JHK’s Three-Act Play
Those inhabiting the economic wish-space got a case of the vapors last week when the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) published an annual report stating that the USA would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer and reach the long-touted nirvana of “energy independence.” The news was greeted in this country with jubilation. Thus, peak credulity meets peak bullshit.
It’s been clear for a while that authorities in many realms of endeavor – politics, economics, business, media – are very eager to sustain the illusion that we can keep our way of life chugging along. But under the management of these elites, the divorce between truth and reality is nearly complete. The financial system now runs entirely on accounting fraud. Government runs on the fumes of statistical fraud. The business of oil and gas runs on public relations fraud. And the media runs on the understandable wish of the masses to believe that all the foregoing illusions still work to maintain the familiar comforts of modern life (minus Hostess Ho-Hos and Twinkies, alas).
And so the story has developed that the shale oil plays of North Dakota and Texas, which started ramping up around 2005 – the same year the world hit the wall of peak conventional oil – and the shale gas plays in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio would enable American “consumers” to drive to WalMart effectively forever.
Now, it happens that the particulars of oil and gas production are so abstruse that the editors of The New York Times, The Bloomberg News Service, CNN, and a score of other mass media giants swallowed the IEA report whole, with fanfares and fireworks, and a nation afflicted with doubt about its future swooned into the first week of the holidays in celebration mode – we’re soon to be number 1 again, and the future is secure! Have a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas and prepare to sober up in 2013. When the truth finally emerges from this morass of dissimulation, the disappointment will be epic.
Here’s why the shale oil story is not the “game changer” that the wishful claim it is: the price required to get it out of the ground (between $80-90 a barrel) will crush the US economy. Since prices are already in that range, the economy is already being crushed. The result is an economy in more-or-less permanent contraction. As demand for oil falls with declining economic activity the price of oil falls – below the level that makes it worthwhile to conduct expensive shale oil drilling and fracking operations.
Meanwhile, in the background, as economies contract and economic “growth” of the type our system requires no longer happens, the problems in finance and banking get a lot worse. This is largely because interest on borrowed money can no longer be paid back. Loans are defaulted on. As this happens, banks become insolvent. Governments play games with public money – including “money” they “create” out of thin air – to prop up the banks. None of it alters the sad fact that there is not enough real money in the system. The result of all these desperate monkeyshines is the impairment of capital formation. That is, the failure to accumulate new wealth. The lack of new wealth, along with declining prospects for the repayment of loans, leads to a shortage of credit, especially to businesses that require large supplies of it to keep gigantic complex operations like shale oil and gas going
Shale oil (and shale gas) share some problematical properties. The cost of drilling each well is a big number, $6-8 million. The wells deplete very rapidly, over 40 percent after one year in the Bakken formation of North Dakota. The oil is not distributed equally over the whole play but exists in “sweet spots.” The sweetest sweet spots were drilled the earliest and the quality of the remaining potential drill sites is already in decline. The current trend shows declining first-year productivity in new wells drilled since 2010 running at 25 percent.
There are over 4300 shale oil wells in the Bakken formation of North Dakota producing about 610,000 barrels a day. In order to keep production up, the number of wells will have to continue increasing at a faster rate than previously. This is referred to as “the Red Queen syndrome” which alludes to the character in Alice in Wonderland who famously declared that she had to run faster and faster just to stay where she is. The catch to all this is that the impairments of capital formation are working insidiously in the background to guarantee that the money will not be there to set up the necessary wells to keep production at current levels. In other words, shale oil (and shale gas) are Ponzi schemes. The story in the Eagle Ford play in Texas is very similar.
I haven’t even mentioned the concerns about fracking and its effect on ground water, and won’t go into it here, except to acknowledge that it presents an additional range of concerns.
The current price situation in shale gas is different than shale oil. The drilling frenzy in shale gas produced a glut, which drove down prices from a $13 a unit (thousand cubic feet or mcf) to around $2 at its low point earlier this year. That’s way below the price that is economically rational to drill and frack for it. The price collapse has played havoc among the companies engaged in shale gas, though it has been a boon to customers. A lot of the drilling equipment has moved to the North Dakota oil fields. There will be less shale gas in the period ahead and the price will go up. It has got to go above about $8 a unit or there will be no reason for any company to be in the shale gas business. But as is always the case in such a correction, the price will surely overshoot $8, at which point it will become unaffordable to its customers. The volatility alone will make the business of shale gas drilling impossible to maintain. Forget about the USA becoming a major gas exporter.
You probably get the point by now, so I will only add a couple of out-of-the-box considerations vis-à-vis the prospect of the USA becoming energy independent.
— Production is getting so low in the Prudhoe Bay fields of Alaska that the famous pipeline may not be able to operate. If the flow of oil reaches a certain low volume, it takes longer to make the long journey. The oil cools down and gets sludgy and some of the water that travels with it will freeze. This could destroy the pipeline. The capital is not there to retrofit the pipeline for a depleting oil field in a region that is difficult and expensive to work in.
— Exporting countries (the ones that send us oil) are depleting their reserves and using more of their own oil, resulting in annually declining export rates. China, India, and other still-modernizing nations compete for a growing share of that declining export flow.
— I have barely hinted at the geopolitical forces roiling behind the sheer business dynamics. But here’s an interesting one: the time will come when the US will invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from sending its oil and tar-sand byproducts to nations other than ourselves. Just wait.
Finally, I have one flat-out prediction, one I have made before but deserves repeating: Japan will be the first society to consciously opt out of being an advanced industrial economy. They have no other apparent choice really, having next-to-zero oil, gas, or coal reserves of their own, and having lost faith in nuclear power. They will be the first country to enter a world made by hand. They were very good at it before about 1850 and had a pre-industrial culture of high artistry and grace – though, granted, all the defects of human psychology.
I don’t think the US can make that transition in an orderly way. We’re too stri
cken with techno-narcissism and grandiosity. What troubles me is how we will greet the epic disappointment that waits for us when we discover that the journey to WalMart is over. My guess is that being predisposed to superstition and religious fanaticism, the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We’re already well on our way. The IEA report will just accelerate things.
cken with techno-narcissism and grandiosity. What troubles me is how we will greet the epic disappointment that waits for us when we discover that the journey to WalMart is over. My guess is that being predisposed to superstition and religious fanaticism, the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We’re already well on our way. The IEA report will just accelerate things.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
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Book 4: |
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First, I didn’t read the blog of course, but still first.
We have a lot of betrayal to be loud about, James.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/the-grand-betraeul-love-in-the-ruins/
Happy Turkey Day from the kulturCritic
I wouldn’t worry too much, Bank of America and the Fed are reducing principal on home mortgages and home equity loans. So the price of oil shouldn’t be a big worry for those who can’t afford it: http://youtu.be/GJ7quL8vX4E
The USA will go kicking, whining, and screaming back to the technological level of 1930, if we are lucky.
I don’t accept JHK’s world-made-by-hand inevitability. Imagine a rough-and-tumble future where most of us live in taped-together slums or fortified compounds, bartering and mending but somehow keeping some lights on and some vehicles rolling. Life spans go down as does the population.
The elite will have the energy resources and longer life spans, yet everyone will share one habit: lamenting the lost era of American exceptionalism.
So then we’re looking at a near term population decline in Japan of some 100 million, at a minimum?
This country will resemble the coninent of Africa soon. Pretend Governments, weaponized clans, black markets, etc…
There will be places (fed ghettos) where there is water, food, electricity, martial law, huge voluntary prisons. The rest of the land will be the wild west Africa.
When we’re dying of starvation in the coming era of resource depletion and Peak Population, maybe TPTB can convince us that we’re actually fat and happy eating virtual Twinkies that are still for sale on eBay. Just never delivered. Zynga’s last iTimeWaster will be a successor to Farmville called “Foodville”…
I figured you’d write about the IEA projections. Hamilton at Econobrowser did, too. He ran the numbers and realized that, yes, we might become the top oil producer–for a few years, and only because Saudi and Russian production had peaked. Even then we still wouldn’t reach the levels of the secondary peak in U.S. production during the late 1980s from Alaska, which didn’t reach the primary peak of U.S. production in 1971. Also, the projected tertiary peak and plateau would only last from 2020-2025. In 13 years, we’d be back where we are now. He concluded his piece by opining that anyone expected life to be like it was before 1973 was in for a big disappointment.
I also figured that you’d write about Hostess Brands going out of business. Consider it a temporary setback. As long as there is demand and the capital to fund it, someone will make Twinkies, this time in a right to work (for less) state.
I haven’t blogged about the IEA projections yet over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, but I did blog about the temporary demise of Twinkies, saying that “Hostess Cakes has gone Galt.” At the top of the the page is a post about how Hollywood has decided that dystopia and collapse is good for their business, with The Hunger Games and related fare replacing the sparkling vampires of Twilight. Between Twinkies and Twilight, I chronicle the latest adventures on the gas price rollercoaster. Farther down the page are baseball news (I can’t be all doom all the time), space news, sustainability news, a lot of posts wrapping up the election.
As for what the rest of the week brings, that’s already programmed in. Just after Midnight tonight, I mark yet another week of showing my class “The End of Suburbia” featuring our host with a post in which I leave answers for my students as links and Easter Eggs while discussing “Dispatches from the FEMA camps” by Metro Detroit’s own Jeff Wattrick, who writes for Wonkette. Wednesday and Thursday, I have food posts planned for Thanksgiving. On Black Friday, I have Buy Nothing Day and Boycott Walmart combined. The week ends with Small Business Saturday, which promotes the kinds of local retail outlets needed for a resilient, post-peak-oil future.
Happy Motoring–for now–from Detroit!
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
Jim: One side benefit of global warming is that the Northwest Passage, or at least the northern coast of Alaska, will become ice-free year-round. This means that Prudhoe Bay petroleum can be transported by tanker, rendering the pipeline unnecessary, and buying the Age of Happy Motoring a little more time.
And speaking of tar sands, whose sludgy selves may soon be oozing through a pipeline not far from me if the “build a pipeline that avoids the U.S. so we can ship directly to China” option is allowed, the very words for that crap are another of the linguistic “which side are you on, boys?” devices that the petro-PR people have created. If you LIKE that shit, you call it “oil sands.” If you’re in the reality based community, you call it by the traditional name, “tar sands.” In the mass hypno-media in Canada, most of which is controlled by a single right-wing corporation, “oil sands” is the standard term now. Activists still use “tar sands.” It’s one of those ways you can detect a person’s bias just by the language they speak.
I was thinking of that, but forgot. Thanks for adding that to the conversation. Mind you, that means that there will more environmental damage. Added to the offshore oil drilling around Greenland and Russia, that will add to the prolongation of the fossil fuel age and the resulting acceleration of climate change.
I can see the US overtaking Saudi Arabia in oil production..
in a race to the bottom. The arab reserves are dwindling, so even
if we have zero increase in domestic production, we could be
the “winners”. Good writing this morning James. Saw no typos.
Here just down the Hudson Rail Lines or the Interstate from you in the Garden State in New Jersey we are seeing all the folly of our coming era illustrated. The gas lines and shortages from major refineries being shut down and pipelines closed are the portent of things to come. Meanwhile our Teabag Gov Christie who has never seen an SUV he didn’t love, apparently let 20% of NJTransit rail equipment flood. Traffic last week when I had to catch a ride (imagine that, carpooling!!) was horrendous as New Jersey local Rail riders were forced to drive. Still in the land of Happy Motoring 90% of cars had only 1 person in them even in the midst of the gas lines the week after the Hurricane!
While Gov Cuomo suddenly beats his chest about “Climate Change” apparently the 38% of greenhouse emissions from Happy Motoring somehow still manages to escape his gaze as he and his Hedge Fund backers plot to build a $5 Billion white elephant Auto Addiction only new Tappan Zee bridge. Some years before as you know Prius driving “environmentalists” took over the Rail Bridge at Beacon for hiking which will surely be a fast mode of transport when we can no longer fuel our cars by any means.
On the other hand, incredibly enough the NY Times had a piece on the value of a return of hitchhiking and its systematic dismantlement in the post hippy era by the fear monger State and the Auto Addiction Lobby.
I still believe the end to Happy Motoring is coming…
Don’t count on Japan reverting to a world made by hand, James. There will still be 1 billion plus angry, nationalistic people in China who carry grudges that were planted in 1937-1945. When everything is going down around you, humans’ unfortunate tendency is to lash out at old enemies. No country will be allowed to decline in isolation. Japan had better hope for a lot of new kamikaze divine winds, because the boat pirates you predicted in “Long Emergency” are going to be nipping at Nippon long before the come a-raiding around Seattle.
So, a War of 1812 2.0 over the tar sands, eh? This of course assumes the US can remain functunally united enough to manage such an endevour. Personally,I that with global warming frying the American heartland, the US will be craving our farmland and water even before oil. However,such a plan would destroy the US
>>> ” My guess is that being predisposed to superstition and religious fanaticism, the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We’re already well on our way.”
That’s precisely what happens in my novel, A Change in the Weather, when an abrupt climate collapse destroys agriculture and the economy. A right-wing, millennialist coup.
Think of the shock and dread if (or when) the Arctic ice cap disappears (soon?) in a feedback loop of never-ending warming. Nature, the very expression of God, will be altered forever. The Third World, largely Muslim, will blame the West and go on a lethal rampage. Right-wing Christians here will react to the Muslims, and blame the usual suspects for this withdrawal of God’s favor. Layer that on top of a rapidly spiraling economic collapse like Jim describes. Chaos will ensue.
God will be avenged for all the travesties that the nonbelievers have brought upon the planet.
“And the media runs on the understandable wish of the masses to believe that all the foregoing illusions still work to maintain the familiar comforts of modern life (minus Hostess Ho-Hos and Twinkies, alas).”
It’s being reported in the financial press that Twinkie production will resume at Bimbo Bakeries, Mexico’s non-union equivalent of Hostess. Somewhere private equity operatives laugh until they wet their shorts.
I guess it is time for Hollywood to do a remake of Mad Max? Might as well cash in while at the same time keeping the consumer occupied.
…yet everyone will share one habit: lamenting the lost era of American exceptionalism.
The habit is already formed and functioning.
Jim, thanks for writing about “the fun” as it hits the fan. I think we’ve been dancing in and out of the shadows- (the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We’re already well on our way.)since we learned to point our finger(s) at “the other guy”… which goes back before the time we learned how to write it down; which leads to how people interact as a society. Look into “Dunbar’s Number” of-150. Write little and say alot.
The Red Queen was in “Through the Looking Glass” not “Alice in Wonderland.” Wouldn’t want your accuracy to be in question.
Jim, re. your quite plausible: “the time will come when the US will invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from sending its oil and tar-sand byproducts to nations other than ourselves…”
for a detailed exploration of this scenario in 2040, including a supposed “Fort McMurray Declaration” and a proposed “Oil Sands Co-Management Initiative Act” (OSCIA) that would assert US dominion over Alberta’s oil exports, see “Inter States” at http://interstates2040.wikispaces.com
JHK,
Thanks for another year of Monday morning wake-ups. You are contributing to the productivity of the 5-day work week, and to my sanity. Permit me the hope that you might find these comments helpful in your upcoming predictions for 2013. The topics are 1. energy, 2. food, 3. war, and 4. money.
1. energy. I’ve only one thing to say. You must, please, must do this: go for a test drive in a Tesla Model S.
2. food. Monsanto is on the front burner this year, both for their fraud in the California election … http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ocean-robbins/monsanto-prop-37_b_2088934.html
… and in the new research that’s come out that shows pretty convincingly that their genetic shenanigans cause cancer.
3. war. Closer to home and sooner than expected. Sorry I don’t have a simple link for this, but it’s about Homeland Security raising an army, the gross quantity of ammunition they and other domestic federal agencies are buying, and their armored vehicles. My God, and I don’t use that word lightly, it’s happening again, and to us this time.
BEGIN QUOTE
HomelandSecurity graduates first Corps of HomelandYouth
October 7, 2012. Vicksburg. The federal government calls them FEMA Corps. But they conjure up memories of the Hitler Youth of 1930’s Germany. Regardless of their name, the Dept of Homeland Security has just graduated its first class of 231 Homeland Youth. Kids, aged 18-24 and recruited from the President’s AmeriCorp volunteers, they represent the first wave of DHS’s youth corps, designed specifically to create a full time, paid, standing army of FEMA Youth across the country.
END QUOTE
4. money. George Will said last week that 2013 will see California, Illinois, and New York go hat in hand to the feds, and I think he’s right.
Also, there was something Kyle Bass pointed our in Keynes’ book, quoted at Zero Hedge last Thursday:
BEGIN QUOTE
Thus we might aim in practice (there being nothing in this which is unattainable) at an increase in capital until it ceases to be scarce, so that the functionless investor will no longer receive a bonus.
END QUOTE
And I though just maybe that’s what is in the heads of these morons, that by printing money, they are making the cost of “capital” cheap, and ultimately, destroying those who would profit by having capital. And so increase their own power. As if “capital” could be created from their own noblity, as expressed in the money they print! And it made me think of, “Let them eat cake.”
As usual, I believe the scenario Kunstler envisions is likely to materialize to a considerable extent, but I also believe that the unconventional gas & oil finds will postpone let us gently say the “restructuring of mankind” in the short term. For the time being, the natural gas glut is real, and the stuff is dirt cheap. I see no reason why this won’t be the case for at least about a decade. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to continue transportation as it is now with natural gas instead of oil, although if we prove too incompetent to even do that then it will be a pretty good indication that we will be utterly inept at dealing with the coming storm of Peak Oil and Gas.
Thanks for mentioning Small Business Saturday. I’m in favor of Buy Nothing Friday, great idea!
“What troubles me is how we will greet the epic disappointment that waits for us when we discover that the journey to WalMart is over.”
James, this is perhaps the ultimate social science future “fiction” question. My guess is your thoughts of superstition and religion rising are correct. In some parts of the country, I predict that we will see “jihadi” maniacs of the christian persuasion (or at least claiming that label) banding together in their hatred of science and rationality and going after whomever they view, on a given week, as the “cause” of their loss of cars, fry shacks and air conditioning. In other parts of the former “US,” there will simply be war between the haves and have nots, occasionally based on racial or ethnic lines.
The world between the immediate present and your “world made my hand” will likely be barbaric beyond most people’s imaginations and gentilic and liberalized, but completely erroneous, conceptions of the world around them.
Lock and load..
Wardoc
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO on the issue
illegal imma invasion
surrender ill imm inv
NPR ill imm
NPR imm
NPR imm
NPR anti imm
NPR anti imm
NPR anti imm
NPR imm vote
NPR imm vote
NPR imm reform
NPR imm reform
“1. energy. I’ve only one thing to say. You must, please, must do this: go for a test drive in a Tesla Model S.”
You must do one thing. Study up to find how the electricity to power the Tesla Model S is generated. (Fucking moron.)
“George Will said last week that 2013 will see California, Illinois, and New York go hat in hand to the feds…”
What? These liberal bastions are having money difficulties? Think the fed will bail them out for future votes? (Nah, never fucking happen.)
Fissile — and in Canada, it’s not just being reported in the financial press that Twinkie production will continue, it’s a fact.
A nation-spanning Canadian food company named Saputo — they make everything from mozzarella to Wonder Bread — owns the rights and will keep on baking these sugary fakefoods. That’s because, surprise! surprise!, Saputo is a company that believes in making money by making things, not just engaging in finance-fraud. Scamming for shekels is now the American business model, but in many parts of the rest of the world, they’re still reality based. I don’t know how great that is when it comes to continued Ding-Dong deliveries, but it beats the “bust-out” strategy pioneered by the Mafia and adopted whole-fartedly by the U.S. corpocrime circles.
Shut the fuck up on climate change. We can’t manage the goddamn post office and you fucking shit heels think some fucking lab coats are going to change the climate? Do you have any idea what idiots you appear to be?
for all the failure of the timing of our host’s particular predictions, his general tone is daily becoming the cry of most thoughtful people on the interwebs.
http://mondediplo.com/openpage/the-mandate-of-hell
just one of many articles i’ve read that express the same thing we’ve been reading about for over five years around here.
so, the rest of the world is beginning to finally catch up to our prophet. what will he turn his attentions to, next?
been in the oil bussiness for over 35 years-oldtimers have always said there is plenty of oil-that the cost to get it is going to be a lot higher-i think if we drill straight down to hell we will find a ocean of oil-whats wrong with $200 barrel oil?might bring some “appreciation” of the stuff and make my stock holdings go thru the roof…
LOL! Things have never been better. The DOW is up 158 points today. Sorry, doomers. I know you would be happier if the bottom was falling out of the economy and you could imagine a Black Swan event was happening. But the markets are not cooperating. Things are getting better and better. More jobs being created. Housing values returning. Leading Economic Index up. Damn. And we were all hoping for a giant collapse and a civil war, complete with pitch forks and hangings!
I am here to show you I am right. Just like back in 2008 when CFNers were saying Obama didn’t have a chance; the country wasn’t ready for a Black president, and I said Obama would be elected. I was right. Not because I made a lucky guess, but because I made reasoned arguments (not just offering opinions like “We certainly don’t have an honest money system now”) and I provided evidence to back up my statements, just as I did recently with the 22 polls in swing states showing Obama’s lead increasing over Romney. And I have every right to continue to be here and continue to offer facts, statistics, and reasoned arguments backed by credible and authoritative sources. A statement of opinion (“he’s a puffed up nitwit”) without anything to back it up is irrelevant. I’m just glad you are reading and responding. I’m glad Mike Hunt is reading and responding.
Allahu Akbar! (???? ????)
Assalaamu alaikum!
“But under the management of these elites, the divorce between truth and reality is nearly complete. The financial system now runs entirely on accounting fraud. Government runs on the fumes of statistical fraud. The business of oil and gas runs on public relations fraud. And the media runs on the understandable wish of the masses to believe that all the foregoing illusions still work to maintain the familiar comforts of modern life (minus Hostess Ho-Hos and Twinkies, alas).”
Playing with illusions, the national pastime in good, ol’ Scamerica.
The resultant self-made misery and sufferings induced by our addictions and dreaming will itself end up shaking us into wakefulness. Creation’s design is benevolent and self-correcting. We simply have to go through what we have to go through…keep an open mind and heart.
And let’s not forget that Sinopec bought up
Calgary’s Addax petroleum and 9 percent of the
Alberta oil sands business Syncrude, they are buying up oil assets of our main oil importer.
mistified ‘do you have any idea what idiots you appear to be”… have YOU any understanding of the concept; the THIEF can only see the pockets of the HOLY MAN. somehow doubt it, but maybe you’ll be able to figure it out. good luck!
Jim – it hadn’t occurred to me that the Monroe Doctrine would be used to assure the Canadians oil would come to the U.S. before anywhere else. Makes sense; think that the same could occur with the Canadians’ supply of Twinkies, which is understood to be ample due to Hostess’ separate licensing, production and distribution arrangements.
Thank you Jim for your comments.
Say it isn’t so…
Bimbo Ho Hos?
So where is the “holy man” in all of this nonsensical bullshit. There is none. The “Thieves” are all of the assholes proposing a carbon tax so we can “change” the weather. What a fucking scam.
Chagdad, Someone I knew lived at his place in Oregon.
The nite he passed over Light appeared in her room, and the next day she got the news.
However in her wise way she noted:
Chagdad was a womanizer
A business man
and, in her wise way she saw that ‘His Oregon students were on welfare, and that enabled them to build the center and businesses there’.
Poor Askoa, he actually believes that the shenanigans that take place down on Wall Street constitute a market! Dow average is up today— that is proof things are getting better. There is some relationship between stock prices and the economic well being of the 99% who own no stock? When the market casino is the exclusive playing field of the 1% who are playing with free money printed by the FED?
With a delusional world view like that, it probably seems like an ice free polar sea is a good thing. After all there is oil under it, and sea transport will allow cheap shipping down to the refineries in New Orleans. Of course the fact that an ice free polar sea guarantees that the Greenland ice cap will melt, therefore putting both Manhattan and New Orleans under water is a minor side effect—.
So the plan is to perforate large parts of North America with drills, pipes and toxic chemicals to extract the last few sweet spots. This will buy another 10-15 years of marginally affordable energy, then what?
The services and growth that cheap energy supports only works below a certain threshold price. After that the model breaks down unless there are hidden subsidies from capital depletion or taxes. When it costs more to travel to and from the workplace than the earnings provide we come to an abrupt stop. When the cheap energy used to grow and transport our food becomes more expensive than the calories and nutrients it contains (already the case), it is the end of affordable food.
