JHK’s Three-Act Play
As the end-credits rolled for James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar, the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show — but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march.
More to the point, the depiction of our national character through the whole course of the film was of a thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature. Nice. And the final irony was that Cameron had used theatrical technology of the latest and greatest kind to depict America’s broader techno-grandiosity — as the army’s brute robotic warriors fell to the spears and arrows of the simple blue space aliens. Altogether, it was a weird moment in entertainment history, and perhaps in the American experience per se. No doubt audiences overseas will go wild with delight, too, but perhaps with a clearer notion of what they are clapping for than the enthralled masses of zombie Americans.
The infatuation with technology, and the disgusting cockiness that goes with it (so well-captured in Avatar), is but one facet of the psychosis gripping the nation — and by that I mean the profound detachment from reality. We have no idea what is happening to us and, naturally, no idea of what we are going to do. I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy. He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.) There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land.
This year, America can look for a nice lump of coal in its Christmas stocking. That lump will be called “the recovery.” This recovery consists of a massive self-deception, made up of accounting tricks and falsified statistics, with a sugar-coating on top of sheer disbelief that the outcome could be anything but a particular happy ending — namely, the continued levitation of the unsustainable. What is most amazing about Mr. Cameron’s holiday blockbuster is the explicit message that America is a society that deserves to be punished (and humiliated!) by others who manage their own relations with reality better than we do. I wonder how much that will secretly account for its popularity. I wonder what the leaders of China will make of it.
The other current embodiment of national character failure, Tiger Woods, golfer, has also dazzled the American public. Personally I find it much more interesting to learn that he was a really lousy tipper than that he got a lot of action on the side with opportunistic bar girls, porn stars, and other denizens of the sports-entertainment netherworld. Is it not also amusing that golf is even taken seriously as an athletic pursuit? I mean, why not pancake-flipping? Or dice? Or shooting rats at the landfill? This is the kind of knucklehead culture we have become after six decades of the softest life imaginable. Anyway, I’m not shedding any tears for Tiger. Even if all his endorsements dry up and his ex-wife takes him to the cleaners for a hundred million or so, he’ll still be left with enough cash to pay for porn stars and lobster tails until the end of time, especially if he keeps his tipping policy at its current level.
Next week I’ll put out my forecast for the coming year, 2010. But for now I’d like to leave readers with this Christmas present: a preview scene from the sequel to my novel of the post-oil American future, World Made By Hand….
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Thanks for the present!
“the depiction of our national character through the whole course of the film was of a thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature.”
Perfect. Bulls Eye. 10 ring. With an extra, super-size helping of stupid.
The something-for-nothing crowd is wondering what to bake for mulatto Santa coming down the chimney with Free Goods this week.
Happy Motoring to Hell.
“Is it not also amusing that golf is even taken seriously as an athletic pursuit?”
Have you ever played golf?
Columnist Howard Jacobson at The Independent also takes a swing at golf:
“There is no mystery in Tiger Wood’s behaviour. He did what he did because he could, and because unimaginable success and wealth, garnered on the back of a tiny talent for time-wasting – golf being a game which attests to the emptiness of life like no other – left him with nowhere else to go.”
Jim: How you weave magic and humor from our sorry state! And you’re right, most folks don’t have a clue how bad things are going to get.
Our experience with sleep-walking youth is at http://www.thenothingstore.com
In the pre-school class that my son attends, the school district requires the children to participate in some type of breakfast offering each morning.
This is partly because so many children don’t get breakfast at all. It’s also because so many children have no knowledge of the manners required to sit at a table and eat with others. Learning this is a part of the curriculum.
We have become a country of barbarians.
Have you ever tried flipping pancakes?
Jim, Golf, to me, is the equivalent of the old days. No hurry, nice walk, and peaceful as can be. Good times, good laughs, with good friends. Although your comments are not offensive to me, I would rather you use, say a football coach, as an example instead. Rude, obnoxius, and rather dumb , to say the least. Hanging around with other otherwise useless cronies, earring shopping, and appearing on any show hosted by a jock-sniffing brown noser. Kind of like your typical American know-it-all.
Are you suggesting that the portrayal of Americans as a “thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature” is in any way inaccurate?
Have you ever tried shooting rats at the landfill?
What worries me is that if Hollywood has its finger on the pulse, then “Avatar” and the film “Knowing” indicate that people vaguely hope for an total and sudden apocalypse that will involve extraterrestrial saviors or complete emigration from Earth. This syphons off the energy of many who do have at least an un-labeled fear that we’re running out of options, by making the direness of the situation so extreme that there’s nothing for the individual to do. Even “Wall-E” supported this passive view of a dark future.
The outcome of the Copenhagen talks clearly leaves it up to the individual to help speed the contraction of global commerce. It’s good for the planet and good preparation for peak oil to scale back and make noise with everyone around us about what we’re doing.
Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill.
What about the “sport” of horse racing? now there’s a “sport” for ya. Soccer is not much better than jai ali, sport-wise.
“The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him.”
Great. How is this even possible? How is it that nobody seems to be taking this seriously?
Our time is here, I guess. Good luck in 2010, Everybody.
http://freedomguerrilla.com
Re: Avatar
1) The movie opened in the UK last weekend, and was well received there as well.
2) A minor quibble – In the final scene, the defeated humans are lined up (under watchful guard) to board their spacecraft and depart the planet… hardly a “death march”, per se. The indigenous populace seemed magnanimous in victory, a fitting contrast with the corporate colonists they’d just bested.
James, you and I are on the same page. I had a conversation last night about how many Americans do not want to see themselves in any part of reality. They live wearing rose colored glasses. They are afraid to see themselves in reality because once there they must change and accept a lower standard of living, and real limitations that swirl around their lives. In addition to that, even the parents of adult children with their own kids avoid reality, therefore the entire family and extended family live in a non-reality based bubble.
This is the new America. I have not seen Avatar, but the new economy in this nation is a war economy. We are the predator nation with a military budget far exceeding other nation’s combined. The war profiteering economy is just another economic stimulus package meant for the likes of GE, General Dynamics and the rest who are big campaign contributors.
Obama believes War is Peace and Peace is War.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
If you find a boor at a party, odds are he’s the most-remembered person you saw there. He’s noticeable because of being unusual in his minority status.
Same for our society: You notice the “thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature” because they stand out from the majority of people.
True, they seem to represent government, but they don’t truly represent society as whole.
IMO, societies reflect the competency of the leadership. If such indeed be the case, it’s easy to see why this society is on a downhill course. This present group of Beltway Bandits is the most egregious example of corruption and greed that I’ve observed in over a half a century of voting in presidential elections–and what has gone before has not been all that impressive.
Possibly they recognize the validity of, “Recover to what?” and intend to get theirs while the getting is good. And in the meantime the society continues downhill…
‘Rat
I guess Andrew is very grateful for the present, James!!
Here is my comment again, since Andrew’s comment has been the one to appear.
James, you and I are on the same page. I had a conversation last night about how many Americans do not want to see themselves in any part of reality. They live wearing rose colored glasses. They are afraid to see themselves in reality because once there they must change and accept a lower standard of living, and real limitations that swirl around their lives. In addition to that, even the parents of adult children with their own kids avoid reality, therefore the entire family and extended family live in a non-reality based bubble.
This is the new America. I have not seen Avatar, but the new economy in this nation is a war economy. We are the predator nation with a military budget far exceeding other nation’s combined. The war profiteering economy is just another economic stimulus package meant for the likes of GE, General Dynamics and the rest who are big campaign contributors.
Obama believes War is Peace and Peace is War.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Perhaps the only way the American populace can confront reality is through the artifice of a moving picture. I have not seen the film, but based on JHK’s commentary apparently we, the US, are humiliated. I find that interesting itself. Is humiliation the only way we can learn a lesson? Obvious dysfunction is not enough, apparently. That speaks volumes.
I saw Avatar last night, in Berlin as it happens.
The blue aliens were obviously an amalgam of Native Americans – part Yanomamo with the ear-plugs, part Aztec/Maya with the jaguar skins, part Mohawk with the hair-dos.
My Israeli friend noted – it’s obviously about Iraq and Af-Pak.
I reponded – yeah, but the use of Native American aliens as the come-uppance for the military-industrial war machine was particularly adroit, like firing emotional arrows into the American breast.
PS those alien injun arrows were poison tipped.
I too went to see a movie this weekend in the blizzard. It was “The Road” http://www.theroad-movie.com/ based on the cormac mccarthy apocalyptic novel. I must say The world made by hand is positively hopefull compared to the story in The Road. While its never quite explained what the disaster was it does vividly come across that it wouldnt take much to push the fragility of our modern society over the edge. Harrowing to say the least.
Battle of Thermopylae or a crowbar, leverage matters. First World civilization is all about choke points: High tension lines from Canada, water siphons in California, Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan. Plug a coronary artery, freeze the Hudson with “Global Warming,” and what else matters?
Molassis can be as good as C4; eldritch stupidity triumphs over all: Washington’s overweening arrogance. Los Angeles cashiered 9% of its workforce, all aged Boomer senior employees, to flood the pay grades with Browns. Screwing patronage meat into the sockets is not indistingiushable from having expertise threaded. A little stupidity goes a long way. A lot goes much further.
PPS
Avatar is specifically about a resource war. Marines in the movie mention tours of duty on Earth in ‘Venezuela’ and ‘Nigeria’.
James Cameron is obviously a peak-oil-resource-war conspiracy theorist. He doesn’t believe it’s just about terrorism. So, hopefully, will Main St America this Xmas after seeing Avatar.
Verily, we have seen the monsters, met then enemy and IT IS US.
Oh well, cheer up! “Killing in the name of” is the top music single on UK music charts!
“…the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show — but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march..”
I have not, and do not, intend to watch this movie. However having said that, I don’t necessarily share your perception.
Perhaps there are still a few “Americans” left among us, who were applauding because they do not personally identify with being on the side of the so called “Free Market”, Capitalistic supporters of the Military Industrial Complex.
They may actually understand that the current paradigm is fast approaching its nadir and they are hopeful, (even if naively so) that some sort of benevolent mutated Phoenix will rise from the ashes to take its place.
Not all Americans are completely oblivious to reality…even if they sometimes try to escape from it by watching stupid movies.
Cheers!
“I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy. He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.) There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land.”
Was his degree was in Martian history?
I do find it rather difficult to believe (not that I doubt it)that someone with a degree in History from Yale University, could not at least give a general overview as to what the Monroe Doctrine was. My son has already learned about it in High School.
On the other hand GWB also graduated from Yale…
Portraying Americans (or their representative sub-culture; white men) as evil, stupid, or subservient is a popular plot device, with guaranteed results. It even works as a marketing tool:
http://awarebrain.com/2009/12/21/am-i-a-chauvinist/
Al sez:
“A little stupidity goes a long way. A lot goes much further.”
Couple that with the willful ignorance we see all around us, and you have a by-god, purely deadly course of events.
Pithy, fright-filled commentary there, Al… and rightly so.
Thanks for the preview, JHK; 2 copies guaranteed sold: one for the house, and one for our tiny local library.
Red State America thinks that we’re number one. Blue State America thinks that we’re dog shit, except for themselves who are of course really great, wise, compassionate etc. Not like those Red State yahoos. They think that they’re so great that they should lead America on a World Wide crusade for human rights-like the right to have abortions in Afghanistan for example. Red State America wants a crusade too, for Freedom, Justice, and the American Way. Also Oil and Opium perhaps.
So you see, they start from different places, but the Red and the Blue end up in the same place. They’re are few real differences between the Neo Conservatism of the Red and the Neo Liberalism of the Blue. Both camps are in denial about the ruling power structure which has its own agenda. Both believe the lies their respective representatives tell them. What differs is the marketing strategy. Woman’s rights works with the Feminist Blues but wouldn’t work with Blue Collar Reds. Getting those Terrorist Bastards works with Blue Collar Reds but is just seen as Patriarchical Nonsense by Feminist Blues. And Hillary is both a Dove and Hawk and has been for years. Her Feminist Base lets her get away with it.
The answer is not self hatred but self knowledge. And the answer does not lie with either party or philosophy. What is it? We have to tend our own Garden as Voltaire said. And our Garden must be both literal and metaphorical, the metaphor extending to our private psyches and our public squares.
Maybe it’s a typically American characteristic to not have a clue about the rest of the world. So, as a non American and as the son of immigrants from a European country that was poor, backward, gang and priest infested, that was and is so corrupt that even the cats have pimps, that invented fascism, that invaded neighbouring countries, that was instrumental in starting a war that killed 60 million, let me assure Mr Kunstler that Americans are the worst people on the planet except, of course, for all the others.
So Americans are “thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature”? Yes but everyone else is much worse. I live in Canada, the land of sneering, smirking sanctimonious shits that can’t stick a finger up its own ass without Americans holding our hand, the land of the oil sands and the place where hundreds of thousands of marginalized, disenfranchised native people live in craphole reserves in the middle of nowhere. Americans have sinned. So has everybody else. We point the finger at Americans for their racism but look at us. Canada exists at the suffrance of the US but having said that, it’s not Americans that have had the softest life imaginable, it’s us here in Canada and only because we lived under US protection without having to foot the bill. If not for Yankee drive and ingenuity this place would be sticks. If our southern neighbour had been Russia or China they would have eaten us, sucked our bones and tossed our carcasses into mass graves. The US is not the affliction, compared to everyone else the US is the solution. Mr Kunstler thinks otherwise only because he hasn’t had a close enough look at everyone else.
JK,
You’re way, way out of line posting this without a spoiler alert for Avatar. There is such a thing as common courtesy on the internet. I hope the response to my complaint in this thread is not going to be that anyone who goes to the movies to see a plot unfold is a contemptible rube.
Great line: “Is it not also amusing that golf is even taken seriously as an athletic pursuit? I mean, why not pancake-flipping? Or dice? Or shooting rats at the landfill? This is the kind of knucklehead culture we have become after six decades of the softest life imaginable.”
George Carlin’s classic rant about golf courses comes to mind.
Thanks for the chapter excerpt Jim. I’m saving my money for your new book and I hope you don’t allow Wallmart to sell it! Some of the above comments are entertaining, particularly those associated with the quintessential American corporate sport: GOLF. How did you forget to also mention poker which is also on Fox and ESPN sport channels as a sport?!!What planet is this anyway? You mentioned the Monroe Doctrine but forgot the Carter Doctrine. You should have given the poor Yalie a second chance. It’s up to all of us to try to spread the kunustler doctrine and its variants to the ignorant multitudes. Most of us are a lost cause but it’s worth the trouble and effort to get the news and the warning out. Some will listen and begin to prepare for a new reality.
Mr. Kuntsler is adept at pointing out where our cultural activities bely the state of our national psyche. Movies, music, theater, and literature all reflect our precarious situation, and the advice seems to be: die in the good fight and than get a job as one of the undead. Lots of openings.
That a news reporter with a Yale degree doesn’t know tha basics of our culture is not shocking anymore. We spend all our time staring at screens, for crying out loud. When we’re doing that, we’re not really getting much done. We’re predictably fat and stupid.
Boxing is the real sport. Strip down to your shorts and we’ll see who can kick the other guy’s arse. No pads or official replays, or tire changes, or penalty boxes. If you’re on steriods you’ll get knocked out in the first round.
So stop staring at screens so much. The answers are not there. Get in shape. Read a book. Take a hike. It’s still a pretty nice planet.
Golf: a waste of good pasture land.
Golf is a game, not a sport.
Around a half-century and more ago, now: Saw the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan: Almost three years’ worth. Then, a couple of years in Paris, wandering all over Europe. Been in Central America and Canada, and lived in or wandered through some 40 US states.
I just don’t have the same picture of this evil ol’ US that so many folks have. Sorry, that evil picture is just a bunch of overblown BS. I’m not claiming that we’re in any way perfection, but we’re one helluva lot better than a bunch of other countries I’ve seen.
Most of all this bad-mouthing reminds me of a kid who gets out of high school and goes off to cow college some forty miles from home. He graduates and comes back to the old home town, thinking he’s all cosmopolitan and sophisticated.
Mr. Cash,
You sir, said a mouthful. While I am not ready to castigate my brethren to the North I agree about you sentiments about those of us to the South.
