JHK’s Three-Act Play
Those of you too caught up in Lady Gaga’s latest cutting edge art project — she arranged for another woman to vomit on her while seated at the keyboard to show, well, I guess to demonstrate that not even vomit can stop the power of pop music — may have missed the latest moves in our nation’s foreign policy quest to remain Hall Monitor of the World. It appears that the Crimean peninsula has voted rather persuasively to become part of adjoining Russia, a nation that they were functionally a province of longer than the USA has been the independent and exceptional beacon of liberty that we became. Now, all that’s left are some procedural formalities, and then our side has promised to do some very bad things to punish Russia for this dastardly outcome.
Have the Lady Gaga fans forgotten that our country set this whole fiasco in motion by promoting a tug-o-war between a proposed Russian free trade zone (the Customs Union) and the European Union (another trade zone) with Ukraine as the rope? Alas, the rope broke in the early going, leaving the Russians to try to splice it back together in some way that aligns with the ethnic composition of the territory and their treaty perquisites regarding port facilities on the Black Sea. This “crisis” has got Secretary of State Kerry pulling his hair out, perhaps in his own personal quest to achieve mature male hair equality with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Mr. Kerry has more work to do before the world will stop calling him “a haircut in search of a brain.”
Notice that for ten years the Russians have not been jumping up and down as the USA hops from one Central Asian state to the next blowing things up and arranging affairs so that hundreds of thousands of people get killed — quite a few by our cunning model airplanes controlled by military video gamesters, who blow away “folks” on morning watch before repairing to the nearest Taco Bell for an order of Doritos Locos (and a chance to watch Lady Gaga get vomit-tagged on their iPhones). I wonder how the USA would feel if the Russian foreign ministry ginned up an operation to persuade Texas to secede from the Union (again).
What will be the next step of the menswear model in the oval office? Is he coordinating with the EU to make sure that Russia can’t sell its products to anyone, say, the EU, which really has nowhere else to buy a great deal of the methane gas it uses every winter to keep the pipes from freezing? Of course our country has made promises that it will export liquefied natural gas to Europe from the depleting shale plays of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas — but, wait a minute (or maybe five years) because we have to build new pipelines, gas export terminals, and a fleet of compressed gas tanker ships before that’ll work. But maybe Europe will have five exceptionally mild winters until then. Note to Mr. Obama: increase National Prayer Breakfasts to once-a-month.
Then there is the question of what Russia may offer to do to the USA in return. Perhaps nothing, because America is doing such a good job of imploding under its own fecklessness and inertia. If I were Mr. Putin — not saying I want to be, you understand, but in the spirit of conjecture — I would just kick back and tune in on the Web to watch this nation of overfed clowns and tattooed savages vomit over each other, since that is apparently now embroidered into the zeitgeist. Mr. Putin could also (in the spirit of the game of chess, which he is reputed to be good at) add some frisson to the situation by stealthily unloading quantities of Russian-held US Treasury paper, not to crash the market but just enough to turn the ten-year bond above the 3.00 percent line — a point at which the US government’s bankruptcy (that is, inability to service our debt) creeps above the horizon like a bad moon rising.
State Department chess players are gloating at the moment that the Russian ruble has lost ten percent of its value this year. No doubt a few functionaries in the Kremlin are going boo-hoo over this. But remember: they are a nation who lost about 8.6 million soldiers to overcome Hitler. Do you think a little austerity will persuade them to cede Ukraine to the Walt Disney Company? Has anyone in the pay of America’s Deep State asked themselves whether it really matters to us who runs Ukraine? Did it matter to us before and then after the Soviet regime collapsed? What was so terrible about Ukraine joining the Russian free trade zone that we felt compelled to go in and vomit all over it?
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“Have the Lady Gaga fans forgotten that our country set this whole fiasco in motion by promoting a tug-o-war between a proposed Russian free trade zone (the Customs Union) and the European Union (another trade zone) with Ukraine as the rope?”
No, as the Little Monsters couldn’t forget what they never knew in the first place. They were far more likely to know that their pop art idol recorded a water conservation public service announcement in exchange for filling the pool at Hearst Castle during a video shoot.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/02/lady-gaga-does-water-conservation-psa.html
Ah, Americans! We’ll put up with all kinds of political, economic, and social abuse, but we demand our entertainment. At least Lady Gaga and the State of California figured out a way to deliver it to them sustainably.
“Then there is the question of what Russia may offer to do to the USA in return.”
One of the actions The Real Most Interesting Man in the World could take would be to stop cooperating with the U.S. and other NATO nations in space. So far, that hasn’t happened, as one ISS crew has returned to Earth since the crisis began and another crew is still training to fly up to orbit. Still, the possibility remains.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/03/returning-without-russia-and-other.html
While Marx got plenty of things wrong (especially the whole ‘rule of the proletariat’ thingy aka meet the new boss, same as the old boss), he was spot on identifying that capitalism was only a stage in history, one amongst many others that have come and gone.
The question for the ages has been, when would this period of rule actually come to an end? Well, it appears Karl got that one correct as well; specifically, when the goodies ran out that were used to bribe a certain percentage of the population in order to support the status quo.
Goodies came in two basic flavors: (a) pump the Ponzi so that anyone who bought in (ie took on debt to purchase capital goods = houses) @ the bottom would experience nominal gains as new players were added to the mix in order to create demand for scarce goods; and (b) keep pushing exploitation out to further outposts of empire so that the previously exploited could comfortably enjoy their brief moment in the sun.
Where the model breaks down is two-fold: a region cannot absorb enough new population necessary to generate equity for those who took on loans to build equity; and/or, we run out of areas to outsource the brutal requirements of industrial manufacturing.
Additional population increases can only be supported by industrial scale agriculture, which is 100% dependent on fossil fuels. Finding new regions to outsource production is proving more difficult each passing day.
As Jim calls it, the “establishment” is well aware of these fundamentals, and if nothing else, are students of history, economics, politics & governance. In other words, anyone with 1/2 a clue knew the existing system would someday come to a close.
The real issue then becomes: what is going to replace it? And this is where things begin to become interesting, because there are all kinds of options available. The US is a particularly hard case, because the dollar’s reserve currency status has really left us weak & enfeebled. The gap between what we currently enjoy and what we could as a nation actually earn/generate absent this privilege is going to drive social unrest.
How this plays out is anyone’s guess, but the interesting part is that it’s becoming apparent that the initial stages of the end of the middle game are now being mapped out across the board.
The solutions to our problems are creativity, permaculture, and forming our own new non-hierarchical institutions.
http://subverses.org/
“I wonder how the USA would feel if the Russian foreign ministry ginned up an operation to persuade Texas to secede from the Union (again).”
I for one would be forever grateful to them.
Actually, I think this may well be in the near future, for Texas and some adjacent states–and developing rapidly without any exterior influences.
As a Hoosier, I rather wish Indiana would think of receding back to a pre 1815 territorial status.
Indiana could survive just on the export of Lindner’s ice cream. It’s that good. And women. Y’all got some pretty girls in the Hoosier State.
Right now the “men’s wear model in the oval office” is busy picking winners in the NCAA basketball tournament. Its called bracketology folks, and its much more fun than dealing with daunting geopolitical events on the edges of Europe and the likes of uncooperative characters like Vladimir Alexander Putin.
BRH
Speaking of things that are much more fun than dealing with grim reality, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Wear green (or orange if you are that contrary and so inclined) and drink responsibly!
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/03/tipsy-bartender-drinks-for-st-patricks.html
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
St. Patrick’s Day is amateur night. Actually, the lines start outside the faux Irish pubs in the morning around here (I believe Neon’s same general neighborhood) and are there all day long. Sorry losers looking for a reason—any reason—to drink a lot of watery beer (my bet is these are not “craft” beer drinkers) and then throw up.
Stay off the roads, people!
“Have the Lady Gaga fans forgotten that our country set this whole fiasco in motion”…?
I agree with Vincent, above. That’s the whole reason we have Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber…..
But we already knew that. Perhaps we’re all better off that way.
Thank you. It’s also the reason we have Hollywood. The odd thing is that our popular and award-winning films still manage to reflect our grim and gritty reality in entertaining ways. As I suspected, a lot of our award-winning films center around crime. More than half the Best Picture nominees involved crime. Two more involved injustice. Add in the films nominated for directing and acting, and nine of the top eleven had crime and injustice as themes. As JHK pointed out when he reviewed “Breaking Bad,” criminality is part of who we are.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/03/crime-and-injustice-among-oscar-nominees.html
Lots of those Lady Gaga fans are also readers of dystopian books for youth and the movies made from them. It’s enough to make people wonder what they see in them. Laura Miller of the New Yorker thinks that it’s because high school is already a dystopia, and the current fiction trend just turns that up to 11. It’s also because the current crop of teenagers recognizes that things are likely to get worse and they’d like some ideas of how to survive it. Finally, they’d like to know how to make things better. As Miller herself wrote, “Yes, our errors and delusions may lead to catastrophe, but if—as usually happens in dystopian novels for children—a new, better way of life can be assembled from the ruins would the apocalypse really be such a bad thing?” Some of us might be wondering the same thing.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/03/divergent-and-other-teen-dystopias.html
The stories we tell…. could get into the whole chicken or egg discussion. Perhaps we’re well into the post-Chomskyesque media era; certainly a response to the happy-happy-joy-joy-spend-and-consume corporate message of the last few generations. Manufacturing acceptance of consequences? AKA: “We don’t know how this crazy era will play out, but it can’t end well. Party on…”
Lady Gaga isn’t any less real or bazaar than our elected leadership. Just a Court Jester on steroids.
Lady Gaga is one classy broad, a real dame, as Bogart would say.
Have the Lady Gaga fans forgotten that our country set this whole fiasco in motion by promoting a tug-o-war between a proposed Russian free trade zone (the Customs Union) and the European Union (another trade zone) with Ukraine as the rope?
How cold those fans forget something they don’t know and will never know because they lack the capacity to know?
The question for me is, how much of Russia’s recent brazen and emboldened behavior is due to the Snowden Effect? If the worst case unfolds, and nukes fly, will the so-called “Left” consider Snowden a hero then…if they have the chance before flash-frying? Burning the village to save it comes to mind. Give me Liberty or give me Death.
So I take it, Cold ‘ole buddy, you didn’t like Mr Snowden lifting the veil and showing for all to see with certainty the outrageous (and incidently “UN American”) things the USA – with the help of stooges like Great Britain and my little Kangarooville) – is doing in the name of “freedom and liberty”? No doubt, anyone with half a brain just knew they were doing stuff like this – But there’s nothing like having your face rubbed in it, nes pas?
As for Russia, as Mr Kunstler correctly pointed out –
1. The regions in question have been part of that country since before white interlopers started giving the Indians and the Aborigines in our respective lands a two hundred plus year beat down.
2. The Russian people, unlike the coddled folks in our comfy club, have known REAL hardship, and are unlikely to be the least bit scared of your Clown-in-Chief or his Secretary of Stoopid. In response to Mr Kerry’s latest bleating, I imagine Mr Putin channelling Monty Python: “I shall fart in their direction”.
The USA would be better served by trying pull it’s own middle class out of its financial death spiral – If not, you might even be facing your own revolution… Just ask any Russian – They know all about shite like that…
War hero and wind surfer extraordinaire, Johnny Ketchup, will straighten it all out with his blow drier…….
that anyone watches lady gaga at all is amasing, never heard the person, whom i first thought was a guy in drag, sing…
As too the menswear model in the whitehouse,, that line made me laugh, i am sure he doesn’t know half of what he is talking about, or care to much for the common us citizens, he talked a good talk, but hasn’t walked his talk, i knew from the outset it’d be con artist scam.
hope we don’t go to blows over this, don’t think they really will, but you never know.
“Have the Lady Gaga fans forgotten that our country set this whole fiasco in motion by promoting a tug-o-war between a proposed Russian free trade zone (the Customs Union) and the European Union (another trade zone) with Ukraine as the rope?”
You’ve got to be kidding JHK, Lady Gaga fans never knew!
Now it should be clear to those with access to and the ability to analyze facts that the US Imperium is way overstretched and ripe for the picking. With that in mind Putin has decided to hog the stage at the end of history. Putin’s aware that the western economic oligarchy is clearly unable to stop him!
Decades of imperial overreach by the US Corporate Oligarchy and the inevitable Blow Back are well documented. The Corporate Oligarchy has controlled the news so that it’s difficult for US citizens to really find out what’s happening in the world. And on the absurd notion that some rag-heads hold up in Afghani caves might pose a credible threat to the US had the Patriot Act passed to keep the real threat, namely disenfranchised US citizens, held in check.
Now that most production’s been outsourced to China or far-away third world locations, I wonder how long it will take for the Corporate Oligarchy to decide to outsource the nastiness it needs to bring to bear to keep us in check despite the Patriot Act. The longer term reckoning that the Fed’s Monetary Easing will eventually bring about may happen sooner, soon enough to possibly cause the Corporate Oligarchy to collectively panic. Then the fun will really begin!
http://www.thesisa.org
Point by point, your analysis agrees with mine, 100%.
