JHK’s Three-Act Play
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Historians of the future, poaching ‘possum snouts in sorrel sauce over their campfires, will trace the fall of Western Civ in the 2020s to the dissolving hallucination that was called the financial economy. It was a phantom parasitical organism that thrived on the back of a real economy based on making-and-doing things derived from the natural world, turbo-charged by fossil fuels.
The orgy of making-and-doing went on for two-hundred-plus years. Even with cyclical “recessions,” the making-and-doing always increased in the aggregate, while its products got ever more plentiful, elaborate, and complex. The phantom financial parasite clinging to its back got used to this “growth” and it, too, developed ever more ingenious ways to suck the life out of its host organism, until it became a greater entity than the host itself, breaking its back.
The whole of this chapter in the long-running human project had strange effects on human minds that had not changed much since the late days of hunting and gathering. After the first hundred years of fossil fuel plentitude, humans had a hard time telling the difference between the host and the parasite. Both of them seemed to thrive equally. The real economy produced food and useful things and the financial economy produced money, which could buy food and useful things.
People made things incessantly, especially better and better tools and engines. That allowed people to grow more food and make more useful things that provided comfort and convenience. The financial economy made more and more money. It also produced myriad new ways for money to represent itself. At first, these things such as stocks and bonds (ownerships and loans-at-interest) were firmly attached to activities in the real economy — that is, they were sucked directly out of the host’s makings-and-doings.
Later on, the things which represented money became more numerous and more detached from real makings-and-doings, more abstract, more based on promises, hopes, and wishes than on things derived from nature. That is to say, these newer representations of money tended ever more to a realm of the unreal. After a while, it became very hard to tell the difference between money-things that were real and unreal. The financial economy furnished plenty of mystification to blend the two. This confusion prompted plenty of fraud, a brisk commerce in unreality that produced winners and losers.
Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, of course. As the fossil fuel supply drew closer to its end and further from the long, happy middle time of plenty, the business model for making-and-doing started to shudder and crack. It didn’t fall apart all at once, but it put many makers-and-doers out of business. They stopped making-and-doing. By then, the financial economy was a colossal phantom parasite that dwarfed its host. It was burdened with so much unreality, so many workings dissociated from nature, that it could no longer pretend to be anything but a phantom.
To keep the host alive, it upchucked some of what it had sucked out of the host, adulterated with money based on unreal promises, hopes, and dreams. This turned more and more into a spewage of money so debased by broken promises, hopes, and dreams that making-and-doing just about stopped altogether. That is when the phantom parasite of finance began to dissolve and humans began to regard it as an hallucination that had gone away, dissolved into mist. What remained were a lot of humans embedded in nature.
And that is the place where the humans of Western Civ find themselves in the 2020s. Western Civ was the first region of the world that tapped into the fossil fuel orgy and it is now the first region exiting this phase of history. Even when the financial hallucination melts into air there will be a lot of real things around that were made before the great age of making-and-doing stopped.
Humans are ingenious animals, enterprising and resilient, though there will surely be fewer of us around. These fewer humans will likely be healthier, working more directly in nature and no longer compromised by the pernicious by-products of all the bygone making-and-doing. We will figure out how to use the left-over useful things to get food out of nature and keep making other useful things. The new making-and-doing will happen at nothing like the former pitch or scale. It may represent a time-out from the lost experience of the old, ever more elaborate and complex makings-and-doings. After a while, humans may discover a new way to get more out of nature. Or maybe not.
In the meantime, lodged as we are in the present, in the moment of this epochal transition, anxiety besets many millions of minds. Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out. Keep your own well-ordered minds on the tasks ahead, your own makings and doings within the bounds of what is real. Take some time out to make some music. There are still plenty of good instruments around, and you can always sing. Put a meal together with your friends and loved ones and sing out. It’s all right, Ma, Bob sang out long ago, It’s life and life only.
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poaching ‘possum snouts in sorrel sauce over their campfires
You old gourmand, you, Jim! Gotta cook them possum snouts low and really slow to get the best out of ’em, but when you do, mmm mmm good eatin’! Throw in a side of roadkill Armadillo on the half shell and you’ll think you’ve died and gone straight to heaven!
Who’s got it better than we will??? No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-body!
Um, you don’t get roadkill without the roads.
Nobody runs over an armadillo on a bike path.
Ya never know. Them ‘dillos ain’t too bright.
If you have ever tried to catch an armadillo? You are in for a real chase. When I was a kid in Texas our entire track team tried to catch one in a football field. The armadillo won! Now a shotgun is not fair, nor a .22; just try to catch one bare handed. BTW: the way their shells work, you better wear welding gloves to pick them up.
Rats are faster too. Bears are much faster and stronger. Chimps are also much stronger.
Know what we do have? Endurance. Dr Leaky amazed a journalist by pointing at an antelope and saying, Watch. He chased it for a couple of miles and caught it.
Dillos are the only animal that carries leprosy.
So yeah no thanks.
Last nite First Republic Bank goes down, the 2nd largest bank failure in US history and the 3rd major bank to fail in 2 months.
Checking the financial media nobody seems too worried about it, one article on the CNBC site and way down the bottom of the page on the Fox site.
It’s all by design. One global bank is on its way. Even my lawn guy has the new ‘global’ payment system for his clients! A little digital box you tap your debit card on & payment received.
Imagine though when these things go on the fritz.
You tap it, he gets paid. Something goes wrong, your account is drained; but he’s got it worse.
Where are the taxes he owes on that 6k mowing job? IRS agents with guns drawn will show up at his house.
Sort of a weird assumption. He owns his own business and pays taxes. He is very professional.
I’m speaking in the hypothetical.
Hypothetical? What’s that? Things are or they aren’t. Just the facts, maam. Mary was talking about her “lawn guy” – who slowed up since getting vaxed. What are you talking about?
A hypothetical situation where a person is paying their lawn guy.
Perhaps I should have used “one”, to avoid confusion.
Remember the movie “Brazil”? by Terry Gilliam of the Pythons?
The plot revolved around a computer glitch, changing one character’s name by one letter, into another. All hell broke loose!
Had that issue with a painter recently. He wanted me to pay my $3,500 balance in cash and I explained the realities to him. They look at me for making the withdrawal and then either come sweat it out of me or draw the natural conclusion from my recently painted house and the fact that everyone in the neighborhood saw their trucks parked outside prominently for two weeks. He took the check.
I mow lawns on the weekends. I explain to clients that I have no insurance because that would require a business license, which would require paying taxes. I’ve only lost a few clients over this. I would not be possible to make any money with just 8 or 10 accounts, and pay taxes. People in Florida seem to understand this.
First Republic’s failure was due to Trump.
That’s the report I got early this morning from the article in “Die Welt” (Germany’s biggest newspaper). Trump cut back on bank regulators.
Now the article is gone. It’s been replaced by a new one that says Mark Zuckerberg got low interest loans from First Republic. Why does Zuckerberg need to borrow money?
I don’t believe these articles are true at all.
What isn’t true? Every big company was taking cheap money in loans vs equity. First Republic specialized in high value loans at lower interest rates. Interest deduction is great for high net worth LLC’s which buy the property. They had a very bad business model for a time when rates went faster than at any time in recent memory.
And Trump removed the same stress test for banks of First Republic’s size that were still required for large ones like Chase. Which is why their balance sheet allows them to pick up fire sales like this.
Just because you don’t believe doesn’t make it not true. That is the problem today with too many people.
I read something somewhere about them being able to pay employees to not work for a competitor by taking out those kinds of loans.
Thanks GR. So maybe Zuckerberg could borrow cheap and re-invest at a higher ROI? No matter how much money one has, more is better. OK. But how do you find out who the borrowers are? Isn’t that private?
As far as I could research today, Congress passed a veto-proof law with bi-partisan support which relaxed the banking oversight regulations. Trump didn’t issue an executive order like the news article would have us believe.
The Federal Reserve issued a report on the failure of the SV Bank…but again Trump was not mentioned at all.
True is was through a bill. From the NYT at the time:
In a rare demonstration of bipartisanship, the House voted 258-159 to approve a regulatory rollback that passed the Senate this year, handing a significant victory to President Trump, who has promised to “do a big number on Dodd-Frank.” The biggest proponent of the bill.
“It’s a bad bill under the guise of helping community banks,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic minority leader, said during debate on the House floor on Tuesday. “The bill would take us back to the days when unchecked recklessness on Wall Street ignited an historic financial meltdown.”
It was mainly a Republican driven initiative, which Trump asked for, and signed with a yuge pen.
So Goldenroad, are you a true believer in the goodness and integrity of the Democratic Party, the deep state, the MSM, and the bank regulators?
People in this forum are generally past that delusional, happy horse shit. Maybe binge watching the collected broadcasts of Rachel Maddow is more your speed.
Partial information is not very helpful. Is it that hard to state the facts? Bernie Franks caused incredible damage in 2008, sponsored by liberal democrats. The Obama era Dodd-Franks act in 2010, sought to regulate banks with $50 billion or more in assets. Trump relaxed that level to $250 billion.
Yes, bank regulations were rolled back during the Trump administration. But it’s difficult to say whether the stricter requirements would have prevented the collapse of Silicon Valley and Signature Banks.
Spending and printing money like TP is going to lead to the great unraveling, Trump would have prevented this. Why? Energy independence and a petroleum based economy, not one based on idealistic green energy, would have prevailed and prospered.
Ah, Trump. Back in 2008, Kunstler said the following about Trump: “A land full of people crying into their foreclosure notices will take a dim view of the Donald Trumps and P. Diddys luxuriating out there and may come looking for scalps — though in the case of Mr. Trump they’ll be sorry they woke up the wolverine that lives on his head. Basically, though, I’m not kidding. Conspicuous displays of wealth will be so “out” that Mr. Diddy might take to club-hopping in a 1999 Mazda. Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton may have to double-up living in a minuteman missile silo to keep the angry mobs of fans-turned-vengeful-berserkers away.”
None of that came to fruition, Jim! People not only didn’t eschew Trump — they lionized him! Now he’s a god-emperor. The man who lives in an actual palace and who flies around on a widebody airliner with a 24K gold plated lavatory has convinced fully half the dumb population that he’s a man of the people.
Die Zeit is toilet roll.
Many here learned that during the Covid Hoax.
MQ, you have a lawn guy?
Who doesn’t? My wife got a lawn guy, me.
Your wife got one too, you.
I’m the lawn guy at my house. And I have an awesome new zero radius turn Grasshopper that beats the pants off my old Snapper that I ran into a tree and bent the front so that it had an 8 foot turn radius.
I can mow the lawn in 1/2 hour, as opposed the the 2 hours it used to take me.
A Grasshopper zero radius fossil-fueled lawn mower. Worth what – $10K? Isn’t this a perfect example of the very techno-hubris position we’ve got ourselves into, that JHK is calling out?
If I had the equipment, I’d totally do it myself. I don’t feel like buying it, and my lawn guy is reasonable.
Paula: What r U doin on the JHK universe if U lear4ned nothin!!
For the the green lawn loaded with herbicides and ur club cadet spewin out carbon galore as these engines are only 25% efficient. You are probably using SCOTT’S lawn care and after the McHappy cheeseburger hour and immediately after Scotty a>>wipe tissues: Everthing the US that is crap seemingly is named after the scots who sent us dew worms for lawns which are now killing all native tree species from their castings.
Where I’m from in Southeastern Pa, people have lawns as big as 2 or 3 football fields. I’m like gosh, what a waste of land and time to maintain it. Who really needs a lawn that big?
When I moved here I was out in the front trying to mow my lawn with the only kind of lawn mower I had ever had, a people-powered push mower.
My friend drove by and stopped and asked me what the hell I was doing. I said “Mowing the lawn”.
She said “I’ll give you 6 months before you buy a power mower”.
She was right. There is no way to mow that tall tough fescue and other weeks with people power.
Obviously I don’t use either chemicals or water on that ground. People that live in deserts don’t know what tough grass and brambles are. I know that I didn’t.
Around here, 5-20-acre “estate size” lots are common in rural areas. The “poor folks” have woodlands, especially on the steep or rocky parts, or let the goats graze in the woodlands to keep the weeds down, and only mow the parts around the house. The “rich folks,” whose lots feature McMansions (there is one in the area that features and Italianate villa with a man-made lake) mow the whole 5-20 acres. Or, I suppose, hire someone to do it.
It does seem like there is a better use for all this acreage.
“that I ran into a tree”
Unsurprising.
You are all Kunstler readers, so you’d think you all would get a clue and not have a lawn. Since I was a boy and had to cut the lawn, I would think they were stupid as shit. All things suburbia were my alienation. Then I found Kunstler — Geography of Nowhere + had a compatriot.
I didn’t have a lawn in California, because there you have to water the grass in order to have grass.
But in Illinois, you either mow or you have a patch of brambles crawling with ticks.
The area in front of my house requires a stretch of the imagination to call a lawn.
You would not like what happens when you don’t mow here. In any case, lawns are stupid but it is what it is.
Law’n order.
@ laceration:
Sounds like you’ve never maintained a home or a yard.
In the town where I lived until about a year ago, there were a number of elderly people who were unable to mow their yards and couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it. While IMHO this doesn’t look too bad, you get young trees growing up all over the place, including right against the house, where they will tear up your foundation (or slab). Also, tall grass and weeds are full of ticks, fleas, and chiggers.
In the old days (1950s), when people still used the old reel mowers (entirely human-powered) people only mowed their front yards, and the small part of their back yard that was not a vegetable garden. The objective was to be able to get to the car without getting covered with ticks.
Often there were large areas of the yard that were bare soil. Sometimes this was because of huge trees that shaded out everything under them, and sometimes it was because Mom threw the dishwater out the back door, and it killed the grass.
Everything I do in the “front yard” (lawn and landscaping) I do for the neighbors. Everything I do in the “privacy fenced” backyard I do for us. It’s artificially fenced on one side, Mother Nature “fenced the other 3 sides with old growth and bramble.
Multiple gardens in back (food & flowers), fruit trees, blueberry, giant punkins, strawberry, raspberry, spuds, horseradish and the list goes on. The first dandelions are up and delish. Last year, I had sunflowers 11 feet tall and 1 1/4 ft. across the blossom it was fun to watch those giant heads follow the sun. Life is good.
Lawns are great.
I sat out on mine last night and had a nice Rochefort 10, admiring the work we have done in the garden, and my mowing job (gasoline Honda, ofc).
Haters gonna hate.
For a standard American family of three, 4,000 sq. ft. of Aquaponic greenhouse, chickens and goats will provide a years supply of protein and vegetables for their annual food needs.
And you never have to mow the lawn.
Just saying—-.
Thorshammer
at one point I had 14 goats, 27 chickens, 10 horses and 1 sheep.
And I still needed to mow.
MQ
Does your Lawn Guy come with benefits? I can’t think of any other reason to keep him around. After all you have been a JHK follower all these years and should know better.
Take a fact finding trip to Port Townsend WA. It’s legacy is a handful of magnificent Victorian houses that the shipping captains built, along with scores of worker’s cabins on tiny lots. (that now fetch a half mil.) Every one of those workers’ cabins used to have a lawn — now replaced by vegetable gardens right up to the sidewalks. The gardens are all fenced— otherwise the herds of deer roaming the streets would mow everything down to the roots and not charge a thing.
You should refuse to pay him that way, Mary. Tell him it’s cash or nothing. This is getting ridiculous.
He would take cash. I will do that going forward.
I mow lawns on the weekends. I explain to clients that I have no insurance because that would require a business license, which would require paying taxes. I’ve only lost a few clients over this. I would not be possible to make any money with just 8 or 10 accounts, and pay taxes. People in Florida seem to understand this.
Nice thanks for the information…-One of the new legion field agent#86,999 new IRS agent.
Expect a knock at your door.
Honestly cannot imagine needing insurance for something that most homeowners do every week.
I spent summers working what is now Trump National in VA, and even there, doing all manner of golf course landscaping with heavy equipment, I never once had an incident of any kind.
We did have one of our redneck greensmowers flip his mower and roll down the side of a hill, so perhaps I should retract my comments…
The dominos be a fallin’ now. Hard to know what to do, other than hunker down and wait for the inevitable. Too much worthless money followed by no money at all. History repeats ~100 years later, albeit with possum snouts over the campfire. Wonder how gopher on a stick tastes? I’ve got a damn farm of those little buggers right outside.
Personally, I’m going all in on home improvements while I still have some soon to be worthless money in the bank. Found me a gang of hard working Mexicans who do great work and never complain. Thinkin’ about adopting them for my own.
Praise be – you’ve found Jesus.
LOL! He’s going by Ceasar these days.
Your almost have to be a Stock Market Geek to understand anything about Financial Land. I’ve been reading Zero Hedge for a while and can’t make heads nor tales out of the financial news on that site.
“Pull it.”
There’s been a Racoon the size of a Volkswagen Beetle wandering thru the hood recently. In “normal” times I woulda just popped him, harvested the pelt and drop-kicked him into the vermin bucket.
These aren’t “normal” times so, he gets a temporary pass.. until I’m hungry enough or cold enough or both, to punch his ticket. Just another form of dense, high quality animal proteins.
btw, Racoons are vicious omnivores.
Funny you should say that. Looked out the window last week and noticed a big honkin’ racoon wandering down the street in broad daylight like it owned the place. We have them up here alright, but it’s very rare to sight one during daylight hours. Maybe he was scouting out good real estate for the post-human era?
For him, there will be a brief, temporary surplus of high quality carrion on which to feast.
Especially in the vaporized ruins of once great cities.
One glaring omission in the apocalyptic fantasies of the ass-clowns in DC, is the total
effect of just one Reactor Core being vaporized.
Not only do the lights go out, there will be vast amounts of uninhabitable land.
About 100 miles from me sits a Nuclear Power Generating Facility sited on a very important river. Melt the core there and it’ll cut this country in half as the remaining isotopes slowly work their way downstream…for eons.
Be careful, sounds like rabid behavior. We lost most of small game like coons and fox to rabies a few years ago, then the coyotes took over. Have seen a few lynx lately and one a mountain lion.
Yes. Sounds like rabies to me. A raccoon was standing in our yard in the middle of the day last winter. I shot him with a pellet gun and he didn’t move. Just stared at me. I was talking to one of the local cops and he told me that they were getting calls every day for raccoons acting weird. We have a very high level of rabies here. Raccoons and feral cats are bad news. I think the coyotes are cleaning up the mess, however.
Around here we have gators to feed on the feral cats and raccoons. We try to keep certain bleeding hearts from feeding the furry critters so they don’t attract gators.
Maybe they’ll learn when one of the kids gets eaten.
I had animal control test a skunk that was acting weird and then died.
Turned out to be distemper. The animal control person told me we haven’t had rabies around here in a long time.
Rabies?
They are wonderful animals, the monkeys of America. They make great pets if taken in as cubs. Strange beings though: One was found who had been working for hours to fill up the toilet with small rocks.
People are vicious omnivores too.
Yep, Canine Teeth and stereo vision.
Some people say that all of the problems in the world are the result of evolution giving us the opposable digit, enabling a precision grip.
I’ve heard they only make good pets until they hit puberty (much like humans), and then they get vicious.
“People are vicious omnivores too.”
That was my first thought too, LOL.
Really? I’ve heard that they mostly hurt people by accident, long scratches on the arms with their back claws when picked up. And that people set them free because they can’t be housebroken, pooping and peeing in odd places, and being generally mischievous and destructive.
Wild ones, yes. They will show up to be fed in you let them get into that, and will be enraged if things aren’t to their liking. They used to come up on my porch to eat dried food left for the cats. I made sure not get into any relationship with them, even though I liked them a lot.
I heard about one family that released their young raccoon into the wild. He went to live in the tree in the corner of the yard and showed up for dinner every evening.
los angeles has coyotes, possums, raccs. they like cat food and will enter ones home to get it.
You have to neuter them to keep them amiable.
That’s the case of most wild animals.
Maybe that’s the problem with humans “gone wild”, they need to be neutered?
It’s the case with domesticated animals also.
raccs are a problem in Germany. The rats were introduced by a fur farmer, escaped and are now into the….. millions?
I have been in Germany for quite a long time now and have never even seen one.
Wild Boars are a problem ther also. Berlin has a lot of wooded parks and sometimes the boars will show up in your living room if the the door is left open by chance.
Also horse shit.
Greetings,
I do not think most are worried at all. When I point out the collapse of these banks and comment upon the fact that their bank is in no better shape, people look at me as if I just said JFK was assassinated by Martians. They simply can not bring themselves to believe that these banks and their retirements (let’s face it, few have savings) are in trouble.
See, I’ve been on a mini-crusade to get the people I know to cash out their 401k’s and use that money, while it still has value, to purchase assets that will help them weather the coming storm. To date, not a single person has taken my advice – no one.
The people that wont listen are already singing and dancing and eating out and going to Disneyland because every day is one big party. It is the prepers that probably worry too much.
Traditionally, in revolutions of days past, one of the key targets was attempting to gain control of the (printing) press, later morphing into radio, then TV broadcasting stations.
In our present days of course we know the target was the interwebs, social media, etc. But the end effect is the same: narrative control.
Now, add population substitution, replacing the heritage population that averaged around 100 with new(er) citizens more in the range of 92-95, and it’s not too hard to see just how easy it is to manipulate the general public.
Finally, the good old 5 stages cycle (denial, negotiation, anger, depression, acceptance) is on fine display. Boomers in their 60s cannot believe the party is coming to an end right now; if it had only lasted another decade!
I’m a “Boomer” and an Economist. I saw this shit unraveling back in the 80s. I’ve lived through natural disasters.
Be positive, keep your head up, eyes open and get the big picture.
I was an adult student of economics in the early 80’s. When I learned about derivative securities, which I believe are the tools of the ‘financial parasite’ to effect the sucking on that making and doing, I wrote on the back of an airline survey, “BAN DERIVATIVE SECURITIES.”
Yeah, I gotta real x-files feeling going.
Unless it’s the weed. Probably the weed.
But that happened, I swear.
The Boomers just had to have their civil rights. They actually marched in the streets for the government to disadvantage their own children. Great job. Thanks a lot, guys. Now they are fretting about their gibs.
Every generation heaps blame upon the previous generation with righteous indignation. Your turn is coming.
Ever listen to that Mike and the Mechanics song, The Living Years?
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I’m a prisoner to all my father held so dear
I know that I’m a hostage, to all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
It’s especially poignant when you’ve just lost someone.
Not every generation intentionally destroys the legacy given to them and despises their culture so much that they want to see their children and grandchildren dispossessed and despairing. The Boomers are unique from that standpoint.
The Baby Boom was a phenomenon, a blip on a chart, not a generation.
People don’t understand, when you had really large families, the tail end of that family had completely different ideas and attitudes and behaviors than the older ones.
It wasn’t uncommon to meet kids with aunts and uncles younger than they were.
We call all kinds of people Boomers who were not part of that boom at all.
We had it so good, we had things like every so often somebody’s older brother went off to war and came home in a plastic bag.
BTW Lyndon Johnson was a WWII veteran.
It started long before the Boomers. The “Greatest Generation” fought for the Bankers against the Fascism and National Socialism – the white blood cells of Western Civilization.
And the generation before that allowed the Banks to take over our economy with the Federal Reserve Act – and then fought for them in WW1.
@Jarek:
“It started long before the Boomers. The “Greatest Generation” fought for the Bankers against the Fascism and National Socialism…”
Good Lord, I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Jarek twice in one day.
Me neither, Cactus Girl.
Beryl, Lyndon Brainless Johnson was many things: an adulterer, a liar, a bigot who routinely used the N word to address blacks and created the Great Society in part to destroy the families of racial minorities, a moronic commander-in-chief who made Viet Nam worse than it had to be, a raging narcissist who insisted his wife and children have his initials, possibly a conspirator in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and a pervert who often whipped out his genitals during press briefings (pardon the pun). He was not, however, a veteran of World War 2, having served in the House of Representatives since 1937.
Ha, Ha!
This turning puts hydrocarbon fueled sustainable population in play. When people figured that out, the population growth went exponential.
In a short 60 sumpthin years, the population will have doubled yet again.
Yer all gonna eat bugs.
The party’s never over when you have grandchildren that love you.
@Beryl:
“People don’t understand, when you had really large families, the tail end of that family had completely different ideas and attitudes and behaviors than the older ones.
It wasn’t uncommon to meet kids with aunts and uncles younger than they were.”
Thank you, Beryl! My parents were WW2 gen, my dad served in France. I’m the youngest out of 4 kids, born in 1960. My oldest sister was old enough to be my mother. I am closer in age to HER daughter. Almost all of my first cousins are much older, and I am the same age as their kids.
I HATE being called a boomer. Boomers had way more advantages. By the time I was working, all my bosses were boomers, and they had taken most of the cookies out of the jar for themselves, and given the leftovers to the, ahem, “disadvantaged”.
The average person – and I will single out business professionals – have absolutely no clue whatsoever. It’s quite something to witness. But they are all in the woke cult, so they don’t know anything beyond what they are told to think.
I read a lot of World History as sort of a hobby and I’ve come to the conclusion that almost evey institution invented by Man be it the Economy, Finance, Government, Religion, Education, Social Welfare or anything else he has conjured up to advance civilization on down the road to Utopia has carried within itself elements of it’s own destruction.
Nickel,
I remember you talking about this before. No one will listen. You either intuitively know this or you don’t.
I’ve been out of pocket on a family emergency for five days. Got back and found out Powell raised one more time and another California regional bank is on the ropes. I turned on cnbc this morning and its all rah, rah, rah!
Be thankful, as this gives you more time to make your moves, while there’s still a counter-party to be found.
Very nice. What a long, strange journey it’s been; still it’s great to see you return to your roots.
As most/many know, I believe depletion, overshoot and degradation are the driving forces, the prime motivations to explain what is happening behind the dual domestic and foreign wars, and why it’s happening now.
Once you go down this logicl path, one soon realizes the vanity fair that is modern politics, the economy, and all/sundry discussion of society and culture.
As you say, keep your wits about you, and focus on the hard reality of the here and now. Ain’t no one coming to our rescue.