America has been big, brash and at times incorrect. But we’ve shared a lot of our bounty over the years as well. And when I hear the words empire and America used in the same sentence I cringe. Save the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the hell are these colonies? For fuck’s sake we aren’t even evil enough to do an end zone dance and rip off all that Iraqi oil (Remember oil? I mean thats why Bush went into Iraq!). The Chinese have taken advantage of that little perk.
Now now, Jim, I’m an admirer of your work and suggest you refrain from alienating a good portion of your fan base by insulting a sport about which you obviously know nothing and that, Tiger notwithstanding, is one of civilization’s finest achievements.
Frankly, I just hope I’ll be able to play it again, after the fact, so to speak. If so, then perhaps I’ll write a novel about titled World Made by Handicap.
Jesus H Christ it was just a freakin movie! Have you ever heard of entertainment?
Why does everything with you have to be a statement with a message inside a freakin statement?
It was a holiday movie released when the college students are home for the holidays with all kinds of great visual and arual effects to help them enjoy their ‘high’ and get away from the freakin family for a few damn hours.
Merry Chrismass and Shut the Fuck Up about it.
I like JHK’s insight, and read it every week.
However, isn’t it only feeding the monster? The end-of-the-world pessimism can be depressing and alienating.
Women need more respect, education and social support systems to sustain the global civilization.
If there is a new “god” emerging from the global narrative, I hope it is a mother and/or a baby girl!
The sooner that technological civilization collapses the better … but it is already too late for humankind. The damage is already done and humankind’s fate is sealed.
The failure of the world’s leaders to take climate change, peak oil, overpopulation and environmental degradation seriously means the extinction of humankind.
But the pursuit of money trumps all other concenrs, including the survival of the species.
Capitalism must serve as Nature’s technique for paying a species to exterminate itself.
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
Well, you sent me to Wikipedia to look up the Monroe Doctrine. But then I don’t have any history degree from Yale. And thanks for the teaser from your sequel novel. It leaves me speculating who this bandit might be – whether he’s someone we might have been expecting since the first volume.
Dave said:
Portraying Americans (or their representative sub-culture; white men) as evil, stupid, or subservient is a popular plot device, with guaranteed results. It even works as a marketing tool
As a card-carrying member of the “white men” sub-culture, with honors befitting an aging middle-class dude of some 47-odd years, neither liberal nor conservative nor particularly independent, but self-educated in the ways of deep skepticism, cantankerous though mellow and clearly fading like the ink on the newsprint articles announcing my birth in 1962, I am perhaps qualified to respond to this “portrayal” you speak of, without guilt, but with something resembling the tired resignation of a moribund idealism.
Avatar, it seems, is yet another act of public self-flagellation, undertaken on our behalf for sins both real and imagined, a stunning act of schizoid atonement that combines the diabolic genius of technical proficiency with the pious sentimentality of a conscience-stricken wastrel. This digital rack is a carefully constructed feat of superior engineering, upon which our collective guilt reclines in exquisite artistry, a body laid out for a dazzling funeral dirge of critics’ wailing and frantic hair-pulling.
If the white guys squirm in their pews, who can blame them? Their whole life is flashing before their eyes in such brilliant color that they cannot focus on the hymn book anymore: the high holy songs of Manifest Destiny seem far away and remote now, like a parade passing away forever, the Fourth of July gone and usurped by some kind of pagan orgy, a demon’s rite of passage to a Newer World filled with ghosts that have more substance than all the achievements put to concrete and wire by every pale hand that came before.
Avatar is the white man’s dreaming of his own demise. Cameron himself, significantly white, must have spent years and years tossing and turning in the humid sheets of his deepest fears, dreaming the funeral of his own people, while seduced by the native charms of the deep blue anima leading him into a new body, a new shape to explore an alien world.
This alien world awaits us all, and if we white men cannot make the journey, there will be many others willing to take the trip.
Tiger should have taken a tip from Santa and stopped at three hoes.
Merry Christmas
HO Ho Ho and HNY to all.
Speaking of acts of public self-flagellation, watching Jon Stewart a few weeks ago, and they had a pretty funny skit.
The Indian Correspondent was doing a spot on the recent news that India sent a rocket around the moon or something. It was a pretty well done thing where the jokes were about how India was breaking out and the US would be answering the phone for their tech support soon. Funny stuff.
But the crowd was cheering a little TOO energetically. Like they were actively cheering the ascent of the developing world over dirty old you-know-who.
And I’m thinking, these fools are cheering the train that’s coming deliver a world or hurt on their asses.
I’m of the opinion that these people will become very unstable when the pain starts in earnest. They’ll go from enjoying public self-flagellation to lashing out violently in a flash. Be prepared.
Mr. Kunstler captures the essence of the modern American society better than anyone – a clusterfuck society propigated by the “Greatest Generation” who thought they had solved all problems and enjoyed by the “Baby Boomer” who just can’t control themselves.
Unfortuneately, the “13th Generation” has been influenced by the “Baby Boomers”. Hopefully they and following generations will get tired of socialism gone wild and return to the individualism of our founding fathers. If not, this is the fall of the Roman Empire all over again.
Nothing significant changes with the human race. We only had a very brief experience with the truly greatest humans to ever live at the end of the 18th century. It passed quickly!
Sfnate said: “Avatar, it seems, is yet another act of public self-flagellation, undertaken on our behalf for sins both real and imagined…”
More real than imagined.
Here is a list of the countries bombed by the United States since the end of the Second World War.
Note that these countries represent roughly one-third of the people on earth:
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46, 1950-53
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Laos 1964-73
Grenada 1983
Iraq 1991-
Iran 1987
Kuwait 1991
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2008
Sudan 1998
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002
Yugoslavia 1999
‘ self-educated in the ways of deep skepticism’
You turn a phrase better than JimK does!
I forgot yesterday’s attack on Yemen killing 63 civlians (28 children). U.S. Forces have been carrying out strikes on Yemeni suspected Al-Qaeda positions, which have killed many people over the last 6 months of conflict.
http://bit.ly/4GLO3g
So, add 2009 to Yemen in the country list.
The second comment on this thread, from “3rd Generation,” concurs with the post and quotes directly the passage regarding the “thuggish, cruel, cynical…stupid” elements of our culture.
He/she then goes on to refer to the president as “mulatto Santa.”
I wonder if the author is able to see the irony in his comment. If the culture suffers from a lack of self-awareness and excess hubris, that encapulates it nicely. Beyond the veiled racism and reference to the “something for nothing crowd”(the banksters, or the people they exploited? I’m guessing by his tone he means the latter), this shows why finding the common good in “commonwealth” is so difficult now.
Perhaps “3rd gen” should “Go galt” and let the less misanthopic out there find solutions.
1 out of 20 is bad…..’China 1945-46, 1950-53′
quite a bad track record.
so Asok…under dems?
under republicans?
give me more info…i know yugo was under a left dem! the rhine? or danube was radioactive.
Asia said: “so Asok…under dems? under republicans?”
Asia, these are equal opportunity bombings. The terrorism the USA rains down upon the world is done by both Democrats and Republicans (Presidents and Representatives) and they all vote together for the appropriations, Democrats and Republicans, militarists all.
And I have only listed countries bombed by the USA after WWII.
During World War II the United States likely murdered from 246,000 to 978,000 non-Americans, intentionally targeted civilian (non-combatant) populations.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM
Well said Vlad. Consciousness is the answer.
“I wonder what the leaders of China will make of it.”
Ahem, they wont be watching it! Their too busy plotting their immanent mastery of the world.
But, seriously @ Cash:
“If our southern neighbour had been Russia or China they would have eaten us, sucked our bones and tossed our carcasses into mass graves.”
Historically a bit off for two reasons; one China has never been an expansionist power, it has never sought to occupy forien countries, and has always stayed within its traditional historical borders; in fact, today China is actually slightly smaller than it historically was. Thru the centuries China has only expanded by actually being conquered rather than conquering. And then assimilating its conquers and their teratory – Mongels, Manchu, Turgegs, etc. (oh, and will people please give up on the Tebet thing, the region has been under chinese control for all but a little over one hundred years of its history – and even that was 1400 years ago – the Dalai Lama’s have been pawns of British and western imperial intrests in the area since 1904)
True America is not a ravenous monster, but was it really historically good friends with canada? Where, the hell, do you think Canadians come from? Many Canadians started of as American colonists who flead north. If Canada had not been under the protection of the British Empire who knows how manifest the destiny would have become?
>And I have only listed countries bombed by the USA after WWII.
Wanna make an omelette, gotta break some eggs. US military power IS the world’s policeman.
>…the Fifth Fleet has to steam out of the Gulf of Oman, abandoning the Saudis to fervent religious opposition leaders eager to settle old scores with repressive regimes that the U.S. protected, one after another, for 60 years. The lid comes off the whole global pressure cooker, capped by U.S. military power that’s financed by foreign governments that buy our debt and prop up the dollar. A dozen simmering conflicts erupt around the planet at once.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=138356#post138356
I actually lived in a world made by hand. When I was a rather young boy, we had a small farm and no wealth. The nearest town was so small we had only four digits in our zip code (a joke-this was in the 1940’s before zip codes). Our only powered machine was an old tractor. I harnessed a neighbor’s team of horses and worked the fields with them.
I hoed 20 acres of corn with a hand hoe, harvested wheat with an antique combine and harvested corn stalks with a sickle, shucked dry corn with sore hands, threw bales of hay on the wagon, man-handled them into the barn loft, carried large buckets of water to the threshing crew that used a steam-powered tractor for power, and I milked cows by hand twice a day. I cranked a corncob sheller and a cream separator by hand, and churned butter by hand. I walked to a one-room county school every weekday a total of one and a half miles round-trip, and hauled buckets of coal for the stove in the winter. Been there, done that, guys and gals.
In the winter we sat around a dining room table heaped with dry bean pods and shucked them for hours.
We were the last customer on a very long-distance-away electric supplier, so with every winter storm we were without electricity for an average of two days. I broke ice on the pond and dipped buckets of water for our cows twice a day. We worked in the barn and house by kerosene lamps and no radio for news or entertainment. We read books. We slept under a hodgepodge of blankets and the glass of water beside my bed was frozen solid when I woke up every winter morning. Large areas of old plaster broke free from the ceilings and walls that had no insulation. The 1880’s house was as drafty as a tree.
In all this I was very fortunate. I lived a life that today’s citizens can only fantasize about. It’s pictures in a history book to you; It’s a living memory for me. I say fortunate, because I am trained and psychologically armored for the world to come—a world of hand labor and aching backs. From experience I say, do not be afraid or depressed. It’s a wonderful world in its special way; clean air, blue skies, golden sunrise and sunsets, a world without obesity/heart attacks at 40, no poisons in our food and water, a well earned appetite and healthy food in abundance for the energetic and thrifty. Companionship with domesticated suppliers of milk, steaks, eggs, and fertilizer to keep your crops bountiful.
Give the future a chance; It’s beckoning us to a better life that accommodates the rightful needs of both humanity and nature.
“Wanna make an omelette, gotta break some eggs”
You know, in my lifetime, no one has ever asked me if it would be a good idea to make an omelette. (except Gene McCarthy in 1968, who I supported)
On ne peut pas faire des omelettes sans casser les oeufs] (attributed to Robespierre and Napoleon)
We are walking upon eggs, and whether we tread East or tread West, the omelet wiil not be made without breaking of some. (T.P. Thompson, _Audi Alteram Partem_, 1859)
SOURCE: Oxford Dictionary of Quotes
One more:
Want to get the USA to spend itself into bankruptcy and ruinous collapse, you gotta bring down a couple of towers. –Osama Bin Laden
http://bit.ly/8MOIE0
Growing up in a family where we composted since the 1950’s, I can tell you shooting rats at the landfill(or in the food dump behind the garage) is a worthy sport.
A couple rules should be posted:
.22 single shot rifles only.
Two categories: scope and open sights
5 gallon bucket for seating
Each contestant will have a 25 yard, 50 yard, and 100 yard shot
Nice post, Jim.
Yeah, Wall-E was not the great wake-up call that everyone reviewed it as, it was a great depressing tranquilizer, about letting technology save us and save the world for us.
Everyone, if you are in Massachusetts or know anyone who is, WRITE ME IN for the Senate seat on January 19th. I will immediately introduce a bill that will change the course of the country away from a numb empty faith in technology and make sure we re-scale, re-localize, and de-globalize.
http://writeinjohnhowardforsenate.com
I’ve been writing a novel for about 10 years now (when the spirit moves me and time permits) that is a “black tale” even in the title, and “Avatar” was immediately familiar.
In it, a “primitive people” (they are engineered animal/hominids, but that is just a device) confront a near future post-oil-post-civilization man and … eats them. Literally. Various kinds and durations of warfare make up an estimated 900 pages. It ends well (even beautifully depending on your definition) but on the whole looks unblinking at our own failures and collapse, is pro-nature, and is unabashedly predator-embracing.
As soon as I saw a clip from “Avatar” I knew what the problem would be because I have written around and through the problem for 10 years:
How do you depict the defeat of business-as-usual — including most of modern life — in a way that others will not find immediately off-putting, and at the same time eventually turns them around to seeing what they are doing as self-destructive in the literal self? We are very much like cannibals eating our own young on a daily basis. We are the predator. But we don’t see it and likely won’t ever.
For me as a writer it has not been an easy task. I think I have managed it through a number of devices and characterizations and by placing the characters in situations where they must fight their way into a future of their own while honoring life and liberty in any species wherever they find it, having been stripped of liberty themselves. The themes took 10 years to define because they were fiendishly hard to get a grip on. But it remains a bleak and disturbing story and I doubt seriously it will ever see print.
Though with “Avatar” in theaters, I am somewhat more confident.
Perhaps I should finish it and see.
cougar
As a white man I would be more than happy to bail out of the Af-Paki area and the next time Pakistan and India haul out their atomic bombs to throw at each others cities we can all just sit back and watch the fireworks. Then all of the america haters will have plenty of action to keep their attention for years to come.
During World War II the United States likely murdered from 246,000 to 978,000 non-Americans, intentionally targeted civilian (non-combatant) populations.
A sober and dedicated accounting of the human toll always reveals a staggering sum, but I find that the numbers begin to lose their meaning when they reach quantaties so far beyond any calculus of reason it almost seems obscene to even speak of it.
As we all know, aggrieved parties from all sides will produce similar tables. The geography of violence extends beyond political boundaries.
The political affiliations of our most ruthless killers are less important to me than the ways in which their methods and techniques reveal the deep psychosis of a system that must harvest flesh in order to fuel and perpetuate its continued expansion. It seems that the machinery of conquest gradually perverts the personalities of those who ride it into unexplored places. The Manifest Destiny machine was a monstrous contraption that carried millions of passengers into a killing field of such brutality that we are all now reduced to shivering around these little bon fires of luminous insight, wondering who stole the sky with its moon and stars–and what kind of dawn awaits us, as we stand here in perfect darkness, abused and abandoned by the very myths and stories and heroic struggles that brought us into existence?
I guess the question is, how do we evolve beyond our cannibal instinct, our serial-killing appetite for the ritual sacrifice of human beings who dare to resist the ruthless efficiency of our mechanical beasts?
At the top of every pyramid of power stand high priests wielding sharp knives. The surgical precision of these butchers is the crowning achievement of any society that elects its technicians to rule with absolute and cruel efficiency. When the heart is taken away and fed to the dogs, only a cold corpse remains, blue and unresponsive and perverted to the task of entertaining the living dead with a ghastly dance. Such are the entertainments of today, in the age of the machine.
In his “Golf Courses for the Homeless,” George Carlin commented: “When the United States is not invading some sovereign nation—or setting it on fire from the air, which is more fun for our simple-minded pilots—we’re usually busy ‘declaring war’ on something here at home,” i.e. “a war on crime, a war on poverty, a war on litter, a war on cancer.” There’s no war on homelessness, “because there’s no money in it.”
Carlin proposes: “I know just the place to build housing for the homeless: golf courses. It’s perfect. Plenty of good land in nice neighborhoods that is currently being squandered on a mindless activity engaged in by white, well-to-do business criminals [and the occasional Tiger Woods] who use the game to get together so they can make deals to carve this country up a little finer among themselves.”
There’s individual, national and even species karma. My own and my nation’s and species’ karma seem at about all-time lows.
