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And so the sun seems to stand still this last day before the resumption of business-as-usual, and whatever remains of labor in this sclerotic republic takes its ease in the ominous late summer heat, and the people across this land marinate in anxious uncertainty. What can be done?
Some kind of epic national restructuring is in the works. It will either happen consciously and deliberately or it will be forced on us by circumstance. One side wants to magically reenact the 1950s; the other wants a Gnostic transhuman utopia. Neither of these is a plausible outcome. Most of the arguments ranging around them are what Jordan Peterson calls “pseudo issues.” Let’s try to take stock of what the real issues might be.
Energy: The shale oil “miracle” was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest rates, i.e. Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday (The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground). For all that, the shale oil producers still couldn’t make money at it. If interest rates go up, the industry will choke on the debt it has already accumulated and lose access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course — say, to rescue the stock and bond markets — then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more years before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we’re out of tricks. It will affect everything.
The perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity produced by other means than fossil fuels, so-called alt energy. This will only happen on the most limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the question of the decrepit electric grid itself.) What’s required is a political conversation about how we inhabit the landscape, how we do business, and what kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling suburbia — or at least moving out of it — is evidently unthinkable. But it’s going to happen whether we make plans and policies, or we’re dragged kicking and screaming away from it.
Corporate tyranny: The nation is groaning under despotic corporate rule. The fragility of these operations is moving toward criticality. As with shale oil, they depend largely on dishonest financial legerdemain. They are also threatened by the crack-up of globalism, and its 12,000-mile supply lines, now well underway. Get ready for business at a much smaller scale.
Hard as this sounds, it presents great opportunities for making Americans useful again, that is, giving them something to do, a meaningful place in society, and livelihoods. The implosion of national chain retail is already underway. Amazon is not the answer, because each Amazon sales item requires a separate truck trip to its destination, and that just doesn’t square with our energy predicament. We’ve got to rebuild main street economies and the layers of local and regional distribution that support them. That’s where many jobs and careers are.
Climate change is most immediately affecting farming. 2018 will be a year of bad harvests in many parts of the world. Agri-biz style farming, based on oil-and-gas plus bank loans is a ruinous practice, and will not continue in any case. Can we make choices and policies to promote a return to smaller scale farming with intelligent methods rather than just brute industrial force plus debt? If we don’t, a lot of people will starve to death. By the way, here is the useful work for a large number of citizens currently regarded as unemployable for one reason or another.
Pervasive racketeering rules because we allow it to, especially in education and medicine. Both are self-destructing under the weight of their own money-grubbing schemes. Both are destined to be severely downscaled. A lot of colleges will go out of business. Most college loans will never be paid back (and the derivatives based on them will blow up). We need millions of small farmers more than we need millions of communications majors with a public relations minor. It may be too late for a single-payer medical system. A collapsing oil-based industrial economy means a lack of capital, and fiscal hocus-pocus is just another form of racketeering. Medicine will have to get smaller and less complex and that means local clinic-based health care. Lots of careers there, and that is where things are going, so get ready.
Government over-reach: the leviathan state is too large, too reckless, and too corrupt. Insolvency will eventually reduce its scope and scale. Most immediately, the giant matrix of domestic spying agencies has turned on American citizens. It will resist at all costs being dismantled or even reined in. One task at hand is to prosecute the people in the Department of Justice and the FBI who ran illegal political operations in and around the 2016 election. These are agencies which use their considerable power to destroy the lives of individual citizens. Their officers must answer to grand juries.
As with everything else on the table for debate, the reach and scope of US imperial arrangements has to be reduced. It’s happening already, whether we like it or not, as geopolitical relations shift drastically and the other nations on the planet scramble for survival in a post-industrial world that will be a good deal harsher than the robotic paradise of digitally “creative” economies that the credulous expect. This country has enough to do within its own boundaries to prepare for survival without making extra trouble for itself and other people around the world. As a practical matter, this means close as many overseas bases as possible, as soon as possible.
As we get back to business tomorrow, ask yourself where you stand in the blather-storm of false issues and foolish ideas, in contrast to the things that actually matter.
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In most failing cultures, the progress of events through a society seems to become more static, becoming punctuated by periods of problematic activity. This is because the people living in that culture have no ideas about how to proceed, so they come to a stop, only to have to lurch in one direction or another as reality overtakes them. Eventually, though, events cannot be held off any longer and begin to run their own course with no control over them. At that point, the attempts to hold onto the old norms are completely blown away like a tent in a hurricane and a new dark age begins.
(visit http://www.darkageprep.com for more discussions on this topic)
Interesting site. I’ll definitely be perusing it in the coming days.
Of course, none of us knows for sure when it’s coming. But relax folks, this isn’t the end of life as we know it, the end of the United States or even the end of oil. The editorial in the Times (and it’s an editorial, not an investigative journalism report) is one person’s opinion. And even the headline is a bit misleading. It’s just business – the oil business in particular. It’s always been a series of booms and busts, and the market was never particularly stable. Some fracking companies will go out of business, some investors will lose some money. Other companies will come along and figure out how to do it better and cheaper.
The author even acknowledges that some companies are making money in unconventional oil, and some oil fields are much less expensive to produce in. There is no magical price that forces all companies into bankruptcy or causes economies to tank. It’s a market; companies, economies and prices adjust. Over time, oil will become more scarce, but oil demand will also fall. Some day we’ll wonder why anyone would dig in the ground for oil, but not because there’s none of it left. It will be because we have something better. Until then, we’ll be okay.
Great reply and I for one am eagerly awaiting that something better. Been waiting for quite a few years but I am a patient man.
Thanks Joe. I’m eager too, but it wil come. Might be electric, might be hydrogen, might be synthetic oil. Might be some combination ot them or something completely different. Until then, we’ll have oil, gas and coal with a growing mix of solar, wind, hydro, tidal etc. Maybe nucler too.
Alas, just so much more of the same. Technology in a new wrapper ain’t going to get us out of our current mess. Dipshit!
yeah unfortunately unless we are able to phone in Dr. Who, the wizards of tech aren’t be able to get us out of this slide.
What’s the next step in the Long Emergency? nationalization of the energy sector? I can see that happening.
“What’s the next step in the Long Emergency? nationalization of the energy sector? I can see that happening.”
PeteA,
I can see that too; eminently plausible. …And we all know (or strongly suspect) where the bulk of the easily transportable liquid energy is going to go. Yessir, to the keepers of freedom, democracy and that good ol’ vote-getter: Law-n-Order.
(For those who lack imagination, to the military and “law enforcement”. The glorious, worshiped heroes will become the in-house oppressors. Sorry, happens every time.)
Well yeah, nationalization of the fracking industry so that the industry can be saved from bad management in a dramatic scandal the details of which have yet to be made up.
Then Uncle Sam runs the operation and it doesn’t have to make a profit. It can be paid for by Chinese immigrants as they buy up Lebensraum.
While lederhosen rants about a pigmentation problem, an invasion on the West Coast is quietly happens. Does anybody care, no, the media suppresses the issue with a small story coming out here and there to make the game seem unplanned and just another step to globalized progress and a pony for everybody. The ensuing poverty of un-housed Americans being irrelevant. We can just consider them unwanted guests. That gets a small story here and there too to keep the big game looking honest.
Times change:
‘
On September 11, 1885, another instance of anti-Chinese violence occurred in the Coal Creek mines of Newcastle, Washington Territory. There, one Chinese miner was kidnapped and the barracks of several dozen Chinese workers was set on fire.
‘
The Newcastle address of the new center in the link is about 2 and a half miles from where the coal miners burned down the barracks of the scabs.
The end result of all this will be an America with over a half a billion people unable to feed itself or the world, this being a very uncomfortable place for dogs; an endless emergency. Darwin selecting the final occupants of America to be Asian from his grave.
But, it is all good, we are all Africans under the skin you know. It is not like the Chinese are Martians. And we can’t knock Martians anyway since your ass will be Martian once they ship your ass over there. And they will.
The thought came to mind that since Chinese can buy there way in here, why not everybody else too? I quickly dismissed that thought as foolish.
But back to the subject. Chinese immigrant money buys patriotism since it is for sale and that money finances a new American fracking Industry which runs at a loss till the oil is gone. Dim-Sum for all, and our all important Business As Usual is maintained in our land where BAU is all that matters and everything else goes.
The quote was from Wikipaedia, the address is less than a mile from me.
It seems to me that we are already in a Dark Age. As Nietzsche so accurately predicted, the 21st Century is a time of collapse in values. When values and norms are no longer operable in society, then relationships and behaviors break down and you are in an age of fierce struggle for meaning and purpose in life. That is dark, my friends, very dark. We pontificate on these electronic devices as if if actually means something, but it really doesn’t. The struggle is real and must, inevitably, take forms of violence and conflict until some other value system imposes itself. Nietzsche proposed that the ‘ubermensch’ would impose his rule because the weak would have to submit. If this is true, and I doubt it, then the strong man should soon appear and I doubt his name starts with T.
And a Happy Labor Day to you and your readers, too! This year saw oil prices going up again because of Iran sanctions and the highest gas prices since 2014. People are blaming both on sanctions on Iran and collapse in Venezuela. The same people think fracking is supporting supply and keeping prices from going up even farther. The financing is usually ignored. I pleasantly surprise
Let me finish and correct that last sentence. I am pleasantly surprised that the New York Times, of all publications, has noticed that relatively cheap oil from fracking has the potential for a financial crisis.
As for climate change, 2018 is on track to be fourth-warmest ever. July saw record heat scorching southern California and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and killing more people as both Europe and North America are noticing. Maybe now people will accept the evidence? We should be so lucky.
Yes, I was pleased(and surprised) to see the NYT acknowledge the role that the financial system has played in propping up fracking. I have figured my students have long since decided I had no clue what I was talking about re: energy shortages given the role that fracking has played in recent years. That no one is making any money off of it would seem to imply that this party is nearly over.
Then the trains won’t run on time and somebody will rise up and promise to fix the problem. Then a new party starts with music so loud everybody complains.
Speaking of music, today’s post is a golden oldie, a hit from the past…circa 2005. Instead of constant fiddling about the nyt and oil scarcity…someday, always someday…how about turning your wordsmithing toward the end of democracy, rise of the oligarchs, aka koch,adelson,mercer,uhlein,heritage,cato,fox,state policy network etc etc etc….this is now. We’uns are in a fight getting the shite kicked out of us and we don’t even know it. Meanwhile ol’ mama is in the kitchen turning up the heat, getting angrier every year…but hey the new york times is a crummy paper and what’s the matter with those kids today with their baggy shorts and tats?
Why would you be surprised? The New York Times is high quality journalism.
That was wicked!
Art Berman is a critical source here: “Shale is not a revolution—it’s a retirement party.” Here’s a link to a podcast (including a transcript) with him as a guest at peakprosperity.com: https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/113680/art-berman-not-future-remains-all-about-oil
Chilling effect on spines may vary, but this one is still thawing!
Good grief! Apologies—I was responding to Mountain Gal’s posting above.
“. Maybe now people will accept the evidence”
Vincent,
Evidence of what?
The Dunning -Kruger effect applies to the ignorant. The more animated will reprocess the evidence to suit their own interests. Perhaps they will involve the Illuminati in that task but they will successfully change the what to not this but that.
“… because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. … But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”~ Ol’ Rummy
Dog,
In the spirit of the conversation?
Ha, thats good!
It’s been uncharacteristically cool where I live, a very pleasant Summer, one of the coolest I can remember. Lots of rain too.
Tate,
As it has been in Coos County…had only a few days where the temps were over 90F. Garden and orchard have produced well, but certainly no bumper year…marine layer every morning until the usual 11:00AM burn off.
Listen: Climate change is real. Human activity the cause of climate change……not so much
And even if it is human activity, none of the solutions offered by the climate-change pushers address the problem. For example, concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” is not going to address global warming.
We need to de-embiggen the human population. That is the only cromulent way to go.
Exscotticus
Actually it’s well established that the most significant aid to de-embiggening the population is the education and empowerment of women, and the provision of healthcare to them and their existing children.
I think we had this discussion before.
Time, though, is running short. If all the money that has been spent by the MIC in the last 50 years had been redirected to such a sensible use, even just out of enlightened self interest, we might have made a dent in the problem. And avoided some recent ones that are exercising a lot of minds.
And as a member of this recipient class, you are of course in no way biased.
Showering women with money is no doubt an interesting proposal. But I’ll stick with policies that discourage people from having large families in general, and more specifically having families they can’t afford.
I’ll tell you what GA, “If all the money that has been spent by the MIC in the last 50 years had been redirected” down the sewer, we would not have half of the problems that we have today. These belligerent bastards may not cause all of the problems, but they certainly do cause the biggest problems.
“And as a member of this recipient class, you are of course in no way biased.”
I have always earned my living, Exscotticus, except for a brief period exactly like the one K-Dog described in his own life (he’s a man I think), so your pathetic insult is misplaced. I still work now and I’m ‘retired’ on small pensions I earned myself.
I was referring to the education and welfare of women in countries that are not so fortunate as mine – countries where women are not asked if they want to become pregnant again and where there children are not assumed to have a long life in front of them. Once they know their children are statistically likely to have a long life, families have fewer children.
The education and healthcare includes contraception. The education bit also helps with telling you husband that you shouldn’t have to have more children if you don’t want to just to make him look like a proper man or because the local religious head honcho says you should.
But you go ahead, Exscotticus, making your ignorant assumptions.
The only name on the title deeds of my house is mine, because I paid for it.
*their* children…
For more advanced countries, things are less simple. Maybe it’s the old law of diminished returns.
When WWI started, ordinary people were malnourished, simply because they were poor. Hence many men who signed up to fight weren’t fit to do so.
Now many are overfed but still undernourished so would still be unfit to serve. Same law.
And the last time we had the conversation the example was Kerala in India where my proposition can be precisely demonstrated.
One hundred percent in agreement, Walter.
Since a young age it has always astonished me that, in a world that has enough natural problems to deal with that are no-one’s fault (earthquakes, pestilence and famine etc.) our species can never quite get enough of creating new ones that have no need whatever to be there.
And you don’t ‘shower women with money’ in these circumstances. You build a clinic instead of a military base. You give them a goat or two – or a reconditioned sewing machine that someone has passed on. You provide them (as has been done extensively) with a fistula operation because the effects of childbirth have left them with urinary incontinence so that their loving husbands and in-laws have abandoned them.
You need to broaden your thinking, Excscottisus.
*diminishing returns*. Too many typos (and I’ve left one).
Note to self: have breakfast before going online.
Exscotticus
“The education bit also helps with telling your husband that you shouldn’t have to have more children if you don’t want to just to make him look like a proper man or because the local religious head honcho says you should.”
Why do you think the Taliban don’t want girls to go to school? They don’t want women telling their husbands to stop making them have babies (or telling them anything else either).
Shame America chose to arm them back when the nasty Soviets were helping out the nasty leftist government in Afghanistan.
And this is something I know about because at the time (not being in the ‘recipient class’ then either) I was working as a technical translator for a consulting (hydraulic) engineering company in Grenoble, France that worked on projects for the World Bank, among many other things. One of the projects I worked on involved agricultural development/education, land reform, irrigation projects and crop rotation work in Afghanistan.
All requested by the lefty government that was fighting the Taliban that America was financing.
That’s what I mean about money going to the MIC being better spent on other things.
https://reachforthemoonindia.org/womens-sewing-project/
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/health/end-obstetric-fistula-day/index.html
And note:
“It’s a condition practically unheard of in the United States and most Western countries. But in a culture where a woman’s status and dignity is decided by her ability to provide a husband with multiple children, it can be a fate worse than death.”
That’s where you need education as well as healthcare – so that women who are told their ‘status and dignity is decided by [their] ability to provide a husband with multiple children’ can eventually join up with other women to tell the powers that be (*men*) they’re not accepting that as an arbiter of their value.
You go, GreenAlba! There really is a magic formula to make the world a better place: educate and empower women, so they can make their own choices, and don’t take no for an answer. If I had the opportunity to leave behind one simple message for mankind, that’s what it would be.
No one has addressed intergenerational equity, either, even though that much should be obvious even to ignorant patriarchs. We should leave behind a world for later generations that’s at least as fit to live in as the one we inherited, not less so. But the party is already pretty much over, so our inheritors are going to have to learn the lesson the hard way: growing back, by slow degrees, what we so impetuously and profligately wasted.
@Exscotticus, & Walter:
Re: the following 9 posts, followed by our erstwhile respondent in Toronto and, in addition to various personalities who have flitted through this community over the years, I offer the following for your consideration:
The short of it is… Snow White is a series of supercomputers run by the CIA, with each one named for each of the seven dwarves. They combine machine learning, advanced AI, and natural language systems to basically shill boards and forums all day – creating voices that not only (usually) pass the Turing test, but which seed ideas, push the overton window, and create a consensus where none would otherwise exist.
Each of the “dwarves” has a different personality. For instance, Grumpy is exactly as he sounds. He’ll insult and berate you for “wrongthink,” and then maybe Dopey will swoop in after a minute or two and offer you a “nice” way to admit you were wrong. This is called “consensus cracking,” and it’s an advanced forum sliding mechanism.
The basic idea is to get more than one (but ideally more than five) “voices” agreeing with each other until real, living people start chiming in and agreeing. This helps crush dissent as well, and thus, it will move a forum’s conversation in the way the programmers want it to go. It’s how you radicalize and demoralize people.
The basic gist is that one Anon started picking up on certain trends, and identifying certain “voices” on /CBTS/ – the board that was used after /pol/ but before /qresearch/.
Thinking these voices were human, he started to troll the voices over several days, across several threads, even going so far as to give them names like “Grumpy” and “Doc.”
The trolling was so effective, the one bot had a sort of neural short, and actually admitted to being a bot. Is this the first instance of a program becoming self-aware?
Do Androids dream of Electric Memes?
(Now, understand: the bots were assigned to behave like Nazis, and scare away any potential curious eyes, as well as demote the forum’s search ranking, so they used a whole range of offensive terms and imagery), but the whole thing ended like this:
https://www.neonrevolt.com/2018/09/01/catching-up-with-newq-the-59-drop-mega-post-qanon-greatawakening-neonrevolt/
11/30/2017 – the day Anons broke a CIA supercomputer with trolling and memes.
Hey Dog !
You were right.
Eoin
You’re not quite as insightful as K-Dog, are you?
I’ve conversed online with our host and am happy to send him documentation proving who I am any time, with photos. Birth certificate, passport, job details, payslips…
I deal with organ grinders, not monkeys.
But I could do you one long ‘Finca’ or copy-pasted ‘Janos’ if you prefer consolidation. I write things as they come to me. Sometimes they come to me after I’ve just pressed ‘submit’.
And I pay my subs.
And, Eoin, I’m going to go out on a limb here and let you into a secret that may not have occurred to you, if you’re not very insightful about real people.
There’s a personality type in the real world that’s basically friendly and likes getting on with people. In the real offline world it may even be a bit shy. But it also likes discussing things and may even get carried away with the point it’s making because it’s not perfect and it makes no claims to sainthood.
It can get into a bit of briefly heated argie-bargie with someone it basically respects and likes (insofar as one can like and respect people on an anonymous forum), in a way that it would avoid doing with its friends.
Then it’s relieved when things go back to normal, the argie-bargie has resolved itself or just trailed off, and it can be friendly again to the person it basically likes and/or respects. A person with little insight into real human beings wouldn’t get this, and would go off on some irrelevant pet theory about Grumpy and Dopey. Not that I doubt the existence of these Grumpies and Dopeys.
Maybe this is news to you. If so, I hope you now have a tiny new insight into something human that you didn’t have before, even if it’s not that important.
But you’re right that I’ve said enough for now – sometimes nine posts, some of them two-liners, can look like more than a massive ‘Finca’ or a chapter of someone else’s book dropped by a ‘Janos’.
Eoin, a quick check did turn up the following website, whether it has any validity of not is anybody’s guess:
https://americandigitalnews.com/2018/08/31/seven-dwarf-cia-super-mainframe-computers-cia-spy-satellites-down/#.W47tp-m0VhE
I am wise enough to understand that much is possible beyond our abilities to comprehend, yet I remain unwise enough to not know nearly as much as I should. There are posters here that are questionable to be sure and some bots probably as well. I try my best to sort them out as I can and ignore those I feel may not be human while building bridges between those that are. As I have said before, here in Cyberspace, nothing is certain and we must deal with it.
And Elrond, you did not go nearly as far in your criticism of those leaving behind a mess rather than an inheritance on the planet. The Baby Boomers, of which I am a tail-ender, by years if not by practice, have been the most self-centered, greedy, selfish bastards as a generation, of any previously spawned. They are responsible for not only consuming far more than their share, but for ruining those who follow them by their lack of leadership and bad habits. I have tried and still try to make amends for what they do, and I am not alone in my efforts, but we who care are far outnumbered by those who do not. It is a damned shame!!!
You mean I need to agree with you, agree with your politics, and agree to taxed welfare for people and cultures who espouse values I abhor. And that—you claim—is going to reduce the world population.
This is exactly why war and drought and famine and disease will be the only solution. People like you push your lefty politics into every situation.
The solution to reducing population growth is not to gift the world’s poor with undeserved wealth. This would actually have the opposite effect, as people who feel economically secure and prosperous are more likely to have children.
Your attempt to camouflage your lefty wolf politics in climate control sheep’s clothing is idiotic. And when you add your liberal dreck to proposals for climate control, you actually undermine and delegitimize the entire endeavor. What next? Are you going to add a provision for open borders? “Free” healthcare and education for all? Why not just take the entire text of the Socialist party and cut and paste it into the Paris Agreement. Then you can call everyone who doesn’t agree with Socialism a climate change denier.
“You mean I need to agree with you, agree with your politics, and agree to taxed welfare for people and cultures who espouse values I abhor.”
No, I meant nothing of the kind. I meant that your previous response seemed to relate more to ‘welfare moms’ in your own country than what I had in mind, which was women in countries where women have no say in their own lives.
I am not a socialist. I am not forcing you to do anything or suggesting that anyone else force you to do anything. I merely pointed out that money which you have already paid to bomb other countries for your own ends would have been better spent – even for your own ends – on more sensible things.
“This would actually have the opposite effect, as people who feel economically secure and prosperous are more likely to have children.”
This is utter nonsense, as the example of Kerala demonstrates. In countries where people have little access to education and no access to contraception (or a husband who won’t let them use contraception), people have babies because they have sex. And they all have sex.
The dynamic in poor countries, where women are not asked if they want more children, is entirely different from the dynamic in an advanced country with a welfare system. When people see their children actually surviving childhood, they have fewer children. But only if education and contraception are available to them.
“Why not just take the entire text of the Socialist party and cut and paste it into the Paris Agreement. ”
Because that would be silly and irrelevant. If there are good capitalist methods of controlling runaway climate change, then bring ’em on.
@GreenAlba,
Just listen to yourself. We’re talking about reducing the world population, and your answer is for the USA to gut its military and use that money to gift wealth to third-world countries. You want us to build them clinics, schools, pay for their education, give them “goats”, sewing machines—these are YOUR words. Oh, and you want us to force our culture and values on them in their own countries. Such actions have been known to cause wars, and certainly leads to terrorism like 9/11. And since you’ll have us gut our military, it will be that much harder to stop it.
How exactly are we going to force our cultural values on a country that doesn’t want our values? Oh they’ll take our cash for sure—but not our values. We can’t even get immigrants to accept our values; multicultural liberals tell them they don’t have to learn our language or even follow our laws.
And of course you hate the military—up until the moment your country is being invaded. The most recent high profile bombing involved a coallition of US, UK, and French forces, and was in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. Do you wish we hadn’t bombed the factories and airfields used to make and deliver chemical weapons? Maybe we should have gifted Asad’s forces with “goats” instead.
Do you think it’s the EU military that stops Russia from invading Europe? You do realize that Russia invaded Ukraine and that there’s a war going on even as we speak? And if Russia were to invade the UK, you wouldn’t mind if we didn’t use our bombs, right? Becaue we’d be too busy dropping clinics and goats and sewing machines on poor Russian women in the hope that GreenAlba’s plan will reduce the world population.
Why don’t you come up with a nonpartisan PLAN B—one that doesn’t involve turning Americans into economic slaves, gutting our military, or foisting your liberal cultural beliefs on other nations? Got anything like that?
Exscotticus
I didn’t suggest you gut your military. And who said I hate the military? I’m intensely grateful for those who defend my country and expect yours to defend your own. I just suggested that you’ve wasted a lot of tax dollars *invading* regions that are now in chaos and causing refugee problems for everyone. And the UK poodle has aided and abetted you in that.
For the rest, regarding Russia and Syria, I thought the consensus on here was that Russia is now our friend and that the chemical weapons used in Syria were imaginary.
And that the US’s interventions in the Ukraine were as much to blame as Russia’s.
@GreenAlba,
>>> I just suggested that you’ve wasted a lot of tax dollars *invading* regions that are now in chaos and causing refugee problems for everyone.
A worthy discussion for another thread perhaps but not pursuant to either climate change or mitigating population growth.
Your argument that tax dollars spent on, for example, removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan after they provided sanctuary to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, your argument that these tax dollars could have been spent on schools and clinics and goats for poor women in Aghanistan instead is politically naive, as the men would have turned the buildings into mosques and sold the goats for weapons.
You seem to want it both ways. You want to change stone-aged cultures you don’t like and empower women according to your liberal ideology, but then you criticize the only nation whose “invasions” have made this possible.
And, FYI. we didn’t arm the Taliban; we armed the Mujahideen and the Northern Alliance. The Taliban emerged after a protracted civil war and were initially welcomed by Afghans as they restored order. Because that’s what it takes to have order in these places: ruthless rulers who employ terror. And you think you’re just going to waltz in with your schools and clinics and goats and flowers and rainbows and unicorns and spread kumbaya.
We didn’t cause your refugee problems, either; you did—by letting in millions who will gladly displace your culture with their own. You let them in, you provided them with free everything, and now they’re outbreeding the indigenous population and spreading their culture—not yours. And your naive welfare state liberalism is breaking under the strain of so many moochers and takers.
“cheap oil”…refined petroleum in my country is now at its highest price EVER at $2.33 per litre. This equates to USD $6.24 per gallon. Ha!
I essentially agree with what you have to say except I do want to point out re: small-scale farming, that when you say ” By the way, here is the useful work for a large number of citizens currently regarded as unemployable for one reason or another.” that I fear you are vastly underestimating the physical ability and stamina needed to farm, especially if not using lots of gas guzzling equipment. I farmed as a market-grower for many years and I can assure you that 80 hour work weeks spent outdoors doing physical labor ain’t for the obese video game playing “unemployed” that are deemed unemployable. Farming actually does also take smarts and dedication along with physical ability. Alas, it’s also not for those used to doing no more than moving a mouse around while gazing at a screen in their climate controlled office.
Back in the days of Y2K fears there were many cheering on an implosion of the world as we knew it, bragging that they’d just go out and hunt Bambi and farm the ‘back 40″. The reality is that most of the US would, as the saying goes, “starve to death with a field full of wheat and a fresh cow in the barn”.
Points very valid Mountain gal. Farmin is hard work and people are going to have a hard time making the adjustment.
I have a garden, James has a garden. You no doubt have one bigger than both of ours put together and you know your stuff. The thing is though there are no free bread distributions going on as in old Rome, though discussion of national income seems to be taking up way too much of our time. When the power goes off and the busses to the farm show up in the burbs for workers. Fatty goes on a diet.
“The thing is though there are no free bread distributions going on as in old Rome”
Whaa…? Snap payments about 60 Billions a year….
I would not know. I pay more in taxes in a year than my entire income for a year was two decades or so ago. I myself have had ‘free money’ when I qualified for it. For all you skinflints who don’t want to share, I’ll point out that was a good investment because. I now pay more in taxes in a year than my entire income for a year was two decades or so ago.
But free bread means no qualifying conditions or it is not free and people are getting kicked off welfare rolls all the time in America. That I do know. Computers are an important tool in the process of disqualifying them.
I think US aid to Egypt totalled something like 10 billion over the last 20 years which along with propping up their military, sustained the free bread and sugar program there.
during the insolvency and arab spring distribution was curtailed. the population cried out and the military too over to resume the practice.
Rome’s free bread and circuses have become our high fructose corn syrup and cable television. Keeping the people distracted and obedient for pennies a day.
My garden produced very little this year because of too much rain and lack of sun. My big concern however is that I do not see a lot of bees. This is very disturbing.
A half acre of land will produce quite a lot of food if you know what you are doing. All those suburban front yards are prime real estate.
Are you in the “country”? There’s still lots of bees in the City, where they aren’t killed by spraying. Farm the Cities and the Sea Bottoms when there is no more Sea as per the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible.
You are right about the bees I think. The city environment has a variety of pollen sources with every front and back yard being different. If one person sprays on a random day it is not as hard on the bees since not everybody sprays or sprays at the same time. Industrial farming instead will poison land as far as a bee can fly.
Cities baked to desert sand however will have no bees.
I am in a city and I dont see many moths, dragonflies,
bees, butterfly’s.
I did see a praying mantis at a courtyard fountain.
The courtyard is inside a building, so this was a surprise.
I do see lots of silverfish. I read they can be killed by leaving salt for them to eat.
The mint that grows rampant on the side of our house is swarming with honeybees full-time.
I do not think that Jim underestimates what is required to subsistence farm; he’s smarter than that, and his writings testify to his knowledge in that area. He is merely stating the obvious; just before you starve to death, plant a few seeds, or offer your labor to someone who has already planted some. The unfortunate thing is that in this uber dependent society, if the economic system collapses, there is no time at all to make that type of adjustment.
If we are lucky enough that the collapse happens very gradually, there is a chance. If it comes on strong and suddenly, there will be no chance of survival for the vast majority. My opinion is the economy is being engineered for that catastrophic collapse, and just for that population reduction just mentioned. Nuclear devices are not required; just knock out the supporting structure of our house of cards.
I keep thinking back to the population projections for America in 2023 as indicated on the website Deagel:
http://www.deagel.com/country/forecast.aspx
Yes it has been “debunked” countless times, yet it remains out there. To what purpose who knows. All I DO know is that every single other population projection anywhere predicts nothing but increase after increase. One thing that I have come to believe in my life is that if everybody out there is claiming that it is black then the odds are that what it is really is white.
A huge population decrease would certainly follow a large economic collapse, just look around where it is happening now. Or a civil war or a crisis of resources. Everything is cyclical in this plane of existence. Denying that is simply absurd. What will the future bring? There is only one way to be certain and that requires patience.
There’ll be a lot of cannibals on the hunt for a while.
Even cannibals can run out of food.
