and I think we’ll both be better off – the proverbial “win-win” – for the exchange.
I’m still OK with you keeping your (Russian, I’m assuming) wife, but I would like to negotiate a few primo Russian babes (I’m fairly age flexible, although I definitely want them to be fit) that you might have stashed up there on “the ranch”, and of course the Caribbean mountain finca ganja rights in entirety.
I like your style Finca, but I think this exchange will improve both of our positions in the world considerably. Call me at your earliest convenience, and let’s get this thing done in time to ring in the New Year!
Cheers to you and yours!
Ol’ Scratch
” I would like to negotiate a few primo Russian babes”
Full bladders optional?
Ah, I was wondering how far down the comment stream I’d get before Trump’s insane US embassy move reared it’s ugly head. A lot further down that I thought.
“than I thought.”
Jim,
Bitcoin has your attention. This is clear now.
When arch-criminal Jamie Dimon declared it a ‘fraud’ (imagine that for a moment – his bank porked up on 15 trillion in derivatives!) that was the go-sign for Bitcoin. It was conceived in 2009 by the mysterious Satoshi in response to criminal banks and what they had wrought. The idea was decentralized peer-to-peer storage of value.
Is it truly less valid that the hilarious “Full faith and Credit” the US supposedly puts behind its paper?
You have a point about the “full faith and credit” canard that Federal Reserve Notes (note: NOT US Treasury Notes), but that’s where the similarities end. It’s perhaps commendable that people are seeking alternative stores of value, but fiat – verified by an impenetrable crypto-security algorithm or not – is still just fiat.
In the final analysis, Bitcoin – just like the US dollar it’s allegedly meant to replace – is issued as a debt (the holder has a prospective claim/demand for resources/assets from the prospective taker in any exchange), and thus must actually represent some underlying “real world” value for the settlement to “ultimately” have any meaning. [For a currency to have “ultimate” value it must pass the “last man standing test.” Since currency units are fundamentally debt units, the “last man standing” behind the currency must be able to pay up to the “last man standing” holder of the currency, some unit of value once all the currency/debt units are redeemed/extinguished. Fiat currencies, especially of the fractional reserve/exponential debt variety, of course decidedly do not meet this test.] The US dollar “commands” such value by virtue of the US Treasury demanding government tax payments in Federal Reserve Notes, as well as demanding at the point of a gun that the rest of the world price oil – the underlying energy source for the electricity that produces Bitcoin in the first place – in dollar denominations. Needless to say, Bitcoin commands NO such respect.
And THAT is what makes Bitcoin just another speculative investment like baseball cards, antique cars, vintage porn, or anything else you care to name. Now, you might well choose to exchange your dollars for Bitcoins anyway and might further “time the markets” in such a way to come out on top for a time, but unless you’re in it for the duration (until either Bitcoin, the dollar, or both fails), your resulting “winnings” will almost certainly be denominated in US Dollars/ Fed Reserve Notes, or whatever TPTB decides comes next.
Still feel great about Bitcoin?
I feel great about it. The price went up $5000 since last week and blowhards like you still can’t wrap your head around it.
Lil Snack Pack, aka janet! Welcome back, you ignorant rube/bot, you! As proudly belligerent as ever I see! I wouldn’t have you any other way!
So tell me, are you into vintage porn too? Maybe we could find some common ground? Maybe you could cash out some of that soon to be worthless BitShit and buy into something lasting for a change? Just a thought.
Call me.
Hey, how about we get together down on Finca’s finca in the Caribbean for New Year’s? We’re striking a deal anyway, so we can all meet up for an epic “group grope” of epic proportions and call it a year properly – ganja, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever! – first world decadent style! Bring your BitShit along with you. We’ll throw ’em in the pot at the center of the table and assess the final damage sometime in mid-January when we all wake up or are declared dead! What’y’a say? Let’s get ALL fucking jiggy wid’ it for the New Year and create a story for the generations!
By the way, I’ve invited a surprise guest to the festivities this year. Can’t give away his true identity, but he goes by the pen name ‘Janos’ on these boards, and he’s sure to liven up ANY party!
Speaking of sex, in a recent poll 25% of young men between 18-34 said they prefer having sex with lifelike dolls than with real life women. Is that what MGTOW has come to? No wonder women are always saying that they can’t find a good man to marry.
You might want to invite Asoka. I noticed his spook of an avatar cross these pages last week. Playing with different combinations of words and slashes in a link to a troll blog taken from a comment with a link on Orlov’s site, I came up with a hit on a personal troll diary once. It was a few years ago.
In it trolls were having a barbecue at Asoka’s DC condo. The author described Asoka as being full of energy. The life of the party and ‘one crazy guy’ if I remember correctly.
Long after my discovery I found out where the troll with his diary on a hidden page of his blog who was at Asoka’s barbecue had obtained the picture he used on his avatar. It came from the movie:
‘The Fifth Element’
It is an alien pet in the movie. I had a devil of a time finding it but here is the animal I am talking about:
http://fnord.hu/picasso.jpg
5% of young men between 18-34 have never touched a sex doll. Or ever will.
25%
Here are some reasons not to have bitcoin.
https://www.howtogeek.com/335471/bitcoin-is-not-a-currency-its-an-unsafe-investment/
“Here’s the bottom line: if you invest in Bitcoin, there’s a good chance you could lose all your money. You could lose it in a scam, without any of the protections offered by established institutions, regulations, and laws. Or your Bitcoin could be stolen by hackers attacking websites that don’t have sufficient security. A fly-by-night website could get “hacked” under mysterious circumstances where the owners probably stole all the Bitcoin and ran.”
A festival of unearned riches has led to utter madness in a steadfast persuit of ever more unearned riches. Imaginary money, imaginary justice. America has become a land of make-believe where nothing real matters any more.
I suppose its the abstract nature of mathematics, but most people don’t have an intuitive grasp of the concept that an equation is more real than anything they can touch or feel.
European civilization was so stunned to encounter the Zero it was banned in some places.
Regardless of your personal ignorance of the conceptual nature of cryptocurrency, you can understand that an investment of $100 has a downside of $100 ($100-$100) and an upside to infinity (and beyond).
You can appreciate the value of a bitcoin as a third world citizen where your own currency is nearly useless, subject to depreciation at an alarming rate, and an easy thing to steal.
In contrast, bitcoin is invisible, can’t be altered, sent cheaply around the world, substitutes as a bank account, is a medium of exchange, an appreciable asset, and an opportunity to invest and participate in the broader world economy and all it requires is access to the internet and a smartphone.
Thats why a bitcoin is worth $15 thousand dollars and will be worth $100 thousand dollars next year at some date.
Well then. I think you should buy as many as you can!
Lil Debbie,
For the record there is nothing beyond infinity.
There is more than one kind of infinity and some are bigger than others.
https://vimeo.com/147535698
Omega + 1, true.
The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world. This is not at all as………unmodern as it sounds. The female bird pretties herself for her mate and hatches eggs for him. In exchange, the male takes care of gathering food, and stands guard and wards off the enemy.” Joseph Goebbels, writing in 1929.
He never attended a viewing of Richard Attenborough’s examination of the mating dance of the male Bird of Paradise, so his theory was incomplete.
Like all naturalists, Dick hates the Black Africans for hunting so many African species to the brink of extinction. Yet he has to pretend to adore and admire them. His conflict is delicious and hilarious to behold.
*David*
And he isn’t conflicted. He doesn’t think in black and white. He thinks ‘people’. And yes, every time someone like Trump’s son, and all the European trophy hunters who have preceded him, kills an animal for no good reason, it makes him sad.
So it’s bad for endangered species when Whites kill them, but fine when Blacks do? Does that makes sense? Dick hates them both!
You’re doing it again – making stuff up. It isn’t good whoever does it. But you knew that…
Janos’ point is that all the very best environmentalists were misanthropic because they apprehended that stopping humanity was essential to preventing damage.
