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All This and World War, Too?

     The situation in Ukraine hotted up this weekend and threatens to blow this morning with the Kiev government affecting to send “anti-terrorist” troops into the eastern cities where ethnic Russians seized buildings. (In the olden times of Europe, they had witches and devils. Now, thanks to our example, they have “terrorists.”) While this impending civil war would be rather dire for Ukraine, it presents the obvious questions: 1) does it matter to anyone outside the region? And in particular, 2) is it any business of the USA?

     War hawk kibitzers on the sidelines (e.g. The New York Times) are making a big deal of the 40,000 Russian troops marshaled around the border of eastern Ukraine. So what? That’s just a few thousand more than the 33,000 US troops deployed to Afghanistan, America’s current “nation-building” project. But the troop numbers swing to our side of the balance beam if you throw in the nearly 3,000 American boots-on-the-ground stationed in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, and the roughly 15,000 in Kuwait and Bahrain. I don’t remember the Russians complaining very much about all this US military hyper-activity in their part of the world over the past decade.

     At least somebody has stuffed a cheese Danish (or something) in John Kerry’s pie-hole the past week. The walking haircut-in-search-of-a-brain has stopped making ridiculous commitments to the US-and-EU-installed Kiev government. And President Obama has stopped drawing laugh-out-loud lines in the sand. I suspect if they resume beating that drum, they could provoke some unrest in our own country. Not everyone is glued to the Kardashian Channel with his fist in the Cheez Doodle bag. And not all of the army vets returned from operations in Muslim lands (the ones that haven’t committed suicide, that is) have such a high opinion of the overall outcome there.

     Barack Obama, who I voted for twice, is on his way to becoming the worst US president in my lifetime, at least — and maybe in the whole cavalcade going back to the very start of the republic. I don’t want to get too sidetracked in this brief blog space today, but isn’t it stupendously asinine that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and his SEC appointees only just last week became interested in the pervasive swindle of high frequency trading on Wall Street after author Michael Lewis went on 60 Minutes. Like, they hadn’t heard about this years-long orgy of front-running until now? Strange to relate, I actually might feel more comfortable if Vladimir Putin was massing troops on the Mexican side of the US border to keep Americans safe from our own bungling and destructive government.

     Aren’t a number of things obvious about the Ukraine situation? Such as: the Russians have a greater interest in preventing chaos there than the US has in any provisional disposition of the Ukrainian border and the composition of its government. Such as: for most of the 20th century Ukraine was essentially a Russian province, and at various times before that the ward of several other eastern European kingdoms. Such as: Russia has a huge investment in gas pipeline infrastructure in Ukraine upon which depends a substantial portion of its national income, not to mention the winter-time comfort of most of the countries in western Europe.

     Hence my plea: will parties in the USA (including Obama camp “progressives”) stop cheerleading for a showdown over this hapless doormat of a faraway nation whose destiny is not entwined with the people of Ohio, Nebraska, Rhode Island, or any of the other fifty states? We have enough to do in our own country to adjust to the new realities of the unraveling turbo-industrial global economy — and, by the way, we are not doing a damn thing to address any of it. Our domestic political conversation at all levels is juvenile and idiotic. I’d rather see US troops shut down WalMart, which has been way more destructive to the US economy (and the livelihoods of our people) than the bandits in any central Asian rat-hole. I’d rather see the US spend its dwindling capital restoring our passenger railroads than paying off the debts of strangers half a world away.

     This is turning into a Vietnam moment for the US political scene. Where are the Fullbrights and Bobby Kennedys of today who have the guts to rally US citizens against insane government behavior? What elected officials among all the bought-off Koch Brother catamites and Wall Street errand boys will stand up for reality-based principle? When will the young people of this country pull their eyeballs away from their iPhones and their heads out of their cloacal vents? When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

235 Responses to “All This and World War, Too?”

  1. Greg Knepp April 14, 2014 at 9:25 am #

    Never.

    • djc April 14, 2014 at 11:46 am #

      I’m really, really afraid you may be correct.

      djc

    • Warren April 14, 2014 at 3:46 pm #

      That was exactly what I thought when I read the last line of this weeks CFN blog.

  2. piltdownman April 14, 2014 at 9:36 am #

    Jim –

    I had exactly the same response to the “late to the game” DOJ announcement about high frequency trading. How absurd that they are apparently making their prosecutorial choices based on TV shows.
    What next? Will they begin an investigation into the winners and losers on Idol?

    And I got a belly laugh out of Tom Friedman’s op-ed piece, in which he suggested that if Putin turns off the gas petcock to Europe, nothing will happen except utopian alt energy doves will fly over that already feeble economic cockup….

  3. Arn Varnold April 14, 2014 at 9:39 am #

    JHK, you’ve pegged this for what it is; puffery, dangerous puffery, but puffery never the less.
    The children in charge (U.S.) will have, as is their wont; never mind the consequences for a people.
    If we escape a serious shooting war, all the better, but I fear the demons will have their way…

    • jonabark April 15, 2014 at 6:37 pm #

      Of course when our CIA and special forces operatives work in hundreds of countries on behalf of “our national interests” this never gives a legitimate reason for those governments and people, often in the majority, who see “US interests” as predatory and destabilizing and conducted on the behalf of the 1% to attack those US agents and their friends. That is always labeled as terror. Me liberator, you terrorist.

      Our foreign policy is Orwellian in its barbaric hypocrisy and violence. The idea that this uprising in Eastern Ukraine is less legitimate than the coup against the elected government is simply bizarre. It is a tribute to that deadly combination of fearful subservience and thirst for dominance of the media, the Military and the government of the US.

      All of this is part of a setup by the fossil fuel people to frack the globe and reap billions while the world burns. Putin and Obama and Saudi Arabia and the Tar sands Canadians and British Petroleum are all just players and master manipulators in the war for oil: warlords of the modern world. And Ukrainians are pawns in their games.

  4. Neon Vincent April 14, 2014 at 9:41 am #

    “Hence my plea: will parties in the USA (including Obama camp “progressives”) stop cheerleading for a showdown over this hapless doormat of a faraway nation whose destiny is not entwined with the people of Ohio, Nebraska, Rhode Island, or any of the other fifty states?”

    The Monkey Cage blog over at the Washington Post found a disturbing correlation last week–the less Americans knew about the location of Ukraine, the more likely they were to favor U.S. military action there. Ah, ignorance and belligerence, the American Way.

    “I don’t want to get too sidetracked in this brief blog space today, but isn’t it stupendously asinine that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and his SEC appointees only just last week became interested in the pervasive swindle of high frequency trading on Wall Street after author Michael Lewis went on 60 Minutes.”

    Michael Lewis has had Wall Street’s number ever since he worked there in the 1980s. It’s not for nothing that he called his first book about the place “Liar’s Poker.” He thought that it couldn’t go on much longer. Instead, it was merely the first of three Roaring Twenties in a row. We might just have three Great Depressions in a row to make up for it. That last Roaring Twenties was the real estate boom and bust, which he wrote about in “Boomerang.” My friend Michael Daly, who uses the nom de net Nebris, had a conversation about that book and what it meant for Americans. It wasn’t good. Here’s the relevant passage from Lewis himself.

    “The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.” What they wanted to do with money in the dark varied. Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak.”

    Here’s what Nebs and I had to say.

    “Nebris: I’d say this is a key part of why the Occupy Movement is not likely to get too far.

    Me: Yeah, deep down, Americans like dominance and the material life too much to be very committed to equality.

    On a related note, I’ve been reading Greer the Archdruid more lately. He thinks that the same love of the material is going to get in the way of Occupy’s goals…”

    http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2011/12/nebris-and-i-have-conversation.html

    Speaking of John Greer, he and I had a conversation about real estate two weeks ago, which I put up on my blog. He’s optimistic about getting good land cheap in the Motor City. Like the offscreen fiancee in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” he likes that Detroit has “huge…tracts of land” for cheap. I’m looking forward to buying some of it.

    http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-archdruid-and-i-talk-real-estate.html

    • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 11:21 am #

      “Yeah, deep down, Americans like dominance and the material life too much to be very committed to equality.”

      And ‘reality-based principles’ don’t draw the crowds. The Fullbrights and Bobby Kennedys of today are here. But nobody wants them. All anybody wants is more.

    • orbit7er April 14, 2014 at 12:08 pm #

      Anybody see the scary article in the NY Times over the weekend over the likely collapse of the Multi-Employer Pension Fund?

      http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/thought-secure-pooled-pensions-teeter-and-fall/

      ========= Excerpt from first paragraph ===

      The pensions of millions of Americans are being threatened because of trouble in a part of the retirement world long considered so safe that no one gave it a second thought.

      The pensions belong to people in multiemployer plans — big pooled investment funds with many sponsoring companies and a union. Multiemployer pensions are not only backed by federal insurance, but they also were thought to be even more secure than single-company pensions because when one company in a multiemployer pool failed, the others were required to pick up its “orphaned” retirees.
      ….

      Of course the “solution” instead of raising money from the plutocrats is to take away workers guaranteed pension in one way or another…

      • islander800 April 14, 2014 at 1:16 pm #

        And isn’t it ironic – in decades past, it was the big bad “union bosses” that were accused of robbing pension funds of workers.

        Now it’s the “respectable” Wall Street financers that are pulling the Great Train Robbery on ordinary hardworking citizens that have had to toil all their lives for their meager crumb of paradise .

        There’s a special circle in hell for these sociopaths.

  5. Htruth April 14, 2014 at 9:46 am #

    The great awakening may be here albeit at a slow pace. Check out what the Nevada cowboys did to the feds over the weekend: http://youtu.be/o_mrreO9hv0

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  6. AKlein April 14, 2014 at 9:57 am #

    Let’s all go to Disney World and dream the dream.
    I don’t know – it just seemed like a reasonable thing to say given our national penchant for living as though we were in a cartoon.

  7. George April 14, 2014 at 10:00 am #

    “When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?”

    It may a bit late for that as things have probably progressed too far beyond the entropy curve to allow much success. We’d best prepare to ride this one out as what’s left slowly (and then blindingly quickly) succumbs to the wrath of the “Harsh Mistress” otherwise known as Mme. Reality.

    http://www.thesisa.org

  8. BioWebScape April 14, 2014 at 10:14 am #

    James,

    I try to read your blog outloud to my father, great today that I didn’t have to use other words over the language bits he’d not use himself. I have been watching Max kieser and gerald celente for some time now, and a few others. I got into the forum over at The Oil Drum back in it’s first few months and even before then had my ear to the ground about the events of the world like my highschool term paper on the pros and cons of nuclear energy. So most of this is not new to me.

    What gets me is that the history of the USA is so rift with these sorts of actions, that the nation isn’t what we were taught in school, unless we had a good history teacher and not some guy that was a football coach that had to teach a few classes too, usually in the classes the other kids called easy A’s. Lucky for me I always got the real teachers, and not the semi-fake ones. But we to have never been taught the truth even back in my years of highschool of the late 70’s-early 80’s. That students now don’t even know who the president or vice president is, is sad. The world over the people seem more involved, more willing to push for national knowledge of their own countries, while my yahoo feed is all about the Idols of the day (insert team name, sport, or actor, singer in this slot).

    We have become the masses of Rome needing to be fed a steady diet of fluff to keep the riots from the streets like everywhere else. What with several people planning things like the 10 million man march on washington I heard off some Youtube vlogger’s channel, or Gerald Celente wanting an Occupy Peace movement to start soon ( I haven’t gotten his trends journal yet, but I have bought your books before). We have been stirring the pot over here a bit , but nothing is moving like it is in the smaller nations. It is like making sure the other nations blow up and keep the masses happy with the TV shows and the Sports, ra ra ra sis boom bah, never let a sporting event go to waste to take the people’s minds off the high prices of “Cheese Doodles” Though the package has shrank in size, the price has gone up too and the taxes took a bit rise to help fundfilling the local pot holes, no not that pot , the ones that are made out of used tires and left over oil bits….

    The list just goes on and on, and your book ” The Long Emergancy” Which I read after losing my last and final job, and having my second wife leave me, I had time on my hands. I knew a lot of what you talked about in it, but we are still seeing it playing out now.

    The end of the USA empire is on the news, just not many people see it as such just yet.

    Biowebscape designs, feeding the future off today’s yards.
    Charles.

  9. budizwiser April 14, 2014 at 10:18 am #

    I noticed that JK’s book is printed as the “20th” edition. My how far we have come.

    I guess I could mention all the dire talk about population “explosion” that started in the 60’s.

    I would guess the life experience that none of us can get our heads around is the massive inertia of our current mindless “mental” as well as physical infrastructure.

    JK thinks somehow – some one – can prick the balloon of the status quo and hence – possibly wake up the masses.

    What we all collectively need to realize is this:

    The world is largely being influenced by the behavior of the US government – as well as it’s immature citizenry.

    The “grand experiment” of democracy and self governance in the US is still somewhat teenage-like compared to many civilizations.

    Is it any wonder that “teen-age-USA” would wait until the very last minute of the global-energy-weekend to start its homework of self-sustaining life-styles and infrastructure.

    And why would anyone else get much of their act to work -when the most popular kid on the global block, the USA, is still partying like 1999?

    Could it be another 20 years?

  10. swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 10:26 am #

    Thanks for the musings, Mr. K. Thought-provoking as usual.

    I, for one, never voted for Obama. I wanted to for a while, until May 2008. That’s when I read that Wall Street was contributing more to his campaign than either Sen. McCain, the Republican, or Sen. Clinton, the wife of the most finance-friendly President in American history (to that time) and the sitting Senator from New York. That told me right there, before the collapse of Finance was out in the open for most people, that the fix was in. My decision to vote 3rd party was confirmed in September 2008 when the collapse was in full display, and both candidates Obama and McCain promised, if elected to appoint the same Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. When both candidates proudly proclaim they are in the pocket of Finance, the choices narrow a bit.

    As for Ukraine and the rest. I really don’t see it as a feckless, heedless course of geopolitical bungling. I think to see it that way misses the true objective.

    Seems to me our system requires infinite supplies of money, energy, resources, and markets. Of these, only money can be made infinite, and that only by making it abstract. The other necessary inputs have all been finite since the Finance system became truly global. Once the limits have been hit, there are no more continents to exploit, and everyone who has the money and a supply of electricity already has a refrigerator. After that point, the system turns inward on itself. That explains the labor arbitrage we’ve seen called “globalization,” and the rest. Of course this relies entirely on cheap, infinite energy, which we also don’t have.

    It’s obvious that our Finance system won’t last much longer, so the question confronting the elites is complex. How to keep the system appearing to function as long as possible, to allow the maximum advantage, yet to prepare for what happens when the system tears itself apart due to its internal contradictions. To amass as much wealth as possible while the getting is good, but to convert that wealth quickly but quietly into forms that will retain value after the current abstract/fictitious wealth loses all its value.

    It seems to me that the elites have latched onto what passes for Gray Eminences in our intellectually debased world; Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Following the playbook that Kubrick only slightly satirized in “Dr. Strangelove,” the elites have adopted the policy of surrounding Russia and China with fire. We also heap particularly brutal and bloody chaos on top of reserves of strategic resources (especially energy) and transshipment routes, as a way of keeping those assets in storage. Nobody can extract or use those assets without overwhelming force, which only the US is able to “project” on a global basis.

    Maintaining the ascendant status of the US Petro-Dollar is very important in all of this, but the elites clearly see the end of that state of affairs. That’s very much a “playing for time” and “making hay while the sun still shines” tactic at this point, though in deadly earnest.

    If you look at a good atlas with resources and political boundaries, you can see the logic of the strategy at a glance. The US has systematically recruited the most vicious, unreasonable, and unwilling-to-compromise factions in every country where there’s even the hint of a crack in the stability of the society, on the perimeter of Russia and China. This extends to the African nations where China has made huge investments in cooperative resource infrastructure ventures (Libya, Horn of Africa, southeastern Africa) as well.

    It’s an apocalyptic scenario, in which “Mine-Shaft Gaps” are taken very seriously. Sure, it’s sold to the geographically and literally illiterate, innumerate American consuming public in all the usual flavors of bullshit. But none of this is for the actual benefit of the Cheez-Doodle crowd. Indeed, doubling down on Armageddon while bleeding the country white to maintain a huge global military hastens the Apocalypse, while putting our remaining carbon-fuel and financial assets to work right this minute on creating the infrastructure of a sustainable future would significantly soften the inevitable blow. Sure, we can’t replace the energy density of petroleum. But we could use what we have now to build the things we’ll need later, when it will be much harder to invest that energy from the sources that will remain. But instead, we’re burning that energy sending ships all over the place, tanks and planes etc.