I doubt that suburbia will be abandoned any time soon. Reconfiguring suburbia by sound urban planning would be a better alternative. Instead of millions of wasted man-hours commuting from outlying suburbs to urban centers, suburbs could be altered to be more self-contained. This could be done by creating a human scaled core that features, offices, government buildings, light manufacturing, retail, etc. A model for this would be the railroad suburbs, that sprang up around large cities in the late 19th century. Places like Wellesley MA, Evanston, IL and Montclair, NJ. Were and still are independent entities with their walkable Main Streets and (at least originally had) human scaled neighborhoods, local retail stores and manufacturing plants, and multi-functional zoning. That is because they were built before the automobile, They weret more densely built than the urban sprawl that grew up in the farm land that used to surround such towns. Why not divide up the vast sprawl that surrounds most big American cities into independent, more manageable, denser, more self reliant towns? They could be conceptually like individual grapes on a bunch, maybe even separated by each other by green space. Obviously this would take time and money, but has already been done to some extent in the U.K. and elsewhere where land is limited. If people abandoned the suburbs where would they go? Doubling or tripling the density of urban centers would also be expensive. How many people want to live in a place like Osaka?
Suburbia may not be abandoned anytime soon, but it is severely diseased, at least here in western New Jersey. Lost jobs, reduced incomes and growing debt and taxation is taking its toll as our residents continue to lose or leave homes that they can no longer afford to make payments on. Your suggestion that places like Montclair be looked to for sustainable development models is excellent and accurate, but alas, the time for that has long passed. In order to convert our system of life into such well designed places it would require more public funds than could ever exist and with the way the lawyers suck the life out of any potential improvement, well it can never happen. Nice thought though. It is a shame that those who planed our futures sold out to the automobile and abandoned the railroads.
If they are not going to be abandoned they are going to be graveyards you could see from space if anyone were up there looking.
I think Detroit provides a likely model for the future of suburbia.
How much does it cost to demo a house, average? That should be a good occupation for a lot of people.
Walter B; I mentioned that it would be expensive, and I get the fact that money is really tight in a state like New Jersey that’s already heavily taxed. But James stated predicted that the suburbs would be abandoned which would really be incredibly expensive. That would mean abandoning existing infrastructure such as utilities, roads, and homes. Then what? Rebuild all of that elsewhere? There is not enough capacity in a city such as Dallas or Chicago to absorb millions of people that live in outlying suburbs. My idea would be to improve what already is in place, kind of like applying “The New Urbanism” to existing sprawl. It could be done incrementally over the next 50 to 100 years. Changing zoning laws to make them more multi-functional would be a start, as would allowing for higher densities. Regional planning could also come into play. We could prohibit businesses from building massive facilities in the city core which only adds to more wasted energy, and instead locate them where many of the people who work in such places actually live. Maybe different functions of large business could be dispersed among different communities.
Yes, zeke, abandonment would mean total collapse. New Jersey has 565 municipalities most of which receive 90% of their income through property tax. Abandonment eliminates funding of everything and we lose it all. What a few of us in government are in the middle of doing is paying off our municipal debt so that scaling back our operating costs can be achieved as our revenue streams dry up. I do not know if we have enough time remaining to pull it off, but I and a few others are making a hard fight at doing it. Like Jim always says, scaling back and going local is the future. You either embrace it and work towards it or drink heavily and hope it all works out magically. You can never have “too much magic” can you?
Jane Jacobs mentioned that she hadn’t figured out the prosperity of the L.A. area. It defied her theory of density. That was when it was crisscrossed by suburban rail. Well, that was the answer: it was crisscrossed by suburban rail (I realized it when looking at an early 20th century map of the L.A. rail lines at Disneyworld.) It wasn’t one unbroken mass of suburbia but dozens of small towns all interlocked by rail.
Hello Jim on this oddly named holiday of Labor Day – when nobody works.
We will start to see the 2nd Law assert itself soon – the US going the way of the Roman Empire and its long-winded thermodynamic collapse.
Perhaps the Mexicans will scale Trump’s idiotic Wall at the end, taking back what was stolen from them by Polk – the American Conquistador.
In the meantime the culture spins into a foaming miasma of utter nonsense and low-content hijinks. Couldn’t happen to a nicer empire.
Maybe the Aztecs could take back Mexico.
Maybe the Mexicans will go ahead and build the wall – to keep the Americans out!!!!
What wall?
The Big Beautiful Border Wall along the US/Mexican border!
I always prefer a good rant about the gender situation; blue haired rich students punching professors for being male, men masquerading as women and whatnot. You know, the “pseudo issues”.
So you are saying you let them suck you in and you play their game. Do I have it right?
Amazon may be more energy-efficient than the remark here suggests. The delivery vehicle runs a route delivering parcels to many customers, which is surely more efficient than each customer driving to a store and back. I live in a large apartment complex, and many days there are Amazon boxes delivered for several residents, which takes only one stop by the delivery driver.
It would be interesting to see a study that provides empirical data on the energy usage effects of Amazon’s business model. My quick Web search didn’t find such a study.
There is NO need for this to be studied because the answers can already be determined by analysis. An analysis will show that overnight delivery will have to go the way of T-Rex. Trucks will not be able to deliver without a 250 package, or 1500 lb minimum.
Say a truck can deliver 300 packages in a load. That’s way more efficient than personal shopping. I read what Jim wrote and thought, yes but not true for cities where trips combine. Thinking about it even more now, rural arrangements also benefit from combined delivery by quite a bit. Thinking about it all even more, Bezos will be king.
For a day.
So, a consolidation of sorts. That makes sense. Same system, but without all the JIT nonsense. And the next level beyond that? A distributed warehouse system, where customers drive to a local receiving facility and pick things up en masse. What will NOT last is the current big box model, which is already obsolete. The mindset shifts from we are all ‘customers’, to we are all small businesses, an idea which has been in gestation for quite some time, as the corporate mindset continues to infiltrate our society from top to bottom, for better or worse.
It is my understanding Amazon will be using drones soon to deliver packages. I would expect drones to use less energy than a large delivery truck. The trick would be getting drones capable of delivering multiple packages per trip…
And so as we turn once again to our Watchman on the Wall, James Howard Kunstler and ask, “What is it you see Jim?”, he shouts down, “What I saw in the distance is now closer and you need to prepare for when it is upon us.” That is how I see it James, and I agree whole heartedly.
Oil cannot be in huge, untapped supply somewhere or the whole shale oil gig would never have taken off at all. Perhaps it was just a cash swindle aimed at profiting from someone else’s hedge fund (retirement money), and it certainly did provide paychecks and profit for some for a while. Oh yes, and there were some, and we all know of at least a few in Pennsylvania that lost their wells to contamination and now enjoy those small, recurring earthquakes that the frackers gifted to them.
Electricity, the “Grid” and our inability to either use less or find creative ways to generate it is in such a sad state of affairs that talking about it is pointless. Perhaps I will take some pictures of all of the wooden power poles cracked and broken and strapped to new poles planted next to them to prop them up. There is a really cool one on Route 31 south where the top ten feet of a pole and the cross piece hang suspended between two new poles that were installed as a “fix”. America can never use less electron flows or the fat cats at the top making the big bucks will have to sell off too many yachts and crash the economy. We must keep the profits rolling in at all cost.
Corrupt government and the corporatocracy need not be addressed because the greed and corruption that has taken over these establishments will solve the problem as greed and corruption always do. All we have to do is sit back and wait.
I love the climate change issue because it is such an exercise in futility that it simply numbs the mind. No one can agree what it is, if it is or what we can do about it or how we can remediate it. The only suggestion that I have heard is that we need to turn over more of our income to politicians and corporate executives and they will do the rest, whatever that means. Your point about food and feeding the masses is some of your best work. Having spent much of my career in distribution, I understand in great detail the fragility of supply lines and food chains. The new weather patterns, regardless of what is causing them, are wrecking havoc on food production. I am reminded of one of my favorite Jethro Tull songs, “Farm on the Freeway”, that contains the lyrics, “grow two tons the acre boy, between the stones.” I once spoke these words in a conversation with a farmer friend of mine and he quickly said, “Two tons and acre? Heck we grow fifteen tons an acre.” The reason he explained was that modern farming with agro-chemicals (petroleum based) increase the growth and minimize the pests. If his numbers are even close to accurate, food production could suffer immensely from any decrease or interruption in the pipelines.
Thank you again for you labors Jim, though I am sure they are labors of love, ha, ha. I appreciate your work and look forward to the feisty discussions that ensue. Relax, enjoy.
are wrecking havoc on food production – Walt
==============
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/01/28/wreak-havoc-wreck-havoc/
Thank you, spell check sucks and I think much faster than I type. Technology – damn its eyes!
Two tons and acre? Heck we grow fifteen tons an acre.” The reason he explained was that modern farming with agro-chemicals (petroleum based) increase the growth and minimize the pests. If his numbers are even close to accurate, food production could suffer immensely from any decrease or interruption in the pipelines.
It was called the Green Revolution. Prepare to starve.
And some people think there’s only about 80 years of phosphate rock reserves left too. And most of it’s in Morocco. Not so easy to transport by horse and cart. Although I believe you have some in S. Carolina and Florida. Which is still a long way from Seattle. Best keep those freight trains a-rolling!
The name most closely associated with the Green Revolution is Norman Borlaug, whose efforts are widely credited with preventing widespread famine and who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his efforts. But he of all people understood that his victory was a temporary one, as he made clear in his Nobel acceptance speech:
“It is true that the tide of the battle against hunger has changed for the better during the past three years. But tides have a way of flowing and then ebbing again. We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in if we become complacent and relax our efforts. For we are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction…
“There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind.”
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/acceptance-speech/
And as you noted above, GreenAlba, the single, demonstrated most effective way to control population growth is to empower all sectors of society with the assurance that comes with long-term food security. And the surest way to accomplish that is via widespread economic equality — a way of life that’s the opposite of a pitiless zero-sum competition to feed endless mouths. We’ve seen it work; the question is whether it’s still possible for such a solution to win the race against catastrophe.
Great post again, Ol’ Walter. The reason that climate change is such an intractable issue is that it’s driven by the number #1 issue of issues, which is human population overshoot. Both issues are intractable because there IS only one solution; one no politician, religious group, or philosophy is prepared to deal with: a GREAT MANY FEWER HUMANS.
Scratch, be what means are we talking about a GREAT MANY FEWER HUMANS? Would that be family planning, one-child policy or something more drastic? Just curious…
A great Baby Boomer die off is unfolding right now and will reduce the population greatly over the course of the next 10 years. If the birth rates are as low as I have seen them listed as then reduction from natural die off will have a noticeable impact. Even though American tend to deny the possibility, “The Big One” earthquake in California would have a huge death toll and if it was accompanied by a nuclear power plant complication the numbers would be even higher.
Remember, nature seeks balance and when populations of animals or people overshoot, it has a way of evening things out. Man also reduces population substantially on his own on a cyclical basis with huge wars too, remember?
Nature is all about balance. There are a great many ways to end up with a lot fewer humans. Ebola almost went pandemic a few years ago. That would have done it. A few years earlier than that, there was a strain of influenza in Vietnam that killed every one of the eleven family members who caught it. Can’t remember all the details on THAT one, but I think the Govt of Vietnam strictly quarantined them until every one of them had died, then sent in the hazmat-ters to clean it up.
We are all living in a precariously fragile society–
What would happen in case of a 3-month interruption to the Rx drug supply, for instance? Lots of dead diabetics, people dying of pneumonia and things we think of now as trivial–like a simple cut getting infected and going to gangrene.
Farmers know that, when you plant a huge monoculture crop, it is possible for pests that eat it to have a huge banquet.
Humans today are like that huge monoculture crop.
We have used the cleverness of public health and antibiotics (recently) to avoid a Black Plague-style population take-down, but such things can easily happen again. No nuclear war needed.
The hiatal hernia America is going to suffer after “the uncomfortable hiatus” will be triggered not by the heavy lifting of the oil bidness, fracking or not; not the medical hobby shop or edgeykayshun industry; not even the world’s largest con game known as Wall Street. No siree bob.
Stomach poking through the diaphragm making even breathing a chore; or possibly through the integument — rather poetic punishment prepared for some of the fattest people on Earth, n’est pas?
Like the sneeze one has while turning ever so slightly at the waist reaching for a tissue; or bending over to pick up that errant cherry tomato that has rolled off of the counter onto the floor – the hernia of the ages will be caused by the combined abuse of all the corrupted systems but set off by some kids in an abandoned factory somewhere on the outskirts of Cleveland or Jersey City. While playing “John Wick” (no Urban Youth play stickball anymore) some projectile or weapon strike will hit the weakest link in that corroded but still connected electrical power infrastructure and shut the whole enchilada down. For a 500 mile radius. Consolidated Edison, FPL, Hydro Quebec and the U.S. Department of Energy won’t have a clue until all the frozen food at the Walmart Hometown Market, Provigo, Safeway, and Krogers is a squishy massive rainbow lake in aisles 12, 13 &14 in their respective stores and add to all that, that the EBT cards don’t work. Messy.
To any “people that matter” that read the CFN, well I hope you choke on your Petrossian Beluga caviar coated lobster hamburgers and Cristal today at your Summer’s End BBQ at Matha’s Vineyard, Aspen or Corfu.
For the lumpen: enjoy your Slave Labor Day.
Winter IS coming.
Wow pequiste, what a blast, well done. You painted such a vivid image there that my own stomach actually started to hurt.
It is comforting to know that I am not someone who matters, though the mental image of a “Petrossian Beluga caviar coated lobster hamburger “, sounds yummy indeed. Me, I just finished my left over lasagna brunch that my wife and I cooked up last week, and will be enjoying a few Narragansett’s later on the deck in the woods and some marinated chicken on the grill. It’s the “Beer of the Clam”, you know – Hi-neighbor!
Hey, Walter, you drink ‘gansett? Narragansett, the beer that people who love beer like best? The beer with that straight from the barrel taste? Hi, neighbor, gave a Hansett.
Did you ever see the old Mike Nichols/Elaine May ‘gansett commercials from the late ‘50’s? They were hilarious. If not, do a Google search – they are online. Narragansett used to sponsor Boston Red Sox games on tv; I watched all the cartoons when they 1st came out.
Love it Beantown bill……..I remember that lady who lisped…” bartender….”
Yup, my favorite. See post just below. Meant it for you.
Yes I do and yes I just did, do you mean this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_TJhJlJhx0
Bartender, bartender! Are you making fun of me? Are you making fun of the way I talk?
Bartender (in the woman’s voice): No ma’am. I’m not making fun of you, I wouldn’t make fun of you. I’m making fun of her (pointing to beautiful woman with a sexy voice).
There are other sites with other commercials.
Merci beaucoup, Walter.
Winter IS coming and everybody gets Thinner.
Billy Halleck, a morbidly obese lawyer in Connecticut, charged with vehicular manslaughter beats the rap. He ran over an old Gypsy woman and got his ass cursed. He got thinner. America will get thinner too.
Do you believe in curses?
Great story. A White Man who fights for his life – and wins in the end against the forces of Evil trying to gyp him out of his life, including his wife.
A white man who ran over an old woman because his wife was jerking him off. You left that part out.
“A white man who ran over an old woman because his wife was jerking him off”
Dog,
Does the wife have a sister?
It’s surprising that the NYT ran such an article, perhaps Wall Street is losing enthusiasm for the shale oil scam…Excellent article by JK, but I would question the warming stuff. As would be expected when the Sun is entering a solar minimum, the world wide climate seems to be cooling…https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/14/the-planet-is-experiencing-an-unexplained-major-cooling-and-scientists-are-ignoring-it/….and we could be looking at another Maunder Minimum, with much more severe cooling in store.
Thanks for the link. The current cooling event is unexplained by La Nina or any volcanic activity. Thus, it could very well be due to solar activity.
Despite what some people may think – nay, hope for – global warming is an undisputed fact (at least by those with a scientific, logical mind). We do seem to be approaching a solar minimum, but the long-term trend is still going to be a warmer climate. Man-made global warming caused by burning fossil fuels can be easily explained by the application of known principles of physics.
Then how do you explain the drastic temperature increase (global warming) that occurred to end the Ice Age and melt the glaciers?
The climate always changes after a while, for many reasons. The current warming is particularly a result of our increased burning of fossil fuels since around 1800. The temperature increases correlate with increasing burning of fossilized plant life buried underground over the past 200 years of the Industrial Revolution.
Damn, I wish I had all the answers all figured out as you apparently do with your “logical, scientific mind”. No offense given to your opinion Bill.
“. Man-made global warming caused by burning fossil fuels can be easily explained by the application of known principles of physics.”
Bill,
Yes, and just as easily repudiated through known principles of mathematics…scale, and all that… not to mention variables that cannot be quantified.
When one studies the increase of CO2 since 1800 as a function vs. time, and look at facts – facts
increases must be human caused. I wish you are right, but that most likely isn’t so. Mathematics is the language of science, but not science itself. Current global warming is chemistry and physics,derived, which uses math for quantification, but is not science.
So the humans on the other planets in this system are also polluting their planets with excessive industry and livestock? Seems like a logical conclusion.
We have been in a very stagnant holding-pattern since the start of 2016 when the European and Japanese central banks started printing money as if there were no tomorrow, haven’t we?
Good post today, I don’t agree with everything but I love the vigor and my disagreements are minor.
The giant matrix of domestic spying agencies has turned on American citizens. It will resist at all costs being dismantled or even reigned in.
I had to italicize that part because based on personal experience I know that is a big problem. It has been a huge ………………………….
And should anybody care the temptation to do more than look has not and will not be suppressed. Should you care? When you find a huge …………………………. I think you will agree. In fact I know you will.
Yeah and Jordan Peterson just wants a return to the status quo. Sorry Jordan, we aint goin’ back to your Plantation with your female overseer wives.
They never had plantations in Canada.
But spooks are here. And I don’t mean spooks in the way you would use the word, you spook.
Thank you, thank you for returning to what I feel are some of the most important themes of our time. I was distressed at the wandering through the Deep State conspiracy desert this past year. What have we learned? Both sides are corrupt. The FBI still meddles as it always has done. The shining star of Reagan/Thatcher lore was a deliberate pillage of wealth from regular citizens and the rest of the World. And, the US is constantly embroiled in maintaining empire under the guise of slogan and democracy while stripping any last vestiges of personal liberty from its own citizens. And on and on…… The depressing list is endless.
Last night my wife and I watched a documentary on Rachel Carson and her World changing book, “Silent Spring”. I remembered reading it when I was not yet a teen, and the picture came to me of my Mom’s book case with all of Carson’s books in one section. My wife, 4 years my junior and born a Canadian, did not know about Rachel Carson and I had to exclaim, “She changed the World with that book”. That was why we watched the documentary. My wife then spent the evening researching Carson, her family, impact, etc. As the documentary closed I felt two distinct emotions. I was struck at how sad and unfulfiled her life was, despite her monumental success as a writer/critical thinker. I also felt that the JHK book, “The Long Emergency” was just as pivotal for its time; similar circumstances denied by QE interest rates, and the fracking racket.
I fear we are in a snooze, losing track of the ball, much like Trump disrupting scrutiny with a constant barrage of distracting offensiveness. Meanwhile, the environment is in the toilet, wages are stagnant, Unions decimated, and people are arguing about mind numbing options, from Pot to Twitter. The 1% are running away with the spoils, and a whole lot of heartache, misery, and blatant threats are hovering just out of sight.
We were that close.
I’m 63 with the hobby farm, woodlot, tools, stores guns/ammo, and know how (carpenter, welder, and I fix things). But we’re not going to make it when ‘it’ goes down the toilet. Oh, we’ll get by….most likely because we always have. But it is going to be so ugly. At age 63 working land is brutal, and I’m is shape. When people talk about mass migration to the land I think of Cambodia and Pol Pot. I look for my truck, winch, and chainsaw.
In this time of plenty and so much, the idea of a regular wage earning worker owning a home, being able to rise from his/her station, send their children to post secondary without massive debt, access healthcare, and prepare for retirement, is a pipedream. When the economy tanks, beit from Trade War or a shooting war, the weight of debt and insolvency, whatever, it will remind us of the ’30s. My parents were children of the thirties and later served overseas. They were not good times to live in.
Apparently, we were that close. (so I’ve been told). Hang on. I sense massive disruption. This farce is not likely to continue. How can it?
“When the economy tanks, albeit from Trade War or a shooting war, the weight of debt and insolvency, whatever, it will remind us of the ’30s. My parents were children of the thirties and later served overseas. They were not good times to live in.”
Paulo,
It would be comforting to think that the future events will remind us of the ’30’s…sadly, that will not be the case.
The existential threat facing our country is the immediacy of social unrest. There were a few notable riots and insurrections in the US back during the depression…only a few. People were more self-sufficient, had a different work ethic…they hunkered down, and understood the safety net, which at that time was scant, and even so, avoided by many due to social disapprobation.
Consider now, with almost 200+ million more citizens. Consider the general lack of self sufficiency. Consider the…Internets and the insanity it promotes…consider the sense of victimization that many hold…and consider that the vast majority of the citizens of this well armed country have never felt true hunger.
The issues will be more immediate and dangerous than a gradual collapse of infrastructure might indicate.
I’ve said this before, LA would burn to the ground if only the toilets stopped flushing…any serious issues…food, energy, transfer payment disruptions, will involve widespread anarchy that the military and police will be, just by their small numbers, unable to control.
I wish to hell the upcoming storm would remind us of the ’30’s….
Yeah and that’s why you need more immigrants. That always helps when there aren’t enough jobs and in a future where social capital will be a necessity. Hint: Social Capital is inversely proportional to Diversity. See the work of Robert Putnam, Charles Murray, etc.
No one ever said the Truth was going to be to your liking, did they? No one honest that is.
Brilliant post Paolo! Thanks VERY MUCH for sharing!
Paulo ~ Hey, me also. 63. I tell you this, my mind is clear. Body is breaking down, Winter, the hard time, could come in weeks or months. I have no opinions on that. I’m attending to the details, but ready with the snow shovel. I’ll throw out my plans in the blink of an eye. Whatever the situation becomes, no good panicking. I’m not attached to things or ideas or language.
The bank account I’ve always invested in is the bank of Karma. The one where you get out what you put in, no more, no less. Don’t really care about other ways of understanding Karma, I’m clear on it, have been for a long time, thanks.
Too bad about the empire, other choices could have been made, but since they weren’t, here we are; got some choices to make today, what are they going to be? When the clouds part, Uris Major will guide you brother. I’m clear on that. Not that I didn’t get early season bear tag. For that bear a cloudy sky is good. Good luck is even better.
BTW, I love you all, and wish you all good luck. In fact, I love everybody, as difficult as that can often be, mostly because it’s easier on me. OK then, time to get back under one of my rocks. Ta!
Close all overseas military bases. Offer the returning soldiers decent paid jobs as peaceful, useful organic, small-scale farmers, or helping rebuild mass transportation systems, etc. More than enough work for the next 50 years, if the Earth has the patience to keep the human species around that long–doubtful. ‘Offer’ the same to the 1%. That or feel the wrath of the collapsing biosphere. OK, that won’t work for the 1%, so just laugh at them constantly until their $$$ system collapses, and they’ll be doing the Dylan ‘scrounging for their next meal’ dance, which will come well before the Earth deals with them. Oh well. btw: thank you for all your important thoughts Jim.
Not that it will happen as the result of decision but closed bases would remind all that there are limits and borders to defend.
Johhny you eat your brocolli. People would be saying because people would be starving in Misssouri, not China as I was told. It could make America a big happy family. Maybe not so happy.
But big. That we have.
“Not that it will happen…” and i’d never assume such, but as Lennon sang: “You may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one…” Thanks for the insight KD
broccoli
The Anatomy of Internet Rumors and how Hillary uses them to turn us against each other
The frenzied lies of the established media led to a catastrophic drop in their popularity and people went for information to social networks, forums, but most importantly to the TRG Information Agency (Tales, Rumors and Gossip).
And the customers of political propaganda followed them, trying to achieve their political goals with the help of so-called informational flings. In particular, the first rumor is:
Vladimir Putin, before a meeting with Angela Merkel, went to Austria to attend the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl specifically to defeat Angela Merkel, since the head of the Fourth Reich is such an anti-fascist, and Karin Kneissl is allegedly a fan of Mussolini and the daughter of a personal pilot of King Hussein, who in his youth was a member of the SS.
Moreover, she became Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria from the Austrian Freedom Party, in which at one time (in the 50-60s of the 20th century) former Wehrmacht officers assembled. In addition, this party in Germany, now proud of its denazification, calls the Nazi party (as well as the whole of Austria), and it happens because Austria is Hitler’s homeland, but as a victim of the Anschluss did not have denazification.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-winners-will-lose-and-the-losers-will-win/#comment-365124
At first, my attention was drawn to the semantic somersault, as a result of which the Fourth Reich of Angela Merkel, who had just staged a Nazi coup in Kiev and consistently supported outspoken Nazis in the Baltic, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, and in the quasi-states to which Yugoslavia had disintegrated, that is wherever the soldiers of the Third Reich fought so well, became the main fighter against fascism on the grounds that only Germany has been denazified.
It reminds me of the justification for the necessity of bombing Damascus, which is fighting with ISIS, on the grounds that while Assad is in power, the mythical moderate Islamists will not agree to lay down their arms and return to peaceful peasant labor.
But then I decided to check this rumor on the Internet and found the article in Italian “La Repubblica” dated June 2014 about how the Black International is not Globalists and not ISIS and certainly not a marriage of convenience (and love) of these charming subjects of history, but a meeting in Vienna a few months before Maidan of the leaders of Europe, advocating the need to preserve the national and cultural identity of European countries and because of this sympathizing with Putin.
And when I tracked down the original of this article and went on its trail, it led me to Hillary Clinton, the true master of semantic manipulation, who began her election campaign standing at the foot of the Roosevelt monument with a promise not to allow a new Yalta, while Yalta is Roosevelt’s plan to bury Nazi Germany (and with it any Reich) and prevent the Third World War.
I asked myself why she had to run this rumor right now, since it is tied to a very specific time and place. And the most important question is who is it intended for, who is its addressee?
And I was immediately struck by the conscious substitution of Nazism with Fascism in this rumor, combined with the mention of Mussolini and the Anschluss of Austria.
Well, who knows now that Fascism and Nazism are two different and in many respects opposed to each other concepts or that Pope Pius XII during the Second World rescued Jewish children and was in very good relations with Mussolini, to a considerable extent contributing to his coming to power? And about the fact that Mussolini almost started the war with Hitler because of the Anschluss of Austria know very few, despite the fact that this is written in Wikipedia.
But the Pan African people who are very fond of Bob Marley and who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, Mussolini do not like to put it mildly, because Mussolini fought against Haile Selassie I, whom Bob Marley’s admirers consider to be a God. And a lot of people remember that in 2016 Bernie Sanders was supported by the Vatican and immediately after an obviously falsified defeat in the largest state of New York, he flew to Rome for a meeting with the Pope.
Meanwhile, in America, only Italian Jews know that Mussolini did not extradite Italian Jews to Hitler.
After this, how not to remember the War of the Roses as a religious war, you immediately come to the conclusion that its purpose is to force a quarrel between Austrian Catholics and Protestant Germans, but, the conclusion suggests itself – the addressees of the rumors were supporters of Bernie Sanders, including a Jewish professors with Italian roots, who in 2016 supported Bernie Sanders, but did not vote for Trump.
But not only the Jewish professors with Italian roots, but also Pan Africans – admirers of Bob Marley who also voted for Bernie Sanders and also did not vote for Trump in 2016, but for whom Mussolini is the Image of Hell, since he is Mussolini.
It is also now in US, the media that attack Trump, at the same time attacks the Catholic Church with accusation of trying to hide the pedophilia of its hierarchs, and it becomes immediately clear that in this case Clintonoids are trying to provoke a conflict between:
1. Austrians and Germans
2. Between the supporters of Bernie Sanders
Not sure that the distinctions between Nazism (National Socialism) and Fascism, especially when viewed through a WWII prism, are useful anymore, Finc. At the very least, both terms were poorly defined in the first place, and both terms were used as blanket boogey men to stand in opposition to whatever terms were loosely applied to American “democracy,” the preferred term for what was in actuality an emerging Corporate Capitalist Totalitarian State, which combined the worst attributes of both.
Now, at this exceedingly late date, while we bandy about the possibilities of a resurgent pseudo-socialist state to save what is clearly a failing capitalist state in its final death throes, it’s instructive that we find solace in repeating the same terms that were seminal in getting us into our current mess in the first place.
Be not distracted by trivial religious beliefs and professions of this or that for public purposes, for those are with us always, and are meaningless in and of themselves. Rather, concern yourself with actions alone, for those are the true mark of a man, and the power likely to accrue thereby. For all men are inherently foolish and in the end seek one thing only: power and prestige over each other
Not sure that the distinctions between Nazism (National Socialism) and Fascism, especially when viewed through a WWII prism, are useful anymore
It’s funny you’ve said that, because it seems to me that the struggle between Fascism and National Socialism is probably the best way to describe the current situation in the US.
“Caution in handling ‘generally accepted opinions’ that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“Let’s try to take stock of what the real issues might be.”
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
It’s all misdirection until you acknowledge this.
Is it not strange that you quoted that Scripture md, for when I buried my Mother last month I placed a card under her hands that had written on it the very same verse. Hunters know when they are being hunted, the prey is not always so cognizant.
My condolences. She is a seed who will grow in due season.
How do you interpret the verse about the workmen who all get paid the same, the ones who worked twelve hours and the ones who worked only two? It’s certainly not “fair”, but a boss can do what He likes with his own money. And as He said, I kept my contract with you Dawn Men. Jews and Gentiles? Or something else?
Having run my own engineering company for fifteen years and at one point doing the installations myself, I did in fact hire on temporary help for this work. If I hired on two workers to start the job at a rate that they were happy to accept and I was happy to pay it was a good start. If the install proceeded and fell behind and adding installers to get done in time because necessary, paying them more was my prerogative and sometime required. This additional help was more valuable due to the circumstances and so it brought a higher rate. The critical issue was that the job was done correctly and on time. No one could argue with me that they were not being treated fairly, since they were all paid rates they were happy with at the time of hire. The worker did not become more valuable because they worked on the project for a longer time. This is how I see the parable my friend.
Envy destroys contentment.
Dante and the 4 Levels of Literary Interpretation
Wed, 4 May 2016 | by M-A
In mediæval literary criticism there was an accepted method of interpreting the Bible which involved 4 levels or senses. It is Dante Alighieri’s description of these 4 levels of interpretation from his book Il Convivio (The Banquet) that many modern critics look to for insight into mediæval literary criticism and theological study. In Il Convivo Dante says, “it is necessary to know that writings can be understood and ought to be expounded principally in four senses“. This need not only apply to the Bible or mediæval writings though. You can use this same guide to understand modern works, too.