I don’t know how David Attenborough fares on the scale of ‘best environmentalists’ but I think he would argue rationally that ‘stopping humanity’ isn’t the same as ‘wishing that humans would limit the damage they do’.
David Attenborough argues that the world risks trouble through human overpopulation, but the trouble will be as much for humans as for the rest of the natural world, since we will not thrive in a world without biodiversity.
I’m sure he’d also be worried about limiting the damage done by other species, particularly those taking over habitats not naturally theirs, like the North America bullfrog, now introduced to the UK:
http://www.froglife.org/info-advice/amphibians-and-reptiles/american-bull-frog/
Or other invasive species like giant hogweed that are difficult to contain.
I’m not a naturalist and my environmentalism isn’t any weirder than that of any normal person wishing our host planet to keep some kind of healthy balance.
*David* Attenborough is the naturalist.The late Richard is the actor/director. But I remember the clip you mention – amazing, as are all his films.
Peacocks are similar, the male being the beauty. Peafowl are polygamous; the peahen lays her eggs and then goes off to raise her chicks herself, so Google informs me.
Even among penguins, which bond long term, it appears that with the exception of the emperor penguin, where the male does it all, all penguins share the incubation duties.
I think it would be uncontroversial to suggest that Goebbels had an agenda! Or two…
You are taking something out of context to preach your twisted truth.
“
The aim of the law was very simple – to encourage newly weds to have as many children as they could. There was also a more long term and sinister aspect to this : as Germany grew she would need more soldiers and mothers; hence a booming population was needed with young boys being groomed into being soldiers and young girls being groomed into being young mothers. If “lebensraum” was to be carried out, Hitler needed the population to fill the spaces gained in the eastern Europe. This attitude of deliberately boosting your nation’s population was finding favour in western Europe and not just in Nazi Germany. France, in particular, feared that its population was falling too quickly and banned abortions and contraception.
”
Establish a compelling false premise and then weasel in the action or belief you want to be adopted. You are a case study Janos and you just showed what you are. But Goebbels was better at it than you.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/08/bombshell-roy-moore-accuser-admits-forged-yearbook/
The Judge cannot be stopped now.
I’m not sure why Patreon supporters would relinquish their support of this blog just because Patreon has changed their rate structure. If you don’t like it, then give up one more Starbucks latte a month to the cause. As a starving artist myself, I am more than happy to continue my somewhat meager support for this blog because it’s worth every penny; I get way more out of it than I contribute. How many things can you say that about nowadays?
Israel by virtue of the “magic of the place” is the center of the world for the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
This is where the stone from which the construction of the Universe and the Earth began, the Son of Man was crucified here, restoring the connection between the Creator and creation, destroyed by the original sin of Adam and Eve, who were buried in Israel, and the blood of Christ dripped from the Cross onto the skull of Adam.
The least Israel is connected with Islam, practically only through the prophet Isa and the people of the Book, that is, the Jews and the Christians. True, the Qur’an asserts that the Prophet Muhammad in his night journey of Al-Isra stopped in the city of Al-Quds, especially for the prayer to the Prophet Isa (Christ?) And how much this city really is modern Jerusalem is unknown, because in Al-Quds already during the Prophet’s lifetime there was a mosque (Al-Aqsa?).
Muhammad never set foot in Israel. You cannot casually walk from Mecca to Jerusalem, not in one day not in one week not in one month not in one year. Any claim that Muhammad did so as part of his journey between Mecca and Medina is a complete lie. But such made up claims are standard fare for the Vatican Paliwood propaganda. Nevermind that Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya wrote a novel “Daniel Stein, Interpreter” in which she dealt a blow to one of the most horrible distortions of the historical truth about the tragedy of European Jews, called the Holocaust.
The novel is based on the true story of Oswald Rufeisen, who, as a priest, tried to use the Jewish Right to Return to Israel, but was denied by the High Court of Israel on the grounds that he converted to Christianity, or rather to Catholicism.
In her novel, Lyudmila Ulitskaya hinted quite unequivocally that the Israeli Supreme Court thus rejected the principle of the connection between Israel and the Holocaust, according to which a Jew is a person who is considered a Jew by the racial laws of the Third Reich.
And this was well understood by people who believe that only they have the right to exploit the “Holocaust theme”, despite the fact that during this time they were not too worried about the fate of too many Jews and, frankly, they did not use their influence to save their doomed to death fellow tribesmen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-world-daniel-stein-interpreter-reviewed/2011/03/17/AFVSZtgG_story.html?utm_term=.1b0f0f451169
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
They pretended that they do not understand the difference between racial and religious anti-Semitism, forgetting that for Hitler the issues of religion played no role whatsoever, and that, for example, in Crimea among the Gestapo there were followers of Judaism, whom the Nazis considered members of the Aryan race, since they were supposedly descendants of the Ostrogoths.
If he’s a practicing Catholic being that he’s a priest no less, he’s no longer Jewish is he? The law of return applies to Jews, not to ex-Jews.
No, there are many Jewish Buddhists or Jewboos. Or Jews who pactive yoga and even Jewish Muslims. Yet such is your hatred for Christianity that you attempt to excommunicate Jewish converts.
“Jewish” is an ethnicity and has been for a long time. Most Jews are atheists or agnostics. That being said, there is now a large contingent of Jewish Christians in Israel.
There are Israelis that hang with Indian Babas and smoke cannabis to just chill for a month or two after their 3 year service in the IDF. That doesn’t make them Buddhists or Indian. Just like having Israelis hang at an Irish pub in Tel Aviv, dancing to Irish music, doesn’t make them Irish. As to your other nonsense, there are many Jews in Israel that have a small Yule tree in the house and celebrate the Christian New Year. Again, that doesn’t make them Christian. Unlike tight asses like you who are full of envy and malice, we like to have fun:
https://youtu.be/2aaBxLOkKi4?t=3m11s
Many American Buddhists are Jewish. So they are Jewish Buddhists. I suspect a similar case pertains in Is-Ra-El. Your Pagan Gods!
There are American Christians that do Buddhist meditations or Yoga or whatever to relieve stress, again, that doesn’t make them Buddhists. I personally know a dissident Muslim of Iranian origin who can’t get enough of my mom’s gefilte fish and insists on celebrating Passover with us every year. I guess that makes him Jewish.
Christmas in Haifa, Israel:
https://youtu.be/HTFdNYURXuE?t=5m50s
Well that’s just silly. You don’t want to admit I’m right. Very human of you, all too human.
“
The elites in the most powerful states are moving into survival mode: externally against rival states as key resources deplete, and internally as resource shortages and climate change risk turning their own publics against them.
This requires a mix of outward belligerence and inward repression in which Israel already excels. State elites are likely to look to Israel for solutions based on its long experience of destabilising neighbours and using Palestinian areas as laboratories for experimenting in methods of subjugation, surveillance and control. This expertise could, in the words of Israeli analyst Jeff Halper, make Israel “indispensable” and provide it with continuing diplomatic and financial cover.
”
http://truepublica.org.uk/global/new-world-disorder-the-next-20-years-hope-or-despair/
You guys really should get out more.
Yeah, but garbage picking in commie psyops dumpsters is not my style.
About TruePublica
TruePublica is quoted, cited, republished and referenced all over the world:
Global Research
OffGuardian
Reddit
Russia Insider
VoxPolitical
European Financial Review
Democratic Undergound
Dissident Voice
Information Clearing House
Strategic Culture
21stCenturyWire
ZeroHedge
Counterpunch
From Counterpunch: “DemocracyNow and other leading alternative media need to start including different analyses. To a sad extent, their coverage of Syria has echoed NPR and CNN. If DemocracyNow is truly an “Exception to the Rulers”, it needs to start including more critical examinations. DN producers should be studying publications such as Consortiumnews, Global Research, AntiWar, MoonOfAlabama, Al Masdar News, Al Mayadeen, CounterPunch, DissidentVoice, American Herald Tribune, 21stCenturyWire, Black Agenda Report, RT, PressTV and TruePublica (not corporate ProPublica).”