It’s not that Americans or rich people who hoard resources the poor could be using are inherently bad, they just become bad in proportion to how much they bomb other nations or hoard.
We think we’re all that because we abolished slavery 2350 years after Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, did.
Slavery is still practiced under other names in much more clever ways to lessen our guilt. Now most of the slaves are wage-slaves in other nations we’ll never see.
I’ve written about most sports for national publications, and I’d rank golf just below shuffleboard and curling for the courage and athleticism needed, and by that I mean hair curling.
>…the deep psychosis of a system that must harvest flesh in order to fuel and perpetuate its continued expansion.
Dude, I think you’ve got a problem with the idea of conflict. There’s always been conflict, there always will be. There’s conflict between animals, there’s conflict between plants. Why should humans be any different. Is it even possible for humans to be any different?
And there is nobody ‘harvesting flesh’. Violence is a result of conflict. Back to top.
Is it even possible for humans to be any different?
And there is nobody ‘harvesting flesh’. Violence is a result of conflict. Back to top.
The difference, I suppose, has to do with how efficient (some) people are as killers. Using technology. And justified through contorted self-serving arguments that obscure and hide the real toll inflicted on people and the planet.
Humans are different–it’s so elementary it seems odd to even have to state it–because they are capable of moral judgments. Where they lack this capacity, they are profoundly disturbed and dangerous.
I think much of what plagues modernity is a cynical nihilism that has jettisoned moral judgment in favor of a kind of perversely twisted naturalism.
You know: Birds do it, bees do it, so why can’t I and screw you, too.
That kind of attitude is deeply troubling and seems rampant in some circles, high and low.
As for harvesting flesh, the abuses heaped upon surplus labor amount to the same thing. They are consumed in the fires spinning the turbines of the global economy.
Obviously, I’m not talking about a Soylent Green-type madness, although we may be closing in on that scenario, too.
YOUR QUOTE :
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“I would be more than happy to bail out of the Af-Paki area and the next time Pakistan and India haul out their atomic bombs to throw at each others cities we can all just sit back and watch the fireworks.”
–
Yeah, me too. But before we agree on that new-age entertainment, please reflect on the article on “Local Nuclear War” page 74 of the January 2010 SciAm. And then, check out the “Year Without a Summer” – to wit 1816 – where lakes remained frozen in July, crops failed and other bad things made early Americans hungry. The volcano was Mount Tambora in Indonesia, and lakes stayed frozen in the good ole USA half a world away. Their volcano, our frozen hell.
–
You might want to reconsider your little bit of schadenfreude – just a bit – and don’t consider this a diss – I engage in the same fantasies, even your AfPak fantasy from time to time. Kills time in the winter . . .
–
SnowieGeorgie
–
Man, I wish I had the ability to have a evil eye.
Three times in the last week, I’ve had Mexicans come to my house and try to buy my chickens and goats. They won’t take “no” for a permanent answer.
I’m glum about what happens when people get hungry and the store shelves are bare.
Don’t say get a gun. I can’t shoot, and I don’t want one.
wasnt there a star wars movie about some primitive animals that looked like teddy bears defeat the evil
empire? wasnt there the same commentary about uhmerika getting it’s a$$ handed to itself?
what if there is a collapse of western civilization? that would mean no more posts from the “curmudgeon of
armageddon”, that dobby mooge JHK. BRING IT ON!!!
so the collapse of technology will have that unintended side effect. no more posts from JHK.
“it’s a wonderful life”… a mean nasty twisted old man….a quote about potter but i guess that could apply to….SN@RX!
Call Hollywood and tell them you want a cut of tonights ticket sales…. you just convinced me to go see Avatar.
Bostons stores were all the bustle Saturday, there were a lot of people trying to shop, but there was a serious lack of clerks to help them (?!?) Amazing, really. The Boarders in Downtown Boston had three cashiers on duty, and a line of 200 people trying to buy books… there were 5 unused cash registers. There were people shoplifting books like crazy and no one to stop it or to care at all.
Today at Suburban Empire we are missing George W. Bush…. not his policies! His ability to get things done.
http://www.suburbanempire.com/front
Suburban Critical, Empire Chronicle.
It all boils down to survival instinct, which all animals possess. As humans, we are self aware, we are intelligent, and we have a conscience, but at the end of the day, we are ANIMALS. We have invented religions to deny this fundamental truth.
As animals, it is in our self interest to survive long enough to reproduce, and to do that often. To do that we need resources. Why should I perform back breaking labor to produce resources when I can simply take yours? Granted, you will resist me, and if I try to take ALL your resources, I will likely have to kill you to get them, hazarding injury or death myself.
However, if I only take a small portion of your resources, and your neighbor’s resources, and the next neighbor’s resources, and so on, you are less likely to resist me, and indeed offer up some of your resources in return for your security. So it will be with your neighbors also.
Once I have enough of your resources to provide for my needs and those of my cadre of loyal thugs, it will occur to me that this works well. It provides me with liesure time, and ready access to reproductive opportunities. It is in my interest not to kill you, so long as you keep offering up a portion of your resources. If you refuse to comply, I kill you and take ALL your resources, and probably your womenfolk. It is in your interest to stay alive and protect your family, so you grumble, but you keep giving me your resources
It sure would be nice if I could apply this on a grander scale. All I need to do is get you to help me kill the fellow over the hill who has the same racket going on, and rob my people AND his. I do this by promising you a portion of his resources, or some form of punishment in lieu of that. So you go along with it, and on, and on…..
Such is the nature of humanity.
As long as there are resources, and people who don’t like to work, we’re screwed. Unless, perhaps we are fortunate enough to kill such miscreants as soon as soon as they rear their greedy, thieving heads, but we don’t like that. It’s inhumane.
Besides, we might need someone to protect us from the miscreant over the hill.
I’m another who’s stared at the south end of a north-bound plow horse. I figured out pretty quickly that the view doesn’t improve. 🙂
I’ve been doing the by-hand thing for a long time. Watching the can’t-do folks can be its own form of entertainment. One thing for sure, life sure is easy when you don’t have to hire somebody else to do for you.
‘Rat
[A Message from “PB” (President Barack, or Peanut Butter)]:
Early this morning, the Senate made history and health reform cleared its most important hurdle yet — garnering the 60 votes needed to move toward a final vote in that chamber later this week.
This marks the first time in our nation’s history that comprehensive health reform has come to this point. And it appears that the American people will soon realize the genuine reform that offers security to those who have health insurance and affordable options to those who do not.
I’m grateful to Senator Harry Reid and every senator who’s been working around the clock to make this happen. And I’m grateful to you, and every member of the Organizing for America community, for all the work you have done to make this progress possible.
After a nearly century-long struggle, we are now on the cusp of making health insurance reform a reality in the United States of America.
As with any legislation, compromise is part of the process. But I’m pleased that recently added provisions have made this landmark bill even stronger. Between the time when the bill passes and the time when the insurance exchanges get up and running, insurance companies that try to jack up their rates do so at their own peril. Those who hike their prices may be barred from selling plans on the exchanges.
And while insurance companies will be prevented from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions once the exchanges are open, in the meantime there will be a high-risk pool where people with pre-existing conditions can purchase affordable coverage.
A recent amendment has made these protections even stronger. Insurance companies will now be prohibited from denying coverage to children immediately after this bill passes. There’s also explicit language in this bill that will protect a patient’s choice of doctor. And small businesses will get additional assistance as well.
These protections are in addition to the ones we’ve been talking about for some time. No longer will insurance companies be able to drop your coverage if you become sick and no longer will you have to pay unlimited amounts out of your own pocket for treatments that you need.
Under this bill families will save on their premiums; businesses that would see their costs rise if we don’t act will save money now and in the future. This bill will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of the program. Because it’s paid for and gets rid of waste and inefficiency in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade.
Finally, this reform will extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who don’t have it.
These are not small changes. These are big changes. They’re fundamental reforms. They will save money. They will save lives.
And your passion, your work, your organizing helped make all of this possible. Now it’s time to finish the job.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Agreed,
This movie is a prognosticator of things to come. By denying that our military might has no energy concequences, we doom our government to the scrap heap of history. In essence, we invite our enemies to take avantage of our thermodynamic cognitive dissonance. This movie portrays that weakness. By exploiting our energy asymmetry in warefare our weaker enemies exaust us to the point of economic self destruction. It is such a wonder how artists can see outside the box and hand us the future to gnaw on. thanks for bringing this to everybody’s attention.
Yes, we are animals, but we are also more; we are also rational. Dogs, rats and cats cant stop themselves from killking, and they cant negotiate with what they are about to eat. But we can, and you know we can. We can stop ourselves and we can simply talk to people and see if their might be a happier way to go about things; sans conflict. It’s not idealism, it doesnt require idealism; just a little common sense, self restraint, and to talk AND listen. There is always a way out of a tricky situation – there is always a way to solve the problem – but you actually need to DO IT, not talk about it. What could be more simple than talking – it requires no methodology. What could be eazier than listening – it requires no special gift. All you have to do is start, and you have all you need to start – everything else is an excuse.
And dont get Cynical, problems we have, yes. And neither you nor i will solve them, but it has to start somewhere. I’m not trying to be aspirational: it’s just a fact, everything has to come from somewhere – noting comes from nothing. Even if there is a great crash; surviving it still has to come from somewhere (wanting to / being able to), and not simply to give up and wait for death. The smartest thing i ever heard was “cynicism is the ultimate weapon of our enemies” it was Robert Reich, in fact.
So we have problems, what’s the solution: easy we all go back to living in our means? Not easy, you say, because people wont listen. Well you’re here – so you understand – and you’re listening. Right, problem number two: well, we’re geniuses, but everyone else is an asshole, they wont listen, they dont care. For a start, let’s not be full of shit; we are not geniuses, we do not have crystal balls. How do you know they wont listen, have you tried convincing them? No, you just gave up, coward. – Oh, it’s not worth trying anything, nothing will work! – Do you know depression is the greatest decadence! People may indeed be asholes, but at some point in history we managed to stop killing peopel to get what we want. Some how, some way, the assholes where convinced that that was no longer a good idea. So boil this down, and think about it logically: is not the best way to avoid dying in a colapse, to avoid the colapse? futher, if assholes must be convinced, and they have been in the past, therefor, is not the best way survive a colapse to find out how to convince assholes of things. (this really cant be hard clergy convince the biggest asholes going of the most implausible things every sunday) If it might be hard to convince assholes of things, would it rationally be harder than digging the earth with your hands and trying to survive a winter without the grocery store?
But i know, waiting for colapse is just so much easier because, then the decision is made for you and you dont have to think, or employ your brain at all, or try to solve or deal with anything. You’ll have no choice – what a relief. Saying ‘we’re all animals’ is just another lazy ass bullshit about avoiding facing up to things – but come twenty years from now when you’r digging twenty hours a day you’ll wonder “why didn’t i try and do something to avoid this – guess i was just too big into denyal to think how bad’t be after.” It’s the inverted ‘Jimminy Cricket syndrome’. Jimminy Cricket syndrome runs: if i just wish hard enough my dreams can come true. Inverse Jimminy Cricket syndrome runs: well if cant get what i want by wishing hard enoungh there just isn’t any point.
The general level of ignorance is mind boggling. I had to explain Peak Oil to an owner of a bike shop. He was clueless. One of my customers looked at me like I’d grown another head when I told her that the A/P war is about oil and gas and the pipeline to get it to market. We’re doomed.
“Dude, I think you’ve got a problem with the idea of conflict. There’s always been conflict, there always will be. … Violence is a result of conflict.”
There has always been conflict. Yes.
There will always be conflict. Maybe.
Violence is a result of conflict. Very rarely.
Example: Western Europe these last 60 years has resolved conflict peacefully. How many times has war broken out between Portugal and its neighbors? France and Germany? Belgium? Switzerland? Austria? England? Scotland? Iceland? Spain? Denmark? Norway? Sweden? Anywhere in Western Europe?
Has the lack of war in Western Europe been due to a lack of conflict. No.
Conflict can be resolved without violence. Western Europe is the proof.
“Unless, perhaps we are fortunate enough to kill such miscreants as soon as soon as they rear their greedy, thieving heads, but we don’t like that. It’s inhumane.”
I think “inhumane” is a religious term. Something designed to allow us to deny our responsibilities to our own people, by changing society.
“If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat.” I don’t have a right to take away a miscreant’s motivation. Only his acts are actionable.
You may have already seen it, but if not here’s a great golf skit by Robin Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDQd49rEF_0
“Humans are different–it’s so elementary it seems odd to even have to state it–because they are capable of moral judgments. Where they lack this capacity, they are profoundly disturbed and dangerous.”
The most dangerous humans are the ones capable of moral judgments: they might decide that killing you is the moral thing to do. And there is nothing in nature that can prove them wrong.
“Don’t say get a gun. I can’t shoot, and I don’t want one.”
Then you will be one of the conquered. Sorry. Maybe you will be kept around to tend the animals.
Here’s a great golf skit by Robin Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDQd49rEF_0
“at some point in history we managed to stop killing peopel to get what we want”
When was this? I’m afraid my history education skipped over that part… although it did cover the Monroe Doctrine.
“Conflict can be resolved without violence. Western Europe is the proof.”
You mean, having the United States as the overwhelming guardian/cop to keep the Soviets out? Western Europe has dedicated its economies towards providing comfortable living for the inhabitants, which helps keep the lid on. And still there are riots from time to time.
I just dropped by to say Happy Holidays Clusterfuckers, and that I’m with Shut The Fuck Up, it’s just a movie, so Shut The Fuck Up and enjoy it already.
How many moron Happy Holidays ya thinks yas got?
According to the popular Chinese book “Currency Wars”, the ultimate shareholders of the US Federal Reserve are the US commercial banks, such as Citibank, J.P.Morgan Chase, Chemical Bank, etc.
It’s all a shell game.
Um, the Associated Press athlete of the year is a NASCAR driver. Say what you will of golfers, but I think that’s a telling statement. Ya bo.
“Don’t say get a gun. I can’t shoot, and I don’t want one.”
“Then you will be one of the conquered. Sorry. Maybe you will be kept around to tend the animals
As if guns are the only way to defend yourself.
What a poverty of imagination. Ask the Nazis how it went when they wanted to conquer the unarmed Danes.
http://www.genekeyes.com/SNVDCO.html
From 1966 to 1999 nonviolent civic resistance has played a critical role in 50 of 67 transitions from authoritarianism.
Recently nonviolent resistance has led to the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Soviets, Nazis, whoever, are powerless without the consent of the populace.
Hi Dr. Doom,
Thanks for dropping in and asking:
“How many moron Happy Holidays ya thinks yas got?”
This is our last holiday season. The earth may not even exist in one year.
Enjoy your last holiday season!
Saw the film today. A couple of observations: the audience is put in the position of cheering for the Greenies against the Marine Corps. Plus, a feminist pilot/character is applauded mentally for deserting the Corps (“I didn’t sign up for this…”).
Also, the spiritual force behind the cause of the Greenies (even though their body color is blue, like massive, muscled Smurfs), is a goddess. A feminine deity unseen…like Earth: Gaia.
The substitution of an implied gnostic, paganistic goddess reveals the true spiritual falsity of the gnostic, that is, seeming care and priority for the good of mankind and earth, but underlying motives that change to death and betrayal, a forsaking of absolute truth for variables of interpretation.
The film is positioned just right for the brainless kudos of a country gone totally amiss to values of constancy and moral regeneration. We are on a financial and moral Kamikaze flight jabbering happily about a trip to Vegas.
Happy landings.
Hollywood is a mental pollutant. Don’t let it into your mind.
So divorced from reality it is pathetic. Destructive to our youth and society as well.
Read good books and periodicals, converse with intelligent people, watch good documentaries.
bravo– smarter than _the economist_, sharper pen then hunter s. thompson or p.j. o’rourke, yet, amazingly, this isn’t cynical. there is an underlying humanity, a punk of optimism.
great blog.
The film seems to have Hindu themes, starting with the title.
Blue skin? Who has blue skin in Hinduism? Krishna, the flute-playing, dancing, blue-skinned, “all attractive one” (the literal meaning of Krish-na)
Avatar? Central to Hindu thinking is the Avatar, the idea of God descending into the world of three dimensions, a Vaishnava doctrine.