On: “… I wonder how long it will take for the Corporate Oligarchy to decide to outsource the nastiness it needs to bring to bear to keep us in check…”,
I might change “outsource” to “INsource”, but that’s a very minor quibble of syntax. I might also nit-pick that Putin has been FORCED to take center stage [of late] by one-regime-change-too-far hanky-panky engineered by ultra-hubristic assholes
Check these symptoms:
http://themetapicture.com/americans-were-asked-to-place-european-countries-on-a-map/
Some actually did pretty well in just coming up with the names, I suppose; and, sad to say, I’d be hard-pressed to do better than some.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/one-four-americans-don-39-t-know-earth-145101318.html#6OTURlO
Which might lead us to ask:
1.) Is ignorance dangerous?
2.) How many “solid facts” are at the command of those who make decisions that affect millions (or more) without anybody’s say-so or by-your-leave?
Crimea provides the perfect stage for all the dysfunction that’s going on in the world today, and the comedy/drama could not have been better scripted or cast. I’m reminded of ‘The Mouse that Roared’.
Only an hour ago, as we were watching the NBC news show, my daughter asked me if the Russians were like the Nazis – so biased was that network’s presentation that she would make such an inference!
My reply, “No, they’re more like the Americans…only not as bad.”
Funny, I’ve caught myself speaking of my countrymen in the third person more and more of late. I’m aware that I may have to pay a price for this indiscretion some day.
Greg, it is the CRIMEa after all.(LOL). And in reality Elephants really are afraid of mice. (and I don’t mean to infer that any of the participants in this circus are vermin).
As far as being an American, I’m with you there, I think that this is part of our underlying problem… the citizens of USA aren’t quite sure what it means to be an “American” anymore.
If we really want to control things, all that need be done is open the following in armpit of Crimea;
Chick-Fil-A, 7eleven, “LIDS”, and 1 hour Tattoo…..control their bellies and appearance and you control it all…after they get Tatted Up and Fat, install Laser tat removal and heart catherization with auto debit done by the IRS——when uprisings occur, pass out coupons for free massage with happy ending and you then have world peace…
….Concerning our shit-for-brains “representatives” who occupy the rarified ether of congressional offices, it might be constructive to ask: “How ill-/un-informed are these serial droolers who are about to cobble together some “serious sanctions” to poke the Russian bear?
As Fincaln observed just last night:
“The “drop” of the Russian stock market presented Putin’s government with greatest financial opportunity to quickly make $20bln in couple of days by buying back discounted stock of Russian oil and gas companies.
Putin waited a week while huge dividend-paying stocks went below the lowest levels in years and then pounced gobbling all he could eat.”
Oopsie.
I will admit to never having heard a Lady Gaga song and I don’t think I could recognize her in a lineup if my life depended on it, but her name along bespeaks infantilization. Who else would choose such a moniker? Now, it’s possible that I’m so tragically un-hip that I don’t realize “gaga” is slang for something else, such as a female body part. If so, please enlighten me.
Just as an experiment, I went back and looked at the front pages of New York Times issues during WWII. I looked at about 20-25 randomly. I could not find one that did not have war news front and center. As Jim has noted so well, look at how that contrasts with today….
As to Obama? Jim’s description made me laugh, and reminded me of those Sear’s catalog pages from the 50s and 60s, where guys stood around in their underwear — but they usually had a football — so we wouldn’t feel uncomfortable! At least Obama will have something to fall back on….
Don’t forget, Lady Gaga’s biggest fans are gay men in their 20s and 30s from LA, NYC and San Francisco. What the hell, you take your fans where you can get ’em. Liza Minelli and Cher did OK with the same audience, in fact built entire careers around it. Homos have a lot of extra money to spend on Lady Gaga concerts, what with no families to support or anything … Its all part of freak show anyway, except the freak show is no longer a sideshow but the main event itself. Only problem is, the circus is bankrupt, the tigers have escaped their cages, and the clowns have moved into town hall …
–BRH
So I take it you’re a Lady Gaga fan then since you know so much about the demographics of her audience?
Hard to say Cole. Having read your blog you wouldn’t believe me anyway.
Indeed, we are exposing the bankruptsy of our ideologies to the world. Even as our toadies, the EU membership pretend to back us.
The idea of surrounding Russia goes back to the late 1990s (ZBIG) and don’t forget that using the drunkard Yeltsin, we were using the ole’ Milton Friedman shock doctrine on Russia instead of helping the country turn into a democratic capitalist state.
Our economic professors at the Ivy Leagues were making 500% of the Russian infrastructure causing Jeffrey Sachs to denounce this practice as unseemly and the neoliberalism philosophy.
The gas pipelines will be given to Chevron for nothing!
Now we have neo nazis winning the day in the Ukraine and placed, by us a technocrat banker as PM. Crazy but true—You can’t make this stuff up.
We seem to be pushing a hot war….
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
• —George Orwell (1946)
Let’s see how well this will go for us.
I’m beginning to think The Deep State has ventured too far into the swamp of its’ own creation.
I hadn’t heard of this one, had you?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37970.htm
“In 1974, the White House sent the Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, very senior and sinister figure in the State Department who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as the “coupmaster”, he had played a played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors – described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.
Okay, enough to chew on from this tiny corner of ineffectual peepings. Best of luck.
Oh, one more thing. Many of us on the blog will be amused to know that this stand we’re taking is against ethnically linked peoples.
We will punish Russia because people of Russia who are being separted out of Russia should have no right to want to remain Russian. These people were celebrating big time after the vote and couldn’t be happier. At least the IMF can’t do its austerity thing on them.
BUT
Globalism is the only choice. (TINA) There is no alternative.
Dear Mr. Kunstler:
As always, a post worth reading. Why spoil it with “ten-year bond above the 3.00 percent line — a point at which the US government’s bankruptcy (that is, inability to service our debt) creeps above the horizon like a bad moon rising.”?
The U.S. is currency-sovereign. It can go bankrupt only if it chooses to do so. Learning why this is true is and will be germane to many of your columns. Among other things, currency sovereignty means that this country has the money it needs to create full employment and that “fiscal cliffs” are as real as $3 bills.
You’ll find a good intro to currency-sovereignty at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCOVldiGeQY .
I wonder what the rest of the world thinks about the situation?
The “selective” American outrage must be palpable among many of the non-whites around Asia.
Not just the “non-whites,” bud.
And not just around Asia.
I wonder how much of what we’re seeing is purely for internal US consumption. I also wonder what constitutes an intellectual “critical mass,” to coin a phrase.
IOW, US policy makes no sense. The traditional right-wing hates it because it’s not robust enough. The traditional left-wing only pretends to love it because Obama is in charge. And most Americans just do not care – content to go where the MSM leads them.
So – a critical mass of informed US citizens might really sway policy; for once in a great long while. Informed by websites like this one, and many others – and expressing opinions around water coolers and internets throughout the land.
So, what percentage of US residents would constitute a critical mass, in this case. Five percent? Fifteen percent? Certainly less than twenty percent.
The plutocrats and power-brokers in charge have got to be getting at least a little bit worried.
Wonder if anybody’s eyeballing that internet kill switch, yet?
Very nice piece of work this week, JHK!
I don’t see how any thinking person can disagree with a single word.
Of course, many will. I begin to think that one of the unappreciated joys of having a Democrat Party president is watching those on the traditional left twist themselves into logical pretzels in defense of a strong US international policy and, presumably, the strong military that has to go with it. Fun times, for this observer!
I’ve gotta’ share this, because it’s so freakin’ funny.
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/121820-john-bolton-sending-john-kerry-negotiate-russians-like-cupcake-negotiate-steakknife/
Yes we’ve already “forgotten” the Bosnian Doctrine in which people have the right to secede from nations and seek self determination.
You mean when Kosovo was hived off Serbia and turned over to the Caliphate? Russia wasn’t too happy about that move either.
–BRH
Connecticut may turn out to be the birth place of 2nd American Revolution as Massachusetts was of the first. Tell us something about your State to make us love it. Why do you love it? Any great Founders? I love Roger Williams of Rhode Island. Any men to match him? Or was it just mostly stodgy Anglicans?
Does the whole state support the Yankees? Or is there an east/west line where support of the Red Sox begins? Our States are like Nations: many of them don’t make sense. North Idaho is really part of Washington. No one looks to Boise at all. Don’t know where the line is. The Cascades should be the state line. Western Washington and Oregon should be one massively liberal State. Eastern Washington and Oregon should go free. Perhaps Eastern Oregon looks to Boise. It’s definitely dry Ranch and Cowboy country like much of Idaho.
Dear Janos, whoever you are!
My sediments exactly! Cascadia also goes up into BC, in its archetypal state. Powell said that the west should be defined by watersheds, not horizontal lines. He was right, but all the railroad people laughed at him.
Yeah. Person to person, the Russians are far tougher.
Now imagine if Lady Gaga and her little monsters had decided to “perform” at a Chabad Temple (the Orthodox Sect that installs the Menorah in the White House) during a service without getting permission. That’s a fair analogy of what Pussy Riot did. Think the world would come to their defense? Or that it would do any good? But Gaga or Madonna are far too savvy to take on Judaism or Islam. Christianity is weak, hated, and out of favor with the Western Elite so it’s fair game – here. In Russia, Christianity is back in favor after decades of horrendous persecution under Communism.
It’s extraordinary how many people support this kind of female low life no matter what they do. As long as they go after the right people that is. Think the Russian people have any sympathy after what they’ve been through? Think they’re going to let the persecution of Christians start all over again?
Think they’re going to let the persecution of Christians start all over again?
Probably, if the incentive is right.
Ahh, Lady Gaga is just an art school chick who has struck it lucky. If you put her in the proper context as a performance artist/professional weird art school chick, she’s actually pretty smart. The young girls and gay men who like her stuff are pretty smart too; they see that the “land of opportunity” isn’t offering said opportunity to them, so they might as well act weird in the meantime. At least they’re friendly and kind to one another.
As for the Crimea melodrama, I see it as a continuation in the 50 years (and running) of the Kissinger/Brzezinski domination of US foreign policy. Very consistent. Surround Russia and China with a ring of blood and fire. Put off-limits great deposits of strategic resources and trans-shipment routes. Use bloody chaos to make any productive efforts impossible, creating “failed states” where the best-armed can do whatever they want, knowing we’re the best-armed and have the least compunction about dealing with murderers. Look at an atlas. The countries in which the US has created violent chaos form a chain around the two nations considered rivals to the declining Empire, at least in the minds of the very specific types recruited by the Anne Rice Vampire types like Kissinger and Brzezinski.
Who are these people, these Victoria Nudelman/Nuland/Kagan, Samantha Powers, Susan Rice people? They’re all what sociopaths, and what I call “passive authoritarians,” looking for the most dominant authoritarian to submit to. They’re very smart, well-educated, and come from extremely privileged backgrounds. They’re carefully taught that they are not like other people, and they must not indulge in quaint whimsies like reluctance to cause death to those beneath them. Power is the only thing they care about, and they’d be willing to destroy the world if that were the only way they could claim to have seized ultimate power.
This policy is not failing, and it isn’t weak. The whole POINT is to create violent, bloody chaos. Look whom we befriend in every country in which we meddle. The very worst, most ruthless, most impervious to reason and compromise. Then we train them, arm them, egg them on to commit the most heinous of crimes. Why? It’s the very definition of terrorism. To commit violence against innocents for political reasons, to incite an asymmetric over-reaction from the established power, to eliminate and discredit any “esteemed interlocutors” who might facilitate compromise. Then when the local powers over-react, alienate more and more of the undecideds, so eventually there is no middle ground whatsoever. Then continue the violence until anyone reasonable simply gives up, then take power. Why else would we create Al-Quaeda? Why else cozy up to the Svoboda heirs to Bandera in Ukraine? I’m sure we’re egging on the Uighurs in China, too. Not to mention the demons we’ve unleashed in Libya, Algeria, Mali, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, etc. Note where the strategic resources are, and where they have to travel for someone else to use them.
It would be great if these people were crazy and their behavior were due to the accelerating decline of the American Empire. But unfortunately, they’re not. The American Empire is indeed in decline, but these people and their policies are devious and evil, not stupid, crazy or weak. They say a dying animal is the most dangerous and lashes out with the most ferocity.
Yes the Feminizing, Queering, and Transgendering of our Armed Forces isn’t coming a moment too soon. Decent self respecting Men should abstain from becoming part of such decadence and cultivate their own martial gardens at home.
That’s something Putin would advocate for America. If enough of these so-called “self respecting Men” stay home and shelter in place, Putin and his Toughs can roll over Europe…Eastern and Western. I knew you were Vlad for a reason.
I’d suggest that “Putin and his Toughs” didn’t lift a finger until Nuland, or rather Kissinger and Brzezinski, started unleashing unreconstructed Nazis in Ukraine. Handing out cookies no less.
I’d further suggest that this was all by design, to create chaos and upheaval for the sake of it, in the evil belief that destruction of others enhances one’s own power. The belief that tending to one’s own affairs is meaningless; only the misery of others makes one strong.