Well, at least you admit it is a belief.
No different than any other belief.
Have you also noticed that the worse things get, the more is ignored by the media. The list of taboo topics is now enormous. But I think last week’s barely reported, but important, story is the Centcom Chief meeting his counterpart in Israel. We’re going to war with Iran to demo that China can’t protect its allies.
This was so prescient:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAKnbIr6TE
We’re going to war with Iran to demo that China can’t protect its allies.
I don’t doubt it, but DC will have another major defeat on their hands if they do. The US days as the great conqueror are long gone now, but the Pentagon egg heads haven’t got the message yet.
I’m pretty sure they know, but there are still a few more years of good stealing left.
This is true. Hard to let go of all that grift once you get addicted to it.
Disaffected : It’s all about the Full Spectrum Dominace mindset the Pentagon in collusion with the Neocons in the Congress has that will be the downfall of this nation, Rome tried the same thing for hundreds of years and lost it all to Tribal Warriors along the border regions of their empire. No one Nation or Entity can control the whole world.
But, one group of international super elites, running a universal surveillance state, can and do.
Are we going to pull our of Ukraine first? We’re getting a bit over extended!
t not r
Thank you for another excellent article, Jim. You never disappoint.
Even though I was born in the 1960s into most modern conveniences, I am mostly still nostalgic for the 1970s before internets and digitalization. It was a better time, IMHO.
I don’t think that all of this ‘progress’ has made humans better or happier. Look at the current state of things, where most of humanity is either culted or insane.
In any case, there will be less of us and the weak will not survive, which is the tragic part of it. In the meantime, I am indeed returning to my music. A good reminder that all we have are our talents and abilities and willingness to thrive, going forward.
I’m of the same vintage, and I think the 70’s were a magical time to grow up, as we experienced a freedom that young people can hardly fathom, and we did it all without being tethered to each other.
I didn’t feel like the 70s were that special in the 80s or even the 90s. It wasn’t until the Obama era that it really hit me, how bad it had gotten now, compared to what we had then.
I ried to read an autobiography by Joe Namath. I could not finish it, it was making me too sad over what we’ve lost.
Right Beryl – Joe Willie had a strip joint in Fort Lauderdale, FL – my hometown, in the ’70’s – The Bachelors’ Three. Those were the days! Talk about sad, I wore black for a week when they finally closed.
Why? Did they lay you off?
No Speedy – it was just a great place to be – the gold standard of nightclubs at that time. With his partners Bobby Van & Ray Abbruzzese, there were always plenty of beautiful girls around and lots of guys with crooked noses – just an electric atmosphere. When Joe Willie was in town & holding court, everybody wanted to be there.
Its 10pm, do you care where your children are ? Then the late lies.
The music of the 60s and 70s is like no other in time and nothing produced today can ever match it,
The 70’s saw the rise of demonic radical Feminism – a most profound source of decay and destruction.
If they were good at all, it because they were “the last of the summer wine”. In other words, the goodness came from what came before, not what was happening then. That was mostly destructive. In and of themselves, they were bad.
But one’s youth is a golden time; for many the best there will ever be. In combination with the remaining goodness of America, your subjective experience is explained.
Younger people say the 80’s. Older, the fifties or sixties. Fewer will be able to say the nineties because of divorce and single motherhood.
I was wondering when it was going to turn out to be women’s fault.
LOL, as predictable as taxes and death.
Because nothing is women’s fault, right?
I don’t say it is all women’s fault of course, though of course you imply that to undercut my position.
You seem quite good at undercutting your own positions.
Always instinctively taking the woman’s side. Raised by a single mother? The story of our times.
Or is it that you’re ‘instinctively’ not taking the women’s side?
You didn’t answer my question, did you?
Get real, and focus on the content than the people. That might actually help you.
Women are people. Like men. Even like you, unless you’re some kind of Thing I’ve yet to imagine.
Like people in general, women have their pros and cons. So your constant harping on women is a cop-out, along with your black and white bunk. It’s divisive too.
Maybe that’s your angle; division and FUD-spreading.
Women could be like Jesus and walk on water and maybe you’d still find fault. That’s a con for some people.
Your ‘Blacks’ you write with a capital B could dance the Mensa and you’d still find fault.
Your ‘Whites’ you write with a capital W could be all lined up in some hypothetical society of yours and you’d start to be concerned then about the ones with brown or hazel eyes or black hair or whatever.
Fuck that.
“Women are people. Like men.”
Meaningless statement, as no one is saying that women are not people. You might as well say that women, like men, are vertebrates. No one is saying that they are not.
“along with your black and white bunk. It’s divisive too.”
Why should black and White peoples, or Black and White peoples if you prefer, ignore their differences? Those differences make living in the same society challenging, and more to the point, ignoring those differences makes living together in the same society impossible.
For instance is it better to assume we are all the same, and then to have to blame White racism for black failure to be as good at math and science and engineering, when they categorically cannot compete with Whites in these fields, or is it better to recognize they are different, and simply accept the obvious, that black women didn’t get us to the moon, nor build the railroads, nor invent math and science and law and medicine, nor any of the rest of the things we take for granted.
You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
“Your ‘Blacks’ you write with a capital B could dance the Mensa and you’d still find fault.”
The reason we find fault with blacks is that we are forced to live with them.
If we were allowed separate living spaces, criticizing the blacks, and pointing out their myriad failures to live up to White standards, would be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.
Access to White living space is not a human right. Why do you want to make it one?
And do you actually avail yourself of living around blacks? There are (still) great vintage craftsman houses in certain neighborhoods taht can be had for pennies on the dollar, but for some reason no one wants them.
“You didn’t answer my question, did you?” – Jarek
“Get real, and focus on the content than the people. That might actually help you.” – Zazelle
And conversely, answering his question might help you. Were you raised by a mother or a father?
It’s a cutting question, and it gets to the so-called “crisis of men” which the pretentious formerly called chattering classes, at least they acknowledge it.
Western men, American men particularly, were NOT raised by their fathers. This is no shame on the individual level, but it certainly is a failure on the societal level, and not just “a” failure, but THE failure.
This is what the boomer resentment (resentment of boomers by subsequent generations) is about, btw, is that they didn’t raise their children. Or rather, their mothers raised them, which means that their wasn’t Fatherly tradition and wisdom, but rather “over socialization” which leads to a sort of rule by consensus, and the long term effects of which are a disaster, see for example the 70 or 80 per cent clot shot injection rate.
Is it fair to put that on women, when it can just as easily be called a failure of men? No, it’s not fair to put it on women.
However, criticizing the reality of being raised by a feminine consensus, is describing the problem and the first stop in addressing it.
“What Does She See In Him?”
Your comments sound very suspiciously like a kind of echo or regurgitation of Jarek’s, if not derived through outright sockpuppeting.
If you’re not one-and-the-same or not from the same Office Of Online Astroturfing & Propaganda, maybe you can come up with something a little more authentic and worth replying to.
I will say this though:
Perhaps the irony is that if the ‘Jareks’, or ‘Karens’ of the world step outside of themselves and look back at themselves from others’ perspectives, like some women’s or so-called ‘blacks’, they won’t likely see a Jesus, they will see a ‘Jarek/Karen’, with all the baggage and/or pros and cons that that entails.
Maybe some women are all taken by some men and who’s available is who’s left– which would seem convenient to harp on about and/to feed one’s own prophesies.
…And create one’s own universe one expands into. Likewise with a sociopolitical dystopia.
To dovetail into the sockpuppet concept…
Birds of a feather flock together, but it is not necessarily obvious to some birds how some birds are birds of a feather with other birds.
That’s how some so-called blacks, or so-called browns for that matter, get together and are very happy with some so-called whites and vice-versa…
Rather like how some people might get together on other criteria that has zilch to do with skin-tone.
“This is the goal and function of the Hobbesian narrative: To instill in people a fear of each other, to prevent them from trusting each other too much, to make them unable to even imagine that cooperation and mutual aid could be possible without a system of domination. In short, to make another world not only impossible but also unimaginable. For Hobbes, emotions were deeply relevant to the maintenance of political systems, making him perhaps the first political affect theorist…” ~ Ole Martin Sandberg
The NY Times, the STANDARD of American Journalism, capitalizes Blacks but not whites. Interesting, eh?
They used to not capitalize either, not seeing them as proper nouns. Many White Nationalists took to capitalizing Whit because we think race is important, and especially our own race and our northern inter-related ethnicities. We don’t feel the same about our cousins, the Southern Caucasians of North Africa, the Arabs, the Stans, Iran, and India.
But to be respectful, many of us capitalize Black as well. So the Times has reversed this, capitalizing Black but not white – and for much the same reasons except in reverse. And without our fairness.
Oh hey, no Suburban_elk. What a surprise.
I don’t think that all of this ‘progress’ has made humans better or happier.
i see peeps looking at their phones a lot.
they look down and are zoned into the phone.
May 5, 2023 at 12:09 am
Well at least they’re more likely to correct their online punctuation than if they weren’t, ay?
As a child of the 80s, I must say that was also a fine decade to be in grade school. Confidence and optimism through the roof, whether hollow or not. See: the mall.
I did feel a bit of jealousy for the kids that grew up in the 70s though. A unique version of America.
J. H. is half wrong this time. He is right about the financial parasite and completely wrong about running out of fossil fuels and the ability to ‘make things’ and become richer. The insane climate cult is forcing us to give up fossil fuels, at least in the crazy West. There is still a huge amount of those in the ground. We are NOT destroying the environment, that ended decades ago.
StwveK9 — You apparently don’t understand my thinking on the fossil fuel situation, and you’re pretty snotty about it. I’m not an advocate of banning them in any way. But I do recognize that the business model is broken for using them the way we do, and for the way our world is designed. –JHK-Admin
There is nothing stopping the human race from both expanding (if we want) and becoming richer (in real goods).
Try: Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less by Alex Epstein
#1 on Amazon in ‘Energy Policy’
Ahh! A Cornucopian. Interesting philosophy. Current events would seem to say it’s a bit… optimistic.
The problem with presenting counter-arguents to something like global warming, is that the people who came up with global warming already know it’s a big lie.
It’s to keep environmentalist types from sitting down with people like Epstein and hashing out their differences to find a way forward.
Also to make them lots of money.
You can talk pollution, you can talk scarcity, and you can come up with solutions.
You can’t talk to each other when one side firmly believes the other side is destroying the planet.
“the people who came up with global warming already know it’s a big lie”
Yup
Perhaps the war on Global Warming, now Climate Change, is a psyop to make us feel good about scaling back in these times of depletion. Tell the world growth is over due to falling energy production and EROEI and panic ensues, markets crash, resource wars are acknowledged. Convince people to virtue signal their concern for changing climate by voluntarily scaling back and you can continue to kick the can down the road.
Tahoe, bingo.
Exactly, Beryl.
The solution would be a balanced approach that helps people recognize that the fear tactics used to scare society into going down a certain path are simply that.
That said, endless consumption with no attempt to put eggs in other baskets or examine whether endless consumption in the manner carried out over the past few decades is a sensible approach to living on this planet is also rather foolish.
Because the Earth can only comfortably hold so many people – and also uncomfortably a higher number. Much like a suitcase can carry so much without splitting its seams. Carrying capacity in other words.
How many people would that be, Jarek?
How many Kennewick Men in the suitcase, Jarek? How big is the suitcase? What’s in it? Rivers? Trees? Women? Big Gay Al?
NO: So you accept the concept as valid, and that there is a number? Or rather two, one sane (comfortable) and the other insane and on the verge of collapse?
No point moving forward until you accept the concept. And that means accepting you were wrong heretofore. Women can’t do this, but as a man, you should be able to.
Za: Shut up, you miserable fool. I’m Russia. You’re Ukraine. I’m driving you back on every front.
Your comments are a blight on Jim’s blog, Jarek.
We must blast the very hills to get our hands on the black gold, be it oil or coal. This planet is simply a staging area, a booster that will fall away from us as we blast off L5’s and then to far off planets orbiting other stars.
The animals are country boys who will survive. Some of ’em. New species will evolve to meet new blasted conditions.
I went to a hockey game with a group of people from work. One brought his brother who was a “research scientist” for Exxon. I asked him what he researched. He said “we aint researchin’ shit!”
No? No alternative fuels?
“We’re not going to go all in on alternatives until we pumped every last drop of oil out of this planet and that won’t be for hundreds of years.”
We still have that much oil left? – what about peak oil?
“We have oil for a thousand years!”
Maybe that’s just one man’s opinion. We had been drinking but that one man was a research scientist for a huge oil company.
It’s not just the amount. If you can’t get it out of the ground cheaply enough, you can’t use it for anything much but basic survival.
Just think how much oil we’d have f we hadn’t fought wars all over the place.
Yes, I would guess there’s untapped oil under Antarctica and Greenland, not to mention the deep oceans. Of course, it will take advanced technology like deep diving robots to safely and cleanly extract it. But it’s not beyond man’s capabilities.
Although, that drunken petroleum engineer who ain’t researching shit, doesn’t sound like the visionary who’ll deliver that future.
Think of how much of that oil is wasted. Driving around, what percentage of people on the road are doing something halfway worthwhile besides “going to the store”?
And plastics are made of non-renewables and these are used as disposables?
People in total behave like termites and can’t stop eating the house.
Followers of Julian Simon still pretend that resources are infinite.
Any simpleton can observe that fossil fuels have been of enormous benefit to humankind. And any simpleton ought to understand the concept of EROEI.
The fossil fuel era was a one-time windfall, and it’s ending. Ignoring that fact or pretending otherwise will not make it so.
“The fossil fuel era was a one-time windfall”.
Your remark, and the remark above about making music, made me think of something Mick Jagger said.
Mick attended the London School of economics, btw.
He said that there was only a small time frame where musicians made a lot of money, and he was in it.
I think that with the type of education people value today, most people won’t be able to place events in historic perspective.
Depletion never sleeps.
I started my professional life in upstream. Still know a lot of people there. They don’t see it the same way you do.
Steve,
The solution for high oil prices is…high oil prices. High oil prices reduce consumption.
When we run out of fossil fuels we’ll just have to start using all the abiotic hydrocarbons that the earth is stuffed with.
Ha, ha.
I think you’re mixed up about the theory, bile.
The theory is that there is no such thing as fossil fuels, that all the oil fields have seeped from the earth’s mantle into those collecting pools.
To us humans alive now, it really doesn’t matter where the oil came from, though.
The easy stuff to get is gone, and it isn’t going to seep back in our lifetimes.
Outstanding column today, Jim. I have shared it with a couple of friends who may finally be ready to understand the world as it has become.
I do not disagree with today’s quote, but am no admirer of the messenger. Sowell is an acolyte of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, which has provide a rationale for doing more harm to greater numbers of people than the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ever managed to wreak.
Zoltar, please share with us the school of economics that you agree with.
Read Sowell’s books and you will discover a brilliant man. America would be a better place had we listened.
Is the one who blamed Black misbehavior on Southern Whites?
Capitalism and Communism are Pyramid schemes. A steady state economy would be an antidote to building the Pyramid but it’s anathema to the modern mind.
Anthea made a point about private ownership in this regard, and I then helpfully pointed out the difference between subsistence farming and farming as a Capitalist endeavor. She raged at me, calling me a bum. She wants to GROW, build that Pyramid. Monsanto is a family farm!
@Jarek: ” A steady state economy would be an antidote to building the Pyramid but it’s anathema to the modern mind.
Anthea made a point about private ownership in this regard, and I then helpfully pointed out the difference between subsistence farming and farming as a Capitalist endeavor. ”
STOP IT! Stop saying things I agree with. You’re making the bottom fall out of my universe!
The bottom fell out my universe when I read David Duke’s autobiography. I had been searching for something in Conservatism, but it was utterly lacking by then.
Duke opened up the world for me. He met with the leader of the Italian Fascist Party who admired American’s Founding Fathers, and said they were in accordance with Fascism. I agree. And given their racism, with National Socialism as well.
The world has been and continues to be ravaged by the Chicago School’s false god of Shareholder Value. In case you haven’t noticed, that sole criterion has come at the expense of the customers, the workforce, the environment, society, and posterity.
In the time at hand society will not be able to afford the luxury of such skewed perception, and it will again be necessary to produce goods and services of genuine value to our customers and community.
At that point, of course, your portfolio will be worthless, and your genuine skillset will or will not sustain you.
Wow Jim, you knocked this latest outa the park ! The advice in the last paragraph was particularly poignant. Keeping one’s sanity is a top priority during times of collapse, something the experts rarely discuss.
The park? Which one? As Aristotle said, I never saw a man, but only an Athenian, a Spartan, a Thracian. The Ladies don’t like generalities or concepts. They were particulars! Real diamond rings, not pie in the sky ones.
correction: want not were
I’ve been dreading the shock for as long as I’ve been anticipating the Big Incident that changes everything.
It will be soul-crushing for millions upon millions of empty bellies with nowhere to turn.
That boy crying wolf?
Wrong.
Them’s actual wolves coming to crowd out the coyotes.
And they’re hungry too.
Damn it, I hate being right sometimes.
In one post-apocalypse novel, young Whites went to the Indians and asked to be taught how to live in the coming world. They became White Indians, with the real Indians remained as the Elite in the new culture.
The best of dogs will be accepted into the Coyote or Wolf packs. The females that is….
The dogs qua dogs (dogs as dogs) are not viable. They don’t form packs that can last.
@Jarek: “In one post-apocalypse novel, young Whites went to the Indians and asked to be taught how to live in the coming world.”
Do you remember the title?
Yes, it’s a trilogy by one, Mitchell Smith, the first novel is titled “Snowfall”.
Either the Earth changes orbit or the Sun takes a nap, can’t remember, but an Ice Age bears down on modern humanity fast and hard.
I found him to be a fantastic writer. I’ve always meant to check out other things he’s written, but never got around to it. So this was a good reminder to do so.
The group that is focused on isn’t the new Indians however. It is a group of White Families who call themselves, The Trappers. The Indians are their opponents in the first book.
@Jarek: thanks! I’ll look for it.
Going to the Indians to learn how to live in “the coming world” would be ridiculous. Reservation Indians are mostly on welfare and have no other means of support–and do not appear to have the ability to provide for themselves in any other way. Also, most of them are alcoholics. They are mostly occupied with domestic violence, child-molesting, and a form of gang violence reminiscent of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
Yes, a valid point for the most part. A very few truly value the old ways and know a bit. Many pretend to and do not.
Wonderful post today.
Excellent extended metaphor!
The financial parasite reminds me of the eponymous Alien, which/who(?) gets inside a human, grows and grows, until it bursts out, exploding him to bits.
Hopefully we can expel the monster before it kills us all!
The same people who believe overuse of energy will destroy the planet tend to be the same people who support chain immigration and H1b visas, etc.
They import droves of Third Worlders to keep the financial industry and auto industries going, to name just a couple of pyramid schemes.
If you look at a newly arrived family from India, you are very likely to see them driving a brand new SUV, leased or purchased with a sub-prime loan.
Go to a Home Depot, see who is buying all kinds of “stuff” with the Home Depot credit card.
People who are legally allowed to be here have a perfect right to consume as they wish, of course, but if we were really facing the crisis many belive we are, why are we cramming in so many more people who are also going to want to cool their homes, and also want to get to their jobs without all the travail reliance on the bus entails?
Michelle once claimed that we might have to give up a slice of pie so someone else can have a piece.
Didn’t anyone wonder why the POTUS was married to a communist?
Overcrowding and then claiminf scarcity was by design.
Beryl, ask rather, “Why was a communist selected as President?”
The entire Dem part is communist, and the Repubs are communist-lite.
The broader the base, the higher the Pyramid!
Almost, volks, almost. It’s one System. Capitalism funded the Communist revolutions after all. Now they’re taking down Western countries and Communists are again useful, this time here at home.
Communism is the attack arm of Capitalism. Its purpose is to destroy traditional economies and nations, to prepare them for entrance into the nascent Global Financial Order.
Mary’s comment that the Republicans are Communist-lite is going the wrong way. The Capitalists are the heads, the Cause, the Communists are the tails or effect.
Neither system can exist in purity anymore. Communism never could as it is opposed to human nature. To a lesser degree, so is the exclusive focus on individual wealth that Capitalism purports to believe in. Well, they don’t – not any more to the extent they ever did. If you get rich somehow on your own mostly, you’re now part of a Class and Culture – and are expected to participate. See if it you can keep it “on your own”. Most don’t get that rich like that any more in any case – to the extent it was ever a thing.
All viable cultures have both individual and group structures. Any exclusive focus on one to the detriment of the other lowers the viability of the culture.
USA does not need immigrants.
look at so cal..the mexican drunks on the street. what was live like el south for them to choose el norte?
They are also the same one who support things like the Paris Climate Accords; and when you tell them that China and India are free to pollute as much as they like, they tell you it is only “fair” that we allow them a full-on industrial revolution to “catch up” with the West.
IIRC, China and India put out more pollution (with the globalists’ blessing) than all of Europe and the United States combined.
🙂
Sowell is always worth listening to, and he has the added gravitas from admitting he was an avid Marxist in his youth.
He should be part of the standard curriculum in modern education.
Instead of “Rise of the Machines” we get “Rise of the Warlords”. There’s going to be a lot of shooty things around for a long time. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when authorities can’t control a society, it will control itself. Ask Afghanistan.
“Shooty Things.” Sounds like the title of the next great Stephen King novel.
If you have been fortunate to visit Pompeii and walk the streets you’d notice a level of opulent living which was at it’s peak. The subsequent fall of the Roman empire ushered in the Dark Ages and the Plague.
Also look at the Greek temple ruins in Agrigento, Sicily. Very advanced civilization, in 500 BC. Plato was said to have remarked that “they build like they intend to live forever, yet eat like this is their last day.”
Does history repeat or does it rhyme?
It echos so even the illiterate are without excuse.
The forces of decay are always already at work when a culture is at its peak. The Athens of Plato was full of foreign workers and merchants – doing the work Greeks didn’t want to do or doing it better than they could.
Interesting, you mention the plague.
Ayesha info says the plaque came into Europe via the Silk Road from the steppes of Asia and China and entered via the trade routes into Venice.
Why does it seem that diseases seem to originate in Asia? Overpopulation? Animal species?
There were several plagues in the ancient world, so we’d have to narrow this down a bit to answer your question. The only one I’ve read much about was Justinian’s Plague in the Sixth Century. The book “Justinian’s Flea” covers the origins of that one pretty well. If I remember right, it originated in the upper Nile region and was predicated upon a few adaptations by both rats and fleas that made it virulent. There was a lot of commerce by ship, and the ships were full of rats, so at the outset it struck port cities and then gradually spread through the countryside.
Hot places, Anthea. This is why I avoid them.
Mostly “plague” was due to starvation. So, crop failure, bad weather conditions too many years in a row, etc.
Nicely done. This is the Jim Kunstler we know and love. No conspiracy quacks, no playing to the gallery, just a clear and convincing narrative that ends appropriately with Bob. Keep it up.
That final Quote from Dylan made me go back and check out the full lyrics to that song of his of the 60’s. A real masterpiece of literature. Thanks Jim
I went to Texas last week and we went to a museum. When I tried to pay the admission fee with legal tender, the young man told me they didn’t take cash.
I was pissed off and told him so. He actually agreed and he knew about the Canadian truckers and what happened to them.
Then we went to a restaurant and they also did not take cash, so I walked out, but the rest of my family stayed. Grrrr.
I went across the street and into another restaurant and asked “Do you take cash?”
The young woman working the cash register (outdated term now) said “We should’.
I said “What does that mean? Do you or don’t you?”
She said “I don’t know. No one has ever paid with cash before”.
We are doomed.
According to a DJ on my local radio station, New Orleans had an entire jazz festival that was “cash free”. But then the system broke down.
So no one could buy food or alcohol. That apparently did not go over well.
In a crisis, cash is king. I’ll trade you this twenty dollar bill for that gold ring. Predatory!
When I would see a sign that said they didn’t take checks I would ask, “Do you take federal reserve notes?”. It was funny how often they would promptly respond “No”. Then I would show them one. Those were the days my friends…
Once upon a time there was a tavern….
If you had ever worked in a restaurant and looked into the business end of some “teen’s” pistol, or had guests shot, you might be more sympathetic to their plight.
I have and I am.
I get your point, but I wonder if any irate concert goer used that method to get what they wanted when the credit machines broke. No cash isn’t necessarily a panacea.
The problem of feral teens is different than the problem of centralized command and control afforded by the digital currency system.
Paula
Went to SoCal two weeks ago with my wife and niece and guess what,
None of the resorts take cash any more!
That sucks. Walk out.
Jim, there’s a word missing from the last sentence of the seventh paragraph of today’s essay.
Thanks for fixing it Jim, it takes a load off my mind. 😉
On a meta level, from the dearth of comments on today’s essay, one can easily observe the effect harsh reality has on people, and why successful purveyors of religion, politics and entertainment are always careful to offer hope and redemption.
As a life long professional write, JHK knows firsthand what sells and what doesn’t. While insightful and profound, I would guess his middle, doomer period didn’t come close to the success of his earliest, heady days as a political writer.
His return to political subjects via this blog to rail against power, to launch bombastic diatribes against supposedly clueless, venial “public servants” and/or horribly corrupt criminals was a demonstration in market dictates. That is, justice was always just around the corner … Preach it brother.
So, why the reversion to less promising, less hopeful, but entirely factual reality? Done with the games, the need to appeal to a more socially acceptable audience, one countenanced with that good old standby “conspiracy allergy”?
My guess is Jim’s recent interactions with his liberal cousins brought him to the final realization that it doesn’t make any sense to continue attempting to ameliorate the political lefts’ opinion of him. This is what I mean when I refer to the radicalization process.
Now, we’re beginning to see traditional liberal Jews like JHK, Naomi Wolff, and perhaps others, the so-called “good, open minded people”, finally reach the conclusion that they were played just like everyone else. That their almost instinctive opposition to conservative values was intentionally engineered, nurtured along and exploited along with everyone else.