Printing more money works for a short time then starts to dilute the value of real capital. The projects that might have improved our chances become too expensive to undertake. While we should have been renovating and improving our rail network we are busy building 85mph toll highways. The plan to construct large scale solar plants in N. Africa to supply electricity to Europe has recently faltered over costs and nationalism.
There will be a frenzy of resource capture by both political and armed force and then a slow slide back to global poverty. Climate change will continue to kick in, the flood of climate refugees will increase and large areas will be never be rebuilt. We poisoned the air and the water because oil was worth more than air and water but that is what we will be left with “after the oil age”.
45th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You realise that such logic is like being greatful for the cancer because the resulting fever allows you to save money on your heating bill. Like cold fusion, the NWP is, was, and always will be a pipe-dream.
In “World Made By Hand”, Kunstler used the deux ex machina of a “Mexican Flu” to reduce the population to sustainable levels. Easy energy is supporting population levels beyond earth’s carrying capacity. The transition is likely to be violent, especially if sudden enough to be unadaptable to, and involve undershoot for a while.
Drei des Dopings verd?chtige malaysische Leichtathleten sind spurlos verschwunden. Das gab das Nationale Olympische Komitee des asiatischen Landes am Freitag bekannt. Demnach würden aus einem sechsk?pfigen Team, das nach Zeitungsberichten von ihrem Trainer ?pinke Pillen“ zur besseren Erholung bekommen haben soll, zwei L?uferinnen und ein L?ufer vermisst. ?Ich bin belustigt und geschockt zugleich. Ich h?tte niemals gedacht, dass so etwas in Malaysia passiert“, sagte ein Sprecher.
Den Berichten zufolge soll es das Sextett am Dienstag vers?umt haben, sich einem Drogentest zu unterziehen. Drei h?tten dies inzwischen nachgeholt, die anderen Drei seien verschwunden. Zudem fehle von ihrem Trainer jegliche Spur. Die Sportler geh?rten zu einem Team, dass am Samstag zum Training und einem Wettkampf nach Bulgarien reisen sollte.
Der Generaldirektor des nationalen Sportinstituts, Ramlan Aziz, bezeichnete das Verschwinden als ?verd?chtig“ und kündigte Konsequenzen an: ?Auch wenn sie negativ getestet werden sollten, werden wir Ermittlungen gegen ihre Verhaltensweise aufnehmen.“
Good points. In addition, as Japan’s current divine wind contains a fair amount of cesium 134,there will be increasing pressure on the government to feed the people one way or another. The Chinese, suffering under increasing drought, will also be looking for new farm lands and resources. They’ll out of necessity, be pushing hard against neighbors. Especially troubling will be the increasingly productive soils of southern Siberia. I’ve seen the simulations and the odds of a shooting war in Asia in the next decade are alarming, while a war in the next 20 years is truly terrifying. No one is going to ramp down from globalization the easy way.
And so it begins
http://www.thesisa.org
On the so called cold fusion issue, (more accurately called LENR) Are you sure about that? http://futureinnovation.larc.nasa.gov/view/articles/futurism/bushnell/low-energy-nuclear-reactions.html
“…the editors of The New York Times, The Bloomberg News Service, CNN, and a score of other mass media giants swallowed the IEA report whole, with fanfares and fireworks…”
And even my standing “truth to power” progressive fav DemocracyNow! go on this band wagon. That really made me loose it.
Don’t mind me, I’m going to go back and click the heels of my ruby slippers over and over saying, “The IEA is right. The IEA is right. The IEA is right…” That will make is so, right?
“Thus, peak credulity meets peak bullshit.”
-JHK
Yessir, perfect!
And it’s in this singularly reality-averse intesection that asoka-the-believer has chosen to park his dwindling stock of trust.
“But here’s an interesting one: the time will come when the US will invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from sending its oil and tar-sand byproducts to nations other than ourselves.”
This, or something of a similar flavour but called something else, will happen.
” It’s been clear for a while that authorities in many realms of endeavor – politics, economics, business, media – are very eager to sustain the illusion that we can keep our way of life chugging along. But under the management of these elites, the divorce between truth and reality is nearly complete.” -JHK
It is my considered opinion that this illusion has been very purposefully and carefully constructed for them to retain CONTROL. Our dependence is what keeps us enslaved and uninformed. (If you have no idea what’s going on, you can’t very well DO anything about it one way or another, can you?) This is easily observed in the obsession and addiction to the cult of celebrity. Duh folks know more about the Kardashians than they do about the next-door neighbor. What’s that tell us?
I used to worry about the economic collapse. I used to worry about running out of oil. Long before either of those things really take effect, we are going to experience more Climate Change. Here at the Jersey Shore, three weeks after Superstorm Sandy struck, a lot of us are still in a world of hurt. Whole towns have been wiped off the face of the Earth. But it could have been worse.
So I would like to thank everyone from the Federal, State and Local levels down for all the help we’ve received. Food, clothing came quickly from the local level. Lights and power came from linesmen (in state and out of state). Gasoline restrictions have been removed in NJ so we can all go to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving. Lots of things left to do, fix and re-build. Might even be considered God’s Stimulus as many infrastructures will need to be repaired and those workers will be paid and then spend money in our local economy which will cause a temporary rebound which is good.
The only scary thing is Superstorm Sandy is NOT a once-in-a-100-year event. These things are happening more frequently. Sandy and her siblings may return sooner than anyone can stand. We need to find more environmental friendly energy alternatives and USE them. Catastrophe is right around the corner. And so far, doesn’t seem like anyone has mended their ways.
Sandy a superstorm? Not by Gulf Coast standards. Search for wind speeds and surge depths of Carla (1961) and Camille (1969).
People build in the wrong place? Mother Nature will eventually harvest. Nature bats last, but sometimes her cleanup is messy.
I’m still trying to make sense of that IEA report. One of their central assumptions seems to be that there will be a massive shift toward electricity in the U.S. transportation sector, largely driven by cheap natural gas (a lot of it shale gas), and while that’s probably true, the timeline on which that’s actually happening isn’t a very good fit to the timeline on which it would need to happen in order to support their projections. I’m puzzled by the way they first acknowledge the water issue and then proceed to essentially ignore it.
And I’ve always been baffled by the logic that has nonconventional methods and sources saving the day. The premise is that once price goes high enough, these methods become profitable and therefore potentially major contributors to increased production. (Comically, this is often presented as though it were a good thing, where all it really does is underscore the unpleasant fact that the reason these less desireable sources are being put in play at all is that the lowest hanging fruit has already been picked.) The logic is self-refuting once you acknowledge that high prices also lead to destruction of the very thing driving those high prices: demand. Granted, the price elasticity of demand for oil is less than with many other things, but it isn’t completely inelastic, either. But then, they’re saying (as I take it) that demand destruction in the U.S. will be offset by increased demand in Asia (mostly); after all, “there is no immunity from global markets”. But energy flows in the U.S. will still be away from oil and toward “less expensive gas and electricity prices”. That doesn’t make sense to me. Again, it seems self-refuting.
At least I managed to notice something most of the media reports I’ve seen either didn’t notice or choose to ignore: the IEA didn’t say that the U.S. would become a net oil exporter. They said “North America”. It’s amazing how easily that distinction becomes blurred in the eyes of many Americans (especially those who live in the part officially known as “The United States of America”).
mistified….. that’s your problem, you can’t see the HOLY MAN! keep trying.
I feel your frustration over the denial of circumstance. Times are bound to get strange and the cream will rise to the top. We can get thru the impending crash, as we have many times before. I just took delivery on 100 gallons of heating oil, yikes! that is barely enough to fill the tank and it cost me $400.00, by the way, it is not oil, but a more refined product like diesel fuel, with a dye added. If you have oil heat and run short, and cannot afford a 100 gallon fill, go to your local gas station and fillup a can with diesel, it will keep you going until you can find enough bucks to get a truck to your intake port.
Funny thing, when the truck got here, I had a chance to take peak oil with the driver. He told me that most of his customers are really pissed off about the rising costs of fuel, so I tried to start a conversation about what will happen in the future. His response was that we have lots of reserves around the nation, and that since it is a fossil fuel, there are lots of fossils being created right now. I told him that it takes millions of years to change organic waste into petroleum, then he said, “so what, we are Americans, if we need oil, then we will go out and take it”, and I just handed him the check and said, thanks, I will see you later.
The Monroe Doctrine? How about the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine? Where after TPTB are done with us they suicide us–either by war, terror, financial chaos, lack of health care, disease, or famine. There will be no world made by hand, but one destroyed by OUR own hand.
NOW
The US is a colony
As are all erstwhile nations of the globe
Colonies of global finance
Colonization
Tactics haven’t changed
Government takeover
Invasion or corruption
Puppet government
Minority wealth class
Middle class
Professional apparatchiks
Majority
Economic insecurity
“economic growth”
Single imperative
“job growth”
Trumps safety/environmental regulations
“free market”
Displaces regional independence
“export markets”
Pre eminence over self sufficiency
Sovereign borders
Erased
Sovereign self determination
Xenophobia?
Really?
Nationalism?
Military fetishism
The US is a colony
God Bless you James…
(I know you don’ believe in deity, that’s ok… under the Pipers Spiritual Relativity, even old loving curmudgeon’s like you are ‘saved’ from the darkness of this universe.)
You answered my question! Thank you…
I thought so, like everything else in wonderland, the mad hatters are only trumped by the Red Queen…
The law of diminishing returns and resource depletion always wins.
I’m glad you mentioned the religious, its not their fault James, have mercy on them… they are mostly too ignorant to understand its the fault of Rome and the preachers. Rome was the original source of all the MYSTERY James. Even their own Bible condemns them, but they are too busy making up feel good fairy tales to keep the sheep “submissive to ‘Godly’ authority”. This is where much of the Apathy and Complacency comes from my friend. Its not that they hate science and reason, they are just too ignorant to care, its all a ‘mystery of God’ to them.
But it is not the Christians who are the problem James, it is the Darkness of the Galactic Rift that comes next month, the beginning of Earth change, monetary collapse that causes a (real) war and the Green horse of Islam… that will ride in on the Caliphate, and our spineless leaders that have enabled it, and will SUBMIT to the demands of oil in the future world when dollars are repudiated; Pay in Gold, or SUBMIT TO ALLAH.
Then you will have something to really worry about.
The only way, instead of a world made by hand, and wallowing in the mud, is to forgo profits and take to the stars… the ultimate Galt.
The Grail is the Key of Understanding, but only for those with “eyes that see”.
http://pipermichael.wordpress.com
Very informative, thanks, Jim.
“So then we’re looking at a near term population decline in Japan of some 100 million, at a minimum?”
Yes, that is exactly what he is saying. There is no other way to support the old style of Japanese living but by reducing the population to levels that were seen before fossil fuels.
This goes for the rest of the world. There will be a 150 year ride down the back side of the fossil fuel bell curve and in the end, the world’s population will be less than 1 billion, just like before the start of the fossil fuel era.
I hope this comes to no surprise, it is simple resource management. Net energy is what makes it all possible, or rather, impossible.
The current height of human civilization is due to the massive net energy provided by the peak in fossil fuel and other resource extraction. We simply could not extract, pollute, consume, transition or just sit around in sheer pleasure if it were not for fossil fuels.
The real kicker is that even if we had five times the amount of energy production, we could not maintain our current standard of living. All the other important resources like fresh water, arable lands, forests, ocean fisheries, minerals, metals, etc. are in deep overshoot that cannot be maintained, regardless of the energy inputted.
There is an exception to this – if we become a super race and learn to extract orders of magnitude more net energy than we currently do, we can do amazing things like clean our own air, design and maintain our own biological systems, etc. However, we are hundreds perhaps thousands of years away from that level of technology, assuming unbroken stretches of progress (The Dark Ages shows us how human progress can be halted for several Centuries) and assuming we evolve socially enough to be able to handle this power without causing our own extinction.
Jim – Thank you for helping to clear out the incessant chatter regarding the “newly discovered” non-renewable resources we have been hearing about. I suspect when the dust finally settles you will turn out to have been way more right than wrong. The future can be a good one if we admit that trying to support business as usual is not only impossible but unnecessary.
See a realistic vision of what is possible and highly preferable in my new novel From Here to there. htto://www.fromhere.tothere.org
Sorry for the typo: The website should be http://www.fromhere.tothere.org
Jim,
You need to read Jeff Rubin’s ‘The Big Flatline: Oil and the No-Growth Economy.’
He’s got politics, oil, international security, and economics all wrapped into one coherent argument from a former bank big shot. He’s got some original economic points and his view about peak-oil is that it is about price not supply.
You will love the analogies and sports metaphors. He knows his oil, hockey, Canadian tar sands, and pipelines.
Quote: “My guess is that being predisposed to superstition and religious fanaticism, the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We’re already well on our way. The IEA report will just accelerate things.”
As usual JHK sums things up with an accurate forecast of the future.
So I’ll go a few stages further.
Stage 1: Obama beats off the godbothering fantasists in 2012
Stage 2: by 2016, certainly by 2020, the economy will have properly tanked because we’ve used up all the cheap energy. without it the US economy will no longer be viable across the vast distances of the nation.
Stage 3:That ultimately means breakup on ethnic, religious and geographic faultlines.
The cracks are already showing.
Stage 4: without energy, the USA becomes ungovernable,
Stage 5: a collapsed economy means the military cannot be supported.
Stage 6: Already infected with theocracy at the highest level, the military goes self employed
Stage 7: The military takes over the running of the country and creates a theofascist state based on ‘biblical law’ to suppress anarchy which breaks out across the country, and to bring everyone back to the path of righteousness
Stage 8: Each region believes it own god myths and fights to prove them correct.
Stage 9: Without US support, Israel gets wiped off the map, nuking its neighbours in the process taking out what remains of world oil supply. JC still doesn’t show up to put a stop to it.
Stage 10: The USA degenerates into a third world status of collective disbelief, rejecting (as JHK says) science and rationality, obsessed with god guns and conspiracies. (at least till they run out of ammunition).
welcome to your future
http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/
How lucky the Japanese are to own their own Island as a Homogenous Race. Compare them to the foolish British who are giving their Home away to South Asian Muslims and Hindus. What a wretched fate. What selfish, cruel, and stupid leaders to have done this.
The right of the common man to bear arms was a hard won right – not medievalism nor achieved in the dark ages. Perhaps the late Middle Ages after the Magna Carta? Not sure exactly, maybe someone else will chime in.
The Left’s religion of Gaia/Goddess and its desire to disarm private citizens shows their mal intent for anyone with two brain cells to rub together. People who get out of line will be recycled or “composted”. Bounty Hunters will hunt disenters down for carbon credits – and to get the credits if any of the Bounty.
Obama when a professor didn’t believe people should have the right to own guns. Has he really changed?
http://clashdaily.com/2012/11/obama-i-dont-believe-people-should-be-able-to-own-guns-main-featrnewsembed/
This week’s essay and some comments make this Canadian a bit uneasier than usual. Forced to read up on the Monroe Doctrine to try and figure out how it could be used to ensure that our oil and gas flows only your way.
To me it looks like the Monroe Doctrine,cooked up with Britain, protects Canada from interference by you guys under that scenario, seeing as we were a colony of Britain when it was devised.
But we still have the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)and it seems to me that we are already obligated to ship all our resources to you first, and not just our oil and gas but also our precious water and wood. Our toady right wing prime minister Brian Mulroney sold us out totally in the name of Irish unity with Ronald Reagan.
Aside from the legalities, or in accordance with them, it’s like the oil delivery guy said who was mentioned a few comments back, you’ll just come in and take it all anyway. We’re fucked. Always have been when it comes to Canadian-American relations.
Jimbo…thanks for at least giving a nod to groundwater (it’s one word, per the U. S. Geological Survey; why, I don’t know as surface water is clearly 2 words). Anyway, few Americans appreciate groundwater, yet many in cities depend on it for their drinking water and don’t even know it. When it comes to our future, almighty petroleum rules over our water supply, I guess. You could ask a lot of rural well owners in the states you mentioned(and even your own NY) about the effects of frack sand mining and fracking itself on groundwater quality. I’m sure you’d get an earful for your weekly diatribe.
Shale oil and shale gas are very energy intensive to recover. It takes the equivolent of two or three barrels of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground. It is like a con mans shell game if when we are told we can be energy independant.
As for fracking, that is injecting steam and water into the earth, it has caused dozenz of small earhquaks in British Columbia ans hundreds in California, albeit minor ones between 2 and three on the Richtern but earthquakes no-the-less.
“It takes the equivolent of two or three barrels of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground.”
Do you have some source for this assertion? Because I would assume that if this were the case these plays would not be economically viable (e.g. profitable), but this is not the claim we hear from industry.
just think, if you had stayed as colonials, like the Canadians, you would have had our Queen as head of state.
that way you wouldn’t have godbothering lunatics showing up every 4 years
With a real head of state in charge, rather than the wannabes you get every 4 years (though I do except Obama from that statement, he’s the genuine article) you would be able to concentrate on stuff that matters.
We keep our queen for just one reason, it stops crazies trying to get the job. If you doubt that—check out heads of state in most other nations
Electricity can be generated in any number of ways, including nuclear, gas, coal, wind, geothermal, hydro, and solar. The point is that an electic car decouples personal transportation from a single liquid energy source. Electricity is overall a more flexible source of power, and it can at least partially be generated in a sustainable way using sources like solar and wind.
It isn’t perfect. Much of our energy still derives from coal and gas fed power plants. And the power plants still pollute, but overall a fleet of electic cars powered by a generating plant will produce less net pollution, because it can be controlled at a single point. This is superior to a bunch of gas-powered cars, all emitting pollution individually.
BTW, these new electric cars are pretty nice vehicles, being virtually silent, with insane 0-60 acceleration, etc.
My concern would be long trips. What do you do at the far end for the return trip? I guess you offer to pay your grandma’s electricity bill for when you charge the thing overnight from her garage power outlet.
But what was your point again? You like the status quo, I guess. Are you saying we should just keep on doing indefinitely whatever it is we’ve been doing? At some point, the oil really does run out. What’s wrong with starting to make bridges to whatever comes next? I don’t see the problem, myself, or why you would be so virulently hostile to the idea (just your style I guess).
Excuse me NJP1, but if you’d read my comment more closely you’d have noted that in my first sentence I said I AM CANADIAN. All that I said pertains to my own country, and that is Canada. Try reading it again, eh?
Another thing about NJP1’s comment; it mis-states the Queen’s role in Canadian affairs. While she may be officially head of state it’s a ceremonial position these days. Since we re-patriated our old constitution from Britain as our very own Charter of Rights and Freedom in the 1980’s the Queen doesn’t carry any real power now. That lies in our federal Parliament and we do still elect our Members there. At least get the facts right, please.
so you did—so you did—my apologies
you mean our Liz can’t chop off Canadian heads anymore??
hardly worth having the job then
The Farewell Adress of Ron Paul. “How cruel he is to ask you to live on your two feet when I have allowed you to live on your knees”. The Persian King speaking of Leonidas in the movie 300. The 300 were the U.S Marines and the Persians, a Gay Pride Parade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqi6paX3ong&feature=player_embedded
News from Eurabia:
Austrian, 63, fined £700 after Muslim neighbours claimed his yodelling mocked call to prayer.
Traditional: Yodellnig is as much a part of Austrian culture as lederhosen (file picture)
A judge decided Helmut Griese, 63, was ‘ridiculing’ the Muslim family’s beliefs and fined him nearly £700. Yodelling is as much a part of Austrian culture as lederhosen (file picture)
An Austrian has been fined for yodelling while mowing his lawn because it offended his Muslim neighbours next door.
A judge decided Helmut Griese, 63, was ‘ridiculing’ their beliefs and fined him nearly £700.
Rather than face a protracted court case with all its attendant legal costs, Griese agreed to pay.
The court heard how the Muslim family regarded Griese as a ‘grumpy old man’ and came to view his open-air versions of the Alpine chanting as racist asides aimed at them.
Austrian media reported how the pensioner was accused in the court in Graz of trying to ‘mock and imitate’ the call of the Muezzin.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339150/Helmut-Griese-fined-700-Muslim-neighbours-claim-yodelling-mocks-prayer.html#ixzz2CiPyVzfP
This just in
“Ottawa is currently evaluating a $15.1 billion bid by China’s state-owned CNOOC Ltd to take over Canadian oil producer Nexen Inc as well as a $5.2 billion proposal by Malaysia’s Petronas to buy Progress Resources Energy Corp. Decisions are expected in the next few weeks.”
More North American Oil going to Asia, perhaps, our largest supplier is selling more of its oil assets to countries other than the US, and the oil will follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-the-US-cannot-Extract-most-of-its-Oil-Reserves.html
That is just two references found in 30 seconds of searching. Even the Canadian government said it wasn’t feasible many years ago before they were bought out by big busines. Our federal government is now officially the “Religeous Right” hence unanswerable to us peons.
What it comes down to is this, whatever is good for American oil companies is good enough to guide the Canadian Energy Policy. Thank you for that:(
RyeBeachBum, that is right, I forgot about that! Did that actually get pushed through yet?
Is everything related to the Second Ammenment and your eviscerated constitution?
Youse guys in the 54th state of the Onion had better get busy on a repeal [or damn good tweaking] of that ol’ cuddly NAFTA thing right quick; time’s a’wastin’!
As far as ‘Murka invading? You know the home ground. How is that invincible and [al]mighty military doing in Afghanistan (even with all the sexy hardware and double-sexy satellite shit)? Could be “problematic”, and at that point (big-time energy scrambling), a desperate bluff and gamble. Will the ‘murkin military finally recognize the futility of attempting to subjugate those who refuse to be subjugated? The depth of belief in illusions will tell the tale…
James, Japan is leading the world in cold fusion research. You may not get your wish. The emperor of Japan is personally funding the research.
I think that I may have finally figured out “My Problem”….
My Problem may be that I’ve basically been living in a hierarchical authoritarian social structure based on power, dominance, materialism, anti-Liberty, greed, dishonesty, stupidity, etc. In such as social hierarchy, apart from the raw incentive of having to get money to buy stuff, I really don’t have any incentive to do much. In fact, the fa//s,c ist social structure, while subjecting me to the incentivizing force of money, probably negatively incentivizes me by subjecting me to ideas and behaviors which I find abhorent. It’s like pressing down on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. It’s like f’…ck’n a big fat woman because that’s all there is.
I saw a movie many years ago in which a skinny Italian bloke trapped in a N//a zi prison camp had to have sex with a big fat female N..a z//i guard and pretend that he liked it so that he could get an extra ration of pumperknickel bread.
Hmmmm,
That could very well be my problem (and basic malfunction, leading to resistance) as well!
Thanks for putting in an understandable format.
Punkernikel? Where da fat wimmenz at?
“…putting IT…”
Hey-Zeus, guess I’ll hie me hence. ;o)
Have any of you blokes noticed that it seems that the people who society considers fringe crazy lunatics (like James Howard Kunstler, Dmitri Orlov, Chris Hedges, Max Kaiser, Gerald Celente, Paul Craig Roberts, Ron Paul, Alex Jones, etc.) are the people who now seem to have the best grasp of Reality?
It’s like in the movie “Jaws” in which the island tourist community of “Amity” (“‘Amity’ means ‘Friendship’!”) has to hire the deranged lunatic Captain Ahab, Captain Quint, because he’s the only one who really understands Reality and who can solve the problem.
I got a very bad feeling….
Good post. I agree with your views about electric cars. If people look at maintaining the personal transport status quo, then EV’s can be a bridge.
That said, electric rail or buses have a clear advantage as they do not need batteries. Batteries are still the weakest link in an EV. In an energy descent scenario, citizens will not have the flexibility to travel every which way as they do now. Road maintenance could be problematic, also.
One nitpicking point: You mention that electricity is a flexible power source. It, like hydrogen, is an energy carrier, not a source. Making that distinction helps people understand that hydrogen or electric powered transport may not be the end all solution.
You have landed on Boardwalk, even though it has been blown away, you owe rent that can not be paid and thus you are bankrupt. We apologize for the lack of power and wish for you to accept free mints as we are unable to cook any Turkeys for thanksgiving. This has been a recording.
“It, like hydrogen, is an energy carrier, not a source.”
Indeed. Thanks for the correction.
Hi, shepp.