Commie psyops dumpsters?
Status quo psyops would be correct. The government does not spend your taxes on commie psyops. Of those there are none.
Few links, showing that I can provide a more or less in-depth picture of the world, opposite to all of you, combined
1. The main conflict now is a “warm” civil war in the US, which does not mean that the US is more important than Russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/12/08/robert-mueller-has-got-some-explaining-to-do/
The head of the commission investigating the links of Trump’s election campaign with Russia will have to explain why he pursues Trump for the crimes that Hillary had gotten away with – Republicans in Congress threaten to hold him in contempt of the US Congress
2. Russia Says North Korea Wants to Talk to U.S., But Are Trump and Kim Ready?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-says-north-korea-wants-142523650.html
Russia offers itself as a mediator in the negotiations between the US and North Korea, but America does not want this mediator and forces China to take the role – which is useless.
3. Roy Moore Slams America, Says ‘Maybe Putin Is Right’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/roy-moore-slams-america-says-065530357.html
The main battle of the main conflict of our time is the elections in Alabama, which are being won by Alabama’s former chief justice Roy Moore, who argues that in this conflict Russia is a good guys, and America behaves like an Empire of Evil.
“But western populations have of late grown weary of the terrorist scourge and the endless storylines of restive migrants doing the dirty work of mysterious jihadists on the Disneyfied streets of western capitals. Jets into skyscrapers. Cars into crowds. Backpacks in corners of concert halls. High-rise shotgunners spraying bullets into public squares. Terror fatigue is spreading across a western world that could only sustain permanent stress levels for so long. Thankfully, for the managers of empire and its media flacks, a reborn Russian state, rising from the ashes of a capitalist looting spree, has provided a second narrative front in the war for the mind of the west. A different visage emerges. Not the bearded votary narrating a death wish to a shaky cam. But a Muscovite in a bespoke suit with a supercilious grin on his sly poker face. The optics are different, but in a media environment of constant overexposure, that is a good thing.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/08/we-the-sheeple-the-blind-reading-the-blind/
Further on:
“the media must craft fresh Frankensteins“
Maltthus,
Excellent point about rents. I’d wager that most of those homeless would give their right arm for a room with hot-plate-bar-fridge-shitter-shower.
The problem as you point out is rents. The flip side of that problem is wages, especially hourly wages which have nowhere near kept up with the cost of living especially housing.
Forty years ago an average hourly wage earner could support a family of four in a house with a car and basic amenities. These days homelessness is a real option for SINGLE hourly wage earners. Now, why do we suppose that could be?
Could it possibly be that American hourly wage earners no longer earn a living wage because industries have been sent to slave wage locales outside the US?
But there’s another side to that coin. And that is to deliberately depress wage rates through the importation of millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, just when the high and the mighty of America are exporting jobs.
Could it be that the almighty enlightened of California that make such a fuss over opening the southern border to all and sundry haven’t thought of the deleterious economic effects on American workers?
Could it be that they HAVE thought of the deleterious economic effects? Maybe cheap labor is good for the almighty enlightened?
Could it possibly be that American hourly wage earners no longer earn a living wage because industries have been sent to slave wage locales outside the US?
Have it ever occurred to you, volodya, that the real reason is the disappearance of the social competition factor from the USSR? Without necessity to compete with the social benefits of the Socialist system, your capitalists immediately went for destruction of the US middle class.
The timing coincidence doesn’t tell you anything?
Bingo!
I said the exact same thing to my Cuban host in Miami some twenty years ago. He was a rabid anti-communist but after a few beers he mellowed enough for us to have this late night conversation. My understanding is the new StarWars movie coming out will explore this same theme 🙂
“But there’s another side to that coin. And that is to deliberately depress wage rates through the importation of millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, just when the high and the mighty of America are exporting jobs.”
BINGO. But the deliberate part I don’t agree with unless you are counting in all the Chinese who bought their American citizenship by investing more than $500 K in an American house. That made a big difference because the prices they drove up are all locations in high employment areas. Isolated islands on the outskirts of flyover land. Candylands where money makes money.
It is a case of nobody caring and not a case of deliberately trying to screw homeless people over. Who would do that? Nobody that does not deserve a padded cell, but finding people who don’t care about other people, who are OK with our national random walk into the future as long as they get theirs. All you have to do to find them is walk down the street.
Forty years ago an average hourly wage earner could support a family of four in a house with a car and basic amenities. These days homelessness is a real option for SINGLE hourly wage earners. Now, why do we suppose that could be?
Lets look at the past, clearly.
1960s–BIG employers, IBM n GM, paying upper or near upper class wages.
family size—4 + 2 = 6.
Hours worked—40.
Much has changed in 50 years.
I blame the 1965 Immigration Act and Clinton, as well as the other elected officials.
BITCOIN, you bloviating, bullshitting bitches!
(And I don’t mean those who are commenting on the knock-ons of economic extraction frauds; those are indeed germane.)
“According to Bloomberg, about 1,000 so-called “whales” control 40% of the bitcoin in circulation, giving them unrivaled leverage over the broader market. And because there are no laws explicitly banning collusion in digital currency markets, only the most blatant pump-and-dump operations risk being prosecuted as fraud.”
Well, well, what could *possibly* go wrong with this… or have any effect whatsoever on bitch-coin valuations? Read on.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-08/bitcoin-has-whale-problem-1000-investors-control-nearly-half-market
Nothing can go wrong Ozone, nothing I tell you. Smile and be happy, it’s all good.
SDR–is that the goal? Push folks to SDRs?
Byebye greenback and ecoins?
It’s a long-tail distribution which is unremarkable. As a nascent market, major holders will exist and can “collude”, however it is not clear it would be worth the effort. It’s not in their interest to crash the price, which would be impossible anyway, considering the distribution.
Zerohedge is crap, a fake news rumor mill always willing to offer up clickbait for everyone’s confirmation bias cravings.
Snacker,
Bloomberg, that anti-rich-folk rag is a crap, fake news rumor mill also, I’m assuming.
Continue with your own confirmation bias regarding vapor-currency, and GO LONG, please. Ride that fucker right off the cliff; that’ll show ’em.
Ozone, I hear the happy talk of the wealthy and their mouthpieces all the time and I heed it not. The reality is right there as big as life.
But it’s like Orwell said, people can go their entire lives not seeing what’s right under their nose.
And people can do the Comey, that is deliberately ignore mountain-sized piles of shit for reasons of class or political solidarity. Like deliberately ignoring homelessness.
Comey did a historic dis-service, he not only covered the agency he headed in dis-honor and dis-repute, he provided the precedent of “no criminal intent” for excusing the most monumental mis-deeds.
What do the – cough – enforcers say nowadays? That it’s so difficult to prove criminal intent. That even when evidence is like knee-deep muck.
And academics in general and the economists in particular deploy their fog machines to obscure and mis-direct. Homelessness? What homelessness, the charts and the statistics say things have never been better.
Keep the compass at hand Ozone.
V.,
“And people can do the Comey, that is deliberately ignore mountain-sized piles of shit for reasons of class or political solidarity.”
“Do the Comey”. Ha, a contemporary classic! I like where you go from there, with willful ignorance and mountainous arrogance driving all before it.
“Keep the compass at hand Ozone.”
Thanks for the advice; I shall, I shall. 🙂
Rippingly off-topic, but did this kid “intend” to make this cop’s life difficult by not following bizarre and conflicting commands? I’m certain he did and therefore deserved to be shot 4 times with the cop’s omnipresent ’15.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-08/arizona-cop-acquitted-killing-crawling-man-who-was-begging-his-life-graphic-video
Who “did the Comey” in this case? The “justice” system, mayhap?
Most of us on websites like this are what-the-fuck-ists by nature, that is, we accept what we see because we trust our ocular apparatus.
Life is made up of what-the-fuck moments big and small, some mundane, some not so mundane, some life-ending like this one.