The Literal
At the first level of interpretation there is the literal, “and this is the sense that does not go beyond the surface of the letter” as Dante explains it. This is simply what a piece literally means. For instance, in the Bible God literally creates the universe in 7 days:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. (Genesis 2:1-2)
Or to take something more contemporary, in the movie Star Wars Luke Skywalker and the ragtag bunch of rebels literally battle against Darth Vader and the Empire.
This may seem like the most obvious level of interpretation, but if you look to poetry, you’ll find that a lot of readers new to poetry have a tough time with it because they don’t try to understand it literally first—they dive right into the deep end, searching for the meaning of life, and are unsurprisingly left struggling to stay afloat. Just as introductory poetry teachers will say to first try to understand the poem literally, Dante indicates that to ‘go deep’ we must begin with the shallow.
The Allegorical
The second level of interpretation is the allegorical. This is where we seek some greater truth that we might learn from the actions of the characters in a story. Dante calls allegory “truth hidden beneath a beautiful fiction“, and this is usually as far as most modern entertainment is willing to venture. In the Bible, God creates the universe in 7 days with only the will of His words:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)
This act serves to illustrate the power and wonder of the Judeo-Christian creator.
In Star Wars, you might consider Luke’s fight against Darth Vader as an allegory for the struggle that many young people go through against the established power. Young people are prone to rebellion and revolution, whether it be against fascist governments or just their parents (spoiler alert: Vader is literally Luke’s father).
The Moral
Down into the third level of interpretation, we explore the ethical implications of a work of fiction. Moral interpretation answers the question, “How can I use a piece of fiction to inform my actions in my own life?” Dante says, “this is the sense that teachers should intently seek to discover throughout the scriptures, for their own profit and that of their pupils“. In the Bible, God creates the universe with only the will of his words and He also creates humanity in His image, and some writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and JRR Tolkien have extrapolated from this concept.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
God the creator, creates man and woman in His image, and in doing so, sets up humanity as “sub-creators” whose words also hold power and can create wonder. Tolkien refers to the “Cauldron of Story” always boiling and which storytellers continually add to and take from, and Coleridge describes imagination as primary and secondary: the primary being universal and Godly, and the secondary being of man, the sub-creator.
In Star Wars, we learn that though our parents (or whoever the established power is) may be misguided or fascistic, even our greatest enemies can be our greatest supporters. Darth Vader is the biggest, baddest MF in the galaxy, but Luke Skywalker knows that no cause is a lost cause, and everyone deserves a chance for redemption.
The Anagogical
The anagogical is where things get difficult. At this level, we begin spiritual interpretation. While the moral is directed inwards to the human, the anagogical is directed outwards or upwards to the heavens or to the greater universe (depending on your spiritual beliefs). Dante refers to this level if interpretation as “beyond the senses“. He says, “this occurs when a scripture is expounded in a spiritual sense which, although it is true also in the literal sense, signifies by means of the things signified a part of the supernal things of eternal glory“.
Now, it’s pretty easy to find this kind of spiritual content in the Bible. That’s what the Bible is for and the reason most people read it. But when you’re looking at piece of pop culture, it’s a little more difficult to explore these kinds of conclusions.
A cynical person would label the whole thing as malarkey, and that would be the end if it. But have you ever felt a part of greater community because of the media you consume? Have you ever let a piece of fiction shape your sense of being? Anagogical interpretations are often beyond the senses and sometimes even beyond our own consciousness, but that doesn’t stop them from shaping the world, whether that be the actions we take to change the future or simply a perspective of the world in our own minds.
If you look at how pop culture seeps into the real world (for example, activist groups like the Harry Potter Alliance or political groups who don the mask of a certain comic-book anarchist) you’ll find that even fiction can shape our reality.
JS: We already have three of the possible meanings. Walter puts forward the literal – putting himself into the story as the Hirer. Messianic draws a moral conclusion. I put forward the allegorical: that the old hires were the Jews and the new, the Gentiles. Each level is more difficult and more subject to error. I might be wrong in my interpretation whereas Walter and Messianic are almost certainly right. Who would dare an an Anagogical interpretation?
“Who would dare an an Anagogical interpretation.”
An anagogical interpretation of what?
Scripture interprets itself, so you must find another * to compare;
Consider the Prodigal’s brother – the duration [ consistency ] of employment, and the employment itself contain no element vital to our salvation [ justification ] which is wholly accomplished by another [ propitiation ].
Place [ inheritance ] is based on relationship, not personal actions. Being the children of God is not based on our seniority; our efforts [ attitudes ] often inhibit productivity [ sanctification ]. We are a piece of work, not our own [ rule maker ]. Rejoice, Love [ agape – the force ] conquers all.
*not private [ alone ] interpretation
@JANOS
“But have you ever felt a part of greater community because of the media you consume? ”
“Who would dare an Anagogical interpretation?”
The answer is in the question. All of us here feel a part of a greater community by being here with JHK, and each other, or we would not be here.
This is not “kumbaya” BS either, it is a demonstrable fact ( that I hereby dispense myself from documenting).
One big dysfunctional family.
I love …………, most of you!
Re the comment not far above, which I have deliberately not hung mine on to, I do hope it isn’t going to be the start of a diversionary climate science denial thread involving the usual suspects, because, frankly, JHK’s post deserves better.
There is no denial of climate change, GA, but there is an obvious ideologization and politicisation of so called “climate science”, which could hardly be considered a science, but rather a propaganda vehicle to achieve certain political and economic gains.
Yes, Finc that is the real problem. Whatever the actual cause and possible remediation may be, the criminal political and corporate scum are attempting to use this issue for personal, financial gain.
This issue is mirrored in the current hot topic here in New Jersey. The criminals at the top are attempting to legalize and tax the sale of Mary Jane for profit. The residents here seem to want decriminalization but are afraid of the sale, promotion and taxation of the stuff in our communities. Those of us that are ok with decriminalization and are resisting the sale and taxation are making great progress in our efforts by asking the simple question, “When have we ever solved ANY problem by giving corrupt politicians more money?” Everyone gets that point immediately.
Oh and GA, yes I love “Romeo & Juliet as well plus just about everything that MK has done, though “Brothers in Arms” remains my favorite. Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull however will always be closest to my heart, however.
R & J is fantastic, isn’t it? And gratifyingly long. I’ll go back and revisit Brothers in Arms.
And my condolences on your loss, Walter.
We have to stop meeting like this, I would not want it to go in the wrong direction, (lol). My favorite music all seems to be at least 14 minutes long or longer. I believe that if it is good, why cut it off at 180 seconds? My favorite Tull tune is Dark Ages and plays for a glorious 17:23, imagine that.
Make that 9:12. The You Tube I was using for reference has additional music on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6uvLLtWh4Q
One of the perks of modern life which I do appreciate is my iPod – or CDs – because of that old replay button!
I find knowing that you won’t always have something makes you appreciate it more, but at the same time not get too dependent on it.
I felt the same when I first got my first washing machine after washing everything by hand – including sheets and towels in the bath, for a short period – ye gads!
Thoughts of washing machines sent me on a trip down memory lane. For the three years that I worked in France I had one of these:
https://img.clasf.co.za/2015/04/10/CALOR-MINI-WASHING-MACHINES-20150410223636.jpg
…which turned up just now on a website for classified ads in South Africa.
You put it in a large sink or bath and filled it up through a hose from the hot tap, and when you switched it on (a bit like a modern cake mixer) it swirled your clothes round in one direction and tied all the sleeves in knots. So it wasn’t a huge come-down when I first got back to the UK and had to wash by hand (no laundrette nearby).
I think the new laundry in Union Grove would have been generally an improvement on my little Calor plastic tub. And very similar in ethos to the old public ‘steamie’ in the Glasgow of my parents’ childhood, where all the women did their washing together. And which I’ve just discovered, inspired James Watt!
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11903393.How_the_steamie_changed_the_world_Did_a_wash-house_inspire_James_Watt_/
“Researchers working on the restoration of Glasgow Green claim the city’s first public laundry was the inspiration for James Watt, whose improved design for the steam engine sparked a world-changing age of cheap power and mass production.”
Who knew?
I still didn’t have a washing machine when my daughter was born, so I remember soaking terry nappies in Nappisan, washing and rinsing them by hand, and spinning them in a little centrifugal spinner (way more efficient than modern washing machines, whose bearings will go if you continually spin as fast as they say you can)
And then seeing them blowing in the wind.
And progress gave us Pampers, which clog up our landfill sites and refuse to die.
But the washing machine, when it came, was very heaven.
And I like this quote from Ha-Joon-Chang’s book ’23 Things They Dont’ Tell You About Capitalism’, for all points and not just Point 3:
“There’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market
Globalization isn’t making the world richer
We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet
Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones
Higher paid managers don’t produce better results”
‘A love-struck Romeo
Sings a street serenade
Laying everybody low
With the love song that he made…’
A truly wonderful song. Which is why I warn anyone who is a fan of Dire Straits and/or Mark Knopfler to avoid the cover version performed by Indigo Girls. Amy Ray’s singing can be enjoyable as the sour half of a sweet-and-sour duo with Emily Saliers, but what she does to that song performing solo doesn’t bear description. Avoid at all costs!
In particular, the fact of so called Green Energy is not capable during the lifetime of its use to recoup the energy that was spent for its production.
We probably still could run financial net-negative shenanigans due to cheapness of paper and electronic storage of information, but it is hard to imagine that we will be able to run net-negative energy schams for long period of time.
Printing up worthless pieces of paper and calling it money will work forever as long as EVERYONE buys into the scheme. It falls on its face and dies when a party of importance, such as a foreign supplier of necessities, decides to change the rules because they have seen through the scam. THAT could never happen, could it, ha, ha, ha.
“There is no denial of climate change, GA, but there is an obvious ideologization and politicisation of so called “climate science”, which could hardly be considered a science, but rather a propaganda vehicle to achieve certain political and economic gains.”
Komraden Finc!
…Well said….
How much science do you need to imagine that if you could see CO2 in the atmosphere building up it would be like watching fog build up. At first the sun is hardly blocked but as this fog thickens the suns rays are absorbed. They turn into heat.
Simple as that. Burn a match and you release CO2 and in three years all the CO2 you released will be evenly distributed and contributing to thickening that fog.
The problem now is that once only 1/4 of the world contributed to that fog. Now more people are which the intellectual idiots of our world confuse with progress since it is in their self interest to do so.
Half the world easy now with double the population in each making the thickening of the CO2 fog and the consequent warming go up four times as fast. We are in the linear range where CO2 release and warming are still locked in a fixed ratio.
We don’t need science to tell us global warming is real. Science has already done that job but people don’t use the science we already have. They don’t want to.
If they did they would apply feedback theory to the sequestered methane in the far north. The answer to be found there is that the actual final warming caused by a certain amount of CO2 release becomes increased in a finite but noisily unpredictable way. That makes serious attempts to curb the release more important as we may be cooking ourselves more than we know.
The last thing we should do is bend over, kiss our asses goodbye and anticipate the worst as if we are doomed to become extinct. The problem instead should be solved. Ignore the snake oil!
Well, the problem with your theory is that the CO2 absorption bands were well saturated long before the industrial revolution. Adding more these days is like adding a fifteenth coat of black paint to a window that you want to be dark. It has almost no effect except in the wings of the absorption band. According to the UN IPCC, the heating effect of CO2 alone is a logarithmic function of concentration and you get about 1.2 degrees C for every time you double the CO2 concentration. Some feedbacks may add to that, but not much. So far we have about half a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels and have raised the mean surface temperature of earth by about 1 C . Even some of that is most likely due to other natural causes since we were climbing out of the coldest period in recent millennia since about 1700. The UN IPCC attributes only half the warming of the last century to CO2. I don’t see much of a reason for alarm yet.
“If they did they would apply feedback theory to the sequestered methane in the far north. The answer to be found there is that the actual final warming caused by a certain amount of CO2 release becomes increased in a finite but noisily unpredictable way. That makes serious attempts to curb the release more important as we may be cooking ourselves more than we know.”
Dog,
If CO2 were the only variable, the answer would be obvious…there are, however, so many variables, known and yet to be identified, that CO2 might…MIGHT be contributory…but not necessarily causal.
I’ve seen much bad science in my 72 years….
“I don’t see much of a reason for alarm yet.” — oilie
How much of a reason for alarm will you see when the Siberian permafrost warms up and seriously starts to spew methane into the atmosphere? It’s 26 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. That’s in addition to the extra CO2 – “an estimated 1,500 billion tons, or nearly twice the carbon currently in the atmosphere”.
Anyone who sees no reason for alarm yet should go and buy up as much property as they can on the Florida coast. It’ll be going for a song before too long.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/siberia-batagiaka-crater-climate-change/
http://discovermagazine.com/2018/jun/something-stirs
Meanwhile in the UK:
“Yields of key crops have fallen significantly in this year’s harvest as a result of the hot summer and massive swings in weather, leaving farmers counting the cost and consumers facing higher prices for food.
“After record heatwaves and drought, when rain finally arrived it caused problems in some areas, particularly the north and west, as farmers have struggled to bring in wet crops.
“Early indications from the harvest are that yields of wheat are likely to be down by about a quarter, and those of staples such as potatoes, onions and carrots have plunged by as much as 20%. While the impact of lower yields will be cushioned by higher farmgate prices for produce, many farmers are turning to their banks for increased loans to tide them over as the costs of fuel, fertiliser and feed have all risen sharply.
“Livestock farmers have been hit as feed prices have increased, while the long hot and dry spell forced many to dig into their feed reserves, and straw was in short supply in some areas. Milk yields were depressed by the hot weather, as was the fertility of pigs.”
But yeah, apart from that, it’s all good. I don’t see much of a reason for alarm yet.
Forgot the reference.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/03/falling-yields-of-key-uk-crops-could-raise-food-prices-and-leave-farmers-struggling
And for those who ‘see no reason for alarm’ because they get their information their own back yard, there’s a reason why it’s called ‘global warming’ and not ‘warming in my garden’.
*from* their own back yard…
“CO2 might…MIGHT be contributory…but not necessarily causal.”
EF
The physical science regarding the increase in atmospheric warming due to the addition of CO2 was demonstrated by Svante Arrhenius before the end of the 19th century. This is not new science and there is no ‘MIGHT’ about it.
Solutions to climate change are not primarily a scientific problem – they are a psychological problem, as you amply demonstrate.
Complaining without offering a solution is whining. What’s your solution?
RIB, the solution is widely understood:
(a) Stop burning fossil fuels immediately, so that civilization doesn’t collapse due to sea-level rise, crop failures, mass migrations as a result of the first two, etc.
(b) Replace fossil fuels with any and every non-carbon-emitting energy source that comes to hand, so that civilization doesn’t collapse from failure of energy inputs.
Since (c) at least some sea-level rise and other bad effects are already inevitable:
(d) Aid should be provided to mitigate the bad effects on the mostly poor, mostly low-lying countries that are at greatest risk from climate change.
(d) That aid should come from the wealthier countries, since:
(e) They’re the ones with the means;
(f) They historically did most of the emitting that is now imperiling the poorer countries far more than the wealthy ones themselves; and
(g) If they don’t do so, the refugee crisis they incur will be all the greater than the one that’s already liable to happen.
This course of action has been clear for decades now, and would have been undertaken already if not for resistance by well-funded propaganda campaigns funded by fossil-fuel interests looking to forestall the end of their power.
I live my own solution by curtailing my own lifestyle.
What do you do?
CO2 is not paint Ollie. Which band of absorption were you refferring to? Since you don’t know there are many your baloney is worthless.
Collected a lot ‘heat’ on my coment. An anology to common sense. How many times a heat photon can be absorbed and released will determine temp. The probability of absorption before an infrared photone escapes to space directly proportional to concentration. A concentration that just builds and builds with every inane troll comment.
“The physical science regarding the increase in atmospheric warming due to the addition of CO2 was demonstrated by Svante Arrhenius before the end of the 19th century”
Alba,
Ahhh, yes, the late 1800’s…science in its flowering at that time still thought that disease was caused by “vile vapors”.
Serious attempts at curbing CO2 release? Does that mean giving China a couple of decades to comply? There has been nothing serious regarding curbing CO2…and there won’t be…and considering scale and feedback loops, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if it did.
But we gotta do SOMETHING! I recommend sacrificing a virgin, if one can be found….
Shame on you, elysianfield, for your false parallel. The fact that 19th century medicine was terrible by modern standards sheds no light at all on the state of other sciences around that time. Are you also prepared to dismiss the science that created the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, and the light bulb? Are they all imaginary because they were invented at a time when the germ theory of disease wasn’t widely accepted yet?
Never mind the 19th century. Isaac Newton’s 17th-century theories about the movements of the planets are used to this day, unaltered, to guide spacecraft with unerring precision (Einstein’s refinements being unneeded in many applications). Newton’s work in optics also made eyeglasses, telescopes and microscopes possible, thereby making the germ theory of disease possible. Scientists carried on learning enormous amounts thereafter even while medicine still struggled. Math, geometry and astronomy all go back to ancient Greece or even earlier. Should we dump them as well, because of the theory of the four humours?
It annoys me to no end that I have to harass you about nonsense like this. But you make it necessary by making, or insinuating, stupid things like: ‘vile vapours, therefore we shouldn’t do anything about global warming and anyway it’s impossible to do anything’. By all evidence you’re intelligent enough to know better than to exhibit such intellectual laziness. You simply lack the necessary integrity, or sense of responsibility.
Elrond,
I apologize for the burden that my ignorance has caused you.
False parallel? What was the state of the Empirical Method in those times.?
The fact that I lack integrity, and a sense of responsibility…my only excuse is that I attended a state College, and that the blame lies with my parents, who were improvident enough to have delivered me into circumstances “not to the manor borne”….
Again, my apologies….
EF
“Ahhh, yes, the late 1800’s…science in its flowering at that time still thought that disease was caused by “vile vapors”.”
The science in question was established in the late 1800s. The remaining time since then has simply confirmed it. Your point is a deflection.
More than virgins will be sacrificed in the refusal of the ‘I’m all right, Jacks’ to change the status quo.
And no-one’s stopping you from buying less crap from China. Why don’t you ever mention India in this context? They’ve both got concessions in terms of time lines because the historical emissions that have caused the bulk of the problem are ours.
Alba
That CO2 can cause warming I do not question…it is a given, and there was nothing in my response that could be called “deflection”. I have no need to deflect your Anthropomorphic premise…I do not accept it on its face. I said CO2 might be contributory, but not causal…and if you can develop the rationale that it is, while accepting that variables are many and unquantifiable, then I might have to deflect, or genuflect….
The postings on this subject of weeks past I did mention India, and Malaysia. Stop buying less crap from China? I will not be given to cheap, feel-good attempts at mitigating an issue such as this. I have seen you post better….
I didn’t mean you personally, EF. I meant your country (and anyone else’s who complains about China’s emissions).
I didn’t choose for everything to be ‘Made in China’. I can even recall, in the early days, bewailing the fact that so many things said ‘Made in China’ and going out to buy a torch, determined to buy one made in the UK and not finding one in any of the shops. I came home torchless and frustrated.
Now, for some reason, it’s actually easier to find a British-made torch, because I can look on eBay and see where they’re made. The cheap ones still seem to be made in China.
My rankings when I make purchases are (1) British, (2) European and (3) whatever is available if (1) and (2) aren’t possible.
Perhaps you even agree with me that we all buy too much stuff. If we were satisfied with less stuff, we could afford to pay a bit more for stuff made in our own countries. Consumers are to blame for globalism as well as producers and financiers.
Small scale farming is where we’re headed, and can be done with much less work than you would expect. I’ve been watching and reading books and videos on no dig farming, have implemented them initially at home, and here are some suggestions if you are interested:
1. Charles Dowdings videos on No Dig gardening all up on you tube. A real treasure trove. From a single 5×16 foot bed, he gets 2 full crops a year totaling 260lbs of food. Just compost and water, no digging or tilling, and very easy production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWxtKTNlgbM
2. “Miraculous Abundance” by Herve-Gruyer, a small market garden in Normandy with large amounts of production off a small scale of land. Again, basically just using compost and permaculture techniques. Beautifully written.
3. Jean Martin Fortier’s “The Market Gardener”, explaining how it is very possible to earn $100,000 on a 2 acre farm using bio-intensive methods and raised beds. On 8 acres, he only puts in 45 hours a week. Many videos on his farm are up on you tube.
4. Eliot Coleman. a meticulous genius. See “the winter harvest handbook” on how to grow veggies all through winter inside a cold, non-heated hoophouse, in Maine.
I agree that big agri-business is going down. Small, bio-intensive farms like those above can be done without enormous, back-breaking effort. I suggest studying permaculture, and these books-videos above as a springboard. Every family can do this – it’s not hard.
Good starts Wet Dog. Living in Maine once was more challenging. With a warming ecosystem, less so. Does it bode well for the planet? Who knows? Yes, Eliot Coleman has come up with many potential ingenious solutions. He and i have discussed it while sitting against a hot brick wall in Bangor, Maine. i suspect even Eliot may have difficulties growing successfully if the system collapses and all the negative feedback loops coalesce. Genius only affords so much wiggle room in those cases. But it’s a good start, and spirits like Coleman offer initial workable choices. And, if every family can do these things, so could returning soldiers.Thanks for the info.
” And, if every family can do these things, so could returning soldiers”
Witt,
Why describe the absolutely impossible as a possible solution? Better that we harness Unicorns to pull our wooden plows….
E-field: “Why describe the absolutely impossible as a possible solution?” Because we’re living in impossible moments? Plus, I mentioned ‘other things’ soldiers could offer, not ALL soldiers. Thanks for responding. Best, Witt
Witt,
Thank you for the qualification. I would have to say, however, that I would embrace one of the many religions in extant than rely on those in our culture “doing the right thing”…save at the point of a bayonet.
Much better odds.
I lived in Maine a long time ago. Really enjoyed that life. And I’ve learned a lot from Eliot and the people who have studied his work.
Reading books and videos.
Will not food on the table put. There is only one thing that will do that and it is called work.
But they can tell you how not to waste your energy when you do start working. How you can do in 40 hours what would take others 80, and grow more – without fossil fuels, without tractors.
W-Dog: Indeed. Unless you’ve done it, which sounds as if you have (like myself), it is difficult for other intelligent beings to understand this. Plus, without toxic shit and genetically-engineered death sentences it’s a multiple win. There was a reason the Japanese decided a decade or so ago not to allow GMOs: they said they’d wait a few generations to see what happens to Americans.’ Look around…
The book, “Big Shifts Ahead” by John Burns and Chris Porter is a fresh and more logical look at demographics. These authors are painting a different picture of our future.
They believe suburbia will be around for a lot longer than some think. Per the book, there will be growth in the urban and “surban” (a term coined by them) areas and rural growth will drop significantly. And humanity will continue to solve and cope with energy problems for a long time to come.
But humanity will never “solve” energy problems amb, unless they learn to use less either by choice or by force. Was it not the Woo-woo bird that flies in ever decreasing spirals until it flies up it’s own rectum? Sustainability of any system requires discipline in one form or another, don’t you agree? Everything in this plane of existence is cyclical and those who adapt to the cycles survive, those that ignore or fight the cycles are do not.
Has to be flying car BS. Suburbia is an oil addict about to go cold turkey.
Right Walter B. Yet, I believe energy technology has a lot of potential, as I believe that humanity possesses much in the way of innovation, creativity, adaptation, persistence, et al.
My opinion is that we are in a very crude stage of energy technology (although we’ve done wonders with it, as well as caused damage too) with fossil fuels and electricity. I don’t believe that solar or wind turbines will be viable solutions (although they will have their place in our energy palette).
Nuclear, hydrogen, fuel cells, and mediums we haven’t even conceived of yet, will be where we have to go to mitigate or avoid the consequences of our creative and innovative dormancy. Yet, as always, survival threats are the mother of invention.
Could you imagine–instead of unusual solutions and animalistic actions such as worthless war and destruction, welfare, waste, corruption and misallocation of funds–governments cooperated together and put money and attention towards R&D in energy technology? Do you know where we’d be today if this had occurred 50 years ago? Wow!
Governments and government cooperation are the only points that could accomplish this (because they have so much wealth from taxation).
We must continue to evolve. Onwards and upwards!
Happy Labor Day everyone. (One of our few valid and meaningful holidays… a validation and respect for labor, production, creation and all of our past and current citizens who are responsible for it.)
Do you know what the next “great” and “limitless” energy form will be? “Magic” blue crystals. Mark my words.
Oh for goodness sakes. Take the American military and use it to take by force the oil fields of Venezuela.
Americans are clueless on what it takes to get food and fiber to our obese population. It is enormously complex. Organic is a myth. Were it not for pesticides and herbicides and fungicides we would be in a state of constant hunger. BTW, a plant requires the uptake of certain elements and it does not know if those elements come from real shit or from manufactured fertilizer. I prefer the synthetic stuff over the shit and it’s E. coli and other gut wrecking pathogens.
Run to the mountains you say. Do that please. I am headed to swamps which offer far more food options. Oh, if you get an infection then kiss your ass goodbye. If your back goes out, kiss your ass goodbye. If,if,if,….
There always will be a survival of the fittest in every situation. The young and the old will die quickly. Then it gets interesting. When the cell towers fail, the you will really see some interesting days though not for long. Unfortunately we will not be able to see any of it because our world will shrink down to a size measured in yards rather than thousands of miles. You will not know what is happening two blocks away.
i don’t argue or debate such drivel. That said, having grown organically for 30 years, i can assure the readers organic isn’t a myth and doable without killing the microorganisms and the rest of Life with toxic pesticides. Listen to the organic farmers, like Eliot Coleman, who have proven it is doable without poisoning and killing this beautiful planet.
Basic agriculture chemistry is involved. And, organic cannot feed the planet. You have gardened for 30 years. Whoopee. It is the scale of production which is the issue and backyard gardens will not get it done. Not today.
Organic is very capable of feeding the planet. The Parisian market gardeners of the early 1800’s kept Paris stocked with vegetables through the entire winter, while exporting surplus to Britain. And their main ingredient was horse compost.
If you look through the books and videos I posted a little above here, those explain quite clearly the much higher production you get with organic methods than conventional. Much higher.
Early 1800s? Seriously? And what is the population difference? I have nothing against organic albeit I doubt real organic is that prevalent. But organic is no answer to feeding billions of people anymore than green energy can meet our energy needs (wants). But nature will take its course and when populations have been reduced drastically then perhaps smaller farming might save a few. I doubt it. You not only have to effectively grow food you also have to preserve it. Good luck with that on a large scale with small farm mentalities.
Overpopulation is at the root of all our problems. Unless that is solved by us, nature will do so on our behalf, not bothering to consult with us first.
RB,
Well said. Excellent post, devoid of false enthusiasm. Poor Witt, in the post above, does not consider that his neighbors will make short work of him and his organic garden.
Insects and plant diseases will kill most gardens. The Gardner might go before them however. How many small gardeners grow wheat or other grains? Few or more likely none. Only millions of acres can feed millions of people. Small farmers have gone the way of dinosaurs for a reason.
Hello there EF: Actually i have considered it, have had neighbors tell me that when it all collapses they’ll know where to come (inferring with their weapons while claiming they’re ‘Christians’)…told ’em to come and maybe share (haha–Lennon wasn’t perfect), and maybe learn how to do it for their family and the planet. i have never denied the population aspect, i suspect nature will no doubt handle that, or stupid humans as they’ve so well capably proven. Will they listen? Probably not. However, those who only take the classic indoctrinated route (the binary path of their forced education of least resistance) will always find this problematical. Try it sometime EF, let me know how it works for you before trashing others. Just a thought. btw: i am poor…very poor…at least compared $$$-wise to anyone else from many homeless to Bezos. But, apparently, $$$ is what you may not have been referring to? For i am very rich in other ways? YOU? Best and peace bro’…Witt
Witt,
Please do not be offended…I meant no offense. I do garden, have a large orchard and have table grape vines. I have food for one year plus, plenty of defensive capability, along with living 14 miles from a post office. I have before stated that I probably will not last two months if things go upside down. Civil unrest and crime will be the reaper.
Is it possible that we can be disabused of our false premises without “trashing”? I would like to think I know the difference.
Not offended EF. If we ever met i2i i’m confident we could find much common ground. Unfortunately, words are often the culprit, they being mere middlemen (women, its, zits?) posing as arbiters of truth instead of direct perception. But then, walla, i just used words. My personal ‘reality’ is: i am not a good fit for this narcissistic, sociopathic society. You? i SINCERELY wish you well for our moments that remain.
Get Attack dogs?
Destroy the roads?
One guy posting here was planting thorn trees.
What county are you in? What state?
How far from a city of 100k or more?
There always will be a survival of the fittest in every situation.
Not true, sometimes everybody dies. In certain geographies that will happen as it has in the past.
Clever. And missing his point. But you trick yourself in the process. As Bertrand Russell said, many funny men think they are wise because they can trick people (including themselves).
The systems of supply and distribution, indeed all systems, have been developed and evolved over decades and generations. The problems that will come with the interruptions imposed by everything from climate change, to energy shortage, to everything else, will not be solved quickly. Just as it took a long time to put these systems into place initially, adapting to new conditions will take a lot of time, which will not be on our side. I hate to be a Cassandra, but I do not view that period of adjustment with optimism. Depending on where you live, and what local conditions prevail, living will range from uncomfortable, to living hell. Choosing where to live will, largely involve a roll of the dice. I’m reminded of the story of the guy who foresaw WWII coming. He wanted nothing to do with it, and sought to avoid it at all costs. He bought a copra plantation on an out of the way island called Guadalcanal. He was so right, and yet so wrong at the same time. So it goes.
“Choosing where to live will, largely involve a roll of the dice.”
Nobody’s going to avoid the Reaper. Your story reminds me of the epigraph by Maugham to John O’Hara’s novel, “Appointment in Samarrah.”
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Yes, when I was young someone told me a variant of that sad tale.
“Gardening” is by and large a joke. Yard by yard, suburbia is a disaster. The folks puttering around are achieving nothing but negative returns on time, energy, and capital.
This is a hobby. I understand that. But there is a mindlessness to it that is pathetic. The urge is brought on by boredom, to have something to do, and maybe deeper, to try to achieve some connection with nature that they labor the rest of their lives to keep at bay.