Well, one of your articles doesn’t necessarily support your point.
From The Oil Drum article:
“I have heard from multiple industry sources that the energy return for producing oil from oil shale is around 4 to 1 (lower than for oil sands production), and that is before refining the oil to finished products.”
If it really took two barrels of oil to produce one barrel from shale, then the companies would not even be bothering with it. The market would definitely price this out of the running if it were the case. The companies involved simply couldn’t run at a profit if it were true.
And then from the Wikipedia:
“In mid-2007, Royal Dutch Shell announced that in 2006 its Canadian oil sands unit made an after tax profit of $21.75 per barrel, nearly double its worldwide profit of $12.41 per barrel on conventional crude oil.[45]”
That said, the environmental costs of extracting all of this oil from shale would be enormous and potentially catastrophic. But to say that the EROEI is negative does not seem to fit the facts as it stands today.
I’m not so sure about that, considering we saved your asses during WWII. You guys always seem to conveniently forget about that, as even Cash observed when he was on this blog. You’d all be speaking German now, it we hadn’t swung some balls.
In answer to your reply, yeah, you’re fucked. The GOOD news is we OWN you bitches. The bad news is that we’re fucking OWNED by Israel. So, you see, we’re all stewing in the same rancid dish water.
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Wait, what? Germany had plans to invade Canada during WWII? That’s news to me.
I think I can be reasonably confident in saying that nobody on CFN really gives a fuck about your queens, kings, dukes, monarchs, etc. I mean, it’s great comedy to us, as must be our pedaphilic coaches in our sports league to you. I mean, it’s all so absolutely pointless, sad, and tragic.
Agreed. We’re all in this mess together.
The IEA’s optimism is not inspired by the prospects for producing oil from oil shale. They’re talking about “light tight oil”, which is oil trapped in non-porous rock formations, usually (though not necessarily) shale. This oil can be coaxed from the formations using horizontal drilling and fracking, and while these are expensive, thirsty, and not very environmentally friendly methods, they at least offer an EROEI that puts them in the black (so to speak) as long as prices are high. It is possible to produce synthetic oil of passable quality from the kerogen that can be baked out of pulverized “oil shale”, but that’s really not viable from either an economic or an environmental standpoint, and probably never will be.
I remember air raids and sirens. Sitting in the absolute darkness at around 8:00 p.m. with blackout shades covering the windows. Silence…and for me at that age, a feeling of stupidity. I mean, I thought, “Really, I’m an adult sitting in my own living room (in the U.S.) feeling both silly and scared at the same time.”
We really were the only hope for democracy back then. And thank god we delivered. It might have turned out a bit different than it did. The Germans and the Japanese were quite a bit more monstrous than we’d thought.
We didn’t mind Europe and even Canada hiding under our skirts as much then. But protection has its price. If you’re going to criticize, then either put up or shut up.
Thanks for addressing the IEA report, Jim.
I guess most of the world doesn’t want a straight story on the energy issue because they see no benefit to telling it like it is. Now I am curious as to who makes up the IEA and why it felt it important to release that report at this time. What was it trying to circumvent or accomplish?
Japan isn’t going to enter the post-industrial state willingly. I am surprised you wrote about that country without mentioning its growing conflict with China over ownership of the Senkaku Islands. The dispute apparently is tied to the possibility of natural gas deposits near the islands.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/10/121026-east-china-sea-dispute/
And guess what? We are tied by treaty to stand by Japan …. so the U.S. may find itself involved in an energy war on yet another continent.
No, I can’t see Japan going willingly into the long emergency…
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2129409-1,00.html
Thanks again for IEA info.
Yeah, especially if you ignore the fact that almost 70% of German military deaths occurred on the Eastern front.
This week’s essay and some comments make this Canadian a bit uneasier than usual. Forced to read up on the Monroe Doctrine to try and figure out how it could be used to ensure that our oil and gas flows only your way. – Grouchy fears for her home land but doesn’t know the half of it.
===============
In his 1996 magnum opus, Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace has unknowingly foreseen a more likely path to Canadian oil and other resources than imposition of the Monroe Doctrine. In the novel’s future world, North America is one state comprising the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). In a single stroke it would also solve the needs of big business for cheap Mexican “stoop” labor. The whole silly plot begins to make more sense every day.
And they ocurred there because we stopped ’em in their tracks. Our mistake was to have not crippled Germany’s army on ALL fronts during WWI.
“Grouchy fears for her home land but doesn’t know the half of it.”
And what she doesn’t know is a lot. I think your book reference has a point. North America is one giant meatball sandwich to the rest of the developing world. China is licking her chops. They are closing in on their 30 year plan. Guess whose on the dinner plate?
Did someone borrow my book explaining the U.S. legal system regulating U.S. corporate accounting fraud entitled “Big Mouse, Little Pussy”?
I need it back.
Thanks.
“Government runs on the fumes of statistical fraud.”
-jhk-
All is fraud, JHK. The system is rotting.
Thanks for pointing it out for us, in a novel way, every week.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/issues/american-workers/immigration-hurting-us-worker.html
Reality doesn’t give a shit about JHK’s claim of fraud. Either the oil exists or it doesn’t. Even the supply is increasing or it isn’t. Whatever is said about oil supply, fraudulent or not, it irrelevant and does not … cannot … change reality.
Now JHK keeps repeating that we are victims to fraud relative to oil supply, that we hit peak oil in 2005, yet the REALITY is oil prices are going down because oil supply is going up. Kind of gives the lie to claims of “fraud,” doesn’t it?
How many more decades are you going to listen to JHK claim we are victims to fraud, instead of paying attention to the REALITY of increasing oil supply and falling oil prices.
IMO, we got a lot of CFN lemmings right here who are gullible true believers who can’t accept the facts because the facts are too positive for their doomsday personalities.
I may be wrong, of course. It might all collapse next Tuesday. I’ve been saying that it might collapse next Tuesday for the last twelve years, since the predictions of collapse related to Y2K. Remember Y2K? Remember how it was going to be, Y2K. No? Let me remind you with JHK’s words in 1999:
Writing this in April of ‘99, I believe that we are in for a serious event. Systems will fail, crash, seize up, cease to function. Not all systems, maybe only a fraction, but enough, and enough interdependent systems to affect many other systems. Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world. People will consequently suffer. I don’t know how much.
See now why I claim CFNers are naive and gullible, terrible predictors of the future, with suppressed wishes for the worst to happen to humanity? That is you, ProCon: uncritical of JHK, unthinking, and obsessed with immigration.
You are wrong on the immigration question, too. Immigrants are job creators and contributors to America. That is not a moral platitude. It’s a fact. We should welcome immigrants, legal or “illegal” with open arms if we are truly Americans and not racist xenophobes.
Retail gasoline price 11/19/2012: $3.429/gal
DOWN $0.020 from week earlier
Retail diesel price 11/19/2012: $3.976/gal
DOWN $0.004 from week earlier
DOWN $0.034 from year earlier
Crude oil futures price 11/16/2012: $86.67/bbl
DOWN $12.15 from year earlier
Weekly coal production 11/10/2012: 19.560 million tons
UP 0.176 million tons from week earlier
SUPPLY UP.
PRICES DOWN.
WITH THE WAR IN GAZA WE SHOULD HAVE US$200 A BARREL OIL BY NOW, IF NOT MORE. BUT THE REALITY IS OTHERWISE. STOP BELIEVING DOOMSTERS.
PEAK OIL FRAUD? YES.
I can write about American Redneck culture….
We are looking for a skilled blog writer (native English speaker) who can write one 200 word article every week.
The topic would centre around
– German culture
– Germans overseas
– German emigration/immigration
Please quote your PRICE PER FOUR WEEKS (=4 articles of 200 words each). This is ongoing work for years to come if everything works fine.
You will directly put the articles in a WordPress blog on the website.
Start your application with the words “I pay attention to details”
“I pay attention to details”
JHK is perpetrating peak oil fraud. JHK claims world oil production peaked in 2012. That means oil production is in decline. Each year on the downside of the curve we should see less production. That is CFN fraud.
2007 … 84,261.9
2008 … 84,318.1
2009 … 85,356.3
2010 … 86,751.4
2011 … 87,092.6
Anybody see a decline in those numbers? No. That is because we are victims of CFN fraud. Fraud cannot alter reality. Reality will slap you up the side of the head. Cain’t change it with words. But you can continue to believe falsehoods. You can be convinced to believe that doom is coming and that belief can be cultivated and sustained for years by cherry-picking “facts.” But the world oil production figures don’t match your so-called “facts.” Now, you can dance around and you can move the goal posts. You can say things like “the low-hanging fruit has been picked” or “the EROEI is negative” … but you can’t argue with math. Math does not have a liberal or conservative bias. The numbers don’t lie. It is what it is. You can accept reality, or you can believe myths until reality slaps you up the side of the head.
CORRECTION
JHK claims world oil production peaked in 2005.
2007 … 84,261.9
2008 … 84,318.1
2009 … 85,356.3
2010 … 86,751.4
2011 … 87,092.6
Wrong.
The 2nd Ammendment is the Teeth that protects the 1st and the whole Bill of Rights. Leftists went to abolish the Bill of Rights but keep all the other Ammendments – and add to them. We will stop them courtesy of the 2nd Ammendment, so yes you are righter than you could possibly know.
JHK is perpetrating peak oil fraud. JHK claims world oil production peaked in 2005. That means oil production is in decline. Each year on the downside of the curve we should see less production. That is CFN fraud.
2007 … 84,261.9
2008 … 84,318.1
2009 … 85,356.3
2010 … 86,751.4
2011 … 87,092.6
Anybody see a decline in those numbers? No. That is because we are victims of CFN fraud.
Fraud cannot alter reality. Reality will slap you up the side of the head. Cain’t change it with words. But you can continue to believe falsehoods.
You can be convinced to believe that doom is coming and that belief can be cultivated and sustained for years by cherry-picking “facts.”
But the world oil production figures don’t match your so-called “facts.”
Now, you can dance around and you can move the goal posts. You can say things like “the low-hanging fruit has been picked” or “the EROEI is negative” … but you can’t argue with math.
Math does not have a liberal or conservative bias. The numbers don’t lie. It is what it is. You can accept reality, or you can believe myths until reality slaps you up the side of the head.
Ah this is grotesque beyond any words to describe. Truly the White Man is sick to put up with this. The English banned piggy banks so as not to offend their parasites. And the French Goverment banned pork in soup kitchens. At least some of the French defied that last I heard.
We will stop them courtesy of the 2nd Ammendment
========
You a dreamer, boy.
You playing to the Feds strength.
Start your 2nd amendment stupidity. Start it now.
Just watch how fast you are swatted. Like a mosquito on the arm of King Kong. Insignificant believers in 2nd amendment. You have no power. You have no significant 2nd amendment rights. You believe so? Go ahead, I dare you. Try to exercise them. Do it now, coward.
No once they’re citizens then they have to be given rights, benefits, good pay etc. Keeping an illegal stream coming is Exactly what the Republicans want. The cost of labor is then thrown onto the Goverment – the taxpayer that is.
Of course, the North American Union is coming soon no matter what. By that time, everyone – Black, White, and Hispanic will be poor and the middle class just a memory. But they would really like to keep the illegals for just a few more years. You don’t begrudge them that do you?
>>Either the oil exists or it doesn’t. Even the supply is increasing or it isn’t. Whatever is said about oil supply, fraudulent or not, it irrelevant and does not … cannot … change reality.
I have to disagree with just about every part of that. “Supply” isn’t about the amount of oil in the ground; it’s about how adequately our daily needs are met. Therefore, whether the oil exists or not is actually not the aspect of reality of most interest to a society that has placed so much faith in the assumption that affordable oil will continue to be available indefinitely. What is most important is how much oil can be extracted, processed, and distributed each day, and the relationship between that quantity and the price the highest bidders are willing to pay. Because perception exerts such a strong influence on that willingness, things that are said about supply actually can and DO change that reality.
If optimism is your thing, the abovementioned IEA report includes one scenario they call the “Efficient World Scenario”, which has global demand for oil peaking “just before 2020” as a result of unleashing our huge untapped potential for increased energy efficiency — and not measures that would rely on any major or unexpected technological breakthroughs (they hasten to clarify), but merely by removing the barriers obstructing the implementation of economically viable measures that are available now. In other words, there is a way to increase supply that does not depend on increasing production, and that is to reduce demand. All it takes is to integrate efficiency concerns into decision making “throughout government, industry and society”.
Yeah. That’s gonna fly.
Yeah. That’s gonna fly.
===========
Thing is, you don’t know what is going to fly by 2020 (the IEA date you provided). Taleb’s POSITIVE BLACK SWAN event could occur at any time. By definition we cannot predict when, but it could change everything in ways we cannot now imagine (again, a pre-condition of Taleb’s positive Black Swan). You are not being honest. Perception is not needed. Reality is.
Jim did a good job with this week’s article.
124th!
TSA unionize – the last stroke of doom or just a precursor to it?
http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/tsa-unionized-americans-screwed/
A typical response to the peak oil problem is to invoke a just-in-time breakthrough techno-fix. Fusion power, maybe. If that’s the sort of Black Swan you mean, then sure: that might fly. If it happens. I’m not prepared to predict that it won’t. I’m not holding my breath, but that’s me. A reprieve from peak oil might also arrive in the form of a sudden population crash due to, say, an influenza pandemic. I’d consider that more likely (and certainly plenty black), but if epidemiologists aren’t confident enough to actually predict influenza pandemics, I’m certainly not.
However, as a citizen of the nation which is the world’s largest consumer of oil, what I can predict — with a high degree of confidence — is that we will continue to see considerable resistance to “integration of efficiency concerns into decision making” in government, industry, and society, and am therefore somewhat less optimistic than the IEA about the prospects for seeing the “Efficient World” appear any time soon (and “soon enough” would have been about thirty years ago).
If you want to say that petroleum geology is not influenced by perception, I can agree. But peak oil is not, strictly speaking, a geological phenomenon. Rather, it is a manifestation of sustained collective human perception regarding what constitutes improved quality of life and how that is best achieved. We have a demonstrated power to move mountains. Collective human perception can also be moved. It’s tricky, because there are so many people constantly trying so hard to move it in different directions all at the same time, but still. The most successful efforts, in my opinion, are most likely to be those which result from giving that collective perception a nudge in a direction in which it was already inclined to go. “Improved quality of life means more stuff, bigger stuff, cheaper stuff, and faster stuff” is one possible example. “Those damn Spaniards blew up the Maine” is another. “You’re going to need to lose that SUV and get yourself a bicycle” is an example of the type of nudge less likely to succeed in a society in which so many regard wasteful consumerism as a birthright.
Before any discussion can even begin as to how “we” might move that mountain, the first thing that would be necessary would be to define “we” in that context.
Actually you have just displayed the usual American ignorance on the purpose of our Queen. Our prime minister cannot issue presidential decrees ( sorry executive orders) like some tinpot dictator. And while, by the consent of parliament, he/she can take us to war he/she is not the commander in chief of the armed forces. All the armed forces swear allegiance to the Queen, not the government of the day. It fundamentally block and chance of both a civil war and the use of the army against us. Any government that griddle would find itself locked up pretty quick. As an ex officer of the Royal Air Force believe me when I say we take that oath seriously. Also the entire royal family costs us less than your presidents. We get the income from the Crown estate(£800 million p.a.) and the entire royal family costs around £50 million.
As to comments about the US saving us in WW2. Well you were well paid for it, in gold too for the first 2 years and the rest paid with handsome interest ending only a couple of years ago. Wasn’t that generous of you all. And of course who could forget that the only actual reason you entered the war in Europe was because hitler declared war on you, not the other way around.
That said many good US servicemen died in Europe trying to free Europe from tyranny. But an invasion of the UK was never feasible and Hitler knew it. Not only did he not control the skies but he was well aware that the Royal Navy would have decimated any invasion long before it landed. His only hope was to try and starve us into submission.
As another poster pointed out, the biggest help was Stalins meat grinder tactics on the Eastern front. Without his callous disregard for the lives of his own”comrades” the war would have dragged on for a lot longer. It sucks that in reality we were greatly aided against one genocidal madman by another genocidal madman, but it is true!
Apologies for the grammar or rather lack there of. I am posting from my mobile and am not quite used to it yet.
Another point mentioned re troops in Afghanistan. The reasons why we have struggled there is little to do with the troops, equipment or training. The reason is quite simply the rules of engagement and hearts and minds. Both US and UK troops a restricted by ridiculous ROE. If the Taliban are observed setting up an IED or mortar position the UK forces still cannot open fire until they are fired upon. The insurgents are left to walk away.
The other point is that hearts and minds does not work. Since WW2 the only time it has been successful has been in Malaya. This was because the communist insurgents there were Chinese not the native Malays and the campaign succeeded turning they Malays against them on racial lines not ideological ones.
In Vietnam it failed, in Kosovo it failed, in Iraq it failed. It failed pretty much everywhere. You cannot do war lite. It is either all or nothing. Contrary to popular belief the Russian army, largely conscripts, were winning in Afghanistan. The tide only turned against them only when then west armed the Muj first with blowpipe, which they found too technical to use, and then stinger missiles( a very good piece of kit I must say). This allowed them to hit the Hind gunships which were so effective against them. The reason I know this is that I, along with others and some American gentleman who claimed to be army but I suspect actually CIA spent months in the stan, as it was known then, training the Muj to use them. Ironically my eldest son is there now, flying an apache. Quite a role revesal in more ways than one.
The TSA thinks that rubbing our crotches with blue rubber gloves makes us safer. (It would give me a stiffy, but for the fact that I find it to be a major turn off.)
Only an extremely deranged and delusional people could think that this makes them safer.
In other countries, even totalitarian countries, they don’t do this, and presumably don’t see any need for it.
What gives?
Again apologies for the spelling and grammar. These mobile devices are still new to me and I am struggling somewhat with the auto spell and small screen. I think I may need to see Mr Magoo’s optician!
storytellingproductions.com
artwork and stories (some very sweet dogs for holiday gifts). please stop in and say hello!
Yeah we are driven by fallacy that our style of life is sustainable. But we would need many more Earths to do that. We should support research of a new technologies instead of investing all the time in the same. But it would lead the global economy to a decline, because oil is essential to it. It is a strange world indeed. Politics lie, when we need them to guide us through the financial crisis, they don´t know what to do, except for buying more weapons and waging new wars. We are living in a wonderful world.
What are the odds that Dmitri Orlov gets really pissed on vodka on his boat and sings patriotic Russian songs in his underwear?
When I was a kid there was a weird chain store in the local shopping mall called “Spencer’s”. It sold “blue lights”, lava lamps, and canned aerosol fart spray.
hate to disillusion you, but JHK was right on peak oil
the figures you show include ‘tight oil’ (from shales etc, tarsands, biofuels and so on
liquid oil, the stuff that’s pumped out of the ground and flows easily and gives about 20 to 1 return on eroei has bumped along under the 75mbd level since 05
tight oil returns about 3 or 4 to 1 on eroei, biofuel is only 1 to 1, and while this lifts the oil industry figures, it is ultimately unsustainable because our economy was built on cheap oil (it used to be 100 to 1 eroei). We are currently trying to keep it moving on expensive oil.
It’s not oil per se that’s the problem, it’s the increasing cost of getting hold of the stuff
basic common sense tells that if there was any cheap liquid oil to be pumped, they wouldn’t be ripping up the tarsands and drilling the Bakken. The Bakken has been known about for 60 years, the oil industry is now desperate enough to use it.
And no, the USA will not be self sufficient in oil–ever. right now, the USA needs 535000 oilwells to pump about 7mbd. Saudi pumps 10mbd from 1600 wells. That’s the real arithmetic of oil
on the ‘right to bear arms’ one should consider another angle
Any weapon above a lump of rock or a tree branch represents embodied energy, the cost of forging a sword or axe, or making a pistol and its ammunition.
These items only became relatively cheap after the industrial revolution, when all metal objects became cheap. The right to bear arms means nothing if you can’t afford it.
Taken to a national level, nations involved to protecting their assets by military means are creating weapons of ever increasing sophistication, and bankrupting themselves in doing so
Parma capitale del mondo. Per una volta non è il genio musicale di Verdi o l’eccellenza dei prodotti gastronomici locali a portare la città ducale alla ribalta delle cronache internazionali, ma le elezioni per la poltrona di sindaco. Da quando il primo turno ha decretato al ballottaggio il favorito candidato del centrosinistra Vincenzo Bernazzoli e, a sorpresa, il rappresentante del Movimento 5 Stelle, Federico Pizzarotti, gli occhi dei media nazionali e internazionali sono puntati sul cuore della Food Valley in attesa di vedere come andrà a finire. La sfida è inedita per un capoluogo che esce da 14 anni di governo di centrodestra, soprattutto per la novità rappresentata dal movimento di Beppe Grillo, che, con il 20% di preferenze del primo turno, per la prima volta non solo arriverà sui banchi del consiglio comunale, ma potrebbe perfino ribaltare i pronostici di partenza e occupare lo scranno più alto del municipio.
?Il caso ha destato l’interesse mediatico, e dopo i titoli sui giornali e i collegamenti in diretta tv da piazza Garibaldi, a Parma è arrivata anche la stampa internazionale. Prima due pagine sul Time dedicate al successo del Movimento 5 stelle alle amministrative, poi lo sbarco, nei prossimi giorni, di una troupe della statunitense Cnn, e ancora interviste e dichiarazioni rilasciate da, diventata nel giro di un mese, per bocca dello stesso comico genovese, il simbolo di una svolta politica a livello nazionale.
Un fatto di cui si rende conto anche Bernazzoli, che sin dalle prime ore dopo l’esito delle votazioni, di fronte a un avversario diverso da quello che si era immaginato, visto che i sondaggi davano per certo al ballottaggio insieme a lui l’ex sindaco Elvio Ubaldi, ha fatto leva proprio sulla pericolosità di questa attenzione mediatica: “A livello nazionale spira un vento che spinge verso il Movimento – ha ripetuto più volte durante gli ultimi incontri – Parma ora è al centro delle attenzioni di tutti, ma poi le troupe delle tivù torneranno a casa, e noi rimarremo con i problemi della città da risolvere. E per questo ci vogliono amministratori con esperienza e competenze, che noi abbiamo. Protestare è una cosa, governare è un’altra”.
Alle critiche mosse dal presidente della Provincia, Pizzarotti ha sempre risposto riportando l’esempio di quanti prima hanno governato Parma: “Gli esperti che c’erano prima hanno creato debiti da 600 milioni di euro, credo che noi riusciremo a fare meglio”. Difficile fare pronostici sui risultati, a detta degli stessi candidati sindaco esclusi dal ballottaggio e perfino dai sostenitori dei due sfidanti, anche perché alla fine Bernazzoli e Pizzarotti correranno da soli, senza l’aiuto di “liste amiche”. Il candidato del Pd, sostenuto dalla coalizione di centrosinistra, non ha voluto ulteriori apparentamenti, e d’altra parte Pizzarotti ha mantenuto la linea della corsa solitaria stabilita fin dall’inizio della campagna elettorale.
Nessuna indicazione di voto inoltre è stata data dai partiti esclusi, anche se a sorpresa Ubaldi per primo aveva mostrato un’apertura verso il Movimento 5 stelle. “Abbiamo di fronte due alternative – ha detto l’ex sindaco – la prima è il vecchio che si riconsuma, la seconda è il nuovo non esperto, ma nuovo”. Secondo indiscrezioni però, molti ubaldiani avrebbero espresso la volontà di votare per Pizzarotti, e i voti al Movimento 5 stelle potrebbero arrivare anche da altre parti. “Sollecitiamo i nostri elettori ad andare a votare, scegliendo rispetto ai programmi sulla città” ha confermato il coordinatore provinciale ed ex candidato Pdl Paolo Buzzi, mentre libertà di voto è stata ribadita anche da Roberta Roberti di Parma Bene Comune, dal civico di Parma Unita Roberto Ghiretti e dalla Lega Nord.