    This isn’t a crazy, deluded, ignorant strategy to keep “The American Way of Life” going as long as possible, though destined to fail. It’s a clear-eyed, realistic, and fundamentally evil strategy to push as many people as possible in front of the oncoming calamity, while allowing the elites to mine the rest of us of wealth and assets for them to prepare their own escape and survival mechanism, maintaining and enhancing their power over us in the system to come after this one completes its ongoing collapse. The laughable pronouncements of the pawns in the media are just a smokescreen, and a decreasingly effective one. The real elites don’t care if we believe it or not; things are fast approaching the point where they judge it won’t matter any more.

    At least, that’s what it looks like to me. I’m no expert.

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    • budizwiser April 14, 2014 at 11:09 am #

      Well said SWMNGUY – your post was one of the most coherent, concise summations of reality this BLOG reader has ever read.

      • ozone April 14, 2014 at 11:27 am #

        Yep.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 1:48 pm #

          I agree as well. We are increasingly on the same side. When the God haunted Lieutenant rises up, will you be true to your principles? Or will you cop out in anarchist fashion because he’s not a Communist – as if they don’t have Hierarchy as well?

          Hierarchy is the way the world works. Even a world made by hand. The Indians were the same. Local life does allow one to get a much better look at the would be Leaders. That helps keep the psychopaths out.

          • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 3:08 pm #

            We are all agreeing this is a great comment!

            “It’s a clear-eyed, realistic, and fundamentally evil strategy to push as many people as possible in front of the oncoming calamity, while allowing the elites to mine the rest of us of wealth and assets for them to prepare their own escape and survival mechanism,”

            But they are deluded if they think they will survive.

          • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 6:45 pm #

            Janos, sometimes I don’t understand where you’re coming from, and sometimes when I do, I think “That guy sure has vastly different opinions from me.” When that happens, I try to get to a plane where we can at least agree we’re looking at the same things. Then we have a basis to see where our opinions differ.

            I like my hierarchies to be temporary, immediate, and dedicated to specific task or set of tasks. I’ll grant a lot of that has to do with my own hubris. I don’t think anybody is intrinsically better than I am. Plenty of people are much better at certain things than I am, so if we form an ad-hoc hierarchy to address those certain things, those other people should be above me on it. But if we meet in a different context, their status in that hierarchy shouldn’t apply.

            I don’t know what I’ll do when “It hits the fan.” I hope I’d be true to my principles. I’d hope I wouldn’t be misinformed, or panic. I’d hope I were looking at the right things and seeing them as they are. But I don’t know if anyone really knows those things in advance. I welcome disagreements and people’s corrections to my errors. In such conversations I’ll assume your honest intentions if you’ll assume mine.

      • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 6:33 pm #

        Thanks, “budizwiser.” I’m just trying to connect the pieces I see. I’m wide open to alternative interpretations. I didn’t come up with this view until I had some time on my hands and it crossed my mind, “How could the US possibly be so horribly inept in all these overseas interventions? How could we always pick the wrong side, the bad guys, and never resolve any of the messes we create?”

        That second it occurred to me, “What if chaos and what looks like failure were actually the whole point?” That seemed so crazy I had to think about it more, and a lot of seemingly unconnected things dropped into place.

        Of course, it’s the really tidy explanations that turn out to be either very right or very wrong and nothing in between, so I guess I’ll find out some day.

    • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 11:37 am #

      “Indeed, doubling down on Armageddon while bleeding the country white to maintain a huge global military hastens the Apocalypse, while putting our remaining carbon-fuel and financial assets to work right this minute on creating the infrastructure of a sustainable future would significantly soften the inevitable blow.”

      But everyone thinks they will be the lucky one the apocalypse passes by. It does not make sense but estrangement from reality doesn’t make sense. Thinking they are chosen and exceptional Americans think the following applies to them. It doesn’t, we are the Egyptians.

      “When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.” – Exodus 12:23

      Americans think that reality will pass by because a blue glow from their living room windows will save them. It won’t.

      • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 6:29 pm #

        Aw, come on. You mean my plan to come out on top by buying PowerBall tickets is stupid? Or maybe I’ll just hide in a laundry basket, like my cats do.

        Hey. I’m on to you. You want to buy all the PowerBall tickets, so you’re trying to talk me out of it. Uh-huh. You’re not fooling me.

    • sauerkraut April 14, 2014 at 12:48 pm #

      Hello SWMN. You say, “Maintaining the ascendant status of the US Petro-Dollar is very important in all of this, but the elites clearly see the end of that state of affairs. That’s very much a “playing for time” and “making hay while the sun still shines” tactic at this point, though in deadly earnest.”

      But is this not inconsistent with the observed facts? I reference the Administration’s actions encouraging the Russians to develop an alternative financial structure, etc., etc.

      What do you think?

      • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 6:26 pm #

        That’s a very interesting question. I’m not sure what the Administration really thinks, under all the propaganda.

        My hunch is that the Administration thinks there is no realistic alternative to the official mechanism of the global Finance system. In other words, that anybody looking to do more than a minor dope deal has to use the SWIFT system, settle at the Bank of International Settlements, go through VISA or American Express, or PayPal, or any of the other official channels. It was actually the US manipulation of the SWIFT system, blocking out Iran, that put Iran, Turkey, India and Russia on the path to creating their own system, walking away from the global SWIFT system.

        This Administration is really a bunch of very conventional and limited thinkers, though they’re quite “book smart” and energetic. They’re the people who got great grades in school and got a lot of approval from authority figures. A lot of their most clever plans don’t survive the, “Well, what if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time?” test.

        I don’t know. How could they be that stupid, as you point out, as to “encourag[e] the Russians to develop an alternative financial structure?” Maybe they have a deeper, more devious plan in mind than I understand. Or maybe it’s one of those mistakes so stupid only a really smart person could make it. I guess we’ll all find out.

        • sauerkraut April 14, 2014 at 7:21 pm #

          Last week I saw three likely possibilities:

          1. crash the dollar and replace it, so eliminating external debt, just coincidentally enriching the government and the biggest banks
          2. crash the global economic system and rule the world with the military
          3. rogue elements in the administration allied with outside crazies trying to cause mayhem up to and possibly including WW3.

          With the data of the last week, I think that we can discard the last; it is more than rogue elements. The problem with the other two is that BRICS may have something to say about it all, and what they have to say may not be very good to hear. As you say, both of those alternatives may be “mistakes so stupid only a really smart person could make it.”

          • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 9:23 pm #

            The key part I don’t know is whether the real elites are keeping paper assets, or just using them as a mechanism to gain title to tangible assets. If they’re actually holding paper assets for the long haul, they’re fools, but it’s hard to tell what kind of fools. If they’re using paper to buy up real stuff they’d continue to own after a complete currency collapse, then maybe they’d try to bring on the collapse, once they were pretty darned certain of their security.

            My hunch is they’re using the paper “Petro-Dollar” system as a means to an end, knowing it will collapse on its own at some, to-be-determined point in time that’s getting sooner as energy dwindles and becomes more costly, weakening our economy. At a certain point it stops being about the currency at all and becomes purely about energy through either barter or brute force. It seems much of the rest of the world is considering barter, not being nearly as inclined to global brute force as we are.

          • sauerkraut April 14, 2014 at 9:56 pm #

            Yes, I agree about energy. Either a currency backed by energy, or energy barter, will be the future medium of exchange.

    • ffkling April 14, 2014 at 2:37 pm #

      Yeah sure, McCain or Romney would have been awesome- not.

      • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 6:17 pm #

        I wouldn’t say “awesome.” I never could have brought myself to vote for them, as I did in fact consider voting for Obama. I’m criticizing Obama because he’s the President. If McCain or Romney were President, I’d certainly be criticizing them, and I bet it would be on the same grounds.

  11. Smoky Joe April 14, 2014 at 10:27 am #

    Jim, I’m waving the B.S. flag hard on this post.

    While I agree that we have no business meddling in the Ukraine, given our inept handling of the Middle East, you are off-base by a light year calling Obama the worst president of your lifetime.

    The worst was the moronic and “walking tall” Texan. That dry drunk derailed our national interests with a war of choice based upon lies, instead of finishing the business in Afghanistan and then putting the financial house in order. Instead W did little as the housing bubble inflated; worse, he cut taxes in the midst of two foreign wars.

    W made and left the mess we are in. Obama has been muddling, compromising, and generally pissing off his own base by not being angry enough at the plutocrats and the howling lumpen who yell about the Benghazi Four while forgetting the Iraq 4,000.

    While Cheney and Rumsfeld should be in jail, they go on speaking tours and W paints. What a clown-show of a nation, as we decline steadily under the current hamstrung Commander in Chief.

    • CyberPass April 14, 2014 at 10:55 am #

      Dear Smoky Joe,
      While your point about Eligula(this is what Caligula would have called himself if he went to Yale) was well taken, and as unbelievable as his having run up the national debt by a sum equal to ALL previous debt was, Obama swore he would halve the deficit in his first term and instead TRIPLED it. Liberals who continue to lamely defend his record skirt the fact that he came into office with the unspoken promise he would divert spending to much needed domestic priorities from defense, but the DOD and arms makers have only grown fatter, as the middle class is bled dry.
      Mr Kunstler, too, would be less belatedly shocked by Obama’s betrayal if he had noticed that the man he selected to be his Attorney General was none other than the one who had voted to pardon the biggest crook to come down the pike before Madoff. Justice is blind, but not that blind

      • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 11:53 am #

        A sad situation it is indeed to be bantering about who is worse, Obama or Bush.

        If it is a tie now then given the time he has left Obama will claim title to first of the worst. He is not going to develop an independent personality and love of country suddenly overnight and stop kissing elite ass. His lips are too busy sucking butt and they have gotten him to where he is today. Those smackers work for him just as they are and he will be kissing the same ass next year he did this year. Faces may change but the ass he is kissing shall stay the same.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 1:52 pm #

          Obama is worse because it’s later in the process. That is all. He has worked on what his predecessors have put in place. If Bush or Clinton were in, they would be doing exactly what he is doing. Likewise, Hillary or whoever will work on what Obama has done. I think you know this in seed form, I simply offer this as a superior paradigm, a more elegant and accurate map.

      • Smoky Joe April 14, 2014 at 1:12 pm #

        Cyber, I will agree that Obama is as captive to big-money interests as W was, perhaps more so since W did such a delightfully catastrophic job wrecking the nation’s future.

        I’ve little patience for 70s-style liberalism and victim politics, as little as I do for the lumpenproles of the Tea Party and their “drown the gub’mint in a bathtub” rhetoric (except the parts they like).

        I would call Obama a failure. It’s tragic, because he too, like his predecessor, squandered an historic opportunity. W could have acted differently in the international moment after 9/11 to kill the jihadists instead of making more. Obama might have his first two years differently.

        Now it’s late the hour of collapse comes. I don’t know if a series of climate or financial shocks will awaken the Doodle-fed masses, but even then, I fear what they’ll choose: Corn-pone Nazi, to quote JHK.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 1:35 pm #

          You’re still stuck in “Liberal” groupthink. Bush and Obama are working for the same people. It’s like professional wrestling. They appeal to different target audiences. You root for Obama and against Bush – just like any other cheese doodle head does for Bush and against Obama. Until you awaken from this duality, you are part of the problem.

          In other words, if a real Leader rose up, say Mr Kunstler’s God haunted Lieutenant home from Falluajah, and began to root out the Corpzis, you would just dismiss him as a Corn-pone Nazi. Fascism IS the philosophy of Nationalism after all. How are you going to take back America without putting America first? Which means closing the borders and setting up tariffs? And deporting tens of millions of aliens?

      • JL Eagan April 14, 2014 at 10:04 pm #

        Somebody has to jump on this item: deficit and debt are two different words.

        The annual deficit is one thing.

        Accumulated debt is a different thing.

        The constant misuse of the words is a good example of how nearly impossible it is to have a serious conversation about matters of governance here in the US.

        In Obama’s time, after the 2009 deficit (inherited as previous business), the annual deficits have actually decreased year by year. The debt continues to mount.

        That aside, mismanagement and lunacy mounts, and Obama continues to avoid dealing substantially with anything.

        JLE

    • ffkling April 14, 2014 at 2:49 pm #

      Well stated, Smoky Joe. More RepubliCONs are the answer. You know, the party of no ideas, pro-war, anti-environment, anti-education, pro-prison/industrial complex, pro-drug war, hypocrites, anti-science, anti-education, anti-women.

  12. shotho April 14, 2014 at 10:30 am #

    As someone who goes to Ukraine every year on business and, furthermore, as a citizen of Arkansas, I have an informed perspective on Mr. K’s article today and agree with him – mostly. I would not go so far as to call Ukraine a “rat hole”, but it certainly is a basket case, overloaded with corruption and hopelessness with whatever government is in control. As far as I can tell, we have nothing to gain there, other than a wrongly perceived notion that we can contain Russia from doing what it’s always done in that part of the world. For heaven’s sake, just look at the map. Russia looms over Ukraine the way Western men would like to loom over Ukrainian women (and they are astoundingly beautiful). Now, the people in Western Ukraine hate Russia with a passion that is ugly to behold and that will have to be taken into consideration. I have no doubt that if Russia tries to move into that area, there will be civil war. But like Mr. K says, what business is it of ours?
    As far as WalMart is concerned, it has dominated Arkansas (including the Clintons) for a generation or two and left devastation wherever it goes. In the global financial holocaust to come, it will be killed off; only hope I’m around to see it.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 2:20 pm #

      The scam is real but peripheral. Creating money out of nothing and then charging interest is the real, essential, and central scam – which is America. America fell to the Banksters in 1913. Now the end game is in view.

  13. noel bodie April 14, 2014 at 10:34 am #

    JHK threads the needle each week, to borrow from Yasmina Reza, both “a man of his time” and “a man apart”. Regarding the casino of Wall Street I propose a very small tax, just a taste, on each transaction. The result for the small buy and hold investor would not be noticed however for the high frequency speculators it would start to add up. If the market is designed to raise capital for productive activity why not tax behavior which runs counter to the purpose?

  14. jim Eberle April 14, 2014 at 10:35 am #

    Why do I feel that if oil was 25 dollars a barrel, and we were again experiencing robust economic growth, that the scoundrels on Wall Street would be brought to justice? I suspect that fear of collapse prevents Obama from pursuing justice.

    Prediction: never, ever again will we experience stratospheric interest rates because of an over-heating economy.

    • swmnguy April 14, 2014 at 10:44 am #

      Interesting thought. I’m guessing also, never, ever again will we see energy costs as low as they are at present. That’s where the extra wealth is going, that might otherwise “over-heat” the economy. Perhaps?

  15. ozone April 14, 2014 at 10:53 am #

    “…While this impending civil war would be rather dire for Ukraine, it presents the obvious questions: 1) does it matter to anyone outside the region? And in particular, 2) is it any business of the USA?” — JHK

    Well, here lies an area truly rotten and ripe for speculation (If you’ll pardon thoughts in that direction)!
    What’s looking most plausible to me, is the propagation of the LNG/fracking wet-dream/nightmare. I believe this “crisis” will reveal who the State Dept. is colluding with/working for. Legislation within this country could rush quickly toward legalizing the poisoning of all and everything in the lights of “saving the EU from the gassy predations of the Evil Russkies” and providing the “energy independence” of our indispensable nation. The dark and nasty side of the business of Business. If this speculation be correct, we’ll see it shortly. (If not, we won’t, of course.) We only have to observe what gets pushed the hardest through the “cloacal fundament” of the houses of Congress.

    Basically, another can-kicking exercise; this time, by the Petro-Giants to protect shareholder profits for a skosh longer til the capital and resources run completely dry. I really do see this as heavy motivation (as well as the playground power-play that cretinous “representatives of the people” so love to indulge in). Therefore, we MUST get those wells, pipelines, ports and mega-ships up and running, chop chop! (Shhhh….could we maybe do this on the taxpayers dime somehow or another? Make it look like it’s the best thing for them and their chirren’s chirren…)

    Some charts that tell the tale of reality vs. wishing and manufacturing consent for ecocide:

    http://www.theautomaticearth.com/debt-rattle-apr-9-2014-the-great-unwashed-american-energy-independence/

    (Please make sure to continue after the 1st chart and get to the depletion graphs where things get really interesting!)
    To conclude: Yes, the Russians have a true and abiding interest (based in a physical reality) in what transpires in the crumbling house next door, and the U.S. is only entertaining a fevered dream of magnificent profits and continued fraudulent contracts, cementing power and unfair advantage. Uber alles? We’ll have to see about that suicidal course, won’t we?