And, as JohnAZ has begun pointing out, convervative/libertarians are no better off either. Promoting open markets without sufficient regulation simply enabled the vampires to run the tables, gaining monopoly control over both corporations and governments.
Which makes both sides either duped or complicit, but illustrates that the real isse is one of class. Divide and conquer, play each off the others, but the real organization is one of a few against all.
Once you come to that final realization, you discover what has essentially driven every political revolution since time began. And at that point, why not be right instead of what might just be temporarily popular or acceptable in polite society.
That is not the final realization mitchllc. Until you acknowledge the Creator and His rights, you are still in denial.
JHK has been radicalized. He is going to joi the worker on the barricade to take the means of production from the evil owning class. LOL
Until the people stop buying the crap generated by the current economic scene, nothing will change.
That’s why they import new customers and subsidize them, every single day.
Ans also the new imported voters they are subsidizing.
“So, why the reversion to less promising, less hopeful, but entirely factual reality?”
Agree with your big picture view of how we’ll need to come to grips with reality.
Hope is relative. “Hope” relative to how we lived for the last 70 years or so is definitely in short supply. That’s the reality of the end of the Empire. “Hope” relative to the future means we’re at least getting to the end of the insanity of gorging on Mother Earth’s abundance, and now we’ll have to grow up and do something useful. Nature bats last, and all that.
It’s a big mental challenge for many, and a physical challenge for almost everyone – for me the biggest change on deck is the end of “life being left alone” as now one gets dragged along for the ride – willing or not.
“In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.”
I have heard this come right out of people’s mouths. How’s that for “hope and redemption”?
Regulation is needed where markets are unavailable.
Examples. Utilities.
IMHO, medicine
Free markets causing competition controlling prices is what stops monopolization. Keeping the damn government out of the equation, IOW, politics, would be a yuge help. A healthy economy should never produce “too big to fail” institutions. There should always be someone trying to out compete you, and conversely, there should always be new company formation to absorb the”losers”. In this country, “losers” end up on the street.
The government is ALWAYS wearing the black hat.
What a failed model. In politics, it leads to people clawing their way up the political food chain, the skill set for which is antithetical to that which is needed to rule well.
All of what you say is simply pablum for suckers and rubes. They don’t believe it and it’s not how they got rich or stay rich.
You want your world of healthy competition? The means big Government to keep companies small enough to compete. What could be simpler. But you can’t get it. If you want to pick up the Truth, you have to put down the Lie. Like a baby has to put down its rattle to pick up another toy.
What you call pablum is what is missing allowing monopolization. If markets were devoid of government, truly devoid, the competition would control the prices and prevent monopolies. Why? Because as soon as a company started to try to control pricing, there would be another to cut them off.
Needed? More than one or two companies per industry, industries present from smal business, through medium and large companies into corporation
Think about that model, think how the government disrupts the continuing creation of small to large companies and the consequent current result, monopolization of the entire economy.
Too big to fail. BTW, a good example. First Republic Bank, FDIC sold it to JP Morgan/ Chase. Another smaller bank disappears.
Big socialistic government is the enemy of a healthy economy.
NO. “Devoid of Government” (lol), they would still attain class consciousness, cooperate, and come out way on top.
Do I have to say it? They would BE the Government.
I wonder if there was a guy named John who fought in both WW1 and WW2, receiving Dear John letters in both?
Ecce Homo. You are or would have been The Man!
“The almost instinctive opposition to conservative values”: E Michael Jones calls it the rebellion against the Logos in his magisterial book, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit”.
Remember, “the authoritarian personality” and how they had “to put America on the psychiatric couch”?
“Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out. Keep your own well-ordered minds on the tasks ahead, your own makings and doings within the bounds of what is real.”
Couldn’t have summed it up any better Jim. Look at all the sex confused trannies out there. Let’s just ignore them, the likes of Dylan Mulvaney, and get on with our own lives to make them better, enrich our families and local community. Eventually those hormonal injections will stop and the trannies will all die out due to natural selection, just as nature intended.
” sex confused trannies…”
Bell,
Why do you consider them confused? They may carry other pathologies, but confused?
If you don’t know if you are a man or a woman, you are definitely sex confused.
If you deny what your DNA and genitalia actually are, you are reality-challenged.
Tguy,
Yes, you can challenge reality and not be confused…wrong, perverse, self destructive maybe.
How to handle a bank run?
Very well, said the bankster clan.
The way to handle a bank run is to print more.
Merely print more! Print more! Print more.
From the upcoming musical “Scamalot”
Out here they got a name for Grift,
For theft and obfuscation,
Regulation is Nil,
Cash OPM,
And they call the risk, Denial….
Denial, risk and OPM,
Will set your ass on fire,
Your money gone, your house is too,
Too late for all your cryin’
,,,Yeah….
Remember “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
George calming down the bank run in 1929, by talking sense to the people and restoring their faith in the building and loan.
There are no George Baileys today!!!
It wouldn’t have worked without the money for their honeymoon. People need money now because they haven’t stored provisions, and/or because they don’t hown their own omes.
True. The money was George and Mary’s own capital pool, which they sacrificed for the public good..
As I said, there are no George or Mary Baileys today.
I met a good man who had been the pharmacist for his town. The town was too big for one but too small for two. He held on, dragging his family into the desperate endeavor. Held on for decades until he felt he could sell it and be free.
He said with deep emotion in his voice, Thank God for the big pharmacies now, so that young pharmacists can actually have lives.
That doesn’t fit into your narrative, does it? Nor mine. But his story is part of the picture too.
Small is beautiful? Sometimes! Sometimes not. Scale matters. You have yet to address Scale. It will be the end of your narrative….
Jarek, that’s an interesting point and a good illustration of why I don’t comment on economics; I don’t understand it well enough. Small appeals to me for largely emotional reasons, and because I grew up in a rural place where the workings of the local economy were both benign and transparent. I’ve tried over the years to understand the arcane workings of seemingly incomprehensible financial instruments, but my brain just doesn’t work that way. I’m somewhat comforted by the fact that apparently reality doesn’t work that way either.
I think this better illustrates the hubris of modernity and ‘faith’ in ‘science’:
youtu.be/56u6g0POvo0
Let them eat ‘possum snouts in sorrel sauce. And bugs for breakfast.
Whereas we will swill champagne and scarf down caviar as we zoom over them in our Gulfstreams.
(Whoever came up with that idea of CBDCs was a genius!)
All will be numbered to buy n sell w the mark.
. The phantom financial parasite clinging to its back got used to this “growth” and it, too, developed ever more ingenious ways to suck the life out of its host organism, until it became a greater entity than the host itself, breaking its back.
a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. I
Yeah…what THEY said….
elysianfield, don’t forget to credit Matt Taibbi with those immortal words (or, at least, they deserve immortality). He’s one of the few who can rival our host as far as pithy use of the English language.
Piglet,
Both Rolling Stone Alumni….
“Later on, the things which represented money became more numerous and more detached from real makings-and-doings, more abstract, more based on promises, hopes, and wishes than on things derived from nature.”
It’s all about supply and demand. The supply of financial instruments will soon greatly exceed the demand for them. Thus, their value will plummet. The exception could be shares in companies that meet real human needs.
You forget there is no basis for the financial instruments, that they are a product of faith. When faith dies, supply and demand makes no difference.
The people of the USA are losing their faith. Evidence? 73% of them think Biden is doing a crappy job with the mirage of an economy. But they will vote for Biden over Trump.
“The exception could be shares in companies that meet real human needs.”
That.
WW and Elysian need to grab a gig as temporary writers for late nite TV, while the strike is on.
Meanwhile, as several commenters upstream mentioned, it’s refreshing to see Jimbo ditch the conspiracy theory chatter and concentrate on the economy and all that is crumbling within it.
“Econ 101, a Fable”…great title.
Multiple sentences expressing complete thoughts and opinions? You go, lo’ t!
I graduated early 80s w/ a BA in Econ. 2008-09 came along and told me everything I had learned was a lie.
Some years later the Alumni Assoc. asked me if I’d like to support them by way of a brick in the Quad walkway, I could put anything I liked as a dedication. I wrote;
“is it too late for a refund”?
It stayed there for quite awhile but a few years ago somebody busted it out. Funny….only mine was taken.
JHK is back to describing diminishing resources again. This time it is not oil, it is capital.
What is capital. The sum total of the output produced by a society? Do socialist/communist countries produce capital? Just asking.
The key word is output!! JHK has separated financial capital from production capital. The difference? Production capital is EARNED by someone busting their butt producing something. It’s expression is $ per man hour. There is no faith involved here, dollars per man hour. Hard cold cash.
Then there is finance. Dollars per man hour has no meaning. The computer age has made finance a non man hour exercise, nothing is earned. It is a crap shoot, gambling. As there are no man hours involved, earning, the goodness of the finance side of capital is totally a matter of faith. Faith that companies have good returns, faith that the country grows providing capital growth, faith that the dollar is worth a dollar, no, sixty cents, no, forty cents, no, fill in the blank. Faith dies, so does the finance side of the society’s capital pool.
So, JHK shows us how the production side of capital is being displaced by the finance side, right?
How come. The picture gets very dark. Our wonderful government has made this possible. Put out tax penalties for success, we are going to get the rich guys, the success folks, the production oriented folks. The response, son of a gun, the production guys automate, they send their manufacturing to cheaper shores. What is left for America, advertising and finance.
Advertising is a joke. It is the bulwark of most of the internet. When advertising becomes worthless, the internet folds. This has already started.
Finance is the second joke. The number one consumer of the globe is us, the good old USA. Strip us of spending power, and the production side folds quickly. When the production side folds, so does the faith in the advertising and finance sector.
When this baby goes, it will go quickly. The bank failings and investment fraud are just microcosms of the collapse process. WMBH is just a story of the world without an advertising or finance sector, a local event. When producing becomes the only game in town, many many people will have nothing to do and no resources.
Proof? Just look at California, the West Coast and Colorado, havens for the human fallout, the homeless. Funniest thing, there are more today than yesterday, or last year or last decade. You are witnessing the collapse.
The most obvious evidence of the collapse? The national debt. When the faith in the recoverability of the debt collapses, so does everything else.
JAZ’s comments about the difference between production capital (earned) and financial capital (faith dependent) are important. Brings to mind the old John Houseman pitch for the financial firm Smith Barney from back in the 80’s…”We make money the old-fashioned way…we EARN it.” Whether they did or not remains questionable, but it sure sounded it did, coming from the old geezer (RIP).
Old Geezers for $100, Alex. Answer is: This old geezer’s catch phrase uttered for Smith Barney made him a household name. Beep beep beep: Who is John Houseman?
Old Geezers for $200 please: Answer is: This movie and subsequent TV series by the same name first established that old geezer’s acting bonafides. Beep beep beep: What is The Paper Chase?
tom clark – in the end, the ‘dollar’ involved is still a Federal Reserve Note, a made-up thing that requires ‘faith’ to continue to exist.
It doesn’t matter whether it was generated from one ‘side’ of the economy or the other, does it?
Do we have ‘real’ dollars from ‘work’ & ‘monopoly’ dollars from ‘unearned income’ (like rents)? No…
Yes. “We earned our money” is the most famous phrase ever heard coming from the mouths of those who have hoarded too much of it. Obscene wealth is essentially hoarding.
One upon a time in the old USA, a dollar wasn’t a “Federal Reserve Note” – it was a “Silver Certificate”. With that piece of paper you could go to a bank and purchase a silver dollar if you wished. That paper was as good as silver. But not anymore. Today it’s just a piece of paper. At some point it will be good only for wiping your ass or starting a fire in your wood heater.
Woodchuck In 1964 we couldn’t “support” the silver standard.
In 1972 we (temporarily) couldn’t support the gold standard….(permanently).
In 1982 we couldn’t support the copper standard.
Soon we will not be able to support the nickel standard. The current metal value of the 5 cent coin is around 6.4 cents.
”We make money the old-fashioned way…we EARN it.”
I’m watching a you tube channel called “Ghost Town Living”. A fellow bought the old Cerro Gordo silver mine near Death Valley. He’s been living there for 3 years and paints a very nice picture for us of what life was like for a silver miner in the 1800’s. Los Angeles basically came to be because of this mine; once the most productive silver mine in the US. 12 hours a day living underground like a mole doing pick, shovel, and dynamite work.
It was fellows like these that actually made that silver buillon itself before it melted and morphed into silver dollars. How many years could the average man endure such tough working conditions before looking for another job? The new owner of Cerro Gordo explores and videos deep down inside the mines. There’s an elevator there that can take a person 1000 feet down a vertical shaft to the bottom of the mine. This fellow explores around down there looking for artifacts. In one collapsed section there is the bodies of some 25 Chinamen who died there and were left because entry into the area was too dangerous. What a dismal way to spend one’s working days, living and working in a colorless hole for months on end. Apparently these miners were paid well and they partied hard on weekends. This town encluded bars and brothels. Murders were common place events that happened when the partying got too hard and serious.
There are ghost towns like that all over the west. Apparently gold and silver are not abiotic, like oil.
Oh, wait! Yes, they must be, because so many people want them to be, so that we can go back on the gold standard and also we can continue to burn oil forever.
So, give that silver mine a little time, and it will fill right back up with silver.
Some years ago when peak oil was a more popular topic I enountered the abiotic oil theory. People get in arguments about whether petroleum is from organic or inorganic sources. Our host has referred to the abiotic oil theory as a concept involving the earth as a big chocolate ball that has a creamy nougat of petroleum at the center – like caramel inside a chocolate bar maybe. And it just oozes up into the top layers of the earth’s crust where we can poke straws in it and suck it out.
If I’m not mistaken, scientists have done complex radiological and isotope studies on the substances inside petroleum and nat gas. They’ve determinded that the carbon in “fossil fuels” is of biological origin.
I don’t know how silver mining is done nowadays. I’m guessing the old fashioned way of mining the stuff as they did in the old West is no longer possible due to safety regulations and changes in machines and mining tech.
Yes, the abiotic people go straight from “The oil came from Earth’s mantle and collected in these pools” to
“Industrialized societies can’t function without oil”.
to
“I like industrialized society’
therefore
“There is no limit to the amount of oil available to us”.
It is toddler logic, but it is very common.
Gold mining was environmentally destructive even when it was totally Made By Hand.
You can ride Amtrak through the Sierra Nevadas and still see the old mining water sluices made from wood.
Those miners rinsed so much dirt from the mountains down into the San Francisco Bay that they totally buried the oyster beds there, back in the 1800s.
Today, it’s even worse, like mountain top removal and long wall mining for coal.
I think it was El Salvador who found out the downside of the CAFTA treaty they had to sign.
A Canadian mining corporation sued them for passing a law forbidding the corporation from destroying a mountain that had people living on it, and polluting the river that millions of people relied upon.
They had to pay the mining company for “lost profits”.
CAFTA, NAFTA and the TPP were the first attempts by global capitalism to destroy nation states and force them to be enforcers for corporations, with no ability to protect their citizens.
The covid operation is global cap regrouping and trying another way.
Actually, I guess it was the WTO that was the first big power grab by global cap.
woodchuck , I was lucky enough to visit the Roman era salt mines of Salzburg Austria. Enormous caverns hollowed out.
We would sit on what were essentially, wooden handrails and ride them down to the next levels. The last level was filled with water making an underground lake of unknown diameter. There was a string of light bulbs going from one end to the other. We boarded a skiff, shoved off and glided effortlessly to the other end.
I thought of the fear that those miners must have experienced. Illumination by tallow candles, constant labor, countless accidents, the rigors of carrying a basket or satchel of that rock-salt up into the sunlight.
The thing I noticed the most was the absolute silence, we were all silent, lost in our thoughts on an underground lake.
I had a friend/colleague who worked for the US Forest Service. He and his work mate were doing a survey on one of the relic Head Frames (the “A” frame that stands above the shaft) the wind was blowing so Bill didn’t hear anything when the flooring partially collapsed and his work mate dropped many thousands of feet. He just wasn’t there anymore.
There wasn’t any attempt at “recovery” because he would have been “ping-ponging” off the walls.
Gravity and Time – nobody gets out alive.
I read a story about a couple rock climbing in Hawaii on their honeymoon – up a waterfall. Slippery as hell. They had kept a picture of it on their wall for months.
They couldn’t turn back after all that buildup. He never heard her fall because of the roar of the water.
Jarek, Tempting the gods of fate whilst visiting Hawaii, I danced on the volcano.
I’ve visited a few underground lakes, one was a naturally made one inside a cave. The water makes for really spooky sound effects with echoes. The sounds bounce and reverb of the water like skipping stones.
A ray of hope: The transition will be hardest on those of us who remember the prosperous times. After a few generations, our descendants will take the world as it is and will be happy over an arrow that found its mark, be it a hunter’s arrow or Cupids arrow.
There are some old legendary cemetery’s in Seattle that are fascinating to make note of. There’s the Calvary Cemetery, and there’s even the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery–which is for those in the Civil War. Many of the names are fascinating, but one in particular rings true to this Fable of “American Freedom News”-is a character who called himself “Eureka Striker!” Definitely a gold bug, probably one of the first, but the point being, it tells you a lot about who people were back then, and it is a “remnant” of the past.
“Historians of the future…”
Historians in our future?
‘Daddy, what’s a Historian?’
‘Well, Sweetie… ah… uh… I DON’T KNOW! But I think they were outlawed years ago…’
“The whole of this chapter in the long-running human project had strange effects on human minds that had not changed much since the late days of hunting and gathering.”
The Human Animal will have gone from caves and hunting and gathering… to Space travel and AI and DNA manipulation and Robot Wars… and then back to caves and hunting and gathering. If we’re lucky.
“Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end…”
Most people today seem convinced that we are nearing the end of our story… Book of Revelation stuff. But that might not be true. We might still be in the beginning since the human race has not been around much in the long course of existence. But we suffer from rampant Recent-cy-Bias and we like to convince ourselves that our Time and what we do is important. It is, but History might have big surprises ahead.
“Humans are ingenious animals, enterprising and resilient, though there will surely be fewer of us around.”
Humans are spending too much time being ingenious in how to use and hurt and abuse others for personal gain. If all that ingenuity and energy were spent building a better World and better human family, there’s no telling what a great place the World might be right now.
“Keep your own well-ordered minds on the tasks ahead, your own makings and doings within the bounds of what is real.”
In other words, don’t let all the disorder and filth around you soil your own body and mind and spirit. Only you control those precious human gifts… not the foul faux-gods-among-us.
And some humans are actually fulling the dream of so many sci-fi enthusiasts and moving towards the stars.
It is an inevitable evolutionary path which we are following.
Over the life of this universe there certainly have been other civilizations realizing the question of where their future lies. How many succeeded and how many failed?
Awareness is a bitch.
A lovely and sanguine post, James. It brings our predicament back to basics, back to nature, and is an accurate vision for where we’re heading and what to expect.
Sabotage
1200 food plant attacks, fires
Train derailments
1000 = cows dead in one fire
What else?
Does the Dominion vote fraud count as “sabotage”? How about everything surrounding the January 6th hoax?
Cowbell81 – try to keep up…the Dominion case has been settled for a ridiculous amount of money because it WASN’T TRUE.
Malthuss,
On average, year over year, there are four train derailments…a day.
I heard 3.
Ummm, the article I read about the dairy fire put the dead cows at 18,000.
the = should be a plus +
my favorite sayin these days is “in a world made by hand”… thanks Jim.one way or tother we will return to simplicity.
Unfortunately late modern finance is now lots more than simply faith and management of publicly traded stocks and bonds and other esoteric financial instruments.
If you take a careful look at asset management firms like BlackRock or Brookfield Asset Management you will see that they are moving beyond managing financial assets of all types, to actually owning and controlling essential physical systems.
They are moving into direct investment in energy infrastructure (like power generation facilities and fuel storage), into water and wastewater infrastructure( like pumping stations) as well as into transportation structures(like roads, tunnels and bridges) or food production (like farmland) and social infrastructure (like schools and hospitals, and apartment blocks).
Asset management investment is now quickly sifting to owning real assets, not simply financial assets.
Again, to me this an important sign of a potential consolidation of power and a structural shift as to what financial entities are actually in charge(no longer banks).
I hope I’m wrong.
Good points, Jim, but I’m not sure this “shift” will be all for the negative. Time will tell. Infrastructure wears out, and we’re only starting to see the tip of the iceberg. I worry more about irreplaceable assets like land.
jim — You can add Vanguard and State Street to the list along with Blackrock. I’ve been reading sporadic articles for about 5 years that they’re buying up not just commercial property but also residential using local real estate companies. Banks have made it very easy for senior citizens to do reverse mortgages so when they die the heirs will sell at bargain prices. Rents in all major cities have risen so people have to come up with more of their paycheck to keep a roof over their heads.
Land is what’s been valuable when the chips are down and all we have to do to verify that is ask Bill Gates (largest owner of farmland in US) or Jeff Bezos (major landowner in Texas). And the Old Testament was one fight after another to reclaim land and kick the other people off.
Keep your paper and give me real assets.
A fable indeed. There will be a “Great Reset”. But the doomsayers don’t read history. Many will lose a lot of money – on paper. But we will move forward as we have done in every crash and every turning. The young will write that history, and the old people will say that it all sucks.
Good point made by Dave Collum on the April 28th Coffee and A Mike podcast:
“Aging Superpowers are very dangerous.”
Now, please feel free to discuss this argument among yourselves.
“As the fossil fuel supply drew closer to its end…”
This was self-inflicted not a natural extension of an exhausted supply. There is still plenty of petroleum to be extracted.
Oh, and if oil is as scarce as Kunstler thinks then, assuming “leaders” that pursue things other than sabotage or national suicide, other energy sources will be developed. Think hydrogen combustion or thorium nuclear reactors. Things far more advanced than what we have rely on now…
More technological cornucopianism, with a tad bit of cargo cultism thrown in for good measure. Might be worthwhile for a time as a psychological coping strategy, but not much else.
@ BigJake:
I’m inclined to agree with you. Karl Denninger has talked quite a bit about thorium reactors. Apparently the US has enough coal to last a few hundred years, if it were used to power thorium reactors–though that would not solve the problem of providing gasoline for cars. It also appears that Russia has plenty of resources in the way of fossil fuels. So I don’t think it is absolutely necessary for the US or the rest of the world to go back to the horse and buggy.
What I suspect is really going on is that the PTB have decided to reduce the US to a third-world country.
“What I suspect is really going on is that the PTB have decided to reduce the US to a third-world country.”
Why does the rest of the world – including Russia – owe us oil? Are they somehow our slaves and some mystical force out there insists that the rest of the world is under an obligation to give eternal support to our “lifestyle”? That they must trade in worthless dollars so we can continue driving everywhere? The USA is just as physically addicted to oil as an opiate addict is to heroin. Going cold turkey and living another lifestyle may involve so much physical pain in transition that the average person decides it’s time to stop living and time to die?
“There is still plenty of petroleum to be extracted.”
Not in the continental US. The easy to get petroleum has been mostly all used up in the USA except for places like offshore Florida or Ca where they won’t allow any drilling for fear of ruining tourist beach areas with possible oil spills. For getting the rest of it drillers must use very expensive methods like fracking. Drilling will stop everywhere in the US after it costs more to produce petroleum than what companies can get from selling the stuff to refineries.
That’s why at the moment we are looking at breaking up Russia and getting our hands on her oil supply as a cheap source. It ain’t gonna happen and we are heading for a much simpler and plainer lifestyle. People who can’t or won’t make the transition will probably lose their lives.
“We will figure out how to use the left-over useful things to get food out of nature and keep making other useful things. The new making-and-doing will happen at nothing like the former pitch or scale. It may represent a time-out from the lost experience of the old, ever more elaborate and complex makings-and-doings. After a while, humans may discover a new way to get more out of nature.” ~ JHK
––
I would like to try dry-stacked stone in a circle for a wall about 7 feet high. Then another similar wall inside or outside it with a gap in-between to throw smaller, filtered stones and sand for insulation.
Then, collect some long-enough branches, roughly a fair bit longer than the external wall’s radius for a reciprocal roof, covered by thatch.
The floor? Unsure, but probably earthen if the materials can be had locally.
The windows? Maybe recycled or even pirated glass, such as in the middle of the night from the surrounds of some downtown highrise office building. Glass would be set in a frame for a casement-style window.
Electricity: None. Wake up at sunrise, go to bed at sunset. Join the birds.
Plumbing? Maybe a small rooftop collection barrel set somehow higher up and gravity-fed into the house. If we can get a second floor, the cistern can be upstairs. The cistern can also function as a bathtub and it can be set below a skylight facing the sun for passive heating.
Did I forget anything?
To do any of the things you’ve described you have to own it. If you’re a renter, you’re out whenever the owner says you’re out. When Klaus in his space man costume told us we’d own nothing, he meant it and that includes the roof over your head and the ground under your feet.
My Planet, My Sedition
—-
Should be interesting…
Independent-living people don’t need Klaus, his gangs or government associates of course and are more difficult to control when indie.
I’m willing to fight for some things at some times. Maybe it’s coming up soon.
Klaus et al. will be in for a fight or two and have their work cut out for them if they want to go all around the planet, door-to-door and try their things.
In any case, and FWIW, over here in some areas/zones, you can more or less build what you want. You can even take over abandoned property and legally claim it after some time.
—-
Lawnternative:I Built a Wildlife Pond – here’s what happened
youtu.be/4LvaX748pVI
—-
Indie Bucket List, item #?: Beekeeping
Why:
• Sugar (honey), source for…
• Fermenting (cider)
• Distillation (alcohol)
• Cooking/Baking
• Preservation
• Salve
• Wax, source for…
• Candles
• Sealant
• Water-repeller
• Bees, source for
• Pollination
• Enhancing biodiversity
• Natural prey
—-
“Bill Mollison: The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, ‘Permaculture Two is a seditious book.’ And I said, ‘At last someone understands what permaculture’s about.’ We have to rethink how we’re going to live on this earth — stop talking about the fact that we’ve got to have agriculture, we’ve got to have exports, because all that is the death of us. Permaculture challenges what we’re doing and thinking — and to that extent it’s sedition.