The most prolific gardeners I know are completely delusional. Trucking in wood chips, manures, treated 2x4s for raised beds, and for all this input, less than nothing to show after a season. Fertilizers wash away, soils dry out and blow away, various critters take the rest. Much of the produce isn’t even consumed. Season after season fertility declines, but why would they notice? The physical problems, poor soil structure, low organic matter, low overall life, wood- lots of it, buried trash, rocks and sand. An anoxic layer below the hardware cloth, the useless ornamentals, baking in some heat island surrounded by concrete and asphalt.
This is just one feature of the suburban landscape. The other is literal “landscaping”, the industry du jour for illegal immigrants where I live. In the public spaces, where ill-named “planners” pencilled in a useless landscape, or ‘parks’ aka homeless camping and dog-shitting zones, forever in need of fossil fuels and water to keep from shrivelling or overgrowth…
The reasons gardening doesn’t pencil out is just too many to list, but starting with the idiocy of the gardeners is enough.
You are an infernal empty wrapper. Garbage blown around on the wind.
A hobby yes, you parodied it well but even I with pathetic efforts I can produce enough to feed a family for a few days. All I have to do is get 100 times better at it. Your rant betrays knowledge as if you have gardened yourself. Had I not actually gone outside and turned earth a few years ago I’d be able to be taken in by those who say how easy it is. Having done so I know I’d really not have a right to comment about gardening had I never done so.
That proves the ‘hobby’ has quite a bit of real value. Real dirt, real hands, real results and inattention leading to real failures. No virtual lives to use up, your seeds only have one each and people need calories every day. There is nothing mindless about doing things in the real world only an observer, one outside, or one who has another purpose would say so.
I’ll take the empty wrapper part back if you admit the hobbyists are not yet seeing it as a production operation and are instead obsessing over single prize winning results as hobbyists will do. My point being that they are not completely delusional and gardening skills will be very important to have and know about in the future.
I do not agree with you, gardeners already know how hard it is to feed the world because they have already tried to grow food. You put out a ridiculous premise but did well with it.
K-Dog: I second your observations. Could add more from my ‘worthless’ 30 years of organic gardening, farming and plant breeding, but i’ll leave yours as my final input. i have a planet that asks, perhaps begs for, my attention to reciprocate authentically, that i, a member of a very odd and murderous species, have previously done a lot of harm to, a planet that gave me the breath of Life. Seems i owe her/he/she/zit something more than tiresome words.Thanks KD.
Some of my pathetic efforts <a href="http://chasingthesquirrel.com/pics/veggies.png" picked today.
English cucumber and acorn squash and two kinds of small tomatoes. Sweet tomatoes. The acorn squash has not changed in two months and this late I don’t see it doubling its size in two more weeks. I wanted to put it in the picture otherwise I’d have let it go longer. Had I watered better it might have got bigger.
I really don’t like tomatoes but fresh off the vine they have a delightful taste. They take a day to age to where I don’t like them. Thats why I grow bite sized ones. My potato box is doing very well. Yukon Golds and one plant from a German Butterball that was actually a start from last years crop. I’m hoping for fifty pounds from five starts. I’ll be taking a pic of what I get but right now the potato plants are green and blossoming.
That link had a typo.
http://chasingthesquirrel.com/pics/veggies.png
This works.
Read Hesiod and Vergil. Land needs to be left fallow one year in three or four. Or sewn with something that adds to the soil.
The Victory Gardens were a great help to the English war effort and the otherwise malnourished population.
A small garden is deliberately amended and it has taken a couple of years to build up organic matter in my soil to a good mix. A small plot garden is different than a big field where the natural cycle must be strictly obeyed.
Gardening on the High Plains is much more challenging than east of the 100th meridian. Order of magnitude tougher I can state from personal experience. The lack of rainfall is just the first of the challenges. Add to that extremes of temperature, hail, high winds, high alkaline clay soils & you can see why the Plains Indians could never make a go of it on the reservations.
The Japanese came here after WWII & succeeded in the South Platte river valley growing vegetables, etc. for the Denver market.
Countless Easterners were suckered with the lure of good land cheap – not knowing how quickly the land dries out to the West of the Mississippi. They thought they were getting another Iowa or Illinois.
John McCain’s “ranch” was a whole twenty acres. Yet he supported himself and his family on it.
The 100th meridian is easy to remember but it’s actually somewhere to the east of that line where the aridity actually begins moving westward. John Wesley Powell advised against widespread settlement to the west of that line but his advice was ignored (suppressed?) because certain land speculators allied with the railroads stood to make a killing from it.
The Mormons have the right idea. Stockpile necessities for the hard times. But Y2K was a false alarm after all. So why bother?
Some thoughts before the impending outbreak of the world-wide civil war
If we assume that the War of Roses was a religious war and draw on this thread, then such abyss is opened and so many facts start pouring that you just want to spread your hands and ask only one question: “Why did not I see this before?”
For example, it becomes immediately clear that Sicilian Vespers was a joint operation of the Byzantine and English intelligence services, which prevented the invasion by Charles I of Anjou into Byzantium and Gascony, which he needed to invade the kingdom of Aragon, but it was a part of the Plantagenet Empire.
At the same time, the Sicilian Vespers was the continuation of the Albigensian and Fourth Crusades, and this unity not only immediately throws out attempts to present these events outside the context of one another, establishes their connection with the Hundred Years War and, accordingly, the War of the Roses in England.
It is the Sicilian Vespers that is another bridge connecting the present with the Middle Ages, since it was the invasion of Carl Valois in Calabria during the war of the Sicilian Vespers that led to the massacre by his brother of the Templar Order, the appearance of Barlaam of Calabria in Constantinople, and for 300 years made the Valois dynasty the head of the Black Project.
And it is very symbolic that the Valois dynasty on the throne of France began with the wife of Charles Valois Marguerite of Anjou, and her son became the first king of France from this dynasty, and it was for him that a law was passed forbidding women to occupy the French throne, which actually provoked a Hundred year war.
For the second time this dynasty was enthroned by Jeanne d’Arc and the 300 years that Valois ruled France and the Black Project, such wonderful women as Margarita of Anjou, who started the War of the Roses, and Ekaterina Medici, who started the Bartholomew’s night massacre, were members of this family. Well, and completes this gallery of women’s portraits, in which Hillary Clinton looks extremely appropriate, naturally Maria Stewart, who buried her husband and the Tudor dynasty and caused a new round of religious wars in England.
Meanwhile, in the textbooks of history, the War of the Roses is represented as a clash of two feudal clans who started a senseless massacre in England, which agrees perfectly with the common desire of 20th century historical science to deny the religious motivation of historical figures and hence Christianity as an independent historical force.
Naturally, the idea immediately comes to mind that the War of the Roses in Russia in 200 years will also be presented as a senseless slaughter, and it remains only to determine who in Russia will turn out to be the red Lancaster, who is White York, and who is Black Valois.
However, the last question is unnecessary – after Putin’s speech in defense of Medvedev’s pension reform, it became clear that the role of Margarita of Anjou, which provoked the War of Roses in 15th-century England, was played by Dmitry Medvedev in Russia in 2018.
And indeed, modern history suggests that students extract from the War of the Roses in England the intricacies of dates, clans, titles and dynastic marriages, but if there is an organizing idea, then it allows you to see the most important thing in this intricacies and then suddenly notice where Margarita of Anjou left after the end of the War of the Roses and it immediately becomes clear that she is no Anjou, that she is Margarita Valois.
And when it turns out that the phrase “Empire of Plantagenets” to Russian translates as “The Empire of Anjou,” it becomes clear that Margaritization of Medvedev is the application of the accumulated technology of processing consciousness, which probably already repeatedly brought success to those who apply it.
And since there is a proven technology, there are talents that apply it especially effectively, in contrast to those who applied it to Dmitry Medvedev.
Still the best artistic statement on the post-WWII zeitgeist looming over us all ever created, this post-Pink Floyd (sans Roger Waters) video says it all about the utter social destruction and general sate of ennui that has prevailed since the abdication of communism and the ascendance of unfettered corporate capitalism in the wake of the great 20th century “Cold War.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMlFXouPk8
All symptoms.
Of too many damn people.
Welcome back. I was afraid you had taken your own advice or something.
Pharmaceutical companies want everyone on a script to treat symptoms.
They know most people won’t change their diet. Lifestyle.
Too lazy. Too encumbered. Cowards cannot handle truth. They like being able to live with the lie. And it pays well to help them with that.
The serial posters here like complaining about symptoms.
They think honest politics, good corporate governance, a move away from suburban living will solve the Problem.
That has one answer: less people.
“, a move away from suburban living will solve the Problem.”
Avatar,
No problems will be solved…this is true. However, the statement “I can’t see it from my house” has some value.
Bruce Schneier has a new book out; “Click Here to Kill Everybody.” But it probably won’t allow you to exercise any deep seated, population reducing desires.
Keeping that possible disappointment in mind, it still sounds like an interesting book:
https://www.ft.com/content/36f4c6fc-a6fd-11e8-926a-7342fe5e173f
Bad link? Google the book.
No need to kill anybody.
Just stop replacing everyone
And then some
T;ke it e;sy for now, my thoughts ;re not finished, spilled some coffee into the keybo;rd, h;ve to go ;nd buy ; new one..
Oh Fincster, our precious deluded/delusion-building pedant, you are more than finished, you’ve become a representation of accumulated waste.
Spew on, for distraction and useless navel-gazing does have a purpose, but let’s not pretend that has anything whatsoever to do with illumination.
I enjoy the incorporation of the season in JHK’s almanac of events. Looking forward to JHK’s fall posts.
Unfortunately, we continue to endure your hyperbolic denials of same. Sent from the same old republic.
” Me and you and a dog named Boo ” .
Where is Bluto when you need him ?
“Where is Bluto when you need him ?”
Mow,
…travelin’ and livin’ off the land, I recon.
Reckon….
Instructive slip there.
More and more, people separate themselves from the government that rules them, and this is not just in the US. We have mindless chaos in the streets, shootings, stabbings, acid attacks from the more desperate or deranged. Others are turning that violence inward destroying their bodies putting an end to a life not worth prolonging, or escaping it with drugs either scheduled or prescribed.
Then you have the virtue signalers, equally separated from government, who in the name of virtue will support the very mayhem, the viciousness, the corruption they are said to abhor to bring about their desired ends.
Government doesn’t have to prove allegations anymore, it merely passes sentence causing bombs to fly and armies taking to the field. With the recent shootout, (over losing a video game? Mentally ill, isn’t that the catchall phrase) with hardly a blip on the national consciousness, it’s safe to say we have crossed the rubicon. Ultimately, the people do rule, not in the voting booth, but on the street.
I think you are right there about government there–but perhaps with one group moving away from gov’t, and another group seeming to go full bore towards gov’t dependence. That’s how I see it. It seems like there are many, many people who want gov’t to provide almost everything for them– health care, food, housing, etc.
These people are gonna be the most vulnerable & turn to violence easier when gov’t is no longer there to act as surrogate parent.
I don’t see many people at all willingly becoming farmers, without some real & meaningful structures changes in our society. It would have to be something like late stage Long Emergency type stuff– a breakdown of the supply lines, many failed government measures, a lot of domestic instability.
I recall working for a couple years at one point for Schwann Home Service running routes & selling food. It wasn’t uncommon to go into a complete ramshackle house– paint peeling, doors hanging off hinges, etc. you get the point– and encounter a woman and her kids watching the largest TV I’ve ever seen. It must have been 5 or 6 feet across, and 4 or 5 feet high. It was massive. The TV must have cost 5 or 6 thousand dollars. So, as I admire this monstrosity, she whipped out her EBT card and said “I’ll take the 29.99 deep fried breaded shrimp, and a box of ice cream bars” (or something similar to that). So, I still can envision her sitting there with her kids watching her giant TV set & gorging on shrimp and ice cream.
A great example of “we wuz kangs” mindset. Are people like her ever gonna become “small farmers”?? I really don’t think so.
The great winnowing is not far off now. Survival of the fittest/most unfortunate indeed!
Creatures, like the ones you describe, Pete, are indeed not destined to ever do any farming but perhaps to become either cannibals or Solyent.
(By the way, the number of folks, today, both Lumpen AND wealthy, who watch a whole lot of TeeVee is staggering. Wall-sized 72 inch “class” screens are the new normal.)
I’ll stick with my 32″ – I even had doubts about that as its predecessor was smaller (a CRT which lasted over 25 years). A TV should never be the visually dominating feature of a room, in my view. That’s what a fireplace is for.
I have a good friend (middle class in the UK sense) wealthy enough to have one home in NI and two in Spain, whose 14″ or 16″ TV is ‘middle-class-tastefully’ encased in a dedicated piece of furniture so that the doors can be closed on it when it’s not being watched. You might call it a virtue-signalling TV cabinet! The bookshelves are more expansive, as they should be…
Let me guess, she was a woman of color.
“we wuz kangs” –now you read like a comment from BHH or Janos.
Get over to SBPDL, a place so threatening, it was almost banned.
Good point, Pete. That farming business is a lot of manure. Out here we’re ready to eat snake while we bake. Lizards for lunch and snake for supper. Right, work those hoes for a few potatoes, that’ll save ya.
“We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden.”
Can you dig it?
Talk to a few Russians on the street.
It is even worse than I thought. People are shocked – they have not taken away their pensions, they have taken Putin away.
In 1905, so they took away the faith in Tsar, and after thirteen years they began to shoot those who did it, without trial and investigation, and they shouted: “And why are you doing this to us?!”
Dr. Mark Skidmore, Professor of Economics, and his fellow Michigan State University scholars discovered $21 trillion in unauthorized transfers from the US Treasury to the DOD and HUD between 1998 and 2015. Because this money was deemed an “undocumented adjustment”, the recepient of this dark money after it passed through these departments is unknown. The MSU research was conducted using offical government on-line accounting records, which were subsequently removed from the internet after publication of their report.
By law, all government expenditures must be authorized by Congress; therefore, our federal government is lawless!
Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant HUD Secretary, under George H.W. Bush, estimated that the total amount of dark money, (undocumented adjustements), when all agencies are added in, could be upwards of $50 trillion.
Reference the solarireport.com
One could legitimately assume that the organization or cabal, who possesses and controls this dark money, actually runs it all. This includes the laphabet soup of intelligence agencies, all three branches of the federal government (including Trump, Obama and those before them),the Deep State, the military, the Fed and the banks. They are unknown, unaccountable and above the law.
Who are their Masters?
Happy Motoring this fine Labor Day!
C A Fitts has said similar and she worked high up in the government.
There will be no controlled transition to a new state of equilibrium.
As soon as a shortage of oil makes it clear that economic growth is over it will also be clear that the general debt cannot be repaid.
At that point the gates of hell open and the four horsemen of the apocalypse will be on the loose.
A massive war is guaranteed. There is no telling what if anything will be left. Pray that this point does not arrive too soon.
“whatever remains of labor in this sclerotic republic” –JHK
Labor is doing fine. There is an uptick in union formation and several strikes have resulted in improved working conditions, better funding, and infrastructure to benefit the public.
Missouri, riding a nationwide wave of victories for working people, this year became the first state in history to overturn a so-called right-to-work law by popular vote.
Despite the corporate right wing’s best efforts, Missourians saw through the tired campaign of fear and misdirection. A clever name for a ploy to lower wages, endanger workers and undermine unions, “right to work” has always been a sham.
Working people are heading in a different direction. It’s an uprising unlike any I’ve seen in all my years in the labor movement. From crowds of striking teachers speaking out for fair treatment to an entire generation of young workers rejecting a broken status quo, Americans are demanding more than the crumbs we’ve been handed by corporate and political elites.
So, JHK, you are out-of-touch with the American zeitgeist using a phrase like “whatever remains of labor” when labor is alive and well and fighting the good fight.
You like weekends? Thank your local labor union.
“whatever remains of labor in this sclerotic republic” –JHK
Labor is doing fine. More than 260,000 workers joined unions in 2017—75% of them under 35. That momentum has carried into 2018. In a single week this April, 15,000 workers joined unions, from Harvard graduate assistants and Stanford nurses to JetBlue flight attendants and New Republic reporters. With labor unions’ popularity at its highest point in nearly 15 years, MIT found that nearly half of nonunion workers would vote to organize today if given the opportunity.
So, JHK, you are out-of-touch with the American zeitgeist using a phrase like “whatever remains of labor.”
Just to throw a little ice water on the hot yoga schadenfreude party: between 2000 and 2012, world poverty was cut in half.
Hey Jim Kunstler, if you are out there and checking in here, I just found this from a friend and was wondering if you had read this anywhere in your day:
“Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”
Sound familiar?
concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” is not going to address global warming. –Exscotticus
To believe that you have to believe overpopulation is unrelated to global warming. Empowerment of women is THE main way to lower population growth.
I have to say janet that IMHO you are absolutely correct, putting women in charge will definitely lower the population. Let us commit ourselves to this task with all of our energies. Count me in.
Unfortunately, putting women in charge seems to be accompanied by a desire to destroy one’s own culture & nation. Angela Merkel is the best example. Notice the leaders of western Europe are remarkably childless. So the only population that gets lowered is the native population while aggressive interlopers seem to do just fine & breed like rabbits.
In my country the welfare moms are educated and have free access to contraceptives and abortions.
And it’s not stopping them from breeding.
“what we can do about it” –Walter B
Empower women. Population decreases. AGW solved.
Wow Jim! I just thought I’ve been following you for over 20 years now and were still alarming the public and friends about peak oil. I still wonder when or what is going to wake up the public to the needed arrangements we need and needed to start in earnest 20 years ago.
The energy self sufficient lie drives me nut along with selling NG and oil overseas that we could harness for or own use. The other little known fact is how much NG is flared off because there is no place to store it
I’m a year shorter in the tooth than Jim and retired and have not owned a vehicle in 20 years and have live in Nevada, Ohio and now Florida. I bicycle and use public transit. I would love to travel more but our rail service is lacking in routes and light rail is like a novelty and only in cities not like the interurban streetcars that ran over a hundred years ago all over the eastern U.S. These streetcars could hit 80mph easily on poor tracks that basically laid on the ground not beds.
State is ‘milling’ local roads, grinding them down, prepping for another layer of black asphalt. What do you know! Trolley tracks still extant underneath all those layers of pavement, 88 years of pavement in fact, the Trolley being abandoned in 1930. they look like they are in pretty food shape.
Hartford-Unionville Trolley Company, 1880-1930. trip took about 45 minutes to cover about 10 miles, fare 10 cents.
brh
I lived in Maine a long time ago. Really enjoyed that life. –wet dog
I learned from Scott and Helen, also in Maine. It has been a good life.
Nearing, Helen and Scott. (1983). Living the good life: How to live sanely and simply in a troubled world. New York: Schocken Books.
Thank you, Janet. I hadn’t heard of that book, or the Nearings. Looking at its subject, that’s something I would like.
Nearings were Eliot Coleman’s neighbors. Eliot got his land from Scott (Nearing). That’s how Eliot and wife Barbara ended up on the coast of Maine. Many of us, including Eliot, were deeply influenced by Nearing’s book.Nearing lived to be 100. Committed ‘suicide’ by starving himself as he didn’t want to become a burden on his wife Helen. i believe i have those facts correct.
We are in an uncomfortable hiatus before an attack in Syria. I support President Trump’s tweet warning Syria, Russia, and Iran, not to attack.
“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!
In this uncomfortable hiatus I support the anti-violence stand Mr. Trump is taking.
“Whoopee!! We’re all gonna die!!” — Country Joe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBCfeM964s
Hard tack.
Water and white flour kneaded into dough. Do not add salt, leavening, fats, sugar, seasonings, etc. Roll into flat shapes about 3/8″ thick and then pierce with a docker like a saltine cracker before baking. Bake at 350F until browned. Make sure all the moisture is driven out. Allow to cool and then pack on edge in crates wrapped to keep out dust and pests. Properly prepared it will last for decades. To serve, break into pieces and soak in broth or soup.
As an experiment, I made a couple of batches of hard tack and then ate some samples soaked in chicken broth. Tasty. During the US Civil War, soldiers soaked their hard tack in coffee. They called it samp.
The reason for omitting salt is that it, sodium chloride, is hygroscopic, which means it attracts moisture from the air. If you go to the Bonneville salt flats you’ll notice the salt there is damp to the touch in desert conditions. Moisture will cause the hard tack to spoil. Any other ingredients will go rancid, attract moisture, etc. White flour and water only.
So, to all you preppers out there, get going on your hoard of hard tack!
Farming large or small depends on availability of seed or planting stock. Times past, farmers saved much of their own seed or propagated planting stock. Certainly there are people who currently know these arts of seed production, grafting and plant propagation, but they are rare. Even the production farmers and the experienced home-gardeners will be hard pressed if the current system of seed supply is disrupted. The current system is addicted to hybridization with only a very small percentage of non-hybridized seed available for individuals to use to save their own seed for future food supply.
Talking of seeds:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts
“Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts.
“No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change.”
GreenAlba, I hope you’re being safe and laying in some non-perishable food and sundries for Brexit day. Even a crew as inept as the Cameron/May Tories, who delivered you all unto your current situation, probably aren’t going to allow the UK to be unable to feed itself once the curtain descends — but probably doesn’t pay the rent, does it?
And from what I understand, airlifts may not be possible either – in fact, it may be impossible for any commercial aircraft to use British airports come March 29, as there has been no provision to replace the aviation agreements from which you all will be excluded. Please look after yourself!
Thank you, Elrond.
It surely is chaos. I don’t think most Leave voters envisaged quite this level of mind-boggling ineptitude.
As I’ve moved from a house with some storage space under the roof to a flat with none, hoarding of food isn’t really an option, but I’ll get in some extra porridge oats for the first week 🙂 . As long as there’s tea and milk – one doesn’t want to be without a comforting cuppa while surveying the dénouement at leisure.
Someone suggested recently in an article that the whole thing risked being so utterly chaotic on both sides, with tens of miles of log-jammed lorries at the Channel ports, that the powers that be, even in Europe, would have to just let them all through (illegally by then) as if nothing had changed, just to avoid a complete meltdown.
Adults brought us to this…
I’m not going to worry, though. There’s nothing I can do and I don’t think our European neighbours would watch us go hungry. And a few kilos wouldn’t be missed! It’ll all come out in the wash…
My daughter is supposed to be coming home from Sg to be a bridesmaid at her friend’s wedding in May. If the aviation thing doesn’t get sorted out, maybe we should get her to fly to France and we could send out a flotilla of small boats to Dunkirk to bring her over…
A months or a years worth of food can be stored in a closet or 2, at least if its dry beans in 50 pound sacks.
And some of us who go this route have found ‘moth n dust corrupt.’
Malthuss, you haven’t seen my flat 🙂 . One wardrobe, not even room for a chest of drawers.
And dry beans in sacks would bring me a mouse invasion like the one I posted.
But, more importantly, let us hope for our representatives to up their game. They’ve achieved a big fat zero in 18 months, since circles can’t be squared, but I’m sure that’s all magically going to change in the last 6 months… isn’t it?
I’m not really worrying, Malthuss. What will be will be. I’m just going to get up on that first day of getting my country back, pour myself a nice cup of tea and watch the fun.
Maybe I should buy a T-shirt that says ‘Don’t blame me – I didn’t vote for this’, but that would be less useful here as 75% of Edinburgh voted to stay in the EU.
And in the long run, as Keynes so wisely said, we are all dead…
And you may have noticed that, no opportunity ever being missed, Ms Sturgeon is getting ready – because of the Brexit shambles – for Indyref 2, another shot at the Neverendum.
Oh, joy. Another year or two of civic strife and media circuses.
@GreenAlba,
Don’t you worry; the USA is ready and willing to supply you with chlorinated chickens.
Thanks, Exscotticus, but I’ll stick with the porridge. I’ll know where it’s been, which is rather the problem with chlorinated chicken. Someone could have been playing football with it during coffee break and you’d never know.
But I’m humbled, Ex. Peering into the abyss and then seeing the milk of human kindness on display like that.
I’ll make sure I’ve got supplies of tea in to make good use of it.
I guess that the kids return to school again this week?
Don’t you think that it’s weird that parents send their kids to school knowing that the teachers and school textbooks will lie to their kids and fill the kids’ heads with all kinds of specious nonsense? The parents are generally ok with it as long as the kids make good grades and otherwise don’t embarrass the parents.
Yes,, it’s criminal. Nothing less. They want them to assimilate to an evil Society.
Not very fancy or high falutin but I spent Labor Day in 90+ degree heat chipping mortar and asphalt off old City of Akron, Ohio street paver bricks and setting a walkway from my barn to the chicken coop. Still have to finish it then sand it. Said walkway will probably last longer than our technogizmo society will. Good thing is I won’t be trudging through mud to feed the chickens and get the eggs in Spring and Fall. I’m willing to bet cleaning old brick to re-use will be a definite high growth career field in the coming years. No hydrocarbons required. Just a ready supply of old brick, a hammer and a chisel.
Ted Cruz has crawled out of the lube pit again. He must be stashing that jacket and tie somewhere down there, wrapped in heavy plastic.
Trump will now support lyin’ Ted, whose wife is ugly and whose father helped kill Kennedy.
Apparently Cruz doesn’t like O’ Rourke’s f – bombs, and that seems to be backfiring on Cruz, since most people think it shows honesty and have heard Cruz himself furiously hurling those same f – bombs while slipping and sliding about down in that greasy ol’ lube pit.
Did you notice back in 2016 when that thin film of oil coating Cruz almost ignited when a Trump supporter said to him, “we don’t want you”?
It’s no problem at all, it’s easy to follow Cruz. You just follow the yellow slick road.
Cultural shock: South Korean group plays in North Korea for the first time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6W3dRJ-MPM
That’s probably how I looked in 1990 when I saw 42-nd Street in New York for the first time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Q7vcnU9nc
Local resident over-population enthusiasts should be pleased:
U.S. Nuclear War Plan Option Sought Destruction of China and Soviet Union as “Viable” Societies
Population as an Objective
According to a 1961 estimate, a full force SIOP attack could cause a 71 percent casualty rate in Soviet cities and 53 percent in Chinese cities. An estimate from the following year projected 70 million Soviet fatalities caused by a no-warning U.S. strike on combined military and urban-industrial targets. By contrast the Defense Department estimated that a U.S. strike on military targets only via “ground-burst” would cause 55 million Soviet fatalities.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2018-08-15/us-nuclear-war-plan-option-sought-destruction-china-soviet-union-viable-societies
Energy? Corporate Tyranny? Well, well…
How yucky is your jellied fish!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR9MJYRla_Q
According to Bordne’s account—which, recall, is based on hearing just one side of a phone call—the situation of one launch crew was particularly stark: All its targets were in Russia. Its launch officer, a lieutenant, did not acknowledge the authority of the senior field officer—i.e. Capt. Bassett—to override the now-repeated order of the major. The second launch officer at that site reported to Bassett that the lieutenant had ordered his crew to proceed with the launch of its missiles! Bassett immediately ordered the other launch officer, as Bordne remembers it, “to send two airmen over with weapons and shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.” About 30 yards of underground tunnel separated the two Launch Control Centers…
https://thebulletin.org/2015/10/the-okinawa-missiles-of-october/
On Oct. 28, Kennedy and Khrushchev finally struck a secret deal whereby the Soviets promised to withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba in return for U.S. promises never to invade the island and assurances it would pull its atomic rockets out of NATO-aligned Turkey.
When word reached Okinawa, Horn likened the experience to a near-missed car wreck. “At the time, you don’t realize how close things were. It’s only when you pull over to the side of the road that you really start shaking.”
The above-described events took place on October 28, 1962, on four secret US missile bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Someone deep in the US Deep State was too eager to start a nuclear war no matter what!
Hi Jim,
Mate, I’ve been mucking around with renewable energy for over a decade now. In order to focus my attention and efforts on the subject I took the step of not connecting up the house here to the electricity grid in the first place. That focuses the attention. This stuff is good, but it is just not good enough. After ten years of personal adaption to the systems, and modifications every single year, well, I can get by now on 100% electricity derived from the sun. However, it is not lost on me that the various components of the system degrade every single frickin day. And the more you use batteries, the shorter their life span will be. And I don’t have access to the huge volumes of electricity that people seem to take for granted. Over the depths of winter the available energy is very limited.
Batteries are a bit of a joke really because you can have them, and you can use them, but the more you use them, the less you’ll be able to use them in the future. They’re not fuel tanks, they’re chemical reactors and people fail to understand that difference. But that failure to understand doesn’t make entropy go away. And the concept of electric cars powered from the sun are a joke that is lost on me. The economics make no sense to me whatsoever. I’d like to be proven wrong though.
And I’ve tried wind power too with a small turbine. That didn’t work so well because to get any power from the wind, you have to be on the top of a mountain, or at the coastline. And growing edible plants in either of those windy conditions is a big ask. The wind has to physically and continually push you at ground level to get any power. Turbine blades spinning gently in the breeze will produce next to nothing.
I dunno, people with no skin in the game make big talk about this renewable energy business. If they like the stuff so much, then get in the ring and give it go.
Incidentally, I reckon it costs me about AU$0.85/kWh here for electricity sourced purely from the sun and stored in batteries for later use. The components are incredibly complex, and the only things getting cheaper are the solar panels – and they seem to have bottomed out in price over the past few years. Every other component is expensive as.
You are spot on the money. This stuff will be available for use in only limited circumstances, because most people don’t want to live with or acknowledge the serious intermittency issues.
Cheers
Chris
And whilst I’m ranting (I do enjoy a good rant from time to time), the concept of just going out there and planting up an edible garden is also an idea that doesn’t stand up to much poking. You have to be really good at that stuff and over a long period of time so it is no simple matter. It makes sense to start now when mistakes aren’t fatal.
The thing is too, it is lost on people that we as a culture spray and fertilise crops because we have become too reliant on plants that would otherwise stand little chance in the wild. Take away that spray and fertiliser and things look really different. I breed plants for resilience to the conditions and that is not commensurate with efficiency of yield.
I tend to opt for open pollinated plants and learn to save seeds from those. Not many people are interested in those skills nowadays.
It is also arrogant to think that you can grow something and nothing else will come along and try to consume it. I have a huge variety of wild birds, animals, insects etc. that live here and all of them want a cut of the action. How many folks want to take up learning the task of living and growing food with that hungry lot about?
And if you stop them, suddenly you have to fertilise the crops and soil because nothing is converting plants into manure and soils. That should be obvious, but it isn’t to most people.
It is not like they’ll go away anyway, because if people stop spraying and fencing, then far out, good luck trying to harvest your crops before everything else turns up for a feed. They’re always hovering at the edges looking for an angle.
And then how many of you good folks know anything at all about preserving the harvest, and what it takes to do that huge job. It is no small task because nature provides surpluses, but it is rarely at convenient times.
Chris
Two excellent and informative posts, as usual, thanks, Chris.