    On more denials of realities and blatant frauds:
    “… isn’t it stupendously asinine that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department and his SEC appointees only just last week became interested in the pervasive swindle of high frequency trading on Wall Street after author Michael Lewis went on 60 Minutes. Like, they hadn’t heard about this years-long orgy of front-running until now?” —JHK

    IMHO, “stupendously asinine” would be just about the pitch-perfect descriptor! 😉
    Perhaps they just need some sound spankings; votin’-their-bosses-out doesn’t seem to be an option any longer.

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  16. Peter April 14, 2014 at 11:06 am #

    Obama is doing something – he’s sending a secret weapon, Joe Lieberman. I laughed out loud for a couple of minutes when this was announced with a straight face.

    My suggestion: hire Iraqui insurgents to mine the roads in eastern Ukraine with IED’s. If the darn things did so much damage to our “up-armored” vehicles, they should be able to split Russian tanks open like tin cans.

    • BackRowHeckler April 14, 2014 at 5:36 pm #

      Don’t laugh, some of our local police departments are being equipped with ‘up-armored ‘ vehicles, use ’em to shut down kids roadside lemonade stands, throttle J walkers, and patrol suburban streets.

  17. BackRowHeckler April 14, 2014 at 11:45 am #

    Well, our army has “like, technology, man”, and a precious concerns, not about combat readiness, but sexual harassment, women in combat roles, and gay rights. For the Russians part they have a tough peasant army primed with vodka, inured to the elements, spoiling for a fight, armed with the ubiquitous Kalishnikov rifle, and possessing thousands of almost indestructible tanks.

    We’d better stay out of this one. Somebody tell the Messiah.

    –BRH

    • outsider April 14, 2014 at 6:18 pm #

      The US could never defeat Russia in a ground war. The only chance would be saturation bombing or a surprise nuke attack. I don’t think I like the sound of that.

  18. Greg Knepp April 14, 2014 at 11:57 am #

    Let me qualify my opening comment: when I write ‘never’ I mean that the romance and idealism that sparked the civil rights and anti-war movements of my generation are largely absent from today’s young people. Such idealism was well justified back then; in the 1960’s the collective memory of the boomer generation was one of increasing prosperity, middle-class comfort and star-spangled flags proudly flying over the ‘greatest nation on earth’. We thought we could make a difference – that we could remind America of its great promise, its enormous power to promote the best qualities in its citizenry…and we were successful more often than not!

    The millennials have a much different collective memory – one of airplanes flying into buildings, and of a culture incrementally devolving into poverty and sleaze. They’ve observed the silliness of the Tea Party and wondered at the impotence of the Occupiers. True, they’re involved in local and state issues – usually environmental concerns of one sort or another – but they don’t put much effort into worrying about the big picture. They seem to sense that the national malady is terminal.

    My life circumstance places me in contact with numerous millennials – not in a supervisory position (I’m not a professor or anything like that) but in a cooperative manner: business interactions, cultural projects, neighborhood activities, school functions, etc… I dearly love every one of them, and I find that their shared attitude and outlook seems perfectly suited to a world that they seem to understand on a level that is more direct and experiential – yes more visceral and hence more realistic – than the views that many of us who are ‘older and wiser’ cling to.

    The young will not waste time and energy on the boomer generation’s quixotic dreams of revolution. I am absolutely convinced of this.

  19. sevenmmm April 14, 2014 at 12:06 pm #

    Sorry. Most Americans are addicted to pleasure seeking and will not bother to notice the destruction around them until their bellies growl with hunger. And that won’t happen until agri-business has used up the soil. This country is closing in on another dust bowl – so we might not have long to wait.

  20. liquid lennny April 14, 2014 at 12:41 pm #

    Jim,

    To use the word kardashian and Cheez Doodle in the same sentence is an insult to Cheez Doodles everywhere.

    That said, the U.S. which many of us thought existed was only an illusion, a myth created to provide us a sense of entitlement as the Empire pillaged the rest of the world.

    Soon enough it will be payback time, if we ultimately arrive at the World Made By Hand as you describe it, it will be a miracle.

    I was thinking, when the U.S.S.R. collapsed they reverted back into nation constructs of the past, such as Russia.

    What construct does the U.S. revert to? Fifty nation-states or as some surmise 7 regional units or will they simply be called Areas?

    Now back to your regular scheduled programing…

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    • Smoky Joe April 14, 2014 at 1:15 pm #

      FWIW, Virginia does not want West Virginia back. I’d take Kentucky instead, for the booze and the horses. Kentucky may not agree with that idea.

      • liquid lennny April 14, 2014 at 2:46 pm #

        You make a good point!
        It will not be easy drawing up the new ‘Merica maps.
        Out here in Az most don’t want to be closely associated with California, nobody wants anything to do with 3rd world New Mexico and Utah is a bit too up tight, even by Az. standards. So I guess it looks like we’ll just align ourselves with Mexico again. Heck, half the population is from there anyway and at least we’ll have an unlimited supply of tequila…All I know is, I really gotta move before the great reset. Now where is that passport???

        • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 7:02 pm #

          Don’t want to be part of 3rd world New Mexico but Mexico will be OK? That makes lot of sense. But not for you evidently. Thus does a great Nation die.

        • hineshammer April 14, 2014 at 7:29 pm #

          Lenny, you should move regardless of reset or not. The main thing I learned from my four years of living in Phoenix is this: it should not be there, along with Vegas, Tuscon, and most of California. The Greater Phoenix area is home to millions of people. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DESERT! The average annual rainfall is barely in the double digits and it, like almost all of the Southwest, relies on the dwindling Colorado River for its water, all while the population continues to grow. Any rational plans for commonsense growth in the SW is scoffed at. That entire shithole part of the country will soon dry up and blow away.

    • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 2:59 pm #

      What construct does the U.S. revert to?

      Sparsely inhabited by who some call savages.

  21. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 12:51 pm #

    JHK,

    I wholly agree that the Ukraine story is the most important one of the week. Although it seems most everything that can be said about it has been. I’ve not seen any new detail about the ordeal despite its continued relevance.

    To me, it makes perfect sense that US schemers are desperate to prevent anti petrol-dollar alliances from solidifying, and every ironic foreign policy backfire brings such a reality closer. It’s poetic justice I suppose. And all I can conclude is that because the currency and trade wars are in advanced stages, with the US mostly losing ground on every front, hands are forced no matter what.

    Let’s assume that it is nearly game over for the era of US global dominance… is there any reason for them not to throw that Hail Mary nuke? I’m certain that the only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because all the major players are now weighing options, deciding which alliances stand best chance of helping oligarchs save their own asses. We’re well into the phase of outcomes. “We” are foolish to think we can still select them.

    Refocusing on local concerns, for any nation, is, in my mind, a lost cause. The majority of people will never accept re-localization and just plain can’t now, nor will the elite chose to give up hoarding wealth. With climate change in full effect, no state is truly resource self-sufficient or economically viable without a tremendous population cull first. No “superpower” has any choice but to scramble for scraps to maintain human and animal live stock, else the ruling class risks losing all its power during a bewildered stampede. Hell, it’s well known that to allow even a partial shutdown of current utility infrastructure spells local annihilation in many senses. The government is at least smart enough to deduce this. PCR, I think, has summarized the predicament succinctly. Either the big banks fail, or the dollar does, either way the ramifications of each kills off a great number of people.

    So instead of the type of focused, aware energy one might expect from a “connected” public with such pervasive access to details regarding the “banquet of consequences” placed before us, we’re still choosing to coddle the majority of outright lunatics who just cannot piece together the obvious on their own. The cake is baked. Root causes for every outcome in play now can be attributed to physical reality.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvhCnYvxQQ#t=67

  22. Carl Grimes April 14, 2014 at 1:30 pm #

    This was very well said, as usual, blunt and to the point. Sometimes I wish Jim was in congress, although it is really hard to get this bunch of empty suits to think about very much of anything other than their own re elections.

  23. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 1:37 pm #

    Greg, I always look forward to your writing, but this bit gave me some difficulty regarding the mindset of Millennials:

    “True, they’re involved in local and state issues – usually environmental concerns of one sort or another – but they don’t put much effort into worrying about the big picture. They seem to sense that the national malady is terminal.”
    _____________________________________

    I employ sweeping generalizations often, just for fun or to purge some level of cumbersome emotion, but attributing broad generational qualities to this and that group never quite makes much logical sense, does it. Romanticism, revisionism or outright lying has to be used in every sort of narrative it seems.

    Oh, and aren’t “environmental concerns” about as holistic and “big picture” as it gets…

    See the Showtime “Youtube” I submitted and tell me then which age group, or types of people rather, are failing to put pieces of the larger puzzle together. Tell me, too, which of the so-called social victories achieved by Boobers in the 60s were NOT simple, minor legislative appeasements to the permanent underclasses, to shut them up and bring ’em back under control. After all, those fuckers aren’t dead yet, so what are they doing now in the face of it all, if they were once so effective?

    Aside from that, I find it amazingly funny that some anticipate or are at least calling for a revolution comprised of the types of generational losers who fought and lost every war since WWII, we’re defeated by peoples of “lesser” cultures in every instance, and were in possession and command of first-world technology all throughout. Ha-haha-hahaaaaa.

    • Greg Knepp April 14, 2014 at 3:53 pm #

      Unstoppable; Good points. I’ll try to address your concerns as well as I can.

      Yes, I use broad generalizations because time and space restrict a more detailed analysis that these topics would ideally call for. There are others who wish to share, so brevity is important – at least to me. Also, my observations, though honestly arrived at, are only opinions and are not cast in stone. Still, as far as the contributions of the boomer generation are concerned, it’s easy, in retrospect, to dismiss the boomers’ positive influence on numerous national issues.

      Our support was pivotal (though not primary) to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. If you think this movement was largely symbolic, then you didn’t live through the fifties.The changes were dramatic and immediate. Did we manage to change the human heart? – No. But we sure as hell changed the law. – and the overt behavior of an entire nation. Of course there remains an underclass. “The poor shall be with us always” – JC (a point lost on LBJ and his Great Society supporters)

      We pushed for environmental fixes that proved equally dramatic: the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species legislation, the banning of DDT and an array of other industrial toxins. The list goes on. It’s easy to take such accomplishments for granted decades after the fact, but I can assure you that these battles were hard-fucking-fought!

      Then there was Vietnam. It wasn’t the VC or the North Vietnamese Army that beat back the aggressor; it was the boomers who drove LBJ from seeking re-election, and Nixon to finally sound the retreat.

      We even answered the ’73 oil crisis by resurrecting the bicycle, homesteading the inner-cities, exploring wind and solar power, gardening, and shedding American gas guzzlers en masse for the subcompact cars from Asia and Europe.

      Things seemed to be working out well enough until America got cold feet in the face of an uncertain future and elected the idiot Reagan. That was the real beginning of the end for the old US of A.

      • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 4:52 pm #

        Thanks for elucidating, Greg.

  24. Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 1:40 pm #

    The Russians haven’t complained about the encirclement of their Nation by the forces of the New World Order? Oh, but they have. We just haven’t been listening – or allowed to hear by the official media.

  25. volodya April 14, 2014 at 1:47 pm #

    So we’re astonished, are we, at the SEC’s inability until now to smell out high frequency trading?

    Yeah well Obama appointed the supposedly “tough” (you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-Mary-Jo) Mary Jo White as head of the SEC. Now this is someone whose past career was defending big-fish Wall Street plutocrats in her job as a lawyer at a big-league law firm.

    I don’t suppose this laughable conflict raised any concerns. And why would it? It’s not the first. It’s the m.o.

    After all, is the job of financial regulatory agencies really to keep a lid on abuses, to strike fear into abusers? Let’s not be daft.

    More likely, in my most humble opinion, the job is to provide a fig leaf of propriety, to make people think the sheriff’s on the job. And more likely still (let’s not say this too loudly) to defend oligarch interests.

    Is the SEC a gang of clock and internet porn watchers? And the Justice Department too? I don’t believe that at all. I’ll bet they’re the cream of the crop and the top of the class. I’ll bet that their action or lack thereof isn’t because of incompetence or institutional imperfection. The institutions work as intended, to mostly stay out of the way, to serve up a bust now and again to make it look good.

    Why would we want Wall Streeters in positions of power in government?

    Well, we don’t. At least I don’t. But the points are always that:

    1) we have no real choice, I mean, who else would we get and

    2) those most intimate with the racket are in the best position to know what the racketeers are up to.

    Hence the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. At least, that’s the justification.

    No matter that those close to the action might be compromised by their personal familiarity, their personal connections and the fact that they made their fortune in those same rackets.

    You and I know all the arguments by heart by now, that it’s not a perfect world, that you use the people you’ve got. Right?

    OK we’re realists, we live in the real world. So, can we count on such people to scrutinize the behavior of former associates and friends, many of them very wealthy and powerful people? And take action against them, to maybe throw them in prison?

    I say no. I say it’s not reasonable, nor realistic. I say that such people are too conflicted. I say you can more reliably count on them to avert their eyes at crucial moments, to argue against taking action.

    Regulation? Impractical, inefficient, costly, cumbersome, too many un-intended consequences. So says Wall Street. Corruption? Front running? So terribly hard to prove. HFT? What’s that?

    Wall Street wants Wall Streeters in Washington. From the fox’s point of view, who better to guard the hen-house than another fox?

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  26. Cold N. Holefield April 14, 2014 at 1:52 pm #

    I’m not buying it. Behind the sensationalized headlines, it’s still very much business as usual. Oil is artificially over-priced and this strategy of tension is used to justify the theft and transfer of wealth. Supply and demand does not explain the ridiculously high price of oil. It’s an illegal, back door tax that’s enriching the World Wide Oligarch Network (WWON) and supporting the success of the Russian rentier economy.

    Call The Bluff

    • K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 2:52 pm #

      F.Y.I.

      “A rentier state is a term in political science and international relations theory used to classify those states which derive all or a substantial portion of their national revenues from the rent of indigenous resources to external clients.”

      I looked it up.

  27. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 2:22 pm #

    Right on! Encroaching US Navy vessels, buzzing Russian fighter jets and swelling ground troops, oh my. This is gunna be a helluva week!

    Let’s see who demonstartes their advanced technology first, shall we.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 2:23 pm #

      *demon-strates

  28. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 14, 2014 at 2:24 pm #

    *demon-strafes?

  29. James Kuehl April 14, 2014 at 2:36 pm #

    Lots of good questions about what on earth we’re up to. You go with what you’re good at, and we’re good at blowing shit up. Notice how the news always runs footage of a worn out sports arena or skyscraper coming down in a plume of smoke and debris. we love that shit, and it’s the only play we know how to run anymore. When it doubt, blow it up.

  30. K-Dog April 14, 2014 at 3:14 pm #

    All This and World War, Too?

    That’s right folks, step right up it’s a two-fer. Pay only extra shipping and handling you get two collapses for the price of one.

    Charge one collapse up to stupidity and you get another collapse to blame it on for no extra charge; scapegoats included.

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    • BackRowHeckler April 14, 2014 at 3:33 pm #

      Oh yea,well, I have AM radio tuned in — warm day finally out on the patio, 3 oclock news, nothing at all about events on the ragged edges of Europe, no, but she said: ‘economy is still healing’, ‘real estate is picking up’, ‘unemployment is down’, ‘things are getting better’, ‘We are in recovery’. This was CBS news. I notice a barrel of oil (WTI Crude) is approaching $105 per barrel. Sooner or later somebody of prominence is going to have to explain, amidst the oil bonanza propaganda we hear all the time, why a barrel of petroleum remains so expensive (if suddenly there is such a surplus).

      –BRH

  31. Karah April 14, 2014 at 3:17 pm #

    Where are the Fullbrights and Bobby Kennedys of today who have the guts to rally US citizens against insane government behavior?

    why would anyone put a target on their back? most of the activity is done anonymously online for good reason. wikileaks has attracted the next generation because our govts have become so looney and dangerous. you might think most of this communication is narcissistic and dream worldly at first, then we notice how our ideas can effect reality like the arab spring and all other offshoots for a better democracy.

    What elected officials among all the bought-off Koch Brother catamites and Wall Street errand boys will stand up for reality-based principle?

    elected officials exist in a political realm that thrives on leverage, who has the most money – influence. as soon as one of our official electivites works without pay may we see them have a good start on principle.