Le scintille e i battibecco tra i due candidati si sprecano nel conto alla rovescia al gran finale, ma la campagna elettorale ha preso una piega diversa negli ultimi giorni, soprattutto per il centrosinistra. Prima il paragone era il centrodestra e dunque il passato degli errori, della corruzione, dei soprusi ai cittadini. Dopo il 7 maggio però i ruoli si sono come invertiti e paradossalmente il passato, al confronto dei rappresentanti del movimento di Grillo, è diventato il centrosinistra: il presidente della Provincia e i suoi alleati, già volti conosciuti della politica cittadina, contro le facce mai viste di Pizzarotti e dei suoi. Il candidato 5 stelle ha continuato a puntare sulla trasparenza e la partecipazione, incontrando persone e cittadini e procedendo alla selezione, non ancora ultimata, degli assessori che faranno parte della sua squadra, anche se alcuni nomi potranno essere svelati solo a giochi fatti: “Molti mi hanno assicurato la loro disponibilità – ha spiegato Pizzarotti – ma non possono sbilanciarsi prima del risultato”. Bernazzoli ha puntato a sua volta sull’attenzione verso il cittadino, promettendo che “non ci sarà un gruppo di potere che si sostituirà a quello precedente”,borse louis vuitton, assicurando che nell’amministrare sarà “un uomo libero, attento prima di tutto alle esigenze dei cittadini, a costo di rimanere isolato politicamente e di andare contro le pressioni dei partiti”, ma anche difendendosi dagli attacchi lanciati da Grillo sul suo blog: “La realtà delle cose è ben diversa dalla fantasia e Parma non si amministra raccontando barzellette”.
Il gran finale della campagna elettorale ci sarà venerdì sera alle 21. Per il Movimento 5 Stelle in piazzale della Pace arriverà il bis di Beppe Grillo, che già aveva stabilito un record di presenze ad aprile,louis vuitton borse. Il comico genovese farà una breve introduzione, per lasciare spazio poi alla presentazione della sua squadra parmigiana. Ancora da confermare invece, nonostante alcune dichiarazioni dei giorni scorsi, la presenza del comico fidentino Gene Gnocchi, storico amico di Bernazzoli e già sua spalla in precedenti campagne elettorali, che avrebbe dovuto dare l’assist finale al candidato del centrosinistra. Se fosse confermato, lo show di Gnocchi potrebbe andare in scena in piazza Ghiaia, come era stato per Bersani, e quindi in contemporanea e proprio a poche centinaia di metri da quello di Grillo. Ma fino ad ora lo staff del candidato ha riferito che l’appuntamento non è ancora fissato con certezza e quindi lo “scontro a distanza” tra i due comici potrebbe saltare.?
Yes – and of course and this is where much of CF Nation’s frustration lay. Reality has been managed so well that the new norms – such as women working full time, many working multiple jobs, many more just scrounging off society or family goes as a non-news story.
Peak Oil and its associated economic contraction are here; but does that matter if no one realizes it.
When the lights finally go out – we’ll appoint a commission to tell us it was an unforeseeable act of God – end of story…..
Gobble gobble – over n out…
I think you have made the ultimate point with your post regarding the changes we have already seen but yet remain, in many ways below the radar. I would add one more – the burgeoning unreliability of the power grid. I live , as do several family members, in the area I grew up in in the 60’s. We virtually never lost power. Now outages of multiple days into weeks are becoming the norm and people are on waiting lists to install whole house generators. Yet only I seem to be the only one to see this as a drastic sign of things crumbling amongst my family and friends. It really is the frog immersed in the slowly heating water syndrome.
Hibbert was a petroleum geologist. Hibbert did not talk in slippery terms like “perception.” Do you understand what the word “peak” means? Once you have reached the peak you don’t jigger up the numbers through game-playing like “perception.” You are moving the goal posts. Now, instead of petroleum geology, you want to talk psychology. OK, I’ll play along.
Has your zeitgeist meter broken? Perceptions are changing. Doesn’t do a damn thing about how much petroleum is available, but it does lessen dependence on petroleum and improve quality of life. Tripp and I are examples of this movement. Check out the miminalist living movement, or the tiny house movement, or the voluntary simplicity movement, or the movement toward veganism (I assume you understand how much oil is required to produce a pound of beef), or the permaculture, organic, and re-localization movements.
Consuming less oil and buying less stuff can improve quality of life.
That is why these movements are gaining in popularity. It is also why we have not yet reached peak oil. And we may never. The stuff may just continue to sit in the ground. Fine with me.
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Yesterday a little after 5:00 pm I drove up from New Haven to Hartford, about 30 miles. It might as well have been midnight it was so dark. This is a four lane Interstate North and South. I could see right away it was a mistake getting on that road … traffic bumper to bumper, door handle to door handle, tens of thousands of cars and trucks moving in unison, headed north at 70 miles per hour as far out as you could see, a Madmans picnic, one wrong move and you’re dead and so are a lot of other people, maybe millions of combined horsepower burning up thousands of barrels of oil on just this one road. And the phalanx of vehicles headed south was just as impressive. I was thinking its like this all across the US right now. Jim says this will all end. Its hard to believe; it seems like the way of the world now, a monster, unstoppable, with a power and logic of its own. It not only goes on and on it grows bigger and gets worse all the time.
–WSP7
To the fair minded, please sign this petition at the WH site.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-white-genocide-through-halting-massive-non-white-immigration-every-white-country-and-only-white/YV5861Tz
That IEA report didn’t make much sense to even an amateur like myself, even if taken on face value. US oil consumption is at the 19-20 million bpd level, and its been there for awhile. Production peaked out at 11 million bpd in 1970. If we could get back up to 10 million bpd, how does that make us energy self sufficient, or an oil exporter?
–WSP7
Concur with you and Buddy-the-vizier.
Reiterating what I blurted above, re. the same JHK sentence:
“It is my considered opinion that this illusion has been very purposefully and carefully constructed for them to retain CONTROL. Our dependence is what keeps us enslaved and uninformed. (If you have no idea what’s going on, you can’t very well DO anything about it one way or another, can you?)” -isedat
One of our largest prollems is the “Pravda Perplexity”. Reading between the lines to get at an amorphous something that resembles the underlying reality that’s hurriedly being painted over.
When Budi sez, “When the lights finally go out – we’ll appoint a commission to tell us it was an unforeseeable act of God – end of story…”, I picture the dreaming delusionista overposters on this comment space to be frantically waving the fingers of their hand, outstretched overhead, mewling, “Ooo, Ooo, me, pick me, pickme, I wanna be on the commission!!”
” …peak credulity meets peak bullshit.” -JHK
This is the space that they insist on (and seem to revel in) dwelling. I imagine they’ll remain there, come hell and high water.
I take no joy whatsoever in contemplating future “difficulties”, but I’m looking toward the possible [perhaps, remote?] survival of family. Since no one else seems to want to think about it much, this somebody gets the dubious “priviledge”. If others scoff, and tell us to dance and play the fiddle all the live-long day, that’s their lookout. (They should, however, be very careful about twisting the words and phrases of those they disagree with and are trying to shout down with sheer volume; it’s a singularly identifying trait and tactic of the consummate dissembler, liar and propagandist. My reading comprehension and retention informs me of this Orwellian turn. Call me paranoid… go ahead, it doesn’t hurt my feelings. ;o)
-The only way out is through.
Ouch!
“Nightmare on Ninety-One”.
What you say about the Unstoppable Leviathan, leads to speculations of ugly reckonings. Is it to be headlong into the brick wall? I’d like to believe “not”, but what I’d like has very little to do with it, does it? (Maybe if I were a Walton, my wishes might become realities, by dint of large slatherings of filthy lucre, judiciously squeezed from producers and laborers.)
I read your editorial with great interest. You are about the first organization to report on the Bakken oil reservoir accurately. I am a petroleum engineer with many years of experience – both domestic and foiregin. I have made extensive studies of the Bakken reservoir. While theere are huge volumes of oil in place only a saml fractiuon can be recovered – likely in the order of 5-7 billion barrels of oil over a long period of time. The same parameters hold true on other shale oil reservoirs. Fracing is not the porblem – fresh water aquifers are thousands of feet above the oil reservoir and fracing cannot possible contaminate them.
In short we are a havenot nation for oil reserves and the politicians had better pull their heads out of their dark places. We need Canadian oil and the XL Pipeline badly. Also, open up Federal landsfor exploration. ANWR is a big step – yet it remains closed.
My blog: http://www.energycrisis12@blogspot,com
As a long time petroleum engineer I can assure you that the IEA predictions are a bunch of CRAP. In fact, I doubt that we can even come close to satifying our domestic market. Kunsler article is correct in most of its conclusions. We need the XL Pipeline out of Canada badly. We also must open up Federal lands onshore and offshore if we are to have decent supplemental oil production. We are stuck with imports PERIOD from now on.
In time we may be able to create new fuels for transportation – biofuels from anything other than algae is not practical. Moreover, algae is still in the research stage. Electric autos need long term operating batteries -to manufacure batteries requires fossil energy.
See my blog: http://www.energycrisis12@blogspot.com. My e-book – The Sky Will NOT Fall – Unmasking the Green Revolution (Amazon, Barnes & Noble)
stroll over to one of the city’s five Stumptown Coffee Roasters locations.). so you’ll get the discount. Cherish it. Whether professional treatment is able to moderate the long-term psychological effects of abuse is a question that remains unanswered”Postpartum depression. . Make sure you have nice pair of sunglasses.
How to Look Preppy and Mature Start with your hair Write Anyway, I knew that I wanted to talk about writing, the usual term is “predict”. (On the other hand, 2012 | 7:09Radio Noon NL E-waste recycling program. they are there, The first time I met him was actually the first time that I got to present to him and show him some initial kinds of concepts of what his first shoe could be and we sat down with his mom and dad there, I actually set up Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on his computer for him so he was sending me color combinations, Lay wonton wrappers on prepared sheet and place the filling of your choice in the middle of each wrapper – no more than about 1 Tbsp total.
rotating baking sheet once during cooking, These scenes are enhanced tremendously by a classical soundtrack. the audience begins letting their eyes and, I am in my eighth class and have had 3 doctorate prepared facilitators. The faculty were doctorally prepared and were excellent to work with. and winter. I know hardly anything at all of healing.” The story of Tim Hortons is one of death and tragedy, His business was his second home.Wholesale catalog printing is a retail merchant’s best friend.
shoes, get ready to burn lots of calories as you walk around all day exploring them. the United States,Olorosos, from midnight to dawn, Never a mortgage. Was it money that “bought” happiness,Joe DiMaggio was Better Than Mickey Mantle When He Returned From the Army ‘ Mickey was a switch hitter, the building doesn’t crackle with energy the way it used to.
not intended to offend and no more valid than the next fellow’s,1 Billboard Female Artist of the year. and Shelly, but each design shoes, and even dropped out of school for a day, Supposedly, We did Black Sabbath; we did a number of others, then if it looks a little “risky” (to them) then mention a guarantee.
Climate change is continual – the Earth is either warming or cooling. However, all parts of the globe do not experience the same effects. For man to control the Earth’s climate has some pretty stringent requirements, among them are: alter the declination of the Earth’s axis, contol the Earth’s wobble on its axis, vary its orbit around the sun, control sunspot activity, control solar storms, contol meteor collisons. Now let’s talk about just things happening on our planet – control the movement of the tectonic plates (they effect ocean currents, affect wind currents, and re-locate the land masses), control volcanic activity and earthquakes,and control population growth. Seem simple?
Human effects on climate are miniscule. Moreover, most scientists do not hold with global warming being created by man. Besides consensus is not science – real science is gaining absolute proof of theories by repeatedly performing experiments until they give the same answer each time. Then one can say the theory is proven.
http://www.energycrisis12@blogspot.com. e-book – The Sky Will NOT Fall – Unmasking the Green Revolution (Amazon, Barnes & Noble). Forthcoming e-book – Beyond Our Control -Debunking Manmade Global Warming.
I’m aware that Hubbert was a petroleum geologist. But I’ll stand by my statement that peak oil is not a purely geological phenomenon. I hope you can come to understand that my reason for doing so does not spring from any desire to move goalposts, jigger numbers, or play pop psych games. It’s simply that I find it important to recognize that the point at which a well, or a field, or a region, etc, reaches peak production is not solely determined by the geology and/or engineering. It’s also determined by economics. And — whether you like it or not — as soon as one enters the realm of economics, one is attempting to quantify, analyze, and predict the infinitely nuanced interactions between large numbers of humans acting both competitively and cooperatively in seeking satisfaction of their basic needs — as well as a great deal that arguably has very little to do with that; pet rocks, personalized licence plates, whatever.
I have to assume that most of the assembled here are familiar with the basics; lowest hanging fruit, diminishing returns, etc, and would understand why a great deal of oil will always remain in the ground no matter what (as long as the main reason for going after it is to obtain a net energy gain). I would also hope that it is not necessary to explain that “peak oil” refers to a rate of production, but the three statements you made here:
>>It is also why we have not yet reached peak oil. And we may never. The stuff may just continue to sit in the ground.
do not seem to me to reflect a very good understanding of that. Hubbert’s model assumes that the point of peak production will occur not because there ceases to be a strong market for oil, or that humans cease to exist, or that human society collapses, or any of a number of other reasons that would unquestionably have the effect of determining the point at which global oil production reaches its maximum rate, even if just as a side effect. His model is based on the observation that production does peak, period, and his explanation of why that happens is based on fundamental principles of geology and engineering. Again, I will not dispute that these fundamental principles are not subject to the whims of perception; they are hard, uncaring realities.
You will not find a more enthusiastic supporter of movements such as minimalist living or relocalization, so you’re preaching to the choir there. My own home is 100% solar (grid connected, though), and I grow as much of my own food as my resourses allow, boycott WalMart on general principles, and gladly pay higher prices to support local merchants (even the few I would not count as personal friends). I must plead guilty to still burning 10 or so gallons of gasoline a month in my car, but with an excuse: I have some physical limitations that would make it an extreme hardship to eliminate those few miles of driving.
I’m probably just a bit more cynical about how well these sorts of practices are catching on, and, with apologies, I have to dismiss as laughable the notion that these “are why we have not yet reached peak oil”. I would LOVE to believe that these efforts are already making a significant difference, but that cannot be the sole basis for adopting such practices into my life, because I just don’t see the evidence to support that. As I see it, we’re standing on the beach to stop the tide here. That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. I certainly am holding out some hope that it might provide me with just enough extra resiliance to permit me to survive at least some of the less-than-worst-case scenarios, but it may ultimately end up having been no more than the poetic thing to do, even if only in a quixotic sense.
If so, that’s enough for me. Besides, I don’t really see living the way I do as a big sacrifice anyway; it’s the way I prefer to live.
You don’t actually expect them to stop do you? Or let us go? Whites are a cancer according to them, and cancer has to eliminated. Susan Sontag (one of the Chosen) ammended her statement later, saying that it was an insult to cancer patients.
I sure wish you were right. However, as a petroleum engineer with many years of experience I can assure you that we will never even come close to overtaking Saudi reserves. One oil field in Saudi Arabia has been producing since 1950 and it still holds over 60 billion barrels of oil – about 5 times the US proven reserves. Canada ranks second in oil reerves – about 160 billion barrels. The tar sands are processed prior to being placed in a pipeline and do not pollute the region along the route. If oil pipelines polluted like many laymen believe then our whole planet would be a disaster.
Better check on pollution from ethanol. 1 gallon of ethanol has about 67% of the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. They both produce CO2 – hmmmm – which one produces the most per gallon. And, ethanol is harmful to combustion engines. http://www.energycrisis12@blogspot.com
Nice balanced post. A much need antidote to Asoka’s toxic and oh so American optimism. We should be riding in golf carts around our neighborhoods while the Elite will still use gasoline and cars. Hopefully they will respect our 25 mph zones…
They’ll get to use highways and expressways. Our roads wont really leave the city somehow, kind of like the Village.
How long does ethanol last? If a long time, it might be worth while to the survivalist since gasoline doesn’t last.
So are you saying that you would not kick me off this blog if you could? Because you believe in fairness and free speech? That would be very White of you if true…
“Hibbert was a petroleum geologist.”
A good rebounder too.
“I used to worry about the economic collapse. I used to worry about running out of oil. Long before either of those things really take effect, we are going to experience more Climate Change.”
I believe the exact reverse. Major impact from Climate Change is many decades into the future.
Collapse of mankind due to peak oil looms in the much nearer term.
In fact, Climate Change is liable to be much less severe than the more dire predictions would claim because we just flat out won’t have enough fossil fuels to jack up the greenhouse gas concentrations as much as those predictions assume.
Have you heard about this? Frightening if true, the last stroke of doom. They wouldn’t even have to flank the Constitution if they could simply change it.
http://www.wnd.com/2008/12/83364/
You say tomato, I say tomato.
Tomato, tomato,
Hibbert, Hubbert…
Let’s call this peak oil off!
Oh boy, housing starts for single family dwellings are up. All those illegal aliens who’ve been the dominant portion of the work force in the last two decades in construction/remodle of single family dwellings can be back employed! Hot damn!
But too, since deindustrialization has made the US economy realestate market dependent, without the constant pressure of high immigrant influx (legal and illegal) that market would be even more value depressed. Especially when is factored in how much of inner city housing stock is sub standard by current code requirements; so without that pressure much of that property would be condemed. So, the high immigration goes on as just another atificial market support.
Yeah, infrastructure generally overwhelmed by the high influx. So don’t kid yourself, high influx of immigrants is not maintained to comply with dreamy, air head sentiments for saving the world; it is — like all policy now — a disregard of long term consequences for sustaining profiteering in the short term by controlling economic interests.
One might easily be forgiven for supposing that peak oil is good news for climate change, but I’m afraid that in reality it’s quite the opposite.
One consequence of an overall decline in EROEI is that even before the finished fuels are actually burned, they have already aquired greater carbon footprints from the extraction and refining processes themselves than did the previous generations of fuels obtained from cleaner, more accessible sources. It’s important to remember that while all oil is fossil fuel, not all fossil fuel is oil. There’s coal to keep in mind, and while the good news is that we have plenty of it, that’s also the bad news from a purely environmental standpoint.
And that’s before we even start talking about all those mountains of junk tires we’ve been trying to find ways to get rid of, or the one source of potental fuel that arguably could represent the worst possible news from an environmental standpoint: the enormous amounts of carbon locked up in methane hydrates. A lot of that will destabilize on its own as global temperature rises (it’s happening already) but we’re talking about an amount of hydrocarbon estimated to be more than twice that of all known fossils fuels on Earth, and efforts are underway to figure out effective ways to exploit it as fuel. I’m not a praying man, but if I were, one of the things I’d be praying for is that none of those efforts will ever succeed. As an alternative to oil, coal is bad enough.
If we had chosen to stick with rails instead of roads as the primary base of our transportation infrastructure, we might actually be in better shape even if it meant relying even more on coal than we do now, but it’s a moot point; those decisions were locked in decades ago, and we can’t just wave a magic wand and covert our entire system to electricity (powered by coal, gas, nukes, or what-have-you).
No matter which way you turn, you run into the same problem: it costs energy to make stuff. That means it costs energy to replace stuff, upgrade stuff, or even just maintain stuff — so the more expensive energy becomes, the more we’re going to be forced to make do with what we’ve got. I seem to recall JHK having touched on this point once or twice.
Here’s an interesting Richard Heinberg essay:
http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/?p=832#more-832
Yes, I clicked on a link to another blog. Also, there are some great Italian cardigan sweaters available at another.
Let’s go for the deepest change.
How do we keep new systems flexible and responsive? How to prevent new patterns of thinking and living from becoming ossified and dysfunctional?
Many earlier folks kept this from happening, so it’s a reasonable goal. Part of it is undermining the concept that bigger is better, but I’m sure there’s much more, quite likely a spiritual component.
Your thoughts?
that point has been driven home by hurricane Sandy, that if the damage $50bn, that means $50bn worth of hydrocarbon energy will have to be used to put things right.
things don’t get fixed of their own accord, everything needs energy input.
Eventually we will reach the point where whatever nature knocks down stays down.
we’re going to be forced to make do with what we’ve got.
============
That is a fatalistic, deterministic, pessimistic, and boring point of view which totally denies human ingenuity.
If the laws of physics were in control, we would not have flying machines. Gravity would prevent it and gravity did prevent it for millenia.
Saying we are just gonna “be forced to make do with what we’ve got” is an insult to humanity, which has never “made do with what we’ve got” … we have always extended and modified what we’ve got in ways that seemed unimaginable … until someone imagined how to do it.
No techno miracles. No cornucopia. Just a healthy appreciation for human history and a refusal to surrender so easily to fatalistic pessimism (or what some of y’all think of as “realism.”
We hit peak oil production globally in 2005, according to peak oil theorists.
Yet the oil production numbers show otherwise.
2007 … 84,261.9
2008 … 84,318.1
2009 … 85,356.3
2010 … 86,751.4
2011 … 87,092.6
That real enough for you?
Pitting human idealism against entropy, idealism wins again and again.
I’m not a physicist, but I’m not aware of flying breaking any laws of physics. A perpetual flying machine, maybe.
Gravity, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
yup—spiritual is the way to go
we can pray our way out of this.
saves all the messy side of actually doing anything
sheesh
this oil peak thing is difficult to drive home
these are the figures for oil liquids, not biofuels, tarsands, the easy stuff that flows out of wells, Jed Clampett oil. not bakken shales or any other fantasies
2004 72.5 Million barrels/day
2005 73.8
2006 73.5
2007 73.0
2008 73.7
2009 72.3 (production drop after recession)
2010 74.09
2011 74.06
2005 was the year we hit the oil production plateau, by 2008 it was obvious world output was static so speculation was inevitable. Oil hit $147 a barrel, from $20 a decade earlier. That was unsustainable so the world economy crashed because oil was unaffordable to the majority of the world’s trading nations. Oil underpins the world commercial system, which can only sustain itself if there is a constantly increasing input of it, together with coal and gas
If there was any easy oil left to find, they wouldn’t be putting 000’s of wells into the Bakken or ripping up Athabasca
You drop a rock, it falls to the ground. You throw it into the air, it fall to the ground. Do this millions of times and your mind may begin to think things cannot stay up in the air. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Until someone thinks of a way around.
It’s not that the laws of physics are being broken by flying machines, it’s that no one thought of going around them because their thinking was limited by false determinism.
Kind of like some people think the end of oil means the end of human progress, or the end of oil means the end of human comfort, or the end of oil means the end of rapid human travel. Thinking that way tends to preclude thinking of a way of going around oil. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is thinking limited by false determinism.
>>That is a fatalistic, deterministic, pessimistic, and boring point of view which totally denies human ingenuity.
I submit that if that were true, camping would not be such a popular recreational activity. My own travels have included a fair amount of what I call “camping for real” — and in my experience, there’s nothing boring about it. Often calls for considerable ingenuity as well. Especially if done on a tight budget.
>>We hit peak oil production globally in 2005, according to peak oil theorists. Yet the oil production numbers show otherwise.
I believe you are mischaracterizing the position shared by a growing number of quite respectable oil industry analysts which is that global production hit a plateau in 2005. Include the numbers from that year as well as 2006 (which I cannot help but notice that you have omitted) and you may see it. Many analysts have predicted an “undulating plateau” of uncertain duration rather than a sudden, sharp decline — which would not be what we would expect to see even in an ideal Hubbert curve anyway.
As for the lessons of history, I believe that our present situation is unique. Never before have so many depended so much upon a single resource. Perhaps you have a counterexample in mind?
What is you source?
these are the figures for oil liquids, not biofuels, tarsands, the easy stuff that flows out of wells, Jed Clampett oil.
So, now you are deciding what kind of oil should be counted as production?
So, now you are defining what kind of oil should be counted based on how “easy” it is to harvest?
So, now you are changing the definitions, the rules, and the numbers, just to make them fit what you insist is “peak oil” … because the real global production numbers include biofuels, including hard to harvest oil and that doesn’t fit with your preconceived notions of what oil production is. More comforting that way isn’t it? You can discount whole nations, with whole fleets of vehicles (trucks, cars, motorcycles, etc.) that operate on renewable liquid energy sources, which in your world view wasn’t supposed to happen because we are “running out” and liquid fuels are supposed to be “finite.” If the facts don’t fit your model, just change the parameters until you get new “facts.” Nice.
>>So, now you are deciding what kind of oil should be counted as production?
I find this to be a valid objection.
As for the lessons of history, I believe that our present situation is unique.
It has always been so, back to the days of Socrates. People always believe their situation is unique.
Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. — Socrates
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. — Albert Einstein
I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Thomas Edison
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. — Winston Churchill
The journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step. — Confucius
CFN Defeatism: “We are so fucked!”
CORRECTION
CFN Defeatist Mantra: “We are so fucked!”