Who cares if some art-school chick has some “transgressive” performance. If the conventional mores were that strong and useful, nobody would be interested in contravening them in the first place. Just as Atheism is a response to Theism and doesn’t make any sense outside that context, “Feminizing, Queering, and Transgendering” are a response to a dominant conventionality that wouldn’t mind its own business and leave people alone for such trivial reasons. If we straight white males hadn’t put so much effort into hurting people who weren’t straight, white and male, just for being themselves, there wouldn’t be any interest in overthrowing the straightness, whiteness and maleness. What the hell were/are we so worried about? Some New York former-Catholic art school chick pays somebody to puke on her on stage? We’re going to give that credence? If so, we deserve it. In a healthy society we just shrug, grin, and say, “Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to go to Art School.”
There was once a Holy Man who walked down the same street every evening and a Prostitute who lingered by her door on the same street at the same time. She admired his holy appearance and demeanor every evening. And he despised her for hers. So she acquired the good aspects of his being since we become what we meditate on. And he acquired hers. Likewise, Russia and the United States have exchanged identities. We’re the ones who go around the world fomenting Revolution now.
The Founders told us to stay at home and be strong in peace. But America became the vehicle of the Global Elite who dream of World Conquest. We lost our Country a long time ago – and you still haven’t noticed. There may well be all the fighting you want soon. But it will be right here. Wake up or you end up being on the wrong side.
When do people become interested in “decadence?” I’m thinking of Weimar Germany, Rome, certain late feudal cultures, etc. It’s when a critical mass of people realize the whole cultural and social basis of their society doesn’t work anymore. When they feel that they really don’t have anything to lose, worth keeping. The USA has always been overly concerned about sex, race, gender and other “morality” issues. As a result, the perverse has always had an outsized fascination for us, both pro and con. To worry too much about it is to lose sight of what is really significant. When people feel there is a viable path for them, they don’t bother much with such things, and they don’t pay much attention when others do. When they see that what they’ve been told, and what they’ve set out to achieve, is unreal and a set-up for suckers, they decide, “What the hell,” and dabble in whatever seems most transgressive and interesting. I was raised to idealize formal education in an almost spiritual way. When I came to realize that was a game too, I lost interest, smoked a lot of pot, and drifted. Eventually I realized I was wasting my own time and that’s the most unforgivable thing, so I got busy trying to do things and take the initiative in my own life. Others, who hadn’t been raised with the weird false mythology I was, weren’t bothered by their realizations. We each have to walk our own path, I suppose.
Did you see 60 minutes last night? The segment about Egypt’s “John Stuart”? That’s how it starts. People love to laugh. But no faculty outside of sexuality is more prone to evil and destructiveness. People can become vicious mockers of everything without even knowing how low they’ve fallen. All though a love of the pleasures of humor.
The guy was funny. Very talented. But you see for the comic there are no limits – unless he consciously exerts moral control over himself and his art. And then someone who doesn’t will step up and shoulder him aside. By then the public has become insatiable. Thus the Government must always exert some standards – or the Culture will be wrecked on the shoals of its own appetites. We are a Fallen Race you see. Each Religion says this, each in its own way. As did the Pagan Sages who preceded Christianity.
Oh yeah..Surely, all problems boil down to feminising and queering..and of course you can’t be decent and one of those. Would you focus on things above the belt for a change? Grow up already.
You really are part of Obama’s Choom Gang, aren’t ya? Look, there are Gays who are appalled at what the Gay Movement has become. I know that, but the question is do you? To put it simply, Homosexuality has been weaponized just like Race in order to tear down Western Culture by corrupting its institutions and children.
Well, there you have it. Vlad/Janos has spoken and decreed that the “Gay Movement” (whatever that is) is not only now a weapon but a weapon that is being used, intentionally(?), to tear down Western Culture. How? I guess by feminizing everything and everybody. I suppose his guy friends (some of his best friends are gay) have told him how this appalls them. These must be the strong, silent, macho gay types like in Brokeback Mountain or maybe it’s Vlad/Janos talking to himself. You know what they say about guys who are really homophobic.
‘I wonder how the USA would feel if the Russian foreign ministry ginned up an operation to persuade Texas to secede from the Union (again).”
This Southerner would put up a statue to those Ruskies and lobby for every red-state hick, “young Earther,” and “No gubmint” Teabagger to take their AR-15s, pit bulls, monster trucks, and bibles and head to the Lone Star Republic. Then the rest of the Union could continue being a first-world nation while the Texans and newly arrived hicks annihilate each other over tiny doctrinal differences.
Texas can have Lady Gaga too, vomit and all. Before her forced deportation, we can get a bunch of Putin’s Cossacks (wearing only fur hats, leather thongs and boots) to horsewhip her on stage while displaying their chest hair and Duck Dynasty beards.
BTW, Jim, I ate some Cheetohs last week. I’d forgotten how damned good they are.
Pardon me, and who is Lady Gaga?
Lady Gaga is a pop star and performance artist known for hyper-sexual costumes and outrageous behavior, like covering her body in raw meat and incorporating regurgitation into her performance.
I read Orlov for insights about the Black Sea drama, but he refers back to Kunstler for the best summaries. Me thinks the next installment of World Made by Hand publishes soon?
Ya, you obviously have no idea what’s going on in Ukraine.
In Sevastopol 123% of the residents there voted for Russian integration: http://euromaidanpr.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/over-123-of-sevastopol-residents-vote-to-join-russia/
The Russians are being sloppy about falsifying the elections and people like you are eating up everything they say as truth.
I used to have respect for your analysis of things, but now I see that you are so obsessed with critiquing American culture that you can’t even pay attention to anything else with any degree of clarity.
Ya Levko. Study some Math. It’s a Transcendental Set a la Cantor. Be careful or you people will lose Western Ukraine as well.
Hmm..how does “critiquing the American culture” prevent JHK from paying attention to “anything else” and especially “with any degree of clarify”? I personally find JHK’s blogs to be very easy to understand.
Lets not clamp everything into one pile.
Things with this referendum are fishy, no doubt, but it is very difficult to falsify 97%. I don’t claim the right to knowing what’s going on, but I can bet any money that all press is rigged, from all sides, and no one really knows who is behind what.
In my view, it is not in Russia’s interests to have Crimea annexed into its territory. If Western Europe and US gang up against Russia, this can lead to a very speedy economic collapse, which, even if it is temporary, would wreak havoc across the whole country and could lead to social unrest and even its own civil war. The situation in Russia is pretty bad as it is, with the exception of Moscow and maybe St. Petersburg.
It is much more in Russia’s interest to keep Ukraine in the state of conflict and have Crimea as an independent country. This way, NATO will not be able to accept Ukraine (due to NATO’s own regulations) and Crimea will be off limits to them as well and under a full dominance of Russia. Besides, the current Russian legislature does not allow for Crimea to be annexed into Russia; it requires Ukraine’s approval. Russia might change this law, but given the timing and implications, it will not play very well and is not really needed strategically.
So not supporting US does not mean supporting Russia. JHK is making a point that Ukraine is being played.
The Gaga apparently needs a little refresher on art history, since she confuses “The Birth of Venus” with “The Venus de Milo” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhph-TRsR8.
Anyway, nobody intertwines American culture , politics, and economics into an “american sized” noose better than Mr. Kunstler.
Botticelli? Venus de Milo? Venus in Furs? You are all missing the point!
Lady Gaga a national treasure. Her hair could deflect ICBMs, if Putin ever opens a can on the US of A. Just keep that gal away from Bill Clinton, who has that “thang” going for big hair, bless his soul.
Just don’t let her near Lord Googoo or they’ll breed to produce little Googoo Gaga.
Screw Lady Gaga!! Stocks are up baby!!!! I’m telling you, in five years when stocks are 22,000 and you guys are still saying it’s the end of the world (and I’m agreeing with you) I’ll be saying to my self I should have stayed in!! I should have stayed in!!!! My condolences to all the Kunstler, Keiser,Greg Hunter,Paul Roberts,Alex Jones, Zero Hedge, Bill Tatro, Real news Network fans who I listen to and believe but who are going to put me in the poor house!!!!
” they are a nation who lost about 8.6 million soldiers to overcome Hitler”
I’m not sure about the number of soldiers but most historians put the total Russian deaths during WW2 at between 25 and 30 million. This is a nation that understands endurance and patience.
Do you know how many Americans died in WW2? Few do anymore – all that is taught is “the six million”. Interesting priority, eh? Almost as if there was a silent coup and America taken over by Non-Americans. I mean why the either/or? Why not teach the six million and the number of American casualties?
Oooo, the Joos. The big, bad boogey men.
Hmmmm. Is this the same “menswear model in the oval office” that Kunstler voted for? I read this blog every week along with daily reads of Market Ticker (Karl Denninger) and Althouse.
I read all of them with a grain of salt since they all voted for this “menswear model in the oval office.”
Anything they post is worth giving it the evil eye since who knows if they are correct this time or the other time.
kunstler needs to stop writing about crimea and get back to the end of times.
i cant get any energy up about the ukraine (or ukraine, as you will)
peace peaceniks
http://clashdaily.com/2014/03/fire-former-obama-fan-goes-rant-burns-obama-shirt/
I want all of you who voted for Obama to do a similar ritual. If you don’t have an Obama shirt, buy one and then burn it. Do with others, make it a collective consciousness raising.
You are magnificent in your choice of words…BRAVO…
Wonder if anybody’s eyeballing that internet kill switch, yet?
The Internet is the kill switch. It’s a beautiful thing to behold. It’s taken on a life of its own. The Hive Mind has arrived. The unwitting and gullible are absorbed and will continue to be absorbed. Uploading and downloading is in process. Do Not Disturb.
I’m not sure about the number of soldiers but most historians put the total Russian deaths during WW2 at between 25 and 30 million. This is a nation that understands endurance and patience.
Really? How many generations removed are we now from that time period? At least several. The current crop of Plebes has no visceral connection to those previous generations. Putin is the Missing Link, but as far as the average bloke in Russia is concerned, he/she is just something to be used, abused and thrown away when you’re done with it. Let’s not forget, many of those Russian soldiers who died in battle during WWII were forced into conscription by gunpoint and always had a proverbial gun to the back of their head. That’s not endurance and patience. It’s sadistic despotism.
Police just take people’s money now – even if they haven’t been found guilty. Call me naïve, but I don’t see why they get anything even if the person is later found guilty. Doesn’t this seem a lot like Privateering and Booty? Piracy in a word?
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2014/03/17/asset-forfeiture-as-institutionalized-corruption/
Even as we (correctly, I think) criticize the menswear model in the oval office for his unnecessary intervention in the Ukraine, I don’t think he deserves all of the scorn heaped on him. In a time of extreme internal political divisiveness he stands out as a voice of moderation. I shudder to think what our public sphere would look like if we had a teabagger, religious nut or cornpone neo-nazi in the oval office.
It may be true that in the manner of Germany’s Weimar republic, Obama is simply the hapless harbinger of a much rougher and deadlier political constellation. I’d prefer to hope that we will get an effective, less corporatist leader in the vein of Elizabeth Warren. Ok, that probably won’t happen, Hillary is a more likely follow-up act and she will be more effective than O at neutralizing the nutwings.
I also don’t buy into the doomsday view of the impending crash of the republic. Slow decline perhaps, coupled with innovations to offset the impacts of pricier energy and planet warming. There will be interesting times to come but the human capacity to overcome challenges shouldn’t be under-estimated, even in the corporatist and NSA-trolled environment we live in.
We have the “best government money can buy”.
After fifty years, the Truth comes out. Young Rockefeller was eaten by cannibals. As generic you knows, cannibalism was dropped by the Boasian Anthropological Establishment since it didn’t make Whites seem worse than everybody.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/03/the-gruesome-details-of-how-rockefeller-heir-was-gutted-and-cooked-by-the-asmat-tribe-of-new-guinea/
I credit your insight Jim. You are not fooled by the giant lie campaign that the government has the media blasting at us 24/7. Indeed, Crimea has been Russian for well over two centuries, and now is populated by majority Russian population. Why is the USA going nuts over this, simple, they had plans to take over Sevastopol for the US Navy and Air Force to build bases and air fields. The attempt to overthrow Russia will never end, the bankers and corporations MUST gain Russia’s resources and vast land mass as the global warming nightmare unfolds. See the current Arctic conditions to witness how fast that is unfolding!
the constant focus on the ukraine and the crimea shows just how devoid kunstler is of any new ideas on his energy descent meme….tripe
peace peaceniks
Feeling bereft? I have the solution.
Go here:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-crocodiles-of-reality.html
Read the article, then place a comment concerning your favorite vaporware and subsidy dumpsters and see how it’s received. Well, there you go; sorry to hear of your troubles; feel better.
Unfortunately for them, most Americans do not understand a simple fact that what we are seeing in Ukraine is a mere competition for the survival between US and Russia. Due to MAD concept (Mutual Assured Destruction) it is impossible to conduct a “normal” war, so different methods of competition are being used.