Clusterfuck? Clusterfuck is a central idea in Hinduism and it is called Kali-yuga, the age we are in, the age of Iron, of quarrel, of hypocrisy.
The Hindu solution in an age of Kali-yuga: simply by chanting the holy name of the Lord one can become free of material bondage. (Bhagavata Purana 12.3.51)
I hereby declare I’m going Bhakti!
Om Namah Shivaya!
HARE KRISHNA!
Om… shanti, shanti, shanti.
Inquiring mind said: “Hollywood is a mental pollutant. Don’t let it into your mind.”
I agree. Those movies like Die Hard, the Schwarzeneger movies, the Mel Gibson movies… all trash!
Passion of the Christ was pornographic sadism, disgusting.
Om Namah Shivaya!
HARE KRISHNA!
Om… shanti, shanti, shanti.
Soon they’ll stop asking and just take them. If you aren’t willing to fight, then what you have will be taken from you. The Mexicans call it the Reconquista-does that clue you in on what’s happening? Countless Whites along the border have faced intimidation, trespass, and wanton vandalism-outdoor faucets left on, gates opened, dogs poisoned etc. Some have stood up for their rights and been murdered by the drug thugs. And what have our Leaders in Goverment and Media (the fourth estate) done for these sorely beseiged citizens? Slander them by calling them racists.
As a basher of all things American and Western, you are getting a karmic lesson. In time you may even come to appreciate the Traditions of the Country you have trashed all your life. But it will be tardy and in vain. Your kind have triumphed and that America is passing away. What replaces it will be something between Mexico and Brazil-unliveable for poor and middle class Whites. Congratulations. You have been a pall bearer at your own funeral.
Ok, practical advice. If you wont fight, then you have to join them. Marry a senorita and start having bambinos. Learn Spanish too of course, but sex is the poor man’s opera and the universal language. Just start having kids and you’ll fit right into the “culture”. Hope you’re not gay or anything like that. You don’t want to do this either? You should have thought of that a long time ago. Don’t say you weren’t warned, you were. Practical advice: run away then like the defeated pale face you are-just like the Whites in Avatar. See, you are part of a trend so feel good about that. Your whole cohort are gonna be running soon-right to the Slave Markets.
Evil Brahmins like you were predicted to arise in Kali Yuga-lovers of self, preaching caste mixture and irreligion. You and your much greater bretheren have already infiltrated Christianity, making it nothing more than a system of “social justice”-a euphemism for Communism. You would never have the discipline, but some men like you actually spent years becoming priests with the sole intent of corrupting the Catholic Church. The Communist Bella Dodd testified to this when she renounced Communism for the Church. Tear down the boundaries and borders, everything is ONE! The United States is the same as Mexico, get rid of the border. Dumb people are just as smart as smart people. Smart people are just as dumb as dumb people. Put the smarties out in the fields and the Somalis into University Chairs. Women are the same as men, not equal-the same. So what does it matter who you love? An asshole is no different than a vagina. It’s all ONE.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing cannot sustain a civilization or even life itself. The End wont be long in coming. We will at least have the satisfaction of seeing the smug looks on their smarmy sanctimonious faces fade and be replaced by looks of horror as the smirking barbarians approach. See my above to Wage Laborer for more on this consolation.
Did not God promise David that he would cause his enemies to fall into confusion and humiliation? That is the kind of God we need, a God of Battles, of Hosts. Not the Androgynous Blue Homo that Asoka preaches or the Big Mamma that he adores and fears.
Note: the “real” Krishna was not only a great Lover of Women, but the Srimad Bhagavatam presents Him as fearsome warrior and grave counselor. He tried to mediate between the warring clans. When rejected, he said for them to fight. No pacifism here. He told the Kauravas that you can have Me or my kinsmen the Vrishnis. They chose the army. Arjuna chose Krishna altho He did not fight. When he drove the confused Arjuna out between the armies, it was there that he told Arjuna to give up his fear and kill those who were already as good as dead. This long sermon is known as the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord’s Song.
Likewise, David was a poet, (he wrote most of the psalms) a lover of many women, and a Dancer. He was also a warrior who struck terror into the hearts of his enemies. A complete man, one who waits upon the Lord and was not too big to repent even publicly. A complete man is not a nice guy, or rather not just a nice guy. He is like Paul Hill, of whom the World was not worthy.
“the explicit message that America is a society that deserves to be punished (and humiliated!) by others who manage their own relations with reality better than we do. I wonder how much that will secretly account for its popularity.”
You miss one of the key points here: that this has ALWAYS been the case. Americans hate empire, and always fight against it, whether it is in Star Wars, Avatar, Viet Nam, South America, or the moon. This was a battle day 1 of the nation, fought out in architecture (Federal period) literature (Twain and Hemingway get the upper hand over epic American snobs) and yes in movies too.
This is why we have the world’s first secret empire, because the American people won’t stand for it, so they have to be “handled” by their power-brokers who can only proceed with empire by keeping them fully in the dark. And as the reality of power and empire come out in Clusterf*ck ’08, they begin to fight it again.
Now this is like being a good person, but also an addict, where you want and need it to end, but can’t quite get up the muster to give up your world to go clean–and Mr. Prescription-maker struggles to keep it that way, with you weak and dazy and your fortune in his long-fingered control. It’s an old story, played out many times by many kings. But as long as there is goodness left, he still writhes and fights, self-destructive as a way to end what he doesn’t like, and this is the root of our own self-destruction, in drugs, dissipation, and consumption. We don’t WANT it to go on. We WANT it to end. But when it ends, it will be a nightmare of unspeakable proportions, and it’s hard to get enthused enough to pull your OWN d*mned plug, when you’re the one lying on the gurney, on drip feed.
Americans hate empire. We will always root for the rebels, will always fight it–even if the only way we can fight it is suicidal self-destruction, a withdraw of our own lives from support of empire.
All golf courses should be fenced off and cattle and sheep turned into them for grazing!!
I have sound economic reasoning for this statement! It will contribute to the aggregate production of beef and mutton therefor lowering the cost to the consumer and also put the idiot that is chaseing the little white ball around to doing something productive!
You all could get some “learnin” from FARMACRES! He has experience a world made by hand! But better do it quick! He has got to be 80 just like my father and when the mentor is dead, who will you ask how to do it?? JHK?? He just writes about it! It is going to be just like war, everybody thinks they know something about the monster, but until you really crawl up the mountain, and meet the damn thing, your just blowing hot air!!
Since that September 11, Hollow-wood has embarked on a variety of apocolyptic themes that seem to tap into a perverse frisson of what it must feel like for those who have it all to lose everything. I have given up Hollow-wood for Lent. The fat-cats that run the place have slipped their “Progressive” agenda into every film project they finance. In the last film I watched, Julie and Julia, they beat me over the head once again with liberal fascism…..a story about cooking for Pete’s sake!! I am writing a screenplay, similar to Jurassic Park, where a scientist exhumes Joseph McCarthy, clones his DNA, then unleashes the Unamerican pit bulls on these media fascists. This movie has a very happy ending.
Jaego said: “If you wont fight, then you have to join them. Marry a senorita and start having bambinos. Learn Spanish too of course”
Jaego, drop your false identifications and your fears will drop also.
When you know who you are you can allow others to be who they are.
Oye, gringo pendejo, me gusta lo que dices de juntarse con los otros en vez de pelear con ellos.
Afortunadamente ya tuve la vasectomia y no puedo tener niños, pero ¿casarme con una señorita? … ¡Sí se puede!
Tienes toda la razón sobre el asunto de la reconquista. Somos 12 millones de seres humanos. Repito 12 millones de seres humanos, no “ilegales” … y no vamos a ninguna parte, gringo rabioso.
Esta es nuestra tierra. Estuvimos aquí antes de la llegada de los españoles y estaremos aquí siempre porque es de nosotros. Aprende a vivir en paz con los demás y no sufres tanto por pendejadas.
¡La raza unida, jamás será vencida!
Raza translates as “people”, not race.
Gee, Jim, you should be praising golf and golf courses. In some cases, its the only green space around for miles. Of course, only the rich can afford to tread on its lushness; the average schlub can only look at from a distance. And have you ever tried to shoot rat golfers?
“I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy. He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.) There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land.”
My sixteen year old son, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, knows what the Monroe doctrine is. Apparently Yale can’t teach him anything.
The convention is to write “SPOILER ALERT!”before giving away the plot, especially the ending of a story, so readers can choose to skip over it. I was surprised, but the trailer pretty much let me know how the movie plays out. My son’s language for how awesome the 3D technology is, is unprintable. I’ll be paying the premium ticket price to see it in 3D Imax.
“A couple of observations: the audience is put in the position of cheering for the Greenies against the Marine Corps. Plus, a feminist pilot/character is applauded mentally for deserting the Corps (“I didn’t sign up for this…”).”
The earth soldiers on Pandora were mercenaries, not Marines, working for Corporate Earth. It stated that clearly when he wheeled himself off the shuttle.
I’m buying stock in Blackwater. Apparently, they have a long and prosperous future.
Jaego said: “When rejected, he said for them to fight. No pacifism here.”
No pacifism, but no black-ops either, or surprise-attack drone-bombers against those who have no drone-bombers.
The battle is initially fought according to the standards of Kshatriya etiquette: actual combat takes place only in the daylight. In the evening, all warriors mix in friendship. One-on-one combat only takes place among equals. Horsemen do not attack soldiers who are only on foot. Warriors in chariots only fight with others in chariots. Those retreating for any reason are not attacked, nor are those sitting in a yoga posture. If someone drops their weapon, they are left alone, and musicians, conch blowers, and civilians–all are immune to the surrounding warfare. Animals, too, are never killed deliberately, though if, in the course of battle, they happen to fall, it is overlooked.
Any abuse of dharma was according to Krishna’s plan. It was a necessary evil, one that allowed dharma’s true virtue to emerge with full force.
Saving the Pandava clan from extinction reestablished the cosmic order yet again.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti…
Hare Krishna!
“:: Oye, gringo pendejo, me gusta lo que dices de juntarse con los otros en vez de pelear con ellos.
Afortunadamente ya tuve la vasectomia y no puedo tener niños, pero ¿casarme con una señorita? … ¡Sí se puede!
Tienes toda la razón sobre el asunto de la reconquista. Somos 12 millones de seres humanos. Repito 12 millones de seres humanos, no “ilegales” … y no vamos a ninguna parte, gringo rabioso.
Esta es nuestra tierra. Estuvimos aquí antes de la llegada de los españoles y estaremos aquí siempre porque es de nosotros. Aprende a vivir en paz con los demás y no sufres tanto por pendejadas.
¡La raza unida, jamás será vencida!::
I hear, gringo asshole, like what you say to join itself with the other instead of to fight with them.
Luckily I already have had a vasectomy and I cannot have children, but marry to me with one young lady? … Sure! if possible!
You are right on the subject of the ‘recapture’. We are 12 million human beings. I repeat, 12 million human beings, not “illegal”… and we aren’t going anywhere, rabid gringo.
This is our land. We were here before the arrival of the Spaniards and will be here always because it is our being. Learn to live peacefully with the others and you won’t suffer so much from bullshit.
The united race, never will be overcome.
—————–
One of the major differences between the European-Americans and the rest of us is when they have problems (like being unable to understand a foreign language), they SOLVE their problems. Then they SHARE these solutions freely with us.
For example, the above passage was translated from Spanish to English using the FREE internet translator (did I forget to mention that the internet is also free?) located at http://www.systranet.com.
When the Aztecs create a society as advanced as the gringos have, and they SHARE it freely with the rest of the world, then I will be impressed by ‘la reconquesta’. Until then, es todos pendejadas. (It’s all just brown-assed bullshit).
Thanks for the advice. Note: I’m not male, nor gay. I don’t dislike Mexicans. I grew up in Pico Rivera, went to El Rancho high school and was briefly engaged to a Chicano.
The Mexicans went away each time. I said I was worried about the future. I have already been threatened with death, dismemberment and being hung on a stake by a WHITE Christian male, so I’m not impressed with your superior culture argument.
I don’t think there was a lot of murder and thieving the the last Depression, but times are different now. However, many countries have been through this in the last 20 years. How many have turned to mass murder? Too many to rest easily.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully, social norms will prevail and people will cooperate.
You’re right: drone missiles and stealth bombers do not the Dharma make. Obama is no Krishna. So-do you renounce his Abominations and accept the social teachings of Krishna as put forth in Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam? Renounce your faux pacificism? Such pacifism is non dharmic according to both Buddha and Krishna: pacifism is only for world renouncers or monks, never housholders. But the up side as you alluded to, is that war in these advanced societies is stylized and limited to warriors. Modern War, the bombing of civilian populations-is a regression to the ancient barbarism of the Assyrians and later the Romans and Mongols, who would put whole populations to the sword.
Thanks for outing the Black Asshole. Talking shit about their White Co-Workers is an old trick of the Immigrants, one of many reasons Whites don’t want to work with them.
Hey Nik
Ok, you’re right about China. So maybe historically China was not expansionist. But that was then. I’ve read that Vladivostok and other Russian border towns are full of Chinese that basically walked across the Russia/China border and set up shop. Just like what’s happening along the Mexico/US border.
Sometimes to effect an annexation you don’t need a formal conquest by armies you just need a critical mass of migrants occupying a patch of land. The migrants then either disregard the authority of the government of the former owners or move the former owners away by force or threats. Ethnic cleansing that is.
I’m up on my history. The place where I grew up is full of descendants of United Empire Loyalists. I lived for years in Alberta which is full of the descendants of immigrants from south of the border that came up for the wide open spaces.
Other countries have gotten what they need from Canada via commercial transactions. But this place is an irresistibly juicy plum. It has wide open spaces, oodles of fresh water, fertile land, gigantic mineral and energy wealth. Just what 6 billion aggressive resource hungry people need. And so far the Chinese have behaved themselves. They try to get in on the action here via state owned companies. But for how long will they behave?
Most people in this country are small L liberal, that is, when it comes to international relations they have all the sophistication of wide eyed ten year old girls picking daisies in a meadow. They don’t get that in this world you cannot leave a treasure chest like Canada unguarded. You need a large well armed military. So far we’ve outsourced our national defence to the US. As payment the US gets booted in the slats by the same small L liberals at every opportunity. To the great credit of the US they did not insist on any quid pro quo, for example, residency and mobility rights for Americans in Canada. Would anyone else have been so generous ie the Chinese? No chance.
If you were going to marry a Chicano than you must know something about their culture-how enraged they are at us; how they intend to take back as much of America as we let them. You are fooling no one but yourself. Face it-America is going to dissolve into incredible ethnic strife. My advice still holds: get married. The Southwest is going to be taken by the Chicanos, so if you are there, marry one of them. If not on the border, consider someone else or a community of like minded individuals. You are so full of Bias and Vitriol, I would ask you not to marry a White Man.
Mr. Purple said
The most dangerous humans are the ones capable of moral judgments: they might decide that killing you is the moral thing to do. And there is nothing in nature that can prove them wrong.
We’ll probably disagree on this, simply because the expression “moral judgment” has been reduced to ironic usage, suggesting something that is neither moral nor particularly well-judged.
But all people have, let’s say, certain yardsticks they use in order to measure the quality or appropriateness of human acts.
The calibration may vary from person to person, group to group, but there is generally broad agreement that some actions can be described as wicked and depraved if they involve gratuitous bodily harm, or false imprisonment, or any other kind of extreme cruelty.
I reckon you might even make a distinction between types of behavior that could be categorized according to the extent they cause harm, to individuals or communities.
This evalution, if you were bothered to make one, would be essentially a moral judgment, based upon what you know about human relations and the need for some kind of regulatory medium to prevent a breakdown into dysfunctioning chaos and general mayhem.
I mean, even the human body itself operates according to a homeostatic necessity, where no internal controlling system is allowed, on its own, in a healthy body, to overwhelm any other organ as a devouring malignancy.
Of course, this is a pathetic fallacy, but I think knowing this is instructive as a kind of guiding abstraction for human relations.
Moral judgments can be poor, like any other choice that is based on faulty thinking, poor reasoning, or sinister motives
But that does not eliminate the need for making them, to the extent that they are made in good faith, with both the rights of the individual and needs of the community finely balanced. That is why we refer to the scales of justice, and justice is the proper context for all moral decisions.