    When will the young people of this country pull their eyeballs away from their iPhones and their heads out of their cloacal vents? When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?

    most of america is a theatrical stage where people jostle for the center of attention. even the internet has become a platform for who can dominate the page no matter what they have to say or do to get a view or like. american propaganda has been really successful for 200 yrs but its still just that, propaganda. putin is raging a propaganda war and winning for the moment. the ukrainians are very confused and disillusioned right now about why they believed their world was free for representative democracy. instead, its a harbor for russian resentment for the unfair division during the dissolution of the ussr in the 90s. putins vain attempts at compromise during his organized invasions will end up failing. young people over there who cant leave have already said they will risk their lives to effect change… blood has been spilt and the land is polluted. putin has lied to himself and his cohorts.

  32. MikeMoskos April 14, 2014 at 4:39 pm #

    I like to listen to Catherine Austin Fitts. She says that during her time in the first Bush administration, a Congressman’s aide told her HUD was being run as a criminal enterprise (loan guarantees that were designed to enrich their supporters rather than improve the neighborhood).

    My current take is that the point of 9/11 was to allow the whole US government to be also run as a criminal enterprise. And Janet at the FED is the master enabler.

    Eric Holder made a name for himself cleaning up Iran/Conta (keeping the right people out of jail). It was a control fraud & cocaine importation scheme in which all the Bushes and the Clintons were involved (the Clintons probably less than the Bushes). Ollie North brought in so many cocaine that the price dropped in half and cities got the crack epidemic. What great patriots.

    I take heart from the phrase: “small is beautiful” Everything changes when you buy from the smallest entity possible. Corporations are only powerful because we buy from them. Fuss all you want, try to change politics, etc; your purchases are where you have actual impact.

    • MikeMoskos April 14, 2014 at 4:50 pm #

      I need to add one thing: imagine the impact Jim Kunster’s garden has:

      1.he denies sales tax to the government by not buying prepared edibles (can’t call the stuff in the grocery store “food”)
      2.he denies payroll taxes to the government by not working to buy said edibles.
      3. he denies sales to the processed edible industry. Over the growing season, the CEOs might lose a few dollars in bonuses because of him.

      Now, imagine if the 50% of the country who claim to be in economic distress also planted a garden. That’s how you lower CEO pay.

      And if he buys what he doesn’t grow from a neighbor (say meat, dairy, eggs, and other produce), that’s more impact. We have full more power than we give ourselves credit for.

      • BackRowHeckler April 14, 2014 at 5:27 pm #

        OK MM sounds good, but hows uncle sucker gonna pay for free cell phones and 52″ flat screens for anybody who wants to watch Maury, Jerry Springer and Ellen? You have to take a panaromic 360d view of these things, look at all angles you know.

        BRH

  33. outsider April 14, 2014 at 6:12 pm #

    JHK asks “where are the Fullbrights and Bobby Kennedys of today.” I’m starting to think that when a country becomes as evil as the US has become since the end of WWII, good leaders are no longer possible. I personally think that the last president who really understood the ongoing crisis of America was Carter. But people didn’t want to hear the truth, so we got Reagan. Now I don’t think there is a decent person left who would be crazy enough to take the job. Anyone who told the truth could not be elected anyway.

    BTW, I, too, voted for Obama twice and, although he has been a total failure, I’m still glad that crazy McCain and Netanyahu’s buddy Romney were defeated. I still think GW Bush was worse.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 6:57 pm #

      Twice? Shame. Carter sounded better but remember his guru is Brezinsky, the master mind of expanding Nato right to the Russian border. Carter is a part of the UN/CFR crowd in favor of Agenda 21. Pack the people into the cities, get everyone addicted to the government, then reduce the population drastically. The Countryside is then left for the animals and the Elite to enjoy. Thus it’s a high tech medieval model. Is that what you want peasant? Serf? Slave?

      • dolph9 April 14, 2014 at 8:08 pm #

        If there’s anybody posting here who consistently sounds like a peasant, it’s you.

        Railing against the federal reserve, the liberals, the foreigners, Obama, the UN, every chance you get, as if they are the source of all of our ills. You spout conspiracy theory nonsense, which distracts from real problems and conspiraces in the world.

        You are the typical backwoods shithole white working class powerless slave.

        I’m not saying you are wrong about everything. Everybody does have something to say. What I am saying is that you betray yourself, you give yourself away with your rants.

        • Looongerbeard April 14, 2014 at 9:50 pm #

          Well said!

          • Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 2:35 pm #

            That you put American in quotes show the depth of your betrayal, you hippie retread you!

        • Janos Skorenzy April 14, 2014 at 10:24 pm #

          How many times dolph? How many times did you vote for Obama? And admit it was because he was Black. The only Whites you care about are Polar Bears – and that’s because your Media Masters have beaten it into you. That’s what they do to the little kids – make them cry about the Polar Bears who are drowning. In reality, much of the Arctic melts every year and the Bears are superb swimmers.

          Your contempt for working class Whites is a huge part of the problem. You are desperate to identify with other oppressed peoples and classes – like the Blacks who aren’t Americans in any real sense. Or the Tibetans who are thousands of miles away. But your own brothers? Never.

          • Looongerbeard April 15, 2014 at 5:47 am #

            Aww, begone with your racist nonsense!

            What the hell could the color of someone’s skin have to do with how “American” they are?

            Don’t bother answering; that was a rhetorical question. And I don’t really care to debate with an obvious racist.

    • Greg Knepp April 14, 2014 at 10:10 pm #

      outsider: I’m with you on the Carter-to-Reagan moment. This was pivotal. We’ve never fully awakened from the eight year nap that Reagan lulled us into. It wasn’t his fault; he didn’t know any better. The first President Bush recognized the problems we faced but was powerless to take the needed steps to turn things around. The damage had been done. Clinton was an affable bubu but little more, and George W…well, the less said about him the better.

      I believe you’re right – we get the leaders we deserve.

  34. carina April 14, 2014 at 8:27 pm #

    We have a new president of the America First Committee.

  35. ozone April 14, 2014 at 10:07 pm #

    No, and again I say, unequivocally, NO! Absolutely not……. well, why… what did you hear? Oh, okay, a possible “maybe” but… all right then…. yeah, but we didn’t really lie the first time, we guarantee THAT part. We just didn’t quite fill out the truth-telling section enough.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-14/white-house-admits-cia-director-brennan-was-secretly-kiev

    Oopsie. No meddling; simply a fact-finding junket (more like a vacation with a little business incidentally and quite accidentally conducted).
    I’m SHOCKED I tell you, shocked!

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  36. Anotherplayaguy April 14, 2014 at 11:26 pm #

    “I’d rather see US troops shut down WalMart, which has been way more destructive to the US economy (and the livelihoods of our people) than the bandits in any central Asian rat-hole.”

    Hooyah!

  37. JDG April 15, 2014 at 12:24 am #

    I truly don’t understand why it’s so popular right now to refer to Obama as the worst president people have ever seen.

    Actually, I do understand why it’s popular, but not why people believe what they’re saying (if they truly do, deep down).

    It seems there is the expectation that President Obama, having run as an agent of change, should have molded the U.S. by now into a Utopia, in which we’re all able to spend as much money as we’d like, sleep with the women we’ve been pining after since early adulthood, etc., etc.

    If I remember correctly, he took the helm at a time referred to by economic analysts as the worst American recession since the Great Depression. At the same time, similar recession and economic turmoil is taking place all over Europe, amongst all the other nations similarly situated to us. It was likewise asserted a short time after that we had largely been extricated from what could have been a far more crushing, permanent disaster – leaps and bounds beyond what had been experienced.

    I am not by any means saying that the United States is in a good position, or that any nation in this world is in a good position. To be honest, I think we are too far gone. I think there is an exceedingly high possibility that widespread death and horror will occur within the next few decades.

    Does anyone truly believe that Obama – or any man, any president – could have prevented that from happening? That he could have “softened the blow” more than he did?

    Everyone here is still happily nipping at one another from their comfortable little huts throughout the blogosphere – the fact that we’re still able to bicker and one-up one another over political intrigue and debate, to me, says a lot.

    I think things could have gotten a lot worse for this country, a lot faster. However, I think the fatal blow was also struck long ago – not just for this nation, but for the world as a whole.

    Is it convenient to blame the horrid state of things on the man in office right now? Does anyone truly think that he is somehow accelerating things beyond an already fatal pace?

    I still think that he is someone who wanted to make a difference in the United States. Not that he’d harbored some long-gestating Communist plan, at last fulfilled by his elevation to Office. He won because people wanted something better for this country.

    It’s fun and en vogue to rake him across the coals, for somehow causing this human mess that we’re in. It’s not just political, it’s not just economic, and it’s not just environmental. It’s everything.

    If it makes you feel better to point the finger at someone else – a popular scapegoat, too – one you can join your friends in jeering – so be it.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 12:35 am #

      You are still struggling with the basics like most people. A man is known by his companions. His family and close friends were and are Communists. This is not Conspiracy Theory but simple fact. That Communism is a Bankster front doesn’t change this simple fact. It just makes the true believers even more pathetic than they seem to be.

      He wanted “Change”? But to what? What? you ask. Change to what? Did you people never think to even ask that? Or take the word “progressive”. Progress towards what? Or “Move on” – to where? Obama wants to bring America down. Drag it down into the 3rd World. How? By following the Cloward-Piven strategy of overwhelming the system financially. He studied under them – back to my first point.

      But you are right that no one could turn America around now. Not without a vast awakening, a miracle basically. Because as you say, It’s everything.

      • JDG April 15, 2014 at 1:47 pm #

        In my mind, his “change” centered around the way the United States was being managed and presented to the world at large.

        When he was running for election, we were absolutely despised by the world’s nations. We were, for good reason, the laughing stock of the international community. Our president at the time was an incompetent, cocky buffoon – and a dangerous one at that.

        People hated us, far and wide, and I was quite honestly embarrassed to be an American while George W. was in office. The war in Iraq was literally a “switcheroo” pulled on an American public deeply angry and fearful following the attacks of September 11th. To this day, adult men and women in this country continue to think that we entered Iraq because they were somehow responsible for what had happened. The fact that our president and leadership was willing to do something like that; and the fact that the citizenry ate it up; was shameful. People looked at us as dangerous bullies – and moronic ones at that.

        International opinion changed the moment it appeared Obama might have a chance at winning the election. When he did, leaders and figureheads around the world celebrated America’s decision. While things may not be rosy hear in the United States, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find nations in ideal situations at the moment.

        The world is in trouble. America is in trouble. Obama did not cause that, and I absolutely disagree with the suggestion that he somehow accelerated things. I think there was a very real possibility that, had Romney one, we would be in dire, dire straits right now, in a continuing economic collapse. Do I think we’re in a great position right now? No – but no nation is. That’s a broad social, political, environmental and economic matter, far from unique to this nation. Everyone is in trouble.

        If you honestly think that we would be in a better place right now, with Mitt Romney and his people as our leaders, than simply say so. I’d be interested to hear why, but I will respect your opinion. Because those were the options – as ideal as a third party candidate may have been to many people.

        I try to look at the relative comfort and security we have, and think about how bad things could be right now. I think a lot of other people – particularly those so quick to decry the job Obama has done – look around and expect some lush, wanton lifestyle of spending, high fashion, and millionaire recreation to be in their grasp right now. It’s ridiculous.

        We have it very, very good – just as good as the other first-world nations we contend and do business with, if not better. These are difficult times for everyone – but because of broader, more far-reaching issues than our nation and the man we have in office.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 2:07 pm #

          You are still clinging to appearances. That you assume I would have voted for Romney because I criticize Obama is the proof. Dude, the same Billionaires often fund both Parties. I mean if you put money on all the numbers of the roulette wheel you’ll win, right? Expensive? Sure. Beyond the means of almost everyone? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Evidently, it is.

          Nor does that mean that they don’t care who wins. They often do and will put more on one number as opposed to another. But they want influence just in case their “horse” doesn’t come in.

          Obama has obviously accelerated the National Debt. That you don’t think that matters shows your Leftist bias. At the same time, he has continued the foreign policies of Bush. Neo Liberalism IS Neo Conservatism, merely with a different spin and target audience. I grant you Obama might have a personal, minority type agenda. If he does what he is told, his Masters may let him accomplish some of what he actually cares about.

  38. BackRowHeckler April 15, 2014 at 6:58 am #

    Its interesting, the same week Sharyl Attkisson says she left CBS news because any story she worked on remotely critical of Obama and his admin. was spiked and never saw the light of day, we find out CBS President Les Moonves was paid $67 million last year. That makes him a 1% by any measure; not to worry, 1% is a code word for the Koch brothers anyway, which he isn’t. All other billionaires OWS and CFN types are cool with — Gates, Spielberg, Hollywood scumbags like Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Richard Branson and that f-cking a-shole in Gore’s organization who pledged $100 to any (Dem) candidate who come out strongest with the hustle known as Global Warming. These billionaires are rightious; some play guitar. they’re with you, they’re down for the struggle.

    So if you want to know what’s happening in Ukraine tune in BBC. The news this morning isn’t good. An American destroyer in the Black Sea was buzzed by 2 migs. Bathhouse Barry has to be shitting in his pants right now, which should make everybody nervous. Its a game of cat and mouse; Barry is the mouse. the thing about BBC, unlike American netorks, is that they aren’t looking at Ukraine thru the lens, “Will this hurt Obama”, who has to be protected no matter what.

    –BRH

  39. progress4what April 15, 2014 at 9:01 am #

    ” Hence my plea: will parties in the USA (including Obama camp “progressives”) stop cheerleading for a showdown over this hapless doormat of a faraway nation whose destiny is not entwined with the people of Ohio, Nebraska, Rhode Island, or any of the other fifty states?” – jhk –

    Yeah. I think the most disgusting thing about this whole spectacle is the way so many Democrats have become pro-war and pro-interventionist SIMPLY because their man Obama is the Prez.

    Certainly, Ukraine is a nice distraction for the US government’s actions against its own citizens. Many of you will like this story, speaking of which:
    http://www.naturalnews.com/044728_federal_agents_rules_of_engagement_new_media.html#

    One more thing, JHK, the threaded discussion format makes it really hard to find new posts added in response to older posts. I suggest everyone post at the bottom of the thread. Personally, I’m choosing to ignore posts that are not posted at the bottom. Oh well.

  40. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 15, 2014 at 10:47 am #

    Any Americans hollering at the government to not get involved militarily in Ukraine? I thought not.

    Next questions. I’ll bet many have thought about loosely similar situations occurring here in the US, as mounting drought scenarios continue to threaten local communities (and America’s own bread basket) with devastation. When will we begin to see significant refugee crises in America…? what will that look like? Do any care to speculate?

    FEMA camps are supposedly in place, but what else would the government do… request bail out packages from China? As masses of refugees begin to abandon defunct rural areas crushed by drought, how welcome will they be in nearby communities or states where economic tensions are similarly precarious. As weather continues to test and disrupt re-localization schemes… how will people in ‘meruca cope?

    If militia types here try to mount secessionist campaigns, what Superpowers nuts will they cling to for moral and military support. Do these crackers really think they can stand up to privately funded oligarch security forces… aka the US military? Sure some will defect on principles of patriotism and brotherhood, but many more won’t if they’re hungry enufff. Maybe this sort wondering is way off base.

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  41. Greg Knepp April 15, 2014 at 12:03 pm #

    I picked up a report on theautomaticearth.com that Michael Ruppert has died of an apparent suicide. I have no confirmation of this. If it is true it is a terrible loss.

  42. FincaInTheMountains April 15, 2014 at 12:38 pm #

    According to the source in Russian National Security agency, one of the reasons of CIA Director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev were missing 20 US citizens, members of private military force Greystone Intl.
    Here is the link to source (in Russian) : http://www.vz.ru/news/2014/4/15/682084.html

  43. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 15, 2014 at 2:32 pm #

    Wow, that’s quite unexpected. I heard a recent podcast of his the other night. He seemed to be working on some sort of film production and another book. Also picked up that he had become fascinated with a younger woman but it came across to me as a one sided romance. I wonder if that relationship went south and he simply gave in after so many years of various let downs.

    Ruppert was a very interesting and deeply emotionally disturbed guy. I hope his suffering is finally at an end.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 15, 2014 at 2:41 pm #

      This was snatched from Wikipedia:

      Michael C. Ruppert committed suicide [26] from a self-inflicted gun shot wound to the head on April 13th 2014, shortly after finishing with his weekly show on the Progressive Radio Network (PRN).
      In the months before his suicide Michael had openly made his feelings clear about dying in the acclaimed Apocalypse Man series by VICE.

      So I’m guessing Mike did this after the same podcast I listened to the other night. Something seemed off, but then again I always imagined that the strength of Ruppert’s emotions could lead to such an end.