Americans and British perfected new (or may be well forgotten old) concept of war through subversion and informational, political and financial domination. That includes:
1. Creating a new class of “effective managers” – so called oligarchs – who are always on the short leash with Western intelligence agencies since their holdings are kept mostly in Western Banks and their families living in the West and their children attending prestigious Western schools
2. Introducing subtle changes to the Constitution of the victim country with the help of Western consultants so it is impossible to conduct national-oriented policies (Russian Constitution of 1993 written by Harvard egg-heads and adopted by Boris Eltsin)
3. Creating an “independent” Central Bank that mostly acts as a collection agency for Federal Reserve by acting as “Currency Board” linking issuance of local currency (rubles) to purchasing of US Treasury Notes (as well as Euro bonds), denying the country necessary financial blood stream and choking the national economy through extremely high interest rates. Cover story being used – they fight inflation.
4. Assuming total (or almost total) informational domination over all main publications and TV Channels mostly through ownership of so-called oligarchs
5. Finding (or creating), financing and training extremist groups that could be later used as a shock-troops during inevitable punitive expeditions – they could be Muslim extremists, or Ukrainian Nazis or whoever. By the way the March coup in Kiev is a typical punitive expedition originated by the State Department and coincided with Olympic Games in Sochi.
American public is being deceived with publications like Dmitry Orlov’s “Reinventing Collapse” blaming the collapse of the USSR on so-called ineffectiveness and imperial overstretch of the Socialist system and scaring the pants off little Americans promising them the same fate. Sorry, total BS.
The fall of the Soviet Union was an extremely successful Western operation that played the desires of Russian party “nomenklatura” to make their positional privileges hereditary and assume as little responsibility to the common folks as possible. Main figure of change – Michael Gorbachev, the most hated politician in Russia. His “perestroika” campaign was nothing else but systemic dismantling of Russian economic structure that inevitably lead to collapse in 1991. And most Russians are still pissed.
Essentially, in his yesterday Kremlin speech devoted to return of Crimea Putin has declared a war and threw down the gauntlet. US have no choice but to pick it up. If Kremlin will manage to stop paying its dues to the Western budgets, China who is closely watching, will follow immediately. Dominos will start falling off. India, Turkey, Brazil…
US will face a prospect of losing its main stream of revenue and basically will have two options: fight to the death or do what FDR did – create a mobilization economy. Unfortunately for US I don’t think that FDR option is viable, just because Americans are not the same as they were in 1930s. I hope I am mistaken, because the alternative is truly awful. But all that gay marriages, Face Books and iPhones and now legalized and highly promoted pot….
And we are yet to see any real signs of returning industries that could provide a legitimate income to US citizens. However, who knows? Stalin managed to do it in 1930s by building in the stretch of mere 12 years well over 6,000 industrial companies. THAT was a real mobilization economy, and it worked – Russians created sufficient military-industrial potential to fight off German invasion.
Anyway, buckle up your seatbelts, we are all in for a bumpy ride
Regarding Ukraine, what recent move tells us that the king has been laid on its side and one of the players has quietly uttered the words “check mate”? I’m not sure what to think here. The major media in this country have gone relatively quiet on this story; meanwhile, alternative media keep producing interesting detail.
This from Mike Whitney:
[Putin realizes that derailing Washington’s strategy to control the Crimea will have serious consequences. He must now prepare for the typical litany of asymmetrical attacks including covert operations, special ops, arming Tatar jihadis to incite violence in Crimea, US-backed NGOs fomenting unrest in Moscow, etc etc, as well as stepped up US military and logistical support for Kiev’s thriving fascist element which has already morphed into the imposter-government’s security apparatus, a scary remake of Hitler’s Gestapo. Here’s the rundown from the World Socialist Web Site:
“On Thursday, the Ukrainian parliament voted to establish a 60,000-strong National Guard recruited from “activists” in the anti-Russian protests and from military academies. The force will be overseen by the new security chief, Andriy Parubiy, a founder in the early 1990s of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine. His deputy, Dmytro Yarosh, is the leader of the paramilitary Right Sector. It is the Ukrainian equivalent of Hitler’s storm troopers.]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37996.htm
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Dr. PCR has been roaring for a couple weeks that Washington is hell bent on a hot war, but now it’s looking like he and others are calling this a fairly secure Geo-political win for Putin? Again, I’m not sure the match can be called at this point. I think hands will be forced by other factors despite any temporary victory one way or another. Neither side can afford to just let things settle down.
And until now, America has telegraphed every dumb move it planned to make in corporate media. Does burying the lead with an overblown story about a downed airplane tacitly imply a US defeat in Ukraine, a shift to a covert strategy, or both?
Who here will venture a guess about possible US contingencies quietly underway?
On the other hand, those eager to claim a victory for Putin just seem to need an affirmation of their own biases. Can it be that simple?
Dmitry Orlov just did an interview for the constantly baffled Greg Hunter, a guy who just can’t stomach the fact that his country never existed the way he likes to imagine. Anyhow, Orlov speaks as if check mate has occurred, the West’s hands are tied according to him; Russia will just continue to casually incorporate the most desired segments of Ukraine over time and mop-up the nationalist militants now being organized by the seemingly ineffectual interim govt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCO5nZgvtbY&list=UUG-G8LLr38fQUNZU8K0t-EA
I didn’t intend to embed the video, JHK, so please delete if it does.
Have fun beatin’ the midget fellow Doomers.
Hey Zone,
Help me out with this from your Arch Druid link. He talks about how oil producers are cutting back CAPEX for new well discovery and development, then launches this nonsensical statement:
“Exactly what effect this is going to have on the price of oil is an interesting question; my guess, though it’s only a guess, is that a couple of years from now the price of oil will spike, possibly to the $250-$300 a barrel range, then crash to $60 a barrel, and slowly recover to $175 or so over a period of several years.” -ADR
How does he pull a guess like this out of his ass and then think readers are stupid enough to just accept the assertion with no supportive reasoning?
His next paragraph is complete fuckin’ blather, too:
“This has a great deal of relevance to the project of this blog. The last time petroleum production failed to keep pace with potential demand, and the price of oil spiked accordingly, peak oil came in from the fringes and got discussed publicly in the pages of newspapers of record. That window of opportunity gaped open from 2004 to 2010, roughly speaking, and during that period a great deal got accomplished. That was when peak oil stopped being a concern of the furthest fringe and found an audience in many corners of contemporary alternative culture, when local groups—some under the Transition Town banner, others outside it—began to organize around the imminence of peak oil, and when books on resource depletion and its consequences found a market for the first time since the early 1980s. ” -ADR
_______________________________________
I can’t really figure out what the hell this guy is trying to say. Is he just interested in resurrecting the market for Collapse Authorship?
On another note, I recently listened to a podcast from the ever redundant Chris Martenson and a guy who I do admire, Richard Heinberg. Athough I agree with Heinberg that fracking is an act of desperation… if one listens to guys like Martenson closely they’re admitting that the fracking phenomenon will last perhaps 10 to 20 more years while simultaneously predicting a nearer term economic disaster of some sort. Which is it? I can’t seem to square these subtle contradictions.
Also, Chris Martenson is sounding more and more like a dumb-ass these days… At the end of that interview he started advocating the idea of a return to sharecropping… what he called “adopt a farmer” or some shit, to bring together wealthy Boomers sitting on land they can’t possibly work themselves with Millennials willing to do all the work for a seat at the dinner table… as if, when the time comes, young people won’t kick sedentary hoarders of more land than they have any earthly right to off of it, turning it to a common productive resource for the have nots who refuse to starve or revert back to a failed system of graduated slavery/servitude.
Jesus Christ, talk about being bereft of new ideas… some of these collapse prognosticators, a.k.a. gutless intellectuals and Gold Shills, are losing credibility and fast.
I’m glad JHK stays out of the “solution” business.
“Exactly what effect this is going to have on the price of oil is an interesting question; my guess, though it’s only a guess, is that a couple of years from now the price of oil will spike, possibly to the $250-$300 a barrel range, then crash to $60 a barrel, and slowly recover to $175 or so over a period of several years.” -ADR
How does he pull a guess like this out of his ass and then think readers are stupid enough to just accept the assertion with no supportive reasoning?
—————————————————————————–
I would get those figures by adjusting the history of 2008 for inflation. Perhaps your source did the same.
I don’t agree that sharecropping is a non-starter. I think that slavery is what the surveillance state and its drones are for – at least in part.
Interesting point…. Perhaps we’ve already accepted a return to slavery via the surveillance/police state. Nice call out.
s-k,
Ouch! I’m afraid you have something there regarding the sharecropping…
UFIA,
“Help me out with this from your Arch Druid link. He talks about how oil producers are cutting back CAPEX for new well discovery and development, then launches this nonsensical statement:
“Exactly what effect this is going to have on the price of oil is an interesting question; my guess, though it’s only a guess, is that a couple of years from now the price of oil will spike, possibly to the $250-$300 a barrel range, then crash to $60 a barrel, and slowly recover to $175 or so over a period of several years.” -ADR
How does he pull a guess like this out of his ass and then think readers are stupid enough to just accept the assertion with no supportive reasoning?”
Not sure how I can help in this regard; I ain’t the brightest bulb on the marquee, as you may have fathomed. My plodding galumph?** It’s his guess’othetical on the convoluted miseries of “demand destruction” in [unrigged] free-market terms. And no, I wouldn’t hazard guesses like those either, but he could be as correct as he is off-base; it’s kind of a crap-shoot what supplies will be (other than a general “dwindling” til it hits the price point of too-‘spensive-to-extract).
**Sidebar: I employ plodding galumphs quite often. Say I happen to be building a stone wall. Some periods of work upon it go better than others; at times my shape intuition and spatial relations files fail me completely. Rather than gape at a crappy and unstable result for years, I’ll just do something else that employs a different mind-set for a while, then return to the rock mumbling when I have a better eye for form and fit.
Capiche? (It’s the same with “understandings” for me.)
On your 2nd head-scratcher, resulting in:
“I can’t really figure out what the hell this guy is trying to say. Is he just interested in resurrecting the market for Collapse Authorship?”
…I’d have to say that his particular market is (and has been) booming along quite nicely. He’s just saying, “get busy inhabiting the landscape in a nature-respecting fashion so as to get some practice in before it becomes a stone necessity” in another way than JHK, (IMHO).
“Putin must now prepare for the typical litany of asymmetrical attacks including covert operations, special ops, arming Tatar jihadis to incite violence in Crimea, US-backed NGOs fomenting unrest in Moscow, etc.” — UFIA
Yup. And remember Russia has already been defeated once after invading.
Crimea is Putin’s Afghanistan.
Huh?!
I was about to bounce until I saw this little brain fart.
Crimea is Putin’s Afghanistan? Yeah, OK, freak. Re-taking a portion of a country by both popular and majority vote somehow equates to circumstances in Afghanistan. Not a single shot was fired by Russia and you somehow see this as related to defeats suffered by Russia and next the US in a ME distant desert?
Shut the front door with these pointless comparison’s, will ya.
Crimea is Putin’s Afghanistan?…Please. Maybe Putin’s Texas or Putin’s Puerto Rico. But Afghanistan? I’ll trouble you for details.
Last one for today…
ADRs commentary on subsidy dumpsters raises the question about the largest of them all – Space programs; meanwhile, the blue space (oceans) turn to ionized diarrhea as we destroy the truest form of energy wealth we ever had, the global food chain.
How fucking truly worthless human intelligence turned out to be.
Now to the gym.
How typical of Dmitry Orlov in the above Utube interview. Blaming US State Department of incompetency? Uttering the idiocy of what happens when interest rates on US T Bills goes over 3%?
1. To blame the US State Department – in reality The Colonial Office – of incompetency one first needs to realize what their REAL goals are. Of course if you naïve enough to assume that their goals are harmony and peace among nations, they really look like jerks. But if you realize that the State Department is the most profitable government agency of all times and nations that basically afford you comfortable level of consumption, you will have to respect the highly skilled professionals that work there (The haircut in search of a brain may be an exclusion). Besides, it is sheer ingratitude – what would Americans do without the State Department? Starve to death?
2. Why Americans still believe in existence of ANY American debt to their colonies? (Like China or Russia). Yes, Russians have half a trillion in so called Stabilization Fund that is mostly “invested in US Treasuries and Euro Bonds – but they CANNOT sell that paper. If they could, why Russian Central Bank did not make any intervention when the ruble was under attack from WS speculators and took a 20% haircut? Do they like the price inflation on all imported goods? After all, their Stabilization Fund is TWICE as much as the ENTIRE amount of rubles in circulation – they could’ve bought all rubles in circulation at 30:1 and still have a nice chunk of change left. The answer is very simple – it is not “investment”, but due payments masqueraded as investment. Neither Russia nor China is currently at will to sell none of their US Paper holdings, they may try to limit new “purchases”.
Concerning BRH’s comment on the“men’s wear model in the oval office”.
Its called bracketology folks, and its much more fun than dealing with daunting geopolitical events on the edges of Europe.
We have the answer!
Obama picks Michigan State to win it all.
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” Sigmund Freud.
Good essay on Hoplophobia or fear of weapons.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=44441
Finc says:
“1. To blame the US State Department – in reality The Colonial Office – of incompetency one first needs to realize what their REAL goals are. Of course if you naïve enough to assume that their goals are harmony and peace among nations, they really look like jerks. But if you realize that the State Department is the most profitable government agency of all times and nations that basically afford you comfortable level of consumption, you will have to respect the highly skilled professionals that work there…”
________________________________________
PURE HORSE SHIT!