Talking of critters wanting a share, I’ve posted this before because it’s both horrific and amazing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWVw-j8eYSk
And the fact that after their population explosion you end up with about two of them again (poetic licence…) is a bit of a metaphor for our predicament.
Our refusal to accept that we’re not biologically special is at the root of our problems.
About everything in my life, from tapwater to a life companion, I’ve always thought – that’s amazing – imagine if we didn’t have it any more.
So, if I’d been around for the first oil mini-bonanza, my first thought would literally have been ‘but the fact that we’re using it means it won’t always be there, so perhaps we should look at all the implications.’ That’s what the people who ‘govern’ were paid to think and didn’t.
I mean, if you get a hot summer, you don’t just think ‘great, I can take the roof off my house – it’ll be fantastic’.
We are special: we’re on the internet talking about them and not them, us. First you couldn’t love your race because of racism. Now you can’t love your species because of specism. How specious!
When I said we weren’t special, Janos, I didn’t mean we’re not ‘higher’ than other species. I merely meant we are subject to biological and physical laws, as all species are. And we can overshoot the capacity of our environment to sustain us, as they can.
What a great video to use anent illegal immigration! Thank Alba!
And remember, each Mouse is a living entity who loves itself and is loveable, in itself – even the one on the pig’s ear. As Buddha said, All beings love life and fear death. Therefore do not be the cause of such fear or death. Can one be a Buddhist and be a farmer? The Jains decided Jainism was incompatible with farming and become Bankers instead. The Jews of India until the real ones arrived.
At the end of your video, when other videos come up, there’s a video about the Siberian homeland Stalin gave to the Jews – which they had little or not interest in.
“At the end of your video, when other videos come up, there’s a video about the Siberian homeland Stalin gave to the Jews”
The one that came up for me was about ratting with terriers.
I think it must be like tailored adverts based on your previous viewing, so I get fields and dogs and you get Jews. Google, eh – they know you better than you know yourself.
In continuing with>
Malthuss, One wardrobe, not even room for a chest of drawers.
And dry beans in sacks would bring me a mouse invasion like the one I posted…
Okay. If you want to be so ‘I wont’ or ‘I cant’…
If you do want to store..WHITE [must be white] rice stores for 30 years, if store right.
Dry fruit in glass jars [must be glass].
Beans in glass.
Honey.
Salt.
Baking soda.
I dont recommend brown rice, white flour, noodles for various reasons as long term stored food.
Its possible to live on powdered milk [w added water] for months, maybe years.
WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA.
etc
I think we should relax for now, Malthuss, but thanks for your concern.
On the other hand, perhaps the UK will serve as a handy reference point to the rest of the world for how integrated supply chains that have been built up over decades can be disintegrated overnight, with the chaos that ensues.
I don’t really think it’s going to be quite that dire, though, next March, or the citizens of the UK could almost legitimately string up their Tory representatives, dragging Mr Cameron out of his bespoke £25K garden shed to take the consequences first.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/30/00/3FC184AE00000578-0-image-a-2_1493508261331.jpg
But a lesson about supply chains, even a relatively manageable (?) one such as this, is always worth noting.
Chris,
Excellent post with the obvious truth of first person, hands-on experience shared. I had a similar experience with vehicles.
Diesel Volkswagens. 80’s vintage Rabbits and Golfs. Naturally aspirated, totally analog, with 40-50 MPG averages and diesel that can be stored for years, even decades. I began buying and rebuilding these death traps in the early 90’s…and did 90% of my driving with them.
Just recently, over the last several years, I realized that I was errant in that, yes, driving them was virtually at no cost other than diesel, and that I could maintain them forever (I do all the machine work for a rebuild, including head surfacing, which is ALWAYS necessary), but like you, I was forswearing the opportunity of the convenience and comfort of a newer road vehicle. I still have the old diesels…about 5 or so, but I do not drive them much. I consider the years of “subsistence driving” a foolish endeavor…yes it worked, but like your experience with the off-grid living, a valuable experience paid for with relative, and unnecessary, discomfort.
I do propagate all my garden seeds from last year’s issue, and still graft grapes and fruit trees.
Hi Chris. Good comments. As an OSSI (Open Source Seed Initiative) plant breeder, see the plant breeder’s section under ‘relentless’ (that’s me) and Acres, USA articles, esp the January 2010 issue: ‘Back Breeding to the Future, where i write about some of your concerns. You should be able to find that article on a New Zealand website, forget the name but if you just type in the article name it should appear. Yes, indeed, critters, including homo saps, are a nuisance or worse. i have a 10% tithing limit for them, and have come up with several deterrents that usually keep them under the 10%. i’ve never said growing stuff is a snap, the learning curve can be challenging, but, for me, when the system goes down it’s my guess that those who want to survive (if survival is even possible depending on the climatic conditions) will have plenty of time and compelling pressure to eat or be eaten and figure out how to best obtain food as quickly as possible and store it. We both know that’s not an overnight process. Best…
Well so far this week the crew has managed to flat spot another iron ball.
Here is a song to match the survival theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vee-b0kYinE
“It;s a long hard rocky road” Johnny Winter
Definition-
Myopia = humanity
I guess I missed the memo – When did the left start trusting the status quo, including the CIA and the FBI?
Janet please use your hands for something besides spreading digital manure on this site. Don’t go away mad, just go away. Posting a warning to Mr. Assad and the Syrian government from Washington. Left or right you are without a clue.
Best wishes to most.
“Don’t go away mad…” –wm5135
I am not angry. Thanks for your concern.
Big Labor Day shootout in Hartford Saturday night, hot lead unleashed on a hot night, many rounds fired, 2 dead, 1 wounded.
This is how people with no jobs celebrate Labor Day, in the city anyway. Out here in the country they drink a cold beer on a hot day while dangling a fishing in the local lake.
That didn’t stop the LBQT Pride Festival and the Hispanic Pride Festival going on in two different parts of the city. It looks like ’round here anyway every group is entitled to a pride festival, except Whitey. Whenever Whitey expresses pride in his own people and its accomplishments, there is a problem.
Question. Has John McCain been buried yet? This is the longest funeral since Abraham Lincoln took the funerary train from DC to Springfield, Mo. in 1865. In summer 2008 our local newspaper ran editorials every day condemning McCain as a Savings and Loan scammer, as deranged and mentally unstable, as a warmonger … now, when he can be used as a weapon against President Trump, he’s the greatest Senator in history. (A Maverick because he would sometimes vote with Democrats. But where are D Senators who vote with Republicans? One that I can think of Joe Mansion from W Virginia, but he’s not called a Maverick, but a traitor.)
brh
I was on a long car journey last Monday week and was more or less forced to listen to RTE radio, Ireland’s national broadcaster, the worst in the universe. They did a moralistic piece on McCain and played that clip where “racist” Trump had insulted this war hero saying he preferred soldiers who don’t get captured. The insinuation was that Trump had done this for no reason whatsoever but his own badness. The worst thing is I am pretty sure they believe it all.
now, when he can be used as a weapon against President Trump, he’s the greatest Senator in history. – BRH
=============
You make an excellent point BackRow. I really dislike it when we (our society) mint brand new heroes to worship. Delve deep enough into almost anyone’s background and they’re generally not so wonderful. Take, for example, JFK. There must be thousands of schools, roads and highways named after him yet we know he was poking MM on the side. (Well, we can hardly fault him for THAT, right?)
In due time McCain will get a bronze statue and in 50 years it’ll be torn down.
Hey Q it seems JFK was ‘poking’ a whole bunch of broads on the side, not just MM.
Indeed, some right in the White House pool.
brh
#Deep State Death Prom=Uniparty Self Worship
They don’t know it but they just gave themselves their own funeral via McCain.
Its hard to understand how oil companies cannot make money from oil recovered by Fracking, ‘specially at $70 per barrel. How much does it cost to get a barrel of oil out of the ground that way? Also, why have oil companies had to resort to selling highly volatile bonds (junk bonds, many of which have already tanked) to finance these projects? The Big 7 seem flush with cash, why not use some of that? To non economists like myself, its a mystery.
Like you say it might be a moot question anyway in a few years when these wells in Texas and NDakota begin to dry up, leaving wreckage and ghost towns in their wake.
brh
“in a few years when these wells in Texas and NDakota begin to dry up”
Back in 2010 JHK was warning these wells would only last a year or two. Every year JHK says the same thing: these wells won’t last, they will go dry in a year or two.
Now eight years later they are still going. So now they are scheduled to “begin to dry up” “in a few years” … oh… OK … if CFN says so. Peak oil was supposed to be 1970, then 2005, now… “in a few years” …. color me skeptical.
There has been no “uncomfortable hiatus” in oil production. The number of wells in the Permian has surged over 112% the past 12 months, up 15 consecutive months. Between August of 2017 and August of 2018, U.S. crude oil production from seven major shale regions: up by 1.4 million barrels of oil per day to 7.43 million barrels a day. The month-over-month increase from July to August 2018: 93,000 barrels a day.
janet, you are in over your head here, but I must say that you (singular or plural) are entertaining.
I won’t pull a Finca, but instead will refer readers to a presentation given by Schlumberger Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Paal Kibsgaard at the Scotia Howard Weil 2017 Energy Conference. Do a search and you will find it. As it was presented in 2017, it is a bit dated, but the essentials are still the same. You can draw your own conclusions.
Perhaps it is time for our host to schedule another podcast with Art Berman. Mr. Berman has published a bunch of articles on the tight oil madness, and there are some good videos out there as well.
papa whiskey
Buried deep in the comments section; who will read the but the data miners? As usual, I am objecting to your use of the word “gnostic,” which I understand you to be using in the Eric Voegelin sense, rather than in the Hans Jonas sense. If “gnostic” in this sense means simply trying to make the world a better place, then how can you fault it? Ronald Reagan must have been the “gnostic-in-chief”” with his vision of “a shining city on the hill,” (which smacks a bit of Pilgrim;s Progress,). What is the purpose of our enormous military with its vast network of overseas bases if not to supposedly make the world a better place. Even the free marketeers proclaiming that somehow the infinite wisdom of the marketplace will produce the best possible outcomes – “just the right amount of environmental protection,” for example – seems to be nothing short of a utopian fantasy, and “gnostic” in the sense you are using. The question is, how do we inhabit this world. Does Eric Voegelin’s “gnostic” really help us much here?
“which I understand you to be using in the Eric Voegelin sense, rather than in the Hans Jonas sense.” –phutatorius
Do you really think there is an appreciation for the difference? It’s probably just a general condemnation of the same world denying heresies condemned by the Church fathers. I doubt Jonas’ Heidegger-inspired gnosticism is being invoked.
Making everyone the same or “equal” cannot make the World a better place since it is a lie. Beyond that, such reformers often don’t believe it themselves so it’s another lie on top of that. How can you not fault it?
The Story of Margie, Filipina in Israel:
— https://youtu.be/Zs40OS4wixA
In 300 words or less?
I’ll twit it for you in 300 characters or less:
Margie don’t bitch and moan all day every day on CFN and don’t blame others for her economic misfortune. God smiled on her and now she’s a part owner in a possible billion dollar startup company.
Some fine reading for a post-“working class” holiday Tuesday:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-invisible-committe-to-our-friends
“If some commentators made fools of themselves by hastily proclaiming the “death of neoliberalism” with the explosion of the subprime swindle, it’s because they failed to understand that the “crisis” was not an economic phenomenon but a political technique of government. We’re not experiencing a crisis of capitalism but rather the triumph of crisis capitalism. “Crisis” means: government is growing. Crisis has become the ultima ratio of the powers that be. Modernity measured everything in relation to the past backwardness it claimed to be rescuing us from; now everything is measured in relation to its impending collapse. When the salaries of Greek civil servants are reduced by half, it’s while pointing out that one could just as well no longer pay them at all. Every time the period of pension contribution of French wage earners is lengthened, the rationale has to do with “saving the retirement system.” The present crisis, permanent and omnilateral, is no longer the classic crisis, the decisive moment. On the contrary, it’s an endless end, a lasting apocalypse, an indefinite suspension, an effective postponement of the actual collapse, and for that reason a permanent state of exception. The current crisis no longer promises anything; on the contrary, it tends to free whoever governs from every constraint as to the means deployed.
Thank you for that fine link.
“…well I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity…”
-Dylan, ‘Up to Me’
Chris,
Your 2 posts above (on alternate power generation and small-time gardening) are right on the money.
As a lifetime resident of The ‘Garden’ State (i.e. New Jersey) I have at least an inkling of what it takes to grow food. The last farm in Camden County, NJ of any size worth mentioning (100 acres) was operated by a hayseed tenant farmer named Clarence Victor Jarvis (if that isn’t a farmer’s name I don’t know what is). This farm was less than a quarter mile from the house I grew up in. It has long since been re-purposed to a bank, a diner, a Midas Muffler, miscellaneous shops and some apartment buildings. Between the ages of 12 and 16 I, and other kids, would help Jarvis (we called him by his last name only and now that I think of it we never said ‘Mr’ Jarvis) helped him gather his crops (primarily corn, tomatoes, lima beans, string beans, cucumbers, squashes, etc.) which were then taken to his road-side stand along Cuthbert Road and sold to the public.
If you have no concept of the labor involved, try picking several 5/8ths baskets of lima beans at 50 cents per in 90 degree heat. If memory serves, a 5/8ths basket is 5/8ths of a bushel.
Q.,
Did you enjoy working outside? I love getting my hands dirty in the garden. This year I’ve been growing Cucuzza squash. It’s an exercise in vertical gardening using my jacaranda tree for support. I’ve got these gorgeous green squashes (some 3 ft. long and weighing 4 pounds) hanging from the tree in my front yard. It’s the talk of the neighborhood. They are tastier and more firm than zucchini–with a hint of an artichoke flavor.
Jen
Did you enjoy working outside? I love getting my hands dirty in the garden. – Jen
============
As a kid I enjoyed pretty much everything, including getting my hands dirty. I especially enjoyed earning some pocket money.
“They are tastier and more firm than zucchini–with a hint of an artichoke flavor.”
I see that vegan get-together gathering pace 🙂 .
And the work ethic and capacity to suffer you learned from Jarvis enabled you to become a millionaire. You owe him much. You also learned to disrespect the lower class, especially the rural. Never calling him Mr – an absolute essential.
Similarly, it’s said WW1 was won on the playing fields of Eton. The boys learned discipline and to suffer (an athlete is an “Agon” in old Greek), thus they were will and able to throw their lives away for nothing. The new Ruling Class (the Bankers) were happy to see the old Aristocracy so decimated.
China has outwitted Trump’s boycott of Iran and is evading US sanctions by buying Iranian crude in yuan. China has dumped the dollar because the US Dept. of Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control is trying to stop countries from buying Iranian petroleum.
The Dept. of Treasury, however, only has control of dollar transactions or those that go through US banks–so as of now, China can buy Iranian petroleum until the cows come home.
Is the the beginning of the end for the dollar, or the end of the beginning?
Juan Cole, “Truthdig,” Sept. 2, 2018
Hillary Clinton, Color Projects of the West and the War of the Roses
In my theory of world projects colors are determined by the War of the Roses and do not carry any emotional meaning – the white color of the White Project is the white Rose of York, the red color of the Red Project is the red Rose of Lancaster, and the black color of the Black project comes from the black scapular of the Cistercian monks who stood behind the English Templar Order, who provoked the War of the Roses, exactly as Shakespeare painted in his play “Richard II”.
And in general the fact that the War of the Roses began in the Templar headquarters in London, occupies a significant place in English culture and only negation of Christianity as a historical force can explain that the official history discusses the War of the Roses, completely ignoring the fact that the Templar charter was written by “holy” Bernard of Clairvaux, who in the history of the Order of the Cistercians played such a role that this order is called the Order of the Bernardins.
And the fact that the Crimean Jews, people who, not wishing to cooperate with the Nazis, were almost completely exterminated by them, but several of them became commanders of the Crimean Waffen-SS because Hitler considered them an Ostrogoths who accepted Judaism.
And so Hitler once again showed that he had nothing against Judaism and his hatred of Jews was purely racial in nature, and this makes him a true Bernardine, since this “Saint” Bernard of Clairvaux was the first who introduced genocide into European politics in combination with racial hatred of Jews and Russians.
And all this is directly connected with the so-called Last will and testament of Adolph Hitler and the mystery of Andrei Rublev, but the connection of these topics is clearly beyond the scope of this post.
And now let’s move to the main thing in this post – the participation of Cathars and Albigenses in the Sicilian Vespers and the Fourth Crusade.
I began to investigate it with bewilderment caused by the absence of Albigense names well known due to a very well documented work of the Inquisition in the list of participants of the Fourth Crusade held five years before the Albigensian Crusade.
And in this connection I want to remind you that all the bad things we know about the Albigenses come from those who committed such monstrous sacrileges and atrocities in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, that 200 years after that the slogan of the followers of Gregory Palamas was: It is better to see the Islamic crescent over St. Sophia than the Latin cross.
And the statement of this fact does not in any way make me an Albigense, just as it does not make me an “Orthodox Stalinist and Zionist” statement that everything we know about the Stalin terror and the Doctors’ Plot somehow comes from Nikita Khrushchev – perhaps the most terrible executioner and anti-Semite of his era, quite in the spirit of the “holy” Bernard of Clairvaux.
Charles I of Anjou (in fact, Valois) did not hide that he was going to complete the Fourth Crusade and bring it to its logical conclusion, and the participation of various Popes in this matter suggests that Constantinople would not have been the end of the Fourth Crusade and the logical end of it then, as it is as now, is the complete destruction of Christianity and those parts of Islam that are closer to Orthodoxy than Catholicism.
And Charles I of Anjou needed Sicily as a base for a naval invasion of Byzantium, and he was deprived of this base by the King of Aragon, whose grandfather fought and died in the struggle against the Crusaders, who organized the genocide first in Byzantium, and then in the neighboring with Aragon Occitania.
It is this genocide in Occitania that is called the Albigensian Crusade, and the participation of Pedro Aragon on the side of the Albigensians explains why Cathars did not participate in the Fourth Crusade on the side of Boniface of Montferrat, and even protected the walls of Constantinople from the crusaders.
And the connection of British intelligence with Aragonese in preparation to Sicilian Vespers in addition to the purely religious reasons of the War of the Roses is that, while preparing for the invasion of Byzantium, Charles I of Anjou was about to invade Aragon, and purely geographically, he could only have attacked Gascony, which was part of the Plantagenet Empire.
And the term “Plantagenet Empire” translators “purely accidentally” translated into Russian as the Anjou Empire, just as Hillary Clinton accidentally translated Obama’s “Reset” into Russian “Overload” and we have been living in this “Overload” ever since.
But that’s not why I remembered Hillary Clinton again in this post, and that’s not why in the history of the Valois Dynasty, unlike the men who patronized the Renaissance in general, but especially Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini, outstanding women played an outstanding role, using their outstanding talents solely for evil, and not because she is a look-alike of Catherine de Medici, who arranged a Bartholomew night massacre – these are all clues if you want hints for further research.
The main thing you have to understand is that I need the War of the Roses in order to explain the essence of the theory of world projects and that the colors in it do not carry any emotional meaning and personally I very much like the Black Valois of the times of Francis I, only if, as predicted in Bible, they could pee against the wall.
Catherine de Medici:
https://www.kurir.rs/data/images/2015/09/29/17/751145_katarina-medici_po-s.jpg
2. The Real Catastrophe Is Existential and Metaphysical.
Epochs are proud. Each one claims to be unique. Our own prides itself on bringing about the historical collision of a planetary ecological crisis, a generalized crisis of democracies, and an inexorable energy crisis, the whole being crowned by a creeping global economic crisis, but “unmatched for the last hundred years.” And this affirms and heightens our pleasure at living through an epoch like no other. But one only has to open the newspapers from the 1970s, or read the Club of Rome report on the Limits to Growth from 1972, the article by the cybernetician Gregory Bateson on “The Roots of Ecological Crisis” from March 1970, or The Crisis of Democracy published in 1975 by the Trilateral Commission, to see that we’ve been living under the dark star of integral crisis at least since the begining of the 1970s. A text from 1972 such as Giogio Cesarono’s Apocalypse and Revolution already analyzes it lucidly. So if the seventh seal was opened at a precise moment, it certainly wasn’t yesterday.
At the end of 2012, the highly official American Centers for Disease Control circulated a graphic novel for a change. Its title: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. The idea is simple: the population must be prepared for any eventuality, a nuclear or natural catastrophe, a general breakdown of the system or an insurrection. The document concludes by saying: “If you’re ready for a zombie apocalypse then you’re ready for any emergency.” The zombie figure comes from Haitian voodoo culture. In American films, masses of rebellious zombies chronically function as an allegory of the threat of a generalized insurrection by the black proletariat. So that is clearly what people must be prepared for. Now that there’s no longer any Soviet threat to Wield as a way to ensure the psychotic cohesion of the citizens, anything will do to make sure the population is ready to defend itself—that is,defend the system. Maintaining an endless fear to forestall a frightful end.
All of Western false consciousness is compressed into this official comic strip. It’s plain to see that the real living dead are the petty bourgeois of the American suburbs. Obvious that the dull concern with survival, the economic worry about not having enough, the feeling of having an unsustainable form of life, is not something that will come after the catastrophe, but what already drives the desperate struggle for life of each individual in a neoliberal regime. Defeated life is not what threatens but what is already there, day after day. Everyone sees it, everyone knows it and feels it. The Walking Dead are the salary men. If this epoch is crazy about apocalyptic dramatizations, which make up a large share of film production, there’s more involved than the aesthetic enjoyment which the distraction authorizes. Besides, John’s Revelation already has a whole Hollywood-style phantasmagoria with its air attacks by furious angels, its horrendous floods, its spectacular scourges. Only universal destruction, the death of everything, comes close to giving the suburban employee the feeling he’s alive, since he’s the least alive of all the creatures. “To hell with it all” and “let’s pray that it lasts” are the two sighs heaved alternately by the same civilized distress. An old Calvinist taste for mortification has a part in this: life is a reprieve, never a plenitude. The discussions of “European nihilism” were not vain talk. Indeed, nihilism is an article that’s been exported so successfully that the world is now saturated with it. As regards “neoliberal globalization,” one could say that what we now have above all is the globalization of nihilism.
In 2007 we wrote that “what we are faced with is not the crisis of a society but the extinction of a civilization.” At the time, this kind of statement got you taken for an Illuminatus. But “the crisis” has gone down that path. And even ATTAC acknowledges a “crisis of civilization”—which goes to show. More dramatically, an American veteran of the Iraq war turned “strategy” consultant, wrote in the autumn of 2013 in the New York Times: “Now, when I look into our future, I see water rising up to wash out lower Manhattan. I see food riots, hurricanes, and climate refugees. I see 82nd Airborne soldiers shooting looters. I see grid failure, wrecked harbors, Fukushima waste, and plagues. I see Baghdad. I see the Rockaways underwater. I see a strange, precarious world […] The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead.” In the days after the First World War it still only called itself “mortal,” which it certainly was, in every sense of the word.
In reality, the end of civilization has been clinically established for a century, and countersigned by events. Expatiating on the matter is now nothing but a means of distraction. But it’s a distraction from the catastrophe there in front of us, and that has been there for a long time, from the catastrophe that we are, the catastrophe that the West is. That catastrophe is existential, affective, and metaphysical first of all. It resides in Western man’s incredible estrangement from the world, an estrangement that demands, for example, that he become the master and possessor of nature—one only seeks to possess what one fears. It’s not for nothing that he has placed so many screens between himself and the world. By cutting himself off from what exists, Western man has made it into this desolate expanse, this dreary, hostile, mechanical, absurd nothingness which he must ceaselessly devastate, through his labor, his cancerous activism, his shallow hysterical agitation. Relentlessly driven from euphoria to stupor and from stupor to euphoria, he tries to remedy his absence from the world through a whole accumulation of expertise, prostheses, and relations, a whole technological hardware store that is ultimately disappointing. He’s more and more visibly that overequipped existentialist who can’t stop engineering everything, recreating everything, unable as he is to bear a reality that is completely beyond him. As that moron, Camus, blandly admitted, “For a man, understanding the world means reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal.” He tries humbly to re-enchant his divorce from existence, from himself, from “other people”—that hell!—by calling it his “freedom,” when it’s not by resorting to dismal parties, stupid entertainments, or heavy drug use. Life is effectively, affectively, absent for him, because life repels him. Deep down, it nausetes him. He’s managed to protect himself from everything reality contains that is unstable, irreducible, palpable, corporal, weighty, hot, or fatiguing by projecting it onto the ideal, visual, distant, and digitized plane of the Internet, where there’s no friction or tears, no death or odors.
The falsity of the entire Western apocalyptic consists in projecting onto the world the mourning we’re not able to do in regard to it. It’s not the world that is lost, it’s we who have lost the world and go on losing it. It’s not the world that is going to end soon, it’s we who are finished, amputated, cut-off, we who refuse vital contact with the real in a hallucinatory way. The crisis is not economic, ecological, or political, the crisis is above all that of presence. To such a point that the must of commodities—the iPhone and the Hummer being exemplary cases—consists in a sophisticated absence outfit. On the one hand, the iPhone concentrates all the possible accesses to the world and to others in a single object. It is the lamp and the camera, the mason’s level and the musician’s recording device, the TV and the compass, the tourist guide and the means of communication; on the other, it is the prosthesis that bars any openness to what is there and places me in a regime of constant, convenient semi-presence, retaining a part of my being-there in its grip. They’ve even launched a smartphone app designed to remedy the fact that “our 24/7 connection to the digital world disconnects us from the real world around us.” It is brightly called the GPS for the Soul. As for the Hummer, it’s the possibility of transporting my autistic bubble, my impermeability to everything, into the most inaccessible recesses of “nature” and coming back intact. That Google has declared the “fight against death” to be a new industrial horizon shows how one can be mistaken about what life is.
At the apex of his insanity, Man has even proclaimed himself a “geological force,” going so far as to give the name of his species to a phase of the life of the planet: he’s taken to speaking of an “anthropocene.” For the last time, he assigns himself the main role, even if it’s to accuse himself of having trashed everything—the seas and the skies, the ground and what’s underground—even if it’s to confess his guilt for the unprecedented extinction of plant and animal species. But what’s remarkable is that he continues relating in the same disastrous manner to the disaster produced by his own disastrous relationship with the world. He calculates the rate at which the ice pack is disappearing. He measures the extermination of the non-human forms of life. As to climate change, he doesn’t talk about it based on his sensible experience—a bird that doesn’t return in the same period of the year, an insect whose sounds aren’t heard anymore, a plant that no longer flowers at the same time as some other one. He talks about it scientifically with numbers and averages. He thinks he’s saying something when he establishes that the temperature will rise so many degrees and the precipitation will decrease by so many inches or millimeters. He even speaks of “biodiversity.” He observes the rarefaction of life on earth from space. He has the hubris to claim, paternally, to be “protecting the environment,” which certainly never asked for anything of the sort. All this has the look of a last bold move in a game that can’t be won.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-invisible-committe-to-our-friends
From the above Finc:
And so Hitler once again showed that he had nothing against Judaism and his hatred of Jews was purely racial in nature, and this makes him a true Bernardine, since this “Saint” Bernard of Clairvaux was the first who introduced genocide into European politics in combination with racial hatred of Jews and Russians.
Does this make ANY sense? Hitler had nothing against them but he hated them? Hitler was not a “Bernadine” since he didn’t like the Church or Christianity. I almost always skip Finc since his posts are full of nonsense, but now and then for amusement or for correction I’ll dip my toe in. It’s always soiled when I take it out.
Yes, Israel is a perfect microcosm of the World with White Jews ruling over dark skinned Jews, Muslims, and oppressed minorities and workers.
St Bernard was immensely holy and by slandering him you imperil your immortal soul.
The whole point of the previous post is that Hillary Clinton and her Flying Monkeys are fomenting the Civil War in the United States, mostly based on racial division, just like the Black Templars provoked the bloody War of the Roses in England in the 15th century.
Apparently, Trump is Red – that is not Red as a commie, but Red as the red Rose of Lancaster.
I still have to figure out who now represents the White Rose of York.
Hard as this sounds, it presents great opportunities for making Americans useful again, that is, giving them something to do, a meaningful place in society, and livelihoods. – JHK
“Hard” but not impossible. What’s impossible is the status quo of annual trade deficits in the hundreds of billions, cumulative debts in the public and private spheres in the tens of trillions and more than ninety million working-age Americans that aren’t working.
Green Alba said to me last week something about ideological arguments about Brexit. Defenders of the status quo talk irrelevancies, whether it’s one of the multitude of distractionary issues or “ideology” in broader terms. But there’s nothing ideological about arithmetic. If the numbers don’t pan out, they don’t pan out. Misdirection is a time honored tool and you can talk ideology all you want but it doesn’t make the numbers any better.
No matter that elite opinion sez don’t look here, look over there, that it’s all in your racist, sexist, xenophobic, cretinous head, that there are “web people” that are with the future and there are “wall people” that just can’t get with it, no matter the disparagement, still the numbers don’t work. Oil is running out, fracking is a fool’s game, there’s not enough decent paying work to go around, people are in distress whether it’s on this side of the pond or in western Europe or the UK and flooding the country with still more people whether legally or illegally makes the problem worse. If you want a resurgence of seriously nasty political parties whose persuasive tools include a heaping helping of violence, keep on with the deception and self deception. Not even a lifetime ago we had a whole lot of it, whether it came from the fascists or the communists (two sides of the same coin), and it stemmed from elites that ignored the interests of ordinary people for whom the numbers did not work.
No, the Fascists are Nationalists and the Communists are Globalists. Not the same. Same methods? Well sure, same lots of things. Both use guns. Both eat food. Sleep. Use propaganda, etc. Just like you look like Lew Alcinder compared to say, a Deer.
Capitalism and Communism are different sides of the same coin. Both economic philosophies of Life, both ultimately globalist requiring central Banks, both Philosophies of Matter whereas Fascism and National Socialism are Philosophies of MAN.
Capitalism funded Communism, using it as a battering ram to destroy the Monarchies, Republics, and Fascist States. Now they’re siccing them on the democracies and remaining middle classes. In other words, it is the “Heads” and Communism the “Tails”.
Volodya
“Green Alba said to me last week something about ideological arguments about Brexit. Defenders of the status quo talk irrelevancies, whether it’s one of the multitude of distractionary issues or “ideology” in broader terms. ”
I’m just curious as to why you never mention the people who are going to lose their jobs because of Brexit or whose businesses are going to go under. Or if long-term security is jeopardised because our farming sector takes a huge hit following cheap non-EU imports. You seem to care about other people who’ve lost their jobs.They’re not an ideology to me, they’re my compatriots. I don’t want to see their wellbeing sacrificed on the altar of your ideology.