People question me coming through the American frontier these days. They ask, ‘What’s your occupation?’ I say, ‘I’m just a simple gardener.’ And that is .deeply seditious. If you’re a simple person today, and want to live simply, that is awfully seditious. And to advise people to live simply is more seditious still.
You see, the worst thing about permaculture is that it’s extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.
Alan: So that’s worst from whose perspective?
Bill: Anybody that wants to extinguish it. It’s something with a million heads. It’s a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can’t put a way of thinking back in the box.
Alan: Is it an anarchist movement?
Bill: …You won’t get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top, and nothing I know of can run like that. I think the world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other.”
“I think the world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other.”-Zaz
Just the opposite of what Thomas Hobbes postulated in “The Leviathan.” Hobbes claimed without the rule of law and a strong social contract enforced by absolute authority a ‘brute situation’ — a war of all against all — would ensue. That’s just human nature, proven throughout history.
Societally, there is no one-size-fits-all response/solution.
From evolutionary, diversity and adaptive standpoints, this just makes sense.
I mean, sure, there will be those who will be ok with, say, mandatory (coerced) lockdowns, travel-/freedom-of-movement-restrictions, or conscription, that the State religion’s ‘rules of law’ (‘commandments’) might demand/command.
While I’m unsure what your Hobbes was on about exactly, perhaps he didn’t think Leviathan applied to everyone and everything everywhere. At least I hope not.
Zaz, has human nature changed since 1650?
It’s interesting to read editorials from the summer of 1914 by British & American Socialists & Reformers, Eugene Debs and William Jennings Bryant among them, claiming that modern warfare between nations would be nullified by working class solidarity that existed between the Proles of potential combatants. They wrote this even when young ‘workers’ from St. Petersburg to London were rushing to the colors.
BRH,
Cultural Appropriations,
And Whitey on the Moon,
Our music, food, Miscegenation!
And Whitey on the Moon
Where’s my 40 Acres/Reparation?
And Whitey on the Moon
Promises made brings Expectation,
And Whitey on the Moon,
With a brace of 9’s and anticipation,
And Whitey on the Moon,
Best come soon, I’m tired of waitin’
And Whitey on the Moon
Hobbesian FUD
——
“Zaz, has human nature changed since 1650?” ~ BackRowHeckler
—
Whose? Yours? Mine? Hobbes’?
So you and Hobbes are good for mandatory vaccinations then?
That’s fine, but some of us aren’t.
If you and Hobbes want a State human zoo, Truman Show, Matrix or Plato’s Cave sort of deal, that’s fine, but it’s not only your planet. So you have to allow room for other forms of adaptation, evolution and so on.
Monocultures don’t appear where it’s at. It appears it’s about diversity and the freedom to diverge. Evolution.
——
“This is the goal and function of the Hobbesian narrative: To instill in people a fear of each other, to prevent them from trusting each other too much, to make them unable to even imagine that cooperation and mutual aid could be possible without a system of domination. In short, to make another world not only impossible but also unimaginable. For Hobbes, emotions were deeply relevant to the maintenance of political systems, making him perhaps the first political affect theorist…” ~ Ole Martin Sandberg
——
“While the models may vary, however, anarchists argue that the result of this social contract theory is the same: a justification of State domination, whether it be through the rule of law or through the arbitrary imposition of force. For anarchists any form of State power is an imposition of force. The social contract theory is a sleight of hand that legitimates political domination — Bakunin calls it an ‘unworthy hoax!’…
According to Nietzsche the State emerged as a ‘terrible tyranny, as a repressive and ruthless machinery’, which subjugated, made compliant, and shaped the population. Moreover the origins of this State are violent. It is imposed forcefully from without and has nothing to with ‘contracts’. Nietzsche demolishes the ‘fantasy’ of the social contract — the theory that the State was formed by people voluntarily relinquishing their power in return for the safety and security that would be provided by the State. This idea of the social contract has been central to conservative and liberal political theory, from Hobbes to Locke. Anarchists also reject this theory of the social contract. They too argue that the origins of the State are violent, and that it is absurd to argue that people voluntarily gave up their power. It is a dangerous myth that legitimizes and perpetuates State domination…” ~ Saul Newman
Did you catch that, Za doesn’t believe in human nature. So why worry about anything? If you put a reptile in an aquarium and feed it well and keep it warm, it will be “happy”. Why not humanity as well?
With all of the Sturm und Drang swirling around about what/which pronouns are to be used, I’ve decided to address everybody else as “consumer”.. “excuse me consumer, can I get by you please”? They look puzzled.
Ah, our venerable host JHK has hit the nail on the head. Financialization of everything has certainly created a parasite that is overwhelming the host. But let’s not forget the other two “rackets” that JHK has opined about frequently – Education and Healthcare – wherein there is often a noticeable difference between those who actually deliver the services and those who “manage”.
It just occurred to me that consequence of the ongoing creep of bureaucratization and financialization eating out the substance of the society’s doers and makers is reminiscent of an adage I have heard. Regarding specialization, where the specialist learns more and more about less and less until he know everything about nothing!
That’s crazy PhD talk!
AKlein — the specialists will be AI not fallible humans. What ChatGBT (?) can already do is disturbing and more is certainly on the way. I think the first real task will be censorship of the internet without our knowledge. Everything in our newsfeed will be curated or censored and searches on Google limited to results the algorithm allows us to see. This isn’t paranoia either — I saw an interview with Jaron Lanier about 10 years ago that said this would happen. Now we see ads for stuff we might like to buy but next will be more restrictive.
And all the illegals flooding across the border? What will happen to them? My guess is they’ll be installed as the new serf class to do the physical dirty work.
Fuck Work
I call that sort of thing a glorified Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Think about that: An entire society with a built-in OCD-as-career/hyperspecialization. Rock and a hard place WRT civilizational requisites.
And we wonder why our society is ill. But imagine, an ill society by design.
—-
I once saw someone on a bike that had a sticker on its down-tube that read, ‘Fuck Work’. I got to meet him in person at a music shop he was working at. I said, hey you’re that guy with the Fuck Work sticker on your bike. He said, “Shshsh…”.
Of course, he didn’t mean meaningful work, but meaningless, kind of meaningless, sort of useless, relatively unfulfilling or OCD work and/or work along those lines.
Oh, and I once saw some graffiti that said, ‘You are not your job.‘. Some years later, I noticed that in the film, ‘The Fight Club’, that was one of their lines. So perhaps that’s where our graffiti artist got it.
It’s a pickle.
Good luck, Klaus.
The ladies aren’t going to like this, Za. They want good slaves to build those Pyramids while she sits like Effendi on the porch, with an iced lady drink in their dainty hands.
I was at an American-chain big-box retail outlet, AKA Walmart, not too long ago and ran into a young woman working there part time while studying neurology at university…
We got into a brief conversation and she agreed with how we as a species may be slowly atrophying our brains in part by hyperspecialization, often, if not usually, done in artificial environments.
Your ladies, if they are enlightened perhaps, will understand that ‘one can’t both eat their cake and have it too’ (yes, I switched the order on purpose); and will appreciate the value of the saying, ‘Careful what you wish for’ as well as the idea behind the law of unintended consequences. Stuff like that.
They may also appreciate the differences with various kinds of work in different contexts, including periods of time.
“The ladies aren’t going to like this, Za.” ~ Jarek
—-
Uh-oh…
Ok well look… They’re drinking their lady drinks, right? So let’s order them more of them and get them smashed so they won’t notice.
There! The first flickers of rebellion against the Matriarchy which has stolen this young man’s mind and heart. I must tend this fire carefully and diligently.
Have you been secretly drinking all the ladies drinks we’ve been ordering?
@ Jarek:
Aren’t you the one who sits around unemployed, daintily doing nothing productive? (While trying to get someone else to water your plants for you?)
Luke 10:40
But Martha was distracted by all the preparations to be made. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me!” 41“Martha, Martha,” the Lord replied, “you are worried and upset about many things. 42But only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her.”…
Jarek: Define productive. You don’t even know the basics of your own religion. You are a dis-grace, both conventionally and spiritually.
Anthea, is this true? Are you are a disgrace, both conventionally and spiritually?
I loved this essay! It really bridged the gap since I’ve been reading Mr K since the days of peak oil. And now here we are. It was all hypothetical then, but now it’s real…..
Having been out pulling wild sorrel out of the garden all day, (before it drops seeds), I especially appreciated the reference to sorrel sauce. Possums used to be plentiful here, but the good ol boys run them down for sport on the road with their pick up trucks. Then the coyotes move in before dawn for the carcass. Life is hard now, even for the possums.
I always thought of myself as grounded and sane. But these days I feel attacked from all sides, like a bug. For instance – the spike protein can be shed onto the purebloods via sex or just proximity. They are putting mrna into the food supply. And what’s in the contrails that fill the sky with a milky white cover? The weird weather seems timed to inflict maximum damage to those of us trying to grow food. Or to regenerate the forest.
Well, Bill Gates and a bunch of scientists from the UN & Harvard have cooked up a plan to seed Earth’s atmosphere with aluminum dioxide particles in order to reflect the sun’s rays back into space to bring earth’s temperature down 1.5°C by 2150. I thought the plan was just in the talking stage but maybe Gates got tired of talking ~ he wants action! That could explain the milky white cover, and in our case here, the lack of sunlight.
There are some people who are not playing with a full deck, not running on all four cylinders, not rowing with both oars.
Maybe that’s Gates, State government and company.
GEO engineering has been going on for decades. Check
Chemtrails, Climate Engineering & Cover-Up with Dane Wigington
320 25K views 8 years ago Chemtrails, climate engineering, geoengineering, the hazards, toxins and cover-up of the program are all discussed with Dane Wigington. Autism and respiratory illness
Well, you should know by now “west is the disease.”
Aluminum is toxic and belongs locked up in rocks instead of being sprayed into the air and being inside our bodies. Let’s hope they really aren’t doing this. The earth is cooling right now instead of getting warmer. This year has seen record snow and cold worldwide and particulary in the US West. AGW is another scam.
Reduce CO2 and sunlight. No effect on photosynthesis. Got it.
“I always thought of myself as grounded and sane. But these days I feel attacked from all sides, like a bug. For instance – the spike protein can be shed onto the purebloods via sex or just proximity. They are putting mrna into the food supply. And what’s in the contrails that fill the sky with a milky white cover? The weird weather seems timed to inflict maximum damage to those of us trying to grow food. Or to regenerate the forest.” – Nigel Tufnel
Yes. I’d hazard to say that you WERE sane & grounded before you started to believe in these unsubstantiated fear-mongering bullshit stories.
“They are putting mrna into the food supply”. Huh?
“-the spike protein can be shed onto the purebloods through sex or just proximity” Double huh??
The use of ‘pureblood’ as if it is a real thing, tells me much.
Huh can be costly.
“They are putting mrna into the food supply”. Huh?
Umm. They have developed techniques for delivering MRNA through cow’s milk:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22916887/
Try again.
I wouldn’t say it’s not possible, but please – offer a rational, comprehensible reason WHY this would be done.
You tell me. They’ve done it. So…there must be a reason, no?
Possums eat huge numbers of ticks. The good old boyz deserve all the ticks they get on them – including the ones causing disease.
Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out.
Bark at the moon, howl at the wind, and piss on a tree.
Only the lucky dead ever leave a fossil.
Fewer of us be around when the black blood can’t come from the ground. Novels fossilized on hard drives by microscopic magnets. No readers.
I think finally this summer, I’m going to get around to learning my trees and, at the same time, review/brush up on my wild edibles/medicinals knowledge while I maintain two community garden plots at opposite ends of the city. Lots of biking for me again.
Living the way our ancestors used to and taking back their knowledge, skills and communities for ourselves (rather that for some parasite politician or corporate suit) is just plain healthy and self-empowering.
Our generations are ill because society’s ill.
You’re ill, I’m ill.
When we die, time ceases to exist for us because we are no longer conscious to experience it, and so the universe we were alive in ‘accelerates’ (‘googol’ years fast forwards in less than the blink of an eye relative to you) until It dies and maybe you’re born again (since we are supposed to be merely ‘information’ of a sort), maybe in part as an alien bee in an alien’s hive.
One day you piss on a tree, then piss off, then you find yourself as a bee in someone’s hive. Then a bird eats you and the program fast forwards again and something else happens. Maybe you end up in prison on death row on some planet orbiting a binary star system…
Ah, living in a State of Nature.
Again Hobbes, a State of Nature, where life is short, nasty & brutal. Also described so well, and expertly lampooned in Nathaniel West’s ‘Miss Lonely Hearts.”
So, pro-authoritarian and anti-nature?
If so, I wonder about your ‘thing’ for this Hobbes character…
In fact, I don’t seem to recall anyone telling me that they were against nature and ethical personal freedoms and desired, instead, artificiality, moral bankruptcy and relative imprisonment.
Who would want that? Psychopaths? Nihilists? Misanthropists?
LEVIATHAN
By Thomas Hobbes
1651
LEVIATHAN OR THE MATTER,
FORME, & POWER OF A COMMON-WEALTH
ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVILL
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
Printed for Andrew Crooke,
at the Green Dragon
in St. Paul’s Churchyard,
1651.
Thanks K-Chien, but what’s the gist, summary and/or conclusion(s)?
Life’s too short to read most every recommended book out there.
And therein lies the rub. 😀
Never mind. I’ll go get them…
What was the hunter gather lifestyle like. Was is actually mean brutal and short, or no?
Where peeps fall on this question reveals attitude. Hobbes can an has been used to justify the downsides of modern life.
Rewilder types think Hobbes is full of shit. But that does not mean much since they are they beyond full. Pro-Hobbians types have brains motivated to do things like blow up the Georgia Guidestones.
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
With flora and fauna devastated and half the forests gone, cut that 500,000,000 number in half.
How many could live on the other side? Considering population as it is now, that works out to be one in thirty.
I don’t seem to recall anyone telling me that they were against nature and ethical personal freedoms.
People don’t say these things, but they think them. To hear them spoken you need the secret handshake.
Original trailer to the Naked Prey
Here is the answer that you seek. See though? The White isn’t racist – he helps Blacks being enslaved. He’s a good White!
The goalpost has moved quite a bit since then. There are no good Whites anymore, except you and Za. The rest deserve to be hunted down.
This movie was filmed in “the most primitive parts of Africa”. They saw all this going on!
Herr Hund,
LEVIATHAN:
Remake it as a Gay Musical
Box-Office=Boffo
SpeedyBB.
A Hobbesian gay musical.
Pete Buttigieg would be in it.
Speaking of which, some time ago later in the evening after sunset (so fairly dark), I had new and faster rollerblades (larger-diameter wheels) and was whizzing around Vancouver’s Stanley Park’s Seawall path when I almost smashed into a young women who, apparently unbeknownst to her (maybe because it was quite dark), was taking a piss– yes all squatted down with her pants around her knees or wherever– in the middle of the path.
I wonder if they now have any homeless encampments there.
ZaZa: “With all the world to piss in and our paths having never once crossed in this lifetime, just imagine you and I meeting on THIS night in THIS place in a puddle of your own piss. What are the odds?”
Young homeless woman (hiking up her pants hurriedly): “Don’t just stand there stranger, KISS ME you fool!”
That’s poetic… Alas, then, I kept going and so did she, in our own different ways…
I liked this, too, by the way:
“…Death is, after all, just another passage on the journey. Never have understood the solemnity surrounding it all. I don’t do prayers. No need. Asking betrays faith in the plan, whatever it might be. Belief in a supreme being implies belief that he/she/it’s competent and doesn’t require petitions for direction. Trust in the plan.” ~ Disaffected April 27, 2023 at 10:40 pm
Thanks ZaZa. “Fate” and coincidence (often referred to as divine) have always intrigued me. How seemingly random paths seem to cross for seemingly no reason at all and produce unexpected, life altering results.
I believe 2 things.
1. There are no co-incidences (except in Geometry).
2. The Universe doesn’t waste anything.
Yes, nothing is wasted. All is conserved. She was probably your mother in some previous life, who potty trained you harshly. Now she doesn’t even have a pot to piss in.
You should have thrown her your rollerblading helmet. The image of you is building in my mind. Soon I will be able to do effective magic against you.
Jarek, Bring it on thou yeasty cod piece!
I know Mother Nature personally, although we currently aren’t on speaking terms, she still has me on speed dial.
MN is fond of Badberries and wishes there were more like him,her,they,we,us.
Zaz, I used to ride my motor to visit James H.P. Wilkie, a florid Scots-Canadian psychic who lived in the ambiguous zone between working-class Vancouver and elite Point Grey.
Like every other paranormal I’ve known, he had a severe identity disorder, dwelling in more than one realm of reality all day long. Huge guy with fancy suits, fingers smothered in rings, house like a tony Village furniture shoppe.
His take was that physical death is such an immensely pleasurable experience and release that humans (and apparently animals) must have an in-built aversion to it, as without such fear we would simply dive into the whirlpool joyously.
Death’s Even Horizon
SpeedyBB, death is a black hole that we can’t come out of and so tell everyone how it is.
I realize some were ‘dead’ and lived to tell the story, but if they lived, then they weren’t really dead dead, as in beyond the event horizon. They just maybe scraped it.
But, or so, maybe scraping it gives one an inkling of it, of crossing it– as per you and/or your colleague, James’ sentiments. Seems people who’ve scraped death’s event horizon speak relatively fondly of it, yes?
——
@Disaffected & badberries:
If we somehow deviated from our path that the universe had in mind for us, perhaps it would snuff us out.
The man, I think it was a line from Vonnegut, can’t remember which novel.
Something like; I’m a member of “the First Church of God the utterly indifferent” their tenet,
“what on earth can I possibly do for God that he can’t do for himself a million times better”?
badberries, that’s a good quote… If this is any consolation, if there is anything in the way of free will, then perhaps we are our own Gods.
Given that, why not take the anthropomorphization of the universe all the way and consider that ‘God’ really is we…
…that the universe just is and always will be and that what gives it another level is consciousness?
The child I helped nurture (parents being such sleepy-heads – they would not get up in the middle of the night to pick him up) used to refer to that peninsular patch of greenery west of the West End as “Stalin Park”.
Nice accidental poetry.
In the 1970s you would NEVER have seen anyone peeing-in-the-park. Powell Street, maybe.
Vancouver-by-the-Void
One of the things I miss most about Vancouver was Lynn Canyon. When my city thoughts started to feel too canned or chaotic, it was nice to go there among the conifers, across the suspension bridge, walk about along the river and hop-scotch its large smooth boulders. On hot summer days, the glacial plunges from the rocky ledges above were a treat. Definitely a therapeutic reset button.
The real estate developer-locusts have long ago descended on Lynn Canyon and turned it into suburbia-fairyland.
Which is grimly funny, as it is a uniformly cold and drippy environment, even when the rest of Vancouver is pleasantly warm. Even more unpleasant than North Van.
As they say in Merry Olde England, the sun shines down so rarely that when it happens the inhabitants phone the police to report it.
@JHK
Ahhh, the ever-dreampt-of world made by hand, eh, James.
And you think that they’re going to allow some feral populations roaming about at will?
I sincerely doubt that the simulations running with billions upon billions of variables will spit out any feasible scenarios that would include any but a possible smattering of feral groups.
But we’re not privy to any of big boys’ stuff, are we?
~toktomi~
We will all be privy to the results of a core melt down.
In his recent interview with Bill Maher, Elon Musk blithely remarked that “there are plenty of resources. There is plenty of Energy and Water.”
Was he just bullshitting everyone?
He forgot to end it with “and I own most of it”.
I suspect that Elon Musk probably meant that resources and Energy are plentiful in Outer Space? The “Catch” is that you’ve got to become a trans human robot in order to move into outer space?
Do you remember the Jodie Foster movie “Elyseum” in which the Elites live in paradise in Outer Space while the mass of people subsist in ghettos on earth? Jodie Foster is an excellent actress, much better than that Fat Ass, Brandon Fraser. Foster’s performance in “The Accused” in which she is gang raped by beer-drinking college frat boys atop a pinball table was amazing….
In Outer Space, the general absence of Gravity and Friction means that Energy is not a Big Deal?
@Pucker
Energy is The Big Deal and the conversion from one form to another [transduction].
If Musk said there is plenty, then the question that needs to be asked and answered is, “for what?”
~toktomi~
Puck,
On the Internets, no one can hear you laugh….
He forgot to add that all useful energy is local and highly concentrated, which as it turns out is quite rare. Same with water. Must be clean/desalinated and readily available. Turns out that’s not so plentiful either.
If “energy” is so plentiful, Mister Smarty-pants Musk, then how come you charge twenty thousand clams for a replacement battery in your dinky little compacts?
Some years ago on another site, I quoted Musk’s concern for lithium shortages. I wonder if he’s changed his concern about that.
This is an excellent, excellent article, by Patrick Lawrence, discussing an extended essay by Jason Siegel at Tablet (which is linked in the comments)
The comments, too, provide a good discussion of the concept of fascism and whether it is useful in the current situ or whether we need a different word:
httpX://consortiumnews.com/2023/04/30/the-most-powerful-demolition-of-russiagate-yet/?unapproved=455058&moderation-hash=2f77a71d36a744d59c0796e6004dbf07#comment-455058
Here is a link to the Tablet article:
httpX://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation
It all depends how much Truth people can bear or desire. For most, it’s just a snarl word, meaning bad or evil. School yard stuff. Mary’s usage. Others can remain calm enough to give the intellectual correlation to the above – namely that it means totalitarianism.
What is the real meaning? Ask the Fascists! It’s a well developed political philosophy after all. Mary was shocked when I told her about the Fascists defeating the Communists in Spain. She was going to ask her “historian friends” about that!
Our current situation? You mean our rulers? The WEF? As Fascists? That’s grotesque. They’re Plutocrats – the opposite, basically. The people who funded the Communists.
So it all depends if you want to understand or just snarl. The snarl is correct in this case since they are very bad. But you’ll never understand the word or the reality until you listen the people themselves. Academia leaves it out. It makes far too much sense….
Jarek, I posted this in different form a few months ago but I think you may find it interesting.
I was in Germany early 1980’s I caught a ride with a colleague to Munich. It was a long drive so we overnighted at his parents home. After supper, he gave me tour of the property, in one very long hall, the wall was adorned with family photographs, one of which showed a man standing by an airplane. I pointed at the plane and said “ME-109”. He asked how I knew of this plane. I responded that the plane was famous.
He pointed at the man and said “mein Vater” I told him I didn’t recognize the Livery, he explained that prior to WWII his father had gone with a squadron to fight the communists in Spain. He asked if I’d like to see the plane, it was in a hanger adjacent to the mansion. It was one of the best events of my life. At risk of being “long-winded”, there’s more to the story but another time.
I would love to hear the rest of the story!
where was this manse located?
Islander, Okay but I’ll keep it short. We went into the “hanger” but it wasn’t the Quonset hut type, it was an enormous two story room constructed of quarry stone, flag stone floor and workbenches.
There she was, just as pictured in the hallway. Back in the Livery of Fascist Spain, not the 3rd Reich – no swastikas.
His father had served fighting the commies in Spain until WWII broke out and he returned to Germany and served in the Luftwaffe.
His father had inherited some Hereditary Title, Graff or Baron, I’m not sure. Anyway, there was old money in the family.
The Spanish govt. had kept the plane in the Spanish Air Force until they decided to “surplus” the ship, I believe in 1966-67. His father got wind of the upcoming auction through friends still in Spain.
He went to Spain, bought the Plane, had it dismantled, shipped to Germany and re-assembled. The son told me his father flew it until time and gravity didn’t allow.
I wish I’d had a camera with me but, no. I would have had a picture of me in the cockpit.
It was all so strange, I was going so many different places that they run together.
I met a man on the train, who had, that very day, been released from a 3 year prison term in E. Germany. He had gone to the “East Zone” on vacation, met a girl and fell in love. They decided he would get a student visa, come back to the E. Zone, have her ride in the trunk and smuggle her out of “the Workers Paradise”. They got caught….
At his trial, she testified against him, that she was being taken against her will,… Kidnapped.
He lost everything, work, apartment, car, friends, family he hadn’t seen in those 3 years.
(Note to self, never leave the valley…).
“Story hour w/ Badberries”.
Wow, in East Germany of all places – Kesa’s childhood paradise. Feminine evil on display. Love is a disease! I was the ultimate romantic. Do any of them merit such feelings? It’s just a trick of Nature. Men typically get it worse than women do. They have a deep practical streak, which makes sense since they’re the one who is going to get pregnant.
Islander: Aren’t you glad you asked?
Franco didn’t like the Nazis but they were the only ones who would help him. “The Allies” were clearly on the Communist side. Even today we hear about the heroes who went to fight Fascism, and nothing about those who went to fight Communism with the Fascists.
Orwell knew it was over when he saw the Republican Guard enter the fray, the elite troops Franco had kept on hold. Franco also used Moroccan savages, a feature of both World Wars I believe. On both sides. Vicious rape monkeys just like the Black African mercenaries.
Alas for the West! He didn’t purge Spain enough and the Left just went underground. It all came roaring back after he passed.
Imagine going to the ‘East Zone’ on vacation. Reminds me of a book I read about Americans who emigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, most never to be seen nor heard from again. Only a few returned, and they had stories to tell.
BRH,
It was a scene from the movies. Mid- to late 1930s. All these American lefties, seduced by candy-coated reports from the likes of G.B. Shaw (“GB” for “gullible bastard”) into emigrating to the Socialist Paradise, were standing outside the gates of the US Embassy in Moscow, waving their passports and screaming to be let in to seek refuge. No dice. Gates locked.
Meanwhile, the NKVD was snapping away with their Leicas, getting photos and preparing to take these disillusioned yankees into the basement of the Lubyanka to get another kind of shot.
What’s the name of the movie?
Islander, There was a movie called “Reds” I think Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton starred. They played American communists. Beatty won an Oscar for best director.
The man that Beatty played (John Reed) is the only American buried inside the walls of the Kremlin. I asked about it when I was there, none of the Russians I spoke to knew anything about and were surprised by the thought.