  44. edpell April 15, 2014 at 3:14 pm #

    “I’d rather see US troops shut down WalMart, which has been way more destructive to the US economy (and the livelihoods of our people) than the bandits in any central Asian rat-hole. I’d rather see the US spend its dwindling capital restoring our passenger railroads than paying off the debts of strangers half a world away.”

    100% agree with you. But sadly the common good of the U.S. is not the mission of the federal government since about 1820. Looking to the federal government for solutions to common good issues is like looking to the fox to fix the hen house.

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  45. Chikot April 15, 2014 at 3:17 pm #

    “When will the young people of this country pull their eyeballs away from their iPhones and their heads out of their cloacal vents? When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?”

    When they run out of food. Revolutions are not mad eon full stomach.

    • Greg Knepp April 15, 2014 at 4:43 pm #

      Best comment ever!

  46. Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 3:25 pm #

    No international conspiracy? Really? America is funding the growth of Islam in the Czech Republic.

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4262/islam-czech-republic

    • BackRowHeckler April 15, 2014 at 4:41 pm #

      Yeah, around 1939 or so the Germans came a calling. Needless to say they were not welcome guests and the Czechs, French, Dutch, Greeks etc fought hard to kick them out. 7 decades later the Muslims have arrived in even greater numbers — an ancient enemy since the French drove them out of Normandy in the 8th century — and you hear hardly a peep. Seems strange, doesn’t it?

      –BRH

  47. BackRowHeckler April 15, 2014 at 6:28 pm #

    And here’s a bit of irony. When you look at the feeble state of Europe, with its weak leadership, its jejune population, lack of national will to even defend itself, and a morally decayed United States, culturally and economically on its last legs, a fragmented nation which has abandoned its Christian roots and puritan work ethic, with 50 million people on foodstamps and where men marry men with impunity, perhaps it will be up to Israel, the last western country with any balls and any kind of credible leadership to carry the crucible of western civilization into the future, as the Catholic Church carried it from Greece and Rome thru the dark ages into an enlightened Europe.

    Who else is there?

    –BRH

    • Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 7:07 pm #

      So the Jews are going to save Christianity? Israel is a Western Nation? Grotesque. You have to fight these ideas when they arise in your consciousness. They have been implanted in you but they are not you – not if you reject them.

      Check out this guy, an Euro-Asian Aristocrat who wanted to mongrelize Europe, except for the Jews whom he idolized. They were to be the Ruling Class. A harmless crank? An ignored freak? Unfortunately not. He was supported by the great Jewish Banking Families and is considered the founder of the European Union. As Aragorn said to Barliman, “One days march from here are enemies that would freeze your very soul.”

      http://www.wvwnews.net/content/index.php?/news_story/europes_mongrelization_through_immigration_is_a_deliberate_plan_the_coudenhove_kalergi_plan_the_genocide_of_the_peoples_of_europe.html

      • BackRowHeckler April 15, 2014 at 8:53 pm #

        That’s why I said it would be ironic, Vlad.

        You need to look at Israel more closely. The Israelis are fighting the same fight we are. Its always been a good ally; I don’t understand your hostility toward that country.

        –BRH

        • Janos Skorenzy April 15, 2014 at 11:06 pm #

          I have nothing against Palestine or the Land per se. Only the people who took it from the Arabs illegally.

  48. michigan_native April 15, 2014 at 7:14 pm #

    The last ditch desperate acts of a dying empire http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/4/15_Paul_Craig_Roberts_Warns_U.S._Now_Close_To_Total_Collapse.html

    A prediction Dmitry Orlov made on his blog. “The US is on suicide watch”. His last blog was announcing that Michael Ruppert has apparently committed suicide. Very sad news all around.

    It’s too bad we can’t post youtube links here, but you can find other great links to Dr Paul Craig Roberts about this current predicament and this one I am watching now, Jim Sinclair, explains how Russia can collapse the US economy and why Russian people in the Ukraine will never become enslaved by the IMF by joining the EU and how insane Obama and Kerry are becoming.

    The collapse process is speeding up, and most of these guys have not taken peak oil and the energy predicament for the US into consideration.

    RIP, Michael Ruppert

  49. Pucker April 15, 2014 at 7:35 pm #

    What happened to Flight 370?

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    • michigan_native April 15, 2014 at 7:58 pm #

      Abducted by UFO or taken to Diego Garcia. Jim Marrs posted that a message was sent by an American who was on board that flight (an executive for IBM) stated that he was imprisoned and thought he had been drugged, but he managed to hide his cell phone. He took a picture of the dark so the location of the photo could be traced and supposedly it was traced to a large building on Diego Garcia. Something about technicians and scientists heading towards China, and another rumor that another passenger on the plane texted or sent a message that the plane was being escorted by military jets.

      • BackRowHeckler April 15, 2014 at 8:44 pm #

        … or more likely, MN, at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in a million or so pieces.

        Sooner or later an identifiable part or ID will wash ashore in Malaysia, Australia or India. One time a few years ago, beach combing in Rhode Island, we found a metal canteen from a German submarine sunk off the Azores in WW1.

        –BRH

        • michigan_native April 15, 2014 at 10:04 pm #

          Seriously? I worked for the Wayne County Road Commission in 1987 when flight 255 crashed, and was part of the clean up effort. The amount of energy released from a 90 ton aircraft travelling at an estimated 210 mph take off and landing upside down on concrete was….aside from disturbing, unbelievable in viewing the aftermath close up. Like a nuclear bomb had went off. If a jet that size had crashed into the ocean at speeds 4 to 5 times higher than that, there would have been some debris, given what will prove to be the most extensive aerial and underwater search in recent history. Talk all that crap about the currents, the vastness of the sea, etc but until we have wreckage that can be independently verified and some remains that can be verified through DNA testing, than you may wish to reconsider any ‘natural explanation’ for this tragedy. If the NSA can track your cell phone conversations, your e-mails, every key stroke on your computer, what makes anyone think that they didn’t track this flight and now exactly what occurred? Don’t count on them to bring us the truth anytime soon

          • BackRowHeckler April 16, 2014 at 4:52 am #

            I don’t know MN, I’ve been to sea quite a bit, and its hard to spot anything in the water, even if its right next to he ship. If that plane hit the water at 500-600 mph, there wouldn’t have been much left to find.

            My neighbor’s kid was one of the 1st responders to reach the scene of TWA 800 when it crashed into Long Island Sound in 1996, aboard a Coast Guard motor whale boat. He said at first they didn’t know what they were looking for –thought it was just a small craft in the begining, didn’t have much information — but what they found was a fire on the surface, but just below the surface dead people still strapped to their seats, mangled up. Until you get out on the ocean you can’t believe how immense and powerful it is.

            –BRH

  50. Pucker April 15, 2014 at 7:38 pm #

    What do you CFNers think of the new book “Twilight of Abundance”?

    “Twilight of Abundance”—“TAB”.

    When I was a kid growing up in the US, there used to be a crappy tasting diet soft drink called “TAB”. I recall that the advertising slogan for TAB was “TAB—Only 1 calorie.”

  51. Pucker April 15, 2014 at 7:38 pm #

    Happy U.S. Tax Day!

    • Neon Vincent April 16, 2014 at 9:29 am #

      As in I hope it’s happy whether it is or not. For a lot of us, the happiest thing about it is that we get some of our money back in the form of a refund. Unfortunately, a few of us will find out that someone has stolen our identities and filed a fraudulent return in our names, which means that we have to prove to the IRS that the supposed duplicate one is the real one and the first one is the fake.

      http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/04/identity-theft-warning-for-last-minute.html

      I have something else for U.S. Tax Day, which is a rant on an anti-tax meme.

      http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/04/repost-rant-on-anti-tax-meme.html

      • michigan_native April 17, 2014 at 1:25 pm #

        We get some of the money that stole, extorted, or otherwise wasted on shit that we do not want or agree with, like destabilizing other countries, funding terrorists and neo Nazis, funding “security agencies” to spy on us, funding the “department of homeland security” so they can buy some 2 billion rounds of hollow point bullets and tens of thousand mine resistant armored vehicles and drones to be used on American soil, and killing millions and millions of people by “protecting our democracy” or “humanitarian” missions, etc etc. Recent news headlines quote politicians who keenly observe “Americans are losing faith in the political system”. So the financial collapse is in its end stages, with the impending death of the US petrodollar than the commercial collapse becomes evident as we lose access to imports, most importantly, oil. The DHS and NSA knew this was coming, if there are any politicians around they will likely need 24/7 cover and military escorts wherever they go, but for all intents and purposes, Americans will give up any hope that the political process will spare them from a life of decline and depravation.

        But wait, last I saw some people were not getting their tax returns. Normally our government proves so inept that it can’t run a lemonade stand. When it comes to giving people any money or services, they are slow, incompetent bumbling idiots with mountains of red tape and inefficiency. When it comes to stealing money from people or otherwise screwing people, they become masters of efficiency, well coordinated, and swift. Some people did not get their tax returns back, they were seized by the government http://rt.com/usa/social-security-treasury-target-americans-968/ Children are having their returns stolen because the government may have made mistakes with their parents(!!!). As Orlov pointed out, before the former USSR collapsed, the communist regime took on a life of its own and set out to steal money from anybody and everybody in any and every way they could. Ditto here right in the good old USA. Fining kids for selling lemonade without some expensive permit or license. Telling churches they can’t feed the homeless without a vending permit or license, it is a $100 ticket to be seen pushing a shopping cart around in my city, so now the dumpster divers carry their cans and bottles in dingy, bed bug infested pillow cases. The cops on steroids. Supposedly broke, the bastards in the neighboring city have an undercover $60K black ninja Camaro SS, they hide around every nook and cranny, while other regulators and ordinance people go creeping around neighborhoods to see if people do not trim their trees and bushes correctly. Meanwhile there is real crime going on, some rapes and B and E’s, a lot of crack, crystal meth, and heroin in the poorer areas, but of course, that seems low on their priority list.

        “The retirement system is doomed to fail” (Orlov). Here is the beginning of that http://news.msn.com/us/high-fees-eroding-many-401-k-retirement-accounts. The funds for social security have been looted so plan to work or live homeless until the day you starve, are killed, succumb to disease or the elements, or are given the Soylent Green treatment at some “FEMA camp”

  52. FincaInTheMountains April 15, 2014 at 7:59 pm #

    Ukraine. Anti-terrorist operation. Day 1.

    Total theater of absurd. The head of CIA flies to Kiev in search of 20 missing mercs from Blackwater. Some drunken men on a rusty old Russian SUV are chasing some old rusty Russian tank through the corn fields.

    A former prime minister, now handicapped, has announced formation of army of volunteers. In Kramatorsk some men dressed as bank robbers attack some forgotten airport nobody gives a shit about.

    Man who is heading the anti-terrorist operation in Kramatorsk gives a speech to surrounding crowd of unarmed citizen declaring them all terrorists. He manages to convince them to such a degree that they immediately take him as hostage.

    In a meantime in Kiev the “illegal extremists” are attacking “legal extremists” who are currently occupying the Parliament blaming them that they are all bought by Kremlin and Putin. The “legal extremists” in turn blame them that they’ve been bought by Putin too.

    While they are hotly discussing who is more bought by Putin, the Kiev district attorney is arresting one of the presidential candidates in the local hospital, where he was getting treatment after being beaten up by a street mob. Charges? Probably that he’s still alive.

    Another candidate is not being let inside the TV studio where he’s about to give a speech by some “Auto Maidan” activists – most likely bought by Putin as well along with their tires.

    All Ukrainian TV Stations proclaim 24 X 7 that all Ukrainians are brothers for Eternity and at the same time some of them are terrorists and separatists. Most funny that viewers believe both statements.

    Total theater of absurd. The feeling is that the whole script is written by some Hollywood idiot like Stallone.

  53. FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 7:10 am #

    Ukraine. Anti-terrorist operation. Day 2.

    Some of Ukrainian APCs – 6 with armed personal – finally had made it to the rebel city of Kramatorsk …. all under the Russian flag and immediately turned themselves over to the local rebel command headquarters.

    So far all the effort by Americans to insight the civil war and bloodshed in Ukraine are miserably failing. Their only hope are mercs and zombies from Nazi “Right Sector”, but it looks like to me that those are being in the cross-hairs or GRU SpetsNaz that freely operates in Ukraine enjoying support of local population.

    Probably soon the missing mercs will end up on RT giving interviews. May be some of them will even get their own shows.

  54. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 9:29 am #

    “Jim Marrs posted that a message was sent by an American who was on board that flight (an executive for IBM) stated that he was imprisoned and thought he had been drugged, but he managed to hide his cell phone. He took a picture of the dark so the location of the photo could be traced and supposedly it was traced to a large building on Diego Garcia.” – Mich Nat

    Everything is a sinister conspiracy these days. So where is all the hard evidence supporting this little diddy of a theory?

    Believing that the search for salvage at the at the bottom of the ocean is just too much. Instead, highly speculative and evidence free claims about an IBM exec who hides an iphone up his ass and waits for an opportune moment to snap a selfie on a dark plane is the more credible scenario. I’m actually willing to entertain this one.

    ;>)

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    • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 11:17 am #

      If anybody cares, the conspiracy theory I’ve seen on Russian internet is that the plane was abducted by same group that has last successfully turned off transponders on 4 civil flights and landed on some American base in Pacific just to get their hands on some Chinese officials with intimate knowledge of movement of extremely large sums of sovereign money and US Treasuries.

      That could explain a sudden concern of Chinese officials about their perished citizens, even paying their families to fly over to Malaysia. Usually Chinese are much more indifferent to such things.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 11:32 am #

      That is probably part of some hidden underlying reformatting of World financial system that we know so little about and only are getting some glimpses, like dozens of suspicious western banker deaths – probably regular functionaries that happen to be in system integration position with too much excessive knowledge. Just business, nothing personal.

      • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 12:30 pm #

        You know, FITM, that’s as good a theory as any other.

        Someone will write a book about it. You watch.

    • michigan_native April 17, 2014 at 2:06 pm #

      I will go back to facebook and find the link by Jim Marrs. Like Alex Jones and Jessie Ventura, he is a so called conspiracy theorist. If it is not in a youtube form, I will provide the link (for some reason youtube links post the video and is forbidden here for some reason or another, which is a shame because watching the videos are often a powerful statement of facts). I found Marrs to be very accurate on the JFK coup de tat, but I really didn’t pay too much attention at the time about a missing flight, but then again, our government is not beyond killing everyone on board a commercial flight for their “national interests”. For example, that Korean flight 007 that was shot down by Russia in 1983 was on a spy mission, but that’s a whole different story.

      We use drones and/or NATO to kill other Americans and foreign leaders to protect the petrodollar, they would think nothing of diverting a plane with persons of interest and detaining them at secret prisons where they will never be seen or heard from again.

      Back Row…..I reread my post about the vastness of the sea and strong currents, etc. That was not directed at you, per se. The amount of energy released from a plane of that size impacting the water, may as well have been concrete, would have left a vast debris field. Again, when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down on Lake Superior in 1975, there were 50ft waves for days after that low front passed through the region that hindered search efforts for days, but minutes after its sinking the Anderson, which was trailing her, spotted an oil slick and picked up some life rings with the USS Edmund Fitzgerald on them and other debris. That nearly 900 ft ore carrier went down so fast that a distress call wasn’t put out, nor did anyone have time to abandon ship. The ships wheel was in the stop position, so for a few seconds they knew she had broken apart on the surface. Within a month they found lots of debris, most of which lay in the Great Lakes shipwreck museum at Whitefish Point .Lake Superior, especially during a November gale, is like the oceans during a hurricane. 50 ft waves, 100mph wind gusts. She is a beautiful lake, but nothing to take lightly

      What does that have to do with the plane? They should have found some debris by now, with like 15 nations scouring the area with some of the most sophisticated detection equipment on the planet. I just have this hunch that something is rotten in Denmark here, I wouldn’t put anything past the US government at this point. I suspect there will be a number of weird things happening in the near future, look for a false flag event to justify military interventionism and/or demonizing this or that nation that has oil or is a threat to the petrodollar. The desperate acts of a dying empire in the making

    • Being There April 18, 2014 at 9:15 am #

      In a world of lies anything’s possible.