‘also rational’?…not all of the peeps all of the time!
more on carbon pawprints
i knew cats in usa killed 100 million birds a year..i didnt know their scat killed animals at sea!
Man’s best friend could be one of the environment’s worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.
But the revelation in the book “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living” by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.
The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.
Combine the land required to generate its food and a “medium” sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) — around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4×4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.
To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.
“Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat,” Barrett said.
Other animals aren’t much better for the environment, the Vales say.
Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.
But Reha Huttin, president of France’s 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.
“Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly,” Huttin told AFP.
“Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don’t eat meat, so why shouldn’t I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?”
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs — the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars — says defiantly, “Our animals give us so much that I don’t feel like a polluter at all.
“I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.
“I don’t want a life without animals,” she told AFP.
And pets’ environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.
With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.
Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faeces cause high bacterial levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.
And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo — owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.
But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals’ environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets’ protein-rich meat intake.
“If pussy is scoffing ‘Fancy Feast’ — or some other food made from choice cuts of meat — then the relative impact is likely to be high,” said Robert Vale.
“If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower.”
Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors as it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals’ blood.
As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.
But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.
“Rabbits are good, provided you eat them,” said Robert Vale.
‘One of the major differences between the European-Americans and the rest of us is when they have problems (like being unable to understand a foreign language), they SOLVE their problems. Then they SHARE these solutions freely with us.’:
Cultural chauvinist horseshit
what about the Pakis?
have you seen ‘little mosque on the prarie’?
I did..as the liberals ate it up!
‘Other countries have gotten what they need from Canada via commercial transactions. But this place is an irresistibly juicy plum. It has wide open spaces, oodles of fresh water,
I BELIEVE 25% OF ALL FRESH WATER ON PLANET IS IN CANADA
HAS IT BEEN PRIVATIZED?
DONT ASK IF ASK WHEN
The Great Lakes contain 20% of the planet’s fresh water supply. The Great Lakes states such as IL, WI, MI, IN, OH, NY and some Canadian provinces signed one of the most protective water pacts ever, that prevent water from being diverted from the Great Lakes watershed. Even western suburbs of Chicago and some suburbs of Milwaukee cannot tap Lake Michigan for water.
Places that have ample fresh water will have a real edge in the decades ahead.
To add to Jim’s clueless financial reporter, may I cite an all too typical response from a policy maker (Deputy Director of a federal agency) Me: ‘What did you think about that alarming news story last night?’ Deputy Director: ‘News? I never watch the news. I don’t want my thinking to be affected by negativity.’ Puchica
Saw AVATAR yesterday. As a military brat after WWII I spent much time in the base theater watching war movies. Never have I seen US soldiers defeated. I was very uncomfortable in the movie. For me it was like watching Custer’s last stand and the indians won. BUT overall I liked the movie and don’t disagree with this Canadian’s point of view.
I have read some of your previous books,but have just now found your web site.Just wanted to say you present some provocative insights.
You are now on my must read list….
Sorry Andrew
That comment was for Mr.Kunstler.I’ll get the hang of this posting soon.
jamie
I would like to see that study. Can you provide a link? I have to be very skeptical of a study that claims that an 8 lb. cat who eats a half-cup of food a day is equal to an auto that guzzles 400 gallons of gasoline per year, not to mention the materials used to manufacture the thing. The cat or dog does not, by itself, use 12000 KwH electricity a year, nor does it take up two or three parking spaces, replace its wardrobe every other year, fly to Hawaii once a year, or commute 100 miles a day each direction.
The mere presence of a cat in your apartment keeps it rodent-free, and a dog is a wonderful security device. The decimation of the cat population in medieval Europe helped create the conditions, mainly a swelling population of rats, that triggered the Plague epidemic.
The day we give up our companion animals is the day we cease to be fully human. R. And, just as we might one day have to return to biological horsepower for transportation, we might once again rely on our dogs and cats to fill the same functions they did in the past- providing security and pest control, herding sheep, pulling carts, and minding children. The love and companionship these animals give us is a wonderful bonus, and something a car or electronic device could never replace.
“Don’t say get a gun. I can’t shoot, and I don’t want one.”
Then given em the goats and chickens. And consider moving. Because when you no longer have goats and chickens roaming around the outside of your home “they” will want to invite themselves inside to see what you have in your larder.
“How many times has war broken out between Portugal and its neighbors? France and Germany? Belgium? Switzerland? Austria? England? Scotland? Iceland? Spain? Denmark? Norway? Sweden? Anywhere in Western Europe?”
And the reason is? Representative governments. What type of countries has the U.S. engaged with? Those ruled by despots, traitors, religious fanatics and world class abusers of human rights.
The countries you have listed fall under the umbrella of civilization. Not all countries do. No news there.
“How many times has war broken out between Portugal and its neighbors? France and Germany? Belgium? Switzerland? Austria? England? Scotland? Iceland? Spain? Denmark? Norway? Sweden? Anywhere in Western Europe?”
Maybe something called the Marshall Plan and NATO had something to do with it??? Jezzz.
Great post. As you say the average “liberal has the geopolitical acumen of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Laura Ingalls of Little House on the Prarie. But I must take issue with you two gentlemen about China. It is expansionistic. Remember it contains 75 minorities, that’s how many tribes and nations the Han have conquered. Their most ancient records record fighting people with Blue Eyes. Sure enough, very tall, fair, Celtic Dressed mummies have been found in Western China. The Chinese don’t like to talk about it or let others see them-the evidence is that these people advanced the local technology. But no matter, they’re gone and the Chinese are still there. Later, in far Western China, the Chinese fought and drove out the Turks. The Turks moved West, found Islam, and the rest is History. Some of the Turkic People are still there, called Uighurs-a mixed people racially, but very strong Muslims.
Back in the 1950’s, China took a piece of real estate the size of Western Europe called Tibet. No one cared much at the time. And even if they did, what could they have done?
So why the confusion about this? I think it’s because they expand more slowly than we do and more out of real need. But when they do expand, it’s forever. Places the Chinese conquer stay conquered. Whither now the Han? Besides the West Coast, they have their eye on New Zealand and Australia. They are already 700,000 strong in Africa.
Question for you: I’ve heard that the Chinese majority in Vancover treat the White Natives with utter contempt. Is this true to your knowledge? And if so, is it a natural thing for the Chinese, or is it because they are mostly form Hong Kong. Could it be because they had the longest history of colonialism of any of the Chinese?
A good story like this was by Ursula LeGuin, “The Word for World is Forest”. Humanity was united but the macho men were the EurAfs-Europeans and Africans. Asians were considered mostly sissies. But only the sissies had the empathy to realize the Natives were intelligent beings and not just animals. Things go downhill from there. The Natives win but not withou being changed for the worse.
America did try to conquer Canada and they were beaten badly by the British/Canadian forces. The History Books record the war of !812 as a war of British Agression, but we started it. We thought that Manifest Destiny went North as well as West. OOps!
Thanks for the heads up review of Avatar. I avoided the long crowds of techno-freaks waiting to see James Cameron’s latest over-hyped piece of shit and saw Nick Cage’s excellent portrayal of a coked-up New Orleans cop in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” This brilliant portrait of the Crescent City post-Katrina probably had more to say about the national character than any movie that came out this year. Too bad Hollywood didn’t do a better job of promoting this dark, disturbing masterpiece. I only learned of the movie’s existence by accident when I went to the local cineplex to see “Brothers” and saw Nick Cage’s name on the marquee next to the name of the movie.
not mommy: “And when I hear the words empire and America used in the same sentence I cringe. Save the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the hell are these colonies?”
The US of America owns the world. The IMF, the World Bank, the UN are branches of the US State Department which is to say the USFedGov.
An “empire” doesn’t need to call its colonies, “colonies”. In fact it’s best never to claim to have colonies, bad for publicity.
not mommy again: “Those [countries] ruled by despots, traitors, religious fanatics and world class abusers of human rights.”
Uh, that would be the United States of America in the Number One position on the list of “those countries” you’re imagining. You forgot “ruled by a 100% corrupt unelected central government”, though.
not mommy are you awake, or simply a congenital liar? or was that apologist? lying apologist? apparatchik? am I getting close? fox news junkie? salary paid for by us taxpayers? P.R. shill?
I’ve been following JHK’s career since publication of Geography of Nowhere, and have read this blog since its inception. I think I’m going to give it a rest, though. Because I must say, when did JHK begin to attract the crazies? A sizeable chunk of the commenters here seem to have been thrown overboard from the U.S.S. Alex Jones…
Totally agree!
Jim, once again, another great post. I also like you’re weekly MP3 conversations. Keep up the good work, despite all the negative feedback from the knuckleheads.
Nikopoloyos, I thank you for your input, and I will now take a moment to clarify a few of my earlier points, and reply to a few of yours. I will do my best to do so without having recourse to ad hominem attacks, which would be to my discredit and cheapen the quality of the discussion.
Yes, humans are rational, but it is that very capacity that leads a percentage of them down the path I described. I wholeheartedly agree with you that dealing with problems rationally, and talking about them is preferable to the use of force. But there is no negotiating with someone who has a monopoly of force, because he doesn’t have to listen. That leaves you with two real choices, submit to his demands, or resist/overcome him by force yourself.
In response to your assertion that I am being cynical and “waiting for death”, I would say this: I am cynical insofar as my government gives me reason to be. If I am contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives as they relate to our elected officials, it is because they have EARNED it. The scenario I described, though simple, undetailed, and certainly imperfect, is my opinion of human nature, not fact. However, that is all too often the nature of human interactions. Given the choice of convincing someone who will not listen, or preparing myself for the trials to come, I choose to prepare, that I need not die.
You closed your reply by verbally attacking me, someone you have never met and have no knowledge of. In doing so, you displayed a cynicism all your own by showing contempt for me, rather than my opinion. It seems you would rather exchange insults than ideas, which is a bit like resorting to violence rather than talking. I have neither the time nor the inclination to trade barbs with you, so instead I wish you good luck and godspeed in your tireless efforts to show the attentive and receptive public officials of the nation and the world the error of their ways. I think you will find it a useless endeavor.
I loved your first paragraph – our family also went to see Avatar this past weekend (we only see one or two movies a year, btw, and the boys chose this one for the winter break). We had a general idea of what the movie was about (“Medicine man” for sci-fi fans, my oldest son said). So while we’re sitting in our seats and they’re showing the commercials and previews before the movie, a long commercial for the National Guard played. I couldn’t help myself – when it was over I turned to my sons and said, “Sure, go ahead – join the team that’s the bad guys in the film we’re about to watch, because stealing resources from developing nations is what we’re all about.” I heard an unamused grunt from somewhere behind me – I don’t know if it was a military person or just a red-state redneck. But I thought the comment was quite apropos. My sons agreed.
Thank You for an excellent entry that ended with:
“That is why we refer to the scales of justice, and justice is the proper context for all moral decisions.”
I thought it rather crude that it was followed by a discussion of feline scatology, and apparently completely ignored.
Mercy triumphes over judgement. Restoring the lawful order cannot be achieved through punishment. It seems all man’s efforts are directed at penalties {or actions} which excaserbate injustice.
Checking in we have a fine original post by the good James Kunstler. Thank you.
followed by……
Racists touting paranoid bullshit…. check.
Typists who will never have a reader on their own blog…… check.
The latest incarnation of the fefe shill…….. check.
The rare sane comment or refutation of the idiots……check. (thanks Asoka)
Armchair generals ranting about Chinese, Afghans and other bogeymen….check.
The fact that the national shop-o-rama getting disturbed by snow in December now being national news of vital importance…… ignored.
Does anybody understand that empires are not going to be maintained by sail power? The Chinese are stuck where they are holding down the home population. The Mexicans in the U.S. would fight like hell to keep the Mexican national government OUT; that’s why they moved north. It could be also why Spanish is the second most common language in the U.S. military.
Blog comments shutting down in 3, 2, 1……….
I think Jims on the money but Cameron was being too blunt to be taken seriously even with all the connections to current events. Having said that nothing would have got through in Zombieland that would be asking too much.
Considering that this is still happening to tribes in the Amazon even today -so people can have cheap burgers and guilt free motoring on bio fuels- or that countries like the US and Australia owe their wealth to doing the exact same thing, it is cutting to close to the mark.
Wow – nobody here gets the REAL message – not even Mr. Kunstler! Unbelievable.
This movie wasn’t about America being defeated – it was about CORPORATIONS who had hired EX-military as a security force being defeated because of it’s EVIL ways.
It is NOT about America the country – it is about the destructive power of corporations.
Watch it again please!
I am a true blue American and I loved this movie for the way it portrays the sociopathic behavior of today’s corporations and banks. Corporations WILL kill us and our country in the end unless we wake up and take it back from them.
How could you have been sooo wrong on your interpretation of this movie???? Again especially Mr. Kunstler – Wow! Have he corporations gotten so good at diversionary tactics that even the intelligent people of America are being blinded?
True Blue
>the average liberal has the geopolitical acumen of Laura Ingalls of Little House on the Prarie.
Good one.
“not mommy are you awake, or simply a congenital liar? or was that apologist? lying apologist? apparatchik? am I getting close? fox news junkie? salary paid for by us taxpayers? P.R. shill?”
Think you got the talking points wrong, comrade Crow. When referring to Fox news one is supposed to say “Faux” news. And of course the U.N, is just an arm of the U.S. state department. I mean the way in which the U.N. lines up to vote on issues that are pro U.S. is exceedingly transparent. IMF and World Bank aligned with U.S interests? See U.N.
The fact that hundreds of millions were freed when the era of Soviet oppression was brought to its knees need not be brought up but I will anyway to illustrate what a complete FUCKTARD you have proven yourself to be.
Now shut up, pull you fat fucking thumb out of the figgie pudding and promise to be a good little boy.
Someone who goes by the name James Crow accusing someone of having an agenda. Laughable.
Saw the movie on your recommendation…. it was excellent, if not a bit Disneyesque.
I had a bitch of a time driving home (after dark) after the movie…. it was like my real vision became 2D in the theater…. had no depth perception a all whatsoever.
Watching the health care “debate” play out makes me actually miss George W Bush sometimes… not his policies… his ability to make congress and the senate irrelevant while imposing his will (as it were) on the nation….
http://www.suburbanempire.com/front
Suburban critical, empire chronicle…. biting if not flawed opinion with some twisted logic thrown in for good measure.
“Maybe something called the Marshall Plan and NATO had something to do with it??? Jezzz.”
I was replying to the idea that humans are by nature violent and that explains why we have wars, and according to some, will always have wars.
I was just using Western Europe to point out that wars are not inevitable, and humans are not by nature violent, that’s all. Jeeezzzz.
“I was just using Western Europe to point out that wars are not inevitable…”
Riiiight. And some of us were pointing out that Western Europe has evolved into countries ruled by representative governments that have rules in place and thus allow for non-violence. This of course, not being the case in much of the world where violence occurs.
So, we are not inherently evil or violent by nature, we are not fallen, we are not stained by any “original sin,” and life does not have to be “nasty, brutish, and short” … because the experience of the last 60 years of Western Europe shows that human nature is malleable, not fixed, and is amenable to following rules that “allow for non-violence.”
Thanks, not mommy. This is really good news for our future as a human race.
I’ve not heard that the Chinese in Vancouver hold white people there in contempt but it would not surprise me. No doubt they have their own sense of racial and cultural superiority. Anglo Saxon civilization is hundreds of years old. Chinese civilization is thousands of years old. We have Shakespeare. I’ll bet they have many Shakespeares. While China is in the ascendancy, European powers are in terminal decline having committed collective suicide in two world wars and Anglo North America is busy committing economic suicide by offshoring its industrial capacity to China.
As that song said so many years ago “the times they are a changin” and for us, I think, not for the better.
It’s probably for the best that you take a break…after all liberals don’t like to read things that they don’t agree with or understand. It’s part of the unwritten liberal bill of rights. They don’t think much of the written one, but they hold dear their unwritten common law understanding. Also they believe that Americans should have to pay for things-like abortion, transexaul surgery-that they don’t agree with. Another one: a Canadian printer was sued one he refused to print up invitations for a gay marriage. So much for conscience. Justices of the Peace were threatened with massive law suits if they refused to marry same sex partners. So it’s the right to be approved that we’re talking about. At my old State College, they would put the local gay paper right on the table with official college registraton forms. That about says it all I think.