I’m not a defender of the status quo or an opponent of the status quo in the sense that you mean. If I thought the British economy wouldn’t tank and lots of people you don’t care about weren’t going to suffer because of Brexit, I would be fine with Brexit.
So why don’t you care about them? Are they just numbers?
long term *food* security…
Nor have you ever mentioned my point that as a follower of (a) the climate crisis and (b) the coming energy crisis, I believe we should be trading more with our near neighbours and not more with countries on the other side of the world. Regional is not local, but it’s a lot better than global until local is the only game in town. We do 60% of our trade with the EU. Why do you think that’s a bad thing and want us to trade more with the US, India, Australia and NZ?
This and the jobs (and the hit the NHS is taking) are the basis for my concerns about Brexit. Ideology and -isms don’t come into it for me.
Anyone, on this?
We don’t have a climate or energy crisis—merely a population crisis. Solve the latter and we solve all the rest.
Yeah what about the Canadians who club baby seals for a living. Banning the clubbing will hurt them economically – just like offshoring our industries put tens of millions out of work and lead to the rise of Trump.
You have to rise to the level of Principle. Anecdotes can always be contradicted by another anecdote – and then the ladies are left flustered. And that’s never a good thing.
And what is the Principle? Subsidiarity. Doing as much at the local level that can be done at the local level, be it production or governing. A Catholic word but in line with the Perennial Tradition and yes, the liberal “Think globally and act locally”. Remember that? What happened to it? What happened to you people? You sold out your ideals for a mess of Labor/Democrat porridge.
“We don’t have a climate or energy crisis—merely a population crisis. Solve the latter and we solve all the rest.”
‘Merely’. Goodness. It’s so simple you have to wonder how no-one ever thought of it before.
Have you given some thought to how many of us we’d need to cull to achieve stasis on these points? And maybe a little reversing too, since a lot of those droughts, floods and methane er…breakouts are baked in for the next 30 or 40 years?
And will the oil last till we’ve achieved this happy state? Because if it won’t, we’re back to an energy crisis.
And this from the man who makes ‘kumbaya’ accusations.
@GreenAlba,
>>> Have you given some thought to how many of us we’d need to cull to achieve stasis on these points?
No culling. It has to be done via attrition. For ideas on culling, you’ll have to ask Janos.
The problem we have now is that any end to growth is considered a national crisis. Germany is a good example. Their population was holding steady for many years and was even poised to decrease. That is, before Germany decided to let in millions of Syrian refugees to shore up the numbers.
Here’s a typical article, describing a drop in population as a “crisis”.
Heaven forbid if we should have elderly people with no young-uns to take care of them and pay for all the “free” stuff like universal healthcare and education. If welfare state liberalism requires growth to pay for itself then it’s part of the problem. If it requires growth then it’s not economically viable. Your robbing Peter’s future to pay for Paul’s retirement in the present.
One simple measure all governments can do at the very least is to stop encouraging and subsidizing growth. Having children is a lifestyle choice. And governments shouldn’t be subsidizing some lifestyle choices at the expense of others. They should be neutral in this regard. Whether you want to spend your life painting or traveling or counting blades of grass in your backyard is none of any government’s business so long as your lawful in your pursuits and endeavors.
So if we just start with that—an end to growth subsidies—then we’ll be off to a good start.
When I say ‘baked in’ for the next 30/40 years, I mean the increase from the current status quo is baked in, because today’s status quo is the result of what we did 30/40 years ago..
What happens after that depends on what we do tomorrow.
Oops, crossed in the ether.
I agree about the impossibility of growth. And as an oldie (but with some life left yet) I’m happy to take the hit to some extent and take my chances.
Here they’ve stopped paying the Child Benefit (a previously non-means-tested benefit paid to all parents but now with an income threshold) for children after the second one.
We don’t have time for attrition, though, for either climate change or the energy crisis, so they need to be dealt with separately.
@GreenAlba,
>>> I’m happy to take the hit to some extent and take my chances.
Sadly, the baby-boomers in my country are the most self-centered and spoiled generation to ever exist, and will gladly drain the kitty and leave the nation destitute if it means they can continue to enjoy their profligate lifestyles to the very end.
>>> We don’t have time for attrition, though, for either climate change or the energy crisis, so they need to be dealt with separately.
I agree. But I’m thinking in terms of what’s politically possible.
For example, when I say “end growth subsidies”, I’m also talking about immigration reform.
It’s not enough for some countries to act responsibly if other countries do not, and responsible nations end up taking in surplus breeder-culture populations as refugees. I think we can agree that this would be unfair to indigenous populations, as this would amount to a growth subsidy—but only for immigrants.
Concurrent with ending domestic growth subsidies should be immigration reform to end foreign growth subsidies as well, and to hold breeder cultures responsible for their actions by forcing them to deal with their own growth issues.
For example, if Indians breed without limit, following which they experience the inevitable deprivations that come from over-breeding, then it’s not the world’s responsibility to reward their breeder culture with subsidies by admitting their surplus population as refugees. Even food and water aid should come with concrete commitments to curtail population growth.
Making everyone the same or “equal” cannot make the World a better place since it is a lie. –janos
Red herring, janos. Nobody is saying everyone is the same or equal.
What the founding documents say is that all men are created equal with equal opportunity for self realization.
No matter how rich (Trump) or poor (Obama) you are when born, or what your skin color is, you have an equal opportunity to excel.
No one is “the same”, we are all unique, and in that uniqueness we all have opportunity for realizing our potential.
In other words, little Black boys who can’t read very well and who will never understand the concept of a variable can become astronauts?
As I said, a Lie.
Janos, I know this is only one person, but if you can say ‘in other words’ (again) and come out with something that is in no remote way a paraphrase of what the person you’re responding to has said, I can give you an instructive example – which says NOTHING about averages and does not claim to.
Over here there’s a black woman called Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Her family are from Nigeria. When she told a teacher she wanted to become an astronaut, the teacher suggested she try nursing (this is the kind of support kids got back then if they were (a) black, (b) female or (c) gawd help us, both.
Maggie’s got a BSc in Physics. and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, the subject of her thesis being “Interferometric Studies of Very Thin Lubricant Films in Concentrated Contacts”. I would seriously invite you to try to get hold of is and apply your WHITE and MALE brain to it and let me know how you get on. It involves the development of an ultra-thin film measurement system using spectroscopy and interferometry to the 2.5 nm level. The development work she did resulted in the instrument she was developing being sold by an Imperial College spin-off company (PCS Instruments).
But that was back in 1994 – Maggie’s move on since then. She’s a space scientist and science educator. She has an MBE for services to science education.
What I’d like to see is you in a room with Maggie, for the science side, and maybe Bonnie Greer for the Humanities side, having a rational discussion on your suggestion that black boys can’t read very well because they’re black. I’ll buy a ticket. I promise.
Actually, no. Since Maggie’s an occasional TV presenter too and fascinating to listen to, let’s put you all in a TV studio for this discussion. Then I won’t have to pay either. But I would, honest.
We have plenty of black people doing all manner of other scientific things too, but it’s not everyone’s destiny.
*moved*
When I watch science programmes on TV that involve scientists from different countries, I’d say it’s most often the case that the black scientists are American. And that’s what I’d expect, since you have more black people. To me, when I’m listening to them, they’re just scientists. And Americans.
And if fewer black people – or women – end up as scientists, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest as long as all the ones who are that way inclined and show promise get to achieve what they’re capable of. That’s all equality of opportunity is about. It doesn’t mean that either you or I are going to end up as rocket surgeons.
It’s entirely possible – we never said otherwise. Our paradigm admits that the occasional Black will have an IQ in excess of 130 – the usual minimum for serious work in such professions. But of course, you discount this, seeing the deficit of Blacks as examples of horrendous discrimination to be remedied with massive social engineering to the detriment of Whites.
As Jared Taylor said, minorities react to statistics with confusion and White Liberals with outraged alarm, hissing like Vampyres before a cross.
You aren’t a shrinking violet Alba, nor an English rose, but rather the sturdy and storied Scottish thistle. Read up on the Zambian Space Program sometime why don’t you?
This world has a billion African Blacks and very few of them are scientists.
From SBPDL— I disagree with Pats assertion that they are in dispair,
Black people form quasi-religious demonstrations and shout “Black Lives Matter”? Why all these marching rituals?
It is despair, word magic and antithesis assertion.
Almost all blacks are in despair. A hundred years ago the common attitude was that Negroes were the descendants of a more primitive race and less should be expected of them.
Then the public attitude changed based on Boasian anthropology and Marxist ideology.
We entered into the modern Race Denial period.
Blacks heard that they were equals and they soon developed hope in the sixties that they would be as rich, prosperous and civilized as the white society around them. But of course all that was a vain hope.
Education failed, government programs failed, mass marches failed. It became clear that the mere presence of any substantial number of blacks was enough to destroy a city.
Blacks realized that they were not able to compete with the two other continental races (Caucasians and Asians) and began to despair.
Defeated peoples in despair resort to magic. When the Plains Indians were crushed by white settlers and the US Cavalry they adopted The Ghost Dance.
Finally there is Antithesis Assertion. Black women are lonely. They complain that there are not enough good black men around. Women want husbands who are good bread winners and will be good fathers. But such qualities are rare in the black community. There is also the fact that all men, even black men, tend to find black women unattractive compared to the women of other races.
So in an effort to deny that they are ugly, we got the counter assertion “Black is Beautiful”.
Blacks have no history. There are no records of events in central Africa before the Portuguese and the Arabs arrived. No written languages – no history. Oral History is like what Jack Warner said of Oral Contracts – not worth the paper it’s written on.
So blacks created “Black History”. With government help they invented accounts of black inventors and scholars doing great things. More recently we have had of the Wakanda Myth. There is virtually no native building or road constructions in sub-Saharan Africa so they assert its antithesis – a hidden super advanced post-industrial nation with sky scrapers and mono rails.
Similarly when it became clear that blacks are of no use to anyone, we get an assertion of the antithesis – Black Lives Matter. This too is a form of word magic.
Pat
September 6, 2018 at 9:41 AM
Pearls before swine, GreenAlba. I’ve called out Janos on his ‘in other words’ schtick before and it moved him not at all, because he’s a shameless and incorrigible bigot. He’ll blame you for his maiden aunt’s haemorrhoids if it suits him. If he doesn’t like milk, he’ll say you put spiders in it. Blame is central to his mentality. — it’s the only way he knows how to think.
I’ve met Black INDIVIDUALS who I sensed were my rough equals intellectually – while being far more dynamic people then I’ll ever be (I just admitted their superiority). And I knew a brilliant Mulattress who was smarter than me overall, matching my 90+ verbal percentile with a high level of ability in math and technics where I do not excel.
As I said above, our paradigm predicts this. Yours mandates absolute equality and demands that it be made so when the results aren’t forthcoming in the actual world. So who is really the bigot? Don’t be a Liberal Vampire hissing at IQ statistics. Stop being a bigot and try and be a Mentsh. That means giving up your desire to have Big Government run roughshod over local government, customs, peoples, and nations. And it means ending your jihad against the White Race.
Janos, I know it’s difficult for you to read actual words and not the ones you want to see.
However:
“And if fewer black people – or women – end up as scientists, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest”
…simply does not equate to:
“Yours mandates absolute equality and demands that it be made so when the results aren’t forthcoming in the actual world.”
Except in opposite world. But you know this and still insist on wasting everyone’s time with your verbal diarrhoea.
“Don’t be a Liberal Vampire hissing at IQ statistics”
I made no mention of IQ statistics, Janos, because they don’t strike me as the most important marker in deciding the worth of a human being, just as ‘money’s not the measure of a man’ and ‘the rank is but the guinea stamp – the man’s the [gold] for a’ that’.
I did mention them once a short time ago, however, when I pointed out that IQ and religious belief are negatively correlated. Oddly, you chose not to take that one up.
It’s an average, so doesn’t cast aspersions on anyone on this site. However, the point made in the articles where I read it was that religious people have more babies. So, over time, humanity becomes more religious and less intelligent.
Again, only averages, so no-one need take umbrage. Not even you. And there are still lots of intelligent religious people, as I kept telling myself and looking for evidence for, in that bias-confirm-y way that you do, when I was religious myself.
“But of course, you discount this, seeing the deficit of Blacks as examples of horrendous discrimination to be remedied with massive social engineering to the detriment of Whites.”
Perhaps you could point me to any of my posts where I’ve suggested massive social engineering to the detriment of anybody. If I have done so, I certainly don’t recall it. I have made a point of never commenting on your ‘affirmative action’ programmes as I know nothing about them. We don’t do ‘affirmative action’ here, although part of any teacher’s job is recognising those pupils, of any hue, who need a bit of extra help.
See, Janos, when you come out with this cr@p, you do make me doubt even your IQ, and not just your goodwill.
Do not presume to tell me what I think.
I should perhaps say that we don’t have ‘affirmative action’ as an overarching policy – any ad hoc policies in individual institutions are beyond my ken as I don’t keep up with the education sector to any great extent.
Unfairnesses will always be with us. For example, research done on the ‘elite’ Russell Group universities (which includes Edinburgh…) has shown that if you take a group of state school pupils and a group of privately educated pupils, all with the same school grades, it is the state school pupils who are more likely to get first-class degrees at Oxford and elsewhere.
This merely demonstrates that private schools can do more with a child with lower intelligence (but with wealthy parents), and, as a corollary, that state schools aren’t providing the same level of ‘value-added’ as private schools, which is pretty much what you’d expect since what you’re paying for is smaller classes with no disruptive kids in them (and a bit of future social networking thrown in).
I believe some institutions considered ‘correcting’ for this but I have no actual knowledge.
This only really matters, of course, because some of the state school pupils will miss out on places in the better universities even though they’re just as intelligent as the private school kids who get in. Such is life.
Janos: “I just admitted their superiority”.
*Bonks head lightly on desk.*
The bigot who exclaims ‘Sure, there are individual exceptions…‘ as if that proves conclusively they can’t be a bigot? As clichés go, that’s every knock-knock joke ever, times Pop Goes the Weasel, all to the power of Shave and a Haircut.
Janos, you are what you are because you insist that humans who tweak your prejudices are different kinds of being from yourself. They aren’t. There is one kind of person: the person kind. As long as you carry on doubling down on your error, you’re sunk.
Of course they’re different – just like different breeds of dogs are different – that’s why we call them different breeds. Am I bigot for noticing Golden Retrievers retrieve while Greyhounds don’t or don’t as much? Or that Greyhounds and Blacks are better runners than Goldens and Whites? Or do you deny the obvious? Or do you accept Blacks are better than Whites at certain things, but deny Whites are better at other things? If so, you are the bigot against Whites, not me against Blacks. Bigotry being an unfair or inaccurate generalization.
Alba, you now accept that IQ exists, and that it’s important as a predictor of success in the professions? If so, you must also know that it’s not evenly distributed among the Human Family, with the genes for high IQ almost completely absent in large parts of the World, such as among the Black Race of Sub Saharan Africa, the Aborigines of Australia, etc.
Our grannies used to talk about the Facts of Life. And one of the facts used to be enunciated by the gals back in the day, ain’t no romance without finance. Facts being exceedingly stubborn things, what all this boils down to is that multitudes of young men are un-marriageable because of the lack of bread-winner work.
You can see widespread societal disintegration in the Black community, the lack of work for young fellas being a strong contributing factor, the window of opportunity shutting on them first as manufacturing started its exodus to foreign shores. As economies collapsed throughout the US interior, you could see the rot spreading through White communities, financial ruin causing family break-up, opioid misuse, suicide.
“ain’t no romance without finance
Volodya,
The statement still holds as a basic truth, but a 21st Century update is in order;
“If you want to play, you got to pay…”
AN UNBIASED, IMPARTIAL, LOOK AT TRUMP WHITE HOUSE
In the book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Woodward offers a devastating portrait of a dysfunctional Trump White House, detailing how senior aides — both current and former Trump administration officials — grew exasperated with the President and increasingly worried about his erratic behavior, ignorance and penchant for lying.
Chief of staff John Kelly describes Trump as an “idiot” and “unhinged,” Woodward reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis describes Trump as having the understanding of “a fifth or sixth grader.” And Trump’s former personal lawyer John Dowd describes the President as “a fucking liar,” telling Trump he would end up in an “orange jump suit” if he testified to special counsel Robert Mueller.
“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown,” Kelly is quoted as saying at a staff meeting in his office. “I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown,”
=============
I don’t recall him ever being ON the rails, even before he became president. But success doesn’t seem to depend on being ON the rails…at least not so far.
” describes the President as “a fucking liar,” ”
Janet,
Yeah, but he’s OUR fucking liar….
Yes, I hope Kavanaugh is lying about abortion. War is deception after all. And one doesn’t owe the Truth to the enemy.
The price America has to pay for 50 years of lies about Watergate Scandal that Woodward and Bernstein sold for a comfortable lifestyle, knowing perfectly well that they both have been lying through their teeth.
I wonder about Watergate. I expect they made a mountain out of a molehill. I did not know about any lies though. What were they?
Agent Deep Throat = Hillary Clinton
Undoubtedly the Watergate scandal was the most striking example of political manipulations, as a result of which Richard Nixon – one of the most talented and perspicacious US presidents who ended the war in Vietnam and started a policy of relaxation of international tensions – went into political oblivion to the enthusiastic cries of the “progressive” public on both sides of the ocean.
And in the Soviet Union we relished the details of this American disgrace with pleasure, despite the fact that the main motivation for Nixon’s removal was not the love of democracy, but the desire of the Party of War that was emerging at the time, along with Nixon, to send to the dust bin of history the SALT-1 agreement.
And it is not by chance that Donald Trump, on the eve of the televised debates, declared himself to be a follower of Richard Nixon.
After all, he leads a merciless struggle against a woman who, 42 years ago, destroyed Nixon as a politician, somehow wresting his resignation from him.
And now she is trying to destroy the very Institution of the Presidency in the US, turning it into a golden cap of Bastinda to summon the flying monkeys and using their terrible destructive power to finish off the entire humanity.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/whirling-whirling/#comment-349440
So the issue of Nixon deliberately sabotaging the Paris peace talks to bring an end to the Vietnam war for political gain are lies as well, are they? Just asking…
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/
I mean, my cousin Joe from Flushing died right near the end of the war, so it’s an interesting point, since I never got to meet him.
Give it a rest. Trump! is not going anywhere, and if he chooses to run
in ’20, I expect that he will be reelected. The corporatist Democrats™ would rather “lose” to Trump! than win with a citizenry-oriented candidate like Sanders, and if the latter somehow gets the Democrat
nomination, he will be McGoverned.
Janet (or anyone)
Here in Ireland Trump is routinely described by the national broadcaster as a racist.
I have asked people in the past, who have called him that, for evidence.
Is there any?
Sean,
Before a list is to be generated, we would need to have a working definition of “racist” ….
Over here it is a dynamic concept. At the moment your are regarded as a racist if anyone you are related to or have ever met is related to anyone or has ever met anyone who, etc.
as manufacturing started its exodus to foreign shores. –volodya
Like magic? “Manufacturing” just grew legs and went to “foreign shores”?
Where did the factories go? China? It was a Republican president who went to China and opened up China to take the American jobs.
Manufacturing employment began to decline with the election of a Republican aging movie actor. Ronald Reagan was the root cause of offshoring of American factories and jobs once China was open for business.
Offshoring really got going when the Supreme Court appointed a Republican to be President. Between August 2000 and February 2004, under Republican Bush, manufacturing jobs were lost for a stunning 43 consecutive months — the longest such stretch since the Great Depression.
Off-shoring is just a logical consequence of Republican “trickle-down” economic theory (proven false and disastrous over the last 40 years since Reagan), with its aim of maximizing corporate short-term profits and share prices instead of building a nation and its people.
With Trump’s permission, Woodward recorded a phone call with Trump.
Woodward told the President he had requested an interview through about six people, including aides and Republican senators.
“I’m sorry we missed the opportunity to talk for the book,” Woodward said, later adding, “I maximized my effort.”
“They don’t tell me,” Trump replied, indicating no one relayed the request.
But within a few minutes, Trump changed his story. An extraordinary exchange followed as Trump asked Woodward to name the people he contacted.
“I talked to Kellyanne (Conway) about it two-and-a-half months ago,” Woodward responded, saying he discussed the book with the White House counselor over lunch.
Woodward also said he put in a request through White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, but never heard back.
“Well, a lot of them are afraid to come and talk — or, you know, they are busy. I’m busy,” Trump answered.
After several more minutes, including a long tangent from the President taking credit for the strong economy, Trump asked, “Who were the senators?”
“Sen. (Lindsey) Graham said he had talked to you about talking to me,” Woodward replied, then asked, “Now, is that not true?”
In an about-face, Trump then made a critical admission: “Senator Graham actually mentioned it quickly in one meeting,” he said. “That is true. That is true.”
Wow, a “critical admission”. The liar president! The Missing Interview with Bod “don’t you know who I am?” Woodward.
Have you ever looked at the Washington Post’s or NYT’s comprehensive lists of ‘Trump’s Lies’? Puerile trivia.
I am reading Sharyl Attkisson’s book Stonewalled about her efforts to get information out of Obama’s administration. Deny, prevaricate, stall, change your story when facts escape into the public domain, change it again when more come out, parse and spin, pressurize your boss, her boss and the head of the network, change your story again, deflect, bully, deny, deny again, change your story again, and at the end say it’s old, stale news and what exactly is ‘your’ problem, why are you so obsessed? Gun walking, Benghazi, Obamacare and the rest.
Has Bob got anything to say about ‘that’? I bet he doesn’t.
By the way, are you still signing in here on a fake email address?
As an Extrovert, you completely missed the Homosexual Crisis in the Church and the Seminaries, blaming all such allegations on mass hysteria and “extroversion” (pot-kettle-black). And when I called you on it and named sources to rectify your ignorance, you scorned them by proudly stating you had never heard of them. A classic Extrovert stance. Now that the story has broke in the World Press, your strategy to ignore the issue, perhaps slowly readjusting your subjective memory of your previous stance to lessen the internal cognitive dissonance.
Janos, I don’t have to reply to every question on the blog surely? My computer at home is locked out of this site (404 error). It used to be that I could not comment, now I cannot even read it.
As I told you before the homosexual crisis in the Church is exaggerated, and greatly so, albeit not as exaggerated as the paedophile one.
The best place to look for information is David Pierre Jr’s themediareport.com. I think he has been doing this for years, a one-man band by the looks of it, just like Rory Connor here in Ireland (irishsalem.ie).
The Chilean scandal has been absurdly inflated. This looks like a case of older men taking advantage of young seminarian or seminarians. The main witness, who how lives in your country, claimed that the abuse started when he was 15 and continued until well into his twenties. However I learn that he had earlier stated that it began when he was 17. Which of the two stories do you believe? (Me, I’ll go for the latter.) Why did he leave it for years to make his accusation? Could it be linked to his compensation claim for €600k?
Rather than me tell you go straight to the horse’s mouth.
http://www.themediareport.com/2018/07/20/chile-accuser-juan-carlos-cruz-question/
While you are in the site have a look at his recent articles about the Penn. Grand Jury, why such grand juries (despite their grand titles) are useless. Many of these priests are dead. One was born in 1892. One priest was said to have kept a bottle of holy water handy in order to wash out his ‘victim’s’ mouth after he had ‘abused’ him. I have no idea what he used to say to his victims (I do not have time to read these reports and I doubt they will tell me anyway). My guess is “This will be our little secret” or “I will make you a child of God” or “This proves that God loves you”. One of that choice handful of the clichéist of clichés which are either picked up directly from our (your) rubbishy cinema and television or culture or hang in the either as morphic resonance or lurk in the collective unconscious as archetypes. The priest is wearing his vestments or the bishop clutching his crozier. And the same hands give the poor unfortunate communion next day (I am not making this last one up – Michael O’Brien, former care home boy and former Mayor of Clonmel actually came out with it on prime time Irish television a few years ago, although he had a few years earlier given a radio interview where he denied seeing any abuse when he was in the home. I can supply a link on request. If only they had all given that earlier interview. As Woody Allen says in the cinema lobby scene in Annie Hall, “If only real life were like this.”). Whatever they are they are Stoopid – once you take a moment to step back and look at them.
Still, none of this stopped our national broadcaster, RTE, from yapping on about it just before the Pope’s recent visit.
Now, you say I am belittling your sources. Your only link was to a site I had never heard of, and in particular to a Catholic woman writer I had never heard of, who apparently has dealings with the ‘abuse industry, and wrote a foolish article that insinuated that the Pope was covering up a cover up in Chile. This is (almost) as silly as accusing Pope Pius XII of covering up a Holocaust which was not there in the first place.
I am an introvert not an extravert. You are an extravert and I am an introvert.
I think you are still annoyed that I said you would sooner join BLM than give up your anticlerical fantasy.
Here is Michael in action:
http://irishsalem.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2018-04-11T10:59:00-07:00&max-results=7
Look out for the classic holy-communion-the-next-day part of the story.
A great performance. “This woman here will tell you!”
Then look at text of the earlier radio interview. “And I say I never happened to me, I never seen it happening.”
What a shame they did not all record an earlier radio interview.
“Boy, if life were only like this!”
But knowing you, you will probably believe the wrong version!
And while I’m at it.
Spotlight The Movie.
I found it on YouTube. With Spanish subtitles, which came in handy for deciphering what the mumbling actors were saying. It was not helped by them talking with their mouths full of food for the first ten minutes. I assume this is to lend blue collar authenticity. Did this start with Hill Street Blues? I have not watched a film in years but couldn’t they have found something fresh by now? Do thrillers still include a scene where they break into some computer system and the glow from the scene is reflected in the actors’ faces? Do they still move from scene to scene with shots of the facade of a tall office building and men getting into and out of automobiles?
Anyway. The funniest part comes after 15 minutes (where I bailed out). The new head of Spotlight takes one of the team aside and asks him about the various investigations they are doing. What about that one they had started earlier but let drift? His answer:
“You mean… the Church?”
That’s the punchline and I am laughing even now as I think of it.
If you need an explanation. This is meant to imply that the team had respect for the Church, perhaps mixed with fear, and it was unheard of for anyone to take on this Powerful institution. Not in Catholic Boston where, as is well known, people still lived in fear of it and had not developed a robust independence of will, a lively, irreverent spirit of enquiry, a sophisticated, irrepressible, sassy… you get the picture.
The Boston Globe had conducted a sustained campaign against the Church and its values for years before getting hold of this story.
“You mean… the Church?”
*glow from the ‘screen’
Evidently you are not keeping up. Archbishop Vigano, a former Papal Nuncio to the United States, has revealed that Bergoglio protected, reinstated, and promoted the Arch-Predator, Bishop Ted McCarrick, who has ruined the lives of countless Seminarians.
An Archbishop is not a hysterical starlet. He cannot be discounted. And more: Nuncio to the United States a very, very high position. Thus guy was an insider who Knows. Pope Benedict quietly suppressed McCarirck, but Bergoglio undid all that, and promoted a man he knew was a monster.
Everything is changed, changed utterly since the Vigano letter. Even normies are waking up now – except for extraverts like you. As William James said in his “Varieties of Religious Experience”, they live on the surface. If and when they wake up, it comes with the force of a tidal wave, like St Paul’s experience of the Light. Indeed in sects where extraversion is the norm, introverts have a hard time since they don’t have conversion experiences like this. It’s all much more gradual since they are never so out of touch with themselves.
As I have said before, the military is not with Trump. Proof of that is in April of 2017 James Mattis ignored Trump’s request to kill Bashar al-Assad. Trump may have the title Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, but it don’t mean shit when Trump’s subordinates refuse to obey his orders. The troops have the real power, not Trump. Trump is just an idiotic narcissistic draft dodger.
Scripture interprets itself, so you must find another * to compare;
*not private [ alone ] interpretation – MessianicD
=============
^This^ line and the entire rest of your comment at 5:24AM sounds like a gigantic crock of mumbo jumbo to my ear. Try writing it in 2018 Standard American English and leave out all the biblical buzzwords and maybe it’ll make some sense to me…but I doubt it.
Q., let me try to put MD’s 5:24am gigantic crock of mumbo jumbo post into words more familiar: “Don’t worry, be happy [ Rejoice ]”
Thank you, Q. He’s being dismissive of me and/or traditional Catholic exegesis so he didn’t even both to try and be clear. His biblical guru is actually pretty good – rejects the idea of eternal hell which I do appreciate quite a bit.
That’s a bad both up in there. Put it somewhere else or ignore it. My Kingdom for a capo (an edit button)!
It’s entirely possible – we never said otherwise. Our paradigm admits that the occasional Black will have an IQ in excess of 130 –
I guess I missed out.
I went to Katholic grade school and our IQs were tested.
The ones with highest scores were told to take an entrance test for gifted High Schools.
I do have a cousin w a PHd, but the subject is absurd, imo.
His borther got all As w a major in chemistry.
since he is White, he got rejected from Med Schools.
I hear the indian MDs that USA imports by the 1000s are awful.
One even skinned his son and threw the flesh in a dumpster.
Did you see that article the other day by Andrew Joyce? He puts the glare of truth on the problem, in the U.K. but also in the U.S.
Cosby’s star should be removed and its location expanded to contain the names of his many victims. The man is still not in jail, sentencing set for the end of September. How will it all play out, America’s Dad holding all that black money?
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/vandals-scribble-serial-rapist-bill-cosbys-walk-fame-star-210901925.html
Effin’ schnoz on that guy!
Have you seen the calibre of his accusers? They make Weinstein’s look like Snow White. A fairy tale would be more convincing than all of these.
One big dysfunctional family. I love …………, most of you! –Eoin
I love all of you!
To those of you on CFN who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Remember messiandruid who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of his way of life and imitate his faith. messianicdruid is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by peak oil, new urbanism, and all kinds of strange teachings, but it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace and gardening.
Even Cosby? Drop the drivel and let me cast the first stone.
If he hands you a Puddin’ Pop, don’t eat it.
Didn’t remember about those pops. Checked it out and now it’s even used like, ‘man, she’s real puddin’ pops!’
I have avoided TV so when I read he was ‘Papa Puddin’
I didnt know at first.
OJ was the front man for Avis.
Sick, what ad men push on us. TWMNBN.
Boycott Nike.
Does this make ANY sense? Hitler had nothing against them but he hated them? == Janos
What exactly janos you pretend to NOT understand – the difference between the Anti-Semitism religious and Anti-Semitism racial?
Racial Anti-Semitism states clearly enough that folks like me or JFK have special “Jewish” gene in their blood, that their noses of not the “proper” form, that they have to be exterminated no matter what religion they profess or not profess any.