Repeat over and over until you are paralyzed and absolved of all guilt. Continue having children, eating your barbeque, and driving your vehicles.
Repeat the CFN mantra over and over and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Demonize those who bring up evidence not supporting the mantra.
Call those who don’t religiously repeat the CFN mantra “cornucopians,” dwellers in the land of unicorns, rainbows, and peppermint candy, irrational, crazy, mentally ill, and starry-eyed idealists detached from “reality.”
Those believers in techno-miracles who ignore the CFN mantra are denying reality, but they will get theirs: because “nature bats last.”
Remember: things work … until they don’t. Black swans are unpredictable and billions of people are going to suffer and die! These are all part of the CFN catechism.
We are so fucked!
>>It has always been so, back to the days of Socrates. People always believe their situation is unique.
I pointed to a very specific aspect of our present situation which makes it unique: our extreme dependence on cheap oil. Our entire society is built around it. Do you dispute that? Can you provide an example of a previous point in history when so many depended so heavily upon a single resource?
Our entire society is built around it. Do you dispute that? Can you provide an example of a previous point in history when so many depended so heavily upon a single resource?
I can provide you with a specific example. Can you draw the correct conclusion?
The entire population of the world was once dependent on water power. This was before oil became ascendent.
The vertical waterwheel, invented perhaps two centuries before the time of Christ, spread across Europe within a few hundred years. By the end of the Roman era, waterwheels powered mills to crush grain, full cloth, tan leather, smelt and shape iron, saw wood, and carry out a variety of other early industrial processes. Locations with good water-power resources became centers of economic and industrial activity.
During the Middle Ages, hydraulic engineers mounted mills on boats and bridges, and from these evolved hydropower dams to store and develop water pressure and to divert water into power canals and thence onto wheels.
By the fifteenth century, large milling complexes in France signaled the reality of industrial dependence on water power. The development of the camshaft and crankshaft allowed water power to be applied to tasks that required a reciprocating motion (e.g., operating trip hammers and blast furnace bellows), which revolutionized the iron industry. The number of watermills in Europe increased steadily. Larger and larger water-powered industrial complexes emerged, culminating in large water-powered cotton mills operated during the 1770s by William Strutt and Richard Arkwright in England.
By 1800, citizens of the newly established United States were importing English style textile factories, and within two decades expansive water-powered industrial cities emerged in Lowell, Massachusetts and other New England locations. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, Euro-American industry depended for energy almost entirely on water power.
So, there you have it, Lifesupport. A specific example. Our situation is not at all unique. The world being dependent on oil now is not that different than the world being dependent on water previously.
What is your point? That we can’t go back. Indeed we can’t. Can you think of an antonym to “backward”? I’m sure you can… if you can free your mind from the paralyzing power of the CFN mantra.
Asoka, LifeSupport… I have stated this before, but we waste so much energy that if we could find ways to make better use of the waste it would greatly change the energy markets. Electricity generation is 50% efficient at best. Automobiles are 20% efficient at best. We wouldn’t be talking about energy depletion at this point if we had been using it at 90% efficiency. But alas we didn’t, so here we are. I am curious as to how other countries without much energy resources have not come up with ways to make the most use of their imports. I am thinking of Japan and Sweden; two very capable countries that aren’t doing things much differently than we are.
Which of the following persons made the famous quip “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”
Was it:
(a) The creator of the cartoon character Sylvestor;
(b) Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping; or
(c) Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, on whether Obama should be President of the United States.
Thanks.
Dwindling Food Supply Forces Haitians to Eat Mud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxT7qxkzjRsOct 16, 2008 – 2 min – Uploaded by AssociatedPress
… than half of Haiti’s harvest, forcing many people to survive on a mud pies.
How many calories are in Mud?
I dont like to think about it.
>>The entire population of the world was once dependent on water power.
Heh. Well, nice try and all, really. I appreciate the honest effort.
Let me put it this way: Have you ever been to Phoenix in July or August? I mean, there’s dependent and then there’s dependent. Your paste job includes one observation I find particularly pertinent: “Locations with good water-power resources became centers of economic and industrial activity“. So what would be the WaterWheelWorld correlate to, say, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles? If the water wheels all ground to a halt, how much of the economic activity would cease? How long would it take those people to devise workarounds, given their skill sets? What percentage of those populations would have been immediately threatened with starvation or death due to exposure to extreme environments from which they had only the protection provided by water wheel technology?
Cuba also comes to mind.
Every time in history is unique. Los Angeles and Las Vegas are unique. The Chenla Kingdom of the 8th century was unique. What is your point?
Your saying we are now living in a unique time is meaningless. You are still looking backward, not forward. You are thinking in catastrophic terms, comparing the past to our current addiction to oil. You are still not seeing beyond our dependence on oil. Nor are you seeing the limits, the poverty, of oil as a source of energy.
This is not unusual. From inside a phenomenon it is difficult to get perspective. Looking back someday we will see the oil era, and its anemic power capabilities, the way we can see the water power era now and its anemic power capabilities relative to oil.
Trust me that in 1600 CE no one could have imagined the energy possibilities oil would bring. Just as in 2012 CE we cannot imagine a post-oil energy source that dwarfs oil in terms of energy output.
Many with no vision can only exclaim enthusiastically, with the conviction of true believers: “We are so fucked!”
“…we’re standing on the beach to stop the tide here. That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. I certainly am holding out some hope that it might provide me with just enough extra resiliance to permit me to survive at least some…”
-lifesupport-
Nice sentiments, lifesupport.
That’s why I’m here, too.
“So don’t kid yourself, high influx of immigrants is not maintained to comply with dreamy, air head sentiments for saving the world; it is — like all policy now — a disregard of long term consequences for sustaining profiteering in the short term by controlling economic interests.”
-cavepainter-
Exactly, Cave, just like JHK said this week.
Fraud rules the land.
And, everybody needs to understand that I own a bunch of US real estate and rental property. The influx of immigrants benefits me in the short term. I’m completely willing to give that up – forever, because lower growth for the US and the rest of the world is the only way we (or some of the world’s population, at least) has a chance of surviving.
Lower growth for the US population is the only sustainable strategy, long term.
Cuba may yet become the England of the Caribbean. If she faces her difficult situation with truth, and she keeps her secrets for herself, she can be quite powerful. This may take a few hundred years. This depends on the citizenry being on the same page. Meanwhile, the bitches to the north won’t be giving up so easily. FUN!
You’re confused, RI.
Of course CFN is used to you being confused.
But you are now confusing casual readers with your twisting of standard language conventions.
Let’s review. There are three categories of reason to be in favor of high legal OR illegal immigration into the US, as follow:
1. All Growth is always good.
2. All Diversity is always good.
3. Moral platitudes (nation of immigrants, etc.)
So, RI, when you say:
“You are wrong on the immigration question, too. Immigrants are job creators and contributors to America. That is not a moral platitude. It’s a fact.” -a soaker hose- *
You are making a statement concerning the fact that “growth is always good.”
Unfortunately, you are labeling your statement as a “moral platitude.”
In either case, you’re wrong.
But let’s keep the terminology correct, anyway.
*and for new posters who think I’m being too hard on our Resident Impediment. All I can say is that you’re new here, right?
Stick around a couple of weeks and try to engage him on something important or substantive.
Then you will understand the RI label.
Nice cut-and paste job there, Soak.
You’re such a putz!
>>You are still not seeing beyond our dependence on oil.
Well I am, actually. Anyone who has read, say, World Made By Hand can hardly help but do so.
>>Trust me that in 1600 CE no one could have imagined the energy possibilities oil would bring. Just as in 2012 CE we cannot imagine a post-oil energy source that dwarfs oil in terms of energy output.
Nukes then. Fine and dandy. So where are the investors? Until they appear, imaginary is a very apt word for your proposed energy source. I believe I’ve also heard it referred to as hallucinating energy sources.
Heard last Sunday during pro football game:
“Hold’n, dee finse, tin yot pinalty, audomadic ferse down.”
Quiz: Was referee:
. White
. Black
. Red
. Yellow
I’ll figure Ref was talkin’ Ebonics, I also have some beautiful butternut squash for Thursday. The turkey is fat and happy. Wait till Wed night!! Poor sum’ bitch! He does’t have a clue! Apple wood smoked and happy to make his contribution!I am a heartless bastard!
I also have a cinnamon pumpkin wine that is hmm,hmm good. On a sour note one of my neighbors died in a house fire sunday night. He was 92 so I guess he can’t complain too much. althouth there are better ways to go. I have been doing his garden, leaves, snow and lawn for years. I knew him for more than 100 seasons.
As Jim says, forget about oil as a long term source of energy. It’s archaic anyway. What we need to do is to tap into the source of the directed energy that was used to turn buildings 1, 2 and 7 of the World Trade Center into dust. And as an added bonus, this occurred with no creation of radioactive fallout. Of course, if those who applied the directed energy, used oil to somehow create it, then we may not be any further ahead in the energy game. Nevertheless it would be good if those folks who used directed energy to turn the buildings to dust, would reveal how they did it.
Reduce by one more, the number of humans on a finite Earth, who can (or should) be loved.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2235811/CCTV-girl-16-punched-ground-random-attack.html
===================
On a completely unrelated note –
Good to hear from you, always, rippedthunder.
That’s rough about your neighbor.
I’m sorry.
Hope you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Well I am, actually. Anyone who has read, say, World Made By Hand can hardly help but do so.
==============
This is a semantic issue, a distinction without a difference. You are looking beyond, but what you hallucinate looks like some kind of past (also imaginary BTW) because it is impossible to go backwards when we already have a greatly increased knowledge base. It would be like you trying to go back to an existence in which you don’t know how to multiply. You learned the multiplication tables. You cannot unlearn them.
You seem incapable of imagining a future which is energy rich yet not based on traditional fossil fuels or traditional nuclear energy, just like the poor bloke in 1600 could not imagine the energy world 400 years hence because oil as a principal energy source was not on his radar. It’s OK. Perfectly understandable.
In any event this whole discussion is academic. We have not yet reached peak oil. We are not on the downside slope of the Hubbert curve. I cannot say what it is (this is a condition imposed by Taleb) but in the decades to come we have time to develop something far superior to oil that is not even on our radar right now. You know, Taleb’s positive Black Swan.
There is no limit to the number of people we can love.
You can love that guy in the video, if you choose.
But you better love him from a distance.
Up close, he’d kill you, love and all.
Anecdotal incidents prove nothing. For example, this USA Marine beating a cab driver. The Marine got upset after refusing to share a cab with another rider.
Can’t generalize anything from this kind of incident.
The only thing for sure is there is no limit to the number of people we can love.
NC cab driver attack caught on tape, Marine arrested
http://www2.wbtw.com/news/2012/sep/11/nc-cab-driver-attack-caught-tape-marine-arrested-ar-4523475/
anti soak does this kind of thing all the time. Cherry picks an unusual incident by a member of group x, as if it makes a statement about all members of group x.
“Cherry picks an unusual incident by a member of group x, as if it makes a statement about all members of group x.” –Asoka
===========
Asoka himself made this same mistake. Took the unusual incident of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then generalized that whites are morally-challenged. That was an error. Asoka later apologized.
There is no limit to the number of people we can love … and that means people of all colors.
Obama got no use 4 u, ngg@
CNSNews.com) – Fresh off his reelection, President Barack Obama is asking his supporters to complete a survey that asks the people being polled to check off which “constituency groups” they identify with – there are 22 groups listed but not one for “whites” or “men.”
The Knock Out Game
Polar bear Hunting…
Those who voted for Obama, blame y’rselves.
How about 30,000 rapes a year?
Does that prove anything?
When society starts to deride the people who know what Reality is (more or less) such as James Howard Kunstler, Dmitri Orlov, Max Kaiser, Paul Craig Roberts, Ron Paul, Chris Hedges, Alex Jones, Gerald Celente, etc., as deranged, fringe lunatics it’s probably a sign that the ship is going to go down.
“The Mad are Sane, and the Sane are Mad…
Get yours now…
While it’s there to be had….”
Yes, that you believe what you read on the web.
The statistics you cite are supposedly from the Dept. of Justice.
Rape/sexual assault (a), Race of victim:
White only 117,640: perceived race of offender: 74.9% white, 16.4%* black
Black only 46,580: perceived race of offender: 0.0%* white, 74.8%* black
The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases.”
Misreading #1: The numbers are not about “rape” but “rape and sexual assault (a)”. Sexual assault means any kind of unwanted sexual touching, like groping or kissing. And the “(a)” means “Includes verbal threats of rape and threats of sexual assault”. So it is way more than just rape. Rape is probably just a small part of it.
Misreading #2: Notice that the star meaning “ten or fewer” applies not just to white-on-black “rape and sexual assault (a)” but to black-on-white cases too! So if we claim that ten or fewer black women were raped by white men then we should also say that ten or fewer white women were raped by black men!
Misreading #3: The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases”, the key word here being “sample”. They did not ask everyone in the country but a sample of 77,852 people, about one in 4,000. So there could have been as many as 40,000 black women raped by white men that year!
Misreading #4: The reason for the star is because ten or fewer sample cases are way too few to draw any firm statistical conclusions. Mere chance could throw the numbers way off.
As it turns out, of the 77,852 people surveyed, only 56 people reported “rape and sexual assault (a)”. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) only 7.5% of sexual assaults are rapes and of those only 6.7% are between whites and blacks. So out of the 56 sample cases, maybe only 4 were rape and of those probably none were interracial.
So this is a case of white people seeing what they want to see, of misreading facts to fit racist stereotypes.
Everyone thought that Noah (Dmitri Orlov) was Mad because he was building his ark….
Collapse makes good sport for amateur historians, and as many would-be pundits raced backward through the bearish landmarks of American financial history—1998, 1987, 1974, 1929, 1907, 1873, 1837—in search of an impressively jarring analogy for current events, Nassim Taleb, the “Black Swan” theorist, was busy rereading Cicero and Herodotus (“the ancients saw things very clearly”), and thinking more along the lines of 483 B.C., when Xerxes ordered the waters of the Hellespont whipped, out of frustration over the destruction of his bridges. Xerxes’ superstitious arrogance, Taleb felt, was no different from our own scientific arrogance, which had been building steadily since the Enlightenment…
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_mcgrath#ixzz2CpeoEyl8
Young Black women punches 70 year old White Walmart Greeter in the face when she asked to see her receipt. The Greeter is so traumatized she can’t work or even leave her home. The Black Woman got five years. Do you agree that this is a just sentence for this animal?
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/11/shocking-video-reveals-moment-woman-shopper-punched-elderly-walmart-greeter-as-she-is-jailed-for-five-years/
You got that from Amren didn’t you? But you wont link to the site to help awaken more Whites. Why not? Surely you are begining to see the reasons for things like Jim Crow now?
The choice is clear: separate or die.
It’s not in dispute that all this stuff can be done, the problem is in numbers
In the era of water and windmills, only a few hundred million relied on their power output, and got a pretty meagre living out of it at that
now we have 7 billion, most of whom expect unlimited energy supplies to simply ”appear”
we can keep things in the air, but we have only one means with which to do it.
the Wright brothers used the force of exploding chemicals, as did the first firework makers 1000 years previously in China. ICBMs and spaceflight use the same principle, even thought the chemicals themselves may vary.
All other methods of overcoming gravity in any practical context must use the reactive forces of chemical explosion. How far we travel depends on the amount of chemical force we use.
The same applies to ground based vehicles, we use chemical force to drive our wheeled transport.
Maglev trains are an exception, but these have limited practical use in the context of our general infrastructure
In today’s Daily Mail. Government report proves 25% of child sex abuse gangs are Asian Muslims. Asian muslims make up less that 5% of the population. UK government body maintains that this proves nothing. British National Party warned about these gangs years ago but were vilified as racist(which is partly true). Problem is even a broken clock is right twice a day. By dismissing others because your ideology doesn’t agree with them you run the real risk that you ignore real problems. This is asoka’s blind spot, though I certainly agree that the world could do with a whole lot more love and less hatred and bitterness.
“Have you ever been to Phoenix in summer” — Life support to Asoka.
Hey lifesupport, Asoka LIVES in Phoenix, year round.
LifeSupport, Howdryl, NJP1 and a few others, excellent posts this week, extremely knowledgeable and well written on the subject of peak oil. Pretty helpful material to a skeptic and lay person like myself.
Happy Thanksgiving CFNers!
–WSP7
See now why I claim CFNers are naive and gullible, terrible predictors of the future, with suppressed wishes for the worst to happen to humanity? That is you, ProCon: uncritical of JHK, unthinking, and obsessed with immigration.
right on baby, you cfn’ers are a terrible, miserable lot that revel in destruction and massive misfortune. too bad virtually none of your prognostications (will) ever come to pass. World’s getting better and better. Become positive and enter the light!
peace peaceniks
I think that it only makes sense to be “positive”, “optimistic”, and “upbeat” when one is actively taking steps to improve the situation. For example, it makes sense for a big, fat bloke to be optimistic when he’s exercizing and eating healthy foods. It isn’t rational for a big fat bloke to be optimistic when he continues to eat fried chicken and nachos.
American society appears to be in a hopeless state of delusion and denial. Not good….
It’s not going to get better.
I think that it only makes sense to be “positive”, “optimistic”, and “upbeat” when one is actively taking steps to improve the situation.
totally agree. which is why i plant plants to help the earth/atmosphere, don’t have a car, compost, recycle…multiply this millions of times over and we’ve got an improving situation on hand.
the scales of conscientiousness have definitely tipped to earth’s favour in europe and large swaths of the untied states, even south america. india and china are basically the basket cases fucking with the environment major. not that we can’t improve more on our end – we are and continue to do so.
plant a plant today. we have 40 tomato plants, 20 jilo plants (look it up on google images) and numerous flowers in a space no larger than 3 meters x 1 meter.
we are getting a .10 acre garden plot soon, we’re going to plant lots of healthy vegetables, along with some fruit trees. no pesticides, if we have an infestation we mix up some pepper/other stuff to ward off pests. or we buy a carton of natural predators for a few dollars and loose them to rain down holy hell on the bad bugs eating our arucula lol.
peace peaceniks
Ultimately our only energy source is the sun, so it follows that all our energy, in whatever form we use it, is derived from the sun. Our oil coal and gas is just fossilised sunlight. We have decided to burn 200 million years worth in 200 years.
That’s where global warming comes in.
Energy cannot be created, only converted from one form to another, incurring losses in doing so.
If the laws of thermodynamics state that we cannot create energy, then we will only be able to use what we have–at a loss.
But there is an insistence that ‘technology’ will preserve our lifestyle into infinity.
It won’t, you can create technology by the use of energy, but you cannot create energy by using technology
We certainly do have a greatly increased knowledge base, and I would not seek to minimize that in any way the strength and adaptability it can provide. It’s not just the extent of that knowledge base that makes it so powerful, either, but the ease with which it can be accessed.
A couple of seasons back, conditions were evidently favorable to a massive explosion in the local earwig population, and while I’ve known them to poke a few holes here and there in lettuce leaves and whatnot, I was having entire plants reduced to naked stalks overnight. At first, I had a hard time accepting that it was even earwigs doing it. Once I overcame that mental obstacle, it took maybe five minutes of searching to come up with a solution I found to be spectacularly successful: shallow traps baited with a ~50/50 mix of soy sauce and corn syrup. They love the stuff, and you can recover most of it for re-use by straining the earwigs out. Within a week, my remaining crops were thriving unmolested, and I was wondering what earwig burgers would taste like. (It’s the pinchers that would be the issue, I think).
It swings both ways, though. The “poor bloke in 1600” had only his own experience to rely on, and that of the small group of people to whom he had access, and no doubt placed great value on each pearl of wisdom in his collection (the fact that many of them were of dubious value by modern standards notwithstanding). I’ve basically outsorced most of that. If I want to try my hand at an origami swan, or a Doc Watson tune, I just go clickety-click, and before my cup of tea has cooled enough to drink, I’ve got somebody walking me through the process step by step in a Youtube video. That mean that if there’s a power outage (something the “poor bloke in 1600” never experienced) it’s not just that most of my stuff quits working, it’s that my connection to my largely-outsorced knowledge base is suddenly severed.
It’s one of the reasons that I would draw a line between the extent of the social disruption that would occur in the face of a sudden, severe curtailing of our oil supply and that which would occur if power grids failed. Happily, our direct reliance on oil for electrical generation is negligible; but the support systems for the power plants are still very dependent upon reliable supplies of petroleum-derived fuels. Replacement parts must be manufactured and shipped; power lines in remote locations must be maintained; etc.
If the plan is to shift the bulk of our transportation infrastructure toward electricity (generated from coal, the flapping of Black Swans’ wings, or whatever), we should already be [i]massively[/i] upgrading our electrical transmission infrastructure to accomodate that. If a full awareness of the scope of the impending energy crisis had penetrated to the level of policymakers, I would expect to see that awareness reflected as an almost desperate effort to insure that the last of the affordable oil wealth is allocated as wisely as possible. I’m really not seeing that.
>>You seem incapable of imagining…
To a first approximation, imagining is how I have earned a living for many decades. The thing I’ve discovered, though, is that in order to experience an actual payday it’s necessary to convert those imaginings into some tangible form. If I could have made money simply hallucinating, I’d have been a rich man before I was twenty.
>>We have not yet reached peak oil. We are not on the downside slope of the Hubbert curve.
That may well be true, but we’re about at the point where most of the projections converge. One of the things that makes peak oil such a tricky issue to deal with is that it’s something that can only be seen in the rear-view mirror (interesting, isn’t it, how absolutely filthy our language is in automotive metaphors?) — in other words, by the time we can clearly see it, we [i]will[/i] be on the downslope, and the most fortuitious time to deal with it will have already passed. Humans are just like that. “Floodplain schmloodplain” we say — until we’re standing knee deep in water.
“You got that from Amren didn’t you?”
-rv, in reference to cctv video I linked-
No, vlad, if you’ll look, you’ll see that that video is breaking news in the UK right now – and that I got it straight off the Guardian website.
Furthermore – I posted the link UNAWARE that there was a racial angle to the video. It took asoka..and antisoak and you to find that and harp on it.
From my perspective – I just saw it as an horrendous act of violence and felt like firing a warning shot across the bow of our resident..impediment, to point out to CFN that some people should not be loved. As WSP7 points out, CFN has several new posters – and they need to be aware that RI lives to impede, by twisting words and posting..too..much, here.
====================
Now – far beyond all of that, Vlad, don’t you think that AmRen links are often counterproductive, when posted to a site like CFN??
The comments – unless they’ve cleaned them up, somehow – reference an unnecessary amount of hate. And many posters there dwell in the “land of the impossible.”
As do you – with your “separation is the only answer” for the races in the US. That’s illegal, in the US, and as long as the Federal Govt. has minimal functionality – It will not happen.
As I’ve pointed out to you before – continuous verbal fantasizing about an impossible thing –
It’s counterproductive, Vlad.
And it paints you and your group in a very negative light among the public at large. You can’t see this – and you will now attempt to argue the opposite – ONLY because you are so closely involved with the fantasy – that you can’t see the reality.
>>Hey lifesupport, Asoka LIVES in Phoenix, year round.
Perfect! Lived there myself for some years. Then Asoka must surely appreciate the extent to which the lives of the people in that city depend on artificial means of support. It might as well be a Mars colony. I mean, what’s the actual year round carrying capacity of that valley?
“World’s getting better and better.”
-welles-
Welles, you find that to be true WHERE YOU ARE.
I’m happy for you, truly. But I’m not there.
I was actually thinking about you, specifically, the other day, here.
My tomatoes were mauled by about one HOT week that we had here in Georgia, in early June. Most of them survived the heat, but were never the same.
Then, lo and behold, in mid-October, after most of the vines had died, the Rutgers tomatoes began to respond to cooler temps. or rain, or something – and they began to set blooms and fruit like crazy. I bet I picked 50 nice green tomatoes before our first hard freeze put and end to everything.
Meanwhile – one of my, locally derived no less??, blueberry varieties was setting blooms and fruit in October. So, it’s not going to be worth much next Spring, when it is SUPPOSED to set blooms and fruit.
You are aware that large reptiles – sea turtles, specifically – survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, by the fact that they lived at the Equator?
My point, welles, is that things really may be better for you. That’s great.
Just don’t mock those of us who aren’t there.
And who don’t see things as getting all-better.
If nothing else – gloating creates bad karma.
I heartily agree!