Dr Pangloss said that an Empire cannot be maintained by sail power. What about the British Empire of yester year? I agree it’s difficult and unlikely though. But I maintain that the Chinese are intent on grabbing more real estate in the decades to come, by hook or by crook. Again, who is strong enough to stop them? They will proceed cautiously at first, and then accelerate. Their activities in Africa aren’t even registering yet-everyone Black and White is still raving about White Racism-as Black rule fails and the Chinese move in. Pathetic.
this is info from someone in silicon vallee who sells realty:
The only ones here buying are asians and they pay 1/2 million to a million cash for a house.
the indians may be cleaner than the chinese.The chinese then fill the house with immigrants. 10 to 20 to a house. cardboard boxes in closets are toilets. i refuse to swim in public pools here because of the chinese.
thats one mans opinion.
Why is it never the Israeli Army?
Always the WASPs who are at fault for everything. Yes, GFD us for oppressing the earth with our refrigeration, modern medicine, and electrical power. I yearn for a time where I can get river blindness or die of easily curable diseases, where I swelter in the heat and freeze in the cold and use smoke signals for distance communication.
Avatar is the delusion, not technology.
Want to damn something? How about BANKING and DEBT PEDDLING? Or cultural filth peddling? Oh, but can’t do that…must be some type of ethnic nepotism between the dominant demographic in power positions in each of the respective professions or something.
We only know the names of some injun tribes because they were the winners in their intertribal slaughters. They were the worst stewards of “the land,” in history. Ever wonder what happened to all the large land mammals on this continent?
Dear Rabbi Doctor Kunstler,
As usual, I enjoyed this week’s snark-infested musings. Thank you for sharing them all with us for another year. I especially appreciate that you seem to allow all comers to empty their squirt-guns on this page, with little or no censorial restriction. Granted, too many of them seem juvenile and incivil, but you let them in anyway, and you let us readers do our own sorting. The less disciplined commentarians usually greatly outweighed by their spectral opposites. Out of all of it, I find that I can invariably sift out something worthy to think on. This week’s avalanche of responses was as good (and bad) as any.
Among the many provocative and/or thoughtful comments, may I single out “PeakInterest” for especial thanks. PeakInterest piqued my interest for more from his/her mind. Well considered, well said, considerably civil. I would love to have “P-I” in my e-mail Address-O-Dex.
At the end of the day (and year) I appreciate your blog for being relevant to my own thinking, and for being, most-usually, interesting to read.
Thanks.
Dan Treecraft
Spokane, Washington
Tiger and athlete in the same sentence? Only in the mold of Leisure Suit Larry. The “great man” came down here for the Australian Masters with a $3mill. appearance fee. No doubt due to his hotel gymnastics, he looked strangely jaded on Day 3 in his crumpled red polo shirt and was brought back to the field. Now the Victorian State government is trying to explain why it has exceeded its $80 mill. cap for “big event” sports promotion. Thanks for the memories, Tiger. Real athletes contend with real sports injuries, not chafed plonkers. If he played a real sport, he wouldn’t have the time or energy for his Leisure Suit Larry routine.
Golf only = an athletic event from the comfort of a loungechair. Golf is a good walk ruined.
The book to check is ‘ THE SNAKEHEAD’..
AS THE DESPOT ASKED JIMMY CARTER..’OPEN THE FLOODGATE, HOW MANY MILLIONS OF CHINESE DO YOU WANT’?
Look at the Clintons/Obamas…the ivy league is where the ‘ leaders’ are groomed.
[It is NOT about America the country – it is about the destructive power of corporations.]
This is quite true.
However.
It is nearly impossible to separate American the country from America the globalist corporatocracy. We built an American empire by exporting American consumption patterns and tastes, and our cultural icons like blue jeans and Michael Jackson. Much of what Islam hates about America is not even Americans but how our corporations depict us through products and services. There is indeed something ugly about how they say we live.
So to an important degree when the natives in “Avatar” defeat a corporation and their thugs they are defeating America in proxy. It is safely distanced from apple pie and the flag, but many will have already connected the dots. It is an optional connection — not everyone will make it — but some will.
In my own novel I have exactly the same thing happening, actually, though I take a lot of effort to separate the corporatists from the citizenry. You can do in 900 pages what cannot be safely done in 180 minutes. My main character even takes people as her “master” to make the point that people are not the problem.
Though of course that doesn’t stop her from eating her way through the book. And that is another series of dots one can connect, were one so inclined.
cougar
Gee, Laura, I’ve never owned a pet. I must not be “fully human”. Likewise, I’ve never had rodent “problems”, as most rodents in a home like to eat the pet food invariably available in plain view. Proper sanitation is easy; with pets it is a lot harder. When humans are careless with wastes like compostables and garbage, rodents move in for the food source. This was the problem during the plague in Europe, not the lack of cats. The conditions were right for a bacterial infestation carried by fleas. Pets are a way to spread fleas. The implication is that more cats would have simply meant more plague. More cats eating more infected rodents, producing more infected feces in the environment… you get the picture. Pets also are proven animal killers. If you claim that a relationship with animals is important for humans, and pets are an example of that relationship, then how do you reconcile the fact that to own a pet means destroying animals and destroying animals’ habitat? These things are just plain facts, are you facing them? As a non-pet owner I can affirm that a world without pets is not a world without animals. In fact there is infinitely more appreciation because you are, at the same time, less self-deceptive about the real balance of your existence. A virtue of Peak Oil, to me, is realizing that everything that you “think” you need, you don’t really need, and in fact, was simply holding you back. We don’t need pets, we need an authentic relationship to wild nature. We don’t need cars, clothes, big houses, processed food, or the fantasies and self-deceptions that come with rationalizing all that stuff. If you have a pet, make it the last pet you ever had and pursue the perfection of your own humanness, through reciprocal relationships with other humans. Love animals? Then help them. To eschew pets is to help animals. Have a rodent problem? Clean up your act and use live repeating traps. Any human with a brain can catch more mice with less effort than the expense related to a cat. And any emotionally capable human being is capable of complete fulfillment through relationships with other emotionally capable people, no domesticated animals necessary.
Thanks for another enjoyable essay, Mr. Kunstler.
I guess I’ll offer my own bit of snark before signing off with a “Merry Christmas!” to all:
Aztecs were referred to, earlier. Okay, fine, but there are few of them to do any reconquista. Far more folks from other tribal backgrounds.
But the Aztecs did have one thing going for them: They came up with the first half of open-heart surgery.
Shame they couldn’t figure out what to do next.
Merry Christmas, all…
‘Rat
Thanks for the marital advice,Vlad. What exact shade or tint of man would you recommend to be my soul mate?
I decided that my last cat would be my last. He wasn’t that good a mouser, and it did start to bug me that canned cat food seems heavy on the endangered fish.
Dogs, though, are another story. I love my dogs. And I feed them vegetarian food. Although they do eat any dead animal they find.
Bustin, being more fastidious, would probably highly object to the smell of three dogs who have rolled in dead animals.
Dan,
Whew! Thanks for that.
I have a very uneasy feeling that when/after TSHTF, there will be those of us “cleaning up” after the xenophobes and hurray-for-me’s [etc.] for quite some time; I’m talkin’ maybe a generation or four. Please be aware that I certainly don’t recommend those janitorial duties be passive in any sense.
Thanks, Jim. Yet one more of your “greatest hits”.
In response to Dan Treecraft: I like my version of peakinterest’s world better because I find it a simpler example. “Give everyone a gun and tell them to shoot whoever pisses them off. Everyone will either be a better neighbor or a better shot. Both are useful skills.”
This boils down to the choice we make between animal and human: whether to be competitive (predator) or cooperative (diversity and symbiosis). I’m not saying predators aren’t useful, just narrowly focused in their use.
Any species survives based on whether it is Net Useful to the natural future over and above it’s consumption of resources. Nature always uses this yardstick, even when asteroids hit. That’s why I don’t use the term “sustainable”. We have to be MORE than sustainable…just in case of black swans.
Sorry, I’m rambling.
Thanks for letting us crazy people on board, Jim.
Dan, I appreciate your recognition. It’s good to know that there are people who still value civility. I generally don’t blog much myself, but I stumbled across this one while browsing for information on peak oil, and couldn’t help but jump into the fray.
I plan on posting when I can, for as long as I can, but I live in Michigan and I’m unemployed, so circumstances may dictate my sudden departure.
I often wonder what will happen when fifteen million people lose their unemployment benefits, and I suppose the coming year will provide me with an answer, as well as ample material for discussion.
Thanks for being a good sport about this-I just don’t want to see anymore of my Brothers hurt and destroyed by bad women who are backed by all the forces of the State. Maybe we could get together-there are very few intelligent women out there-about one for every 20 men or so. Going against my own advice for sure, but if our reach does not exceed our grasp, than what’s a heaven for? I would risk the very fires of hell to save a good women-even if lesser men must aver. We could be another Kate and Petruchio or if equality is your thing, a James Carvile/Mary Madeline combo. Just think of the wild nights they must have-their political debates almost coming to blows and then ending in passion. I know-the horror of breeding with Republicans. But look at him-those ears!-the guy’s is from another planet, an evil elf.
Other possibilities for you: one Swedish Woman married the Eiffel Tower. One German Woman married the Berlin Wall-and mourned its passing very deeply. She used to say, my lover was so svelte and slender, not like the chunky great wall of China. An American Woman married a male dolphin named Cindy. Check my facts, check my facts!
Apparently, he had a very foul mouth on the greens, cursing vociferously when he blew a stroke. But this was assiduously covered up by the Sports/Advertising Complex. Tiger was always a Product-and he had to be kept squeaky clean. He was a softening up for Obama. How could a beautiful woman like Ilan throw away ten of thousands of years of evolution on someone like that? One is reminded of Heidi Klum and the hideously scarred Seal. She has one beautiful daughter from her previous marriage-and then the new ones.
Also, apparently Tiger was a lousy tipper-like most “Blacks”. People in the restaurant industry always say that Blacks are the most demanding and the least rewarding of all their customers.
With all due respect to Most Reverend Kunstler, if we are truly approaching the apocalypse then nobody bothered to tell all the overfed idiots who packed into the local Wal-Mart today in a frenzy of last-minute Christmas shopping. The crowds were so bad that people were forced to park in the strip mall across the street and they even had cops directing traffic in and out of the place. Being that I live in city with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, highest foreclosure numbers and a skyrocketing crime rate, it begs the question: where the hell are all those supposedly financially strapped consumers finding the cash for big-ticket Christmas items?
I just read that Arrow Trucking just closed up for the holidays leaving hundreds of it drivers stranded! Merry Christmas and so much for restocking the shelves. Rice and beans again.
george – For some, the cultural threat of not getting gifts is still extremely strong, even if you can’t afford it. I have been watching shoppers this season and what they are walking out of the stroes with are pretty small packages for the most part. Merry Christmas.
“I often wonder what will happen when fifteen million people lose their unemployment benefits, and I suppose the coming year will provide me with an answer, as well as ample material for discussion.” says Peak Interest
My own perspective suggests that the membership of the last remnants of trade unions could form the seminal force to grow a political force capable of restoring some semblance to equal economic security and force for recognition of longer term concerns of this nation.
However, the chances for a coalition of political will by these groups is unlikely since their attentions remain misdirected towards the devil (abortion), “terrorism” (whatever or whoever that is?) and socialism, rather than the rich and powerful. Given enough time, and the experience of enough hardship -perhaps their priorities will change.
While JK writes each week, disparaging and condemning the current mindset of many Americans and their lack of critical attention to their leadership – we all need to realize that in spite of the trials and turmoils awaiting us – that indeed this broken US social-economic system continues to produce paradisaical fantasy for roughly 30 or 40 million humans.
We truly live in a fantasy world of Tiger Woods, Victoria’s secret models and flying aliens. Until I pick up an endorsement from Nike and Jim gets a multi-million dollar backing from Accenture~ don’t expect any change.
Merry Christmas to all.
“How could a beautiful woman like Ilan throw away ten of thousands of years of evolution on someone like that? One is reminded of Heidi Klum….”
—————————-
Apparently, despite their beauty, they are air-heads. Makes one wonder about those vaunted White high-IQs.
Thanks for the back-handed compliment and offer, but I have been happily married for decades to a White man.
And – we have produced blonde, blue-eyed, high IQ children for the upcoming White vs Brown Smackdown that you dream of.
As to your delusion – I have been the pet project of a right wing libertarian for a few years. He is totally convinced that I can be reached. I have these uncompromising social libertarian ideals, if only he could convince me that unfettered capitalism would make the world a paradise!
Not going to happen.
Thanks for your reply but I think we shall have to agree to disagree on this one. I do not believe it is impossible to separate America from the globalist corporatocracy. In fact I think this message is something this movie is desperately trying to convey with a glaring urgency. Also I do not believe that the message in this movie is about defeating America even by ‘proxy’ as you put it nor do I believe that was Cameron’s intent in ANY way.
My interpretation regarding the message in Avatar is that the conflict between the indigenous people and the corporation sent to mine the ‘unobtainium’ parallels the American peoples struggle against corporations(and banks). The message states very clearly to me that the evil that these sociopathic thugs have inflicted on us and our government needs to be rooted out at the core. A separation of corporation and state – similar to the concept of separation of church and state and state – is the ONLY solution and will give us the ability to de-throne the globalist corporatocracy from halls of our democracy.
And, again in my opinion, this movie is inspirational at just that level. The message is clear if one looks a little deeper: We do not have to accept the fact that the corporations have turned the definition of America into what THEY want and not what the American people truly want. And an even more subtle message contained in the movie is this; we don’t even see it coming. Only after we lose some what makes us who we are will we take action.
I believe that we will see a struggle that even this movie cannot portray adequately enough. Our struggle will be of epic proportions – I’ll even dare say bigger then any struggle this country has seen YET.
Would you agree that this is one interpretation? And maybe the better one?
All the Best and Happy Holidays,
TonyS
Cash,
True, canada does have a weath of natural resourses, and plenty of room for expansion of its population. However it is also cold ( i am not being fascious) and with a low coastline to landmass ratio. Such places have not tradionally excited invaders. Most european expansion was by seizing enclaves on the coasts (for trade – hence why areas that have winter frozen ports are not prefered) then moving inland. Well that historical position has changed; so we may see things work out differently in the future. Also, large territorial expansions of the past have often been supported by new infectious diseases and the relative difference in technology – America & Spain / Native America – Britain / Australia, but where the natives had resistence to european disesaes their encursions where not long lasting China & Africa. (but that would never have been the case with -european- canadians)
“such a land mass requires a large army to protect” yes – it does, and you had one – the army of the british empire, remeber? I dont think america would have liked to war with britain before 1914 (american was more isolationistic before then due to stricter readings of the constitution; although apparently britanin was plotting war with americal through the 1910’s 1920’s), and after the start of the cold war america’s nato aliances where too valuable to alienate by invading it’s neigbours. However i also doubt that america has ever seriously plotted invasion of canada. However the Order of The Golden Circle was plotting invasion of mexico, cuba, many others in the 18th century – but they where ousted with the fall of the south.
A second point is china does not have such an army; to be frank, china’s army is pretty poor, and small, and defensively oriented. I think they’re more fightend of russia than they are salivating over canada.
“Sometimes to effect an annexation you don’t need a formal conquest by armies you just need a critical mass of migrants”
Very true, and possibly characteristic of china’s behaviour in tebet during the 1950’s. But china is not going to occupy canada, ever (how would it matain such an occupation so far from their natural borders – and without an ocean going navy? how would they get to canada in sufficent numbers?).
True america has made few demands on cananda – but it made massive demands on the britian! including the end of the gold standard, limmiting british trade, and the breaking up of the british empire. And including increased autonomy for canada. So how this relationship is interpreted depends on whether we see it as a America / Canada relationship or an America / British Empire relationship. In many ways canadians have benifited from Americas desire to see the Britsh Empire broken up.
A reply to Desertrat. I was also under the name of “Farmacres”, but I can’t get that password to work. So I went back to using “Farmboy” with a recovered password. Thanks for referring to my Farmacres post–It’s all the truth. We also had no hot water–for baths we heated water on our huge, antique black iron kitchen stove burning wood or coal. My mom cooked and baked on this stove. When we had thrashing crews for dinner our 12 foot long table was crammed with healthy, tasty food, with rivers of milk, water, coffee and a half-dozen pies–all made on that stove. We had a hand pump beside our kitchen sink, supplying water from a cistern. It never ran dry. Our sanitary arrangement was an “outhouse” about 20 yards behind our house. During winter, my cold fingers could hardly unbutton my fly.