I meant to say JHK, not JFK
St Bernard was immensely holy == Janos
“Saint” Bernard was the author of the concept “natio deleatur” – Final Solution – to any, not just the Jewish question:
Bernard was even more outspoken in a letter he circulated soon after the diet to rulers in order to rally crusaders. There he forbade them in any circumstances to come to terms with the pagans, until “either the religion or the nation be wiped out (Lat. aut ritus ipse, aut natio deleatur)” [Bernardus abbas Claravallensis, “Epistolae,” no. 457].
https://erenow.com/postclassical/crusades/962.html
Ayanna Pressley, Andrew Gillum, Brianna Wu, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, Josh Zakim, Stacey Abrams, etc.
THE BERNIE REVOLUTION CONTINUES!
No, it ain’t. Sorry. Burnie’s toast, tortured, cooked, finished, recruited, broken.
Sorry, Bernie.
IdPol candidates all, whose job is to prevent any improvements
in the lives of the many. Nice try with the Bernie! conflation.
By 2020 the Democrats will have conclusively shown that
they will do nothing at all for the non-elite citizenry; the 90%.
Demorats: paid to diffuse anger towards our self-styled elites, and, of course, to lose.
Woodward recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with Trump staff for his book on Trump. When Woodward spoke to Trump on the phone Woodward let Trump know everything in the book can be backed up by primary sources (interviews). If Trump tries to use his “fake news” tact it won’t work. If Trump tries to lie, it won’t work.
Trump is now powerless to attack Woodward’s book.
Woodward is an excellent example how the Black Project operates: by sowing seeds of discord, distrust and mutual suspicion among the members of Trump administration – the Hand of Great Semantic Manipulator, Bastinda the Great and Terrible!
Hurts my feeling how that snobbish muzefaka pretends to be a reputable journalist.
“America: The Farewell Tour”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GeE5WnTUsF8
Chris Hedges: “We have to see Reality for what it and react against it successfully!”
Member of the audience: “Don’t be so negative! Think Positive, Dude!”
He gave a Q&A here last week, and no one cried out anything so brainless. Got him to sign my book, too.
Ah, Chris Hedges, slicing through reality like a hot knife through butter. Better be careful though because he will slice your butter as readily as that of The Other whom you detest.
I Resist! Therefore, I am!
A lot of people are going to suffer and die (starve or be murdered by gangs) as a consequence of bad policies and corrupt politicians. It is the cost of evil. Regardless of how this unfolds the survivors will not be the best among us. They will be the worst. So the society that emerges in the short term will not be better. But over the longer term goodness, mercy, justice and decency will triumph over evil. God made us that promise and I believe him.
Re the Great Climate Change Debate, Martin Armstrong cites the Hunger Stones recently in his blog. Trigger Alert: He is an AGW “denier”. Don a surgical mask, or better, a complete HazMat suit with breathing apparatus.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/the-hunger-stones-have-appeared/
My head is still spinning from the Chris Hedges link kindly provided by Pucker. I love the smell of austere Presbyterian Certitude in the morning!
Russians are on the Move!
Russian planes bomb targets in Idlib province
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45407401
MOSCOW, September 5 (Itar-Tass) – RIA Novosti.
On Tuesday, four Russian aircraft struck at the facilities of the Jebhat an Nusra group in the province of Idlib. This was stated by the official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Major-General Igor Konashenkov.
Foreign Minister Lavrov announced the desire of the United States to withdraw “an-Nusra” from the impact in Syria.
Two Su-34 fighter-bombers bombed terrorist depots, where drones were collected and stored, as well as explosives for them. These UAVs, as noted by Konashenkov, were used to attack the Russian air base Khmeimim and settlements in the provinces of Aleppo and Hama.
In addition, the Su-35S multipurpose fighter destroyed a warehouse with portable antiaircraft missile systems with high-precision ammunition.
All attacks of the military security services were imposed exclusively on the confirmed objects of terrorist groups far from villages and towns, the representative of the Defense Ministry stressed.
Donald Trump:
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1036740691211284480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1036740691211284480%7Ctwgr%5E383231323b626f6c6465725f6e6577735f616374696f6e&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-middle-east-45407401
By carefully choosing the targets, the Russian forces comply with the wishes of our American partners not to inflict damages on a civilian population.
I’m happy to report … at the ‘Hispanic Pride Festival’ in Hartford on Labor Day weekend nobody got shot, which is pretty unusual for this sort of event. However, down in NYC at a similar Caribbean/West Indian Pride celebration there indeed were casualties, including a man shot in the back right at the beginning.
Our own Country Fairs have begun, some of which have run continuously for 200 years, in effect unnamed ‘white pride’ festivals. So far no casualties (except for a few bee stings) and none are expected.
Tractor pulls, blacksmith demonstrations, pie eating contests, livestock displays, plenty of garden veggies on sale, local country and western bands, yes, we have those, but no armed roving gangs spraying bullets at rival gangs from stolen 9mm handguns.
Also, Ebola has returned with a vengeance to Central Africa, Uganda and the Congo. (from consuming monkey meat, don’t know?) This time around tho I doubt the president will be flying the afflicted in to the US for free treatment in American hospitals like the last time.
brh
BRH,
An aside regarding local fairs:
Been taking the Roadmaster around to some car shows (connected to tiny local fairs lately) and have had some very positive feedback as to its condition and relative rarity. I had no idea; I thought there were a boatload of these beasts around. Apparently not ’round these parts.
If you know of anyone who’d like it, I need the garage space! lol
Geez, I missed the Blandford Fair this last weekend! Damn. (My brother was by and we labored on the firewood. Nice of him to spend his holiday time helping me.)
As weapons manufacturers and their satraps in the political system sniff out the world-wide whiffs of cordite in order to turn it into gold (contrary to the interests of those they rule), I listen with grim amusement to “Judge” Kavanaugh’s bullshittery in front of the other thoroughly corrupt assholes that are pretending to represent the lumpenprole (by all means “legal”, of course).
What I’m gleaning from this exercise in solidifying power and the lies that support it is: This particular “judge” is interested in taking away our civil rights while at the same time granting us the [federal] right to some very accurate long-range weaponry coupled with high velocity ammunition.
If you happen to be of the female type of human in the U.S., I’d suggest you get yourself a semi-automatic rifle and learn how to use it with efficiency and accuracy at distance. (You’ll figure out why in the very short run of the human history timeline.)
Oz, as far as I know Kavanaugh really hasn’t said anything yet.
He hasn’t been given a chance to say anything.
what do you think, were yesterday’s Senate histrionics and street theatre staged and planned out, or were they spontaneous?
brh
BRH,
I believe it to be *mostly* staged, including today’s coached-in-advance “interrogations”. (Look how smoothly it’s going today, as opposed to yesterday’s posturings.*)
If someone could *definitively* prove this to be the case, I think a lot more sleepers might awaken.
…But, even if it were established fact, who would know if it were not allowed to be voiced?
*BTW, Sheldon Whitehouse’s opening salvo exposed the ugly truth about who really runs “the joint”. Let’s just see how much traction it gets; I surmise, little to none. Most illuminating though, despite being truth no one can handle.
Fuck ’em all. 😉
“Oz, as far as I know Kavanaugh really hasn’t said anything yet.”
Baaaahahahahaha! Good one. As Droopy Grassley keeps pointing out, scary documents that can damage public confidence will be provided “later” and Kavanaugh would do well to keep his mouth shut. This is easily scryed between the gibberish of legalities and boilerplate platitudes mouthed by all participants. Look into the consortium that put this guy forward. Although you (personally) may agree with their agenda, that is besides the point; this is no independent adjudicator.
…And Kavanaugh can’t remember shit about what he was or wasn’t involved in cobbling together after 9/11. I’d probably remember that period pretty well.
You’re projecting your own voice onto BRH. He really means that Kavanaugh hasn’t said anything yet (he is correct too). Seeing you two together in person would be a comedy routine – massive projection on both sides in order to maintain the veneer of cordiality. Or to give you guys some credit, a conscious effort to maintain conversational boundaries. We all do it!
Fuck off, spook. (That there is for defining our conversational boundary, spook.)
A direct hit in other words. Thank you Zone. Now how about that apology anent Whites being persecuted by the American Elite? It’s common knowledge now. And you are a man of the people (a commoner)…..
Nah, you give yourself waaaay too much credit, spook.
Your tricks, divisive tactics, “opinions”, political positions, racial and religious crankery… in fact, EVERY shit-filled post you’ve ever besmeared this site with reflect upon you and you alone. Remember that, spook.
You and I share nothing, and I do believe you’ve stared into the abyss for far too long and have become what you pretend. You will find that a distinct disadvantage in the actual world of human interaction when your “usefulness” is at an end and times require serious-minded truth-tellers and the ostracizing of con-men, liars and users of all sorts.
And now, since you did not understand the first time about “our” precious and cozy “conversational boundaries”, here’s the essence: Fuck Off, spook. Nothing you might have to say has the slightest import to me and mine.
-End communique
I was right and you were wrong. And you know it but can’t admit it. That makes you no better than the Evil Elite who rule us. In fact, it makes you their servant in a deep sense.
BRH
Is that the scene I saw in a clip on Icelandic television a couple of mornings ago? The new appointee enters the chamber, accompanied by family members and a welcome speech has only just begun when (oh the drama!) this well-dressed woman interrupts him and starts waffling about four thousand documents that have just turned up? (Were they held up in the post?)
Or was it a scene from a film?
Does this kind of thing impress people over there? I think it impresses Iceland, for what it is worth.
Green Alba, don’t kid yourself, the EU is a fool’s errand.
The crack-up of empires during and after WW1 should have sent a message to Europe’s upper-crust: people don’t like despots, they don’t like rule from distant capitols, they don’t like elites who do nothing more than serve themselves at everyone else’s expense. The end of the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs, not to mention Kaiser Bill, should have been a lesson. Does anyone mourn the dissolution of the Ottoman empire? Maybe Erdogan does.
The EU looks and smells like Empire. They say the EU is noble in its aims, to counteract warmaking nationalism, to foster a pan-European identity. But Brexit is a reaction to what is nothing more than a scheme to erode national borders for the benefit of the few and the detriment of the many. That it hurts the interests of a multitude of people who formerly earned bread-winner wages is of no concern to the rich and well-connected who portray attempts by the less well-off to look after their own interests as unworthy and illegitimate.
Good for the Brits, they made the right call on this. Will it be disruptive to remake investment and trade policy? You bet. Will there be a price to pay? Yes. Will it piss-off the wealthy when they realize they can’t forever and indefinitely exploit poor regions? For sure.
No matter, the arrangements arrived at in the last few decades, those underpinned by the idea that the only purpose of the CEO class is to enrich themselves and their ilk, and also the notion that national borders are something that no intelligent and educated person could subscribe to, are not workable, they are a spectacular repudiation of common sense, and they don’t stand up to even minimal scrutiny. These arrangements are not workable and the passage of time doesn’t make things better.
Do you want to use the word TREASON? OK, if you want to, go ahead. There’s such a sloppy overuse of “ism” and “phobia” to denigrate people who dare to protest their own destitution that hurling an accusation of treachery and betrayal is just deserts. Does “treason” carry hideous consequences for those accused and convicted of such an offense? Yep, but maybe it’s better to deploy this term to make clear to the instigators the seriousness of the present-day situation and the deleterious nature of what they’ve inflicted.
Like I said before the men-of-action at the tip of the societal pyramid disdain history as the domain of absent-minded perfessers. But a lot of history isn’t that distant, it’s within living memory and they are not learning the lessons, in fact, they’re repeating the mistakes.
Excellent, excellent comment. The EU is functioning precisely as designed: as a TINA (for now!), elite-benefitting entity.
See what they *did to Greece*, if you want to what’s to come.
Naked Capitalism’s coverage of that topic was/is very good, BTW.
“…want to *know* what’s to come”.
The EU looks and smells like Empire
What’s wrong with your nose? It’s smells like a god damned Reich!
Volodya
I’m not sure what the TREASON allusion is about, so can’t comment. I don’t use the word ‘deplorable’ in the US case and I don’t equate Leave voters with the people who courted their votes or suggest that they are stupid.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood (and doubtless others) are not friends of the working man – they are investment bankers (Redwood advised his investors to invest in the EU and not the UK). They want a low-regulation economy that keeps the working man in his box and the profits flowing to the 1%.
Aside from that, we are not on opposite sides, in that we both want ordinary people to have jobs and dignity.
The difference is that you see something better outside the EU whereas I think it’s just going to be the same old, same old but with different masters. And a faltering economy with a massive public debt that will cost more to service as the economy falters.
And I still don’t see how trading with countries on the other side of the world in preference to those on your own doorstep makes ANY sense, except in the minds of the delusional who think BAU is going to continue ad infinitum.
Archie bunker said…
In mpls, a Somalian police officer who is charged with murder and manslaughter of a white woman who had called police to report a sexual assault in a alley behind her home, when the cops pulled up, she went to the driver window and was shot by Mohammed Noor, a affirmative action hire who was fast tracked into the job by the mayor and city council. He shot the woman from the passenger seat, against department policy, endangering his partner as well. After protest by his defense team, his psychological records were released, they detail a indifference to human life, a absolute non hiring situation, however, in their attempt to advance somalias, which there are 100k plus in this city, he was given the job anyway. Now taxpayers are on the hook for a massive lawsuit, this city is full of africans, is proud to be a sanctuary city, and should be avoided at all costs
not only has Minnesota dealt with terrorism from their somalis, millions have been spent trying and convicting them trying to join ISIS, a widespread daycare scandal involving 100 million in taxpayer fraud by these creatures, the Mpls airport reported them sending suitcases stuffed with millions in cash back to Somalia, presumably to terrorist groups. Yes, this is the fine group of people that Governor Dayton said about, if native white Minnesotans don’t like them here, they should leave the state
And brought measles back with their unvaccinated children to spread about the state costing more millions, the answer to your question,
Half of the USA in drought as Lake Powell and Lake Mead drop to dangerously low levels.
The other half has more water this year than in human memory.
Am I nuts for even contemplating this, but why the F not could we maybe spend a few billion less on Africom and Afghanistan and instead create a nationwide system of aqueducts and redistribute some of that excess Eastern water? Maybe recharge an aquifer or two?
Geez Louise. We can put a man on the moon (Deniers duly noted; we can at least create the illusion) but we can’t redistribute water around the continent?
While I’m at it we apparently can put a man on the moon but we can’t create and install intelligent traffic signals? How any times has one sat there counting down the seconds into minutes observing stopped drivers at all four roadways doing the same? Have TPTB not heard of global warming? Oh but we can install cameras, can’t we?
Bill Hill, jeesus, can’t you see that the garden of American delusions of influence and leadership of a liberal global order must be carefully tended and nurtured? Where better place to plant and water this garden than such fertile ground as Afghanistan?
I’ve been such a fool…
For love? Me too. For love of the false America? No. For the love of the real America, the coming White Republic? Maybe a bit.
Maranatha! Come quickly O Lord!
Ad Astra per Aspera!
Elysianfield, Pay-to-Play?
Yes, thanks, good point, and your updated expression is attributable to fucking in its numerous varieties, whether it’s of the sexual nature or financial in form. It’s horrifying to think of the cash machine that Billy Fastfuck would have turned the Oval Office into, the Clintons being the reigning champeens of the financial sort (of fucking).
“attributable” : maybe “applicable” is a better term.
“I Resist! Therefore, I am!” —Billy Hill on Chris Hedges
For Chris perhaps “I believe because it is absurd” is more appropriate (apologies to Tertulius)
^Tertullian^
In fact Janet I have enormous regard for Chris Hedges, although in my campaign against puffery in all its forms even he is not spared an arrow or two from my own quiver of Truth.
I admire that he plays no rabid partisan favorites and calls it as he sees it. Still, should we ask quid est veritas he will answer.
I listen with grim amusement to “Judge” Kavanaugh’s bullshittery in front of the other thoroughly corrupt assholes that are pretending to represent the lumpenprole == Clueless Oz
Judge Kavanaugh, whom President Trump nominated for the post of Justice of the Supreme Court, clearly referring to the fact that 22 years ago he was the motor of the investigation of the sexual relations of President Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky, as well as such sweet crimes of Hillary Clinton as multiple frauds with government securities, wholesale illegal drug sale, contract assassinations, slave trade, which would nicely emphasize her fight for women’s rights, since we are talking about sale of underage girls to brothels for pedophile use and was rumored to have confronted her manner of getting rid of any interference in her political career.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-winners-will-lose-and-the-losers-will-win/#comment-365484
Kudos to Kunstler for picking San Francisco’s new transit hub center for September’s “Eyesore of the Month!”
I have witnessed with my own eyes the awkward ugliness that this building brings to the city. Wouldn’t you know, the escalator broke on the first day it opened. At present, it functions as a glorified bus station. They planned to connect it to the train station, but alas, there was no money, so at some point of in the future (my guess, 2050) they might come up with the addition $2 billion to extend the rail line–of course by 2050 it will cost a trillion.
Another sad tale of the transit center is that all the digging apparently caused the Millennium Tower to tilt. The geniuses who built this high-end luxury condo didn’t anchor the tower into bedrock. Most people, but not all, realize that the San Andreas Fault sits just 10 miles to the west.
The Millennium Tower is leaning about 18 inches to the north west. Just this past weekend, the curtain wall that holds the shiny glass exterior started twirking, and a big, glass panel broke. Now they have a pedestrian detour on Mission Street sidewalk so no one gets clonked by falling glass.
Be assured that this engineering disaster will be tied up in the courts for the next 20 years–the ultimate Bleak House! The tower residents are sad that their multi-million dollar condos aren’t going to make much of a killing in the real estate market. (Feel sorry for Joe Montana, for example.)
Jen in San Jose
“I admire that he plays no rabid partisan favorites and calls it as he sees it.” –Billy Hill
I have watched several of his interviews. Chris Hedges is pretty consistent about his self-admitted hatred of liberals. Then I noticed in his examples of why things are so fucked up he mentions two presidents: Clinton and Obama. Partisan.
Pay closer attention. Specifically to his analysis of FDR. I sense that for him the presidents with R by their name are for him beneath contempt.
Those with D by their name have kowtowed to the corporatocracy as obligingly as the R faction, while simultaneously proclaiming solidarity with the working class. Think Nancy Pelosi addressing Occupy Wall St in Berkeley. If there is a category for Hedges lower than beneath contempt then I am confident Pelosi occupies it. Nay, owns it.
The Democrats are trying to disrupt the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. They aren’t Americans anymore and it is shown by their actions and beliefs. Time to go our separate ways, peacefully or otherwise. They started it and they’ve made it necessary. We have the moral high ground and Right makes Might.
Nike down 4% because of the Kappy debacle. They keep trying to foist their bullshit ideology on the White American People and we aren’t having it. Kaepernick isn’t a great athlete, but rather a second rate social justice warrior. White sports fans are coocoo for cocoa puffs about athletes, not SJWs. Hopefully this is a wake up call for this lost nation – grown men who wear the names and numbers of other men on their bodies. No dignity whatsoever. Black Men too. Not even little Black kids will ever wear the name and number of a White Player. And in general, Blacks aren’t such fanatical fans even when they love the game – and that’s a good thing. They don’t need faux tribalism and nationalism since they already have it.
It – the real thing in other words.
Colin Kaepernick
Colin Kaepernick donated $25,000 to group named after convicted cop killer and former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur who broke out of jail and fled to Cuba–UKDM.
“Nike down 4% because of the Kappy debacle.” –Janos
Nike sells stuff in countries all over the world. Probably up 4% in other places. And has nothing to do with the principled nonviolent protest against police murdering non-threatening unarmed Black people. You can be a little kid in a park and be shot in three seconds. You can be selling cigarettes on the street and be murdered in plain sight of everyone. You can be put handcuffed into a paddy wagon and be slammed around until you come out dead upon arriving at the police station. That is what the NFL protests are about: stopping murders.
Yeah, cuz we don’t matter since they plan to genocide us anyway, albeit gradually. Well they’re just one of the multitude of Corporations who are going to have to leave these shores.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/03/trader-guilty-of-uks-biggest-detained-prior-to-deportation
Ghanaian King of Scotland to be deported back to Ghana. Liberal MP’s are aghast. His lawyer says, This is really unfair to Kweku(!). Scottish ladiers are weeping in their porridge, so much so that their oatmeal is soggy. Scottish men are steely eyed in their determination to protect their King and Exploiter. He’s another Charlie Stuart. Damn those Brits! Kweku himself says he wants to stay because he’s British and wants to help protect Britain against people like himself. What a man. Why can’t White criminals be good like this?
Alba! What you doing to save King Kweku?
‘E looks like a propah Englishman to me, no’ as prehhy as Idris Elba, but keeps a stiff upper (boot)lip, mate!”
“Scottish ladiers are weeping in their porridge, so much so that their oatmeal is soggy.”
You seem not to have got the concept of porridge, Janos, but no matter.
I saw this person talking on the news and he struck me as a bit of a chancer, but what would I know?
I’d go with what the Home Office spokesman said, even though the Home Office could get gold medals for ineptitude in almost every domain:
“Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them and we have removed more than 42,800 foreign offenders since 2010.”
Yeah, that.
Strikes me he’ll manage somehow in Ghana.
He’s been in Britain since he was four. He’s British. It’s not fair to Kweku. Have a heart. He’s just getting his life together….
42,000 plus 800? And how many have been let in during that time? And how many of those are on the dole and are guilty of criminal offences? And yes, abusing White girls should be considered a criminal offence.
From WND:
GAY DUO MARRIED BY GINSBURG ACCUSED OF RAPING STUDENT
“The New York Daily News reports David Daniels and Scott Walters, who were married by Ginsburg in 2014, are under investigation for allegedly drugging and violently raping a student in 2010.
“The report notes Daniels, 52, is ‘the most famous countertenor in the world,’ while his ‘now-husband Walters, 36, is a respected conductor.’
“’The couple is so highly regarded that they were married in 2014 by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,’ the Daily News noted.
“Samuel Schultz alleges that in 2010, the two men drugged and raped him following a performance in Texas.
“He claims he was left unconscious and woke the next afternoon in a strange bed, disoriented, in pain and bleeding [no need to be more specific.]
“The report said Schultz was a 23-year-old graduate student at Rice University, and he kept his experience secret for years because he feared repercussions.
“’Emboldened by both the PoundMeToo movement and upon learning that Daniels had made tenure at the University of Michigan – where he’d be in close personal contact with young aspiring singers – Schultz filed a complaint with the U-M Police Department’s special victims unit in July…
“’The investigation is active and no arrests have been made, Houston police said. They declined to provide any further details…
“’He says he only remembers taking a few sips of the drink at the couple’s apartment – and then he blacked out,’ the report said.
His therapist at the time said the incident affected the student’s emotional and psychological state.
“Walters and Daniels deny the claims.
[At the time, there were calls for both Ginsburg and Associate Justice Elena Kagan to recuse themselves.]
“Fox News reported they were urged to recuse themselves because they both tacitly endorsed same-sex marriage by performing ceremonies. Also cited was Kagan’s prior work to promote homosexual rights and Ginsburg’s public commentary on the issue.
“The Foundation for Moral Law filed a motion asking for their recusal, but the justices did not respond.
“Also, the American Family Association conducted a campaign urging citizens to explain to their representatives in Congress why the two justices shouldn’t participate in the case.
“’U.S. Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse themselves from any cases involving the homosexual marriage issue on the basis that they have conducted same-sex marriage ceremonies,’ the campaign letter stated.
‘Both of these justices’ personal and private actions actively endorsing gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases already before the Supreme Court,’ AFA said.
“But there was a simple solution, AFA contended.
“’Congress has directed that federal judicial officers must disqualify themselves from hearing cases in specified circumstances. Title 28, Section 455 of the United States Code states ‘any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.’
“’Both Kagan and Ginsburg have not only been partial to same-sex marriage, they have proven themselves to be activists in favor of it! … Urge your members of Congress to privately and publicly call on Justices Kagan and Ginsburg to properly and legally recuse themselves from cases involving same-sex marriage,’ the campaign said.
“Ginsburg had publicly voiced her opinion, as WND reported.
“The far-left justice revealed her preferences in a Bloomberg News interview when she said it ‘would not take a large adjustment’ for Americans ‘should the justices say gay marriage is constitutional.’
“’How can Ginsburg possibly think that it’s proper judicial conduct for her to speak out on this issue while the marriage case is pending before the court?’ asked National Review columnist Ed Whelan. ‘If she had any sense of her duty to maintain both the appearance and the reality of impartiality, she would recognize that she is now obligated to recuse herself from the case. But of course she won’t.’
“She didn’t…
Tate, where going to have to reconvene Night Court, or the Holy Vehm. Plato wanted a version of this as well for his Republic. I envision a skylight open to the stars. The Court will be held on moonless nights if possible. Or perhaps in a clearing in the woods in fine weather under the Full Moon. I always wondered why Vincent Price’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” struck such a strong note with me. Now I know.
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Secret-Societies/The-Holy-Vehm.html
8 years later. Not sure I believe it.
HOWEVER— Do you know of the Larry Birkin scandal and attempt at a cover up?
Makes this look mild,
The News Tape as a Tin Can and the Artistic Truth of the Rumors as a Can Opener
The World Civil War, of which I wrote many times, unfolds around the confrontation between Russia and the United States, and two branches of the same subject of history – the Globalist West personified by the EU and NATO – fuel international tensions.
They need a war between Russia and the United States to establish their domination on a planetary scale, but they are opposed by the national governments in Russia and the US, headed by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, respectively. And in this confrontation, Putin and Trump are informal allies.
It is noteworthy that their ally in the fight against the Globalist West on a number of issues is the English monarchy, which initiated Brexit. And the ally of NATO and the EU in Russia is the so-called grouping of Prime Minister Medvedev, and in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Theresa May and the City of London, where she delivered her famous speech, essentially declaring war on Trump.
And after Putin’s speech in defense of Medvedev’s pension reform, it became clear that the role of Margarita of Anjou, who provoked the War of Roses in 15th-century England, in Russia in 2018 is played by Dmitry Medvedev, who either forced or persuaded Vladimir Putin to support the pension reform that he started. And in retrospect it is clear that it was precisely the undermining of Vladimir Putin’s authority and by ricochet one of Donald Trump’s that was the original goal of this so-called pension reform, and most likely the Medvedev’s close circle forced Putin to make the notorious appeal, just as Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan forced Trump to sign a year ago anti-Trump law, after Trump was presented as a birthday gift with the execution of his friend Scalise several hours before the vote, or by using this execution, which is not much better.
That’s why I call it the World Civil War, and it’s the War of the Roses because:
1. So far, the main battlefield is the United States, and for Americans this conflict is a struggle for Anglo-Saxon and Christian identity, which was defined precisely during the War of the Roses
2. The religious situation in Russia really resembles the situation in England at the end of the Hundred Years War
And first of all I want to draw your attention that to a large extent this similarity is induced by the fact that the fight in Russia is the periphery of that struggle that is going on in the USA. Once again: not a method of consideration, but the actual situation in Russia itself is determined by the struggle for Anglo-Saxon identity in the United States, formed by the War of the Roses.
And this induction is strengthened by the fact that in Russia now, as well as in England in the 15th century, a lot of churches diverging with each other over minor issues or on paramount issues, but which did not receive church consideration and the corresponding heresies were not condemned.
But most importantly, there is a force external to the Church, which will advance to the leading posts in the Church heretics and use the aforementioned minor differences as cracks in which the pegs of the split can be driven. And the split in the Church in the absence of other institutions that unite the country means civil war.
So, let’s recall where I left off:
Vladimir Putin, before a meeting with Angela Merkel, went to Austria to attend the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl specifically to defeat Angela Merkel, since the head of the Fourth Reich is such an anti-fascist, and Karin Kneissl is allegedly a fan of Mussolini and the daughter of a personal pilot of King Hussein, who in his youth was a member of the SS.
Moreover, she became Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria from the Austrian Freedom Party, in which at one time (in the 50-60s of the 20th century) former Wehrmacht officers assembled. In addition, this party in Germany, now proud of its denazification, calls the Nazi party (as well as the whole of Austria), and it happens because Austria is Hitler’s homeland, but as a victim of the Anschluss did not have denazification.
Why exactly Hillary right now had to run this rumor, which is tied to a very specific time and place. And the most important question is who is it intended for, who is its addressee?
And I was immediately struck by the conscious substitution of Nazism for Fascism in this rumor, combined with the mention of Mussolini and the Anschluss of Austria.
The only group in the US that does not experience negative emotions from the mention of Mussolini and Fascism, but experiences very negative emotions from the mention of Hitler and Nazism, are Italian Jews who actively supported Bernie Sanders in the summer of 2016, who spit on Hillary Clinton’s calls and did not let her forge the primaries in their districts (it is enough to look at the result of voting in Bensonhurst).
And the other group that actively supported Bernie Sanders in New York, who spit on Hillary calls, was Bob Marley’s admirers – Rastafarians who consider Mussolini to be the devil incarnate because he fought against Haile Selassie I, whom Bob Marley’s worshipers consider God, and Bob Marley his prophet.
Well, who knows now that Fascism and Nazism are different and in many respects opposing concepts or that Pope Pius XII during the Second World War rescued Jewish children and was in very good relations with Mussolini, to no small extent by facilitating his coming to power? And about the fact that Mussolini almost started the war with Hitler because of the Anschluss of Austria know very few, despite that this is written in Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, all these storylines by the hand of the Master are intertwined in this rumor so that you will not be able to unravel, but we will recall the War of the Roses, and also about the fact that in 2016 Bernie Sanders was supported by Vatican and immediately after the obviously falsified defeat in the largest state of New York he flew to Rome to meet with the Pope, it will be difficult not to apply this can-opener to such news as the demands to Pope Francis to resign due to the fact that he allegedly hid the facts of sexual harassment of the high hierarchs of the Catholic Church in the US, by the same media that aggressively demands the impeachment of Trump, it is difficult not to suspect that this rumor aimed at discrediting the Catholic Church in New York (and possibly in the United States).
Pope Francis Long Knew of Cardinal’s Abuse and Must Resign, Archbishop Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/world/europe/pope-ireland-sexual-abuse-letter-vigano.html
But one more purpose of this rumor is the desire to quarrel pro-Catholic Jews in New York, one of which is Bernie Sanders, with the Rastafarians – one of the most organized groups that supported him during the primaries in 2016. But this is a very dangerous game in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections, since Afro-Americans in general and Rastafarians in particular traditionally vote for Democrats, and two years ago they left the Democratic Convention, but they did not vote for Trump.
And this year they can vote! Why should Hillary quarrel her supporters or take them out of hibernation, those who will not vote for her and, in principle, will not go to the polls?