To think the “highly intelligent” ass holes in the the US State Department would risk such deep global embarrassment when their “red line” rhetoric is so blatantly ignored, their leaked scheming and plotting so nakedly exposed, is laughable.
All that shame to simply coerce payment from one of it’s alleged colonies… get fuckin’ real. If this country’s leaders had any true respect left in the world, its partners/competitors would not be so quick to piss on the their boots so freely.
Are you at the gym? Was this a fiasco for them? They overthrew the legitimate regime and installed a Western puppet. They may have permanently taken away the Western part from the Russian Federation. Now back to your daily physical jerks. You need to get strong – you’ve been weak for too long.
Gym is down the hall… too poor for a club membership… so, free weights, rubber mats and a pull-up tower and adjustable bench occupy a spare bedroom.
Yup…got carried away posting, what with all them endorphins and pandora radio playin’ in the background. Easy to check updates on CFN
About those physical jerks… this swipe comin’ from the Popeye’d blog fondler himself.
I’ll bet you can’t even handle your own body weight, let alone your junk. And you consider yourself a steadfast leader poised for the aftermath…..hahahaha
FU Bluto.
Here’s an opinion from a former Soldier For The Empire that’s probably been percolating for some time now. Old hands tend to have some pretty chilling insight into what the real deal is once they discard the jingoist crapola and apply some deductive reasoning. Means, motive, opportunity.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/18/natos-warmongers/
Eleuthero, do you still read this blog?
You mean the people of Europe actually believe that the US has enough spare energy to export? I am betting before the 5 years needed to build the pipelines, the terminals where the natural gas can be convert to a liquid state, then transported using special tankers, the US will have collapsed wholesale. It would be so typically stupid of the US to go ahead and try to invest money that it doesn’t have on this rather costly venture, only to have the shale deposits deplete just in time of its completion. If this winter is any omen of what the future holds, the people of Europe, teeth chattering and sick of regular hospital visits for frostbite and amputation along with burying the untold hundreds of thousands that succumbed to hypothermia will tell the US to go fuck itself. Putin has the US by the balls. With BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) dumping the US petro dollar and setting up their own central banking system, the usual bag of dirty tricks the US liked to unleash on (then) weaker nations, like sanctions, the world bank and IMF, along with armed invasions and aerial bombardments, are no longer working. Wait until Germany realizes that we “leased” their gold to the Chinese, who subsequently melted it down. Wait until China realizes that it will never get paid back all of the debt that they bought up from us, and we continue to block them from gaining access to natural resources after we ripped them off. They no longer need the US to export their plastic junk to Walmarts, so when they decide to dump their US treasury bonds, they will have completely destroyed the US without firing a shot. Karma will prove to be one huge bitch to the US.
*Sidebar: I employ plodding galumphs quite often. Say I happen to be building a stone wall. Some periods of work upon it go better than others; at times my shape intuition and spatial relations files fail me completely. Rather than gape at a crappy and unstable result for years, I’ll just do something else that employs a different mind-set for a while, then return to the rock mumbling when I have a better eye for form and fit.
Capiche? (It’s the same with “understandings” for me.) -Zone
_______________________
Thanks man, just blowin’ off steam. And take some credit for that high-level writing gift you’ve got… As salient and vivid as JHKs, IMHO.
Mine, on the other hand, gives away that my knife isn’t sharp enough to cut through TP.
“Help me out with this from your Arch Druid link. He talks about how oil producers are cutting back CAPEX for new well discovery and development, then launches this nonsensical statement:
“Exactly what effect this is going to have on the price of oil is an interesting question; my guess, though it’s only a guess, is that a couple of years from now the price of oil will spike, possibly to the $250-$300 a barrel range, then crash to $60 a barrel, and slowly recover to $175 or so over a period of several years.” -ADR
How does he pull a guess like this out of his ass and then think readers are stupid….” – ufia, to o3, quoting archie the druid –
Good ideas, guys – all 3 of you.
IMO, the archdruid – like most people who have the cajones to write or speak for public consumption – believes what he believes. The druid may be slightly more prone to rely on pure intuition than average, but not by a large margin.
Personally, I find the druids projections as logical as anything else out there I’ve seen. UFIA, it may be the whipsawing numbers that are putting you off – that and the weasely “couple of years.”
So, consider two things. First, “couple of years” is undefined.
Second, and more important;y – you’re not considering the effect of time and inflation of the currency.
In round numbers, let’s say that the average US’ian earns $10/hour, right now, and ga1s is $4/gallon @ $100/bbl.
And, let’s say that the Druid’s near tripling of oil takes gas to $10/gallon. And remember oil costs drag food (and all other) costs upward as well – and eventually wages would double, given enough time and a workforce beginning to riot.
This would find our average salaryperson at $20/hour finally, in a degrading economy.
So the druid’s projection of $60/bbl several years out – is really $120/bbl, $4 to $5/gallon – when corrected for inflation of income. And it wouldn’t matter that much anyway – because very few people would really be earning that average of $20/hour.
The changing value of money with time is rarely considered.
Because your average human thinks a year is a long time.
Some math major or accountant can jump in here and clean up my WAG’s. Where is Q, anyway?
Greer looks like he’s projecting into the future what he’s seen in the past. That spike up to $250 then crash to $60 looks like what we saw during 2007-2009–a run up to $147/bbl then a crash to $35–except on a bigger budget, or at least a budget that looks bigger in nominal dollars but would be nearly the same in real dollars. Thank you, inflation.
As for what motivates the guy, it seems to be his faith as much as his intellect. After all, he is a leader of a religious organization. One of the things he has faith in is that the civil religion of progress is dying, much to the surprise and dismay of those of us who think rationality is a good thing. In the meantime, rationality in the form of science is taking over fields of knowledge that it didn’t hold sway over until recently, like psychology and sociology.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-conversation-with-archdruid-for.html
While rationality may be dying, he doesn’t see it as the end of the world. Instead, he thinks it will eventually be a good thing. Also, he doesn’t forsee a sudden crash. He’s very firm about the course of history during the next few centuries as being a Long Descent into Dark Ages and then a new civilization with new goals arising. As for those who think we’re in for a near-term Doomsday, he’s mocking them. 2030 will be the next 2012 in more ways than one.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/02/perspectives-on-next-doomsday-from.html
49% of Americans believe in at least one medical conspiracy theory.
“We see that Americans have conspiracy theories about a lot of things, not just about politics, but also about health and medicine as well,” Oliver said.
Why we believe
Belief in conspiracy theories is not necessarily a sign of a psychological condition such as paranoia, Oliver said. Rather, in cases of uncertainty, people have a natural tendency to assume that malevolent forces are behind the “unknown,” Oliver said.
“These narratives seem like very compelling explanations for complicated situations,” Oliver said.
Humans may have evolved to think this way, Oliver said. “If you hear a noise in the bush, it’s much more adaptive to believe that there’s a predator there than not,” he said.
Public health implications
However, this widespread belief in medical conspiracy theories may have implications for pubic health.”
– huffington post, on conspiracy –
So, JHK, can Hancock speak his mind, please?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/18/medical-conspiracy-theories_n_4985715.html
“Personally, I find the druids projections as logical as anything else out there I’ve seen. UFIA, it may be the whipsawing numbers that are putting you off – that and the weasely “couple of years.”
So, consider two things. First, “couple of years” is undefined.
Second, and more important;y – you’re not considering the effect of time and inflation of the currency.
In round numbers, let’s say that the average US’ian earns $10/hour, right now, and ga1s is $4/gallon @ $100/bbl.
And, let’s say that the Druid’s near tripling of oil takes gas to $10/gallon. And remember oil costs drag food (and all other) costs upward as well – and eventually wages would double, given enough time and a workforce beginning to riot.
This would find our average salaryperson at $20/hour finally, in a degrading economy.
So the druid’s projection of $60/bbl several years out – is really $120/bbl, $4 to $5/gallon – when corrected for inflation of income.”
__________________________________________
Great Detail Pro… that added the picture my mind was struggling to paint. Thank you.
As I finished the Druid’s article I found myself in complete agreement with his “subsidy dumpster” thesis.
Also, when I listen to the experts “intuitions” about the fracking bubble, I have to remind myself that economic bubbles often slowly deflate rather than burst all of a sudden. So The Long Emergency meme (courtesy of Jim) holds true… Druid’s logic in that sense seems legit.
I guess what I find frustrating is that a lot of these guys shift between the near-term disaster scenario while subtly, even deceptively at times, subverting the fact that the fracking swindle will continue for a couple decades, potentially. That’s the shame of techno-mystique.
For an exporter like Russia who sells natural gas to the EU, a declining ruble is a good thing, because each Euro they receive equals ever more rubles. Last month I sold gas and got 1,000 rubles, or five bottles of vodka. This month I sell the same amount of gas and get 1,200 rubles (six bottles). Life is good.
Also, I’m looking at a 1900 map of Russia. Ukraine does not exist. Nowhere is there a mention of ‘Ukraine’ in that area. Crimea was clearly part of Russia at the time.
If I have 10 rubles and their value declines, how is that good?
If I go into the store and the items that cost 10R y’day now cost 20R?
Bush, Romney, McCain… all would have jumped at the chance to dance with the bear. Thank goodness they are not president now.
Obama: “We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine”
I am glad we have no-drama Obama, a level-headed President, in the White House. In Libya, in Syria, in Iraq, in Iran, in Ukraine, etc. Obama doesn’t get sucked into sending other people’s kids to die.
Obama has more patience and is more intelligent. The turning of the screws will be gradual. Putin will eventually regret stirring up the jihadi beehive. Al Qaeda supports the Tatars. Last time Russia went up against Al Qaeda and jihadis, Russia was defeated, forced to leave Afghanistan with its tail between its legs.
“Just like during August 2008 Georgia war over South Ossetia …
Was lots of talk similar to what we hear now, no action.” — FincaIn the Mountains
If you are a billionaire oligarch and a friend of Putin, you have to be feeling a bit nervous right about now. Obama is hitting them hard.
The latest on Obama’s Russian oligarchy hit list includes top government leaders, such as Sergey Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff, and Vladimir Kozhin, the head of the presidential administrative directorate.
The super-wealthy oligarchs who are personally close to Putin do not escape punishment.
“Brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, Putin’s childhood friends and former judo partners, are named. Arkady has a net worth of $4 billion, and Boris is worth $1.7 billion, according to Forbes. Bloomberg reported that Arkady’s companies got $7 billion in contracts for the Sochi Olympics. Vladimir Yakunin, head of the lucrative Russian Railways, was also listed. Yakunin got to know Putin in St. Petersburg, where the Russian president launched his political career.
Yury Kovalchuk, a banker and financier with a net worth of $1.4 billion, was included as well. Kovalchuk is believed to bank for Putin, and is the largest shareholder of Bank Rossiya, also targeted by the sanctions. Gennady Timchenko, the 12th richest man in Russia and another person with close ties to Putin, also made the list.
Senior administration officials told reporters on a conference call that the individuals would be banned from conducting business with Americans and barred from using U.S. dollars, and would be blocked from even participating in the world financial system. That could hurt many of the oligarchs, who are believed to hold some or most of their money abroad.”
No action, FincaIn the Mountains? TPTB in Russia are not untouchable. And the screws will only tighten more on Putin’s friends until Putin reverses course or is overthrown by internal turmoil. Expect the G8 to soon become G7. The Russian economy is weak and will fall easily. Russia has no counter sanctions to fear in the near future. Summer is coming. It will be a long time before Europe needs heating oil or gas.
The best thing Putin has done is to get conservative USA politicians talking seriously about jacking up investment in alternative energy in order to be less dependent on fossil fuels. It’s all good.
“Putin has economic nuclear bomb”
Jim Sinclair
http://usawatchdog.com/putin-has-nuclear-economic-bomb-jim-sinclair/
On the other hand the Russian action in Ukraine could be a drift toward a new conflict. For us it would be wise to prepare for the Dark Scenario.
http://www.holigent.org/Holigent.org/Dark_Scenario.html
“Obama is hitting them hard.”
Yes, I noticed. I’ve been reading comments on HuffPost and it seems that Putin really managed to hurt some deep American feeling of their national exceptionalism. How does he dare?
Well, you better take it easy and get used to it, Putin’s just starting.
There is an abyss of differences between the Eastern and Western civilizations, between Russian and American mentality. Russians are viewing the Crimean events as re-birth of the Nation, not just a land grab, re-birth of their National Pride that suffered for the last 20 years under the boots of American occupation, it’s their Second Great Patriotic War and if few billion dollars here and there going to perish, so what?
If we forget for a moment about a thin layer of ideology, things like capitalism, communism, free market that has been in existence just for a few hundred years and look at the basic differences between Russia and US we have to realize that Russia is typical Tellurocracy – Continental Empire while the United States in its current strange form adopted from their former arch-enemy Great Britain is Thalassocracy or Maritime Empire. (I think back 100 years ago US before re-colonizing by GB was Tellurocracy as well).