But there were wonderful things about life in a world made by hand–such as week-old snow still pure white. Hiking amid the beauty of nature–on our own land! The companionship of affectionate and gentle cows. A population of no less than a dozen or two cats. A home free of vermin and rodents. A lean, muscled body that had no need of prescriptions. And speaking of health, I’ll celebrate my 74th birthday this Sunday the 27th. Got my check-up 2 weeks ago and doc says I’m healthier than all his other patients my age–and the only cheerful one. My great grandfathe (who also lived in a world made by hand) lived to be 107 years old!
I recommend another book (after you read JHK’s) for your benefit, titled, “When Technology Fails”, a large-sized paperback–worth every penny.
So, look forward to YOUR world made by hand and be happy. Remember, Jesus was born into a world made by hand, and look what he accomplished.
FarmBoy/Farmacres
But Star Wars did it first, when those little teddy bears beat the empire.
How can you leave the War of 1812 out of your assertion that the US never attacked Canada?
And the US invaded Mexico and took half of their territory in the 1846 war. True, some in the South wanted more plus Cuba, but you ignored the massive land grab that the Union had already finished.
What would a properly fettered capitalism look like? And who would/should/could do the fettering?
Auntiegrav, I think what Dan war referring to in his post was the tenor of my response to Nikopoloyos, not necessarily the content of my original posting.
Equating my posting to an argument for vigilante justice is simpler, but it’s also a shortcut to thinking. I think that the majority of humanity would be happy with cooperation, and would prefer it to conflict and competition.
Unfortunately, there will always be a small portion of the population that chooses to act in a predatory fashion. Because of this, security concerns arise, and this mechanism leads to the establishment of governments.
I suppose what I am driving at is that until humanity learns to deal effectively with those among us who choose to act in a predatory fashion, conflict over resources will continue, in any type of world, with any type of economy.
I assume that by saying “net usefulness” you mean natural selection. To do otherwise would imply that nature is self aware, and has an agenda.
Thank you for taking the time to participate in the discussion, and have a Merry Christmas.
“A separation of corporation and state – similar to the concept of separation of church and state and state – is the ONLY solution and will give us the ability to de-throne the globalist corporatocracy from halls of our democracy.”
Separating spirtituality from governance is what caused {is causing} corporatism. Trading one God {rulemaker} for another god {which is by definition idolatry} has quite predictably brought us to the worship of mammon.
We were sold a bowl of lentils in exchange for our birthright. Those producing lies live like kings while those that produce everything else get stuff that makes us sick and shallow.
Apparently Nikopoloyos does not give two shits how stupid his post appears, regardless of its content. See quote below with bolding mine.
Cash,
True, canada does have a weath of natural resourses, and plenty of room for expansion of its population. However it is also cold ( i am not being fascious) and with a low coastline to landmass ratio. Such places have not tradionally excited invaders. Most european expansion was by seizing enclaves on the coasts (for trade – hence why areas that have winter frozen ports are not prefered) then moving inland. Well that historical position has changed; so we may see things work out differently in the future. Also, large territorial expansions of the past have often been supported by new infectious diseases and the relative difference in technology – America & Spain / Native America – Britain / Australia, but where the natives had resistence to european disesaes their encursions where not long lasting China & Africa. (but that would never have been the case with -european- canadians)
“such a land mass requires a large army to protect” yes – it does, and you had one – the army of the british empire, remeber? I dont think america would have liked to war with britain before 1914 (american was more isolationistic before then due to stricter readings of the constitution; although apparently britanin was plotting war with americal through the 1910’s 1920’s), and after the start of the cold war america’s nato aliances where too valuable to alienate by invading it’s neigbours. However i also doubt that america has ever seriously plotted invasion of canada. However the Order of The Golden Circle was plotting invasion of mexico, cuba, many others in the 18th century – but they where ousted with the fall of the south.
A second point is china does not have such an army; to be frank, china’s army is pretty poor, and small, and defensively oriented. I think they’re more fightend of russia than they are salivating over canada.
“Sometimes to effect an annexation you don’t need a formal conquest by armies you just need a critical mass of migrants”
Very true, and possibly characteristic of china’s behaviour in tebet during the 1950’s. But china is not going to occupy canada, ever (how would it matain such an occupation so far from their natural borders – and without an ocean going navy? how would they get to canada in sufficent numbers?).
True america has made few demands on cananda – but it made massive demands on the britian! including the end of the gold standard, limmiting british trade, and the breaking up of the british empire. And including increased autonomy for canada. So how this relationship is interpreted depends on whether we see it as a America / Canada relationship or an America / British Empire relationship. In many ways canadians have benifited from Americas desire to see the Britsh Empire broken up.
How dare you suggest “neighbour” and “behaviour” are misspellings? 😉
Actually OP’s spelling was neigbour, which is incorrect. But you’re right about the “u” stuck in there — obviously OP is in Canada, which kept the Brit spelling, but at least they don’t drive on the wrong side of the road, Eh?
Canada Schmanada … with a name like that I figured Nik was Greek.
At any rate the don’t-give-a-shit attitude toward what he’s typing is appalling.
Then invite them into your larder Wage. Or better yet, just give’em the keys.
We’re tired of hearing your whining.
They do have reeks in Canada — someone has to handle the spatulas.
Sorry, my “G” key misfired, that was Greeks not reeks.
However, the Greek economy reeks — watch for Greece to get dropped from the Euro monetary system, or the Euro monetary system to go broke trying to support Greece’s economy. If Greece gets bailed out then Portugal, Italy and Spain will want to be saved as well. Either way it’s bad news for the Euro.
Don’t bet on the dollar dropping — I’m betting on the Euro falling considerably in 2010.
I think this is it in a nutshell.
>The fundamental problem with most of the world’s largest economies is that they have allowed government spending to grow faster than economic growth, which can only lead to long-run economic disaster.
So the way out of this is… more government spending of course. It occurred to me that we’re all following in the footsteps of the soviet union. They were just 20 years ahead of us.
“We have no idea what is happening to us”. Now ain’t that the truth.
It was amazing to find, at least around where I live, there was not a shortage of shoppers at the mall this year.
No Ma! Not a problem here! Everyone seemed compelled to empty their bank accounts. I suppose to support El Presidenta’s misguided economic theory of recovery.
I am sure you tussled some feathers with the golf thing. National sport isn’t it? Now ain’t that a vain sport(sic). Keep up the good work.
I saw the movie and loved it. About time someone at least makes an attempt to break through the insane denial of the American psyche.
Once again, doesn’t anyone get it a’tall??
(It’s the only thing that “shocks” me anymore… and I really mean it.) Kunstler is laying it’s bloody guts right there on the ground, and very few have the stomach to read the awful future! Why? What’s the big secret? What’s the big problem? What are we keeping from our children (who will suffer the most from our selfish decisions)? Is it a collective GUILT?? Okay, get the hell over it and get busy fixin’ what you can fix, and if you want to weep over the things you can’t… goddamnit, weep; but in the gob-smacking end of it, do what all have always done: get the hell over yourself, and work for the common weal, or die with a bit of grace and humility, for jaysus-jumped-up-chreezus. Are we still really not gettin’ this?? NO MORE PLAY or SPECULATION. That shit is over. Time to get with preparations… not this constant bullshit of “well, uh, duh, should I get off my dead ass… or mebbe not… huh?…” Guess the fuck what
Well, after a bit of holiday, let’s revisit a cogent posting in response to ANOTHER of JHK’s calmy-jokey WARNINGS. (Are we gettin’ it now? hmmmmmmmm? Oh, if we’re not, events will clarify every-friggin-thing by mid-spring; no pundits needed, as fiscal “reality” is finally revealed to even the highly-resistant. Am I bitter? You’re GD right I am; to see the waste; the GD waste in pursuit of profit, at the expense of everyone’s childrens’ lives! Can you imagine extinction? No? …start imagining… not that the earth will be hurt by the disappearance of one of its’ worst parasites.)
Okay, enough of my muddy spew and back to the tie-in of something prescient and cogent…
Again, Uncle Al sez…
—Battle of Thermopylae or a crowbar, leverage matters. First World civilization is all about choke points: High tension lines from Canada, water siphons in California, Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan. Plug a coronary artery, freeze the Hudson with “Global Warming,” and what else matters?
Molassis can be as good as C4; eldritch stupidity triumphs over all: Washington’s overweening arrogance. Los Angeles cashiered 9% of its workforce, all aged Boomer senior employees, to flood the pay grades with Browns. Screwing patronage meat into the sockets is not indistingiushable from having expertise threaded. A little stupidity goes a long way. A lot goes much further.—
(Before and after apologies, Uncle Al. I’ve probably misconstrued all of your comment. To my twisted perspective [if you can call my “view” that], you have couched our situation in an accurately bleak frame.)
“As if guns are the only way to defend yourself.”
I’m assuming you’re not talking about knives, clubs, bows and arrows, IEDs and other such things.
“What a poverty of imagination. Ask the Nazis how it went when they wanted to conquer the unarmed Danes.”
Ummm… the Nazis didn’t want to kill off all of the Danes. It would have been a different story if Denmark had been 100% Jewish.
As far as non-violent resistance, appealing to your opponent’s sense of morality works if your opponent wants to believe he (or she) is a moral (or civilized) person. Gandhi understood this to be true about the British.
But when a desperate, hungry person is trying to take your food (or something else of survival value), you may very well need to kill them to preserve your life. Would it suck? Sure. But if you value your life more than theirs, you will do it. Then you can cry about it.
When societies fall apart, resource scarcity will eventually rear its ugly head. Hunger trumps morality for most. Those who assume otherwise are going to be disappointed.
Try non-violent resistance against the Chinese government (which values order and stability over morality) and see how that works.
“The earth may not even exist in one year.”
Oh, man…. do you realize how stupid that sounds? WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH NUKES TO DO THAT! The earth will go right on existing for quite some time (at least roughly 5 billion more years), human-infested or not.
Don’t knock it Jim. With our government ‘leadership’ rat shooting may soon become a valuable survival skill.
“I reckon you might even make a distinction between types of behavior that could be categorized according to the extent they cause harm, to individuals or communities.”
When such a person (A) as we are speaking of sees his or her self as a part of a group, and sees another person (B) as a threat (immediate or otherwise) to that group that cannot be negotiated or otherwise driven away, then the moral choice for them might well be to take your life.
A hypothetical: your community has a limited water supply, just enough to keep your current population alive. As a part of this community, you value the lives of the members of the community almost as greatly as you value your own. Along comes someone who starts stealing (or polluting) your water. If you don’t do anything about it, members of your community may die. You can’t convince the intruder to stop (via rational argument, instilling fear or physical abuse.) What do you do?
My answer: I would kill the intruder. And not lose a wink of sleep over it. Does that make me a bad (immoral) person? To the intruder’s friends and family, yes. To the community I am a member of (and rely on for support), no. What I would lose sleep over would be the death of one of the community members if I could have done something to prevent it.
Obviously, this is a very simple hypothetical, but this is the kind of moral decision I am talking about. It isn’t always (in fact, usually not) easy to make decisions like that, but that doesn’t mean that such decisions don’t get made.
Does ownership of a pet make one more human? John Berger, in his famous essay, Why Look at Animals? apparently argues that the opposite is true.
So says Morris Berman, who parses Berger as saying that “the pet […] provides a non-human mirror, but as in the case of the zoo animal, the reflection is distorted. We get a humanized form of ourselves, not a true Other, and in consequence, we don’t know who we are.”
Berman, in his discussion of the problem of domestication, The Wild and the Tame, in his Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West, notes that pet-keeping, at least on the scale at which it is now practised, is a recent phenomenon. Why do we do it? To reduced the alienation of urban, technological life? To compensate for the collapse of the extended family? Berman suggests the cure for alienation may be worse than the disease: studies have shown that “pet owners tend to be a great deal more brittle and neurotic than non-owners [and] that pets are detrimental to effective social relations.”
See: Angier, Some Pet Theories; Alan Beck and Aaron Katcher, Between Pets and People (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1983); Charles Phineas, “Household Pets and Urban Alienation”, Journal of Social History, 8 (Spring, 1974), 338-43.
Yeah, but I love my cats, and I’m pretty sure they love me. So, who you gonna call?
Asoka said: “The earth may not even exist in one year.”
Mr. Purple said: “Oh, man…. do you realize how stupid that sounds? WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH NUKES TO DO THAT!”
This is a typical humanity-centric response. As if “We” have control over anything.
The earth may not exist in one year as a planet (not to mention any of its geological or botanical or zoological inhabitants), and “we” may not have anything to do with its destruction.
It reveals a “poverty of imagination” to think “we” might in any way be responsible for the disappearance of a planet from this galaxy (not that it would be missed in the greater scheme of things).
Of course, the best thing to do is just to assume things are going to get better and better, and act accordingly.
Jim:
when will yr 2010 predictions be online?
unemployment in La is 13%.
on public radio i heard flagstaff arizona has growing homeless population!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Asoka,
It must have been some cute chick who used the “poverty of imagination” line within your hearing, because you seem to like using it a lot.
So, in terms of the earth being here in a year or not: I’ll bet you $1000 that the earth will be here in a year. Seriously. If you want to take me up on that bet, I will provide an email address to which you can send your contact information.
Yours truly,
Mr. Purple
“So the way out of this is… more government spending of course. It occurred to me that we’re all following in the footsteps of the soviet union. They were just 20 years ahead of us.”
Yup, the Cold War was an economic war of attrition: the West (call it NATO, or more accurately, the USA) tricked the Soviets into spending their way into collapse. The problem was, the West did this by spending as well, and didn’t move off the economic war footing once the Soviets fell apart.
By the time it needed to be dismantled, the military-industrial complex had become too powerful.
It’s a story that continues in other sectors — big banking among them.
You said: Don’t bet on the dollar dropping — I’m betting on the Euro falling considerably in 2010.
It is indeed very possible the USA can keep its scam going a little longer. Just like AIG brought every big bank into its clutches, thereby entwining them in the web of debt under the illusion of future profits, the USA and its corporations have brought much of the world into the scheme through contradictory, bogus promises.
The US economy is not going down alone.
But, in the end, it is mentality that determines the zeitgeist of the day (thanks for the new word, JHK). And I bet the Western Europeans will be able to deal with the demise of WalMart and NASCAR much better than us here on God’s side of the Atlantic.
“By the time it needed to be dismantled, the military-industrial complex had become too powerful.
It’s a story that continues in other sectors — big banking among them.”
Agreed.
There are parallels to the emergence of bureaucracy. Strange as it may seem, bureaucracy emerges in history to fill a need for stability following the death/deposition of a ruler. Unfortunately, bureaucracy kept growing beyond its original purpose. And now we have the DMV.
The DMV. Ha! Good one.
Though I’m not generally a small-government guy (although I think it’s coming whether we want it or not due to austerity), I agree that it’s not only the various private sectors that get to large and outgrow their usefulness. Government does as well.
For example, during the obviously unsustainable housing boom from 2002ish-2007ish, local governments expanded big time thanks to the huge increase in assessed — or taxable — value of the land, brought courtesy of the building orgy.
Then, when it sank, governments were like: “What are we ever to do?”
The answer of course is they should never have based assumed permanent governmental growth upon a private-sector housing bubble that was soon to pop.
Governments codemn the booms after the popping of the bubble, but during the bubble they are all too anxious to get some tax dollars.
Mr. Purple said: “It must have been some cute chick who used the “poverty of imagination” line”
She was beautiful!
But you are spoiling the fun. Dr. Doom and Nudge like to repeat “we are fucked” so I upped the ante a bit.
Now you are rightly calling me on it. I do not have $1,000 to lose and would be a fool to bet. If I win the bet, neither of us would be here to collect it. So, it is a lose-lose situation for me.
We are not fucked. The planet will be here next year. All indicators are not negative.
Human beings still have the capacity to respond rationally to short-term and long-term threats to continued existence on earth.
I appreciate your offer, but I politely decline to accept you bet.