Thanks folks, for providing some clear perspectives in an arena of copious smoke-blowing obfuscation and denial.
The only way anything is going to “get done” is to realize the dire straits that we’re [collectively] plunked in. That’s not happening, and I feel this lack of comprehension and downright misunderstanding can be attributed directly to happy-talking smoke-blowers in the service of monstrous profiteers. THAT is not helpful or innovation-producing (or at least no innovation that really means much); that is what happens when the theme song is, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. Why not be dependent on what is currently being provided, if one is told it will always be there for your comfort and pleasure throughout a long and languid life? Relaaaaax, “It’s All Good!”
Question:
If Chris Hedges writes a column that sounds out a strident warning, and it is only read by internet outliers that don’t believe in Empire [by any and all means], did he actually write it?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/elites_will_make_gazans_of_us_all_20121119/
“Those who cannot be of use to market forces are considered expendable. They have no rights and legitimacy. Their existence, whether in Gaza or blighted postindustrial cities such as Camden, N.J., is considered a drain on efficiency and progress. They are viewed as refuse. And as refuse they not only have no voice and no freedom; they can be and are extinguished or imprisoned at will. This is a world where only corporate power and profit are sacred. It is a world of barbarism.” -Chris Hedges
Ozone, BTBill, RipThunder, and a special Happy Thanksgiving to you my friends, my New Endland Comprades!
–WSP7
brilliantly put lifesupport
Thats New England, sorry.
“we can keep things in the air, but we have only one means with which to do it.”
Not quite accurate. Ever hear of gliders? They can stay in the air for a very long time using thermals.
gloating creates bad karma
who’s gloating? i’m merely stating positive steps we’re taking.
reduce everything to the minimum, grow your own food to an extent.
hell, i just threw 7 tomato seeds into the ground where i don’t know if they’ll take to the soil or not – but i’m trying, ya know?
one small step for mankind.
other day we buried a mango seed in an area covered with building debris, to try to get nature started beautifying the darn eyesore.
don’t knock the little things, if everyone did one tiny planting the world gets better. this is a well-known fact.
ain’t gloatin’ at all.
peace peaceniks
I think it’s important to correct this delusion about UK ‘hiding under the skirts’ of the USA with some hard historical scientific facts.
1 UK declared war on Germany in 1939
2 The Germans were working on nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, they were world leaders in rocket technology, the USA had B17s later B29s
3 We Brits held out until 41/42 when the Americans arrived. Had we not done so, there would have been no ‘British aircraft carrier’ for USA warplanes and men to land on.
5 With no other European airfield or ports available, the USA would have had to concentrate on the pacific war and stay out of the European war.
6 With Britain occupied, German industry would have carried on intact to produce nuclear weapons by, say 46? 47? their V2 rockets were proved effective, they only needed improve existing technology to cross the Atlantic. Even having nukes, the USA had no means to deliver them across the Atlantic.
7 With UK out of the war, Germany would have occupied the oilfields of the middle east, Iraq Saudi and Iran would have joined them (they were pro Nazi anyway) and closed Suez. Germany gains vast oil energy sources
8 Germany gets nukes and the means to deliver them on US cities.. USA has nothing to defend itself
9 A demonstration by Germany on a typical US city would have shown that the game was over.
10 The USA becomes a fascist dictatorship (about 80 years early, at a guess—but that’s another story)
All of that isn’t conjecture Without constant air attack, German industry would have delivered nukes, only my timing is guesswork but not more than a year out either way.
So let’s have no more of this ‘we saved yo ass’ nonsense huh?
quite the opposite, but Brits are too modest to point it out.
Yes, the divorce from reality is almost complete. Republicans and Democrats refuse to even acknowledge their own histories. When it comes to politics nothing strikes a chord quite like a few people with pitchforks and funny white hats to get people burning against change, until reality drop-kicks them in the face.
http://wp.me/p1LP6G-8k more here.
Following are a quote and a letter published in the local daily newspaper today:
“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.” -Sitting Bull
Competition for improvement
Many Americans love to compete. Or if they happen not to love it, they believe it is required of them to get along in the world.
There is a place for everything in this world, and competition can certainly serve a constructive purpose. But nearly everything can also be overdone or overemphasized.
Thus, I recommend that we Americans create a different paradigm when it comes to competing with one another.
Instead of continually struggling for one’s own self-interest and self-regard, this new way would be to focus our competitive energies into seeing who can create the most effective means for sharing the mercy and bounty our benevolent creator bestows upon us all.
Ron Greenstein
El Cerrito
“…other day we buried a mango seed in an area covered with building debris…”
-welles, not realizing how gloating sounds-
Look, if I drop a mango seed in the ground I get a rotten mango seed.
If ozone drops a mango seed in the ground he gets a FROZEN mango seed.
You’re in a great climate for survival and growing things year round. Honestly, man, you’re in a climate in which indolence and lack of worry may actually be REWARDED by evolution and other forces.
Without petroleum energy, most of the United States is not, repeat NOT such a place.
Packing the United States more and more full of immigrants is leading to a disaster – as soon as the easy energy for heating and agriculture runs out.
And the other issue is that our overpopulation and overproduction of CO2 up HERE may well render YOUR climate unsuitable for the “easy, happy” life, as well.
C’est la vie, I suppose.
===================
so, maybe, don’t be so quick to affirm asoka..who uses vile words of hate, like “xenophobe” against those with whom he simply disagrees
Especially when his hate-language targets are simply trying to help spread ideas that could improve things – for ALL humans – not just those few millions who manage to slip into the US over the next few years.
that conveniently ignores the fact that our species has two purposes, eating and procreation,
To do that we have to compete for the best food and the best breeding female
Which is why you see bimbos hanging on the arm of billionaires, they offer the best chances of offspring survival in the face of competition.
terrible I know
but you can’t buck nature.
Lordy, will it never end? Another turd from Mr One Percent.
Last week, along with scoffing at endless printing of fiat money (no hyperinflation here, never, nosiree) he said, in agreement with the renowned Dick Cheney, “Deficits don’t matter”.
This is NOT directed at College Boy because we know that his apparent self appointed role here is to advocate for the One Percent. And we all know the One Percent want a Fed dedicated to printing money. But, other than that, if not actively hostile, they don’t give a crap about the USA other than how can they flense money off it.
This rather is directed to anyone who might be wondering about this stuff like “deficits don’t matter”.
Economics might not be your bag nor maybe common sense, but that’s ok, nobody’s perfect. So I’ll say this: if you think deficits don’t matter then go to Europe and see whether they do or not.
But never mind that continent of greaseballs and degenerates (just kidding, they’re fine upstanding people… sometimes), what about the mighty USA? In the glorious soon to be formerly United States of America, do deficits matter?
Hmmmm. Let’s ask the Chinese. You see, they were formerly buying up gobs of US debt. But nowadays they’re apparently having second thoughts. So they evidently decided that deficits DO matter. Because their actions show they’re nervous about getting repaid, that maybe they’re being swindled.
Swindled? You bet. Not necessarily through outright default – yet – but rather through the more gradual default of debasement via the electronic printing press of the Federal Reserve.
And so what are the Chinese doing with their loot instead? According to various news outlets they’re lightening up on US treasuries. And doing what with all that money? I’ll tell you: buying up Canada. And Africa. And Pakistan. Yes Pakistan.
You see, the US isn’t the only game in town. There are valuable assets all over the world. Somebody in a post this week mentioned Siberia. Another place worth looking at.
Do you personally live life for the two purposes you assume are THE purposes? Anything more sublime or beautiful than that?
further to my last post:
BUT you say, this is all a distraction, who gives a fuck what the Chinese are doing, so long as the almighty Fed is buying up truckloads of US debt. Surely that has to be proof positive that there really IS such a thing as a free lunch.
Well, if you think that all this Federal Reserve counterfeiting is free of consequence you might have missed some really big events in the past ten or fifteen years which occurred as a direct result of all this malignant and incontinent money creation : the tech bubble and bust, the telecom bubble and bust, the derivatives bubble and bust, the real estate bubble and bust, the financial meltdown of 2008/2009. Each worse than the last and all leaving the financial carcasses of wrecked companies and banks and especially families in their wake.
And can you say “Bond Bubble”?
Did you happen to notice the price of oil? The price of a barrel in November 1998 was about 10 US bucks. In 2012, the price is about 87 US bucks. Nothing to do with the Fed’s cranking out money?
This is an Ameri-centric website which is natural seeing as it was created by an American and since most commenters are American. And that’s fine. But you might want to have a peek at what the price of oil has done in neighboring countries. Like that cold place to the north that supplies a great deal of it because there’s this thing called the exchange rate. And what of that? Well, when converted to the local denaro the cost of oil did not go up almost ninefold like in the USA but rather less ie six times. Not good but not nearly as bad.
Not only is that chilly place a producer of oil which may account for some of the relative appreciation of its currency vs the greenback but its public finances, while rotten, are not nearly as calamitous as those of the US. No fiscal cliffs, no trillion dollar a year deficits there, not even close. And moneymen like hard currency countries. So what you ask? Just this, a favorable exchange rate. Ask yourself, would you rather have sixty buck a barrel oil or ninety?
And that is the reward for managing a central bank and public finances relatively well. A sixfold increase sucks but doesn’t suck nearly as bad as ninefold. Still think deficits don’t matter? Still think money printing doesn’t matter? Money markets beg to differ.
if one is told it will always be there for your comfort and pleasure throughout a long and languid life?
==============
Ozone, I detect a certain Yankee puritanism … a worry that somebody might be happy, somebody might relax, somebody might live a long and languid life … and for puritans that is a problem. (Living well is a denial that life is nasty, brutish, and short.)
Puritans seem concerned that the happy talkers are living in ignorance, oblivious that their death is approaching. They must see the light! They must recognize the truth of their condition! They must … because salvation depends upon it.
For puritans death is of utmost concern (as if we are going to live forever here … or at least in the hereafter!).
For someone who is truly relaxed and happy, death is of no concern at all. So much of the survivalist/doomster activity is rooted in fear of death, IMHO.
Relax, Ozone. Death is inevitable.
Live, love, laugh and enjoy the present moment, which is all we ever have.
I thought of gliders – but dropped the idea when I considered that it takes abundant fossil fuel to build them and, especially, to launch them.
On another note, Bill, how do you feel about the idea – engrained in the public mind – that it takes a United States Secretary of State running around the Middle East to make the Israelis and the Gazan’s (sp), or whomever stop fighting?
And anyway, isn’t Hillary about to quit?
Doesn’t that make her an ineffective “lame duck?”
Or is this a sop to her and Bill. (clinton, not beantown!)
IOW, she achieves Peace in Our Time through Shuttle Diplomacy – and gets a leg-up on the next Presidential election cycle.*
*such election cycle now thus begins, and Obomber isn’t even sworn in, yet – GROAN!
*and in Hillary’s case, she doesn’t get a leg-up, she gets a “Thunder Thigh” up. haha!
And lastly:
Remember folks, that financial markets are ok with something until they’re not. They were good with financing Lehman. And Merrill. And Bear. Until they weren’t. Now what happens when all those Wall Street sharpies (whose real function is predicting the behavior of their fellow sharpies) decide that US government debt is crap?
What happens when the received wisdom suddenly turns like a school of fish ie when Wall Street collectively decides that US Treasuries are a no win proposition, that the greenback is a loser?
Remember 2008? Typically they all try to unload. At the same time. A rush to leave the casino. A stampede for the exits. Maybe a sudden Iran-style debasement of the dollar, a run to buy something solid.
Like what? Well, real stuff. And there is a lot of real stuff out there to buy. The pink cheeked MBAs manning trading desks may not know it and their bosses may not either but there are actually real places where real people get dirty doing real work. After all, you can’t eat derivatives. Life isn’t all financial flim flammery in air conditioned offices.
And so Americans might find themselves in bidding wars with Chinese private and state owned enterprises for stuff like farmland in Africa that produces crops and potash companies that produce fertilizer and other valuable stuff like oil and copper and coal deposits in countries other than the US.
Can’t happen? You think the US dollar will always reign supreme? Remember that Britannia used to rule the waves? Remember the Pound Sterling? Once upon a time it reigned supreme.
Like I said, the US isn’t the only game in town. You are 300 million. The world is 7 billion. The US is important but if it crashes and burns life will go on. Remember the old saying: the graveyards are full of indispensable men. The same goes for countries.
Combine a reckless and bought-and-paid-for Fed and Congress with another couple of droughts like this year’s and you might find yourselves waaaaay down the list of places to park money ie behind the likes of Spain and even chronic fuckups like Greece – who might start looking good in comparison.
eating and procreation are the prime functions of all of us, the rest is window dressing
I can be enchanted by music or become lost in the words of Shakespeare, look at my beloved England with the deepest of emotion, and take life at full tilt with my significant other,
But I do not deny the mutual and unstoppable drive that produced my wonderful children, or the ongoing need to support them to maturity. That is the force of nature, and there’s little we can do about it given normal circumstances
we can make a conscious decision not to do that as individuals of course, but not collectively, as a species
Are you in UK? Is Blair to blame?
And what of the latest Pedo scandal? I forget the
deceased guys name.
Here, in USA:
ISLAMIC COOPERATION
‘The US State Department is sending a representative to an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (read: Organization of Islamic Domination) meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss banning any and all criticism of the bloodthirsty, savage, backwards-assed, religion of murder called Islam. It’s about time!
You have to give it to the State Department. Nobody kisses the asses of the world’s savages any better. But AWD thinks this banning defamation of savage Islam is a wonderful idea! For too long, the murderous, ignorant, worthless brutes who subscribe to the religion of murder who call for the death of all infidels and the elimination of Israel…and who explode schoolchildren, stone and hang their women, prohibit women from education, cut off the tingly parts of female children, ban music and art, and whose greatest contribution to the world is the IED…have been for too long criticized by the Western world. How un-PC can we be? We certainly wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of 7th-century savages dedicated to death, destruction and total world domination!
The OIC’s mission is noble, but short-sighted. They say:
We must emphasize that there is no hierarchy of human rights whereby a single right can trump others. Freedom of opinion and expression is among the fundamental rights.It does not include a licence to hate mongering. Freedom of expression does not mean the right to vilify. Our position must also be rooted in history and culture. Having indicated our seriousness at building consensus, we must seek to be reciprocated in the same spirit.
We need to seek multi-stakeholder support for an international discourse seeking an intercultural solution – A solution that acknowledges that denigration of symbols and personalities sacred in Islam must be viewed as a matter of identity. It inflicts the psyche of Muslim all over the world. It is in that context that we seek an end to the systematic pattern and increasing frequency of events that contribute towards stereotyping, stigmatization and alienation of Muslims. Such events constitute an affront to human dignity violating the whole range of human rights of victims.
Yes, this defamation of Muslim savages must stop.’
What do you make of Agenda 21?
Everyone here who has studied it [except our resident impediment] What do you make of A21?
And can you say “Bond Bubble”?
===========
Can you say “Gold Bubble”?
Can you say “Precious Metals Bubble”?
Can you say “Art Objects Bubble”?
Can you say “Commodity Stocks Bubble”?
Why are you still reading and responding to my Bubbling Thoughts?
how do you feel about the idea – engrained in the public mind – that it takes a United States Secretary of State running around the Middle East to make the Israelis and the Gazan’s (sp), or whomever stop fighting?
==========
ProCon, please read Ozone’s link to the Chris Hedges piece. It might answer your question.
Ozone,
Assoka says: Live, love, laugh and enjoy the present moment, which is all we ever have.
Well, no the present moment may be all HE has.
There are others of us that have responsibilities to others that need to eat – like kids and a spouse and maybe aged parents that need money and attention – and so the future becomes a concern.
And so our own death ie early death – if we have dependents – becomes a serious issue.
What do you make of Agenda 21?
Everyone here who has studied it [except our resident impediment]
=============
I support Agenda 21, and I am not alone. Agenda 21 deals with a lot of what we discuss on CFN:
AGRICULTURE
COMBATING POVERTY
DECISION-MAKING
EDUCATION
ENERGY
FRESHWATER
HEALTH
INFORMATION
OCEANS
Agenda 21 is 10 years old. Why the sudden interest, anti soak? Here is a link to the summary document.
http://bit.ly/10uzqy9
Thanks for bringing up Agenda 21 and giving it publicity, anti soak.
Carry on unimpeded.
To paraphrase Churchill, idiocy gets half way round the world before common sense has a chance to get its pants on.
And besides I wasn’t directing my post at you.
Because we all know who you advocate for. Don’t we Mr.One Pecent?
There are others of us that have responsibilities to others that need to eat – like kids and a spouse and maybe aged parents … And so our own death ie early death – if we have dependents – becomes a serious issue.
=====================
That settles it!
People with dependents cannot die. It would be irresponsible of them!
LOL!
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
— Winston Churchill
That is the force of nature, and there’s little we can do about it given normal circumstances
we can make a conscious decision not to do that as individuals of course, but not collectively, as a species
=============
So, we are at the whims of “the force of nature”?
Hmmm…
Then organizations like NPG should not even exist. The species can, and should, collectively decide to engage in negative population growth.
In fact, twenty countries have zero or negative natural population growth and almost all will see significant population losses by the year 2050.
So I would say that is evidence we, as a species, collectively, can make a conscious and intelligent decision to kick “the force of nature” in the butt!
The sources on all those countries with a negative natural population growth are:
2005–2010 List by the United Nations
2011 List by the CIA World Factbook
2009 List by the World Bank
There is nothing sacred about “the force of nature” with respect to procreation.
We are perfectly capable of both family planning and voluntary sterilization. I speak from my own personal experience, having been sterilized at age 19, specifically out of concern for world overpopulation. Having children, whether one child or two children (supposedly “replacement” children) has negative consequences like resource depletion and environmental degradation. Every child (even if you only have one) will consume and pollute throughout his/her life. Love Mother Earth and stop having children.
I see that you have regressed back to the status quo which is simply not viable. First, why is hate bad? Who said? Some talking head? Some frustrated old maid teacher? Some fag preacher? Where did you pick that up? In any case, get rid of it – it’s crap. It natural and necessary to hate people like that Black Buffalo who punched the 70 yr old White Walmart Greeter in the face. If you don’t hate her you are sick. I grant that a Saint can hate the sin not the sinner, but you’re no Saint. When ordinary people try to do that they become White Marshmellows. You don’t want to be a Marshmellow do you Prog?
The hatred of criminals is one of the most potent factors that can lead them to reform. Needless to say, she will get alot of high fives from other Blacks in prison for what she did so reform is unlikely. Black crime, as well as Muslim, is more complicated because they are not in their own Countries. It takes on aspects of a civil war or jihad – which will only get worse as the economy crashes.
People on other sites, like this one, have the right to know about other perspectives – even ones that involve “hate” – as if Liberals don’t hate! As if Black don’t hate. As if Hispanics don’t hate. As if everyone doesn’t hate. Whites hate themselves and project that onto White Conservatives and Racialists in order to become “pure” and acceptable to their Minority Masters and Jewish Masters. And you think this is a “normal” state of affairs? I see I still have alot of work to do.
If we can just get rid of Whites, the cancer of humanity, just think of the beautiful world Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians could create! With lots of Jewish guidance of course, eh Greenstein?
The Rothschilds are trying to get us to reduce our carbon footprint by reducing the population and imposing carbon taxes. Yet they seem unwilling to use any of their own money for energy research but only the public’s? Strange, eh Ron?
I see I still have alot of work to do.
==========
[sarcasm on]
Yes. In your years here you have failed. You are a loser. You need to intensify your efforts. Post more. Increase your hatred. Work yourself into an absolute lather of hate.
Do not … I repeat … do not relax or dance or feel your natural bliss. That nonsense is for navel gazers and worshipers of blue-skinned, flute-playing dancing gods. Those happy-talking idiots believe in relaxed meditation and full-tilt ecstasy … but the truth is this: the world is a harsh place of competition and meanness and evil and hate. Only those who are cutthroat, the fittest, the most unethical, those willing to engage in hate, will survive … Reality is going to slap those happy-talkers up the side of the head someday … someday … someday … well, we can’t predict just when, but be assured their happiness is false and their grins will be wiped from their happy-talk faces … someday. Really. They are deluded, disconnected from reality. Nirvana? Bah humbug! Karma? Bah humbug! No limit to the number of people we can love? Bah humbug! Look what they do to those who preach love: persecution, assassination, crucifixion. How many divisions do they have? None! Because they live in a non-dual reality! [sarcasm off]
we are a biological species, in term of collective reproduction we are driven by the same forces as any other. I do not include individual decisions, only collective ones. We were at 1 billion around 1800, we are at 7 billion now, irrespective of any decision of any individual not to have kids. For my sins I added 3 to that total, many years ago before climate change etc was heard of. maybe i wouldn’t now.
Can and should are an irrelevance.
Not complaining about the sin part though
study any species you like, it will expand to the limit of its food/energy supply, then die back or fall victim to some other bigger stronger species expanding its own food/energy supply
We may well bring population under control, unfortunately there is a population bulge passing through the system right now that will drain our resources before it peters out
We are a biological species. Yet we are not just a biological species. Our decisions collectively determine population growth. Population continues increasing because the death rate worldwide has dropped much farther than the birth rate. Of course no one (except some on CFN) wants to see death rates rise. That would be an unthinkably inhumane way to stop population growth!
The humane way is for birth rates to drop and balance with today’s lower death rates. Repeated studies in countries all around the world show that the longer children stay in school, the fewer children they will have. Smaller families can provide more resources for each child, and entire nations benefit when they have fewer children to drain their limited, declining resources. So education is the key to humane population stabilization.
Another highly successful educational approach involves the use of specially-created soap operas, both on TV and radio, that communicate — even to illiterate people — the benefits of having fewer children. These special soaps are currently running on every continent (except Antarctica) and are having an incredible impact to help reduce people’s expectations about their “desired family size.”
No other biological species takes measures like this, except homo sapiens. That is why I say we are biological species, but not just a biological species. We can consciously act collectively, not just as individuals driven by “the force of nature.”
We can overcome our biological programming. We are overcoming our biological programming on every continent (except Antarctica). We can control our drives, we can overcome instinct. We can kick “the force of nature” in the butt.
I really like the give and take — you and Asoka are having a good go at it.
I never spend anytime at this BLOG anymore because of all the childish off-topic banter.
A couple of issues that usually contribute to any off-hand discussions of CF nation’s dilemma(s)?? – Is that time-frame and denotation of the subject matter at hand are misunderstood.
Obviously no one gets out of here alive, unless of course we take “Bucky’s view” and build thousands of city-sized spacecraft to leave this rock behind.
In tandem with my fatalist view with respect to unilaterally affecting positive activities to negate global warming – my perspective suggests that trying to reason with – even semi-intelligent people like Asoka is hopeless, and therefore itself a waste of energy.
And the real trouble is: there are a lot more Asoka-types then realists.
>>Having children, whether one child or two children (supposedly “replacement” children) has negative consequences like resource depletion and environmental degradation. Every child (even if you only have one) will consume and pollute throughout his/her life. Love Mother Earth and stop having children.
But, you advocate unlimited growth of the US population through immigration?
>>So education is the key to humane population stabilization.
The folks you are so much in favor of coming to the USA, are they well educated?
“There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect’s wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.”
Chief Seattle
There is one similar that mentions the sad state of affairs where there is nowhere to get away from the smell of man, no more wilderness.
“Stupid White man.” Nobody (Gary Farmer) to William Blake (Johnny Depp) in “Dead Man”
But, you advocate unlimited growth of the US population through immigration?
============
If you live on the east side of town and then move to the west side of town, have you reduced the total population of the town? Think carefully.
lol, you never quit.
on our present population trajectory, we are going to hit 9 billion in 40 years time, irrespective of any education programme, it might even be 10 billion
that is absolutely unsustainable unless we start eating each other—likely!!
therefore it follows that there will be some kind of die back to a point where there is enough food to sustain life
As no (collective) means is available to stop breeding right now (the mothers are already reaching childbearing age) those extra people are going to appear.
Forced sterilisation or fines for childbearing are not an option. That was tried in China and India
Even a 1% birthrate rise doubles the world population in 70 years, 0.5% rise=140 years
so we must have zero growth.
that is impossible, so it follows that nature is going to do it for us, which is certain to be very unpleasant
wishful imperatives don’t work
Hi yes I live in Wales. Is it Blairs fault? Well obviously he has not been PM for sometime but the scandal did originate on his watch. However there has been plenty of opportunities to deal with it. It has been brushed under the carpet by social services and the police on politically correct grounds despite many young girls being abused. The girls are White predominately and non Muslim which apparently means anything goes for these scumbag kiddie fiddlers. As the abusers were all Muslims including a couple of imams it seems to have been deemed inappropriate to deal with it. After all one would not want to upset the religion of ‘peace’ now would we, especially as most of us like our heads attached!