As difficult as it sometimes is we accept the evidence of our own eyeballs because, well because what the fuck else are you supposed to do? Un-see what you damn well saw?
There is a malady known as preposterosis, a cognitive condition that sometimes has unfortunate behavioral aspects. It is widespread, not least because it is contagious. This is apparently one of those instances.
One of the symptoms of preposterosis is to refuse to believe what you just saw. The contagion becomes evident when multiple eye-witnesses to an event accept preposterous (hence the name of the disorder) explanations negating what is clearly obvious.
Preposterosis is normally very difficult to treat, not least because of resistance to and non-compliance with a regimen of therapy. It’s sufferers deny their illness but are typically otherwise healthy-seeming and well adjusted, hence the prognosis is usually not hopeful.
That said, treatments are simple and include a change of physical locale and social milieu with lots of fresh-air and sunlight.
And it was a Black guy, right? Cuz Cops only shoot Blacks. We all know that.
The Officer Executioner had “You’re fucked” etched into his rifle.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2017/09/08/profane-etching-ex-mesa-officer-phillip-mitch-brailsford-gun-inadmissible-daniel-shaver-murder-trial/648709001/
UG Krishnamurti was again pondering the question “How do I know I am in that state?” with no answer forthcoming. He later recounted that on suddenly realising the question had no answer, there was an unexpected physical, as well as psychological, reaction.
It seemed to him like “a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body.” Afterwards, he started experiencing what he called “the calamity”, a series of bizarre physiological transformations that took place over the course of a week, affecting each one of his senses, and finally resulting in a deathlike experience. He described it this way:
I call it “calamity” because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen. /
U.G.
I don’t know much about UG. Before his awakening, if that what it was, he was living on a park bench drinking fifty cups of coffee a day according to him. So anything is better than that! Is he the poor man’s Jiddhu Krishnamurti or the rich man’s Echart Tolle?
the “last man standing” behind the currency must be able to pay up to the “last man standing” holder of the currency, some unit of value once all the currency/debt units are redeemed/extinguished. –Ol’ Scratch
If you are the last man standing, in a sterile world destroyed by greed, being surrounded by gold bars will be worth exactly the same as having a hoard of electronic Bitcoins. Neither gold nor Bitcoins can be eaten or traded; neither can provide you sustenance for physical survival.
If you are the “last man standing” there won’t be anyone to redeem them in any event. Value is defined as “the importance, worth, or usefulness of something” … Neither gold nor Bitcoins meet the test of importance, worth, or usefulness in the case of the “last man standing.”
Can’t stay away. I was trying but then I was googling an author and found this:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/nozomi-hayase/changing-world-without-taking-power-bitcoin-and-challenges-of-consensus
JHK does not like shouting but I must to make this point.
The article is total techno-narcissism and an example of how we as poor humans can be totally deluded and out to lunch when we try to straddle our chasms of ignorance. This author politicizes bitcoin and knows nothing of computer science, the inherent possible manipulations by masters of this science and by the powerful, and the fact that the ‘state’ controls computer science not ‘hackers’. The article ends with:
“By moving from a system of power to a consensus of equal peers, together we can work toward realising promises enshrined in this code of a-political money.”
She is deluded in thinking that bitcoin is a-political and the misspelling of realizing is hers.
Or, she is right and you are completely missing the point. Bitcoin protocol development is political because it is a human Enterprise. Written into the Bitcoin protocol is a requirement for a 95% consensus for changes to be made. The protocol’s requirement, far above the simple majority common to democracies, demands a much higher standard of cooperation and should reflect to a greater degree, better outcomes.
In this way the protocol was designed to be resistant to special interests and manipulation.
It wan’t designed. One guy came up with it.
Well, alert the media and the public
Because no one’s been able to prove who came up with it.
The guidance of the protocol, however is mutable and ongoing.
‘While we may not know who he (or she) was, we know what he did. Satoshi Nakamoto was the inventor of the bitcoin protocol, publishing a paper via the Cryptography Mailing List in November 2008.
a consensus of equal peers — kdog
Yeah, about as much consensus as can exist between people who have absolutely no knowledge of the algorithms/machinations involved in “mining” … and never will.
Not unlike the consensus of all those who believe gold has value… even though none of them knows whether there is any actual gold in Fort Knox … and will never be allowed in to see for themselves.
That was a quote I was critical of to be clear. Not a delusion I share.
She is a deluded social justice warrior who had the arrogance to talk about bitcoin like she knew something about it. No surprise there, they are entitled and not burdened by the realities of life.
From the article:
Now, a breakthrough in computer science has found a way to crack this closed logic of control. Bitcoin opens what sociologist John Holloway described as a path of “changing the world without taking power”.
A total crock, to think everything reduces to power relationships but OK, lets everybody sing:
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius
Aquarius
When the Moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
“…and the misspelling of realizing is hers.”
Apologies from the mother country, K-Dog, where we use -ise and -isation endings (from the French). 🙂
Although certain dictionaries also defend -ize (from the Greek, I believe), but increasingly from the US.
The US will win in the end of course, by sheer force of numbers and cultural hegemony (and the tendency towards simplicity). ‘Foetus’ is already ‘fetus’ in medical texts, while ‘paediatrics’, ‘tumour’, ‘haemoglobin’ and ‘diarrhoea’ are still bravely holding out! And night, thankfully, remains night…except in some advertising, cough remedies and texting.
Although standard spellings in English are a relatively recent phenomenon anyway, generally credited to Samuel Johnson in 1755. Before that the language of Shakespeare was very easy going.
The Republican tax plan leaves a $1.5 trillion bill for the middle class to pay. If paid for with spending cuts, the bill leaves 71.6 percent of Americans worse off. This is what Trump voters have wrought… to their own detriment. Trump supporters are truly deplorable.
The Wisdom of Judhttp://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/13_things_roy_moore_has_said_a.htmlge Roy Moore as it pertains to Sex.
When accused of wanting to kill all Gays, he denied it!
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/13_things_roy_moore_has_said_a.html
One is reminded of Wallace Stevens’ 13 ways of looking at a black bird.
To those who are afraid they’ll lose control of their assets and bitcoin will protect them, think this through. We already don’t have control.
Try to withdraw over a few rhousand dollars in one shot, and the bank sends off a report to the feds. Your saving accounts have been designated as secondary to other bank liabilities and can be used to pay them off if said bank hasn’t enough assets. Your money is being stolen from you by inflation. More money is taken from you by taxes – do you control how your money is spent by the government?
The government has apps that can record your every keystroke. You think your bitcoin wallet is hidden from the Feds, no matter what it’s proponents claim?
Bitcoin is just like money – an accounting device to store the value of your work or other benefits. It certainly doesn’t give you real security. In this sense, ultimately bitcoin isn’t good or bad compared to fiat money.
This reminds me of an “Uncle Scrooge” comic book story I read as a kid. Donald Duck and his nephews – or someone else, I can’t remember – decide to play a joke on Uncle Scrooge. They make up a fake news story stating that very soon the dollar will be done away with and the new money will be fish. Since all of Uncle Scrooge’s money is in cash in his money bin, he rushes out and converts all his money into fish. He has a fit when he finds out that the news turned out to be very fishy.
Try to withdraw over a few rhousand dollars in one shot,
Indeed, BC is a step toward cashless ‘consumers’
[I dislike the term but use it as thats what ‘they’ reduce or want to reduce humans to].
Personally, I like to have as much of my money as possible in my physical possession, which is why I don’t plan on using bitcoin.
Bill, you have to live like the government does – always in debt! Otherwise, you’ll have nothing and enjoy nothing.
A friends mansion burned down. He had money in its safe.
The bank or government replaced the ashes with money.
Sounds fantastic, I wonder how this could be?