To me, the most amusing (and revealing) aspect of “…fascists defeating the Communists in Spain” was that when the tide was evidently flowing hard against them, the Rojos raided the Spanish treasury and shipped a load of gold bullion to Moscow… “for safekeeping”.
Stalin was quoted as laughing “That’s the last they’ll ever see of this gold.”
… and the next step:
“Cognitive control operations, using so-called brain-control weapons, would suit an autocratic regime that seeks physical and digital oversight of populations under its control, and they would have domestic and foreign applications.”
Warnings about ‘brain-control’ weapons reflect growing US concern about China’s military research by Stavros Atlamazoglou
businessinsider.com/brain-control-weapon-warnings-show-concern-for-china-military-research-2022-2?op=1
The Behavioral Psychologists and the government propaganda “Nudge Units” insist that Fear is an important motivator of “The Herd”.
What was the scariest blowjob that you’ve ever had?
Do you remember the Woody Allen movie in which the “Giant Tit” that escaped from a government bio lab (the product of a secret government gain-of-function science experiment gone awry) terrorizes the countryside?
I bet that it was “Pretty Hairy” in that U.S. bioweapons lab under siege in Khartoum in “The Sudan” last week?
Hopefully, the irresponsible, hyper-ambitious, career-oriented scientists in the bio weapons lab in Khartoum flushed everything down the toilet at the last minute?
Bleach then fire dumping it down the toilet just releases it.
Everything is a scam!
Went to the King Tut exhibition and it was all electronic junk no real mock ups beyond a fake boat some little model boats hagnong rom the ceiling and a game board beyondkingtut.com/city/san-diego
The worst part the phone VR part of the tour was busted and cost even more.
Two people $115 after parking total rip off.
Was looking around and realized at least half in attendance were stoned out of their gourds.
Hanging from
In his interview with Bill Maher, Elon Musk seems to be suggesting that we should worship George Washington?
George Washington was a big Freemason. The Freemason’s are big Builders. George Washington always had a bunch of blueprints prepared, and he was always building stuff. He was always acquiring more land in the Ohio Valley so that he could build more stuff.
I hear he had blueprints for Bioweapons labs too. Ol’ George was way ahead of his time.
Puck…ol’ George sounds like Trump and his golf courses.
George Washington used to let his slaves have guns to hunt for wild game to supplement their meals. I suspect that slave owners permitting their slaves to have guns was a bit rare, if only because the slaves might shoot their owners or other valuable slaves? The male slaves would probably get into fights over the female slaves?
George Washington had a private library in which he kept his books and his private whiskey. Martha and the ubiquitous kids were strictly forbidden from entering George Washington’s private library.
Martha was purportedly very disappointed when a female slave fled Mt. Vernon aboard a British ship on the Potomac River. The Brits probably made unrealistic promises?
The female slave probably ended up doing the cooking and the cleaning for a British officer?
Maybe she was taking care of George and once she left, Martha realized that she would have to do it.
Still thinking about Jim’s comment on the Coffee & A Mile interview that trucking industry sitting 25% idle……
Maybe this explains it a little. This merger is a really big story, but nobody seems to be paying attention to it.
‘Canadian Pacific Kansas City
The new railroad, to be named Canadian Pacific Kansas City, will become the first and only railroad to run a direct line between Canada and Mexico — bisecting and hauling freight through the heart of the country, including Kansas City, the second largest freight rail center in the United States.Mar 15, 2023’
Lots of companies are getting aboard. CPKC it going to have a huge impact. Never mind your electric cars. Rail is the future, and so it should be……….
Jim, what a timely post. I just discovered Nate Hagens of Peak Oil’s simplicity discussions and here you revisit that time is running out on resources and money.
Tomorrow’s shabby survivors won’t believe the garbage we spent the last of our dwindling miracle fossil fuels on. The magic stuff that cooked for millions of years in the right conditions for us to turbo charge the past 150 years. I know the Greens are a bunch preachy asshats, but I think they may have been setup to purposefully demand we shrink our energy usage so no one would need to metiphoricaly shout fire in a theater, Fire like “We used all the recoverable resourses and no matter how much phony digital currency we print.you will never have the lifestyle you took for granted”
Happy May Day
Greens, agw, etc are attempts to gain and maintain control, rather than allow pricing mechanisms to guide demand. Example: carbon credits
Very similar to cv – don’t allow individual decisions, rather impose top down dictates. Example: quarantine healthy, Vax mandates
As jim et al point out, the (non) solutions have nothing to do with actual problem solving. The best Example of this is nuke suppression or shut down.
Nothing is being done at any level to address future needs. Rather, it’s a broad rush for the titanic liquor cabinet
Yep, and it’s going to take a mighty formidable Secret & Uniformed police force for Greens & agw to maintain control and brutally enforce the law libraries full of Climate Paris Accord diktats it will take to bring the country down 1.5°C by the year 2020.
Thank you Mr. K for the amazing econ 101 lesson! I do wonder if the fact that we have been living with a parasite financial system is a primary reason why themes of parasites and parasitism are found in so many places. It also makes me wonder what I’ll do when there are no more elites to complain about and heap all of my exasperation upon lol. I’m sure there’ll be other things to think about in due time. I do think that stories can also be viewed as interlocking loops. The end of one is the beginning of another and the middle is one long arc around and around. It may just be a disdain for endings though lol but it’s a theory that some may wish to consider. Also, another theory is that there is so much ambient energy all around us we could power this thing for millions and billions of year. If we knew and had ways to get all of that energy. But what is really weird is that the more information we have the dumber we get. So we have forgotten that many things were done with psychic energies before. A big casualty of machines and mechanics that may find new life again in time.
Jim did do a great job, didn’t he?
We must tap the power of galaxies! Yes, the sun can make electrons move! I just found some really valuable dark energy, no need to hide it. I’m going to wait for it to grow in value and power.
Does dark energy adhere to Einstein’s famous equation? Maybe it’s E=mc^3?
Psychic energy is out. Too many exploding heads. ?
Stories can be complicated knots or written on Mobius strips!
Oops!
Smiley turned into a question mark.
Darn, don’t you just hate when that happens!! Or maybe not. Sometimes questions are for more exciting than smile lol. I’m not sure if dark energy adheres to Einstein’s equation. I think its more like the principal of every action has a reaction. Every speck of energy has a correlating speck of opposite dark energy. The tension between the two is what holds the cosmos together. That’s the theory i’m working with right now. Where is the beginning and where is the end of the universe. The James Webb telescope has shaken the foundations of the big bang theory but scientists are not going to want to give that up. So perhaps the universe itself is a mobius strip!?
Also, another theory is that there is so much ambient energy all around us we could power this thing for millions and billions of year.
Read any of The Archdruid’s old columns and he’ll dubunk that theory for you pretty quick. Diffuse energy as found “all around us” is great for lot’s of stuff, but 21st century human industrial energy requirements are not among them.
But as you’ve alluded to here, unless we control our numbers and our energy usage, we’ll be stuck on The Red Queen Syndrome (running faster and faster to fall further behind) treadmill for the rest of our days, which is not only suicidal, but just a damn shitty way to exist. Our current society is living proof of that.
Yeah. And also, just because the energy is there doesn’t necessarily mean we have to try to harvest it. Who needs a treadmill when you can just float down the river and let its natural energies move you!
Sometimes I think that cheap abundant energy has been a curse and a blessing.
A blessing because it has given some of us a comfortable, well fed lifestyle.
A curse because it has enabled us to efficiently bring large scale death and destruction to un-countable numbers. Suffering on a incomprehensible scale.
I pity the dupes in Ukraine, especially the common peasants.
Yes. Energy versus dark energy, positive versus negative, good versus bad, actions versus reactions. There does seem to be blessings with curses and vice versa. Love and hate and all that too.
The Dichotomies of la Vida Dulce.
I’ll have a sip of champagne with that while I wait for my cosmo lol
I take my Champagne with one cube, I like to watch the bubbles.
Recent fascism has roots going back to the progressive revolutions of the 1800’s and 1789. I guess you could go back further to any time there was virulent backlash to radical socialization or extremely unsettling liberal policies.
Socialism and capitalism are often blended together under fascism, along with a strong nationalistic and militaristic leader at the helm, but today, we have a lot of the former and none of the latter, unless that leader is hiding behind the scenes.
It can be so confusing. We seem to have a liberal, anti-fascist government that is leaning towards totalitarianism while often acting fascistically.
Auden hated Franco. Ezra Pound loved him, and Hemingway couldn’t stop him. Picasso was also against him, and the war gave birth to his famous ‘Guernica’. Different strokes for different folks.
Is real Fascism or National Socialism the only way out of woke and ‘liberal fascism’? Or has the Left buried those two concepts forever, along with Trump, the closest thing we’ve had to a Strongman since who knows when?
Will Woke become a warped fascism, a fascism in disguise, something like a trans ideology?
Ring or ride, you decide.
“Isms” are always defined after the fact and mostly just confuse the issue. If we insist on using them going forward, we’re going to have to invent some new definitions. Technologically enabled neo-feudalism, with oligarchs acting through corporations being the new land owners (rent seekers) is the best definition for our current arrangements that I’ve found, but even that’s constantly evolving. Regardless of what it’s called, appropriation (lawful or otherwise) and consolidation are the themes of the day. “What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is ours, and you will be thankful for whatever we give you, should we find it in our hearts to give you anything at all.”
Capitalism evolving into neo-feudalism.
Here’s something from an article by Jodi Dean from 2020:
Neo-feudalism: The End of Capitalism?
‘Most of us constitute a property-less underclass only able to survive by servicing the needs of high earners. A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that over the next 10 years the occupation that will add the most jobs is personal care aides, not health workers but aides who bathe and clean people.
The dependence of the ruling class on the vast sector of servants — cleaners, cooks, grocers, cashiers, delivery persons, warehouse personnel, et cetera — suggests new sites of struggle, points of weakness where workers can exert power. Strikes of nurses, Amazon workers, and others target the neediness of the wealthy by blocking their access to the means of survival. If labor struggles under capitalism prioritized the point of production, under neo feudalism they occur at the point of service.’
Roboslave will be happy to do the “personal care”, I would imagine. One of the first applications of the sinister Boston Dynamics critters will be to play loving nurse to the senile old rich bitch (think “Queen of Mean” Helmsley), listening to her, responding sympathetically, wiping her nether regions and massaging where it hurts.
Then maybe pinching her nose and mouth, smothering her the way that Joaquin Phoenix did to his daddy the Emperor in GLADIATOR, when the time is ripe. Or when the family gets behind in the “Sunset Home” payments.
Robots for the elderly and / or feeble-minded. That’s the ticket.
The last POTUS who saw war up close was JFK. Since then we’ve had “pretend” warriors at the Helm.
LBJ saw “combat” in the streets of Chicago. No Service.
Nixon was a “Quaker” so, religious exemption. No Service.
Gerald Ford, nice guy. No service.
Carter, in one word; peanuts. No Service.
Reagan saw extensive combat on the “silver screen”. No Service.
George H.W. Bush saw combat on the monitors at Langley. No Service.
Bill Clinton was too busy with the Interns and married to a fugly. No Service
W. Bush, who consistently avoided his ANG contract. No Service.
Brother Barry O, Neighborhood organizer. No Service.
D.J. Trump, went to a military academy and then declined. No Service.
FJB, had two sons fighting in the cocaine wars.
No Service.
Did I forget anybody?
Remember when John Kerry tried a run for presidency and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth debunked what Kerry claimed was his great war hero activities? Haha, good times. Kerry was a loser then and certainly still is.
BB, George Bush senior flew combat on a torpedo bomber in WWII. I’m pretty sure the Japs dropped him into the drink on one of those torpedo runs.
Bush was saved by a US sub. Some of his fellow flyers were captured by the enemy and ended up on the dinner table of the Japanese officers or so it’s told in the story of the Chichijima incident.
httpx://allthatsinteresting.com/george-bush-cannibalized-chichijima-incident
Absolutely correct and I apologize to readers here and to the memory of President George H.W Bush. My memory chip is not downloading as fast as once. lol
George H. W. Bush was in the Air Force (I think it was still called the Army Air Force) in WW2.
I read Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets years—probably decades—ago, but my recollection of his account of Bush and the CIA is something like this:
Bush I’s flying combat career placed him in the Pacific Arena. This led directly to his involvement in the OSS, various American spook Founders (of whom he was one), and the ultimate creation of the CIA.
I am quite sure that Baker alleges that Bush I was a CIA -man before there was a CIA. Present at the creation.
US Navy member
“Nixon was a “Quaker” so, religious exemption. No Service.”
Berries,
Nixon volunteered for sea duty and reported to Commander Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet where he was assigned as Officer in Charge of the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command at Guadalcanal in the Solomons and later at Green Island….
Yeah, you missed somebody….
“Nixon was a “Quaker” so, religious exemption. No Service.”
Berries,
Nixon volunteered for sea duty and reported to Commander Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet where he was assigned as Officer in Charge of the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command at Guadalcanal in the Solomons and later at Green Island….
And Gerald Ford volunteered for the Navy in WWII…served on a Carrier in the Pacific campaign.
Yeah, you missed somebody….
HW Bush gets a “pass” because he sought and engaged in Combat. Ford and Nixon? meh, paper pushers.
By 1944 the Empire of Japan had no effective offensive or defensive naval air assets. Submarines were still active but mostly overwhelmed by sheer numbers of “Tin Cans”.
Berries,
Oh, you meant served AND grievously wounded in combat…sorry.
Apology accepted however inaccurate.
I made no mention of “grievously wounded” as a requisite.
It has been claimed by some, that DJT once remarked that John McCain (RIP) was a loser for having been captured.
That right there is clown world.
Paper pushers…excuse me?
They were still on the front line.
Ridiculous levels of absurdness.
Just being forward deployed back then was misery index pegged.
Even now with all the advancements being deployed on a NAVY ship is miserable.
Nixon was not a “real” Quaker.
Berries,
You missed somebody…
Carter served on a Nuclear sub in the Navy.
You did NOT mention honorable wounds as a requisite. Your post was/is so replete with errors that I was seeking a possible reason for the lack of accuracy.
No defensive naval air assets?
Okinawa,
Jesus, Berries, stop posting about things you know little about. People are going to think you are a product of our educational system.
elysian, Full of yourself today?
Your arrogance and inexperience will serve you well….or not.
Tell me a story about a time where you, yourself were in extreme peril. Ever had to peel a friend off of a cliff where they landed when the “uncontrolled descent” came to a stop.
Ever stood in the middle of a 250,000 acre fire? Where every direction you looked was ablaze? Members of other crews were screaming over the radio for evacuation…didn’t happen.
Ever talked with a guy who had walked from Iran to India after watching the “Republican Guards” murder his entire family because they owned the Mercedes franchise in Tehran?
Tell me and other regulars of CFN a story of even moderate interest. You remind me of an editor, all editors are failed authors so they pick on the work of other authors.
Tell me just one story…..waiting..
Berries,
Arrogance and inexperience?
“Tell me a story about a time where you, yourself were in extreme peril.” OK.
After college, I was a police officer in Mayberry. It was a tough town, and, one dark night, there I was, facing both Goober and Opie, in a blind alley…they wanted my lunch money. A cuss-fight ensued, and they left…
Berries, what does your question have to do with the inaccuracies of several of your posts?
“By 1944 the Empire of Japan had no effective offensive or defensive naval air assets”
Yeah…the 600 Naval aircraft, using Kamikaze methods, sank 30 naval vessels off Okinawa…in 1945.
So, no real life stories? Never done anything interesting?
I guess I should have just Googled the presidential info (as you did) but I chose to let memory serve. My error
Just responding to your ad hominem, “Jesus Berries, people are going to think you are a product of our educational system”.
I’m proud to admit that I did indeed, finish public grade school.
I like your user name, unfortunately, the gates to Elysium are for those who died honorably, for a cause. I probably won’t save a seat for you.
Berries,
You have me well described…a life of quiet desperation, without drama or consequence. I did google the information I posted, but only because, after a life of study, I knew the biographies of those presidents, and wanted confirmation.
I would be remiss if not mentioning that LBJ served several years in the Navy, and received the silver star. Ronald Reagan served four years in the Army.
Coming from a military family, I do not denigrate the military service of those never having been under hostile fire. A lack of respect, either intentioned or otherwise, is just not acceptable. I suppose neither of us served in the military (Well, my two years in the Air Force is hardly “military” service”)…You?
And…and regarding your “Ad Hominem”…If offended, I apologize, and, unlike the other posts described, your finishing grade school is both acknowledged and celebrated at face value.
” Ford and Nixon? meh, paper pushers….”
Berries,
As was Dwight Eisenhower….
EF, what does the Elephant look like?
Actually I’ve never seen the “elephant’ but I have had death come knock on the door a few times. I told him to fuck off.
Saint
When death came aknockin’ I did not have the option of telling him to fuck off…I just let my Mag Light do the talking….
I wonder if Berries owns a weed-whacker….
They really aren’t liberal policies. Most liberal policies are good. The current (as JHK calls them) Woke Jacobins in power aren’t liberals. They just call themselves that.
But I agree that the woke/queer gnosticism cultism goes back centuries and even has its roots in Greek Mythology.
Every viable society, be it hunter gatherer, agricultural, herding, or industrial must have elements of both individualism and communalism if it is to flourish or even survive in the long terms.
The dim witted pundits knock themselves out trying to define Fascism as either left or right. Ditto National Socialism. They’re both and neither. Nor are they they moving midpoint of modern European style socialism. They are their own separate line, thus they are free to use both, and also elements of pre-industrial economics, such as the medieval guilds.
And as such, since all viable societies must partake of both elements, they are more viable than our system will ever be.
Everyone here is well aware of some key economic and social indicators,, but what is interesting is measuring general public awareness.
Econ is hard to guage because of so many bots, organized teams etc. Examples are quick Biden or Trump criticism following a generic stick market summary
But what I’ve been recently noting is the sad general feeling of confusion & despair on local news feeds covering the daily mass shootings, riots. Etc
Here we don’t see a quick progresión to political blame but a genuine wonderment about what is going on. They can tell society is sick, but can’t explain any reasons.
From this, we can conclude the major trendlines to watch will be racing inflation, economic collapse and general social disintegration. Trace it out and it’s easy to project how things will untold
Ps peso :: dollar hit its all time high yesterday
Mitchellc, Are you talking Mexican Pesos? I was in Mexico early 1990s. One dollar bought 3 thousand Pesos.
Si senor
Someone (my guess is the MX central bank) drives the price of the Peso down early each day, but then takes the afternoon off, allowing the price to float back once again to its prior level.
However, each day it creeps a smidge higher than the previous day, slowly reaching ever slightly highs. This demonstrates that if the early morning price suppression wasnt occurring, the damn thing could very well take off.
From MX point of view, this is bad for the economy due to the sheer amount of dollar driven remissions, capital investment, export purchases, etc.
The previous all time high was back in mid-March. That’s when the MX government started talking about a possible devaluation. This in itself is very interesting, because typically devaluations occur during poor economic situations, not one where currency strength could possibly impact the economy.
It’s gotten so ‘bad’ that people are beginning to ask about being paid in pesos. We, like everyone else, typically pay in dollars for household services (including the staff at our HOA). Now, they’re seeing their purchase parity dropping 5-10% which really begins to add up.
We travel back and forth each week (ida y vuelta), and the traffic levels continue to increase. Every billboard is in English advertising real estate or housing develiopments.
We haven’t quite determined our bug out plan. MX might work, especially if enough gringos (ie refugees) flood the zone, but then there might be substantial pushback.
In the back of my mind, I think a mad dash (10-12) drive to El Paso might work. As my wife says, once your reach TX, you’re good to go anywhere in the new rump US all the way to FL.
I had been into Ol’ Mex several times in the 80s. Always bringing home a couple of Bank Notes. I had a friend whose son, (11 y.o.) was interested in my wanderings. At the time,the exchange rate was somwhere in the 2,500-3,000 Mxp/USD. I gave the boy a 20,000p note for his collection so, worth $7 US.
I believe it was 1993 when Clinton and Mexico agreed that the exchange rate would be pegged to the USD @ 3Nuevo Mxp/1 USD. Devaluing the Peso by 1000.
The son of my friend heard a lot of media reports about the Mexican Peso so he dug out the notes I had given him and took them to his local bank to ask their value. The de-valuation had just taken place and the new exchange rate (for Nuevo Peso) was 3p/USD. My buddy’s son gave the bank the 20,000p (Old Peso) note and they paid him $7,000 USD.
Well, as you can imagine, the bank was very upset when they realized their mistake but, he had already spent a great deal of the banks “Oops”. The bank started threatening him with ruination, so the kid got a lawyer who told the bank to shut up and eat the loss….The bank had accused the kid of running a deliberate scam…ohoh, Slander. When that word came out, the bank realized that a jury might respond very unfavorably and they took the loss and paid for the lawyers time.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure mot bankers run a lunch tab more than $7k, so they should not sweat it too much and give the kid some credit for getting away with something, much like all the scams these banks pull on the American public.
Your buddy’s son should have went full on Frank Abagnale, Jr. and tried this trick at every bank in the metro area.
Cowbell81, In retrospect, I’d bet the kid wishes he had gone full-tilt scam too.
Luckily, he came out ahead of the game, had he continued, it woulda been a slam dunk for the prosecution to prove felony intent.
MEXICO LOPS 3 ZEROS OFF ITS CURRENCY
By Janet DuncanJanuary 2, 1993
MEXICO CITY, JAN. 1 — Mexico trimmed three zeros off its currency and began issuing new pesos today in an effort to simplify mind-boggling financial transactions.
Aside from some moments of consumer confusion and a handful of petty frauds, analysts expected few negative side effects from the release of the new peso.
“From an economic point of view, the change is completely neutral,” said Alberto Gomez Alcala, an analyst at the Banacci financial group.
Under the new regime, the 1,000-peso coin, worth 33 cents, becomes a one-peso coin with no change in value. Prices of goods and services, bank accounts and salaries are denominated in new pesos starting today.
To make the transition easier, the old currency will continue to be accepted as legal tender for a while.
The new currency will be called “new peso” during a transition period, after which it will revert to the “peso.”
Save your coins.
This is when things go “sideways”. Prepare not to go up or down but to go sideways!!
Gold price up over $2k per ounce! Employment numbers are down by the tens of thousands! Banks continue to crash and burn! Inflation here we continue to go, up up and away!
.
… and according to an article in the NYPost, 10,000 illegals crossing the southern border every single day.
In a decade a billion will be on the move.
Heading back home?
Yes and they will be dragging that new LG 85″ big screen surround sound and lazy boy you bought last year.
If you can cut boobs off a woman and call her a man, then why not poke pencils into your eyes and claim disability so you can be deemed legally blind? Makes perfect sense to me!
“TRANSABLED woman BLINDS herself, says she should’ve been BORN BLIND”
httpsXX://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/relationships/transabled-woman-blinds-herself-says-she-should-ve-been-born-blind/ar-AA1aBvKi
It’s only going to get more and more insane.
There are middle-aged men identifying as little girls. There are children identifying as dogs and cats. And the public are supposed to support their delusions, or we are haters/white supremacists/bigots/etc.
I liked this Tweet from the article:
“Where the Woke lived before the ’70s” (with a picture of a mental institution below)
Absolutely classic and totally correct.
httpsXX://twitter.com/SemiRedacted/status/1652565129685336064
That’s a rare condition that’s been around for awhile – or forever. Nothing to do with trans per se, except perhaps one madness being more likely appear with others.
A couple of decades ago, a patient convinced their therapist to help her blind herself. The therapist got her some acid and she blinded herself and was satisfied with the result. It might have been a man, can’t remember exactly.
Therapists are warned of coming under the influence of their patients. Love is the usual one, and from that can come compliance.
It does seem really crazy. But also remember that some view the body as simply a cage containing the soul. Some cages just really suck for some souls. So its like you have to help people find peace with their cages. Others like their cages and feel like they are one with their cages.
Yeah, bad enough to be stuck in a cage, but then ruin the cage while still stuck in it?
But your spiritual thesis remains true nonetheless. Christ said, If your eye offends thee, pluck it out, I believe. I’m sure he meant it metaphorically of course.
Yes, depending upon the person they may not feel as if they are ruining the cage. The problem is that things that are rare have been made into political weapons and social trends. Presumably this is all being done to undermine the normality that society brings and typically demands. What better way to overturn and overthrow society!
I think Christ’s reference was in relation to sin. So that by offend he essentially meant sin or sinned. So if your eye sins then pluck it out. I could be wrong on that interpretation but I think that is what is meant.
Some people think they ARE their cages.
So if they feel that it’s not ruining their body to cut off their own limbs and pluck out their own eyes, it’s not ruining their body in reality? Feelz are realz?
messi has nailed the biggest driver of queer gnosticism, per James Lindsay.
Your body is a prison, according to the QC religionists, and since you can’t escape it, you must change all of society to accommodate you.
Mission nearly accomplished.
“If you can cut boobs off a woman and call her a man, then why not poke pencils into your eyes and claim disability so you can be deemed legally blind? ”
This is the kind of thing that poor families in third world countries used to do (or still do?) to make their children more convincing as beggars.
Like genital mutilation, this kind of mutilation (also, say, breaking legs to produce paraplegic children to beg form sympathetic strangers, for the benefit of the family) used to be decried.
Islander, The Film “Slum Dog Millionaire” in addition to being an excellent Film (8 AMPAS!).
It addressed the “lower caste” tradition of blinding their children purposely. A blind beggar brings home more money than sighted beggars.
Back to energy/the economy.
Here is an excellent piece that was linked at Gail Tverberg’s Our Finite World blog.
httpX://internationalman.com/articles/the-great-energy-deception-the-truth-behind-the-5-trillion-renewable-energy-scam/
It is all good, but I especially like this clarification re “fossil fuels”:
+++++
“Rising Hydrocarbon Prices
First, a necessary clarification.
Sloppy, vague words lead to sloppy, vague thinking.
The term “fossil fuels” is an excellent example of this.