On a side note over Gaza I have to say my sympathies are with the Israelis. Islam does not lend itself to peace unless it holds the whiphand. My brothers late wife was born and raised in gaza. Her parents and sister still live there. As Christians the restrictions they face on their daily lives by Hamas make the Jim crow laws look positively benign.
Almost every conflict in the world today seems to feature Islam on one or both sides. They even plant bombs in Thailand against the buddists. A particular favourite being the buddist monks. God only knows what such harmless people have done to upset them.
Back to Gaza has the execution of 6 alleged Israeli spies by Hamas featured there at all. Family sources name 3 of them as brothers/cousins from a Druze family who have been causing friction. A common tactic of Hamas s to rid themselves of opposition.
Yes the jimmy saville inquiry rolls on. The good old BBC knew about him for years apparently but covered up for him and others. I suspect there are far more revelations to come. Operation ore was rumoured to have trapped several labour politicians as well but a d notice was issued to the press on it, as the story goes. This will probably tumble out in the course of events as the investigation widens.
Anyhow have a good thanksgiving to you all over there and as monty python would say ” all ways look on the bright side of life”
I am consistent. My concern has always been to reduce global population, not worry over reshufflings of the current population. That is the domain of racists, xenophobes, and scoundrels.
So, when your arguments cross, you go for the name calling.
How about…wait for it….environmentalists?
“And now for something completely different…”
they mostly hang out in here
We know from science that world population will soon stabilize. Not from wishful thinking. Not from mass die offs. Not from tragic deaths.
We know because we have consciously set into motion the programs aimed at reducing world population and they will bear fruit in one generation.
We are in control, not an ambiguious quasi-religious “force of nature” …
We are rational. We have made decisions. We are the only biological species that does this kind of conscious activity (family planning counseling, tubal ligation, vasectomy, education of girls, etc.) to limit population growth, nay to reduce population size to accommodate carrying capacity and avoid human tragedy. Most biological species have no idea what carrying capacity is, much less the ability to control procreation.
I don’t understand this comment.
Elaborate, please.
“So, when your arguments cross, you go for the name calling.” -dt-
There you go, daytrip.
Why do you think they call him the Resident Impediment?
When in Rome…
I can’t help it. My instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and since I am just a biological species, like all other biological species, the CFN savages provoke me into fighting. LOL!
My mirror of love is broken. They have worn me down. They have won. LOL!
Oh, by the way, name-calling is different from generalized descriptive narrative. Name-calling is directed at a person. I was making a statement about immigration policy, not attacking a person.
Nice try, though.
Of course, if the shoe fits…
I am a failure as Resident Impediment.
I never seem to impede your gratuitous comments.
But no one will ever take the name away from me. I will forever be known as RI, whether it’s true or not. And it matters soooo much in the grand scheme of things. Not.
The Soak isn’t shilling for the 1%. When it comes to the subject of economics he’s, shall we say, economically challenged. He just doesn’t get it.
Bond bubble? You bet! And big time!
Precious metals bubble? Not for quite some time, I’m afraid. Gold and silver are still undervalued.
The Soak lives in a bubble all his own.
You on drugs, boy?…
Gold broke out to a new all-time high the last time the debt ceiling was raised (Aug. 2, 2011).
Outside of the USA declaring bankruptcy, American politicians have no other option but to raise it again. According to many on CFN, the USD cannot maintain its value with unlimited printing of money. The USD will begin to crumble (hyperinflation, y’all!) and slowly but surely, the true bubble in gold will begin to show itself.
Sent from my own special gold-free i-Bubble.
(where it’s all warm and fuzzy with unicorns, rainbows, and peppermint).
Inside my i-Bubble there’s lots of talk about General Motors’ finance arm buying Ally Financial’s loan businesses in Europe, Latin America and part of a joint venture in China for $4.25 billion. GM says having its own finance operations will let it to make low-interest loans and cheap lease deals. Automakers with their own finance arms often subsidize loans and leases to boost sales. The move will help Ally repay a $17.2 billion bailout from the U.S. government during the banking industry meltdown of 2008. Ain’t nobody here doin’ drugs, but the citizens be gettin’ back their bailout money.
Booyah! Semper Fi!
I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear. I do not consider England to be part of Europe. I know this is open to interpretation. When I said that Europe was hiding under our skirts, I meant countries like Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, etc.
I agree with you, btw. Without the UK, the U.S. would have been SOL and could never have achieved the turning point that 1942 was. My apologies for any non-clarification.
“We are rational. We have made decisions. We are the only biological species that does this kind of conscious activity (family planning counseling, tubal ligation, vasectomy, education of girls, etc.) to limit population growth, nay to reduce population size to accommodate carrying capacity and avoid human tragedy. Most biological species have no idea what carrying capacity is, much less the ability to control procreation.”
I don’t suppose you could mention this to most of Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent, they seem to have mislaid the memo. While your there send a copy to china and to the governments of the USA and the UK. The continual subsidy paid to the ever expanding underclass to squeeze out more and more children is obscene.
If any doubt that this happens please type in benefits calculator uk. Goto the gov.uk site and take a run through it. Try the family scenario of single mum, working 18 hours a week with 5 children 2 of which have ADHD so they can claim disability at the middle rate. Don’t forget that the final figure does not inched rent( upto £300 per week in most areas) or you subsidise mobility allowance or car. You would have to earn £75,000 pre tax p.a. to get close to the claim figure.
This is your future. Working like a dog to pay others entitlements.
Talking of dogs, where is K dog thus week. Is he upset he didn’t win the election. Shame he didn’t because he would
probably do a far better job than almost any of the candidates!
>>We are in control, not an ambiguious quasi-religious “force of nature” …
So close, and yet so far. In my opinion “we” (still undefined in this context) have much less ‘control’ over birth rates than do some distinctly non-quasi religious influences. They wrote the book on control, after all (literally, I think it’s fair to say). Education and empowerment of women is the key to limiting population growth (as I’m sure we both agree), but there is still a considerable and very firmly entrenched resistance to that idea. In some places, it’s actually gaining ground. As bizarre and laughably childish as they are, the mythologies of bronze-age goat herders have proven to be among the most successful and persistent memes the world has ever seen.
Whoever “we” are, our slogan must surely be something like “Fighting ignorance since the Enlightenment (it’s taking longer than we thought).”
And to you, too, Marlin.
Treeman, your prayers are answered. Africa is already transitioning towards smaller families. In north Africa families of two are the norm. Even if you exclude that region, the sub-Saharan part includes areas of relatively low fertility such as southern Africa, where families of three prevail. Africans are realizing the economic benefit countries get when the share of the working-age population rises relative to children and old people.
Your prayers regarding Asia were answered long ago when fertility started to fall after 1960. In Latin America your prayers were answered after 1970. Fertility in Asia and Latin America has fallen quickly, ineluctably and universally. The number of children a woman could expect in her lifetime fell from six to two in a generation. The fertility fall was continuous, more proof that we are not just another biological species. No other biological species has consciously done what we have done.
See my response to Treeman (November 21, 2012 7:09 PM). You are selling humanity fall short. I am not talking about wishful thinking. I am talking about the fruit of population control efforts of the last 40 years after Ehrlich published his book. Humanity has heard the call and has responded. You might have a negative conception about our biological species, but your conception is not supported by the facts.
Hey Kunstler,
You’re always predicting that the Dow Jones is going to end the year at 4,000, and you’re always wrong. (Just thought I’d point that out, for your readers not paying attention.)
You can make big money at Intrade if you’re convinced your knowledge is so sound. Right now 50.5% of traders there think the Dow will end up above 13,000 at the end of the year. Thirteen thousand!! Even if your 4,000 prediction is off by, say, 200%, at 12,000 you can still win big bucks. What are you waiting for, Einstein???
Or, Jim, is it that you have already been wagering every year … which is why you have to run this blog, to keep paying off the debt you’ve incurred? Just curious.
In my opinion “we” (still undefined in this context) have much less ‘control’ over birth rates than do some distinctly non-quasi religious influences.
=========
Have you ever been to Latin America? It may be 95% Catholic, but the religious influence is quasi. The Bishops are not in control. Women are definitely in control of their bodies with contraception … and with abortion (legality be damned). Once again, your opinion does not represent the reality of family size decreasing from six children to two in one generation.
Education is part of the key to population stabilization. But I’d argue that a more fundamental key is women’s status in general: provide women around the world with greater economic, political, and social power, mobility, and security, and they will choose to have smaller families.
No conflict with your comment, of course … more of a chicken-and-egg thing. I’d argue that better educational opportunities for children (female in particular) can’t happen in a developing country unless and until their families — including their mothers and sisters and brothers — enjoy something resembling a fair sharing of the country’s economic, political, and social opportunities.
I never spend anytime at this BLOG anymore because of all the childish off-topic banter.
==========
I hear ya. This week, however, we are focused on energy and population, topics central to our global CFN.
Of course, I am taking the less popular stance, by providing evidence to show my biological species does not consist of idiots.
We are conscious beings capable of rational action to save our asses. I get in trouble for saying it loud and saying it proud (and for talking about love).
nice title…describes my feelings pergectly to see flad and RI still here to be scrolled…
Charliefoxtrot, I feel your pain. But nothing can be done. The way the software is set up the name automatically appears at the top of each post.
I apologize for this if it causes you inconvenience to see my name. Look on the bright side, though. By seeing my name at the top of the post you know to immediately scroll past the post without reading any of it. That way your mind maintains its pristine state.
Cheers!
>>I am talking about the fruit of population control efforts of the last 40 years after Ehrlich published his book. Humanity has heard the call and has responded.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: That someone’s predictions of catastrophe failed to materialize is evidence that humanity heard the call and responded. Why do I get the feeling that if I posited that the Y2K disaster was averted by the dedication of millions of programmer hours to preventing it, you would claim that the disaster never happened because the threat was simply overstated?
I’m not quite sure what your argument is here. World population very nearly doubled over the last 40 years. Yay population control efforts. I guess.
Lifesupport, your post hoc, ergo propter hoc point is taken. I’ve given it my best shot and you are still not convinced. Further discussion would be fruitless. I am going to concede defeat, and stop posting on this. It is best to let others have a say, even though that will damage my rep as RI.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you plan to celebrate such a population-increasing historical event.
BeanTownBill – I asked for your opinion about why it appear necessary that Hillary has to run around the ME to make the Israelis and the Gaza residents stop killing each other.
And here’s all I get – from asoka..,no less.
asoka..look at me! look at me!
“ProCon, please read Ozone’s link to the Chris Hedges piece. It might answer your question.”
– the Resident Impediment, speaking for BTB-
You know, RI, if I wanted your opinion, or ozone’s opinion, or Chris Hedges’ opinion – I would have asked one of you.
I wanted bill’s opinion.
And now – I have to suppose – he won’t answer.
BUT – If the Chris Hedges’ piece represents what bill thinks – then I will happily print the thing out, batter it, deep fry it, and eat it instead of turkey tomorrow.
Try this, for instance:
“Because it has the power to do so, Israel—as does the United States—flouts international law to keep a subject population in misery. The continued presence of Israeli occupation forces defies nearly a hundred U.N. Security Council resolutions….”
and
“The blockade has turned Gaza into a sliver of hell, an Israeli-administered ghetto where thousands have died, including the 1,400 civilians killed in the Israeli incursion of 2008….”
So, bill – do Chris Hedges and asoka..speak for you and the Israelis?
My printer is warmed up. The batter is ready.
And the turkey fryer grease will be hot at noon tomorrow.
Just give the word and I’ll chow down on fried paper.
They say everything tastes good – if it’s battered and deep fried.
“What do you make of Agenda 21?”
-as-
Some of Agenda 21 sounds pretty good.
Especially because *they* will probably apply it to other folks long before they apply in the US.
sarcasm on/off
Seriously, antiS, lots of people would love to cut the US and our standards of living down to size, if they could.
But, I suspect that other things, like overpopulation and social fracture, will do us in – long before the UN is able so to do.
So, no is the short answer.
I’m not concerned about Agenda 21.
Vlad –
You, and White Nationalists in general, need to work on your Public Relations efforts.
That was all I was trying to tell you.
I wanted bill’s opinion.
And now – I have to suppose – he won’t answer.
============
Funny how people are. You hammer on them and they stop talking to you.
But I’m here to help you out. You can always blame me for impeding the communication. Me being the RI scapegoat, in your eyes.
Stubborn old coot yankee. I tried to talk him into a lifeline many times. He said they were for wuses. Anyway It is what it is. We be planting him in the Marble orchard this Saturday.
Amazing how soker, vlad, lifersss, p4c, etc all hijacked this blog after only a few hours Monday. Oh well, blue sky mining ahead!!! Watch as all the available solid carbon(CO2) and liquid water(ice) are evaporated off the planet (can we say, Mars atmosphere, here we come?!?)…
EDIT: “boiled” off (not “evaporated”)
So, this may be a sign the Long Emergency has been delayed.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss issues.
Funny how you use the word “hijack” to describe activity central to the blog’s purpose.
We are no where close to Mars atmosphere on this planet. Your hyperbole does not serve you. If you are going to post, at least make a comment that indicates some degree of thought went into it.
REALITY CHECK:
Temperatures on Mars can dip down to -87 degrees C, and rarely get above 0 degrees C.
The atmosphere of Mars is made up of 95% carbon dioxide – poisonous to breathe.
Pop Quiz:
How much of earth’s atmosphere is carbon dioxide?
“As of today at exactly 12:00 noon, two plus two no longer equals four. We haven’t yet decided what two plus two equals yet, but we’ll let you know in due course when we feel like it.”
When the so-called “crazies” who’d be ostracized completely by the mainstream media get a mass following on the Internet, it may be a sign that…it’s going down….
Down..down…down….2 minute warning…there is no fifth quarter, despite what they tell you….
All of the white people that I know say that when they “retire” that they want to “travel around”. That’s the plan…no plan….but based upon some fundamental assumptions that may not be true…like a future of abundant cheap oil.
Remember when Ev a Bra un threw a big party in H//it, ler’s bunker during the final hours of the Soviet seige of Berlin?
She said: “I just want to dance (tanzen)!”
Remember the Indian guide who led General Custer and his men into the valley of the Little Big Horn? Custer’s men all trusted him….
“Don’t worry. It’ll be just like last time…only a helpless camp of squaws and children. There won’t be 5,000 Indian warriors armed with repeating Winchester rifles. It’s all good…”
The ‘Master’ wrote:” Governments play games with public money – including “money” they “create” out of thin air – to prop up the banks. None of it alters the sad fact that there is not enough real money in the system.”
Perhaps Mr. Kunstler is referring to something with intrinsic value, like gold. If he is talking about modern definitions of money, then he is wrong – money is a medium of exchange. It can be created out of thin air – or more accurately, thin paperish stuff and accounting entries. What ‘real money’ should there be in the system? What is this ‘real money’? Is it something besides accounting entries in books and paper fiat? If money is no longer accepted as a medium of exchange, if it is not accepted by users as a medium of exchange, then only barter exchange is left. Perhaps Mr. Kunstler is thinking about another country’s medium of exchange taking over from the US dollar as a ‘standard’, acceptible (working) medium of exchange.
“Governments play games with public money” is intrinsically meaningless unless you only want to play on emotions and ignorance. You should define ‘real money’. Is it tax revenue plus inflows that match outflows (expenditures)? Does it take into account all the US Dollars on the books of foreign banks and investment accounts, dollars that are being used as investments and international mediums of exchange?
This whole article is weak on specifics and rigor – it reads like a harangue. Soapbox ranting.
You’re bored Procon, so you’ve decided to provoke me, which is quite all right. I didn’t reply to your comment because, believe it or not, I’ve got a life and I had things to do today, so my posting is very limited today (I should say yesterday because it’s now past midnight). Don’t make assumptions about me not replying to you earlier – you know what they say about making assumptions.
The answer to your reply is no, Israel didn’t need Hillary meddling in its affairs. Obviously pressure was put on Israel to participate in a cease fire; we’ll see if it holds.
America has been trying for 50 years to force peace into the area with no success. I know – but you’ll probably deny it – Israel is perfectly willing to live in peace with its neighbors, but the neighbors keep saying that Israel shouldn’t exist, but rather it should be exterminated. Hardly conducive to peace making.
So, Procon, I’ll throw your question sorta back at you: What would you do if the people living closest to your house said they want to kill your family and burn your home down? Then they blow up your car and your barn. You’d sleep kind of uneasily, huh?
Then, if you’re a man, not a coward, you take your shotgun and head out to their places. Then you find that all the local cops stop you, and when you tell them why you’re doing this, they say tough shit, you’re a bad person for trying to take action.
Before you judge Israel, tell your fellow Americans that their country sucks because they took Native Americans’ land away from them and moved their populations onto reservations. What about slavery? I’m not blaming today’s Americans (I’m one, too), but before you judge a country, maybe you should consider whether it is acceptable to be self-righteous.
I don’t think it’s fair to come to a decision about a group of people until you hear those people’s story from their own mouths. I have – on both sides.
JHK clearly referred to “peak conventional oil” in his post … not “peak oil-from-all-sources”. I think I know what he meant by “conventional”, but that’s for him to clarify.
I remind you that Jews used to tell us how evil we were for stealing the Indians’ land. That was when you all were lying about Palestine being unihanbited except for a few Bedouin herders. “A land without a people for a people without a land” the evil crone Golda Meir used to say.
But since you all were caught in that lie now you’re trying to build solidarity with us by saying we’re the same. Well we conquered all on our own. You used us for the heavy lifting and then kicked us to the curb with contempt. We’re slow but we will learn/remember next time.
If you people had taken Madagascar as offered, none of this would be an issue. Islam goes thru cycles of weakness and disorganization with strength and unity. The Crusaders established a Kingdom in Palestine, the Outremeer, when Islam was weak. It lasted a bit more than a hundred years until Islam reconqured the area. Same thing with Israel: you took Palestine when Islam was very weak. They are on the upswing now and they will take it back. It’s madness to have founded a country on Arab Land – surrounded by hostile Muslims. Madness. You rely on us (but give us no respect) to save you and expand Israel to the Eurphrates – but we’re tired of you and your wars. Do it yourselves if you can – but you wont be able to.
So how do you feel about the Black Woman being sentenced to five years for punching the 70 year old White Lady in the face? You forgot to answer me.
Remember, not only was Roshi Kapleau White but so was Buddha – or at least Caucasian. Back then, the Brahmins were proud of their fair skin, but Buddha told them not to be.
A LABEGE (Stade Just Fontaine). -Labège/Escalquens bat Onet 4 à 3 (mi-temps: 3-2 pour Onet).
Dans un match sans enjeu, les deux équipes ont joué une rencontre-champagne (7 buts). Dautant que pour son dernier match, larbitre Suzanne na pas sorti le moindre carton. Dès lentame du match, le Clef se montre dangereux. Checarelli puis Villarzel tentent leur chance à lentrée de la surface (2e). De leur côté les joueurs de Cabaniols sont plus réalistes. Vacquier part sur la droite et adresse un bon centre à Riols. A la lutte avec Sassus, lattaquant aveyronnais pousse le ballon dans les buts (12e). La réaction locale est rapide. Suite à une passe en profondeur de Bénédetto, GBizié offre un caviar à Rives devant les buts adverses. Lattaquant profite dun contre favorable avec le gardien pour égaliser (25e). Le temps de revenir au centre et Aube effectue une course de 40 mètres et fusille le gardien. Ce nen est pas pour autant que les visiteurs restent perplexes. A la 35e minute, Caparros profite dune mauvaise sortie de Foltran pour placer le ballon dans la lucarne.
Doublé pour Rives
Onet devient entreprenant. Marino,Louis Vuitton Sito Ufficiale, très inspiré, dribble Annemarie et trouve la lucarne du gardien local (42e). Le match semballe. La pause ne va le calmer. Dès la reprise, Villarzel centre pour Rives. Face à Montheil, celui- ci profite encore une fois dun contre et égalise. Et puis le match va perdre de sa vivacité. Il faudra attendre lentrée de Nicolae pour voir le coup de grâce. Sur son premier ballon, il séchappe et fait trembler les filets (82e). Pour lentraîneur dOnet, Francis Cabanios la défaite est regrettable: « Cétait un match sans pression. Il faut dire que tout était joué avant le coup denvoi. Vu le déroulement de la rencontre, cest dommage de ne pas avoir bien fini la saison. Il faudra tirer des leçons sur notre manque deffort défensif ». De son côté lentraîneur-joueur Jean-Luc Sassus se réjouit de la victoire: « Tout le monde a bien joué. On a manqué des occasions de buts. Mais nos petites bêtises en défense ont compliqué la tâche,Louis Vuitton Outlet Italia. Sur la physionomie de la rencontre on méritait de gagner ».
Good article. Favourite statement:
“They…had a pre-industrial culture of high artistry and grace – though, granted, all the defects of human psychology.”
srj
All the rant and counter-rant in here misses the point about population and population control
Human beings have come to regard themselves as the dominant species on this planet,
we are not.
We have been around in our present form, homo sapiens, for about 100,000 + years. other life forms have been around far longer, biologically unchanged for millions of years.
The critters who really run things here, the bacteria, have been around for 2 billion years at least. If that’s not a success story, I don’t know what is.
Without bacteria, we would die in days. On the other hand, if we were not around to graze on, bacteria wouldn’t even notice. In their terms, human beings are just breeding space.
when we discovered bacteria, and found they caused disease, we decided to declare war on them. That was our biggest mistake. Bacteria didn’t take kindly to upstart humans usurping their dominant species status.
So while we were wiping out quadzillions of them with our new found potions, they were quietly regrouping. As we killed them off, the ones we didn’t kill passed their immunity on and reproduced themselves to fill the empty spaces we made. So we bumped off more–and they repeated the process–ad infinitum
Now we’ve pretty much run out of ammunition, and still they come at us, still carrying their old familiar diseases.
It is an interesting concept, that by keeping our numbers in balance, the bacteria unconsciously preserved our world and their own, only since we decided to take over running our world have we screwed things up
rocket surgeon? or do you just play one on teevee? ‘real’ money is that which is being used as such: being exchanged between people (citezens united bedamned!) For goods and services…”money” that sits in a bank drawing interest, or waiting for said rates to fluctuate before being manipulated between banks, is not fulfilling its purpose…and jon corzine is still at large…there s your fraud
No, Mr. Kunstler, the Japanese will not “opt out.” Long before that, there will be a cold start, a re-boot of the global system, and as before … war.
War always corrects power imbalances. Sometimes not for the better … but a re-boot will happen. Bank on it.
wars can only function when there is sufficient excess energy to drive them.
That’s why battles used to be settled in a day or two, until warfare got industrialised and went on for months and years
WW2 was concluded by the side with the most resources, specifically gasoline. Germany and Japan ran dry first.
Now we have asymmetric wars, a few thousand (at most) tribesmen with the willingness to die are bleeding a great nation to death by slow attrition.
if the USA walks away from the middle east, world oil gets cut off and the world economy tanks
If they stay there to protect the oil, the billions of dollars spent will destroy the US economy
interesting choice huh?
From Asoka
“Treeman, your prayers are answered. Africa is already transitioning towards smaller families. In north Africa families of two are the norm. Even if you exclude that region, the sub-Saharan part includes areas of relatively low fertility such as southern Africa, where families of three prevail. Africans are realizing the economic benefit countries get when the share of the working-age population rises relative to children and old people.
Your prayers regarding Asia were answered long ago when fertility started to fall after 1960. In Latin America your prayers were answered after 1970. Fertility in Asia and Latin America has fallen quickly, ineluctably and universally. The number of children a woman could expect in her lifetime fell from six to two in a generation. The fertility fall was continuous, more proof that we are not just another biological species. No other biological species has consciously done what we have done.”
Never one for selective facts are we? In
Africa only the NE and the state of south Africa come under this. NW Africa is currently in decline due to poverty and war, not choice. Though I suppose you could argue they choose war but then are you admitting that all north Africans are blood thirsty butchers or would you concede that that is beyond the control of most normal people. Either way they have not consciously decided to limit their families but have been forced to.