I literally wore a thousand dollars sewn into my pants last summer, nearly every day. Despite the obvious advantages of possession (I was travelling) I had no problem leaving the rest of my money in various possessions at a far remove. It doesn’t require too much faith in accounts. TEOTWAWKI isn’t probable to happen any given month or year let alone decade, I’ll wager.
Bitcoin is the ultimate store of money because it is merely a mathematical equation- this sum is forever a part of the bitcoin blockchain- it requires no storage fees, or even physical space. An address on the blockchain is why some people have described bitcoin as an “asset” because it exists as real estate of sorts. Even though there are a near infinite number of addresses only the known private keys really “exist”. And that is just a number on a piece of paper.
So lets say you have gold and you want to move out of the country. You sell your gold, buy bitcoin, and then, in your new location, sell or trade the bitcoin for gold. Happens all the time.
Bitcoin depends on the existence of the internet which was designed to survive severe reductions in networks. As long as two computers exist and are running bitcoin the network will exist.
So your private key is a number written on a piece of paper. How many digits is this number? Could I memorize it? If I do, don’t tell anyone the number, and I die, my estate loses those assets forever. If I write the key number down somewhere, then it’s subject to be stolen.
How are your assets protected when the government decides to shut down all the exchanges – except for their own?
See, I think the biggest danger of bitcoin and others is the sense of invulnerability they give. True, they may be more secure than traditional money (or they may not). It’s like a man eating very unhealthily because he doesn’t believe he’ll ever have a heart attack.
I’m not saying to not buy bitcoins, but the comments I read from its proponents seem to have a strong evangelical flavor to them, like true believers; and once I smell a fanatic, I become very wary.
For me, there’s no advantage to bitcoin compared to other traditional forms of hard assets.
I think a lot of the allure of the block chain is that it is digital – it’s so au courant. Look, I know the world is going to turn all digital, assuming no Long Emergency or species self-destruction. I embrace that, being technically-minded. But until blockchain is the universal standard, I will stay away from it.
Stranger things: Porn star bullied into suicide by Gays and Social Justice Warrior porn actors after saying she didn’t want to do scenes with men who had performed in gay movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPI9Mk17OAs
Elrond strokes his scraggly beard*, nodding his head sagely as if saying to himself, “It is well.” Alba does an English imitation of a Dallas Cowgirl Cheer, falling to the Earth only to make Snow Angels, such is her joy.
*Elrond can grow a beard of sorts. It just takes a long time. And like anything hard won, he values it greatly. Yay Elrond. When he converts to Islam, this miserable beard will be an asset.
I pity the woman. Suicide is a bad way yo go.
And have you read about UG Krishnamurti?
A gal pal met him.
I found his ‘revelation’ or ‘catastrophe’ to be noteworthy.
August Ames had legitimate reasons for not wanting to have sex with gay men so I doubt that is the real cause of her signing the big paycheck. Convenient as it is for some to claim it being the cause suicide, her reasons made total sense so her giving up the fight so easily makes no sense.
Another tragedy here is the fact that any woman has to explain why she won’t have sex with someone. That is her prerogative and another reason to doubt August’s suicide is tied to gay harassment directly. That a womans prerogative is no longer re[respected suggests our fall is very near. Our culture has now lost respect for boundaries of all kinds and this is not the first time such a thing has happened.
But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter.
And they called unto Lot, and said unto him: ‘Where are the men that came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.’
And what is the matter with you two. She had a name.
‘Porn star’
‘the woman’
How much could it have pained you two to type August.
Convenient as it is for some to claim it being the cause of hersuicide
That a woman‘s prerogative is no longer respected suggests our fall is very near.
Your trying to simultaneous be more PC than thou, super sensitive to women, and let her tormentors off the hook – since they are your PC allies.
It won’t wash. Shame on you.
I thought I was just pointing out that you are a brute.
You re [you are].
Calling her by her name would be meaningless since we don’t know her and unless you are a fan, wouldn’t know who she is and thus the story wouldn’t make sense. But to call her a prostitute sets the context.
Btw, I agree that more was going on. Healthy people don’t kill themselves, certainly not over twitter storms. But being a prostitute isn’t a healthy thing, at least not for most.
Gays are often very cruel and Liberals almost always are. Put the two together in a room or in one person, are you have a nightmare waiting to happen. Equality? They don’t want equality, but deference. And Liberals are eager to give it to them – so they can then set out to destroy all who don’t.
The fact that the main battle of this world war is happening in the US is good
This means that Russia has a breather, that Russia is now the Second Front. From this point of view, what is good that Russia became the main battlefield during the Second World War? In my opinion, it would be much better if the Americans landed in Normandy in 1941 and in September Hitler would have had to transfer troops from under Smolensk to France. Then Trump would have more reason to argue that it was the US that won the Second World War, and not just on the basis of mere participation in the winning coalition.
So the Cold War was the Third World War and America itself admitted this by establishing a medal for victory in the Cold War, and the consequences of this victory are quite comparable with the losses in the Second World War.
And the Fourth World War has already begun, and the first big blood of this war was the shooting of 600 people in Las Vegas at a concert of country music, with one radio presenter even fired for saying that she does not feel sorry for the victims, as most of them were the Trump supporters. And how many were not fired for this, just because they did not say so?
And already three times there was a moment when Trump nearly lost this war, because the US security services do not obey him, and the bitterness of this war has not reached the degree that he could order to surround the CIA and FBI buildings and shoot them out of howitzers.
And thank God for that, because this war is waged against him by a small layer of bureaucrats in these departments, and most of the staff is completely loyal to the President, but if he lost then Russia would again become the main battlefield in this war and they would become soldiers on the other front lines.
And Trump wins because he understands that the war against him is a world war, and since he can not count on the intelligence community, he created an army of spies using his personal money, who fight against the aforementioned bureaucrats and spies all over the world.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-private-spies-deep-state-735091
And one of Trump’s victories was that a significant part of the Republican Party began to demand a report from the special prosecutor Mueller, who is leading this investigation.
But Hillary wins quite often. For example, the stylistic analysis of the requirements of the IOC toward Russia leaves no doubt as to who exactly is its author.
Unfortunately, these victories of Hillary can go so far that Russia and the US will be de facto in a state of cold war, and the Third World War showed that the Cold War is still a war which task is the complete destruction of the enemy. And Trump, even putting the witch in a chair, will find that he has nothing to offer Putin in exchange for peace, and then North Korea will become the main battlefield in this new cold war.
Actually it has already become, and if Trump accepts Russia’s mediation in North Korea, he will have to admit defeat of the USA in Ukraine, and this is still the reason for his impeachment, which will be Hillary’s main victory in the war, after which the Fifth world war will begin, which will become the Last World War.
And the point of application of all these victories of both sides are the early elections in Alabama, where Roy Moore’s win will show that the work of the Clinton media is in vain and Clinton’s fund pays money to them for nothing. And the media is still the main fighting force in the Fourth World War, and its neutralization will play a decisive role.
With all the Clinton supporters involved in the Mueller probe, Trump must start thinking outside the box. Spies, secret private armies, etc., but these things are easily said and difficult to arrange.
If the likes of Fox News were neutralized, we wouldn’t be hearing about Clintonites Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok involved in the investigation.
And Mueller and his team are imploding. But will it happen quickly enough.
The anti Trump Justice Dept. and FBI must be cleansed. You remember 1993 in Russia. A little bit of that here could light up and burn those rats.
https://www.rbth.com/politics/2013/10/03/how_october_1993_led_to_president_putin_30489.html
A Cold War is an actual World War or any kind of War? This is classic Foreign Affairs/Neo Con gibberish. But Finc is a Jew so it fits.
The US is a bit like the bloke who climbs out of the window onto the ledge of an 80 story building. Or the bloke who thinks that “The Answer” lies in a whiskey bottle. Once the Utopian social experiment is exploded, then there’s no way out?