Typical form of rule of any Thalassocracy is oligarchism, while in Tellurocracy it is social contract between the ruler (tsar, emperor or president) and common people against the ever-growing appetites of the inevitably forming oligarchy(technical, bureaucratic, military, financial)
Putin currently enjoys a very broad support of Russian people, so he’s less and less dependent on Russian oligarchs.
It is kind of typical for Tellurocracy to expand and acquire new lands not through aggression, but in response to external aggression – that was always the case in Russian history, as it is now the case of Crimea. Russia was attacked through Kiev like it was in 1941 (Kiev was the first Russian city to get bombed by Luftwaffe) and she just responded in kind.
Finca, you are missing the point. You said there would be no action, just words. The U.S. Treasury has sent Vladimir Putin a chilling warning: We know where your money is, and we can expose you for what you are.” The Treasury hinted at a “direct (financial) relationship” between Putin and owner of a shadowy oil trading company chartered in Switzerland, who happens to be on the sanctions list.
A reputable Russian Web site just published the news that Putin’s purported business partner sold his shares worth billions of dollars, yesterday, one day before being placed on the sanctions list. It does not seem that Putin is laughing at the joke any more.
President Obama announced today a second round of sanctions imposed on individuals in Putin’s inner circle, a Russian bank, and against key sectors of the Russian economy. Obama recognized that such sanctions will disrupt not only the Russian but also the global economy. However, these penalties are regrettably necessary if we want to live in a 21st century world that respects the sovereignty of nations, declared Obama.
You see, Finca, it is not all hat no cattle. Not just words. Actions.
Actions that hurt Putin, and over time will destroy Putin. Obama is patient, methodical, and has time. Putin’s popularity is fleeting. The more Russians find out who he really is, his corruption, his relationship with the oligarchy, the less popular he will become.
Exactly my point. Westerners are so hell bent on worshiping the power of Money that they forget that Money is nothing but a political fiction, cumulative informational expression of political will. If that will is not strong enough, the money pyramid will fold.
Yes, perhaps under the CURRENT dollar system sanctions may have had a chance, but what if the current system IS the target of the Crimean operation? What if the stakes are MUCH higher than they seem to be?
What if the alternative to dollar payment system is already in place, its independent telecommunications lines are installed and secure, processing centers are built and reinforced, software developed and tested? What would be an EVENT that will trigger it to spring to life?
We are truly blessed to have Mulattus Obomber Maximus leading us through this period of extreme tribulation…….
The only thing I’m seeing that’s exceptional about america is the stunning lack of holistic thinking. This nearly always leads to assertions mired in naivete and shallow dismissal of important factors.
He’s an example that we don’t hear too much about. Can we possibly guess why, or does it require too much thought? (Thinking’s hard, you know.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_logistics_in_the_Afghan_War
Since our state dept. seems to find that international law and agreements can be disregarded when convenient, others might feel they can do the same. (Obama has officially designated a state of national emergency over the kurrent Krimean kerfuffle… or hadn’t you heard?)
Any clues yet?
http://indianexpress.com/tag/closure-of-supply-routes-to-nato-forces-in-afghanistan/
The link insn’t working. I guess we are not suppose to know
Lisa (and UFIA),
I apologize for being a bit too obtuse with those stories as well as the one with the busted link. The one that wouldn’t work, showing the picture of Leon Panetta is from 2012 and the much cheaper of the supply routes through Pakistan has just been re-established (end of January, I believe?). This shows that the Emperor really is in charge of a very shaky and changeable Empire, and that placing the right bribes in the right places is the only way to keep the apparatus from collapsing in a heap on any given day, on anyone’s given whim.
Here’s another insightful supposition that looks to be either ignored or unmentioned by the “smartest guys in the room” whether they be be in the business of finance or murder:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-21/petrodollar-alert-isolated-west-putin-prepares-announce-holy-grail-gas-deal-china
(More than a few have suspicions of such a “pivot” should the world hegemon try punching beyond its’ weight class.
As we’ve seen, there’s a lot of growling, bragging and feinting going on without a lot of clear-headed analysis of what might happen if a fight actually started. That’s what I find rather shocking.)
AJ – We thought you had banned yourself! Welcome back the voice of pure innocence!
Not sure how you get “methodical” and Obama in the same sentence with regard to the Ukraine affair but contemplating this is at the least good therapy for preventing or delaying Alzheimer’s. You may want to view the Orlov YouTube cited in an earlier post. He has a pure innocence as well, and speaks Russian to boot.
I would submit that the whole thing is now largely irrelevant anyway, and the most important story today is the fact that Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows XP as of April 8th, and that a significant amount of banking infrastructure relies on this operating system. Gerald Celente and others have been prophesying cyber catastrophe based on the Stuxnet model launched from some nation with a grievance (this presumes the mathematical intelligence to create and innovate cyber attack is evenly distributed around the world – which is plausible). I’m not completely on board with the energy cyber system threat as Stuxnet had to “jump the gap” using a human being rather than a wired or wireless network, and such isolation is underway or already has been incorporated in the power world. So a group of hackers in, say, Bolivia could not take out a nuclear power station unless they had a human agent in place, such as a disgruntled employee or something similar with access to the isolated network. But the financial world may be by design a sitting duck since it is so widely distributed and embedded in everyday life. In the same way entire industries have become democratized via digital technology (recorded music, for example) maybe it can be said that Defense departments world-wide are becoming democratized. An angry Turdistan can retaliate against slights from Fiji. Or an aggrieved Russia can seriously disrupt the EBT network in the USA.
“Welcome back the voice of pure innocence!” — Florida Power
Thanks, Florida Power.
Innocence is innate, a survival mechanism that has allowed me to trust in others and thrive.
‘Zone,
That last link is bad… Is there new word that Russia is definitely planning to close supply lines to Afghanistan out of their territory? Orlov mentioned this recently, too. It seems steady maneuvering with regard to sanctions and such is still proceeding from Washington.
Hands are being forced, just as we imagined.
UFA — According to Yahoo News Russia is NOT planning to close the corridor.
http://news.yahoo.com/putin-no-further-retaliation-against-us-093200798.html
Key paragraphs:
Putin’s statement appeared to signal to the West that Russia wants to maintain cooperation in other areas despite the tensions over Ukraine. He said that Russia will keep funding a program to service Afghan helicopters and train their crews that has been conducted jointly with NATO.
“We must continue that cooperation even though our NATO partners intend to freeze it,” Putin said. “I believe this work represents our common interests, and we need to strengthen the Afghan government.”
Russia is expected to play a major role in the planned withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO forces from Afghanistan later this year by providing transit corridors via its territory, and Putin’s statement seems to indicate that the Kremlin at this stage has no intention to shut the route in response to U.S. and EU sanctions.
Thanks, Flo Rida.
I appreciate the tidbit. But it seems like Putin’s not very inclined to telegraph his moves either way, in most cases, whereas the US might be employing some of that guile as well. Time will tell, I guess.
So do the sanctions leveled by either side have lasting bite at this point, or are we simply observing successive approximation?
No one is standing still.
Finc says:
“Yes, perhaps under the CURRENT dollar system sanctions may have had a chance, but what if the current system IS the target of the Crimean operation? What if the stakes are MUCH higher than they seem to be?
What if the alternative to dollar payment system is already in place, its independent telecommunications lines are installed and secure, processing centers are built and reinforced, software developed and tested? What would be an EVENT that will trigger it to spring to life?”
__________________________________
Which is is it already? Either the Washington Sophisticates are a few steps ahead of the Russkies and effectively coercing payments by Putin’s Oligarchs via market shenanigans, as you asserted the other day, or, “the Crimean operation” is a diabolical master plan by Russia to throw off the Petro-dollar once and for all.
You guys couldn’t be more obvious with your contradictions and distortions… but you’re hella good typists.
Criminy.
UFIA, let me tell you an old Russian joke:
Ukrainian paratrooper jumps from the plane. When time comes to open up parachute, he pulls one ring, another – nothing works. “Oh shit, what’s wrong with the friggin thing?” he thinks.
Suddenly he notices another Ukrainian flying in the different direction from the Earth up. When they level up, he asks the guy: “Hey, compadre, do you know anything about opening parachutes?”
“No, sorry – I have different specialty, I am de-mining contractor”
So guys at State just good at different specialty.
Was that a Ukrainian or Russian joke?No difference?
Or was it a veiled hint buried in an inane, unfunny quip?
Data mining is a pretty lucrative biz these days, ain’t it?
Old Czech joke: The Russians imposed a midnight curfew. One night, two Russian soldiers on patrol noticed a man hurrying down the street a few minutes before midnight. One of the soldiers shot him in the back. The other exclaimed why did you do that? It’s not midnight yet. The first replied, I know where he lived. He wasn’t going to make it.
I see the RI House Speaker is in trouble.
That just appeared on news.
And in the ‘YOU CAN NOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP’ category,
children call ape ‘daddy’!
http://www.liveleak.com/
ProgorCons said:
“So, JHK, can Hancock speak his mind, please?”
=================================================
Thanks for all the kind words, Prog, this week and last.
I am not yet banned, I suppose, but during my brief return here, I consider each post to be my last, which is fine by me.
As I believe I mentioned before, not 15 years ago, I was an unabashed 100% supporter of Israel and Zionism. Unquestioningly. Like so many people, Jews and non-Jews alike, my belief was shaken by Israel’s and Zionism’s increasing “discarding the mask” of ethics and any pretense of justice over these last years.
This was augmented by my many readings during that time to try and dissect…to understand the rise of Corpzi America since the Stolen Election of 2000 roused me from slumber. As you may know, I read as many books I could on the rise of Nazi Germany, because I came to believe that understanding Nazi Germany was key to understanding Corpzi America.
At least twice, perhaps more, but at the very least twice, unimpeachable eyewitnesses who gave a worm’s eye view of the rise of the Nazis (Sebastian Haffner in”Defying Hitler” and Victor Klemperer in “I Will Bear Witness”) said they were uncomfortable with Zionism because it reminded them too much of Nazism.
Understand, for me as for most people, these were literally forbidden thoughts in those days that seem a lifetime ago. But once these two spoke it, two men who stood against the Nazis unequivocally, and were of unimpeachable character, the forbidden thoughts became unforbidden and I began to ask uncomfortable questions of myself.
(one should note that the thoughts Haffner and Klemperer annunciated are literally illegal to speak of or write publicly in some nations in Europe…itself worth pondering)
In Israel, there are Jews-only apartment buildings, Jews-only highways, brand-new Jews-only towns that roll their sewage down on the ancient Palestinian West Bank towns they are built above.
In what universe and under what circumstance are these things right, proper and good UNLESS “special pleading” is made, as Zionists frequently do? And if you even whisper in protest they scream “ANTI-SEMITE” and shut you down, no discussion of the actual issues necessary.
There are also Jews of conscience there to let us know of these things going on in Israel, like Uri Averny, Max Blumenthal, and B’tselem.
On the other side of it, the “Conspiracy Theory” side, 15 years ago, I laughed without consideration at those nutsies like Marlin does and so many others still do.
Then one “conspiracy theory” after another turned out to be true.
I used to laugh at the idea of the Bilderbergs, crazy conpiracy theory that it was. Global aristocracy meeting in secret, abetted by MSM to remain so, completely outside the realm of democratic-republican (small ‘d’, small ‘r’) purview, determining God knows what behind closed doors.
Whoops, turns out not only to be true but they’ve been around since 1954! Good job at keeping the secret for 50 years, Corpzi Media Elites!
This post is getting long so I won’t list the many other “wacky conspiracy theories” that have turned out to be 100% verifiably true, and no, I do not include 9/11 or Boston, which are not 100% certain to be Operation Northwoods-type conspiracies (though there is much to suggest it is so, as will 9/11 #2 be in three to five years).
Meanwhile, the Iraq Invasion floated in on a sea of literally 100% lies, something I also would have considered a laughable conpiracy theory if you told me before that such a thing was possible in Modern America.
Now, as JHK faithfully documents each week, we live in a sea of 100% lies, abetted gleefully by Corpzi MSM. In such an environment, media and governmental just like in Nazi Germany, in Corpzi America a much higher percentage of “crazy conspiracy theories” turn out to be 100% true.
So, what’s a “one-eyed man in the Kingdom of the Blind” to do? Be like Marlin and the rest of the Good Germans, believing the TV and that our apple-cheeked lads could NEVER perpetrate or orchestrate such dastardly deeds? That’ll work out as well as it did for the Germans back in the 30s, history, if there is any after 9/11 #2 and WWIII, will show.
Where I stand now on Zionist “conspiracy theory”, since much of it is just so shamelessly out in the open now that endgame approaches and concealment matters less, is that when one of these Watershed Events comes along, I try to find even a single instance where Zionists and Zionist dual-citizens aren’t at the center of it or deeply involved.
Take the Ukraine, where much to my shock bankers and dual-citizen Zionists, not merely satisfied with the odious hypocrisy of allying with al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, now helped (to the tune of $5 billion and likely more) NEO-effing-NAZIS into power.
Look into it… “our man Yats”, a banker of course, appointed them all to high positions of power in the security apparatus and they are already confiscating Ukrainians’ firearms (as per the New York Times, who write about the confiscations but not who’s doing the confiscating).