When the average person hears “fossil fuels,” they think of a dirty technology that belongs in the 1800s. Many believe they are burning dead dinosaurs to power their cars. They also think fossil fuels will run out soon and destroy the planet within a decade.
None of these absurd things are true, but many people believe them. Using misleading and vague language plays a large role.
I suggest expunging “fossil fuels” from your vocabulary in favor of hydrocarbons—a much better and more precise word.
A hydrocarbon is a molecule made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms. These molecules are the building blocks of many different substances, including energy sources like coal, oil, and gas. These energy sources have been the backbone of the global economy for decades, providing power for industries, transportation, and homes.
Modern civilization has only two choices for baseload—hydrocarbons or nuclear.. . . ”
+++++
Also:
“I believe hydrocarbon prices will rise substantially in the months ahead, making nuclear—the only practical alternative—even more attractive than it already is.
There are four powerful trends that I think will push hydrocarbon prices higher.
Trend #1—The End of the Petrodollar System: . . .
Trend #2—Rampant Currency Debasement: . . .
Trend #3—Carbon Hysteria and Under-Investment: . .
Trend #4—Geopolitical Turmoil: . . ..
Energy security is national security . . .”
Yes, precision – often gained by reducing things to their most basic terms. Take an equation and factor it, then reduce it to algebraic letters, the variables that stand for any number or value.
So not fossil fuels, but hydrocarbons.
Not racism, but Sir Arthur Keith’s Law of enmity and amity. One for your own and the other for others. But which for which!?
I asked Blackbird – crickets. As falls Wichita falls Wichita Falls.
Coal is not really a hydrocarbon. Basically just carbon and the USA is the king as far as coal reserves go. Burning coal produces way more co2 than oil or gas because hydrocarbons also produce a lot of water vapor when burned. We save our coal and China builds a new coal burner every week. How does that make any sense.
“Coal is not really a hydrocarbon. . . . basically just carbon . . ”
Huh?
##Does coal contain hydrocarbons?
“Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock with a high amount of carbon and hydrocarbons. . . . j”
##Does oil contain hydrocarbons?
“Crude oils and refined petroleum products consist largely of hydrocarbons, which are chemicals composed solely of hydrogen and carbon in various molecular arrangements”
##Does natural gas contains hydrocarbons?
“Natural gas is an odorless, gaseous mixture of hydrocarbons—predominantly made up of methane (CH4).”
Merriam-Webster:
”
hy·dro·carbon noun
: any of a large class of organic compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen, comprising paraffins, olefins, members of the acetylene series, alicyclic hydrocarbons (as cyclic terpenes and steroid hydrocarbons), and aromatic hydrocarbons (as benzene, naphthalene, biphenyl), and occurring in many cases in petroleum, natural gas, coal, and bitumens”
What is an organic compound:
“What is an organic compound simple definition?
Image result for What is an organic compound?
organic compound, any of a large class of chemical compounds in which one or more atoms of carbon are covalently linked to atoms of other elements, most commonly hydrogen, oxygen, or nitrogen. The few carbon-containing compounds not classified as organic include carbides, carbonates, and cyanides.”
+++++++++++++
As far as I can see, “organic” does not mean a molecule came from a fossil.
but but diamonds…
Those definitions are so diverse as to be obtuse. The anthracite I burn is 99.5% carbon. Hardly rich in hydrogen. Produces almost straight CO2 when burned efficiently. The gas I use to cook is almost pure methane, CH4. A straight hydrocarbon. Crude oil contains thousands of compounds. I stand by my assertion that coal is basically carbon.
What is the chemical formula of the carbon in your coal?
Anglin
This is a response to the Ukraine war supporters that swarm me.
In fact, it is actually impossible to have genuinely beliefs or convictions without being able to explicate the motivations of the opposition.
Calling people evil, which is what “Nazi” is, is childlike and dumb. It should be totally humiliating for an adult to think this way. pic.twitter.com/viJQpyAh52
— Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang) April 20, 2023
This is why the left is made up of women, feminine men, and paraphiliacs. Those are the three groups of people that would lose power if the image of man’s role in the universe represented by Russia and China were enforced in the West.
This fear is real and easy to understand.
— Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang) April 20, 2023
Ukrainians themselves are not actually the feminist LGBT activists that #NAFO portrays them as. They are dumb peasants being used as golems for this agenda, and on varying levels, the war supporters understand that.
— Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang) April 20, 2023
“Democracy” means a system of state violence that holds back the order of nature by enforcing unnatural power dynamics.
This system is, in a very real sense, “Luciferianism,” in that it is a rebellion against nature as created by God. pic.twitter.com/ez2hIMis2P
— Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang) April 20, 2023
They are probably right.
The Lord God has sent the two-headed eagle to bind the bringer of fire, and to peck out his vile organs. pic.twitter.com/3c84ooMgJK
— Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang) April 20, 2023
Jarek: Anglin admits that Elon is lying and that twitter is not free, even though he has been allowed back for the time being. The wise Mary warned us about this. Even though she mindlessly throws the word fascist and nazi around, she is plenty smart about some things.
When trying to take on the immensely complex topic of fascism one good place to start is a book by Robert Paxton “The Anatomy of Fascism,” written in 2004.
Paxton discusses in detail European History between 1919 and Word War Ii and creates five chapter headings outlining the successive phases of fascism in action
(1) Creating Fascist movements
(2)Taking Root
(3)Getting Power
(4)Exercising Power
(5)Radicalization or Entropy?
This clever methodology allows Paxton to observe how in some countries fascism stopped short of phase one(the more intellectual phase) while in others it only reached phase two, taking root in places where government instability, unemployment and other grievances were so high that a space for thinking that fascism might be a solution opened up.
I hope that BeantownBill and his wife have been doing okay lately. It has been a while since we all last heard from him.
Thanks for asking Cowbell. Actually, my wife and I are doing well. Her oncologist is amazed how positively she has responded to chemo. Her numbers are in the normal range. She’s been feeling very well.
Believe it or not, her multiple myeloma is not her main problem. The other thing is that she has some degree of heart failure, we think. It’s manageable, too. The docs have added some other meds to treat that, and so far, she’s doing better there, too.
Me, I’m still rolling along. My dad lived to 96 and I’m hoping to pass that. In 4 days I’ll turn 78. Being old is a challenge. I’d like to say I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but oops, you know what that would mean.
I’ve actually posted here several times, but you must have missed them.
Again, thanks for asking about us. It’s appreciated.
beantownbill,
Glad things are moving in the right direction!
Another sudden death:
“X, devoted and loving wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, and brilliant X, diedTuesday, April 25, 2023, unexpectedly at home of natural causes alongside her wife, X.”
She was 63. .
Mike Cernovich would destroy you for this post. I say we can neither say yea or nay until further information is given. We must know vax status..
In most obits or such announcement there is no way to know jab status.
Who is Mike Cernovich?
What is he to me?
I presume though that you posted as sort of insinuating it could be the vax, no?
Mike Cernovich is a conservative social media personality. I’m not sure how he relates to you. However, he has posted a lot on twitter sorta dragging the “died suddenly” crowd. He made a comment one time that annoyed me because it was dismissive of people concerned about the jabs and I accused him of whistling past the graveyard. I’m not a big social media personality though so it was just a comment from someone basically.
I don’t do social media.
Many here have been talking about sudden deaths they have noticed in, say, obituaries in their local papers.
I have no idea why you posted your comment under mine.
I just thought you would know who I was talking about. But it basically had way more to do with the dismissive attitude one finds they will get from certain people when they bring up the issue of sudden deaths than anything else.
” the dismissive attitude one finds they [WHO?] will get from certain people [WHO?] when they [WHO?] bring up the issue of sudden deaths than anything else.”
Whom are you talking about?
Did I take a dismissive attitude?
Any attitude?
“I have no idea why you posted your comment under mine”.
Because she was trying to talk to you, this being the comment section of a blog, or in other words, a medium of social communication. Yup, no attitude here. Of course you don’t do social media, so there’s that too.
“I don’t do social media”
Posts links from social media accounts several times per week.
OK, then.
This is the first thing from JHK I’ve seen in a very long time that was grounded in reality and not delusional fantasy. Good to see him back again!
Why hello there, is this AIDS666 in new form?
The banks and the borders are collapsing and MTG has finally realized that the Democrats and the Republicans are fake. I’m thinking the best description for the Regime is a Borg. Because it’s many elements coming together as one. Elected and unelected people within government, the media, influencers, teachers, professors, doctors, street zombies, etc. They all are of one mind. Now if the legion will simply enter the herd of pigs and plummet themselves off the cliff.
Brazil fell, but Paraguay prevailed
RFK Jr. tweeted that he will pardon, among others, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, should he become President.
Not wise to show his hand so early. Makes me wonder if he’s not just for show. Or he has a death wish.
If he isn’t part of the show then he is already on the outside and has nothing to lose. If he is part of the show then all of it is null and void anyhow I would imagine.
I don’t see how he is part of the show. His work with CHDF is far too extensive for that to make any sense.
He made a more encouraging statement about climate change, saying the issue has been subverted by WEF and co.
Still not sure what his current position is beyond that, however.
He should add Trump to that list, then he would definitely lock up the votes. He should also ensure that the Biden clan is fully prosecuted to the hilt.
‘He should add Trump to that list, then he would definitely lock up the votes.’
He’d lose more than it was worth.
Go to Google translate. Select Finnish as the translate from language, and English as the translate to language. Type “Kamala” into the Finnish box and experience the magic. :0 You are welcome.
Lol :o)
Whore-able.
So, what are the odds? Will chomsky turn out to be a pedophile?
“I was gob-smacked when Chomsky advocated separating the unvaxxed from society where getting food was ‘their problem.’ That was after he called Medicare 4 All ‘candy.’ Now he talks like this about hanging with Epstein? Holy shit.”
“Noam Chomsky told the WSJ of his longtime relationship with Jeffrey Epstein: ‘First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.’”
https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1652737629706915840?cxt=HHwWgMDQ2cOH2u8tAAAA
Wow! That intelligent asset literally dragnetted everybody!
Seriously looks like it, doesn’t it?
I’ve heard that he was working for US, Israeli, Russian, and the rest of the five eye intelligence agencies. Can’t verify of course but it does seem very possible.
Turns out there were meetings with CIA director William Burns, too.
Sounds like it’s one big lizard cabal pulling the levers and calling the shots, an elitist, international circle jerk.
Ukrainian army is out of ammo & artillery ordnance. WHERE DID THE $200 BILLION IN US AID GO?
Under SloJo’s couch cushions. Walking around money.
Looks like he was a real POS. Part of the elite inner circle he was always criticizing. I wouldn’t put pedo past him.
Some of the comments under it are priceless…
——
Zachary Tisdale ??
@ztisdale
·
Apr 30
Wait until you figure it out about Karl Marx as well. You’re on your way to being a real libertarian, Jimmy!
Michael Peifer
@flakyfarseer
·Apr 30
A “real libertarian”? You mean an anarchist?
—
Zachary Tisdale ??
@ztisdale
Apr 30
Libertarians are for less government, or “minimum” government.
Anarchy is no government.
—
Michael Peifer
@flakyfarseer
Apr 30
Capitalism concentrates wealth/power over time, which leads to expansion of gov’t so the ruling class can maintain wealth/power (police/military/etc).
“Libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles, would be anarchists.”
-R.A. Wilson
youtube.com
Robert Anton Wilson on Anarchism
—
Michael Peifer
@flakyfarseer
Apr 30
Quote Tweet
Michael Peifer
@flakyfarseer
Apr 9, 2022
Karl Hess talks about his evolution from Ayn Rand libertarian & Republican speechwriter for Goldwater to anarchist. Upon reading the works of Emma Goldman he discovered anarchists were everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent.
Source: youtube.com/watch?v=AHGl9a8BcqI
Except their deep motivations are entirely different. One is for the selfish exploitation of life, and one is intensely idealistic, wanting to change the world. That’s why you fools march with Communists and not Capitalists.
People who just want to be left alone are unlikely to be comfortable with other anarchists, right?
Amazing, the power and depth of protected depravity.
Chomsky wouldn’t surprise me to have “imbibed”.
Or perhaps they just used to get together to play canasta. Just a couple buddies from down the block and all that…
Finding a willing partner just isn’t a very attractive option for those traveling this life on the upper rail, for some reason.
Tribe. We’re so passed that now, we can’t even remember how it works. Taking over a people so disunited was child’s play. The WASP Elite? They bought them out. They’re mostly shareholders now, with some individuals having a lot of influence.
George Washington was right, warning his contemporaries about political parties.
Today, the presence of political parties is about to destroy the country.
The Constitution was designed as a framework of rights and how to run a country with those rights guaranteed, not an argument foundation for two groups of jerks to argue about.
Power needs to be controlled to ensure rights and liberty. Power today is harnessed by the Deep State to destroy those rights in all ways possible.
After the revolution (secession, military coup, take your pick), it will be interesting to how all of this shakes out.
What modifcations will be made to the constitution?
I think prohibiting political parties, redefining corporations, banning lobbying, disbanding TLAs and of course recapture of currency and public debt would be the primary goals
It still doesn’t address the destroyed mono culture, energy scarcity, lack of production and of course collapse of military & police resulting in open borders, emptied prison, etc
The Chines survived the 50-70s, The Russians somehow were able to survive the 90s, but I’m pretty sure we dont have the gumption to survive the 20-30s.
Constitutions. There won’t be just one. There will be several at least. More likely many.
Already have 51, just need 50.
One ring to bind them and in the darkness hide them.
Our cultural revolution has lasted for generations, so yes, you’re right. And of course the racial basis of our Civilization has been destroyed utterly, that goes along hand in glove with the first point, each being both cause and effect of the other.
” I didn’t have a lawn in California, because there you have to water the grass in order to have grass.
But in Illinois, you either mow or you have a patch of brambles crawling with ticks. ”
— Paula D
Here in Tennessee , and the South in general , you either mow , or you have a solid wall of brambles up to your eyeballs , and a tree growing two feet from your front door , and a tree or two growing two feet from your back door.
” Where I’m from in Southeastern Pa, people have lawns as big as 2 or 3 football fields. I’m like gosh, what a waste of land and time to maintain it. Who really needs a lawn that big? ”
I VISITED the area a couple of times , I never LIVED there , so what do I know ?
That having been said , what I saw was a whole lot of sidewalks and blacktop , and why do you have to mow that anyway ?
I’m guessing you are talking about Country Club Row ?
Where I live it is not Country Club Row , there simply are no sidewalks , and even , albeit a few , of the public roads aren’t even paved.
Here the lawns are so big because , if you want to go for a stroll of more than 15 feet , your options are to buy a 10k mower ,
or ,
buy a 10k suit of armor and an arsenal of machetes.
Yeah , it sucks that you have to go to so much trouble just to go for a walk.
Please submit your complaints to God.
” When I moved here I was out in the front trying to mow my lawn with the only kind of lawn mower I had ever had, a people-powered push mower.
My friend drove by and stopped and asked me what the hell I was doing. I said “Mowing the lawn”.
She said “I’ll give you 6 months before you buy a power mower”.
She was right. There is no way to mow that tall tough fescue and other weeds with people power. ”
— Paula D
You can with blunt coercion .
You have hit upon , indirectly , why I never took the racism / slavery narrative seriously.
Instead , I agree with the historian who said that slavery was not an outcome of racism. It was the other way around ; Racism was invented to justify slavery.
If that is true , then you have a problem that no amount of pious sermons and pricey TV commercials will ever even address , much less rectify.
That is ;
You could say the original sin was Irish , Scottish , Germans , and Italians moving to the South in the first place.
It is The Garden of Eden , but that it is the Garden of Eden is precisely the problem.
It should have been left to the Stone Age Aborigines.
Before the White Man came three – fourths of the landscape was old – growth forest — i.e. the forest canopy had grown so high and so thick it blotted out the sun from the brambles so you could go for a stroll through the woods.
Most of what was open land was open land because it was pasture for the Eastern Buffalo , and it was the Eastern Buffalo , not man , that made the pasture.
But that also meant the pasture belonged to the Buffalo. You couldn’t plant corn or turnips there , the Buffalo would just trample it to pieces.
That brings us to the actual small and few corn fields.
The corn fields were full of women — growing shit was ” womens work ” — an Indian euphemism for a job so thankless and unpleasant that nobody wanted the job.
Slavery was introduced because civilized White People didn’t want to hack away at brambles for 15 hours in hundred degree heat anymore than Stone Age Indians wanted to.
Alas , the civilized world view says you have to do something.
You can’t just sit around and smoke dope , fuck , work on arts and crafts projects , and go around warring on other groups commonly just for giggles. .
Among Stone Age people everyone is an artist , even the folks who plant corn and pull weeds all day are artists.
In civilization , artists are a tiny group of rich people paid exorbitant amounts to do what , given their wealth , they probably could have done for free anyway.
And in civilzation forcing others to work qualifies AS work.
—
Here , once again , I have a strong suspicion that many of these Doomsday Preppers and Mother Earth News types are theorists and dilatants who have never actually lived the life they are proposing.
I was pulling weeds in my mom’s backyard yesterday trying to clear up some growth that literally seemed to pop up overnight and I accidentally grabbed a bramble vine. I wasn’t happy about that but I was able to save a palmetto that was getting chocked out by a bevy of water oak, willow oak, and red oak saplings. I would be ok with letting the forest grow back over everything but most other people probably wouldn’t be so i’m stuck.
SSL, wear leather gloves. That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned working on my own property. AND CHECK FOR TICKS! Those little buggers will bring you down.
People here are worried about bears, and bears are a problem. Last week a black bear bit a woman walking her dog, and on Sunday bears entered two houses, presumably looking for something to eat. Apparently, these bears know how to open doors. But I’m not too worried about bears, tick bites are what concern me. A few years ago I got a case of cellulitis from a tick, ended up being hospitalized.
I’ve heard that ticks won’t bite if your BAC is over .10%. BRH you have to do your part! Then again bears like fermented fruit so you gotta watch your back.
“on Sunday bears entered two houses, presumably looking for something to eat. ”
Nah, Yogi was lookin’ for box wine. Connecticut Karen’s favorite beverage.
Backrow, If you’re walking a small dog on a leash in Montana, we call that “Trolling for Mountain Lions”.
Several years ago, west of Helena, a young lad rides his sled to the school bus stop. He didn’t get on the bus, didn’t show up at school. They found his sled leaning against the bus shelter and bloody drag marks as the cat pulled him to some place for a quiet meal.
True Story.
Mother Nature always bats last and she can be a stern mistress.
The MA Dept. of Fish and Game refuses to acknowledge the existence of Mountain Lions around here. I know several people that have seen them, and these guys are experienced hunters. Also I have seen my friends game cam pics of a couple wolves on his back property. They’re hard to mistake. I don’t know why the authorities won’t verify. They know they are here.
Stelmosfire, In regards to the cat in my writing above, the community first asked the dept. of Fish and Ducks to send out the contract bounty hunter, but were declined.
Private citizens, over the next few months killed every cat in the region. Good riddance!
The MA Dept. employees refuse to acknowledge the problem because they might have to get off their overpaid, underworked asses and do something.
Do you know why State employees don’t do anything on Tuesdays?
It’s too late in the week to start a new project…
I was “necking” with a young nubile in her car, she was behind the wheel, I was passenger side. I came up for air and looking over her shoulder, I saw a cat jump out of a dumpster carrying the front quarter of something. This was in downtown Helena.
Just because you don’t see ’em doesn’t mean they’re not around.
bb,
I heard a similar story about a man in rural Alaska who was walking with his five-year-old child. A grizzly appeared out of the bush and plucked away the kid.
Soon there were no more live grizzlies on that particular island. The locals cleared them out.
Yes, we’ve moved away from Homo Ludens, Man the Player. With all of our technology, we should be moving towards it but no. We’re just going to make almost everyone a slave. IBM is not hiring people now, Chad (Chat) is coming!
Men want to hunt and fight. Women may not like it but what are they going to do? Overthrow us – which means fight us? This was the old understanding and balance. This had to be over-turned to make all into slaves in the Kali Yuga.
And of course for some, both men and women, there are the arts and crafts, storytelling, and spirituality.
Breeding true was an essential part of traditional life. So “racism” is just natural. Like unto like! Sir Arthur Keith’s Law of Amity and Enmity. One for your own and the other for others. So they sewed the salt of universal morality into our fields to destroy them.
“Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
There you have , I think , the difference between East Germany and West Germany ;
If you make 5 dollars an hour and drive a motor scooter , it is tyranny and a Russian puppet state.
If you make 30 dollars an hour and drive a Mercedes it doesn’t matter that it is tyranny and an American puppet state.
I’m wrong ?
” … he will pardon, among others, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden … ”
” … He should add Trump to that list … ”
Why ?
You don’t want free food , free clothing , free shelter , free HBO , and in the care of folks who respect human rights ?
And to hear it told , anyone in the East who was ever arrested and jailed in the East for principles sake was a hero.
You don’t want to be a hero ?
But then the West does not have political prisoners.
PARDON is the correct word.
The West only has criminals you let walk out of the kindess of your heart.
Well, according to Jesus everyone is a criminal. So there is that. The nicer a prison is the more people are able to psyche themselves into thinking they’re not in prison? Prisons generally in the US are very inhumane and awful. Their focus should be reformation and reintegration. But those things may not be profitable for the right people. People do get out of jail all the time though so its not just out of the kindness of peoples hearts.
Every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints.
The U.S. military occupies one third of Syria. It sells the oil produced there and the grain grown there. Who get the MONEY?
James Lindsay.
I know he has some fans here.
I often find him hard to follow.
I guess the word “gnostic” makes my eyes glaze over.
But this essay of his is a real doozy!
I recommend it.
httpX://newdiscourses.com/2023/05/intersectionality-is-american-maoism/?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=ND_-_5-2-23_-_Intersectionality_Is_American_Maoism&utm_medium=email
“Original trailer to the Naked Prey
Here is the answer that you seek. See though? The White isn’t racist – he helps Blacks being enslaved. He’s a good White!
The goalpost has moved quite a bit since then. There are no good Whites anymore, except you and Za. The rest deserve to be hunted down.
This movie was filmed in ‘the most primitive parts of Africa’. They saw all this going on!” ~ Jarek May 2, 2023 at 1:46 pm
——
“I will not accept being labeled cisgender by anyone.” ~ vera, Resilience org
“Ah but Vera everyone has to have a label or how shall we know who is to be hated and who not.” ~ Dave Zoom
“Bwahaha… and a cheery good night to you too, Dave! :-D” ~ vera
Above comment should be separate and not be under Islander’s.
Why did you put your comment under Islander’s? She doesn’t do social media.
Hope you got the tongue in cheek aspect of my post, old boy. Yet at the same time, they really did eat people, some of them anyway. Anthros played that down to the max, being told to do so by those that sign their checks.
I don’t know if any Black Africans ever hunted a White man for sport, but there are reliable stories of Red Indians doing it over here.
You might find him hard to follow because he’s an academic and doesn’t dummy down his explanations or lectures, as is common with others nowadays.
He’s not for the intellectually lazy, that is for sure. Thanks for the link.
MQ:
“You might find him hard to follow because he’s an academic ”
LOLOLOL
They have their own language, and having one in the family I know first hand. At least Lindsay is understandable. My relative, not so much. You would need an academia decoder to grok what the hell she’s talking about.
““You might find him hard to follow because he’s an academic ”
It’s really a keeper, my dear!
The author deleted my comments.
Such powerful brains cannot allow the riff raff to engage with them directly.
“American Maoism”
What a tard.
Glad you were entertained!
If it’s said simply, Islander won’t respect it, confusing profundity with convolution.
I have little doubt that when I was buying David Duke’s autobiography off the sale cart outside the Harvard Coop, she was inside perusing Leftist nonsense.
Islander – fascinating article.
Interestingly enough, I have an appointment with my son’s school principal in a few days to discuss exactly this topic, as MN is preparing to go full woke in the schools by mandate. This article helped me clarify some thoughts.
MN will surely pass this legislation and cheerfully/blindly pat themselves on the back for doing so, as they have the Dem trifecta at the state government level.
My main question for him is what is being/can be done about it once full-semester CRT/intersectionality courses are mandated (besides going private or home schooled, obviously)? Are there like-minded groups looking for a workaround, or are most administrators planning to throw in the towel and ride off into the sunset with memories of what education used to be like here?
Next year will be HS seniors only, after that, they want K-12. Fock that.
You should read/listen to more of his lectures.
He advocates throwing sand in the gears:
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/05/sand-in-the-gears/
And if you do ever quote him to the school boards, etc. make sure you mention he is a lefty and an atheist. Because they will try to paint him as a conservative extreme right-winger.
make sure you mention he is a lefty and an atheist
Lol. Times sure have changed when that’s the way to get school admin to take you seriously…
Yes, indeed.
It was done very slowly – and let’s face it, most of the changes you agree with as a liberal.
Now you’ve reached your limit. The generation after you will be comfortable with more. Then they’ll reach their limit, and their kids will take it farther.
The Elite know human nature and are well on their way to Victory. They’re sprinting to the goal post now. If anyone tried to take them down by any means necessary, would you be on board? A Putin or a Hitler type?
Doubtful.
Mr. Mango,
For me one of the most interesting parts was the comparison of Wokester’s to the Red Guards. I have often thought that the current young Wokesters are a lot like Red Guards, but in a general way.
[Of course, a lot of Wokesters are not youngsters. But perhaps it is a character fault of many American adults that they now think of themselves as rebellious young reformers!]
Anyhow, as I was saying, Lindsay foretells a sad end for those who let themselves be used as ideological battering rams, based on how the Red Guards ended up as social DisGuards and possibly dead.
I’m taking him at his word—I don’t know much about that history.
Can you put it to your son’s school principal what you think of this policy? Maybe ask him what the options are for alternative schooling to protect children from this mental and emotional miasma? Something to make him think?
Please do report back to us on the meeting!
Will do. I know he told me before we enrolled our boy there that if CRT were ever mandated, he wouldn’t do it, so he might have to retire early and find a new line of work. He’s in his mid-late fifties, I think.