“Make America Great Again”; “Black Lives Matter”
“Ideas being only accessible to crowds after having assumed a very simple shape must often undergo the most thoroughgoing transformations to become popular. It is especially when we are dealing with somewhat lofty philosophic or scientific ideas that we see how far-reaching are the modifications they require in order to lower them to the level of the intelligence of crowds. These modifications are dependent on the nature of the crowds, or of the race to which the crowds belong, but their tendency is always belittling and in the direction of simplification.”
“The Crowd”, Gustave Le Bon
“Like ya know what I’m say’n?!”
It seems that Crowds also have a high propensity to hallucinate, which may explain why the Crowd buys into absurd stories such as the official narratives of 9-11, the JFK assassination, the Las Vegas casino massacre, the Michael Brown story, etc. Crowds are basically stupid and deranged, and very easily manipulated.
I don’t see the absurdity of the official 9-11 explanation. I do have some serious questions about the JFK assassination, but I don’t think it’s absurd to accept the standard explanation. Nor do I think it’s absurd to accept the Vegas shooting. Yeah, some of the small details may be a little hinky, but the story is, in essence, true. Truthers and conspiracists are the absurd ones. And absurd is a very strong word to use.
And any rational human being knows that 9-11 was a UFO attack, Jackie killed her husband, the Earth is flat, so we never landed on the Moon and we are not descended by monkeys because God created the Universe in 144 hours.
Their essence lies in the fact that if manipulation becomes obvious, then 3000 theories are instantly invented and published in anticipation, exposing these manipulations in the most distorted, delusional version, and the publication of the truth by association instantly turns out on the bookshelf under the title “Total fucking nonsense” .
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/what-now-3/#comment-329184
Over 3,000 licensed, expert architects and engineers have signed a petition seeking a new investigation into 9-11 on the grounds that the official narrative re: 9-11 couldn’t possibly be true.
thanks.
3000.
Found this—
all the naturopathic doctors & holistic gps that have been getting killed in odd circumstances , many of them discovered a gene that was being turned off in our bodies – the pharmaceutical companies add
something to medications.
Many NDs were treating / curing cancer.
I think it’s around 150 have died…150 researchers die in one plane crash.
The crowd is a collection of people living according to traditional legend and reasoning according to authority
Vissarion Belinsky
Blithely life goes by but then you learn that the number of people intended to die at the Boston Massacre was four and you learn this little tidbit on January 21st of the year it happened. You don’t even believe it until…
Then you know what it means to be a dust mote on a desert wind. To know that you are a tiny speck in the universe. Insignificant and irrelevant, existing between the yawning expanse of infinity and an abyss of nothing. Existing like a burning spark for only the briefest of moments then lost forever in endless sands of time.
Hillary’s Slogan: “I’m with Her.”
“I’m Wither.”
Trump is the oldest president at time of inauguration. When you consider age, his physical condition, he does not look in great physical shape and hasn’t for some time. The anxiety, the worry, the burden of knowing that Bob Mueller and the special prosecutor is out there investigating nearly every aspect of his life and his family’s financial life — and the fact that he doesn’t really know the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, of what he’s talking about a lot of times. He can’t even say “God bless the United States” without slurring the words. He is a low-energy golf-playing president. Hillary would have been better.
Devastating….
https://www.truthdig.com/videos/chris-hedges-american-empires-descent-dystopia-video/
Three minutes in he says that once the dollar loses it’s position as the worlds reserve currency a crippling economic depression will result and our death spiral will begin.
The Spanish Dollar was once the world currency. When it ended Spain did not disappear.
Gold was once the world currency. When it ended nations did not disappear.
The Pound Sterling was once the world currency. When it ended the UK did not disappear.
So why does the end of the dollar as the world’s currency supposedly result in “our death spiral”? Much ado about nothing.
In all the cases you mention overpopulation was not severe resources remained and dependence on fossil fuels was far less. Recovery in the boom and bust cycle of unregulated capitalism is only possible if resources remain.
This is no longer the case. The infinite game of endless substitutions which caused survival in all the cases you mention will come to a halt. No more substitutes can be found so technology becomes tapped out by the burden and expense and diminishing returns of its own complexity. New innovation can no longer replace what is lost and as there is no cheap energy to keep the existing system going, it all stops.
It is not like there is going to be North Dakota oil to come to the rescue like there was last time. Recovery from economic troubles require resources. With the dollar no longer the reserve currency the empire can no longer drain the world of the resources it needs to keep going.
So far I have written about generalities you may not agree with but that last part says it all. I wrote:
‘With the dollar no longer the reserve currency the empire can no longer drain the world of the resources it needs to keep going.’
Thus no recovery will be possible and the American way of life as we have known it will die. We will live like Cubans after our trade embargo was slapped on them. They no longer got any new cars. Old cars were kept going in a world made by hand. They had nothing.
Americans will starve to death unable to buy food in the land of plenty. Like the Irish of old we will watch the bounty of our land shipped overseas all so that some here, a dwindling few, can still live large.
The shooting of Daniel Shaver by Brailsford was cowardly sadistic.
There was hardly a hint of threat in this kid’s demeanor, begging for his life. The fuckin’ cop made him crawl and cringe. Why not tell him to just lie flat, arms outstretched?
Wanted to taunt and toy with him.
Probably not wanting his shorts to come off during the crawl, he tries to pull them up and takes a quadruple or quintuple tap. Took bullets to hide the butt crack.
Another officer already holstered his weapon, and deployed a stun gun.
The “you’re fucked” tells you all you need to know about this unprofessional, sadistic piece of shit. Hopefully that’s his fate after the lawsuit.
Brailsford needs to be held accountable. Death would be too good for him; He deserves far worse.
During the election campaign in the US, the struggle against Satanism of Hillary Clinton (aka Bastinda) pushed all other issues to the background, but when the miracle happened and she did not become president of the United States, other problems came to the fore.
Meanwhile, after this victory of all people of good will over the controlled chaos, Russia has found itself in a very difficult situation, since all state institutions whose task is to combat the “Dulles Plan”, which is undoubtedly one of the cultural consequences of the Fourth Crusade, were captured by the adepts of this Crusade or its useful idiots.
The big-box chains want to sell only imported goods, the criterion of scientific value is the Hirsch index, and the main literary and artistic value is the denial of the civilizational and cultural identity of Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9d1hkoF-A&feature=youtu.be&t=2369
Speaking of Total fucking nonsense, did you read Benjamin Fulford?
Good example how mainstream conspiracy theories work – I am sure he’s getting well paid for his effort.
The problem I see in making out Bitcoin to be the greatest thing since sliced bread is that it’s something that relies on the ever-increasing gizmo-fication of our society in order to work. And one thing I see happening with the next leg down of collapse/ decline is that society has become so hyper-big, hyper-complex, and hyper-gizmofied, that this situation is only going to facilitate things falling apart even more drastically, and nobody’s going to know what to do. So I agree with JHK that Bitcoin is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
ever-increasing gizmo-fication?
Trivial drug use + drainage of capital from China will suffice.
By the way, the very popular and flourishing trade in “spices” in the Middle ages was, probably 90%, trade in drugs.
And you thought it was all black pepper and coriander?
Finc,
Never gave it any real thought…but if you are correct, where were all the dope fiends?
venuspluto67,
As an interesting aside to that, here’s an article that refers to the demand for “traditional” stores of value, namely gold and silver bullion held in hot little hands. This is a matter of confidence and trust — and vs. Bitchcoin? No contest. As one might figure, demand for bullion has become YUGE (but not factored in, market-value-wise) since 2008. BTW, very little of this is re-sold back into the market; it is *held* as a long-term hedge.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-09/disinformation-war-attempt-disregard-silver-investor-demand-market
I think it’s important to see where confidence is being placed as well as those areas in which confidence is being lost. Critical indicators as well, IMO.
While the attention of the whole world is focused on Jerusalem and North Korea, in my opinion much more important changes are taking place in good old England. And in this regard, I must admit that I’m a little angloman and my favorite film is “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_uinVxj0Y
This film quite truthfully portrays the hard life of the English aristocracy, to which the Princess Diana and Harry’s father belonged, and for which the Windsors are not sufficiently aristocratic. By the way, the Windsors has their advantages, allowing them to ignore this circumstance, but in 1994 when this film was shot two months before the peak of the British monarchy scandal because of the sexual emancipation of the mother of the heirs to the throne.