Now I’ve seen everything.
And who was a main driver in putting “our man Yats” into power? Victoria Nuland (aka Nudelman, married to the infamous dual citizen Kagan Arch-Neocon and Uber-Zionist family).
Go to You Tube and listen to the Nuland/Pyatt “F0ck the EU” call in full to see that none of this is conspiracy theory in the least.
Just WHAT exactly is an Uber-Neocon doing in the Obama Administration as ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EAST EUROPEAN AFFAIRS?
Hope and Change in action – lol.
So, you may deride ‘conspiracy theories”, but they just keep coming true.
Like Zionists funding Neo-Nazi takeovers, as if the American dual-citizen Zionist-Saudi-al-Qaeda connection in Syria wasn’t lunatic enough.
Just as in Nazi Germany, the level of insanity and yes, totalitarian lies, fraud and mendacious malfesance in Corpzi America, is ratcheted so high, that more than a few ‘conspiracy theories’ turn out to be bald-faced conspiracies in fact.
Ignore this aspect of the New Normal at your peril.
Oh, and don’t forget to practice your shocked look of outrage for 9/11#2, that Rooskie-Iranian plot. My money’s on the dirty-bombing of Chicago sometime after the installation of The Next Republican Emperor, probably Jeb, because the war marketing doesn’t work with a Democratic Emperor on the throne.
Marketing is everything in Corpzi America, these days.
If this is my last post, it’s been a pleasure conversing with you, too, Johnny Reb.
Here’s what “needs to be done”.
Cass Sunstein is our friendliest friend… EVER!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-21/taming-deluded-conspiracy-theorists
…And if you have the time; yes, they really are after anyone who would point out that the turd they’re polishing is, in actuality, nothing more than a turd.
http://www.bigboysgonebananas.com/welcome
A movie about the legalistic smothering of a movie that didn’t make a big corporation look too good. Stream-able on Netflix.
Was Johnny Ramone a raciss? Or just a generic Storm Trooper?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130914151030AAPAViK
Thanks for your two bits btw. You know far more than you admit to. As Mr Marrs said, “You can’t wake up someone pretending to be asleep.” You’re afraid. Iss Ok if you have kids or dependents.
Hey ‘zone.
Great article, and well said.
How many “conspiracy theories” have to come true for people to open their eyes as to the contemptuous culture of the 0.01% Gods on Earth, to put it mildly?
Apparently, for roughly 98% of people, an inifinite amount of lies.
The same as ever and apparently forever until the last “lower class” human perishes slavering and obedient beneath his or her Master’s contemptuous control, with The Priest egging a few more joules of slavish work out of them with a promise of Pie in the Sky After They Die.
Sad, but there you have it. It’s what the species is and always has been, Masters and Serfs (or Slaves).
Such a species richly deserves extinction, before it infects other worlds and destroys them. Be thankful that it is a virtual certainty that humanity will never get off this rock.
Damn, d00d – did you really give up on all us *proletariat* already?!?
I think liek U do, but I *hope* something can be done (other than *PRAYER*)…
I still don’t understand *GREED* – I could have stayed at my last job, for the past 17 years, and accumulated *AT LEAST* another $4 MILLION. That thought doesn’t really give me a feeling of satisfaction. In fact, it makes me realize every $100k is another debt-slave, to do my *BIDDING*…
Do you think the aliens ever got off this rock? I suspect they evolved on this (or Mars) planet a few million years ago, and learned to use the ocean *BUFFER*…
Damn, d00d – you really gave up on all us *proletariat* already?!?
I think liek U do, but I *hope* something can be done (other than *PRAYER*)…
I still don’t understand *GREED* – I could have stayed at my last job, for the past 17 years, and accumulated *AT LEAST* another $4 MILLION. That thought doesn’t really give me a feeling of satisfaction. In fact, it makes me realize every $100k is another debt-slave, to do my *BIDDING*…
Do you think the aliens ever got off this rock? I suspect they evolved on this (or Mars) planet a few million years ago, and learned to use the ocean *BUFFER*…
Bravo Herr Hancock! Only a fool never admits that he was a fool in the past. You have been a greater fool than most thus you know more than most now. As the Zen says, “Great Doubt, Great Enlightenment. Small Doubt, Small Enlightenment. No Doubt, No Enlightenment. Marlin has little doubt thus he never comes out the other side.
Now let us continue. Jews are in the middle of this but that doesn’t mean they ARE Nazis per se or the Nazis are Jews. Both are trying to use the other and hope to shoulder the other aside. You were using the word Nazi in the generic, popular sense. But don’t let that get in the way of seeing clearly. Obviously both are Nationalists – and all Nationalists have similar characteristics up to a point. So now the question: who had more right to Germany? The German Nationalists or the Zionists and Bankers of the proto New World Order? Hitler’s designs on Eastern Europe are another question. Answer the first question and THEN weigh things in the balance to judge the Nazi movement as a whole. And remember, the two groups did work together there too for a time.
How many times do I have to tell you, fascist swine, that I will NEVER be “on board” with the likes of you?
Why would I trade one form of totalitarianism for another? Why would I join you in worshipping unfairness, indecency, and human suffering?
I wouldn’t.
Whatever liberalism’s flaws, the old FDR liberalism that no longer exists except in the hearts of a few remaining holdouts drowned in the cacophony of Corpzism’s “identity politics” faux liberalism, it’s core tenets are still worthy of belief and striving for, even if they can never be reached.
As Jefferson said, “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
You’re not kidding anyone, Vladdie, for we all see that you disagree most strongly with Mr. Jefferson.
It’s just that you want YOUR bunch to wear the spurs, instead of the current aristocracy. Which makes you as bad as them, if not worse.
So save your “bravos” and your smarmy “Herrs” for someone dumb enough to fall for them.
You think peoples interchangeable? That the Founders created America for Non-Whites? You’re wrong and need to do some reading. By that light, why not give America back to the Indians? They don’t want you here after all. Nor I guess do you think the Germans had the right to Germany – or that any White people have the right to their own Nation. Just give the whole continent to Islam, right?
And I’m the swine? No, you are. Why don’t you stand up on two legs instead of four. You might even like it. But evidently, you prefer the saddle and the mud.
Jefferson was for a Natural Aristocracy, one of merit – for Whites.
Another thought: do you even know what Fascism means? Or is it just a “snarl word” as the Archdruid said? For most, that’s all it is. To be against Fascism is to be against Nationalism since Fascism is the philosophy of Nationalism. And obviously that means keeping Corporations in line. And since the Jews are against Nations other than their own, it will usually mean being against them and other globalists if and until they change and renounce globalism.
Ok, so start here and then go to the Founding Fathers. I envy you in your journey of discovery, both of world and self. It’s truly amazing you’ve gotten as far as you have without understanding this basic issue.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-three-weimar.html
DON’T FEED THE *TROLLS*.
How original – and originality is a mark of genius. It is this statement that proves it – and not your unique grammar and spelling which is indistinguishable from one who never went to school.
Many in Detroit are losing water service.
That’s not good for the pool industry. Likewise during a blackout, people wont be able to access ATM’s!
Have you seen Idiocracy? What do plants like? Brawndo, it’s got electrolytes. What are electrolytes? They are what plant like. Brawndo’s got em. Who needs water? That shit is just for toilets!
Who needs water when you have 40oz Malts, and MD20/20?
Truly, the Day of the Locust is at hand.
“she arranged for another woman to vomit on her while seated at the keyboard”
Sexual deviants *eat* that sh!t up – literally (2 girlz 1 cup [never saw it, but saw plenty of sh!t eating gifs, back in ’94]? and *figuratively*). Apparently, there’s a lot of them sorts of perverts (excrement-related) – a *market*, so to speak. Profit now, or lose the *opportunity*…
“cunning model airplanes controlled by military video gamesters”
Haha, we all have to die *one day*. “Repairing” to the nearest taco bell (that didn’t sound *correct*)?!? Repelling?!… Sorry, got to get back to GW2 gamester-ing!!!
“But maybe Europe will have five exceptionally mild winters until then.”
But that’d be called *GLOBAL WARMING* – and everyone knows it’s now (kinder and gentler?) climate change. Disregard that exponential growth CO2 chart, showing levels exceeding anything known to *MOTHER EARTH* for the past 5 million years; disregard that global temperature chart showing temps going up exponentially…
“Note to Mr. Obama: increase National Prayer Breakfasts to once-a-month.”
OMG – ha! Why bother actually *DOING* something about it, when *GHAD* can turn it all around, with a mere *PRAYER*!!! I’ma gunna kick back with a bag of cheese doodles, and say 5 Hail Marys/2 Our Fathers!!!
“watch this nation of overfed clowns and tattooed savages vomit over each other”
The idiocy of our Amer-society can hardly be a cure, or something to watch *in disbelief*…
“just enough to turn the ten-year bond above the 3.00 percent line”
I know! Why does it keep sawtoothing up to 3%, only to *IMMEDIATELY* drop back to 2.7%, *ad nauseum* (0% fed loan injections to banksters, leveraged 30::1 and loaned back to the govt at 3%)…
Youtube vids flood your first day/page – Songs? CCR “Bad Moon Rising”, and Gerry Rafferty “New Street Blues.” Hope you hit 200 replies this week…
Apparently that Malaysian airline opted out of the $100,000 software package that allows all planes to be GPS tracked through satellites. Well, golly – GEE WHIZ!!! Who’d have figured that planes *STILL* couldn’t be tracked, after the 9/11 fiasco *OVER* 12 years ago (I think I smell a *RAT*)…
New Street! Design us a walkable future!
Animal mothers often feed their young by vomiting in their mouths. Perhaps we’re devolving in that direction.
Your faith in the Mother Goddess is touching. She’ll keep us warm until we are gay enough to burn wood.
I don’t buy Mr. Ford’s entirely unsupported claim down below, but he dares to make it seem feasible in this article:
“Rather, Moscow’s response to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government was predictable, as was that of the Russian-speaking Crimean majority. Washington’s strategy is to permanently ratchet up tensions to “new cold war” levels to justify sanctions against Russian energy exports while exploiting America’s own natural gas “surplus” as an enhanced weapon of global hegemony.
“The U.S.-engineered coup in Kiev sets the stage for a protracted assault on Russia’s energy trade.”
Thanks to shale fracking, the United States recently surpassed Russia as the world’s number one exporter of natural gas, and will next year become the top oil producer. As the New York Times reported on March 5, “The administration’s strategy is to move aggressively to deploy the advantages of its new resources to undercut Russian natural gas sales to Ukraine and Europe.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38025.htm
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I’m not familiar with Glen Ford’s other work, and although that article is an interesting re-imagining of how recent events in Ukraine have transpired, I don’t believe he supports his own view very well.
So what’s going on here…? some folk’s have argued that the fracking boom has silently been acknowledged by major oil producers to be a last gasp in boosted production, lasting maybe another 20 years; CAPEX has allegedly been cut for most new drilling endeavors, perhaps suggesting a downward slope of less than 20 years.
Peak Oil was stifled for a time, but PO proponents always maintained that the fracking bubble is simply part of the bumpy downward trajectory.
And Are we really to believe US schemers think they can outpace Russian energy reserves, destroy demand for Russian energy with sanctions, and fill the needs of the EU with US fracking production? From what I understand, Russian natural gas stockpiles make US fracking output seem like little more than a lengthy beer fart. Anybody with any number comparison’s out there?
Too many things just don’t seem right in Ford’s piece, but it’s somewhat compelling. If his position is true, then Russia will seemingly stop at nothing to kill the Petro-dollar before the sort of US scheming Ford is claiming can take hold.
This might be plan B for the US, but I’m not so sure it was game-plan all along. Who knows.
“From what I understand, Russian natural gas stockpiles make US fracking output seem like little more than a lengthy beer fart.” –UFIA
“AROUND 45% of the world’s recoverable natural-gas reserves are “unconventional”, comprised mainly of shale gas, and also tight gas and coal-bed methane. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons global gas demand will increase by more than half between 2010 and 2035, and unconventional gas will make up 32% of the total supply, up from 14% today. While Russia and the Middle East hold the largest reserves of conventional gas, available sources of unconventional gas are spread across the world, and can be found in countries that are currently net importers, such as China and America. But the ease of accessibility will vary from well to well. Extracting shale gas (which is trapped between layers of shale rock) and tight gas (found in sandstone) involves bombarding the rock with water and chemicals, a technique known as “fracking”. This is more expensive than the methods used to produce conventional gas. Costs differ between countries, too. China’s shale-gas and coal-bed methane industries are subsidised to the tune of 3 cents per cubic metre. Elsewhere there is less government support. France and Bulgaria have banned fracking for environmental reasons.” –The Economist, Jun 5th 2012
So what does this mean? Why would the EU opt to buy more expensive “unconventional” fuel when Russia still has plenty of the cheaper good good?
Yeah, seems dopey to try and out compete conventional producers by forcing sanctions, allowing Russia to ultimately sit on their reserves for the future; meanwhile, the US spends a ridiculous amount of money to boost shale gas production and deliver it to other nations. I’m assuming this requires a weird juggling act to keep the price of fuel high so that it off-sets the costs of extraction? How is this a winning strategy for the US?