Not what I would like to see happen, as it was a challenge to find someone on the inside who would say that in the current landscape.
I don’t (yet) really know any more of his political bent, nor do I care, as long as we see eye-to-eye on my child receiving a recognizable education that doesn’t cast him as a villain because of the color of his skin…but if he was that strongly on board there, I would imagine we can at least have a like-minded conversation when it comes to school, and see if there are any options to push back.
I find this stuff incredibly boring, not because the article itself was poorly written (it was not), but rather because the ideas it is discussing are stupid and a waste of time.
Issues in race, gender, etc., are largely wedges used by the powerful to distract peons.
Who gives a shit?
Those whose six year-olds are being threatened with mandating this crap at their schools, for starters…
Indeed, and all the women losing thousands of dollars and opportunities in scholarships, and all the women having to put up with perverts in our dressing rooms, shelters, locker rooms, prisons, bathrooms. And all the kids being sliced up without their parents’ consent, and all the people being called “racist” or “bigot” and fired and nationally shamed and having their lives ruined, etc. etc.
All true, Mary.
To be fair though, I can’t get a professional grant to save my life, due to my maleness and epidermis hue.
If I were QWERTY I’d go to the top of the line. Foundations literally state this in their applications. Preference will go to POC, QWERTY and women.
I do note, however, that “women” is at the bottom of that preferential list. Feminism, on its own at least, has been swallowed up and largely discarded as a privileged class.
True, Mr. Mango.
Remember, though, that women being included (at the bottom) of this group has nothing to do with feminism – we are just lumped in with the “oppressed” groups, you know, the people who have something wrong with them so need an extra leg-up.
I have always been able to work well before any so-called feminist policies came into play that forced companies to hire women.
But then again, that was when they just hired the best person for the job, and lots of my jobs were traditional female roles (secretary, etc.).
Absolutely not what his work’s about, but you’d have to actually listen to one of his lectures to grok what he actually has figured out. It encompasses everything, from WEF to the global plantation to GND etc.
Still doesn’t get it. He wants to fight tribes as an individual. You don’t care about all that, but they do.
You lose. How do you think the Tribe took America? How do you think the Muslims are taking Europe. The Ignorance!
Uh oh! drone strike on the Kremlin. Things are getting personal. Maybe the Z-man will be martyred soon.
Sooner or later Putin need to take the gloves off. EU HQ in Brussels might make a fine target.
Just remember it’s all one big show.
Really, a little weeny drone is a threat to the Kremlin?
LOL.
Not sure if serious.
Did you see the video?
The Kremlin needs to do a retaliatory strike on that penis piano player Zelinsky, wipe him off the map for good, once and for all.
That would be a step in the right direction to ending this special military operation.
Maybe Zelo is a financial Epstein. If you know what I mean.
Zelensky just made the #1 spot in the death pool. Either Putin or one of his military advisors will take him out.
Medvedev calling for elimination of the tiny fat dancer.
YES!
If he was involved in the attack, probably they will mull going after him and his.
War is not about retribution… at least until it is settled.
Why do I have the feeling that I’m getting played? Energy makes the world go ’round. CME prices YOY crude down 35%, natural gas -75%,coal -43%, wheat -43%,butter-35%, oats -57% etc,etc. yet prices are through the roof. I’m confused.
httpx://tradingeconomics.com/commodities
This is all a figment of our imagination. Did Biden come right out and say that there is no inflation? It’s gotta be true!
Yes, and he also said the southern border is secure.
I just watched the interview with Robert F. Kenndy Jr. at the Unherd Youtube channel:
https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY89a_zXi9s
I have to give him credit. He is a skillful political manipulator. He can thread the needle with the best of them. Except for a few faux pas, such as calling Russia the Soviet Union and calling Iran Iraq, he was able to give a good account of himself. Of course, he was totally wrong on nuclear energy, but except for these few exceptions he should be able to appeal to a broad cross-section.
Despite being able to play the political outsider with every rousing meme imaginable, he is doomed to fail, either as a candidate or as president. Let’s say a miracle happens & he ascends to the Oval orifice. The Washington establishment gets behind him & he ousts Brandon through a series of complex backroom machinations, he is still doomed to fail. It’s pretty obvious that he will be beholden to the corporate & establishment interests, i.e., he will pull an “Obama” just as surely as his name is Kennedy (or if he doesn’t, see below).
I would say the odds are 20/80 against him at this point but if he overcomes the odds, & even hints that he’ll follow through on his agenda, his reform initiatives are doomed. He will be “trumped” to death. His administration will be infiltrated top to bottom. Leaks will abound. The Deep State has learned that they don’t even have to give him the traditional Kennedy treatment. They can just lawfare him to death, as they did 45.
What few are willing to admit is TINVOWOOT (there is no voting our way out of this.)
Of course, although I won’t be voting, I do hope that someone can mediate the madness for a while longer so I can live out the remainder of my years in relative peace untroubled by any actual kinetic involvement in the approaching Civil War II. Maybe RFK, Jr. is the ticket for that. It will take a while for the populace to catch on that like Reagan, like all the others who came after, his is a doomed cause. So if he only postpones the party for a while longer, that may be the best that can be hoped for from the perspective of the Boomer generation.
I just listened to Jim’s recently posted podcast with JFK. This is also great! (Except where he doesn’t believe there was any fraud in the 2020 presidential election.)
JFK? You must mean RFK, and he’s right correct, there was no fraud, but keep day dreaming lol
Yes, mea culpa, I did mean RFK. My mind thinks one thing and my fingers type another….oy vey!
No, he is incorrect. Keep day dreaming. LOL.
Deep thoughts with the Shitbird.
Although I won’t be voting?
I have had the same thoughts, however,
It may make very little difference but,
I have one small chance to thumb my nose at the corruption of the Deep State, to be able to tell myself I did what I could to undo the damage the Left has done to this country.
If but 5% of this country would vote for the good of the country instead of their own gimme psyche, this country would turn around overnight. The Dems could not cheat, nor run the country into the ground.
BTW, as before mentioned, the near time future of the country is at stake, THIS MONTH. Keep watching the debt ceiling debate, it is going to be a political blood bath. Already, Biden has thumbed his nose at McCarthy, Schumer, the perennial asshole, has challenged McCarthy on the Hill. Here is such a Dem trick that it is almost humorous if it was not so arrogant. Schumer says we have to pass the higher, much higher debt ceiling first, then we can discuss spending issues, not cuts, issues. What a phony, but he represents a party of phonies.
Trust me, he says. When pigs fly and the pigs in the DNC will sink us, not fly.
Haha, here is the breaking news that just came over my monitor. As if big pharma needs another reason to lie and kill. I never even heard of RSV before! lol
The Food and Drug Administration approved Wednesday the first-ever vaccine to combat severe respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Arexvy, the new vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved for adults 60 and older and was 82% effective at preventing lower respiratory tract illness caused by RSV, according to trial data. It was also 94% effective in those who had at least one underlying medical condition.
“Today’s approval of the first RSV vaccine is an important public health achievement to prevent a disease which can be life-threatening and reflects the FDA’s continued commitment to facilitating the development of safe and effective vaccines for use in the United States,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Respiratory syncytial virus infects nearly everyone by age 2 and typically causes cold symptoms. But it’s also the leading cause of hospitalizations among newborns and younger children. Among those under 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports between 58,000 and 80,000 hospitalizations a year.
RSV also strikes late in life, causing more than 177,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths among older adults each year.
I’ve read somewhere that life itself is eventually 100% fatal. When are they coming out with a vaccine for that?
We’re working on that.
Lighthearted, Dis, but the number one question is,
Is it mRNA or a relative? What testing has been done? What long term risks exist and how will that be tested?
mRNA, never again!
I highly doubt that RSV strikes late in life. That sounds like total bullshit to me.
Yes, almost everyone has had RSV by the time they are two, and yes, it makes some babies very sick.
Hey, I know! The Public Health Dept. should advise mothers not to put their infants into daycare until they are over two.
That way, they have very little chance of acquiring a deadly case of RSV before their immature immune systems can handle it.
No, you say? They won’t recommend that?
Instead they are trying to scare adults into being afraid of a childhood disease they have no doubt already had decades ago and are immune to?
Yeah, that is actually more likely. No profit in mothers protecting their newborns, is there. But there is Big Money in “vaccines”.
I have tested hundreds of infants for RSV, but not one adult, ever.
Why is that? Could it be that adults don’t get RSV? Right up until Big Pharma invented a “vaccine” for it?
Could it be that this ad campaign by the Mighty Wurlitzer is based on total bullshit, meant to sell a worthless and unnecessary product?
I think so.
Black Californians could receive up to $1.2 million in reparations payments, task force says
The California Reparations Task Force released estimates, as well as breakdowns of the methodology used to determine the amounts, on Monday ahead of a critical vote that will take place later this week.
The possible payments reflect the work of economists who advised the task force and who were asked to estimate the total financial losses suffered by Black Californians impacted by slavery and institutional racism.
As outlined by the San Francisco Chronicle, an eligible resident who lived in California their whole life and was 71 or older could, in theory, receive as much as $1.2 million.
If approved, the task force would urge that the money begin to be disbursed in the form of “down payments,” according to CalMatters.
A new state agency would need to be established to distribute funds and determine eligibility, CalMatters writes. That agency would also help Black Californians trace their lineage to confirm that they are eligible for the payments.
Those who qualify could receive various payments to compensate for the injustices of “over-policing” of Black communities, discrimination in housing, and inequity in the health care system, CalMatters wrote.
Each of those categories includes a maximum payment based on specific timeframes. For instance, a Black Californian who lived in the state between 1971 and 2020 could receive as much as $2,352 per year due to “over-policing.”
Additionally, the task force may also recommend for the State of California to formally apologize for slavery, as well as state laws and actions that members say actively discriminated against Black residents, including enforcement of the federal fugitive slave law, prohibition of interracial marriage, the construction of monuments that glorify the Confederacy, as well as open segregation and discriminations in the arts.
Tucker Carlson called woman ‘yummy,’ leaked video shows
The task force will meet Saturday at Mills College in Oakland to vote on the proposals. If able to come to an agreement, a formal proposal would be drafted and eventually sent to the California legislature to be voted upon.
The proposals would likely face strong opposition from Republican lawmakers, and some moderate Democrats, the Chronicle suggests.
The California Reparations Task Force was established in September 2020 following the passage of State Assembly Bill 3121, which cleared the way for the state to evaluate the financial impact of slavery on Black residents and determine the best means to repay those who have had been adversely affected by American slavery, which has had long-lasting reverberations for more than 150 years after it ended.
My comment: Okay, so once you Blackies are all paid off, then everything is squared away on the level, right? No more complaining and asking for more handouts due to injustice. Riiiiight…..
No, they’re complaining bigtime in Chicago. Walmart abruptly shut down 4 stores ‘in de hood.’ Now members of the community have no place to shop ~ a ‘food desert’ has been created. For Walmart’s part they just couldn’t sustain the looting, pilfering, shoplifting, assaults & stolen cars in the parking lot, and still make a profit. Community leaders including the new mayor, blame Walmart — they be racist — and are holding rallies against Walmart in empty Walmart parking lots.
Nordstrom just left SF.
LOL.
It’s a good thing black people were not gassed to death in concentration camps during slavery.
The black people of the South were ‘valuable property’, Amman.
But there were no black slaves in CA.
This is really nuts.
California was a Great Migration goal for many southern blacks, especially from 1940 to 1970.
Many of them came from Louisiana to the Bay Area.
Oakland
Lots of work.
Isabel Wilkerson writes about this in The Warmth of Other Suns.
A wonderful book.
i
Reparations propaganda is part of the media game to inflame and set black and white Americans against each other.
I really REALLY hope this passes. I would just love to see the fallout.
…and get your giggles, no doubt.
Hey this ties in nicely with what I posted below. And I posted it before seeing your comment.
YES, I am planning on doing a lot of giggling, alright.
An idea! When ethnic Balkanization happens, split California into half and give SoCal to Mexico and give NoCal to the Blacks.
Then pray that the San Andreas gets very active again.
After Benr gets out of course.
You have an uninformed view of blacks if you entertain this scenario. Black people have contributed in ways you are not conscious of and which affect and control American society and its future. To be blunt, without Black people, there is no America and the converse is equally true. The general equation?
US society = Br +iW
where B = a Black people who strive for the real (r)
and W = a White people who strive for an imaginary Ideal.
Unfortunately, the MSMedia create acute division in order to let big money have its way.
In other words, Blacks are the real Americans now.
Fatuous bigotry.
Don’t get caught “snickering” at a trans, Business Insider will be there to shame you as a racist bigot!
Because of course their intrepid reporters KNOW WHY you are snickering. Thought crime alert!!
Granted, men in dresses IS funny. Our culture is full of them – Mrs. Doubtfire, Tootsie, etc. But NOW we are NOT supposed to laugh. Because laughing, Bus. Insider reports, is the exact same thing as white bigots laughing at black people back in the 1950’s. Let’s just ignore that the scene they portray doesn’t have any people of color in it. Racism no longer has anything to do with race, you see.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/a-photo-of-women-snickering-at-trans-lawmaker-zooey-zephyr-in-montana-looks-a-lot-like-the-photos-of-white-people-snickering-at-black-people-in-the-1950s/ar-AA1aEzQ1
Honestly? If I were the woman in that photo, I would sue the bejeezits out of Business Insider. I hope she does.
This is proof, by the way, that the very best weapon against the Woke Jacobins is humor. They cannot stand it. So, laugh laugh laugh, people! While we still can (especially at sick perverted men in woman-face).
In Ireland (makes a change from Scotland for once) new hate speech laws state that if hateful material is found on your computer, for example, there will be a presumption of guilt unless and until you can prove it’s not hateful, i.e. guilty until proven innocent. Fun times.
Yes, what happened in Ireland should send chills down the spine of all free humans.
I was working on my dual citizenship for Ireland a couple of years ago. Then I found out that it was worse than the US for this stuff. Really pathetic. I would have thought the Irish would be champions of free speech.
Then again, none of the western countries’ mandates really are based on popular support but rather the loud queer cult screechings and demands and threats etc. plus their agenda money and control.
Putin allies reacted to the alleged attack with alarming calls for revenge.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev – now a top Putin security official – called for the “elimination” of Zelensky.
In a chilling statement, he said: “After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left except for the physical elimination of Zelensky and his cabal.
“It is not even needed to sign an act of unconditional surrender.”
Pro-Putin Just Russia party leader Sergey Mironov added: “This is the very real casus belli – a pretext for war.”
He urged the “liquidation of Ukraine’s terrorist top brass. We have something to hit their bunkers with.”
Senior politician Alexei Zhuravlev urged: “It is necessary to target the centre of Kyiv.
“Destroy the president’s office, destroy to the ground the [Ukrainian parliament], the general staff, and the buildings housing the Ukrainian special services.”
MP Mikhail Sheremet said: “It’s time to launch a missile strike on Zelensky’s residence in Kyiv.”
So, the Russians are fully capable of a ‘false flag’ operation. Go figure.
All governments are.
It is hardly inconceivable that the dancing dwarf would at the behest of his Western masters, and using their tech, attempt to take out Putin.
The term false flag certainly has its applications, but based on the evidence we have seen thus far, I would say it is rather premature to claim such a thing.
It is also rather illogical, given that the Russians have nothing to gain from killing the dancing dwarf, and quite a bit to lose.
They’re blaming the US directly this morning. Who can tell what the truth of it all is?
The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates for the 10th time in just over a year, to a level between 5 and 5.25 percent, the highest level in 16 years.
Gold is up over $2,030 an ounce! Silver is pushing $26 an ounce! Biden says that there is no such thing as inflation and that prices are going down! The US-Mexico border is secure!
Let’s all enjoy rainbow fantasy land!
Listening to Bloomberg Business while working out back in the garden this morning, learned more banks are poised to collapse.
Biden and his team of financial wizards own this. We are about to enter a period of American history that will make the 1930s Great Depression economy look like a booming bonanza!
Meanwhile I got a mailer from a local bank—or, more like a regional bank—offering 4.25% APY for a five-month CD.
They must really need to get deposits.
For loans, I guess.
Mortgages?
No one can afford a house/ mortgage around here.
Maybe for construction or business loans.
I’ve noticed my local bank really upped their savings and checking payout rates. They must have read the tea leaves.
All the “late nite” shows are going on hiatus due to the Hollywood writers’ strike. Gee whiz, now how are these buffoons going to tout the great achievements of the Biden Administration?
This is likely all being done on purpose, to squelch further dissent.
Late night shows contain zero dissention.
Call me naive but I was surprised to learn that the 6 years of Trump hatred from the likes of Kimmel & Colbert is totally scripted; late night comedians simply deliver what’s written for them. They have no original thoughts.
I knew that a long time ago. I think I stopped watching late night shows in the late 1990s.
I think they really started scripting them in earnest after 9/11.
Benjamin Franklin started out as a “Printer”, printing books and newspapers. After he gained prominence and status amongst the Freemasons in Philadelphia, he landed the lucrative contract to print the local money in his printing shop, which is a very sweet deal.
“ International Man: The US federal government has raised the so-called debt ceiling 104 times since 1944.
Shouldn’t they call it a debt target instead of a debt ceiling?
Is this whole thing a farce?
Doug Casey: The situation is completely and irredeemably out of control. It’s a farce. Quite laughable, except for the fact it’s so deadly serious.
Can they reduce the debt ceiling or the amount of debt? Or even slow down its growth at this point? No.
The situation is beyond redemption because most US government expenditures go to pay entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and numerous other types of welfare.
Those things will be very hard to cut at this point; breaking the doggy dishes of millions of corrupted Americans would cause unrest. Plus, the so-called “defense” budget, which mostly supports the military/industrial complex while fomenting conflict. It’s actually much larger than disclosed because it should include $50 billion of foreign aid, the cost of running outrageously large embassies over the world, the CIA, and black budgets of all types.
Meanwhile, all US government agencies are bent on expanding themselves. The bureaucrats who run them realize that if they don’t grow the budget every year, they reduce their chances of going from one GS level to the next. Their success is based upon managing more people and spending more money. Naturally, all these agencies grow like cancers.
As a result, the “debt ceiling” is a fiction. It will stay out of control unless there is a total reorganization of the government—which itself would be risky. And that’s not going to happen until we have a financial catastrophe that leaves absolutely no alternative.
International Man: You have previously stated the US government should default on the national debt.
What are the reasons for that?
Doug Casey: I know it sounds outrageous to propose the US government default on its national debt. Of course, they don’t think it will ever be necessary because, as several high-level government officials have pointed out, they can just print money to pay off the debt.
However, I disagree. What are the reasons for doing something as seemingly catastrophic as defaulting on the debt? I’ll give you at least five. Stick with me. Let’s conduct an outrageous but not unreasonable thought experiment.
First, barring default, future generations of Americans will be turned into serfs to pay off the debt. Profligate people have run up the debt, but everybody’s children and grandchildren are stuck with having to pay it off. That’s simply immoral. If you have any care for the future at all, future generations should be saved from becoming serfs to pay it off.
Second, it would punish the enablers who lend the US government money. People who lend the US government money facilitate it by doing all the stupid and destructive things it does. They shouldn’t be rewarded; they should be punished.
Third, official default is better than the alternative. It’s like a hundred-story building that’s about to collapse. If that’s the case, should you wait until it collapses randomly and unpredictably, or should you have a controlled demolition? It’s not a pleasant alternative, but it’s the better alternative.
Fourth, default would make further borrowing on the part of the US government impossible, at least for a while. It would be exposed as an untrustworthy entity, like the Argentine government, which defaults all the time. People would still idiotically lend it more money, but a default might slow down the rate of increase in the US government’s size.
Fifth, it’s almost necessary that the debt goes away to help de-financialize the US economy. The US is tremendously over-financialized. It’s all about buying, selling, creating, and packaging financial instruments. Government debt, with the help of the Fed, is the actual engine of inflation. Defaulting on the national debt would pave the way for the reinstitution of a sound, redeemable, commodity-based money. People would have to concentrate more on real wealth than phony financial wealth, actual engineering, as opposed to financial and social engineering.
Of course, an objection reasonable people would make is: “If you default on the debt, it’s going to be a catastrophe.”
My answer is that just because all the paper debt of the US government goes away doesn’t mean the real wealth in the world will disappear. The farms, factories, technologies, and the skills of the workers, will still exist. But on a sound foundation. And with some new owners.
Furthermore, I’d point out that the US Government isn’t “we the people.” It’s become a discreet entity with its own interests, like a giant corporation. If it declares bankruptcy, it’s a problem for its employees and clients much more than for you, the taxpayer.
Those are some of the arguments I’d make for defaulting on the national debt. But it’s just a rather academic thought experiment. The powers-that-be will prefer to build the current house of cards higher, probably propping it up with FX controls, Central Bank Digital Currencies, a Social Credit System, much higher taxes, more inflation, price controls, and god knows what else in the years to come.
The default will happen, but more gradually, through the subtle fraud of inflation, which is actually the very worst and most dishonest way to default.”
I wonder which 4 or 5 banks will be left standing to administer the monopoly programmable Central Bank Digital Currency?
I think they’ll all be branches of the Fed, at least to start. But I could be wrong.
Here is a thought.
Default happens? Maybe when the world goes it’s own way under the banner of BRICS++, and “disowns” the US?
We have had the bragging rights as the world’s consumer base for three generations. No longer, and the Mob is trying to destroy what is left with taxation and inflation.
Extrapolate, and default is inevitable.
The only question now is exactly how they go about it and how long it takes to sort it out.
The end result will be a new CBDC credited at pennies on the dollar (if we’re lucky) to our accounts (or new accounts) with “assurances” that the credits are “commensurate” with our previous deposits based on purchasing power. All that will occur after a still to be determined period of civic “belt tightening,” where pretty much all economic activity stops and a good portion of the most vulnerable in the population steps off for greener pastures in the afterlife.
You have a knack for Power Writing James. You’re an inspiration. As usual, it’s time for Everyone to SAY something: so I wrote this to Senator Todd Young of Indiana.
My Elected Representative
Senator Todd Young
Local Office
1300 S. Harrison Street ~ Suite 3161
Fort Wayne, INDIANA 46802
Wednesday, 3 May 2023
7 AM Elkhart
Good Morning Todd,
Too Big to Fail is a phony concept. If it were a True Concept: there would still be Dinosaurs roaming the Earth.
Scientists say the BEST of the Artificial Intelligent Beings will be connected to the Internet. Over half the information on the Internet has been wiped off, destroyed, censored. Try and imagine the CEO of Pfizer; dying of some incurable disease, and his A I comes up with an injection based on the same information Pfizer used to create their Emergency Use Only COVID vaccine. Talk about a dilemma ! ! Wouldn’t you love to see the look on his face ?
Social norms, societal morals, are established from The Top Down. The FIRST reaction ~ of our Leaders AT THE TOP ~ is to kill, destroy and steal. AFTER they kill and destroy, there is usually an investigation PROVING it was a mistake to kill and destroy. Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine are perfect examples.
Go aft, raise The Finger on the mizzen mast and get this Oil to America ! ! (A little something I picked up in Nam. Navy: Bos’ns Mate 3rd class.)
Go out on the streets of Chicago or New York or San Francisco some warm summer night and learn the lessons Our Leaders have taught our society. Go to ANY Walmart or Target or even a Piggly Wiggly and see how well our society has learned to TAKE the Assets. Congress, the President and the Supreme Court should be out there on street corners ~ congratulating their graduate students. Go ahead. Pat them on the back; shake their hands and give them a cigar. You taught them well. The few Valedictorians among them will eventually run the Too Big to Fail Banks.
Kick back and relax. Our leaders, following their Tunnel Vision, are starting a war with Russia and China. From what I read, the odds are we’ll be vaporized in seven-tenths of a second. We won’t even have time for our minds to register the flash. Speaking of a flash of conscience: Free Julian Assange.
My Best Regards,
Ron
All letters to representatives are Public Record Correspondence.
Thanks for all you do James.
I’ll be surprised if the staffer assigned to screening his mail gets beyond the first sentence.
Hey, Navy, Nam, STG 2.
Ever get the feeling we wasted our time?
World Made By Hand And A DIY Folk Approach To Everyday Life
—-
@Islander…
Read the essay, pretty good…
A little hard to read with the jargon that the author, who seems a little young, might still be a little enamored with. Nevertheless, he appears to be on the right side of history.
After reading it and briefly glancing at a video of his, I did some inspired preliminary research and ran into this that I thought to share, if only as a kind of offering for some kind of literary catharsis in reading it. ‘u’
It was written in 2017 and in six years, things only seem to have gotten worse for the subject-matter, ay?
——
“The Woke Left, a term growing in popularity to describe the ‘leftism’ of city-based children of bourgeoisie backgrounds, is itself a puzzling beast… It is a Left with almost no class consciousness, no economic underpinning, and one that prefers battles over language and protest marches to actual combat. These are the same people that claimed the Black Bloc was a ‘patriarchal’ and ‘racist’ form of protest because it was favored by Europeans used to actually fighting the ruling class instead of writing letters to the local newspaper editor…
This again betrays Alexander’s audience: because Stirner used bad words he is bad, a classic of the ‘Woke Left’ whose battles primarily involve language rather than physical existence. These are the same ‘Anarchists’ claiming that Huckleberry Finn needs to be banned from libraries and calling Mark Twain a racist.
Interestingly enough most of these people have never read Mark Twain because they would know he was violently anti-imperialist and very much opposed to the racial caste system of the American South. Noticing a pattern here?…
…the Woke Left of the West Coast has determined that no matter what Stirner readers might say it is always, always wrong, and that they need to come back into the ‘right’ kind of Anarchism.
Which is actually kind of racist…
Why is something so basic, the literal ideas of a philosopher, so fundamentally off base? What are we to make of an essay that isn’t only wrong but gleefully so?
That it serves a purpose.