Although there is a theory according to which Diana behaved this way because Charles never managed to overcome his feelings for a divorced woman, whom he fell in love with before his mother found Diana for him, since he could not marry his chosen one because of the fact that the royal family sincerely believes in telegony.
The crisis was terrible and those same aristocrats in comparison with whom the Windsors are no aristocratic enough started talking seriously about the transformation of Great Britain into a republic because of the absence of an undisputed heir in the event of William’s death.
It is against this background that this stunningly funny film appears whose plot is quite simple:
Charles, who is played by Hugh Grant, falls in love with the American millionaire Kerry, who lets him have it on the first day, but when she says in the morning that she wants to marry him, he is not too happy about this proposal and it offends her so much that a terrible conundrum begins.
Question: why does not he want to marry her? And he never married, despite the fact that he sincerely loves her. Bachelor syndrome? Nothing like this. He can not marry her, it’s a misalliance! The film shows the life of the highest English aristocracy.
Hello Fincain
The reason Charles couldn’t marry Camilla Parker-Bowles was two-fold: (1) she was still married to her husband, Andrew Parker-Bowles, and (2) even as recently as the 1980s, the royal family (and probably the tabloid newspapers) insisted that the wife of the heir to the throne should be a virgin. They seem to have got over that obsession now, as they have also got over the stipulation of not marrying divorcees (Wallis Simpson/Edward VIII; Peter Townsend/Princess Margaret) or Catholics.
The Windsors are actually the Mountbatten-Windsors, in the male line descended from the Queen (Battenberg having been changed to Mountbatten to make it sound less German):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountbatten-Windsor
They are basically of German origin and descended from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor.
Now if you really want to get into the royal blood thing, here is some interesting stuff on both Charles and Diana, who were both of royal lineage – some argue she even more so than he.
http://queryblog.tudorhistory.org/2009/07/question-from-gervase-princess-dianas.html
Good luck! And here’s to a grown-up republic 🙂
Okay then.
It’s a Saturday, and on zerohedge’s first page, there are 7 articles relating to bitcoin. Theorize *that* if you will… and I’m sure you will. 😉
When Tony Blair and Al Gore and the other neoliberal acolytes failed to gain traction for their new(est) false commodity, carbon, the need didn’t simply perish with it. They tried to corner the market. They had everything in line. Well, almost. Their machinations in this scheme were easy to read. Of course it was dressed rather thoroughly and sanctimoniously in the vestments of ecology, the zeitgeist at the time. Yet the emperor was still seen to be naked. Info age after all. These things need secrecy. So we have crypto-currencies. And we have Bitcoin. A false commodity to collect for the vacuum. For now.
A some point, you gotta quit talking about the money (in its different forms) and start discussing things that really matter.
“things that really matter.”
Finc,
Russian “honey pots” with their bellies full of liquid gold?
With all due respect, elysian, what the heck are you talking about?
Finc,
just referencing your fixation on hot…steaming….
The former reference was to America’s earlier fixation with the Russian prostitute (honey pot), and Trump’s supposed “golden shower”…you know, things that really matter….
I apologize for being obscure….
But a Muscovite in a bespoke suit with a supercilious grin on his sly poker face.
Wow, how fluttering, but, unfortunately, not ’bout yours truly – I’m no Muscovite I am a Siberian boy.
Found this—
all the naturopathic doctors & holistic gps that have been getting killed in odd circumstances , many of them discovered a gene that was being turned off in our bodies – the pharmaceutical companies add
something to medications.
Many NDs were treating / curing cancer.
I think it’s around 150 have died?
“Many NDs were treating / curing cancer”
Malthuss,
When the extremely wealthy die of cancer, you know that there is no cure.
People spend money or mis spend money.
Just because they spend money does not mean they
are in the right.
Strange. It’s almost as if Finca has not read JHK’s World Made by Hand series that concerns a possible future that includes mediums of exchange. Oh well, guess suppositions about the future have no relations to the past — unless their importance is properly sanctioned by an American expatriate of Eastern European origin living in the Dominican Republic as a farmer. Sorry, but all I’m seeing as this heavy infestation of blog space continues is patent goddamned nonsense and historical smoke and mirrors of the most overt sort. Our time is wasted and our intelligence insulted. Is that the point?
O3, our civilization does so, so many things incorrectly that it’s a wonder we ever had functioning societies. But even deeper, it’s not about just doing things incorrectly, it’s about thinking incorrectly. Our thought processes are very flawed, and that’s a major reason we are in the state we’re in.
Tainter is probably correct about complex societies failing – maybe because our brains become less and less effective the more and more complex things get.
Whatever the cause, we’re right on the line of total societal dysfunction, so Finca’s posts, while having the effect you describe, are totally in line with expectations. Perhaps we shouldn’t kill the messenger, but just shake our heads and sadly cluck in understanding.
Mr Ozone I think what you may be describing is a troll. Hardly matters if the troll is government employed or not. We can speculate as to motive or agenda. This being the internet, a commenter can be anyone, anywhere on the globe. The only thing you can do is to look at the direction of the troll commentary. Economists are among the most shameless shills, so, for example, you know who an economist is working for pretty much as soon as they open their mouth. Same idea with the troll though a troll may be more skilled at concealment.
All the foregoing hardly matters, what the troll does is, as you say, spew patent goddamned nonsense and historical smoke for the purpose of wasting your time.
But mainly for the purpose of keeping ideas from circulating and especially coalescing into something substantial. So, the troll deflects, diverts, distracts, obscures, misinforms, lies like hell.
If your intelligence is insulted along the way, well, that’s just for laughs.
And your “intelligence” is probably inspired by the Goddess of Triviality and the Muse of Repetition.
Ahhhh,
Now seeing as that’s so non-accidentally articulate, direct, succinct and smoooth (English-speaking-wise), I begin to doubt Finca’s “difficulties” with the language, as a foreign-born, not-too-good-i-say-much-Am’rikan speaker.
Yep, I’ll read a sentence or two (it’s called ‘skimming’) then I tend to give up further into the distractionary weeds.
Thus;
“Nope, didn’t read that goddamned nonsense”, for most of the Finc-ey content proffered.
V.,
Well, as long as *somebody’s* getting a laugh or two…
(Mostly, I determine this kind of behavior as little more than sadistic.)
ozone
November 28, 2017 at 11:58 am #
Finca,
Nope. Didn’t read that one either. It’s possible that I may missing one of life’s great epiphanies, but I seriously doubt it. It may also mean that I don’t trust you. Oh well; feel free to return the sentiment.
ozone
November 28, 2017 at 6:03 pm #
Finca,
Nope. Didn’t read that one either. It’s possible that I may missing one of life’s great epiphanies, but I seriously doubt it. It may also mean that I don’t trust you. Oh well; feel free to return the sentiment.
ozone
November 28, 2017 at 6:04 pm #
Finca,
Nope. Didn’t read that one either. It’s possible that I may missing one of life’s great epiphanies, but I seriously doubt it. It may also mean that I don’t trust you. Oh well; feel free to return the sentiment.
ozone [finally admitting]
November 28, 2017 at 6:15 pm #
It’s okay to be a shithead.
“ozone [finally admitting]
November 28, 2017 at 6:15 pm #
It’s okay to be a shithead.”
FincaInThePayofDoD,
Since this (in pointed particular) was directed at one of “the paid trolls we’ve all known for too long”, I’ll simply assume that Finca is one tentacle of the same consortium. How’z’at? Better and more comfy-cosy? Suck it; eat it; digest it; I’ve got no use for it. How’s the ol’ *credibility* these days?
Best advise from a commentor on this blog comes from Beans. YOYO, Finca; have fun wasting space and keystrokes, that’s all it is.