Here is an excerpt from a reflection, “Who Am I” by Charles Tart, professor of psychology at UC Davis:
“Who am I?
The question is an eternal one. If you don’t answer it, you may never be able to distinguish between what your essential self wants and what other people manipulate you to want.Each of us may do best to answer it for himself or herself. Yet the answers given by others do affect the way we approach (or avoid) this question. Several general types of answers have been offered.
The most traditional answer in Western culture is that you are a creature, a creation of God, a creation that is flawed in vital ways. Conceived and born in original sin, you are someone who must continually struggle to obey the rules laid down by that God, lest you be damned. It is an answer that appears depressing in some ways. One the one hand, it can lead to low self-worth and the expectation of failure. On the other, it can lead to the rigid arrogance of being one of the “elect.” Further, this view doesn’t much encourage you to think about who you really are, as the answer has already been given from a “higher” source.
The more modern answer to “Who am I?” is that you are a meaningless accident. Contemporary science is largely associated with a view of reality that sees the entire universe as totally material, governed only by fixed physical laws and blind chance. It just happened that, in a huge universe, the right chemicals came together under the right conditions so that the chemical reaction we call life formed and eventually evolved into you.But there’s no inherent meaning in that accident, no spiritual side to existence.
I believe that this view is not really good science, but rather what we believe to be scientific and factual. More important, it’s a view that has strong psychological consequences. After all, if you’re just a mixture of meaningless chemicals, your ultimate fate – death and nonexistence – is clear. Don’t worry too much about other people, as they are just meaningless mixtures of chemicals, too. In this view, it doesn’t really matter if you think about who you really are – whatever conclusions you arrive at are just subjective fantasies, of no particular relevance in the real physical world.
Psychologically speaking, this materialist view of our ultimate nature leaves as much to be desired as does the born-into-original-sin view. As a psychologist, I stress the psychological consequences of these two views of your ultimate identity, because your beliefs play an important role in shaping your reality. Modern research has shown that, in many ways, what we believe affects the way our brain constructs the world we experience. Some of these beliefs are conscious. You know you have them. Yet many are implicit – you act on them, but don’t even know you have them.
If you think life in general is a meaningless accident, your perceptions of the complex world around you will likely be biased toward seeing the meaningless and absurd. Seeing this will in turn reinforce your belief in the meaninglessness of things. If you believe in original sin and the great difficulties of finding salvation, your perceptions will likely be biased toward seeing your own and others’ failures, again reinforcing your belief in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our beliefs about who we are and what our world is like are not mere beliefs – they strongly control our perceptions. So we can gain more control by finding out what we believe and how those beliefs affect us.
[emphasis added by Asoka]
Expect more stories like this. Arrow Trucking goes out of business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLJv-6Rs2fA
“Human beings still have the capacity to respond rationally to short-term and long-term threats to continued existence on earth.”
What if they are declared non-persons by your government?
“After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity.”
Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can’t even been sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to “beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs.”
“Again, let’s be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand — in court — that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What’s more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing — insisting — that torture is an ordinary, “foreseeable consequence” of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared “suspected enemy combatants.”
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1887-dred-scott-redux-obama-and-the-supremes-stand-up-for-slavery.html
“Human beings still have the capacity to respond rationally to short-term and long-term threats to continued existence on earth.”
Unfortunately, for many humans, the ability to plan long term becomes atrophied in situations of extreme prosperity or extreme deprivation. This has been frustrating me for some time now. It seems that we as a species operate best when our situation is in balance: neither too easy, nor too hard.
“I appreciate your offer, but I politely decline to accept you bet.”
I appreciate that you acknowledge (and seem to understand) my offered bet, even though you decline to take me up on it.
Messianicdruid: Kudos to you for noting Chris Floyd – that most endangered of species, an honest journalist.
The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
-Michael Friedman
The first thing we must do is abolish the corporate charter.
Anyone who does business must be civilly and criminally responsible for the destruction done by that business.
Corporations are artificial sociopaths and must get the death penalty.
The ones in business now can be turned over to their employees with the knowledge that they are now responsible for the effects of their dealings.
As soon as I say I’m female, some jerk accuses me of “whining”.
Typical.
The Colorado River used to flow through Mexico into the Gulf of California.
The water is stolen by Americans, used to water golf courses and lawns in the desert of Los Angeles, and to grow rice and alfalfa in the desert valleys, and no longer reaches Mexico, much to the detriment of the peasant farmers in Mexico and the whales who spawn in the Gulf.
Too bad for the Mexicans and whales.
I don’t see anybody killing anyone in self defense.
And don’t equate hungry farmers crossing the border to look for work with your stirring vision of self defense.
Why can’t you believe that you are a meaningless accident who evolved to cooperate with members of your tribe to survive?
It seems clear to me that we have a very strong tribal instinct, which our ruling overlords use to their advantage.
Look how quickly members of a nation state can be stirred to kill others, as Goebbels pointed out.
We either extend our tribal vision to all people on this planet, or we kill each other off, and most of the other lifeforms present at this time with us.
Atta Girl Wagelaborer; yours are some of the most succinct, cognizant and cogent comments on this blog. It does astound one the egotistical arrogance of humans who can look out at a universe containing perhaps a trillion galaxies each of which contain an average of perhaps 250 billion stars and conclude that the Earth is the only planet in the universe upon which their god has deigned to populate with supposedly intelligent critters hell bent on destroying it. SNAFU
“and to grow rice and alfalfa”.
And tomatoes. The flats where what’s left of the once-mighty Colorado meets Mexico has been divided into canals where tomatoes are grown.
and what if those in the tribes dont want yr ‘vision’? then what?
Actually, asia, that’s a damn good question. The idea, advanced by wagelaborer, that tribalism would (should) extend to all other tribes, is a worthy idea, much to be hoped for. But not for the reasons commonly supposed, which I’ll assume is your point of opposition.
The thing to understand about tribalism is: it works. It is what has worked for the greater time that humans have been around – millions of years, in fact. So does genocide. Genocide works. The ruling powers don’t want us to know that genocide works or, as Stalin said, “no more people, no more problem.”
The fact that both tribalism and its opposite, genocide, work so well is hidden behind, but at the same time revealed by, the consensual reality of prime-time television and the other chimerical powerhouses that promote a false togetherness: modernity’s last project – multiculturalism.
But, despite multiculturalism, despite that, we, various races and cultures, who have been brought together under the behest of cynical rulers who would exploit our differences the better to take advantage of us, we can live together.
Just remember good faith. It drives out bad. We can make it. Don’t give up on the good in people.
Wage Labor, I’d have been much harsher if you were male.
>Anyone who does business must be civilly and criminally responsible for the destruction done by that business.
And I have a depressing response for this one, but gonna save it for the next round.
The sunny south is ready to ride mules. A mule was/is a superior animal. And you are/is a smart man, JHK! Thanks for the sneek…
Sneak?
I am the dotted line… southern dumbass!
Bama earl
follow my track if you can… thru 2010
I can go anywhere in the Estados Unidos de América w/o the aide of fossil fuel! Thanks be to yeshua!
Y
Mexicans aren’t members of our Tribe. The idea of a universal Tribe or Nation is a contradiction in terms. You are just using Green Language to promote the tired old failure called Marxism. Sure, turn everything over to the “Worker Tribe”. Worked real well in China and the Soviet Union. You just don’t get it. Life doesn’t work that way. People naturally favor their own families and Tribe-the Tribe being just an extension the clan, and the clan an extension of the family. And the Nation is just an extension of the Tribe.
Check yourself. You’re selfish too. You favor your own kids over other kids. That’s where it starts but not where it ends. You want to do all these wonderful things with other people’s money. Well you first. Give it all away and then talk. I’m for social reform too, but not reform that is against human nature. Sorry, we aren’t the blank slates Socialism would have us be. Each Nation must decide its own destiny. And that includes Whites. Sorry again, but the little Brownies gots to go.
I ain’t asking nobody for nothing
D*
If I can’t get it on my own
A
If you don’t like the way I’m living
NC*
You just leave this long haired country boy alone
Prepare the way for JHK!
I saw Robert Nesta Live in Birmingham (1979). If there is one world… may it be his vision.
Carter was the president and he ended with Exodus.
Erudite blog. broad range of comments.
Kunstler, has golf always been “not a sport” to you, or did your views change after the colored boy became boss? Funny, markmanship is an olympic sport.
Cameron’s Avatar is a technological tour de force, true original. Good reason to watch it, even if its message on the insatiable military-industrial complex makes you squirm. The defeated soldiers were ex-military, corporate mercenaries and not American troops. Did we watch the same movie?
Greshams’s Law: the bad drives out the good. Multiculturalism makes everyone afraid of everyone else-it even decreases interaction between members of the same group. It is disastrous-completely opposed to the being that millions of years of evolution has made us. Yet Leftists, knowing all this, persist. Why? Because it’s a religion and they will not go against their phony revelation.
Hey James, with all your vision and foresight… being a yankee and all… can you fore-tale better than me? Or is it I? The further you look the greater you will be!
Furthur Bob Weir & Rat Dog, Furthur, Phil Lesh etc…
And speaking of Christmas… Can you celebrate truth with a lie?
also called prevarication, falsehood
Santa is knock-kneed!
I have it on good information that Angels do not sing. You must know the despairs of life to sing in the minor chords.
And the greatest show on earth in 2010… will it be Nigeria or Cameroon?
I claim the tribe of Cherokee, even though a sin unto these hills, for a generation or two. We would not want to prove it for fear (and not of the almighty). Black Dutch seemed to work.
“And don’t equate hungry farmers crossing the border to look for work with your stirring vision of self defense.”
I don’t either. I’m talking about when the supermarkets aren’t getting weekly shipments and the choices are grow your own food or starve.
Of course, today the hungry farmers don’t dare get violent: between their own government and the government of the United States, they are pretty powerless.
Is is the world the spoiled (never been on a farm) American children of those hungry farmers will inherit that may see that change.
“The first thing we must do is abolish the corporate charter.
Anyone who does business must be civilly and criminally responsible for the destruction done by that business.
Corporations are artificial sociopaths and must get the death penalty.”
Agreed.
Notice how “Silver Bells,” a song about Christmas in the city, has become virtually obsolete?
Notice also, how urban department stores in cities other than New York have either been swallowed up by national chains and had their old names – Marshall Field’s, Wanamaker’s – discarded mostly in favor of New York names? Those are the lucky stores; others just disappeared. And the national department store chains lucky enough to thrive today are mostly located in malls anyway.
At least people still go into New York for Christmas. Who goes into Detroit? Newark? Hartford, CT? 🙁
I was one of those guys cheering for the “noble savages” in Avatar.
I didn’t see “US Marines” being handed a brutal defeat; I saw a local government, using it’s power of Eminent Domain, taking someone’s home to build a condominium or a strip-mall.
And when their “final offer” was declined, they tried to use their corrupt and unaccountable police department, equipped with “banned from civilian ownership” weapons, to take it for free.
I saw that same government and it’s willing supporters get their asses handed to them in a most satisfying manner.
I saw a humiliated mayor and city council (aka corporate execs) being forced to leave town at gunpoint.
One can choose to see what they wish in Avatar; I personally see a free people fighting back against vicious oppression.
Sure, STFRAM, you can see what you want to see, everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some, like myself, are more interested in seeing what is.
The truth of the matter is, while the human antagonists are clearly called mercenaries at one point in the film, in another instance they also make the point of stating something to the effect of ‘once a marine always a marine’ which I think is equally significant. Especially as you will remember upon initially meeting the indigènes the association claimed is to “Clan Jarhead. No, the enemies represented are a portrayal of classically strawman American interests and military.
Furthermore, the didactic details of the aggression between the hostiles and natives are depicted in such a way as to draw direct correlation to Vietnam era conflicts and tactics. As if to underscore what is already obvious, the use of napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships (one, you may recall, was the ‘Valkyrie’ -a terribly unsubtle reference to “Apocalypse Now”) in such a way as to leave no lingering doubts over the ideological base upon which the movie is erected.
I have. It’s a pansy sport. Good for panty wastes like tiger boy.
Finally I have also seen the movie Avatar:
First of all I will never straight forward equate the US Army with the United States. And how is final scene a “death march”? Looks more like a orderly deportation to me.
It is evident everybody reads into Avatar what supports his own beliefs: ecological warning; predatory capitalism; resource depletion; anti warfare; live in harmony with nature. Try not to get stuck looking at the surface of things. What if the military guys would all look Arab or blond with blue eyes or Russian or be “Alien” creatures? And the ‘fight terror with terror’ and ‘shock and awe’ quotes in Avatar are exactly as stupid as they have been in RL (real life)! Nothing new here.
Interestingly enough after reading dozens of commentators left, right, and center – everybody despises the military and the Colonel, however nobody took offense that Sigourney Weaver’s character has cloned Na’vi bodies (obtained permission?) and put human minds in them…
The movie is about reality perception and social interaction. And the main message I take with me from this film is DON’T BE AFRAID.
This may sound ridiculous at first. But why do the Na’vi live at peace with themselves. Think of the initiation ritual: you now belong to us – you may put your fears (about that) to rest. (Living without fear does not mean carelessness or blind faith.)
Even the steeled Colonel, showing not one ounce of empathy for anything, deep inside only has fear.
Imagine you were a paraplegic for many years already. Suddenly someone puts your mind in a body with working legs. But only for a limited time – then maybe next day again. And you’re in a totally new environment. All your own “truths” are questioned, your former perceived reality begins to evaporate. Shortly after you even are enabled to fly, sensorial connected to an ikran.
Movies to compare it to are: “Strange Days”, “Total Recall”, and Jack Sully rediscovering reality is like Lester in “American Beauty”. And a bit “True Lies” and “Matrix”.
Overall:
Fantastic movie!!!
Groundbreaking for this generation, just like Star Wars had been for the previous.
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Firmam?z; makine yüzeyi, ya?l? cilt, motor, epoksi yüzey, imalathaneler, yanm?? yan?k ya?lar, mutfaklar, f?r?n ve f?r?n tavalar?, plastik yüzeyler, klima, fren balata, parça, elektrik ve elektonik aksamlar?n temizli?inde kullan?larak mükemmel sonuçlar veren ya? çözücü ürünleri üretmektedir.
Ürünlerimiz her türlü sorun te?kil eden katranla?m?? ya?lar? çevreye zarar vermeden su haline dönü?türen kimyasallard?r. Makine yüzey temizli?inde boya ya zarar vermeden sararm?? ya?lar? temizleyerek makinenin yüzeyini temiz ve yenilenmi? bir hale getirir. Boyan?n ömrünü uzat?r.
Metal yüzeylerde ya?l? metallerin temizleyip fosfat kaplayarak boyan?n daha iyi tutunmas?n? sa?lar.
El temizleyicilerde a??r ya?l?, kirli ve boyal? ciltlerin temizli?inde kullan?l?r. Üstün ya? çözücü özelli?i ile en etkili temizli?i sa?lar. Cilde zarar vermez.
Araç motor yüzeylerinde kullan?lan ya? çözücüler de ise motor aksamlar?na zarar vermeden motor yüzeyini ilk günkü temizli?ine kavu?turur.
Epoksi yüzey üzerinde sorun haline gelen lekelerin ve lastik izlerinin ç?kar?lmas?nda kullan?lan özel ya? çözücülerimiz vard?r.
G?da i?letmelerinde çi? ve yan?k ya?lar? temizleyen ya? çözücüler çevreye ve insan sa?l???na zarar vermeden net bir temizlik sa?lar.
Klimalardaki alüminyüm serpantinlerin temizli?ini yapan ya? çözücülerimiz ?s? al??veri?ini düzenli hale getirir.
Elektrik ve elektronik aksamlar üzerinde bu aksamlara zarar vermeden temizlik yapan ve koruyan ya? çözücüler üretmekteyiz.
Gold Teknik Klima Servisi, olarak konusunda uzman ve e?itimli kadromuz ile tüm marka ve model klima servisi hizmeti vermekteyiz. ?stanbul avrupa yakas?nda gezici servis ekibimiz ile haftan?n 7 günü kesinitisiz hizmet veren firmam?z h?zl? servis hizmeti verebilmek için ?stanbul Avrupa Yakas?n?n hemen hemen tüm semtlerinde gezici klima servisi arac? bulunduruyoruz.
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