Alexander is not a journalist, he is an ideologue whose one-time outing of a fascist has him seeing them everywhere. Alex and his ilk are threatened by the rise of Post-Left thought because it’s a beast uncomfortably foreign to them: it requires no apologizing, it puts no groups above any others, and it dispenses with any savior-complex about ‘The People’. Egoism simply says that you and you alone determine what is good, that you owe the world nothing, and if you want something you better well take it…
This is in direct opposition to the key tenet of Woke Anarchism: Identity Politics.
Anarchism, as it exists among the privileged and ‘Woke’ Americans in Portland and other liberal enclaves depends upon certain ‘sacred’ things. It is an ‘Anarchism’ where certain things must never be questioned, certain lines must always be upheld, and above all the opinion of the community at large must be put first. It is an Anarchism of laws, rules, and little miniature cliques that get to describe who’s in and who’s out. And above all YOU are not an individual but a member of an ‘identity’ and that literally determines everything about you.
Consider the editors of Anti-Fascist News were quick to call those that had legitimate issues with the article ‘a parade of angry white dudes mansplaining about ‘edgy’ books that almost no one has read and were written over a hundred years ago’ and it becomes clear why a Post-Left even exists…
Stirner’s ideas are opposed to all the ‘Anarchists’ in favor of writing laws, building prisons, and otherwise developing their own religious dogma pretending to be a political philosophy. It is opposed to spending your time at universities in Portland apologizing for having dreads or any group whatsoever dictating who can speak and when. It is about seizing what you require and attacking.
You know, ACTUALLY revolutionary stuff.
The Woke Left knows it can’t compete with letter-bombs and arson, so it does what it does best: complain and whine to some external force to GIVE it respect…
When Alexander says we must reclaim anarchy as the integral struggle for freedom and equality’ he means HIS anarchy, the kind favored by white intellectuals on liberal campuses, the only kind that ‘works’.
Never mind comrades the world over in the FAI, the leading Insurrectionary-Anarchist organization, have found Stirner and his thoughts on individualism and action a guiding light. The Woke Left of the West Coast has quickly denied them agency, the privileged white liberals who enjoy police protection of Vegan Days down at the park claiming yet again the audacity to dictate to Insurrectionists in South America, Greece, and Indonesia that their politics must be wary of ‘entryism’ while white men are thrown out of Anarchist discussions in the US and into the arms of the Alt-Right…
His Woke Left privilege has left him blind to the glaring error in his own Identity-centered politics, something the Queer Insurrectionists in Bash Back! and indeed much of the larger world has been eager to point out:
‘Identity Politics are rooted in the ideology of victimization, and thus celebrate and comes to enforce norms surrounding what activity people are allowed or able to participate in…’
South America, Mexico, and Europe have made their choice and it’s to leave the classroom-bound theories of Seattle and Portland in the garbage heap of history.
I say it’s time American Anarchists learn some real solidarity and join them.” ~ Dr. Bones, ‘Post-Left vs ‘Woke’ Left: How Alexander R. Ross Got Max Stirner Wrong’, 2017
——
“Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism’s relationship to traditional left-wing politics, such as its emphasis on class struggle, social revolution, labor unions, and the working class. Influenced by anti-authoritarian postmodern philosophy, post-leftists reject Enlightenment rationalism and deconstruct topics such as gender. While a few advocate for armed insurrection, most advocate for creating spaces and affinity groups to act freely within current society rather than fighting for utopian ideal. In the United States, CrimethInc., Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and Green Anarchy are associated with post-leftism, as are many primitivists. CrimethInc, which is influenced by Situationism, anarcho-punk, and green anarchy, argues for a DIY folk approach to everyday life, including refusal of work, escaping gender roles, and straight edge lifestyle.” ~ Wikipedia
Zaz, there are some good observations on Wokism in here.
What is disturbing about the current scene is that the Woke seem to be the most ready and eager to get violent in their attacks on normies.
As will BLM, the “image-verse” doesn’t seem to count Woke violence as violence.
Well said. The right of free association. None of the other rights mean anything without this. If Whites want to associate with other Whites – and exclude Blacks – no one has the right to say anything about it. Or vice versa. I don’t know how to cut Black (or White) har (hair).
True anarchism supports White Nationalism. False anarchism (communism) does not. This is a great litmus test – one that you have failed heretofore. You have to do the inner work, making all of yourself congruent with your idealism – even if it means deleting long cherished narratives.
What are the promises re: the new mRNA vaccines of the Pharmaceutical companies?
“ Lenin had gained power with incredible ease. Without barricades, bloody encounters or intervention, state power had been transferred to the party that had promised to make the people happy by bringing them peace, land and liberty.
According to the Marxist canon, everything was going to be simple: private property would be abolished, the bourgeois state smashed, the army replaced by an armed militia, the workers (‘even the cooks’) put in charge, secret treaties published, self-determination of the nations proclaimed, strict social control established, and the dictatorship of the majority confirmed. Everything, or so it seemed, had been foreseen by Lenin. All that remained was to build the socialist edifice according to the blueprint.
In reality, there was famine, factories went on strike, gangs held sway in many parts of the country, the peasants hid their grain, and the army disintegrated of its own accord. “
The U.S. Army is starting to disintegrate under the weight of Wokism and the vaccines?
Was Lenin an “Egg Head”?
When I was a kid I liked to eat “Deviled Eggs”. Why are they called “Deviled Eggs”?
I have a sign that reads “Wicked chickens…Make DEVILED EGGS.”
Some day it is going over the hen house.
Why are they called “Deviled Eggs”?
Spices added to the mixture, often paprika/cayenne/spicy mustard/hot sauce, etc. Same with deviled ham (minus the mustard/hot sauce, depending on what part of the country one lives).
Source: Me. A self-appointed deviled egg connoisseur.
Deviled eggs are one of the best foods on the planet.
Seconded, thirded, and fourthed! I usually just settle for a boiled egg with mayo, though, what with being an old ‘batch’ and all that. Grab and go! That reminds me, going to the store today. Need another dozen eggs to boil up. Thanks for the reminder!
“Here are Massachusetts 2022 deaths labeled “covid” and have ‘BLUNT’ in Cause A, Part I of Death Certificates
This whole thing has been a MANUFACTURED FRAUD ON THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.
Moderna have parties in MA @ HQ EVERY FRIDAY. They & Pfizer killed > 4,000 people in MA alone”
https://twitter.com/JohnBeaudoinSr/status/1653861398508711937?cxt=HHwWgsC93b2L2fMtAAAA
LOL.
Da greatest hoax in human history.
What does BLUNT mean in this context?
Blunt-force trauma.
OK,. I looked at the Twitter thread.
It looks like the implication is that people fell very suddenly.
Naomi Klein mentioned this as a factor in medical consequences of the jabs; Very sudden falls—more like total collapses–that resulted in injuries.
Perhaps she was referring to this data with all of these mentions of “blunt” injuries.
It is shocking that so many “blunt” injuries are associated with supposed covid deaths.
In a word association test, “blunt” associates with “blunt instrument” and “bludgeon” .
Using a recent clip, Nicola Charles points out that Trump, Jr., is now fully awake to the Davos/WEF global agenda.
https://twitter.com/AllBiteNoBark88/status/1653900949977538560?cxt=HHwWgIC9kdeJ6_MtAAAA
Is the fellow at the beginning of the clip, with the ponytail, Trump Junior?
Not sure he has a ponytail, but affirmative.
South Park Cartman Identifies as Transginger (Transgender) and Poops in Girls Washroom
youtu.be/OXio40pl3FI
——
School
‘Crime Of The Century’, by Supertramp
youtu.be/JgJRM_8GWHg
Transginger. I guess I’m kind of one of those in the outgoing direction. What little hair I have left is mostly white now, but I’m still plagued with the damn ginger complexion. I’m terminally pale or slightly pink. It really sucks. Luckily, I haven’t pooped in any girls’ washrooms, though.
Me neither.
I once made out with a girl in a girl’s washroom cubicle during a high-school dance– her idea that I disliked in case another girl came in– but never did any other business in it.
I’ve been less-than-crazy about the term, ginger, for some people and would be more inclined to go with cinnamon instead if we’re going to be spicy about it.
Like that song by Neil Young– “I could be happy the rest of my life with a cinnamon girl…”.
I don’t know. Could I? Could you?
Same thing with red hair: I’d rather go with orange if we’re going to go with primary or secondary colors.
Jarek’s Upbringing & Personal Life
” ‘You didn’t answer my question, did you?’ – Jarek
‘Get real, and focus on the content than the people. That might actually help you.’ – Zazelle
And conversely, answering his question might help you. Were you raised by a mother or a father?
It’s a cutting question, and it gets to the so-called ‘crisis of men’ which the pretentious formerly called chattering classes, at least they acknowledge it.” ~ Suburban_elk May 3, 2023 at 6:42 pm
——
It also appears as an attempt at a ‘pre-emptive’ logical fallacy– a red herring, straw man, ad hom and maybe a few related others.
Jarek seems well-known hereon for some of those.
That’s why I inquired upthread if you and he concurrently might be occupying the same pants. How’s the fit?
It might go something like this:
– Raised by single mother: ‘Then he has a bias for women that’s clouding his perceptions of how they can be…’
– Raised by single fathier: ‘Then he has no formative experiences with a female role model and so doesn’t quite understand women and their ways…’
– Raised by both parents: ‘Then he doesn’t understand what it’s like to be raised by a single parent, specifically a mother (of course)…’
I realize that there may be some dubious personal information about Jarek that he may have willingly divulged– maybe even coaxed into being by a woman– like ‘incel’ or ‘mooch’, but that’s his problem.
On the other hand, it could be deliberate and therefore no problem at all.
Header’s sort of tongue-in-cheek.
—-
Teardrop
by Massive Attack
youtu.be/u7K72X4eo_s
loser
Of course. Says so right here:
“Za: Shut up, you miserable fool. I’m Russia. You’re Ukraine. I’m driving you back on every front.” ~ Jarek
Have a molotov. On the house.
May 5, 2023 at 12:09 am
Did she have you out of wedlock or was there a divorce? Do you have any relationship with your father?
Or perhaps you adopted this twisted feminine worldview as just part of your acculturation to the Zeitgeist. Having all or nearly feminine teachers is a natural part of this of course.
Actor Jaime Foxx on his way to speedy recovery after complications. – HIGH PROFILE MYSTERIES
Speedy recovery. LOL
He’s got the Long Coroneaus now.
Another must-read by Mike Whitney, at the Unz Review, with quotes from Tom Luongo and others:
“httpX://www.unz.com/mwhitney/was-the-tucker-take-down-a-deep-state-hit/
Of course it was a Deep State hit.
One of the money quotes (Luongo), re Blackrock’s role in the global attack on us:
” This [purchase of 51% of Fox] is symptomatic of Blackrock’s use of proxy to get what they want. Larry Fink, BLK CEO, is notorious for his antics in forcing heads of state and CEO’s to do his bidding while hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘I’m just a guy investing your hard-earned capital on your behalf for the good of humanity.’
“Now, this is some prime Grade AA Bullshit.
“Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary in the C-Suites of the S&P 500 as well as the Euro STOXXX 50 (link will need translation from German). He may as well change his first name to Don but there are some ethnic issues with this outside of Queens.” “Tucker, Blackrock and the SIFI Two-Step”, Lew Rockwell) ”
[[I think this is Rockwell quoting Luongo.]]
Comments also worth looking at.
At least, the first bunch contain some interesting musings.
I would be somewhat skeptical of the Whitney/Luongo speculation–correlation is not necessary causation.
There is plenty of evidence to indicate that the Blackrock/Vanguard present business model (growing asset management of equity stakes in publicly listed corporations of all kinds ( primarily through index funds–typically in the 5 to 15 percent range) are not that interested in direct control of such companies.
In fact the hallmark of their business model is asset-manager passivity, seeing themselves as disinterred shareholders.
However when it come to asset management companies owning real assets (housing or infrastructure( not financial assets, then control is indeed a key part of their business model–but this gets into the question of exactly how the investment funds of various asset management firms actually function.
When Luongo says that Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary(in the financial asset arena) I would like to see some case-study descriptions of such activity.
One of the very first things to suffer during wartime is the truth.
That warfare can be actual warfare or political.
Bashing Russia is a favorite pass time of the modern woke idiot leftist.
popularmechanics.com/science/health/a43756202/russian-soldiers-sick-after-camping-in-chernobyl-radioactive-forest
Not sure if any of this is true but I found it rather interesting.
After their “debunking” and “expert conclusions” about 9/11 (“pancaking”, you see), I don’t trust Popular Mechanics farther than I can toss it into a campfire.
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if people still get sick around Chernobyl…
A delightful sampler:
popularmechanics.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories/
Thew sheep are always suckers for a good story. Tell me a story, Uncle Bob!
From the experts at PM – “WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.”
Lol. Office furnishings. Ah. Must’ve been some damn good lacquer on those boardroom tables…
Damn office furnishings! How could we have not considered that?
I hear spontaneous combustion might have been a factor as well. That one’s always a tough nut to crack.
Anyone ever read any accounts of spontaneous combustion? That’s some really weird shit, righ’tchere.
Remember what the Dark Man said to Trashcan Man?
There’s work for you in the desert, Trash – great work. I will set you to burn.
I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, and not trying to start a discussion about that which most everyone here already knows.
But hey, benr started it by saying Popular Mechanics! I was triggered!
War?
Legalized murder, legalized human hunting!
Passed by an act of Congress or whoever. In this country, one man can “pass the murder law”, which makes us a dictatorship.
I wonder how much of the I hate Russia syndrome of the last century is nothing but BS from the MIC Neocon element of the Deep State.
The latest BS story is that Russia incentivized the Ukraine war. Total BS, Biden did all of it, under the Obama banner.
Russia has officially accused the US of being behind the assassination attempt on Putin.
httpx://www.rt.com/russia/575777-peskov-washington-kremlin-attack/
Now, we are looking at a massive escalation that could bring about WW3 very quickly.
All we had to do was just stay the fk out of that war.
Being consumed in a nuclear conflagration wasn’t exactly what I had planned for Thursday but I think I’m ready
I never know what to wear for these things. Is there a protocol? By the way, you were period lazy again here. You know how that sets the Q. Man off.
Flannel is a good neutral option. Change of seasons and all that.
Ahh!
I hope to trigger him before the end lol. I won’t be wearing anything for the big event
Goin’ out buck naked, eh? No comment.
You..have no comment, Dis? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue LOL
You know me. I’m a man of few words, most of them unintelligible.
Oy.
If the sky lights up, ready doesn’t really matter, though that mentality would be a nice way to tap out if those were the terms.
One request, Vlad: I’d prefer to not be sitting in my office alone staring at work when the big flash appears on the horizon. At least wait until after dinner and let me be working a puzzle or playing Uno with my wife and boy, bowl of popcorn in hand. Deal?
Just like you never hear the gun shot that kills you, you will never see the flash that immolates you. All that was left of many of Hiroshima’s folks was their shadows.
He should at least be able to grant you that, right? Some people just think they can control everything and it gets on my nerves too.
Also, give me time to crack a beer.
Are you? The worse option is to survive the nuclear war.
If you haven’t, watch Testament with Jane Alexander.
You’re literally giving me an assignment on the day the world ends John lol
But frt, i’m sure you are right. How does one even go about surviving nuclear winter and also the radiation?
Check out “Threads” also. Another uplifting flick for a rainy day.
Review of “THREADS”:Those crazy Brits a a laff a minute. Sounds like a must see SSL
Extremely graphic and disturbing nuclear drama
Put simply, THREADS takes every disaster movie you’ve ever seen – even the huge budget offerings from Hollywood – and unceremoniously skewers them on a rusty skewer. Very few films have the ability to suck the life out of a viewer and leave them feeling drained and shaken in quite the same way that this does. The world may have moved on since 1984, but the central message of THREADS – that politicians have the power to pretty much destroy the whole world and wipe out life as we know it in a matter of minutes – remains horribly relevant. So, if you’re looking for shocks and jolts, where to start? Burning cats, dead kids, dogs buried in rubble, incinerated babies, mutants, synchronised vomiting, hospital floors awash with excrement, blood and urine, point-blank shootings, stillbirths, characters we’ve come to know and care about starving to death or slowly dying before our eyes, extreme incompetence on the part of government-appointed officials, radioactive sheep…the list is endless. If you find the scene where the bomb is dropped on Sheffield city centre on a bustling weekday morning upsetting, then I strongly advise you to switch off, because the rest of the film is unremittingly bleak, nauseating and devoid of hope. It will give you nightmares for weeks. THREADS is not a film to be watched, it’s a film to be endured, and if you feel you don’t have the stomach for it, go with your first instinct and give it a very wide berth. It makes the so-called ‘video nasties’ look like a frivolous waste of time.
It sounds like something to watch on a day in which I wish to punish myself. Thanks for the recommendation!
Saint,
Is the film as bad as the “Faces of Death” series? That was true pornography. Only watched it once, and never again.
‘When the wind blows’ is an easier watch than ‘Threads’!
amazon.co.uk/When-Wind-Blows-DVD-Blu-ray/dp/B076M98H2M/ref=sr_1_1
Threads wasn’t even a cinema film, if I recall correctly – it was a TV serialisation when it first went out. We were made of sterner stuff back then!
“When the Wind Blows” soundtrack by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. Rogers is pretty outspoken about a lot of things.
EF, we watched “Faces of Death” at the firehouse. Laughs all around from the sick bastards. One scene always stuck with me. The poor little monkey in the restaurant.
A great read involving a post-apocalyptic world (southeast England) which could conceivably be the descendants of those youngsters at the end of “Threads”, is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Recommended…
WW3 won’t last long. Probably be over in about 45 minutes.
Russians aren’t happy about a bomb going off over the Kremlin just a few days before May 7, but I seriously doubt they’ll launch nukes because of it. Kiev could be in a world of hurt, tho. We shall soon see if Russia is out of missiles as retired US Generals appearing on CNN have frequently claimed.
The ‘war’ might be over in 45 minutes but the descent into medieval hell would be an ongoing process. And not as quaint & jolly as JHK’s World Made by Hand series.
YOU TUBE–Full spectrum survival channel.
I have a burning question before the big incineration event. Does the bitch not understand English or what?
What bitch are you referring to, Karine Jean-Pierre or Nancy Pelosi?
I am sure that Q could provide some astute English lessons to everyone involved.
Well from what I see Q has his work cut out for him lol. Seems he’s being a little lazy in this regard so he needs to get busy and do some effing work.
SSL, I think I may be smitten by you, and I barely even know anything about you, except for what is posted here…. 😉
lol really 🙂
[Cue lights and music]
Sounds like a steamy night in the swamp-lands tonight. Nothing like some pre-nuclear conflagration sex. No morning after regrets, since there’s literally no morning after.
NYS has a gas ban.
Oh my.
Army collapsing. Oh well. all the illegals and obese, illiterate etc in the mili-FAIRY.
US Navy has a new recruiter. I wonder how our resident squids feel about this outrage’
pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1653735667879247872/MkCXfP3w?format=jpg&name=small
What normal young man would want to join the navy after seeing that? We are so screwed.
None, I believe. And, for some reason, it appears that would be the goal.
NYS has gone uber-bonkers.
SUICIDE GENE?
Gold spot closed the day at just over $2,050 an ounce!
Silver spot closed the day at just over $26 an ounce!
Forget the worthless US Dollar. It is good times for the precious metals economy!
Bell,
You should be checking the price of lead.
Proud Boys leader found guilty of ‘seditious conspiracy’ for the ‘stunning attack on the Capitol‘ on Jan 6.
20 years.
How freaking stupid are people, really?
apnews.com/article/jan-6-enrique-tarrio-seditious-conspiracy-trial-f8738f17552cda21eef6d89504da2a0e
Some are stupid, some are traitors.
These guys are both.
We live in a totalitarian state.
No, we don’t.
Catasprohizing hyperbole might make you feel good for a minute, but it has no meaning or effect.
You’re fun, Mike. Maddow is starting soon.
Is this Carghoul or Take-a-Poo?
Inverted Totalitarianism
“The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin coined the term inverted totalitarianism in 2003 to describe what he saw as the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin analysed the United States as increasingly turning into a managed democracy (similar to an illiberal democracy). He uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” to draw attention to the totalitarian aspects of the American political system and argues that the American government has similarities to the Nazi government.” ~ Wikipedia
He may be a Fed – or perhaps he though he was! Now he may just be Patsy Cline.
The others? They’ll do hard time in any case.
Gold over $2000/oz! Vaulted (one of Jimbo’s sponsors) must be having a heyday.
How much are you sitting on, lo’ t? Or is all your money still in the defective carport and Cuban houseboy smuggling scams?
So, Florida now has a hate speech law. So much for being a “red state.”
Desantis doesn’t believe in freedom of speech, or the first amendment, apparently.
Enjoy Leo Varadkar explaining why it’s democratic to have public consultations about new hate speech laws but also democratic to completely ignore the results because democracy.
twitter.com/Nic21121970/status/1654139647121866755
“This fella is nothing only an evil bollox.”
He doesn’t appear to be popular – lol.
He outed himself with this one, big time. Even for those not paying really close attention. Bad move for him and those behind him.
You should run for office.
Clown Worlds: Blurred Staff-Patient Distinctions In Large-Scale-Open-Air State-Asylum Takeovers
—
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
—
“Like many insightful quotes this one nails an important idea, but really just one side of it. If you step back, you’ll recognize the other side and then you will have cornered yourself with a fundamental tough judgment call, a tension that needs to be balanced and rebalanced in changing situations.
First let’s set aside one simple problem with the quote. Not all pigs can be escaped. Sometimes we are forced to wrestle with pigs because they have power over us. For example, oppressed citizens have to wrestle with the dictator even if he’s a pig.
The problem I want to focus on here is the complexity of deciding who is a pig. If there were an objective test to determine who’s a pig and who isn’t, we would know who to steer clear of. But there isn’t one.” ~ Jeremy E. Sherman Ph.D., MPP, ‘Psychology Today’, Dec. 18, 2010
——
There isn’t?!
Which US government department and NGO will be responsible for policing the Internet for “Misinformation”?
It was purportedly Room 223 of The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan where J. Edgar Hoover and Cardinal Spellman had their homosexual blackmail parties. The Mob had a control file on J. Edgar Hoover replete with photos of J. Edgar Hoover blowing Clyde Tolson.
I wonder who is living in that Apartment now? Probably, an anti-Putin Russian Oligarch, or a rich oil sheik A-Rab?
Watching Lester: Family of Black losers try to take down Ed Sheerin for plagiarism. They fail.
White guy on NY Subway with blonde hair, takes down violent Black. The Black dies. Now the White will be destroyed.
Lester had to balance the balance sheet. Ed Sheeran’s victory must be balanced with a White defeat. The White guy is going to be portrayed as a monster instead of a hero. Then people wonder why men don’t step up more.
Ed the singer? ugly Ed?
malthuss the Jarek sockpuppet?
Feeding The Spiral Downward
“In colloquial usage, the term ‘demonization’ is used metaphorically to refer to propaganda or moral panic directed against any individual or group, for the purpose of defamation, character assassination and/or dehumanization.” ~ Wikipedia
Virtual Helminths & CFN Allergies
——
“Did she have you out of wedlock or was there a divorce? Do you have any relationship with your father?
Or perhaps you adopted this twisted feminine worldview as just part of your acculturation to the Zeitgeist. Having all or nearly feminine teachers is a natural part of this of course.” ~ Jarek May 4, 2023 at 10:12 pm
—-
“Loaded question, sometimes called ‘complex question’, is a type of logical fallacy – an error in reasoning or a trick of thought used as a debate tactic.” ~ Paul Elsher
—-
What do parasitic worms and our increasing allergies have in common?
“The answer lies in another area of evolutionary biology where helminths can be considered as “old infections”. These old infections evolved the ability to persist in our ancestors’ small hunter-gatherer groups. Once helminths are established the immune system can’t get rid of them, and attempts to do so merely waste energy and damage the host. So, in order to persist without endangering the host, helminths partially suppress the host’s immune response. So could it be that the immune system evolved to anticipate the continued presence of helminths, and that in order to calm the immune system we should all carry a harmless load of worms, perhaps given at birth? That is what some people believe, and clinical trials looking into whether this will work are underway for several chronic inflammatory disorders. But this all depends on whether the requirement for helminths is genetically encoded in our DNA, because of our evolutionary past, or whether it only occurs if helminths are present during our growth and development.
If a need for helminths is encoded in our DNA sequences, then we might indeed need us to carry helminths, or at least learn to devise drugs that exploit the molecular tricks that helminths use to regulate our immune system. On the other hand, perhaps it is only when helminths are present during pregnancy and early life that our immune system ‘assumes’ they will persist and will take responsibility for essential regulatory duties. If this is correct, then after a few generations without helminths, immune systems that have developed in the absence of these worms might lose this requirement. But we will still need the studies to prove it.” ~ Graham Rook, UCL
—-
See also related phage research.
Virtual Helminths & CFN Allergies, Part 2
——
“Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out.” ~ JHK
——
(sneezes… coughs… blows nose…)
Sockpuppet #?
Jarek May 1, 2023 at 12:39 pm #
Are we going to pull our of Ukraine first? We’re getting a bit over extended!
Reply
malthuss May 1, 2023 at 2:49 pm #
t not r
If one is going to change one’s handle, one has to remember to change it back before one corrects one’s punctuation, yes?
It seems that Ukraine has always been a big Sinkhole….
But by the summer of 1918, as the Russian civil war began to escalate, the Germans found themselves becoming increasingly drawn into the complexities of local political and military relations, especially in Ukraine. Their hopes for a rich supply of grain from ‘Russia’s bread-basket’ foundered because the agrarian economy was disrupted, while their hopes for the transfer of large numbers of troops westwards were submerged in the quagmire of Ukrainian politics.
As the historian of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, John Wheeler-Bennett, wrote: ‘A million troops immobilized in the east was the price of German aggrandizement, and half that number might well have turned the scale … in the west. [Only] a few cavalry divisions were necessary in March and April 1918 to widen the gap between the French and British, thus severing the two armies. These were not available on the Western Front, but at that moment three cavalry divisions were propping up successive puppet governments in Kiev.’32