How is the already broke American consumer going to be able to prop-up the whole scheme?
I may have this completely wrong, but I’ll keep employing those plodding galumphs until the picture becomes more clear.
Thanks for the deets…
To continue the analogy of shale gas as a beer fart: as long as the cost of beer doesn’t strain a certain threshold, America will have plenty of gas in the future… but if the EROI ratio/formula goes skunky, no one will buy it and then no gas gets released. Bloating and rancid diarrhea-like fracking water is all we’re left with. Painful.
Aw shucks, it’s time for bed.
How is this a winning strategy for the US?
Wrong question.
I’ll keep employing those plodding galumphs until the picture becomes more clear.
Take your time. We have decades more to figure it out and even more time in the long run. [John Maynard Keynes reference intentional]
Not really sure how this message board works so I’ll leave a reply here. As I understand it, or at least from a philosophy standpoint, rationalism and empiricism are not necessarily one and the same thing. Rationalism is more along the vein of an a-priori, innate, “Platonic Forms” approach: Was, is, always will be. Thus, it is tinged with the bias of predetermined outcome, True empiricism, on the other hand, does not discount the possibility that the Sun may not rise one day in the future not matter how many millenniums it has done so in the past. Assuming that the Sun will inevitably rise is certainly a rational thing to believe, after all, when hasn’t it?
In many ways, or at least as I see it, JHK is in the empiricist camp, while others on this message board believe in the inevitability of sunny days ahead. In their eyes, no piece of steel is incapable of being sharpened and no wrestler incapable of making weight. While a JHK observes that although steel tool may be sharpened, it no longer cuts because the temper is lost or the emaciated wrestler sweats in the sauna to make weight. Thus the return to more basic ground: grind the tool down and reheat, and move the wrestler up in weight so he can function.
Not quite. The two approaches are not covering exactly the same territory or doing it in the same way. One can believe in the Logos and not conflate it with the Sun. Many Pagans including the some of the American Indians told the Christians that they were worshiping the One God thru the means or symbol of the Sun – and not the Sun itself. Thus one such trained in science could accept that the Sun would one day go out and not feel his God had died.
And empiricists render homage when they use logic and mathematics to make their calculations. These things will endure even as the Universe runs down. Some of the walls or lesser laws of physics may grow thin though – UFOs may be an incursion from previously walled off dimensions.
“Rationalism is more along the vein of an a-priori, innate, “Platonic Forms” approach: Was, is, always will be. Thus, it is tinged with the bias of predetermined outcome, True empiricism, on the other hand, does not discount the possibility that the Sun may not rise one day in the future not matter how many millenniums it has done so in the past. Assuming that the Sun will inevitably rise is certainly a rational thing to believe, after all, when hasn’t it? ” – Buck’s a Dud
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Jiminy Cricket that was take my breath away stupid… See folks, America is DOOMED, just lookie that up there!
Hey, brother. Just to let you know… The Sun has never risen… Ever. The Earth does this funny thing called revolution and evolution… and every 24 hours and every 365 days… well… eff it.
You have no idea how stupid you sound sometimes. A proud man is his own worst enemy.
Ha… that”s rich. This from Mr. Hubris himself… keep pulling my leg, jAnus.
This poster has never read Hume, or specifically, ‘Hume’s Fork’. If so, he/she wouldn’t feel so vilified (I once had the temerity to suggest that this poster was wrong on a particular comment) in wiping the ass of historical metaphors with the toilet papers of literalism. Oh well. I recall in a moment of honesty this poster stating that he/she had spent their entire working year career as a pharmacy tech, ringing up customers and dropping pills in bag. So I do understand the source of the hostility and frustration, particularly as it might concern “Americans”. And why he/she now runs bitter hands over the thick skin of a thin intellect, brown stain poop proudly tinting a dull gray apex.
And by ‘this poster’ I do mean “UFIA”.
He poisons people’s bodies by day and then poisons their minds here by night. Nothing is more dangerous than a man unhappy in his work. Think of Tillicum the Killer Whale, a virtual slave of Sea World. He has already killed two or three of his handlers. Yet still Sea World wont retire him or at least cut back his schedule.
Buck, who do you think you’re kidding? You think you’re channeling Hume with your flowery spouting?
Alright there, sir. If it sounds good in your mind I guess that’s all that matters. Do let us know when your book of poetry is finished.
And where did you get this pharmacy worker nonsense? You’re clearly confused on more than a few levels.
According to some Russian Internet resources, the “Russian” troops without insignia that initially occupied Crimea were members of Russian Private Army, sort of “Russian Blackwater”. So Putin had a plausible deniability when he maintained that those were NOT Russian military.
Also some of the mercenaries that liberated Crimea were American Nationals, hired by that Private Army. On that photo http://i2.wp.com/ic.pics.livejournal.com/drugoi/484155/9304396/9304396_original.jpg we could see one of the mercenaries with far from Slavic face.
Joke’s on Putin
Israel allocates 3 billion for attack on Iran. Could this be the reason for the Ukraine coup? A feint to draw off Russian forces so Iran could be crushed?
https://us-mg6.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=d0prtt7hfr53s
I doubt very much that Israel could be an independent geopolitical player and 3 billion doesn’t sound like a lot considering the endeavor.
Obviously American “Nomenclatura” – elites – are very nervous and even desperate at the prospect of the world-wide revolt against their dollar system lead by Russia and loosing significant percentage of their income stream that could possibly lead to ungovernability in United States. So most likely Russia was real target of the Kiev coup.
How would you like Maidan in the Times Square in New York?
According to member of Russian Duma (Parliament) Evgeni Fedorov current contributions by Russian Federation to the US budget are in the amount of 7% of the entire budget.
Mostly the contributions are being paid by the “independent” Central Bank Of Russia buying US Treasuries in exchange of Russian Oil and Gas(and other exports) revenues to maintain emittance of Russian internal currency – Ruble.
Due to IMF standards, Russian Central Bank is prohibited from independent ruble emittance to support the legitimate needs of Russian economy, including new investments. Currently RF CB maintains bank refinancing rate at above 7%. In turn, private banks lend money to individuals and businesses at rates that exceed 15%, sometimes reaching as high as 20% on new mortgages.
Obviously that lending policy greatly inhibits the development of Russian industries based on financing in rubles, forcing them to search funds from Western “investors” (e.g. speculators).
Evgeni Fedorov recently introduced a bill to force Russian CB to maintain bank ruble refinance rate at or below 1%. He hopes that the Crimean momentum and economic sanctions will help him to overcome resistance of certain members of Russian establishment, who are mostly West-oriented.
Knowing how the IMF/Globalist agenda steals wealth from other nations for the few, this article appearing in Hang the Banksters is worth checking out. It comes with a warning that it is unproven…
[– so far on an entirely unsubstantiated basis – that last Friday, in a mysterious operation under the cover of night, Ukraine’s gold reserves were promptly loaded onboard an unmarked plane, which subsequently took the gold to the US.]….
[According to Boryspil staff, prior to the plane’s appearance, four trucks and two cargo minibuses arrived at the airport all with their license plates missing. Fifteen people in black uniforms, masks and body armor stepped out, some armed with machine guns. These people loaded the plane with more than forty heavy boxes….]
http://www.hangthebankers.com/ukraines-gold-reserves-sent-to-ny-federal-reserve/
And the same people funded Communism and all the things you love. Nationalism means Fascism – at least as you define it. Some of the elements of Fascism such as militarism are not necessary. But when did Liberals care to make fine distinctions between right wing philosophies? You just scream “Fascism”, taking advantage of the Pavlovian conditioning already in place.
Admit it: you believe poor uneducated peasants armed with hammers and scythes overthrew Russia and China – or at least you pretend to so believe.
Good News!!! President Obama has picked more winners than losers in the NCAA basketball tournament, and “his brackets are in good shape”!!!
That’s not all. Last week, when Putin was accepting Crimea into the Russian Union, Obama’s appearance on the TV show ‘Ellen’ was a big hit, I mean off the charts, with the stay at home, section 8, food stamp demographic (a key demographic in daytime TV)
I missed it, Was it a hard hitting interview, respectful and adversarial at the same time? I’d expect nothing less from ‘Ellen’.
–BRH
Listen to this:
[HUDSON: The objective of IMF loans is to deindustrialize the economy. It is to force the economy–meaning the government when you say the economy–the government has to pay the IMF loan by privatizing whatever remains in the public domain. The Westerners want to buy the Ukrainian farmland. They want to buy the public utilities. They want to buy the roads. They want to buy the ports. And all of this is going to be sold at a very low price to the Westerners, and the price that the Westerners pay will be turned over to the Ukrainian government, that then will turn it back to the Ukraine. So whatever the West gives Ukraine will immediately be taken back.]
This is the blueprint of the globalist model. IMF money goes to oligarchy—and back to the west. If you want to understand how this works please to listen.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/ukraine-will-benefit-imf-bailout.html
Germany coveted that rich Ukrainian farmland too, but used a somewhat more direct method for taking it.
Ukraine is a flashpoint, where east meets west, well described in recent book ‘Bloodlands’.
BRH
So we’re in the wrong, right? Say it. Say “America is on the wrong side and I, Marlin, endorse America in this.”
I could never understand the policy of pushing NATO up against Russia’s borders. My policy would be don’t bother the Bear, leave the Bear alone.
–BRH
This is only for my followers and people with hearts. Nobody else needs to bother clicking on this.
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/horseman_passing_by.php
Thanks for posting that Vlad.
A few years ago a fellow rode thru town wearing a confederate army uniform, on a white horse. It caused quite a commotion as you can imagine. In this oh so politically correct utopia, where ‘tolerance’ is worshiped as the highest human virtue, a few of my more enlightened neighbors wanted to have him banned, and investigated for a ‘hate crime’, for the stars and bars tied to the saddle.
Turns out it was part of a 150th anniversary commemorating the start of the Civil war. But it goes to show you the political climate here, and I suspect a lot of other places too.
–BRH
BT, Hudson says “The objective of IMF loans is to deindustrialize the economy.”
BT, do you think privatization is the same as de-industrialization? If Ukraine is de-industrialized, how will they get the natural gas reserves out?
Putin has troops massed on the Ukraine border. Do you now think Putin will not invade Ukraine? Do you think Putin has changed his mind about invading Ukraine, or had it changed for him by the threat of more severe sanctions? So Obama stopped Putin’s plans?
The Russian Federation inherited a Marxist-Leninist command economy from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Chief among the characteristics of the economy was an almost total absence of private productive capital. Do you think Putin intends to allow deindustrialization of Ukraine? Or is Putin powerless to stop it?
I understand precisely what he’s saying. It’s the program of the IMF to lend money to the oligarchs who then return it while bypassing the system it’s supposed to help, then when it doesn’t work the public holdings are ravaged. Though I’m no fan of Putin, you must know by now that I’m really not a fan of global neoliberalism, either.
We see our own country going down. As I said a few minutes ago elsewhere, when the govt is no longer there to invest in infrastructure we all go down. And China has the bullet trains, en masses and we’re left behind in the dustbin of history.
You’ll see it for yourself as things get worse here.
Does it make sense to invest in roads and highways that few, if any cars will be travelling on in a decade or less?
“[The justification for surveillance] has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies. As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored. And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it.” – james earl carter –
I’ve been thinking this for a while now, and Jimmy Carter put it into words for me.
Do you suppose the soft thudding sound now becoming audible is coming from Langley, where foreheads are being soundly slapped by CIA/NSA insiders saying, “Damn – all this technology, and we forgot to monitor snail mail!”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/23/jimmy-carter-nsa_n_5017378.html
” And China has the bullet trains, en masses and we’re left behind in the dustbin of history. You’ll see it for yourself as things get worse here.” — BT
Thanks, BT. I doubt I will see the USA as the dustbin of history. Maybe my grandkids will see it. I have travelled quite a bit around the USA, from inner cities to Indian reservations and I have never seen anything like the poverty I have seen in places like Mexico and India. I support you in your opposition to neo-liberalism and inverted totalitarianism. I just don’t think it is ever going to be as bad as places I have already seen elsewhere. Go visit Mumbai, a city of 18 million with 11 million homeless. What do we have to compare to that? Do we have even one city in the USA with a 60% homeless rate? We don’t have anything like it, nor will we in my lifetime … probably not in my grandkids lifetime. Living here, the view of the USA, from inside the USA, is distorted.
We don’t realize how good we have it here. The bitching about NASCAR and tattoos is a bit of a farce. Other places have real problems.
You are forgetting one big difference. Those places of extreme poverty have had centuries to adapt. Many of them are in climates that do not require extreme fossil fuel consumption to maintain a hospitable climate. The US is about to crash, completely blind sided by this myth of American exceptionalism.
A false argument. We are being driven into poverty and indeed globalism will retire us to the table of former empires, like GB. The fact is that with the hatred of science, here, we will not be innovating anything like we could have and…..we will not be drawing talent from all sectors of society.
That’s what I mean by dustbin of history. Other systems that want to be nations will do better with economic determinism pushing them militarily as well.
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