    • Being There April 18, 2014 at 9:17 am #

      In a world full of lies, anything’s possible. (my apologies if this is posted twice)

    • michigan_native April 18, 2014 at 9:05 pm #

      OK here’s your link
      SHOCK CLAIM: Flight 370 on Diego Garcia Per GPS Data

      Video produced by http://www.westernjournalism.com Produced, written, and edited by Kris Zane. Narrated by Tom Hinchey

      • michigan_native April 18, 2014 at 9:35 pm #

        That link doesn’t take you directly to the story, but a youtube link works, but no youtube videos allowed so look up “smoking gun…proof flight 370 was hijacked by the US Navy”. A text was sent out 10 days after the plane disappeared. Philip Wood claimed he was being held in a cell, that he thinks he was drugged…and I photo was taken which was traced by GPS coordinates to a large building on Diego Garcia.

  55. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 9:57 am #

    “perhaps it will be up to Israel, the last western country with any balls and any kind of credible leadership to carry the crucible of western civilization into the future, as the Catholic Church carried it from Greece and Rome thru the dark ages into an enlightened Europe.” -BRH

    So the Catholic Church is responsible for the Enlightenment? That there, folks, signifies the difference between logic and rationalization. Big difference, as you can see.

    Ha-haha-ha-haaaaaaa

    60 some odd years of ‘life experience,’ a professed love of literature, and a decent writing style and this type of nonsensical rationale is the product? Fuck, I’m glad I never graduated high school… I realize often that I narrowly escaped a type of cultural indoctrination that I’ll never quite be able to define.

    “The Israelis are fighting the same fight we are. Its always been a good ally; I don’t understand your hostility toward that country.” – BRH

    Wow.. all dogmatic thinking and bullshit opinion trading aside… one good hard look at an interview with BB Netanyahu yields an amazing, insightful look into the eyes of a malevolent sociopath. Yeah, let’s get on board with a people that allows leaders like this to team up with leaders of the US. That’s a recipe for success. *smirks*

    Yes, if the youth are to look to the socially successful elders of the previous two or three generations in this country…well, hopefully some UFOs will snatch a few more lucky airliners away before it comes to that.

    Good grief… It really is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to such a sick society. – KM bite

    Mike Ruppert, if you’re watchin’ from beyond, may many, many more of your generation find the cajones to do what you did, and soon, sir.

  56. Neon Vincent April 16, 2014 at 10:28 am #

    For all of us mourning the death of Michael Ruppert, I found a link on this site to a video of him speaking about Peak Oil.

    http://kunstler.com/other-stuff/video-interview-featuring-michael-c-ruppert-of-collapsenet-recorded-for-the-nation-magazine/

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 10:53 am #

      Right on for catchin’ this, NV… I heard about MCR just before I left for class yesterday… Didn’t hit me until the ride home last night.

      I first stumbled upon him a couple years ago when I found his Collapse doc. on Netflix. I was completely floored by his synthesis, though I later found out that he was a 9/11 Truther and didn’t quite know what to think about that. But MCR helped me to begin contemplating the connections between many different things I never would have considered.On the other hand, Mike had some completely flaky POVs, too, which somewhat turned me off to his claims for a time. He was simply one of those charismatic compelling figures that you couldn’t help but check in on from time to time.

      Anyhow, not long after I stumbled on to JHK’s similar views in a mainstream show which also featured MCR. After that, the paradigm shift was in full effect; it has been a pain in the ass emotional roller coaster ride ever since. The most alive I’ve ever been though.

  57. FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 12:35 pm #

    What spooked the 27 crew members of USS Donald Cook to submit their resignations?

    The Pentagon said a Russian fighter jet Su-24 made multiple close-range passes near an American navy destroyer. On Monday, the USS Donald Cook entered waters of Romania where 27 members of the crew submitted their resignation to the Navy.

    After all, SU-24 that made 12 (TWELVE!) fake bomb runs on the US destroyer equipped with the powerful Aegis missile defense system is a 30-years old Soviet built fighter jet has not being carrying any missiles or bombs under its wings, …. But it was carrying something else.

    When the Russian jet was in vicinity of the destroyer, all ship’s electronics, all its radars and sophisticated controls of the “powerful Aegis missile defense system” went totally dark. So Russian jet took its time to make another 11 fake bomb runs.

    According to some sources Russians were testing their anti-electronics “Hibins” system. No wonder they’ve used an older jet – they could’ve used an old crop duster equipped with home-made fertilizer bomb to sink the destroyer.

    So after all, may be the World War could wait a little.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 12:40 pm #

      Links please!!!! OK, OK, I Google the damn thing.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 1:26 pm #

      This story seems entirely bogus. No wonder you didn’t link to it.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 2:02 pm #

        Sorry, all my comments from now on seems to be a subject for moderation. I don’t really mind.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 2:08 pm #

        http://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/48815/

        In russian

        http://rostec.ru/news/2826

        • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 2:18 pm #

          I read both, thoroughly. I now accept them as true. See, the poor translations that you earlier referenced weren’t as believable as the two of these all-Russian text versions are. That we can both comprehend the language is a welcome bond. Thanks, comrade.

  58. Precipitous Decline April 16, 2014 at 12:41 pm #

    JHK, I think you are missing the point here. The situation in Ukraine is exactly indicative of the lengths that countries will go to to secure their energy and leverage their natural resources.
    While I totally agree that America and the rest of the world needs to focus on preparing for the economic cliff that we are facing, we also need to be cognizant of the effects of this globally. Now is not the time to stick our head in the sand. There will be winners and losers in this last of the global games and America is complicit in this probably to a greater extent than any other country as we have burnt up much of the worlds oil and gas supplies.
    I think that America and Europe’s decline will be slightly balanced by the growth less developed world as they realize that they hold some vital cards such as natural resources, favorable climate, and a population of people who still know what work is. This contrasts with our cubicle dwelling, social climbing, car driving population that doesn’t know or want to know how to do practical things like plant a garden. There is much to be learned and much to be gained by working together. If Russia cuts off the gas pipeline to Europe, so what. It will be a prelude of things to come and would force people to conserve or adapt now. The Russians will cut off their own revenue source, people will get hungry, and revolution is eminent.
    Perhaps the most important message we can get from the Ukraine situation is that it is time for Americans to wake up to reality.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 1:07 pm #

      Precip,

      I think you’re gonna have to make a stronger counterpoint than that.

      Dmitry Orlov seems to think Russia has the food and energy resources to turn inward. If so, the questions become: do the countries that rely on its nat gas have the same ability? Can Germany and France do without Russia’s energy? Why would Russia be shifting to a barter and trade energy exchange practice if what you say is true?

      Does the US have the ability to turn inward? Can America, right now, return to domestic agricultural production at levels adequate to feed its populace? Ask Texas and Californian farmers, or any other drought stricken regional crop producer for that matter.

      But wait a minute, BRH says global warming is nothin’ but an Al Gore hoax, so no fuckin’ worries, plus the Jews are gonna crucify us all into the next age of intellection.

      C’mon, make your case, Precip. I’m open to your perspective.

      • Precipitous Decline April 16, 2014 at 5:41 pm #

        Unstoppable

        You bring up some interesting elements, especially those of Dmitry Orlov.

        As far as the Ukraine, it is the Canary in the coal mine for the effects of energy on global geopolitics. Of course that is not new but it is still a wake up call for America. This is real and Americans need to take action for themselves. We also need to stand for and support Democracy where possible and it seems in this case that it is being undermined by Russian supported and funded thugs. That is not right.

        The US definitely has the ability to turn inward. Americans are very resourceful and have a lot of potential given the right leadership. America is still a democracy if people will just wake up and take back the power from the corporations. The voters hire and fire congress and the President, not the vote buyers. If people would just wake up and take back the power that they have, it would revolutionize everything.

        The problem is how to wake up the “sheeple” who go along with the current system and don’t vote or get involved.

        The Ukraine had some degree of Democracy and it looks like they might lose it. America had some degree of Democracy and currently, few people seem to even care enough to vote. My point is that JHK, in the spirit of Bobby Kennedy, could have used the Ukraine situation to galvanize support for American Democracy as well as highlighting the potential tragic loss of Ukrainian Democracy.

        • michigan_native April 17, 2014 at 2:41 pm #

          So I suppose you refer to the neo Nazis in the “Right Sector”as freedom fighters and those who do not wish to become enslaved by austerity conditions imposed by the IMF and other blessings of our illustrious western style democracy “terrorists” like the mainstream media is starting to?

          When 97% of the people vote to become part of Russia, including a majority of Ukrainians living in Crimea, that is what you call democracy. I am thinking you are very confused by the actual reality of what is going on there.

          ” The US definitely has the ability to turn inward. Americans are very resourceful and have a lot of potential given the right leadership. America is still a democracy if people will just wake up and take back the power from the corporations. The voters hire and fire congress and the President, not the vote buyers”

          Really now. Americans are very stupid. We are the only country in the world that could not convert to the vastly superior metric system. We are becoming number one at illiteracy, violence, infant mortality, and I suspect, malnutrition and life expectancy shortly. So many get all worked up about elections which should be obvious to everyone as a waste of time. If voting really made a difference, they would make it illegal. Voting for yet another president will not bring back depleted resources needed for endless growth and modern industrial society. There is no political solution to the impending collapse.

          Yet now that China has told the US/Monsanto to take their GMO franken foods and stuff them up Uncle Sam’s ass, we may be able to feed the millions of unemployed, homeless people at soup kitchens. But as there are no profits for corporate agribusiness, that will never be free. When the inputs from fossil fuels are gone for large scale industrial farming, people will slave away from sunrise to sunset and retire to their huts to eat vegetables and chitlin on the Monsanto or Halliburton plantations in the neo feudalism that will arise after the collapse and the government has nothing left to steal

          • michigan_native April 17, 2014 at 3:26 pm #

            And the other point is NO, Europe could not get by without Russia’s treasure trove of natural gas. I saw on RT via FB that they also discovered a vast oil reserve in the south of Russia. So they will be the next energy super power, and the US is acting like a chump about it, thinking Europeans, who now know they have been spied on and countries like Germany will find out we stole their gold, will be willing to succumb to a slow, painful death from hypothermia by the millions to assist the US in funding terrorists and neo Nazis to force feed the collapsing US petrodollar and maintain US hegemony in the region. I don’t think they will buy into it. Probably the UK will be the last hold out, but the comments I am seeing about the US from people across the UK, Wales, etc range from “the US can go fuck itself” to “they are getting desperate” to “If I were Putin, I wouldn’t sell us any gas or oil” seem very popular. Anti US government sentiment is rampant not only amongst Americans, but it would seem with our European allies as well.

            The snake oil salesmen that have the most gullible duped by this fracking myth will be exposed, as the US will not able able to supply Europe with gas, we don’t have the terminals, the ships, and most importantly, the supply of methane gas to shut out the Russians. And no matter how much Obama gets on his knees and sucks the dicks of the Saudi Royal family, they can’t ramp up production to kill Russian oil revenues, the elephant fields are in terminal decline as well, so……it’s game over for the former industrialized US. Technology, the “American spirit”, fracking, and all these other delusions of bullshit aren’t going to save us.

            But I knew the US would not go down with dignity. Their international policies have been failing, and hopefully they will not trigger WWIII as they sink. I also do not think they ever intend to allow the country to dissolve into separate territories, like the former USSR. They seem to be taking great steps to impose martial law and maintain control over the masses at all costs.

  59. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 1:41 pm #

    Apocalypse, Man:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNVHbzlzUS8

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    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 1:41 pm #

      Sorry, JHK… I thought this was disabled!

  60. BackRowHeckler April 16, 2014 at 1:49 pm #

    Russian Troops have crossed the border into eastern Ukraine. They’re not moving west to hand out manna, no sir, maybe to cause trouble, what do you think? They’ve all heard the heroic stories, these young soldiers, epic tales told by their grandfathers, driving the Nazis out of the motherland. Surprise attack, these fascists,25 million patriotic Russians dead. Stalingrad! Moscow! Leningrad! Kursk! I know, I know, who gives a sh-t, we have our own effing problems to deal with right here, right here in River City.

    All right then, here’s something local. NCAA scholarship athletes, in addition to free tuition and 3 free square meals a day, will now be eligible to access the chow hall any time of day or night. These kids get hungry. We’re talking free food my friends, free food. See, we’re dealing with our problems.

    –BRH

    • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 2:42 pm #

      BRH, where the heck did you get that BS? No Russian troops crossed no border at no time, more, I doubt that Putin has any intent of doing so – and why would he? The dysfunctional Ukraine very soon will drop into his lap on its own and Putin will be facing a tough problem how to feed em all in the short run.

      • Cold N. Holefield April 16, 2014 at 2:50 pm #

        Wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who said it’s good to have a Holodomor every fifty years or so to clean out all the old garbage and stat with a new, freash slate? Well, Ukraine’s overdue for Holodomor II: Putin’s Betrayal. In fact, many in Ukraine are begging Putin for it. As Marie Antoinette said, “let them eat nothing!”

        • FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 3:22 pm #

          If you knew the history beyond the comics books, you would know that Golodomor affected as much Russian population as it did Ukrainian.

          It was a result of unfortunate Bolshevik policies of forced collectivization, but you must also know that West contributed to the Famine of 1932 by refusing to sell grain to USSR even in exchange for gold.

          It was a tragedy, but tragedy of the entire Nation, not just Ukraine. My father lived through that unfortunate period of the Soviet history and he had memories of it till the end of his life.

      • BackRowHeckler April 16, 2014 at 4:27 pm #

        I got if off of Drudge, FM. Right now its just Spetznatz in there causing mischief. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Usually the worse case scenario does not happen, thank goodness.

        I’m impressed you know about that Ukrainian famine, 1931-1933. It seems lost to history, even tho millions perished. One point tho, that gold you mention was gold looted from the churches and synagogues throughout Russian when the Bolsheviks took over in 1917.

        An excellent book about the Ukraine Terror-famine is “Harvest of Sorrow”, by Robert Conquest, from Stanford’s Hoover Institute.

        –BRH

        • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 5:07 pm #

          “I got if off of Drudge, FM. Right now its just Spetznatz in there causing mischief.” HRB

          Cheeze and rice, try actually reading the article instead of just the headlines. Uhh, after some observation of your assertions over time, I feel you’re the last person one should consider a book recommendation from.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 16, 2014 at 4:58 pm #

      Remember, the West just grabbed 90% of the Country. So the Russians are evening it up a bit, taking the Russian part. Better for Russia to take it then let the EU fill it up with Arabs and Africans. Apparently, the Gold has already been looted from Kiev.

  61. FincaInTheMountains April 16, 2014 at 1:52 pm #

    “This story seems entirely bogus. No wonder you didn’t link to it.”

    It very well may be. But than again, it may not. Here is the link to the RUSSIAN company site that produces the complex:

    http://rostec.ru/news/2826

    The russian text says:

    KRET will develop unique military complex of radio-electronic warfare.

    Here is the company English version of the site:

    http://rostec.ru/en

    Here is another site (again in Russian) that describes the incident:

    http://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/48815/

    Sorry, couldn’t find anything substantial in English, but that’s probably understandable.

  62. Cold N. Holefield April 16, 2014 at 2:04 pm #

    I guess he Crossed the Rubicon. This is what happens when you scale the rabbit hole without a secure tether.

    Peak Ruppert. What a pussy. He didn’t have the guts to stay and watch all the fun that’s always just around the corner.

    One down, so many more to go. Next up–Guy McPherson.

    “It was very well planned by Mike, who gave us few clues but elaborate instructions for how to proceed without him,” said Baker, who was a guest on the final program and will host Ruppert’s upcoming radio show in memoriam.

    How to proceed without him? What? How ridiculously arrogant. Remember the movie Scent of a Woman? Well, this statement is Scent of a Megalomaniac.

    I have news for you Mike, if you can hear me across the Rubicon, it’s much larger and deeper than you, in your infinite wisdom (haha), could have ever imagined or cared to imagine.

    As Ellis says to Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, “you can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” I’d make one correction of this statement as it relates to Ruppert. It was waiting on him…to commit suicide; his destiny.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 2:21 pm #

      Hey, Cold Asshole…

      Guess how many social media mournings will appear upon news of your death?

      *crickets*

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 2:24 pm #

      You know why?

      Because your story won’t even make news, not even a tweet. A picture of someones breakfast burrito has a better chance of making headlines on your death day.

  63. K-Dog April 16, 2014 at 3:17 pm #

    Madness and irrationality.

    We start with this, from which I excerpt:

    In her call to 911, Kirk said her husband was “talking about the end of the world and he wanted her to shoot him,” according to a probable cause statement filed in the case. There was a gun in their house, Kirk said at the beginning of the phone call, but it was locked in a safe.

    As the call went on, Kirk told the 911 dispatcher that her husband was hallucinating, scaring their three young children, the court document said.”

    Note:

    Cannabis does not cause hallucinations.