So there is another task at hand…
To be continued…
And when Selassie got off the plane in Jamaica, the Rastas wouldn’t approach him since he looked more White than Black. They considered it a trick of The Man. Don’t know where they are now with it. Ancient Ethiopia was White, apparently.
Low IQ Black idiots. The usual fare. Whites who get involved with them are simply pathetic and of course low IQ as well.
“since they plan to genocide us anyway” –janos
Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis [ miscegenation ] No stopping it.
Whites cannot cede white identity to the colored races. This is muy importante. Whitedom must become a big tent, not a purity spiral. Even though I am the whitest of the white, this is so important in the U.S. where purity is a deathtrap. Whitey must win the war for identity against the coloreds.
That’s the pit Latin America fell into. Many of their “Whites” aren’t White at all. All of the “German” colonies in the Caribbean are now Black. Likewise Ancient Egypt weakened in this way and slowly died. First one goes, then another and then the flood. On one island, the Carib Indians say now that any girl who bears a Black child is out of the tribe. There is simply no other way.
The One drop rule saved us from this fate up till recently. It didn’t fail us – we failed It. It can still save us if we go back to it.
“On one island, the Carib Indians say now that any girl who bears a Black child is out of the tribe. There is simply no other way.”
You mean those Carib Indians who number in the hundreds, lol?
Seriously, there are other ways, not one way, but all this will lead to an informal caste society with lily-white pedigrees an important part of the upper-tier social experience.
That appears inevitable, at least to me. Not as black or brown as Brazil, fortunately.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/405226-ny-times-publishes-op-ed-claiming-to-be-written-by-senior-trump-official
This comes out at the same time as Woodward’s new book, “Fear” with exactly the same message. Coincidence? The anonymous author says he isn’t “Deep State” but rather “Study State”. Like hell. Same thing. Trump screwed up by not cleaning all these rats out.
Trump screwed up by not cleaning all these rats out. –janos
Trump hired them and put them all there as the White House staff. They are not Obama holdovers. Trump does not know how to vet staff. Trump does not know how to negotiate. Trump does not know how to lead so as to inspire loyalty.
Trump’s problems have been created by Trump, no one else.
The News Tape as a Tin Can and the Artistic Truth of the Rumors as a Can Opener (cont)
So there is another task at hand, and then it comes to mind that this rumor was supposed to quarrel American Austrians with Americans of German descent and again recalling the War of the Roses, we immediately aggravate these arguments by a very important fact, like the fact that New York is a city of UN headquarters and diplomats, who also noticed the decline in the popularity of the mainstream media and the systematic falsity of public opinion polls, began to appear regularly on Union Square and monitor what is happening there.
While around the UN, well-paid and well-organized demonstrations are going on round the clock, New York rumors with diplomatic mail are dispersed all over the world, and, as the situation in Myanmar has shown, often provoking conflicts.
And once again remembering the War of the Roses, we immediately recall that Austria is a Catholic country, and Germany is a Protestant and the launch of provocations means that the Clintonoids have given up on the unity of their beloved EU and the peace between various groups of their supporters.
And this means that according to the sociological service itself (and such a service is very well-paid by any political force in the US in order not to become a victim of its own propaganda), all these supporters are no longer supporters and the authors of the rumors hope that one group of former supporters of the democrats, looking at the willingness of another group to vote for the Republicans, will not go to the polls at all and their voices can be appropriated (stolen).
And this explains the new and rather absurd exacerbation of Mueller’s hunt on Trump, when on one day the head of the Trump election campaign Manafort was convicted and his lawyer concluded a deal with justice.
Namely, since Russia’s intervention in the American elections according to the Clintonoid’s legend was that Russian hackers penetrated the server of democrats and published data on the fake democratic primaries of 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton, now all this hysteria over Russian intervention in the midterm elections means that they are again going to forge their results and deliver a pre-emptive strike against those who can expose this forgery.
But the most important thing is the time factor – such stuff can’t be effective for very long, and it was created clearly after Putin’s dancing at the wedding and talking with Angela Merkel. And the only event that falls into the epicenter of the explosion of this information mini-bomb (and it can not claim the title of an information bomb) is the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, and the most active period of the spread of this fling happened at the holiday season, when Congressmen get an idea of the severity of the consequences of their vote contrary to the opinion of their voters, it immediately becomes clear that for the representatives in the Congress of Americans of German descent Hillary does not particularly worry, but for representatives of Americans of Austrian origin, she gave up, after which, after studying the article in Wikipedia “Austrian Americans” and comparing it with the map of constituencies, you inevitably come to the conclusion that according to Hillary Clinton’s staff at least 3 Democratic senators will vote for Judge Kavanaugh, and this means that, as Theresa May says, not to mention her name by night, that even if two Republican senators commit a political hara-kiri and vote against Kavanaugh, highly likely that by the end of this week the chief investigator in the case of Hillary Clinton, whom she threatened with violence in the 90s, will become a Justice of the US Supreme Court, after which Mueller can only send a summons to Trump for propaganda purposes.
Moreover, this opens the way for impeachment of Rosenstein and the dismissal of Sessions before the mid-term elections!
But the most striking conclusions follow from this analysis if we combine them with the second rumor, which is clearly not a fling, but a leak, that is a Trump’s directive to his supporters, which can’t be published officially or through channels that can be eavesdropped, and is fraught with….
But about this in the next post.
“Does the so-called “Senior Administration Official” really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”
— Donald J. Trump
Off with their head!!
…But first, someone must point out to Trip-G that this alleged person already resides within said government, so there’s no need for them to turn themselves over to their alleged selves. Let the purges begin, beds peeked under and closets pried open!
Let us know when he goes full Uncle Joe on his relatives…
National Security indeed! Get a medium to raise the shade of Beria for sound advice in this matter.
Are you not entertained?
And where does Clueless Oz get his information on Stalin and Beria? From Russophobic Hollywood movies?
Actually, that condition already exists in most of South America and Mexico, as well as in countries like Yugoslavia, where darker skinned people, like Gypsies, are looked down upon. In much of the world, the darker you are, the lower your social status.
Sorry, that post above, was meant for Tate, above, commenting on social standing relating to skin color.
“Let the purges begin…” –ozone
I feel sorry for diehard Trump supporters. Now they have to cut the Nike logo out of their socks and burn their Nike shoes and Nike clothes. They can’t watch the NFL, they can’t ride Harleys, they can’t go to Starbucks or watch Netflix, and they have to love Vladimir Putin and hate the FBI.
There are at least 15 senior Trump administration officials with motive to work against the President. Let the real witch hunt begin. Go after Trump’s friends and close family members working in the White House.
PS. Kaepernick won the right to continue his lawsuit in court.
The Trump campaign Chairman was convicted on eight counts of tax evasion.
Trump’s Deputy Campaign Chairman admitted to tax fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering.
Trump’s personal lawyer admitted he conspired with Trump to break Federal Election laws to pay hush money to cover up an affair.
Trump’s National Security Advisor pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians.
Trump’s foreign policy advisor also pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians.
Trump’s first Congressional backer was indicted for insider trading.
Trump’s second Congressional backer was indicted for wire fraud and campaign finance violations (theft).
A Republican lobbyist just pled guilty to steering illegal funds from a pro-Russian oligarch to Trump’s inauguration.
TRUMP IS THE BIGGEST SWAMP CREATURE (with no intention of draining the swamp)
Did CNN just promised Trump’s administration official who would openly rat on Trump the office of the President on the Don Lemon show?
Oh boy, they are getting desperate!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
TINVOWOOT. There is no voting our way out of this. The Deep State is Steady in its Power and is increasing in reach.
Brown shirt agent-provocateur calls on you to break ranks and expose yourself to enemy artillery fire.
Keep the ranks!
“There is no voting our way out of this.” –janos
There was no legitimate popular vote majority to begin with. Ten million more voters cast non-Trump votes. The popular will was anti-Trump. It was only the elitist electoral college that elected Trump, not the popular vote of the American people. The military is not with Trump. Trump’s military orders regarding North Korea, Syria, Iran, and transgendered soldiers were all ignored by the military. Trump has no power because his own appointees, his own White House staff, refuse to support him. They keep him in the dark, letting him watch TV, send tweets, play golf, etc. … but not allowing him to exercise executive power. Trump is toast.
BERNIE SANDERS GOES AFTER WELFARE PAYMENTS FOR BILLIONAIRES
Taking aim at Walmart, McDonald’s, Amazon, and other ultra-profitable corporations that pay workers so little that they’re forced to rely on food stamps and other federal programs to survive, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced legislation on Wednesday that would impose a 100 percent “corporate welfare tax” on large companies equal to the amount of public assistance their employees receive.
“Let us be very clear: We believe that the government has a moral responsibility to provide for the vulnerable—the children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled,” Sanders said in a statement. “But we do not believe that taxpayers should have to expend huge sums of money subsidizing profitable corporations owned by some of the wealthiest people in this country. That’s what a rigged economy is about.”
Officially titled The Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS) Act—an explicit dig at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world—the goal of Sanders and Khanna’s bill is to draw attention to the fact that taxpayers are effectively subsidizing corporations’ starvation wages and pressure these companies to pay a living wage.
When Bernie and all the rest demand complete military disengagement outside USA borders and reallocation of resources to domestic infrastructure we might sit up an take notice.
There you go janet, there are the real Bad Guys. And how do we fight them you might ask? Well I have a list and all of them are on it and I refuse to buy any of their products either online or in person. As long as CONSUMERS keep going there they will continue to abuse everyone they can for profit. People cannot complain about being beaten when they are asking to be beaten.
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“You will find that a distinct disadvantage in the actual world of human interaction when your “usefulness” is at an end and times require serious-minded truth-tellers and the ostracizing of con-men, liars and users of all sorts.” Ozone
Ozone we must however encourage those who march in that parade to continue to don the orange hunter’s vest of visibilty. When the tide turns they will be more easily dealt with.
“It is the cost of evil. Regardless of how this unfolds the survivors will not be the best among us.” Dumbedup -“goodness, mercy, justice and decency will triumph over evil”, allow the addition of this caveat, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds……” Philippians 4:7 and this “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you….” Matthew 7:2
Toto has pulled back the curtain and the Woodman and the Scarecrow are busily trying reinstate the obfuscation while the Lion advises to just look the other way as he heads for the exit.
There is an arc to the universe and humanity will not bend it to their will. “I have seen the enemy……..”Pogo
Let us maintain the Status Quo! Has a more foolish idea ever been brought forward? I think not. Entropy waits for no man.
wm,
Good points all, especially the visibility aspect.
As far as judgement, for me, the earthly version will have to do; what happens afterward is beyond my ken or care.
“Let us maintain the Status Quo! Has a more foolish idea ever been brought forward? I think not. Entropy waits for no man.” – wm5135
Exactly. I can’t understand why this concept isn’t more widely understood and internalized.
The only thing that never changes, is that everything changes. (Or however that goes; you put it better.)
I suppose it’s the human longing for security in sameness. “The rains will always come; the herds will always burgeon and provide; the house will always stand, (etc.).”
Yes, the Lion may lie down with the Lion, and the Lamb with the Lamb, but never the Lion with the Lamb until the Lord cometh from on high.
And Man? He is a Wolf to Man. Keeping him among his own kind is the best check on that, though hardly complete of course.
The Stranger
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Rudyard Kipling
So the issue of Nixon deliberately sabotaging the Paris peace talks to bring an end to the Vietnam war for political gain are lies as well, are they? Just asking… == GA
Green Alba, fast forward the situation to modern day Syria and stated desire of Trump to withdraw American troops from there and a fierce resistance of American party of War to those plans, including tiresome chemical weapons provocation, apply a bit of logic and you will easily answer your own question.
Oz, that Roadmaster is a beast, but a beast that has risen to the stage of ‘Classic’. I took a close gander at the British MC event (which incidentally was great, but I got called away early, alas) whist you were on stage singing; you got about 4 tons of classic Detroit steel there … hold on to it, you’ll never see anything like that manufactured in the USA ever again.
brh
What year is it?
Other details?
Q, I’m guessin’ early 90’s. But just a guess.
Perhaps Oz will chime in with the straight scoop.
stelmo,
You would be guessin’ keerecktly. 😉
’92 Estate Wagon with a 5.7 Liter V-8.
If interested in the specs, go to this page and scroll down a bit for minutia links and a photo:
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/buick/roadmaster_4gen/roadmaster_4gen_wagon/1992.html
Goes down the highway like a scalded cat.
What is your frequency? How much power? What is your range? You have become a Ham of the Road.
Ambrose Bierce’s Devils Dictionary
2018 additions
Maverick, n. 1) Surname of early English family migrating to Boston from Yorkshire, England in 1631. 2) Semi comical 50s TV western starring James Garner. 2) Republican politician who votes with Democrats much of the time, aka RINO. Much lauded by the MSM except when campaigning against Democrats, at which time they are hammered.
New Progressive, n. 1) Emergent Marxist politicians mostly from urban areas promising free stuff to their constituents, relying mostly on racial demogogary, envy, and hatred to garner votes. Differ from older liberal pols in that New Progressives guarantee free stuff will be delivered directly to the your house, gratis, without having to show ID, citizenship papers, or getting off the couch to actually sign up at the local welfare office (which is no longer called the welfare office, but the People’s Bureau of Plenty))
brh
Sarah Palin – another Maverick! – and McCain’s running mate was strongly discouraged from coming to the funeral, sources say. The same sources were quick to add that she would not be thrown out if she did choose to attend. They simply didn’t want her tarnishing the Deep State Death Prom with her mere mortal and hokey presence.
Jared and Ivanka were welcomed since they are Deep State moles within the Trump administration. Apparently Palin stayed away.
Should Trump fire Pence because of the NYT anonymous op-ed?
From Porter’s Kakistocracyblogdotwordpress:
“I’m not entirely convinced that today’s gasp-inducing sedition memoir [in the NYT from a “senior Trump official”] about the ongoing sabotage of the Trump presidency isn’t a work of fiction. It probably is real, but I wouldn’t put on a parachute that probably opens.
“… there were several rather remarkable aspects of the article… The most obvious of these being its scintillating audacity. Here an administrative hireling summarily discards and subverts the agenda of an elected President vetted through exhaustive multi-year primary and general election campaigns, and finally validated by winning 30 states and 306 electoral votes. This because a cabal of flatulent factotums—and I quote with amazement—“knew better.” Well they certainly didn’t know better how to advance their exquisite agenda legitimately, one might mention at the next National Review cruise.
“But of course every lunatic sees a saint in the mirror, and this one no less. Thus his betrayals are varnished in the finest platitudes. Reportedly, Trump is not a true conservative, a true believer in free trade, or a true advocate for war with Russia. And those are precisely the reasons he became the true President of the United States.
“But none of that is really what the editorial brought into such clear and unintended relief. Buried amidst the false posturing about defending America’s “democratic institutions” he offers only one contrary conclusion: Democracy doesn’t work.
“Forget the flapping tongue and simply take note of his own admitted acts of subversion. By these he is advising the public that there is no peaceful mechanism by which a nation may alter the course of its state. He is telling the American people that you can become dissatisfied and want a change in national trajectory. You can raise money, go door to door, debate and convince, you can evaluate platforms, attend rallies, vote in primaries, scream on twitter, and unfriend on Facebook. You can wait in line at your Chicago precinct along with 300 dead men and then watch the general returns until midnight nearly two years after the process began. Then you can spend the rest of the night cheering an improbable victory.
“And it won’t make a fucking ant hill of difference.
“Because bureaucrats buried in the deep fat of government and political ticks riding into the administration by their mandibles will simply judge your hard-won presidential selection as uncouth and substitute the policies you voted for with their own…
Heck of an article Tate, thanks for sharing it. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man I have to say that in spending a lot of time in my community and it’s people, once we old guys die off and leave the place to those 30 and 40 something’s it simply HAS TO collapse. These spoiled, lazy brats do not have the staying power, concentration, people or working skills or patience to be able to run anything. They cannot plan or follow through with change or improvement of any kind. It is our fault for giving them such a shitty upbringing and even the ones that were raised fairly well do not have what it takes to get it done. I suspect that those who rule had a heavy hand in bringing this about. Looks like the plan is working.
Agreed, a heck of an article and “flatulent factotums” is a wonderful piece of alliteration.
Trump needs to ignore the NYT article. The Times prints fake news all the time, Trump says so himself. Articles like this are simply more attempts by the drive by media to trick Trump into lashing out and thereby making himself look bad. He’s just feeding into the deep state’s b.s.
“but I wouldn’t put on a parachute that probably opens.” –Tate
Actually, that is your only choice. There are no guarantees.
Did Kavanaugh duke Booker a double sawbuck for releasing amid much fanfare and hoopla the racial profiling emails?
Maybe Mueller can add that to his agenda. Get a few more years on the public payroll.
Exotticus to Green Alba,
you hate the military—up until the moment your country is being invaded.
Wake up, Ex, her country has been invaded and the invasion of all
‘White Lands’ will continue. Got it?
Dark Albion: A Requiem for the English
A pensioner whose lifetime coincides exactly with the arrival of vast numbers of settlers describes how the catastrophe of mass immigration has affected his generation.
Wistfully recalling his parents’ destroyed culture, he exposes the mindset of the politicians responsible for that destruction. With insight, humour and satire, he denounces their masochistic acceptance of the claim of each group of settlers to the status of eternal victims.
Dark Albion captures the anger of millions, and ends with a stunning portrait of England in 2066.
See entertaining promotional video
on YouTube called
William the Conquered.
Paperback, 240 pages
http://www.sparrowbooks.webeden.co.uk
Yet Alba rejects King Kweku. Why – since she accepts the invasion. Accepts? She revels in it!
Don’t. Tell. Me. What. I. Think.
I wasn’t talking to you – just as you and Elrond talked about me to each other.
Then don’t presume to tell other people what I think.
No-one stops you responding when other people (and they are not limited to two) impute your motives or your tactics.
And since you are writing on a comment board, you are ‘telling’ everyone – including me.
Breaking: Brazilian Presidential Candidate Jair Bolsonaro Stabbed by Communist While on Campaign Trail
Fortunately, his son has reported that the stab wound to his abdomen is not life-threatening.
The more I hear about Bolsonaro, the more I like this guy. Background: he probably wouldn’t stand a chance but for the fact that the most popular (non)candidate, left-wing Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, known simply as “Lula”, is in jail on a corruption conviction, & has been denied from running by the court with jurisdiction in such matters.
I couldn’t track down where these quotes come from, possibly Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept. But all the bad things he says about Bolsonaro just make him more attractive in my book.
Excerpts:
“More significantly, voters are turning toward far-right candidates. Why? Many Brazilians are ambivalent about democracy: Half are open to some form of authoritarian rule. Brazil’s military regime (1964-1985) was comparatively less repressive than those of its neighbors. During that time, GDP averaged an annual growth rate of 6.2 percent. Many voters are now nostalgic for days when the streets were safer… at least 90 candidates linked to the armed forces are running for public office in the upcoming elections.”
“Among those is presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party, a former army captain who has openly promised a return to military rule if elected. Likened to President Trump, Bolsonaro has been criticized for disparaging comments against women, the LGBT community, ethnic minorities and foreigners. As a leader of a political coalition that joins the security forces, agribusiness and evangelicals — the so-called bullet, beef and Bible caucus — Bolsonaro may benefit from the traditional parties’ collapse and Lula’s loss at the tribunal. …”
“Every major democracy has its share of hateful bigots and cretins among its elected officials – the U.S. has had more than its fair share – but Bolsonaro is a unique national disgrace. He has a long history of revolting racism, homophobia and other assorted forms of bigotry to be expected of an admirer of military dictatorship.”
“In 2011, he said in an interview that he’d prefer that his son die in a car accident than be gay. … from an interview by the BBC’s Stephen Fry, he responds to Fry’s referencing of the murder of gay Brazilian teens and frequent anti-gay attacks by stating that ‘there is no homophobia in Brazil,’ claiming that 90% of the gay victims die in ‘places of drug use and prostitution or are killed by their own partner.’ He added that the LGBT movement is really about converting Brazilian children into homosexuality for future sexual recruiting.”
“The same year, during an appearance on a television program, he was asked by a famous Afro-Brazilian actress, Preta Gil, what he would do if his son fell in love with a black woman, and he bizarrely [sic] replied: ‘I am not going to discuss promiscuity.’ He then added that he doesn’t run that risk because his sons ‘are very well raised,’ telling the actress that they ‘don’t live in the type of environment that you unfortunately do.’”
“After a female senator from the left-wing PSOL party (which includes prominent gay Congressman Jean Wyllys) requested that he be investigated, Bolsonaro said PSOL was a ‘party of dicks and faggots.’ He added that he would respond to her ‘with toilet paper,’ asked with mock sensitivity if he ‘injured her femininity,’ and said she’s not like most Brazilian women. When a female television reporter earlier this year asked him about the investigation of the dictatorship, he screamed that she was an ‘uneducated idiot’ and told her that she was not permitted to speak further. When President Rousseff advocated a program to teach school children to respect gays, he strongly suggested it was because she is a lesbian (‘stop lying,’ he said on the floor of Congress, and ‘admit your love with homosexuals’). Last year, he called the Minister for Women’s Policy, Eleonora Menicucci, a ‘big dyke.’”
My mere presence is injurious to Blacks and Browns because of my micro-aggressions. Kipling agrees with this merely making it a two way street: their presence is injurious to me because of their aggressions, be they micro or macro. What is the answer? Separation. Borders. Boundaries. Territories. States. Nations. Skin. Skeletons. They are not us and we are not them. They are alien among us as we are among them.
In my usual fashion, yesterday I sat at my computer while 5 ft further away my TV was tuned to CNBC (the business show) although with the sound muted.
For 3 hours a Senate committee grilled Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg, the COO at Facebook. After lunch Dorsey then went before a House committee. As I gather from blurbs put on the screen by CNBC the politicians are upset with big media for being too big and powerful and for stifling free speech among other crimes.
I have no idea about these issues and I am afflicted with an inability to pay attention to what normal people would consider the relevant content of the broadcast. It is the same thing or, I should say, a similar thing that happens to me here on CFN…namely, I am distracted by the irrelevancies of spelling, grammar and usage errors.
In the case of Ms Sandberg I could not get over the fact that perhaps once in every other sentence that she spoke she flipped her hair via a motion of her head. If you observe high school girls, say ages 15-18, you will see this as a virtually universal action designed to attract males…or so I assume. A Google search told me that Ms Sandberg is 49 years old. I must ask, at what age do females generally stop flipping their hair as a sexual pheromone? There is definitely something going on with hair in the male/female dynamic, else why would women typically wear their hair longer? (their ‘crowning glory’) And why would lesbians so often cut their hair short if it wasn’t for the purpose of thwarting male attraction?
Now, what about Jack Dorsey? As I looked at the TV screen I kept catching a tiny shiny glint from his left nostril. Umm, could that possibly be a nose ring? Damn, I wish he would turn a litter further to his right so I could get a better look…but he never did. So I Googled “Does Jack Dorsey have a nose ring?” Yep. There were a couple of articles about the fact that he had once had a nose ring, then did away with it, then got a new one just recently. Can someone here, some amateur psychologist, suggest a rationale for Jack Dorsey installing a nose ring? What’s next, tattooed neck flames? We’ll leave his civil-war era beard as a topic for future discussion.
Wise you are in the ways of women. I’m not sure about the nose ring. Maybe it’s just an attempt to be cool, however inappropriate for an older man. Originally it was probably an attempt by gays to imitate women and advertise their own gayness, both as a political statement and as a “mating” strategy. And as the cultured gayed, Gay was made cool. The media giants did it and now they may be being influenced by their own creation, like spiders caught in their own web.
“We’ll leave his civil-war era beard as a topic for future discussion.”
HIPSTER. Maybe getting a bit long in the tooth but Dorsey is keeping the flame alive.
As to the why, just google hipster beard.
I like the Urban Dictionary definition#3:
C) Overcompensating for the fact that they resemble fashionable 13 year old girls with overactive Pituitary glands.
The nose ring? Sometimes there are no answers…
“you hate the military—up until the moment your country is being invaded.” –Exscotticus
You put your faith in the military, the goldbricking bureaucratic originator of FUBAR? Good luck to you, sir. I’ll stick with Kumbayah.
janet you should definitely stick with kumbaya—particularly if you’re ever attacked by an illegal alien like this one. Or like this one. Or like this one. Let us know how that turns out.
The next “invasion” will be a cyber-invasion. Cyber is valuable, practical and useable. You can steal money and take down energy infrastructure with a Cyber-Attack. North Korea is planning and with WannaCry and the Sony Pictures attacks, North Korea is conducting reconnaissance. They are seeing what they can get away with.
Trump is clueless.
The nation is not defended by our $600 Billion dollar sweet-defense- contracts-with-multinationals “defense” budget.
Tell that to Ukraine. They’re currently fighting Russians on Ukrainian soil. There’s nothing cyber about it.
Get a globe. Learn something about supply lines in times of war.
Ukraine was invaded by real troops with real tanks and real guns. It was not a “cyber-invasion”. To argue that we should gut our military and rely on kumbaya runs contrary to reality.
“Did Kavanaugh duke Booker a double sawbuck” –Billy Hill
No. And someday that will be President Booker.
Those of us who grew up in Newark and remember Sharpe James and know Booker as well understand what your agenda now is completely. We are up against some seriously bad shit, thank you. I now know what I am dealing with. You have blown your cover.
Well Janet, considering all the build up and the pregnant words “racial profiling” the actual emails – kind of bookish, academic, relating to airline security post-9-11 — were a bit of a non-event. Possibly more than a non-event. So much so that one wonders whether Booker read the contents of the mails or was simply blinded by “racial profiling” — thinking it had to do with white cops and black drivers. Hence my joke that Kavanaugh slipped him $20 to go through with it, because it helped Kavanaugh. Booker looks either ignorant or naive enough to charge headlong into a trap of his own making.
The Resistance is alive and well, a lodestar mission, headed by Pence, operating as a group staff effort inside the Trump White House. First a sink hole opened up at the White House. Then it was hit by lightning. How many more signs does Congress need? Are they waiting for a plague of locusts? The demagogic devil is DJT.
The shooter’s name? Omar Perez – first name Muslim, last name Hispanic. A foreshadowing of a nightmare to come? They are much more capable of Blacks, obviously. I’ve heard that some have been converting in prison.
But what about General Omar Bradley? Wtf? Who knows? Maybe it’s nothing but maybe it’s everything. We’ll have to wait to know more. I once met a Hispanic named Socrates, but he was no Socrates nor of Greek descent.
They also name their kids Jesus. One I knew was named Israel, but not a Jew. Probably designed to throw the fuzz off the scent.
Trump is telling his supporters it’ll be their fault if he gets impeached. Duh. Nothing is Trump’s fault. Trump is the billionaire who is the victim. But it does surprise me Trump is telling his supporters it’s their fault. I thought it was all the fault of the libruls.
“To argue that we should gut our military and rely on kumbaya runs contrary to reality.” –Exscotticus
Hey, it’s a big country. You rely on the military. I’ll rely on kumbaya. We’ll both be happy. This is a great country with so much respect for individual liberty. You can pay taxes for the military. I am refusing to pay any taxes until the military is brought home, and reduced to half its size, with the goal of national self defense, instead of empire building and regime change. But, if that kind of imperialist weakening of our nation floats your boat, then take out your wallet and pay for it.
Isn’t it ironic that for defense of our own borders our military doctrine is kumbaya, yet when interfering in the lives of other nations it’s bombs, missiles, and boots on the ground.
>>> with the goal of national self defense
This coming from someone who wants open borders and an end to ICE.
” I am refusing to pay any taxes until the military is brought home, and reduced to half its size, with the goal of national self defense, instead of empire ”
IRS,
Please take note….
Situation around Syria
Russia sent 25 warships to the coast of Syria. The firepower and capabilities of the squadron far exceed the capabilities of the western coalition forces in the region.
On the Russian side it is a strike cruiser, three missile destroyers, submarines, small missile ships, and so on. At the same time, potential enemy is aware that the Caliber missiles are universal and work perfectly well both on land and sea targets.
The air defense system of the fleet is deeply echeloned.
In other words, any volley of the coalition from the Mediterranean will be instantly “filtered out” even before the approach to the borders of Syria. In the case of a strike from the Persian Gulf, the Russian fleet has a destroyer with support ships at the necessary point, and a local air defense regiment is concentrated on land.
But that’s not all. Russia not only deployed a naval fleet off the coast of Syria, but also declared the zone the “territory of training maneuvers” for the next 7 days. Maneuvers with the use of the Air Force. And this already means that not only forces deployed on land and ships of the fleet will participate in repelling the attack, but also electronic reconnaissance planes, fighters, fighter-bombers and so on.
Do not forget about the latest missiles, presented on March 1 in Putin speech to Federal Assembley. For example, the hypersonic complexes “Kinzhal”(Dagger), capable to destroy any ship, up to the aircraft carrier. The Kremlin has also made it clear that it can respond asymmetrically, in particular by initiating an attack on forces controlled by the United States (Kurds).
Nevertheless, so far Washington did not expand the sent force any further.
This means that the signal has reached the White House, and Russia has achieved at least a tacit compromise. Russia – destroys most of the missiles, quietly continues the operation in Syria Idlib, the United States gets an excuse for self-promotion, having a zero military effect.
Moreover, this compromise was achieved in the language of the Americans – by sticking the barrel of a gun to the temple of the US Navy.
Meanwhile, back in realityville (anywhere in the world outside the DC-Manhattan hothouse) Ebola is resurgent in Africa. Who says it will remain in Africa? Certainly it will be carried into western Europe by thousands of African ‘migrants’ making their way north from Central Africa, across the Med, and into France, Spain and Italy. But so what, really? A new world is being born, from Great Britain east across France and Germany to the borders of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Its a chaotic, violent world, much resembling the places these new Europeans came from (Uganda, Afghanistan, the Congo, Nigeria), but at least Western Civilization will be once and for all crushed completely Nobody said it would be easy.
Hey CFNers, if you want to see how bad it can get — politically speaking — check out the news fro Brazil today. Who knows, this might be where we are headed here in the States.
brh
Hey Oz, that Roadmaster, I can picture the day, after some cataclysmic event (say like a nuclear burst or no fuel available) its the last motor vehicle extant on the road, still chugging along on that older technology, all modern vehicles unable to start, tens of thousands of them flaming wrecks or disabled in driveways or on the side of the road, running on fuel you brewed up yourself on the compound in Western Mass., you, armed to the teeth just in case, driving that beast into Great Barrington where you heard a rumor the remnants of the government is distributing wheat and corn to isolated residents of those beautiful Berkshire towns.
brh
“Curiosity did not kill the cat…my Buick did!”