Best post you ever made. You two deserve each other. One who thinks he knows and the other who doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.
unless their importance is properly sanctioned by an American expatriate of Eastern European origin living in the Dominican Republic as a farmer.
–thats quite a resume.
our brains become less and less effective the more and more complex things get.
Really????
Things are bad, but still not as bad as Weimar, where child prostitution was legal. On the other had, the whole West is Weimeresque, and still descending into the Maelstrom.
Mowrer says ‘No one who lived through the period from 1919 to 1926 is likely to forget the sexual promiscuity that prevailed.. Throughout a town like Berlin, hotels and pensions made vast fortunes by letting rooms by the hour or day to baggageless, unregistered guests. Hundreds of cabarets, pleasure resorts and the like served for purposes of getting acquainted and acquiring the proper mood..’ (pp. 153-4). Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds ‘Most of them (the night clubs and vice-resorts) were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews.. among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.’ (pp. 144-5).
Douglas Reed, Chief Central European correspondent before WWII for the London Times, was profoundly anti-German and anti-Hitler. But nevertheless he reported: ‘I watched the Brown Shirts going from shop to shop with paint pots and daubing on the window panes the word “Jew”, in dripping red letters. The Kurfrstendamm was to me a revelation. I knew that Jews were prominent in business life, but I did not know that they almost monopolized important branches of it. Germany had one Jew to one hundred gentiles, said the statistics; but the fashionable Kurfrstendamm, according to the dripping red legends, had about one gentile shop to ninety-nine Jewish ones.’ (Reed Insanity Fair (1938) p. 152-3). In Reed’s book Disgrace Abounding of the following year he notes ‘In the Berlin (of pre-Hitler years) most of the theatres were Jewish-owned or Jewish-leased, most of the leading film and stage actors were Jews, the plays performed were often by German, Austrian or Hungarian Jews and were staged by Jewish film producers, applauded by Jewish dramatic critics in Jewish newspapers.. The Jews are not cleverer than the Gentiles, if by clever you mean good at their jobs. They ruthlessly exploit the common feeling of Jews, first to get a foothold in a particular trade or calling, then to squeeze the non-Jews out of it.. It is not true that Jews are better journalists than Gentiles. They held all the posts on those Berlin papers because the proprietors and editors were Jewish’ (pp238-9).
http://rense.com/general29/why.htm
Wasn’t Rense site that peddled Fullford “revelations”?
Total fucking nonsense:
http://www.rense.com/datapages/fulfdat.htm
So you think the Culture of Weimar Germany was in line with Orthodox Christianity, the Christianity you supposedly believe in?
Janos, you know my personal feelings regarding Germany – I love it so much that I insist that there should be many of them.
The Nazis hated the Jewish Weimar and its corruption. Thus you must admit, insofar as they remedied the situation, they did a good deed.
You are so deep in the rotting peat, I can actually smell your sulfur stink across the interweb. There’s no redemption where you go. Just pure blackness.
https://www.stripes.com/report-44-000-unknown-military-personnel-stationed-around-the-world-1.501292
Accounting error or the hidden soldiers and black ops of the Deep State?
…Oh yes, I do love a good schizophrenic “exchange”; so DIVERTING.
What could be more evil than a USGSO (Unrecognized Single Gender Social Organzation)?
Under the policy, students may decide to join a USGSO and remain in good standing,” a statement attached to the email asserts, though it also cautions that “decisions often have consequences, as they do here in terms of the students’ eligibility for decanal endorsements and leadership positions supported by institutional resources.”
[RELATED: Harvard mandates ‘implicit bias training’ for faculty]
Reiterating that “the policy does not discipline or punish the students,” but rather “recognizes that students who serve as leaders of our community should exemplify the characteristics of non-discrimination and inclusivity that are so important to our campus,” the Corporation’s statement emphasizes its belief that the policy preserves “agency and choice” while balancing competing interests.
Despite its rhetorical concessions to freedom of association, though, the statement makes clear that the Corporation considers USGSOs a pernicious influence on campus, saying its members concurred that “the university must act” to limit the reach of such clubs.
“The USGSOs have a very different relationship to the campus than was the case a generation ago, and it cannot be seriously disputed that the overall impact is negative,” it notes, asserting that “they stand in the way of our ability to provide a fully challenging and inclusive educational experience to the diverse students currently on our campus.”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10240
Really fuckin’ stranger things going on right there at Hahvahd, eh Janos?
The soundtrack please: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmv5pTyz–I
Will the Hahvahd students who are also members of the Cambridge, Ma. Women’s Center have to make that choice? If it is considered a USGSO, then that would constitute the horns of a dilemma to be sure.
How about the local Gay Men’s Chorus? Singing and pursuing studies could be considered an existential conflict in the making under the university’s new policy.
Whew….good thing there are plenty of well-credentialled therapists and counselors at the school to help the perplexed over this hump.
No stranger to stranger things is another seat of Uber-Lib higher education: Oberlin College in Ohio. Did you hear that a local bakery is racist because they profiled Negro students who stole some wine and beat up one of the owners? Yep – a sure case of blaming the YT victim.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443005/gibsons-bakery-oberlin-college-crusades-against-local-business
And just think; it’s only going to get stranger still.
We had our first winter snowfall here, about 5 inches of the fluffy stuff sugarcoating the landscape and creating a little bit of magic, at least until the armada of snow ploys made their appearance.
The local TV media went with balls to the wall 24 hour coverage as if Armageddon had descended upon us and the end was near. The only other story was this or that do good organization collecting toys and gifts for underprivileged kids (in Hartford) Those kids in Hartford by all indications are going to have a pretty good Christmas.
In CT cities all kids to age 19 are provided 3 meals a day by the city in various strategically placed kitchens. Christmas gifts are procured thru donations. There are collections for winter coats, shoes, eyeglasses etc. One has to wonder, what role do these parents have in raising their own kids? Do they have to provide anything at all or do anything except give birth to them?
brh
Schools have been tasked to provide surrogate parenting.
When they fail at that, and the kids fail, the schools fail.
There is an enormous incongruence between behavior learned at home and behavior permissible in society.
This was the diplomatic response from a Columbia grad who Taught for America in NYC. After a few cocktails, they became “animals”.
Nature’s oldest truth syrum.
In vino veritas.
Yes BRH, the issue are also provided a name from the baby mamma and sometimes from the baby daddies. You know what kind of personal appellations I’m suggesting don’t you?
Everything else is wonderfully provided by the Taxpayers. Sweet!
The advertisement is well worth playing for edification purposes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLTTX35LNJo
Stranger things than this approach.
Mr. Darling, your precious indicator, which you no longer dare cite:
The BDI explodes higher.
The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is a measure of freight rates for shipping dry bulk commodities around the world on ocean-going vessels of certain sizes.
Demand reflects an improvement in the global economy. Over recent months we have witnessed rising industrial commodities prices, and freight rates have been increasing, most recently to the highest level since 2014.
Suck it; eat it; digest it; I’ve got no use for it. How’s the ol’ *credibility* these days? == Ozone
Finca, May 19, 2017 at 2:05 pm
Director Comey was forced to say that he resumed the investigation of Hillary Clinton ServerGate 10 days before the election under pressure from the FBI employees who, following the trail of traffickers and lovers of child pornography, arrested the computer of Huma Abedin’s husband, the closest adviser to Hillary Clinton.
They found on this computer video footage of the visits of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the head of her election campaign Podesta to the so-called “Orgy Island” and threatened to put these records on the Internet if Comey did not resume the investigation.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/monster-eating-nation/#comment-304472
Judge Jeanine, December 10, 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=346&v=fDhrXRAYMBI
Saying pretty much the same thing!
Ozone, suck it; eat it; digest it – or give me a single example when you were right about something that you didn’t see on TV 5 minutes ago.
Another strange Hail Mary pass — to no one.
Nice construction though; must be studying hard.
test