    And we end with this:

    Police Investigating Role of Marijuana in Man’s Killing of Wife

    Shades of Reefer Madness and the girl slayers!

    So the mindless irresponsible give me more corporate PTBs at NBC bring us back to 1936.

    Perhaps feeling more comfortable if Vladimir Putin were massing troops on the Mexican side of the US border to keep Americans safe from our own bungling isn’t so whacked. Because making sense of the world, to tolerate such manipulation, Americans don’t seem to care.

  64. K-Dog April 16, 2014 at 3:35 pm #

    Some are attracted to movements for emotional reasons and become zelots when the dogma in the movement makes sense to them. But the emotional reasons still drive the soul behind the scenes, unsatisfied. I fear Michael Ruppert was one who was attracted for emotional reasons. And Michael had seen some ugly reality. Better to find a movement from a pure search for truth with an untroubled heart. But that is advice rarely taken or even contemplated.

    I wish Michael had found other ways to end his pain.

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    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 4:33 pm #

      K-dog, you always “speak” with a sincere and kind affect. Good form, dude. You’re not a mean dog like me. My only view on MCR’s suicide is that he should have pulled the trigger in beautiful Colorado, on the mountain, not the shitty trailer he fled to in Cali.

      I think you nailed some key points about how and why people who choose to focus on this type of material do it. Some are ideological zealots who just need straw men to slay, others are absorbing this stuff at the emotional level, and for some the lines are a bit blurred. No body seems to be entirely sure about any of this stuff – maybe that’s a faulty observation on my part, yet to pay attention without experiencing some combination of horror and grief is inhuman.

      I’ll bet that if many of the pot-bellied older guys who spend a lot of time and energy on this suddenly lost whatever sort of financial buffer or cushion they currently have in a big showdown, quite a few would quickly choose the same exit Ruppert did. In fact, I’d offer up a bit more respect for that crowd if they did start eatin’ bullets en mass. What’s occurred over the last 40 years in this species’ history, despite the amazing emergent intellect and creativity seen from a small handful individuals over thousands of years, is embarrassingly shameful, enough to merit extinction. The homo sapiens evolutionary cul-de-sac needs to be relegated to the fossil record.

      I say bring on the reckoning. I wanna see who among us stands or falls the quickest. I wanna see what material possessions count for in the final shake out.

      • K-Dog April 16, 2014 at 5:13 pm #

        “He should have pulled the trigger in beautiful Colorado, on the mountain, not the shitty trailer he fled to in Cali.”

        Al la Sol Roth’s Euthanasia in Soylent Green?

        As for myself, I’m in no hurry to bring on the reckoning.

  65. K-Dog April 16, 2014 at 3:46 pm #

    More on Michael, courtesy of Max Keiser.

    The ‘last podcast’ is there and more.

    • Being There April 16, 2014 at 8:00 pm #

      I found out about Mike R. when I checked out CFN today during a break at work. Imagine my shock. I just looked over collapsenet this past weekend.

      He had his share of demons, so he might have been heading in this sad direction for a long time. I did go to Max’s site to listen to the podcasts.

      Big Loss! Very sad.

    • Karah April 17, 2014 at 12:01 am #

      i looked, i listened. two things stuck out from his rant and radio shows. he had gone from identifying himself as whistleblower/journalist to new age warrior. he is convinced the end of humanity is imminent – 2035-ish.

      his last broadcast revealed his mental anxiety had ramped up, having frequent and more intense dissociative episodes, he was lonely and feeling isolated by the “matrix” or the comforts of city life juxtaposed with disturbing news bombardments. his guest termed it as being spiritual noise. he asked for his guest advice, neither of whom claimed any doctorates in medicine or mental health/psychiatry. one said to turn off the noise, meditate in complete silence and call a sympathetic friend such as herself. the other recommended he count his blessings, one of which being alive.

      ruppert believed when he shot himself, he would never be any happier or anymore enlightened, that he would pass on in spirit form to the next stage of evolution. also, he was getting older and lonelier. he has a bad history with women and preferred the company of a dog. he is a unique voice in that he severely criticizes his govt, his former employers without letup; however, he died like so many other men of this age, eaten up with fear of the things to shortly befall mankind and not knowing the way out.

  66. Janos Skorenzy April 16, 2014 at 5:01 pm #

    Great video. The Feds are on records saying they wanted Bundy’s land. They’ve been “disappearing” the evidence for the last few days, but this guy has found some of the records.

    http://clashdaily.com/2014/04/bundy-ranch-youre-told-video/

  67. Maureen Meyer April 16, 2014 at 5:42 pm #

    Off topic but I’d be interested in hearing your opinion of this book.

    The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch
    by
    Lewis Dartnell

    I’ve always considered “World Made by Hand” a good window into adapting to a 19th century agrarian society.

    • K-Dog April 17, 2014 at 2:09 am #

      Only hooked up people have read this book it is so new.

      But rebuilding won’t happen. The better strategy is as described in this weeks Archdruid.

      Collapse first and avoid the rush:” getting ahead of the curve of decline, in other words, and downshifting to a much less extravagant lifestyle while there’s still time to pick up the skills and tools needed to do it competently. Despite the strident insistence from defenders of the status quo that anything less than business as usual amounts to heading straight back to the caves, it’s entirely possible to have a decent and tolerably comfortable life on a tiny fraction of the energy and resource base that middle class Americans think they can’t possibly do without. Mind you, you have to know how to do it, and that’s not the sort of knowledge you can pick up from a manual, which is why it’s crucial to start now and get through the learning curve while you still have the income and the resources to cushion the impact of the inevitable mistakes.

  68. prettykitty April 16, 2014 at 7:33 pm #

    Actually, Mr. Kunstler, most Americans couldn’t give two craps about Ukraine. Not our junk show. Obummer is too much of a beta to do anything, anyway. Which is good for those of us who would like to focus on the home front. Which Obummer and his liberal/progressive cronies are continuing to destroy. Are you ashamed or horrified that you voted- twice- for this communist, empty-suit cypher? Actions have consequences, enjoy the show before the zombies with tattoos come knocking on your door for a handout. If you are lucky they’ll just steal your stuff and not slit your throat whilst high on meth. The armpit of New York is not a great place to hide, nor will it remain untouched by this Fourth Turning we find ourselves in.

  69. progress4what April 16, 2014 at 7:55 pm #

    This is an interesting (even slightly humorous) look at last years events in Boston. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/boston-bombing-anniversary/too-many-guns-how-shootout-bombing-suspects-spiraled-chaos-n80236

    And – on an unrelated note – is anyone noticing problems associated with cookies from this CFN website. Every time I check this thread my PC slows to a crawl, and stays there until I delete cookies, or sometimes, reset Firefox completely.

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    • progress4what April 16, 2014 at 8:03 pm #

      Here’s another interesting news article. Genetic underpinnings of human behavior are often frowned upon due to pc-ishness.

      Don’t know how this one sneaked in.

      http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-like-made-germ-theory-democracy-beliefs-73958/

      I’ve installed a “script blocker” add-on for firefox. This was my first restart of the software. Things seem OK, so far.

      • K-Dog April 17, 2014 at 1:46 am #

        Interesting. A country with highlands and lowlands at the right latitude must be a place of eternal philosophical angst then.

        Can this relate to Ukraine?

    • K-Dog April 17, 2014 at 1:42 am #

      My PC slows to a crawl, and stays there until I delete cookies, or sometimes, reset Firefox completely.

      De man be watchin is be what it is.

  70. progress4what April 16, 2014 at 8:11 pm #

    MN and others – some interesting ideas about that airplane, but I’m more with backrow on this one. It’s a big ocean. If that plane hit the water at high speed, it’s quite possible that the biggest pieces left were quite small. Potential floating debris would have been compressed by the concussion – to the point that a lot of it may have absorbed water and sunk rapidly. The biggest pieces floating may have been thumbnail sized or smaller, and these would have been rapidly dispersed by wind, waves, and currents.

    And on another note – if governments have the capability to do something like this – why not do it in some more sophisticated manner, and avoid all this collateral exposure.

  71. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 16, 2014 at 8:43 pm #

    “We also need to stand for and support Democracy where possible and it seems in this case that it is being undermined by Russian supported and funded thugs. That is not right.” – Precip

    Sorry, Precip. There’s no way an intelligent person, who has surveyed the propaganda coming out of the American, Russian, and alternative media, could draw this conclusion about Russia’s actions in Ukraine. It’s all propaganda, but one has to posses the ability to interpret subtext in order to identify the real thugs – the US govt. You don’t have to “like” Putin or Russia to see the truth of these circumstances. Putin certainly is no angel, and he serves the oligarchs of his land, just like our leaders do, to be sure. There are many reasons why this is true, you just have to look.

    The US bungled yet another coup attempt in Ukraine and is now grasping at straws to recover an ever failing economic and militaristic agenda, plain as day. Did you not catch Victoria Nuland’s leaked phone call and the attending photos linking all the key players in this matter together? Strip away the spy novel mystique and Post-WWII American triumphalism behind these issues out of your head and just consider the dry logic of the moves on either side, here.

    The lies of omission, especially coming from US corporate news media surrounding Ukraine, are blatantly obvious. The “truthiness” in our media coverage today substitutes actual truth with “plausibility”, and it seems you’ve gobbled these rhetorical tropes up. The strange thing is that after trying to spin a particular lie one day, the US media is constantly having to acknowledge the real truth while awkwardly downplaying it at the same time the very next day. It’s all right there in the open, and that’s what makes it so scary. The US is clearly desperate for public support for potential showdown with Russia after finding none during the attempted Syrian incursion by the government months back. But leave the obvious aside for a moment.

    Do you honestly think voting changes anything in this country? And why are the people who actually do vote NOT the true “Sheeple” we should be afraid of? These fuckin’ fools stick with their party leaders no matter what, in spite of all evidence to the contrary that corruption is systemic and Democracy is irretrievably dead in the US.

    No matter your personal political affiliation, find two different people, one who voted for Dubya Bush twice, one who voted for Obama twice, then ask them how things turned out. Then really study their answers. In each case you’ll find someone who simply can’t think beyond the talking points of their in-group identity. Those are the fukin’ sheep.

    • ozone April 17, 2014 at 9:15 am #

      UFIA,
      Woof! I’m not a good doggie either. I no longer forgive wishful thinking or the thirsty quaffing of the gov’t. supplied Kool-Aid. Trust is not due those who engage in weaving a web of lies, nor those who wrap themselves in the layers of silk for their mental comfort. I turn away in disgust, knowing that these are the people who will later hunt me or ask from me what I won’t be able to give. As K-dog attempted to “point to” (ha, see what I did there?), Greer’s advice to “collapse first and avoid the rush” not only is purely practical, it let’s us know that those who try and apply that advice may lead the way into a more balanced future for humankind. (A future in which homo-not-so-sapiens finally recognizes that he is master of nothing but himself and is himself simply another of an inconceivably gargantuan number of biospheres.)

      Again, we should seriously ask who it is we trust. Mouthpieces for the status quo, who never seem to supply any different actions aside from the consistently failed ones, or those who face the outcomes of our predicaments squarely and are quietly building in the direction of resilience and technological robust simplicity?

      As you say, it’s all right there, out in the open, and as Dylan paraphrased, you don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.

      Mike Ruppert, we hardly knew ye…

      • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject April 17, 2014 at 10:27 am #

        Way to size it all up and distill it down with clean writing, Zone. One day, maybe, I’ll arrive… got to learn to type without starin’ at the keyboard first! Ha-ha. Might catch some of those syntax goobers then.

        Yeah, thinkin on Ruppert yesterday and also trying to mess with an IBM SPSS program for homework created a lot of angst. It manifested on screen. That too shall pass. Did. Back to deadlines!

        Turnips didn’t die in the sudden snow we got the other day. Been rainin’ the last 12 hours off and on. Things r lookin pretty green in Colorado…

      • Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 1:24 pm #

        Does Greer follow his own advice? Is he “collapsing”? Or is he flying around the country to speak at Collapse seminars – the title of his talk, “How to collapse”. The poor man’s James Bond or Al Bore? I don’t know. You tell me. How’s that for humility or humus. Remember Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth”.

        What I do know is that Greer, the “Arch Druid” is still attached to Globalism in terms of race replacement via immigration. The Ancient Druids were for their own people and were killed by the Romans on sight. But the Arch Druid is better than that – or so he thinks. Incredible hubris, eh? Or are you still stuck in the same place? Just as you once thought that you’d save the world with your music, or that Ben & Jerry’s were really good people, this is just another illusion. Sleeper awaken.

  72. Pucker April 17, 2014 at 5:58 am #

    I read “Twilight of Abundance” on the flight to San Francisco. Not bad. His argument re: likely global cooling over the next 30 years based on historic sun spot activity and massive population reduction in the Middle East and Afghanistan due to drought and shrinking growing seasons seems convincing. Not good for the Canadians, Russians, and Chinese. I think that his false hope of a massive US government program for liquified coal synfuels and thorium reactors is unlikely unless it is directed by the US military.

  73. Pucker April 17, 2014 at 6:16 am #

    Who won the Olympic gold medal for spear chunking? Where would one find a professional Spear Chunker coach? What’s the most important thing to keep in mind if one wants to be a successful Spear Chunker?

    • Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 1:27 pm #

      Is that some kind of under handed racial slur? Trying to get the pleasure covertly without the pain of courtship? Just your little robot running under skirts and taking pictures to be “used” later?

      • Pucker April 17, 2014 at 1:46 pm #

        In the original movie “MASH”, they recruit a professional American football quarterback named “Spear Chunker Jones” who happens to be black. All of the doctors on his team innocently ask him: “Why do they call you ‘Spear Chunker’?”

        • Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 2:47 pm #

          That n is a lifesaver! R is for Rocket and N is for Niger. What about the missing c? C is for See how clever we are. Chunker indeed.

  74. ozone April 17, 2014 at 10:10 am #

    Let’s see now…
    In a NPR news report this morning, they characterized the violent clash of Ukraine military and pro-Russian supporters in the coastal south as a “glimmer of hope” for the success of the new illegitimate gov’t. (They’ve apparently been rebuffed or switched sides in every other attempt at forcing assent.)

    Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME???? Resorting to violence and dead and wounded is a sign of “HOPE”??? Jesus, how do you like your shit sandwich (propaganda) served? Maggot infested olives as garnish?

    In case no one noticed, the US-backed troglodytes have made themselves some martyrs for their enemies. (Guess they learned nothing from the provocative murders-by-sniper in the Maidan Square. Stupidity and blind hubris now rule the day.) Do the Neo-cons and their State Dept. flunkies want [un]civil war in Ukraine? Kinda looks that way, doesn’t it? Makes it easier to push ’em over… oh wait, seems we forgot where the place is located. Oh well, push on; they’ll think of something!

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    • Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 3:06 pm #

      Watch yer French please. What’s the problem? You still smoking those Jazz Cigarettes?

    • BackRowHeckler April 17, 2014 at 3:07 pm #

      I’d like to learn how to talk like they do on NPR. It’s like a loud, very loud whisper, but loaded with compassion, concern, a little ennui and world weariness, with a slight hint of patrician inflection. If you can talk like that you’re in with the Big Libs, Elizabeth Warren types, and can be invited to fundraisers, wine and cheese parties, and book signings. Our betters at Yale and Dartmouth talk like that, too.

      –BRH

      • BackRowHeckler April 17, 2014 at 3:13 pm #

        Those get togethers are to discuss third world issues, you understand. Its also understood, very clearly, that all problems on earth are the fault of the United States. Accept this as gospel or don’t bother showing up.

  75. Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 2:43 pm #

    Wisdom, attend. Women want to advance themselves through marriage. Thus any attempt to equalize pay will reduce the number of marriages even more. The proof? African-Americans. Higamous Hogamous, Women are Hypergamous.

    http://www.the-spearhead.com/2014/04/17/hypergamy-enters-national-political-lexicon/

  76. Pucker April 17, 2014 at 2:59 pm #

    Can you believe that the Coca Cola Corporation now sells the soft drink “Tab” in Namibia? The advertising slogan for “Tab” used to be: “‘Tab’—Only 1 Calorie’.”

    Why would they sell a diet drink to “The Skinnies”? Is this some kind of Sick Joke?

    When I was a kid, I took a sip of a Tab and promptly discovered that it tastes “Like Shit”….worse than Shit…..

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(soft_drink)

    • BackRowHeckler April 17, 2014 at 3:15 pm #

      And it came in a pink can, remember that?

      • Pucker April 17, 2014 at 4:07 pm #

        Yeah…the Pink can was rather “Weird”….

        Who is going to buy a soft drink in a pink coloured can called “Tab”? Isn’t a “Tab” a detachable piece of paper attached to a coupon? I don’t get it…..

        I recall that Cola Cola may have gotten into hot water when they subsequently discovered that Tab contains a lot of very nasty carcinogenic chemicals that cause cancer.

        It I think about it, it “kinda freaks me out.”

        • Pucker April 17, 2014 at 11:55 pm #

          The Coca Cola Corporation could get that Somali actor from the movie “Captain Philips” to do TV commercials for Tab in Africa.

          “Look at me Irish. Tab—Only 1 calorie.”

    • ozone April 19, 2014 at 9:37 am #

      A gourmand of shit? (That would explain a lot.)

  77. BackRowHeckler April 17, 2014 at 5:35 pm #

    I think it was one of the first so-called diet carbonated soft drinks, marketed primarily to women.

  78. Janos Skorenzy April 17, 2014 at 8:55 pm #

    Political Commentator: No one is saying that Chelsea’s baby was scheduled for political purposes, but if it was, it couldn’t be at a better time.

    We all know that this isn’t political. We do?

    • Being There April 18, 2014 at 9:34 am #

      The Clintons are political animals. That’s how they roll. I’m sure she (Chelsea) wanted a baby, but somehow you have to imagine the wheels turning in their heads.

      BTW I heard on the radio that Chelsea wants to get into politics down the road, if she sees an opening. Another neo-royal family in the times of neoliberalism/neo-feudalism.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 18, 2014 at 6:05 pm #

        Now admit it: you’d give ten years of your life for a sit down televised meeting with Hillary where you were treated as a “powerful woman” with valuable insights. You covet her pant suits.

        Do you think the thrown shoe incident was real? Hillary was so poised: just as she will be when the Russians are throwing nukes at us. And the repartee! The soft ball reference was code admitting she was one in order to get the Gay vote.

  79. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2014 at 10:47 am #

    One day each year, for a few hours, Vladimir Putin makes himself available to take phone calls from citizens across Russia. Just like that, call him up and ask him anything, register a complaint if you want to. How many people in Russia? 180 million? 200 million? I’ll be damned, out of the millions trying to reach Putin, Edward Snowden’s call went thru, our own Eddie! (look, there’s Eddie on Moscow TV!!) Unbelievable! What a stroke of luck! What synchronicity! Just one of those things I guess. The question was basically does Russia spy on its own people (like the US). The former KGB operative answered only in criminal investigations, that’s all, and its tightly controlled by the Russian court system. So we got that out of the way. The only country that does any spying is the USA.

    –BRH

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    • FincaInTheMountains April 18, 2014 at 1:01 pm #

      He, he… Ed Snowden is absolutely brilliant KGB/FSB operation to kill American plans to establish transatlantic free trade zone and put a wedge between Americans and their West European vassals. Now every time the talk of that comes up, Ed conveniently recalls new details of NSA spying on Merkel and other Eurocrats.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 18, 2014 at 1:07 pm #

      I guess Putin couldn’t help himself but to parade Ed during his address – after all great accomplishment. A lot in the Putin interview was addressed not to Russian people, but, as he likes to put it, to “our Western Partners”.

      • BackRowHeckler April 18, 2014 at 1:54 pm #

        “Ivan, ask him if we can get an increase in our Vodka Allotment down here in Volgograd. We’re drying up for Chrissake”.

        (2 quarts per day ain’t enough. Not when its 20 below six months out of the year)

        –BRH

        • FincaInTheMountains April 18, 2014 at 3:57 pm #

          “Not when its 20 below six months out of the year”

          Not in Crimea, it aint.

          • BackRowHeckler April 18, 2014 at 4:23 pm #

            You know, FM, from what I see on news broadcasts Crimea looks a nice place.

            Next town over here there’s a sizable Ukrainian community. Some go to the Onion domed church. Some go to the Catholic Church. I’ve heard the two groups don’t get along too good.

            –BRH

          • FincaInTheMountains April 18, 2014 at 5:43 pm #

            Crimea is absolutely beautiful, majestic place. I’ve been there several times on vacation back when I was living in Russia. I am 100% sure it will become very popular destination for Russians to spend their summer vacations (which I believe are 24 work days or full calendar month).
            Three main nationalities live in Crimea – Russians (the majority), Ukrainians and Crimea Tatars (Muslims). All three languages are made official language of Republic of Crimea.
            Crimean authorities are busy with current affairs: the pensions (in Russia women are getting pension at the age of 55 and men at the age of 60) are being brought up to Russian Federation level – twice as much as they used to get. Military compensations are also increased to the Russian level – 4 times.
            Several infrastructural projects are in the planning stage – the biggest is the bridge (or tunnel) to connect mainland Russia to the peninsula. The large backup diesel generators that were prepared for Sochi Olympics are moved to Crimea. Also Russia has a floating nuclear power station that could be moved to Crimea if necessary.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 18, 2014 at 6:01 pm #

      That Gosh Darn Eddie Haskell! Always up to no good! You said it Wally.

      • BackRowHeckler April 18, 2014 at 9:20 pm #

        Yeah that Eddie is a real rascal, a prankster …

        Do you think he will ever get out of Russia alive?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 19, 2014 at 11:00 pm #

          Of course. Today’s Russia isn’t Stalin’s. The question is where would he go that he wouldn’t be killed by American agents. We’ve exchanged identities to some degree. We are becoming more like Communist Russia and they are becoming more like I don’t know what.

          He’s a smart guy and will settle down, learn Russian, and find a nice girl.

  80. K-Dog April 18, 2014 at 3:48 pm #

    We have enough to do in our own country to adjust to the new realities of the unraveling turbo-industrial global economy — and, by the way, we are not doing a damn thing to address any of it.

    As Jason Heppenstall sez:

    Economic growth is dead for most people and living standards are declining accordingly. The ‘recovery’ is simply the paper wealth rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, as well as the entire system they depend upon for their wealth. You will probably not get a pension and your kids will be slaves to debt. This is what peak oil looks like.

    When will the United States begin the long-overdue task of getting its own act together?

    • Being There April 19, 2014 at 8:50 am #

      It’s not going to.

      • ozone April 20, 2014 at 8:01 pm #

        BT,
        After much hemming and hawing, back and forthing, nougat and nonsense, finally being dunked enough times in the ice-water of reality under the cold light of day……… I’ve arrived at the same conclusion as yourself. Now all that’s left is for the play to be played. (BTW, turns out — it’s a tragedy.)

  81. FincaInTheMountains April 18, 2014 at 6:10 pm #

    I don’t think “peak oil” is the problem – “peak intelligence” is. Lack of fresh ideas. Plenty of false theories like “balanced budget”, “sustainable development” and other garbage. The only ideas that I’ve seen so far that make sense are expressed by Webster Tarpley – http://tarpley.net/docs/five-point-program.pdf
    Leverage Military-Industrial complex of the US as an engine for new industrialization – after all that’s the only place where America still has its hi-tech.

    • K-Dog April 18, 2014 at 7:09 pm #

      You are right about intelligence but did we ever have enough to peak?

      The hairball of resource depletion should be providing opportunities for generations of work at full employment far far into the future, instead of limiting opportunities by insisting society be run as business as usual for as long as possible. An interesting five point program. Thanks for linking to it.

  82. K-Dog April 18, 2014 at 8:10 pm #

    Imagine, more than 100 hate-crime murders linked to single website. Somehow the Southern Poverty Law Center managed to find this out and chides the Department of Homeland Security for concentrating overmuch on Jihadists terrorism and not “developing intelligence about these groups and individuals”. The Department of Homeland Security being the lead agency for developing intelligence about ‘these’ groups and individuals. These groups and individuals also including those who frequent ‘end of the world blogs’ as DHS puts it.

    Imagine the giant vegetables the Department of Homeland Security finds when they investigate critters who frequent CFN. Perhaps they should give prizes and post pictures. Or find something better to do!

    If the battery drain on my Iphone suddenly goes back up to requiring a charge a day I’ll know why.

    Carrot, lettuce, spinach, cantaloupe, radish, cucumber.

    New words for the terror watch list.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 19, 2014 at 10:52 pm #

      Remember Dale wrote to the SPLC complaining about us. Their “hate map” was used by one Gay terrorist when he attacked a Conservative Foundation, killing a security guard I believe before he was neutralized.

      How is the job hunt going? We may have an opening for you in Ulan Bator. The local girls are cute. I hear their ******* are closer to their ***** than you may be accustomed to. But I’m sure it can be gotten used to! As the Tibetan Buddhists say, through skillful means one can be comfortable even in Hell.

  83. Pucker April 19, 2014 at 4:44 am #

    Many of the white women in the US look and act like men. It must create a lot of sexual confusion in the society?

  84. contrahend April 19, 2014 at 5:17 pm #

    greece is wonderful, everyone well-behaved, educated, and the prices are very reasonable.

    no sign of a powderkeg about to blow.

    have taken in athens and some of the islands.

    where is the revolution & downfall domino effect so sought after?

    enjoy your dillydally fantasies.

    kostoskontrahend

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  85. Lisa April 19, 2014 at 6:48 pm #

    Two relevant topics in one podcast:
    1.Bundy ranch standoff in Nevada and
    2.situation in Ukraine and the role US played in it

    http://www.podcastone.com/embed?progID=401&pid=407771

  86. Janos Skorenzy April 19, 2014 at 10:42 pm #

    Bobby Fischer, a Jew of intellectual and moral genius, who rejected the evil of his people. Think of him as a Semitic Edward Snowden. Or do you take the easy way, the back row heckler way, and just call him “crazy”? More fool you then.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer

  87. Karah April 19, 2014 at 11:39 pm #

    “The U.S. is now the world’s largest natural gas producer and is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia soon as the world’s greatest oil producer, becoming a net exporter of energy by 2025.”

    really? if this is true then we are running faster than everyone else to the cliff of depletion. in the next ten years, while the u.s. gets flushed with money from energy sales, tomkat center for renewable energy at stanford will be inventing stuff like longer lasting non toxic batteries and redesigning americas power grids to run off solar while regulating huge power drains. while all that is going on, the worlds religions will somehow converge into one united front to end corruption. all of this happens before i reach retirement. i can see myself in an igloo of cheap a/c watching kim kardashian with her 3 kids on her netflix show doing everything her mom did in the past episodes. wow, i can not wait!

  88. FincaInTheMountains April 20, 2014 at 5:49 am #

    Conflict in Ukraine has finally entered its commercial phase. Kiev has announced that it will buy AK47 for $1000, machine gun for $1500, and every “polite green man”, dead or alive, for $10,000. Also, every Ukrainian Military garrison that would withstand an overnight attack would receive half a million “griven” – around $50,000US. Knowing the Ukrainian entrepreneurship it is not that hard to predict what happens next.

    Ukrainian military units will start in turn “attacking” each other and heroically withstanding the “attacks”. When they fail to honestly split the reward, they will start attacking themselves. What the hell, in the crisis they need to somehow feed themselves and their family, to hell with American taxpayer who is supposed to foot the bill.
    Also we should expect an increased demand for alcoholics without permanent place of residence – appropriately dressed after their demise they’d pass for “polite green men”.

    As all other “brilliant” policies I am sure that one also comes from geniuses in State Department. I wonder how that particular “accounting entries” are going to show up on their books.

    • Cold N. Holefield April 20, 2014 at 9:06 am #

      Controlled chaos trumps uncontrolled order.

      I’m thinking the name of this blog is what happens to countries Russia and America tag team over.

      Renault-Nissan sees bright future in Russia as it relaunches Datsun

      Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn sees great potential in Russia despite a slowdown in car sales in the country and the crisis over Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

      Ghosn said the geopolitical situation is “bumpy” but is “not going to last.”

      “We have no hesitation about the potential for the Russian market, he said. “At a certain moment it will be behind you. Our strategy doesn’t take into consideration short-term bumps but has to take into consideration trends and long-term potential.”

      Ghosn was speaking to reporters after unveiling the on-Do sedan, which is being launched in Russia by Nissan’s revived Datsun brand.

      The automaker’s supply chain has not been disrupted by the Western sanctions imposed on some Russian individuals over Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, he said.

  89. FincaInTheMountains April 20, 2014 at 8:45 am #

    Alarming details regarding unexpected visit of Director Brennan to Ukraine emerge

    According to that blog http://pravosudija.net/article/sderzhivanie-teoriya-zagovora the real goal of Mr. Brennan were NOT giving the instructions to Kiev’s Junta regarding counter-terrorist operation in Eastern Ukraine(after all that’s beyond the CIA competence), but rather retrieval of a specific person – very close to Mr. Brennan – who was captured near Lugansk along with 19 others mercenaries. Even more, the goal was a retrieval of certain electronic device with some encrypted files from “Westinghouse Electric” along with some instructions in regards to two important objects.

    The two objects in question are Zaporojskaya Nuclear Power station – the biggest in Europe – and South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Station.
    Only the load of South Ukrainian reactors exceeds the combined load of 3 damaged reactors in Fukushima. Zaporojskaya Nuclear Power station exceeds it at least twice.

    The most alarming to me is the fact that problem of securing the Ukrainian nuclear reactors in the dysfunctional country are not even on the horizon of discussion anywhere.

    According to the same blog, the person was retrieved in exchange for significant amount of cash, the device and the files were not.

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  90. FincaInTheMountains April 20, 2014 at 9:06 am #

    The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
    “What are those?”
    “Soldiers.”
    “What are soldiers?”
    “They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can.”
    The girl held still and studied.
    “Do you know … I know something?”
    “Yes, what is it you know?”
    “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.”

    Carl Sandburg, “The People, Yes” (1936)

    Kiev Junta is calling a war, but nobody’s showing up….

    • Being There April 20, 2014 at 11:31 am #

      Here’s something from Max Keiser

      This is about lucrative big agribusiness in Ukraine. There is a following article on the big cache of natural gas that Chevron wants. Yes, it’s all about the globalists wanting fresh new resources–isn’t it always?

      [FT: Cargill acquires stake in Ukraine agribusiness (January 2014)

      Cargill, the US-based agriculture trading group, has doled out $200m for a stake in UkrLandFarming, Ukraine’s largest agribusiness holding, in a potentially far-reaching deal that sources said would see both groups partner up in future grain exports to China and other growing markets.

      The deal, for 5 per cent of the holding, boosts Cargill’s already strong trading presence in one of the world’s most promising agriculture commodity producers. It comes amid reports that China was increasingly rejecting imports of genetically modified US corn as it stepped up organic purchases from Ukraine.

      Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/04/kr590-keiser-report-ukraines-big-oil-big-angst/#DzeFWtTFYSTguAYR.99%5D

      • Cold N. Holefield April 20, 2014 at 11:49 am #

        I’ll take GMO over melamine any day. Or have you forgotten that the Chinese like to fortify their packaged manufactured food with melamine? And we’re to believe they’re interested in organic? Riiight.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 20, 2014 at 11:59 am #

        I don’t trust Max Keiser a red cent, not after his “Buy silver. Kill JP Morgan” campaign or after his peddling BitCoins.

        I wish it was so – about agricultural resources, but I doubt it. Everything US does lately is about US Dollar and US Treasury notes. Rather US would create instability everywhere, except North America and England o make Anglo-Saxon financial markets that much more attractive.

        Imagine what would a nice nuclear disaster in the middle of Europe and with the right winds at the moment do to West European markets?

    • Janos Skorenzy April 20, 2014 at 2:37 pm #

      How did he feel about Israeli soldiers? Or Russian Communist ones? Jews of his generation were famous for their ability to turn on a dime from pacifist to war hawk depending on the country in question. Just because they were Anti-American doesn’t mean they were Anti-Nation – unlike so many White Liberals of today.

  91. FincaInTheMountains April 20, 2014 at 12:27 pm #

    The best outcome everybody should wish for in Ukraine is Russian troops taking over and establishing some law and order in that f-cked up excuse for a country. They’d probably need just one battalion to start with, I am sure they’d end up entering Kiev with 5 divisions plus some local militia, all picked up on their way there.

    Unfortunately there is no chance Putin is going to do that, short of Kiev issuing orders to what remains of Ukrainian Air Force to start bombing the cities in the South East. Putin has enough other tools at his disposal to play the game carefully and pragmatically. Crimea was an exception due to its extreme strategic importance and huge reluctance of Russians to see American 5th fleet parked there.

    I just wish he would send some paratroopers to secure the nuclear power stations.

  92. Janos Skorenzy April 20, 2014 at 4:55 pm #

    http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/04/19/359181/ukraine-jew-registration-hoax-traced/

    Ok BRH? Got it?

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