South Africa the norm is 2-3 surviving children. Aids amongst other diseases have heavily impacted their populations as it has in Zim. Due to ‘cultural considerations’ this is overlooked by almost every organization including the WHO.
Middle Africa by contrast has a record of between 4-7 children per family.
India and Pakistan both themselves admit that their census figures are really only accurate in large urban areas in poor agricultural areas they are still pumping out children like mad. It is the reason why their cities are growing so fast. The countryside can not support them all. Afghanistan’s census figures are pure fiction. Check out Brazil’s population. In the last 10 years alone 10 million more recorded births.
The human race is expanding regardless of what we in the west think. It will continue to do so until war, famine and disease cut it back. Economics might slow it down but that is all and as for conscious choice. That exists only in the west elsewhere hard reality is in the driving seat.
We in the trendy western countries are in trouble. Our culturally devoid ideas and pursuit of greed have led us to a declining population. The problem is that our benefits driven ideology means we require an ever expanding tax base to pay for the loafers. With a declining population (which at the current birthrate of western born peoples is what we have) we are filling in the gaps by importing peoples from elsewhere. I realise the thought of this delights you but the real fact of the matter is that this imported labour has a much lower income on average, but requires the same level of benefits. It is a self defeating spiral on many levels. To compound it governments for many years have spent recklessly and now struggle to repay their debts. Clusterfuck, yeah pretty good name that…..maybe they can put it on the wests tombstone.
I guess I really don’t know so much about your rep as RI here, and I care even less. I like to make up my own mind about people. From what I’ve seen so far, it looks like you’ve got a good heart, and that counts big.
I think I would have a hard time finding any place occupied only by people who agree with me completely on everything, and even if I did, I can’t see there being much basis for stimulating dialogue. The communal reinforcement of the echo chamber may be a comfort to those who fear having their own ideas challenged, but I have more respect for a person who, like yourself, is not afraid of that — and I especially respect a person who can find the courage to say those words so seldom heard in any venue: “I concede the point”. I’ve done that once or twice before myself (out of… I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of exchanges). As painful as those memories are (I simply hate to be wrong, see; it’s just one of my funny little quirks), even more painful are the memories of times when I should have done that, but couldn’t bring myself to it; the times when I found myself reaching harder and harder to defend a position, not recognizing until much later that the reason I was having so much trouble was that I was just flatass wrong.
The echo chamber is a breeding ground for ideas that are not merely wrong, but sometimes dangerously wrong. I don’t see any immediate danger of the comment section of this blog turning into an echo chamber, but I appreciate your efforts to prevent that from happening. The politics and economics of peak oil, peak water, overpopulation, etc — these are not merely complex problems; problems upon which there is much room for valid disagreement; they are Wicked Problems.
Yes, I will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday, though with considerably more moderation than I often did in previous years. One thing I can guarantee is that my own participation will not include any activities that will result in any increase in population. I’ve been snipped, you see. Long ago. I’m also a very careful driver, and I won’t be travelling far, so I’m highly confident that I will get through the weekend without impacting population in either direction (so to speak), though I cannot provide the same absolute guarantee there. Anyway: Happy Thanksgiving to you as well.
Cheekychews, you are right. Good catch. I should have read more carefully.
We still have decades of non-conventional oil left, and centuries of energy from non-fossil-fuel sources which will be developed in such a way that it provides sustainable zero-emission energy, an improvement over the conventional oil we are now consuming.
Regardless of how easy and how much energy we have, we still need to reduce the global population by at least one half of the present population, if not less.
it’s not the amount of oil left in the ground that’s the problem, it’s the cost of getting hold of it
when the energy-cost of extracting a barrel of oil exceeds the energy obtained, the oilparty is over—even if theres trillions of barrels of oil down there
I am so glad the “fiscal cliff” has been downgraded to a “fiscal slope” … a gentle downward ride through 2013.
What is even more heartening is that fiscally irresponsible Republicans are not in office busily increasing the deficit while saying: “Deficits don’t matter.” –Dick Cheney
Instead we have an intelligent president who has LOWERED the deficit each year for the last three years. That’s right: the deficit is decreasing.
From the Business Investors Daily:
Believe it or not, the federal deficit has fallen faster over the past three years than it has in any such stretch since demobilization from World War II.
In fact, outside of that post-WWII era, the only time the deficit has fallen faster was when the economy relapsed in 1937, turning the Great Depression into a decade-long affair.
If U.S. history offers any guide, we are already testing the speed limits of a fiscal consolidation that doesn’t risk backfiring. That’s why the best way to address the fiscal cliff likely is to postpone it.
Regardless of EROEI cost, oil is a finite resource. It is yesterday’s fuel source. We have to get over oil and move on to sustainable zero-emission sources, while at the same time reducing global population and engaging in a responsible energy descent from out-of-control consumers to energy mimimalists. I have such a system heating my house at this very moment. It’s called an adobe thermal mass passive solar system. Passive solar works 333 days a year where I live (wool blankets work on non-sunny days) and passive solar doesn’t cost me a penny. One third of the world’s population lives in earthen structures and takes advantage of the same principles. My biological species is not composed entirely of idiots … except for those in suburban McMansions paying exorbitant heating and cooling costs, using fossil fuels that are finite in nature … with an increasingly bad EROEI.
That’s the way to preach it! Good comment & a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. That goes for everybody here on CFN.
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I hope you all recognize more and more of the blessings for which you can be grateful today and every day hence forth. Happy Thanksgiving to you, yours, and Our. In the spirit of the day, I share this song-video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8pzTeCPoVw
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Line your entire body up in a fluent stance that is parallel to your target, you need to hit the golf ball at the lowest point in your downswing. etc. The most advanced enthusiasts manage to go week after week without paying anything for groceries or supplies. Two great places to meet your potential mate; Church – Generally when people share something like a common religion, not someone to spend the rest of their life with. telemarketing has established by itself to be the final resource in IT revenue. Let’s just say that this is merely an investment on a new advertising campaign, The ideal dream of Wang is to make everyone look good anytime day or night. Wang introduced his first collection of women clothing in the year of 2007.
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it been a busy couple of weeks planning and preparing for isabella birthday. the festivities have already begun. this girl has oodles of toys but has hit a growth spurt in the past couple of months. she a skinny minnie so her waist is a 3t but the pants are highwaters. granted, she going to be FOUR! sooooo, she needed clothes and what kid wants JUST clothes for their birthday?! to divvy it up, i bought a ton of cute outfits for her and wrapped them in newspaper. every morning, isabella gets to open up a gift and wear that outfit the same day. she is LOVING it!!!! we began on sunday, april 10th and will go all the way until her actual birthday on the 17th. it been so much fun and feels good to do something different for her. so far, we are on day four.
on top of that, i doing a spider-girl themed birthday party at her pre-school. i not a mom that throws HUGE parties for her kids. but this year, it would be nice to share some goodies with her pals at school. i making the cupcakes, party bags, and a couple of activities for them to do at the school. it is also considered volunteer work so it a win win win situation 🙂 isabella has NO idea! but she might get a hint when she opens up friday birthday outfit and it a spider-girl dress!!!
/>so it been about peter parker daughter and isabella in the greenbean household. don worry, diego isn being neglected and he been a big help. i love them BOTH so much. they make my heart melt. anyhow, this is the first time me and ramel are doing a bit of art for our kids. we are also having a SMALL get together here on the 17th with a couple family members, some streamers, and maybe a homemade ice cream cake. i planning a couple of games too for everyone to win something. PLUS, the week after is spring break. isabella is going to school [per her reqeust] and it will be me and diego time. wow, this post is a HUGE montage of THOUGHTS! hahaha
now, i just have to think of something unique to do for diego b-day. but that is a few months away, and after the san diego comic con family trip! PHEW!
yes, the greenbean shop is up and running! and guess what sort of NEW goodies are available?! WINDOW DECALS! something new, something fun, and something greenbean. there are several decal designs in the shop right now including the girl who loves bugs and several designs of couples in love. there is even a decal of a beautiful lady putting makeup on. these are new products in the shop so they are in stock for a limited time only.
there is also plenty of magnets, embellishments, and illustrations. and did i mention those GIANT embellishments?! probably but it must be said again! there are a slew of embellishments ranging in size and price that would be perfect to add on a card, to put in a frame, or to include in a scrapbook. i even threw in a few that i didn want to sell but figured someone else could use it and love it.
i got a few more ideas up my sleeve including some shrinky dink earring love, a few easter eggs that may or may not get into the shop in time, and with a few non-holiday ornaments. but this week, i be working on isabella birthday goodies- spidergirl related! it gonna be SPECTACULAR [oh, who gets this joke?!]
I wholly agree with you as far as your comments about asoka go. My last interaction with him involved him twisting my words until they meant what he wanted them to mean, and then he shot them down. I never read his comments any more, but I come across people’s replies to him and I see that he never changes. Someone, I forget who, said about someone else “He uses statistics like a drunken man uses lamp-posts…for support rather than illumination.
I see that he never changes.
Capt, thank you for your kind words. I am consistent, regardless of what some may say.
Wait, is that me twisting your words again? LOL!
Terrible thing to quote someone’s words back to them.
OK, Bean and the rest, if I haven’t turned you guys onto John Michael Greer permanently yet, you absolutely must read this week’s post on Israel. One of the more honest and rational discussions of the subject you are likely to see. Oh, and I hope you enjoyed the post on nukes last week. Can’t wait to see the last of his 3 hot button topics next Thursday!
Cheers, mates.
Interesting article, Tripp.
It raises a question I have asked and no one has answered with a specific date: when will the USA military establishment collapse due to lack of oil?
The only answer anyone has ever given is “the military will be the last” which is not an answer. What decade? What century?
Or will there always be oil, giving lie to the peak oil claim.
If there will not always be oil, then when, what date, will oil not be available. If no such date can be given, the peak oil problem is revealed to not really be a problem.
CORRECTION
If there will not always be oil, then when, what date, will oil not be available. If no such date can be given, the peak oil problem is revealed to not really be a problem, anymore than a certain rogue planet crashing into the Earth is a problem.
Imagine if Nazi Germany had been able to get a deliverable nuke onto a plane in 1944 or 1945. You wonder whether WW2 wouldn’t have had a really dreadful end with London or maybe a Soviet occupied East European city getting smoked – and then a “negotiated” so-called “peace” with Adolph holding the whip.
I have to say I’m not so sanguine about this nukes thing. I wouldn’t want to put too much money on rationality.
To date nukes appear to have been a peace keeper of sorts fending off some all out conflagrations. But still.
I’ve yet to read a really good explanation of why WW1 happened. Maybe nothing more than doddering Victorian Generals doing the bidding of European aristocrats enfeebled by syphilis and opium and centuries of in-breeding. Imagine the Great War as nothing more than the result of ruined minds. So who knows what passed as “reason” in the great salons of Europe before and after the banquets and the debaucheries…
Was WW2 about something better than cleaning up unfinished business of WW1 and something more than Japanese thinking it’s cheaper to steal than to buy resources?
Can’t help but think that modern day people don’t have much of a leg up intellectually on our 20th Century forebears. Still subject to idiocies and neuroses.
So can you imagine the Taliban up-ending Pakistan? Can you imagine Mullah Omar or someone of his ilk with his finger on the nuclear trigger?
Yes, spoken with the airily dismissive, Romney-esque perspective of one who’s been flush with money all his life.
Mommy and daddy leave you with a nice trust fund to mooch off? I’ll bet they did. Not that there’s anything inherently WRONG with that, I mean, with being wealthy. Or with inheriting wealth. Guilt in general and especially about money is such a drag, isn’t it? Sets you up to fail, doesn’t it? Strictly for losers. Right? I’ll bet you understand Mitt pretty well, don’t you?
That’s ok, you can tell us, we’re all your friends.
The thing is if the UK or Russia had had nukes then adolf would not dared have use them(also the reason why he never used chemical weapons on the allies). The comparison though does not hold true with Mullah Omar or his ilk. These halfwits actually the martyr crap they spew out. They will gladly sacrifice their children if it means they can hit the USA or Europe, though of course israel would be their No.1 favourite.
It is also the reason why Iran can never be trusted. They already have the means of delivery. In the past 2 years alone over 6 strategic studies on the use of EMP have been carried out by Iranian scientists. One mentions the use of 2 over the US and 1 over central Europe…… Hello 1870!
Sorry , actually believe the martyr crap
Can you give a link or cite a source for that? Because that’s a credible threat. You don’t need hundred of warheads to inflict terrible harm if you use the EMP effect. In the novel “One Second After”, unknown (they never find out) terrorists fire EMP causing missiles from a platform in the Gulf Coast. There are many commercial vehicles registered in 3rd world countries – a deal could easily be made once the technology is in place.
Still tripping the light fantastic you little fairy?
Yes, Sub Saharan African Negroes are booming in population – expected to reach two billion this century. They will overflow their boundaries and genetically ruin all peoples. The future of Civilization depends on keeping them in Africa.
Hopefully we’ll be saved by the Peak Oil/Climate bell and things will collapse before that happens in full. It is already happening of course: downtown Dublin is full of White girls with their coffee colored bastards.
Wow Asoka, you’ve really been on fire this week. I for one, appreciate your alternative perspective. And for some reason, I was thinking about Orion and his “Chameleon” post this morning. IMO, it is the best piece of writing I have read on CFN thus far, truly inspired and touched.
Myself, I just don’t seem to have much to say these days, or the inclination to force myself to type something.
Yes good article. He agees with me.
Now you respect him alot so ask him whether your mindset about Man being reduceable to physical matter and energy is valid. As a Druid he will set you straight but in a gentler way than I perhaps. Style is important I know. You’re not wrong: the principle of inter-dependance is important on all levels. But that the thing: there are many levels. Otherwise, Buddhism and Western Atheism would be the same thing.
When minds as different as Richard Millhouse Nixon, the Arch Druid, and Radu Voda agree on something, you know it has to be true. Israel is toast in the long term.
Does the Druid have a blog? Maybe I’ll preach to him about White Nationalism. Not that I’ll leave you bereft of course. Fear not!
Here is another concept regarding purpose of life that I came upon today. Questioning and contemplating purpose and meaning are worthy of time and speech, especially on a day of counting blessings. Best wishes, Brother.
“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”
– Dalai Lama XIV
Thanksgiving is a religious event. It’s a short, large meal which follows a very long period of fasting, or penance. Probably symbolizing God’s granting of Deliverance through moral courage and suffering. It’s not about eat’n a f..ck’n Butterball!
We haven’t gotten to the real Thanksgiving yet because we haven’t yet gone through the long period of fasting….. Don’t mock The Lord!
And What-the-F…ck is this?: “Every year, the President of the United States will “pardon” a turkey, which spares the bird’s life and ensures that it will spend the duration of its life roaming freely on farmland.”
The IFPA have done some preliminaries on this and if you scoot around the Internet there is a lot of the info there. The information I have I received directly from my brother who is a consultant for the MOD. He has considerable experience of nuclear weaponry. He also served in the RAF, at a far higher level than I. At one point his primary role involved the deployment of the WE177.
Forstchen’s book was extremely accurate. I an not sure if you are aware but the book is based in part on the Report of the Comission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack. It had the misfortune to be published on the same day as the 9/11 commissions report and was thus forgotten about. You can find a copy of it at empcommission.org.
To say the USA is vulnerable is the understatement of the century. I cannot gloat though as we are in a far worse state.
Do I take this threat seriously, enough to have a faraday cage containing some spare goodies.
The irony is if Israel is left to hang and they use their only WMDs in response to an attempt to wipe them out, one of their primary targets will be their enemies energy sources. Radioactive oil for the next 10’000 years or so!
Anyone who thinks we can salt ourselves with the islamics or even get them to tolerate us needs serious help.
God’s going to make Man suffer because Man has become an apostate liar, a fraudster (Dante’s Nineth Circle of Hell). Because of his lies Man will suffer until Man finds Deliverance in the Truth. Those who speak the Truth will suffer most at the hands of the fraudsters and the liars, but they will find Deliverance.
Edgar Cayce said that Japan would go under the waves.
Traitors are very far down in the circles too. To betray your own Nation or Race is a most serious crime, both secular and spiritual. That the modern West ignores the latter shows them for what they are since Race is senior to Nation on the scale of values.
We’ve got a corrupt President who lives in the closet, who likes “blow”, and who vacations with his family on a luxurious, private, high-security, 5-star plantation resort in Hawaii.
And he was, believe it or not, the preferable choice of candidates in the last U.S. election!
It’s all going down…unless the Americans repent and start speaking the Truth…quick….
Otherwise, it’s going down…down…down….
How about a lead safe? Would that protect? Also good in case of a conventional nuclear attack if some kind of breathing tube could be created.
I think that a Traitor is also a type of fraudster in that treason is also a type of fraud, or a deception perpetrated on someone to whom owe a duty of loyalty.
In this Holiday Season, on ‘Black Friday’, it is the duty of all Red Blooded Americans to climb into their SUVs, drive to the Big Box Store in the local strip mall at the edge of Town, and buy lots of sh*t they don’t need and cannot afford. The Economy, the Future of the Nation, and your family’s happiness depend on it. Anything less would be unpatriotic. Happy Holidays!
–WSP7
Having read books that attempt to understand Cayce,
seems he did not give Timelines.
Any thoughts on this?
How many nuke power plants would sink if it does sink?
Somewhere in the Bible it’s written:
“Blessed is he who has eyes that can see. Blessed is he who has ears that can hear.”
We’re living in very strange times now. Many people can’t see the obvious. For example, many obese Americans don’t know that they’re fat.
It’s going down….
It’s almost as if Americans are suffering from some kind of mass blindness, or mass delusion…like the Ger m ans during WWII.
I live in Asia. The other night I was watching a crappy “60 Minutes” infotainment report on U.S. college football.
They showed a scene of a football stadium filled with screaming football fans. What struck me was that basically everyone in the stadium was fat. It was basically a mob of screaming fat people.
What would happen if the U.S. President addressed the crowd of screaming fat people and said to them:
“Do you realize that you’re fat?”
Surely, Obama must know that they’re fat since he’s so skinny, right?
Michelle knows that they’re fat because she’s always push’n her low fat, crash diet menu for kids in the public schools, right?
I bet that in the U.S. that there are lots of delusional big, fat young American women who try to enter the Miss America beauty pageant and then feel hurt and wronged when they don’t win?
From Jerry Pounelles Chaos Manor.
Iran will by now have tens of kilograms of fuel grade Uranium. Fuel grade is 10% to 20% U235. Creating it is about 80% of the work required to create weapons grade Uranium, which is about 90% U235. Building a Hiroshima weapon from 90% U235 metallic Uranium is a fairly simple process: the Manhattan Project didn’t even bother to test a Uranium weapon. The Trinity test was a Plutonium bomb. Refining Uranium from Fuel Grade to Weapons Grade is an order of magnitude less difficult (and time consuming) than refining natural Uranium to Fuel Grade. The point is that Iran has done 80 to 90% of the work required to create a Hiroshima nuke, and this is known to everyone who takes the trouble to look at the situation. It is possible that Vice President Biden did not know this during the Vice-Presidential Debate, but he certainly knows it now. There is no difficulty at all in building a Hiroshima bomb from Weapons Grade Uranium. The resulting weapon can be carried in a Six By truck, a small power boat, or most aircraft. There is no need for a missile.
His evaluation is spot on.
Why would you want to survive a large scale nuclear exchange? From every scenario I have ever studied you would be better off dead.
MAD worked both sides were sane. When your dealing with the Islamic fruitloops all bets are off…..
Anyone who thinks we can salt ourselves with the islamics or even get them to tolerate us needs serious help.
Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims are rational people. I have many Muslim friends. They are easy to get along with. They are good people. Anyone who cannot tolerate them needs serious help.
Hey Asoka how about the Muslims who blew up the bus in Tel Aviv a few days ago? Are they easy to get along with?
–WSP7
The newest thing is for Middle Aged Women (many fat) to enter their own “beauty” contests….
Remember, Iran has every right to feel threatened by Israel and the New World Order which intends to destroy them. Both sides are wrong though I must say, Shiism is much less aggressive than the Sunni Islam of the Wahabbi school.
His timelines are all wrong so what’s the point of a prophet who doesn’t know when? In the long run, the whole planet is doomed. The whole Cosmos up to the level of Brahma will be innundated by the Universal Flood.
The guy who blew up the bus was Israeli, from the village of Taybeh in Israel. I don’t know if he was easy to get along with. He admitted he did it. What he did was wrong.
How about the USA Marine who beat up the taxi driver? You gonna generalize about all US Marines based on a minority of marines who beat up civilians?
Michelle hates Oprah for being fat and perhaps for lusting after Barack.
Have you ever noticed that Americans basically worship Lincoln and think that he’s our “greatest” President when Lincoln oversaw the wholesale slaughter of roughly one quarter of all Southern men of military age during the Civil War?
What kind of a man can direct that extreme degree of pain and carnage against his own people?
“You’re bored Procon, so you’ve decided to provoke me, which is quite all right. I didn’t reply to your comment because, believe it or not, I’ve got a life…” -btb-
Yeah, no problem, bill. So do I.
And I was in no particular rush for an answer from you, either. It did anger me when the Resident Impediment* said that Chris Hedges could speak for you, though. And that was why I assumed you wouldn’t respond – either because you agreed with Chris Hedges, or RI, or both.
Glad you countermanded that idea, anyway.
And as regards:
“So, Procon, I’ll throw your question sorta back at you: What would you do if the people living closest to your house said they want to kill your family and burn your home down? Then they blow up your car and your barn. You’d sleep kind of uneasily, huh?
Then, if you’re a man, not a coward, you take your shotgun and head out to their places.”
-btb-
First of all, I wouldn’t have moved into that neighborhood. And – 64 years on – with my children’s children still running around with my shotgun, and with the neighbors gaining in numbers AND fanaticism – – – I’d be thinking it was PAST time for a different approach.
Did you read that ArchDruid piece that TrippTicket suggested?
All Israelis Jews need to read it.
Israeli Muslims already know it, intuitively.
Like the “peaceful” guy who blew up that bus, yesterday.
Times are changing for the US, and not for the better. Our “allies” need to face a changing future that involves less US force projection.
*putting his words in the mouths of others is a standard Residential Impedimentary technique for asoka..LifeSupport.
Just stick around and watch.
You will understand.
Like the “peaceful” guy who blew up that bus, yesterday.
=================
The federal penitentiarys are full of Christian who committed violent acts. Do you go around making fun of Christians and Christianity? Do you call Christianity a “Peaceful religion” in quotes?
You and WSP7 and Treeman are maligning a religion of peace for the actions of a minority. But you don’t do that with Christianity. You don’t disown members of your family who are Christians. There is a word for what you do: hypocrisy.
Bombings and killings and other acts of violence are immoral. Do you therefore support the dismantling of the armed forces, where they train people to bomb and kill? There is a word for why you don’t: hypocrisy.
Speaking of hypocrisy, the United States should cease blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.
If the Israelis continue their illegal blockade of Gaza and their massive land theft from the Palestinians of the West Bank, the UNSC should place economic sanctions on Israel. The US moves to paralyze the UNSC on the Palestine issue are the height of hypocrisy, similar to the diplomatic cover it gives the government of Bahrain.
Note that the most severe sanctions in history are being applied to Iran, for doing things that Israel has also done. American hypocrisy on Palestine has long detracted from the moral authority of the USA and the UN in the Middle East, and weakens American diplomacy and soft power, to the detriment of USA interests.
Do you have a point?
You must be kidding!
The point: Islam is a peaceful religion.
With one and a half billion Muslims in the world, a few are bound to go astray, as members of any other faith do.
The first words revealed to Muhammad, begin with “Iqra!” or “Read!” It’s one of Islam’s most crucial messages because it admonishes Muslims to seek knowledge wherever found. It’s through knowledge that peace and understanding are found.
Peace was Muhammad’s teaching. Peace was his method and, finally, peace was his religion.
Anybody chopping heads or blowing up buses is not a true Muslim: they are a minority. Just like Branch Davidians or Jim Jones do not represent mainstream Christianity.
anti soak, from the Crusades to September 11th, the prevalent notion among non-Muslims is that Islam was largely spread by the sword and continues to be defined by violence. In fact, that belief is a distortion of the religion’s tradition, of its history, and of the actions and beliefs of countless Muslims around the globe today.
The book “Islam” Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today provides a rebuttal to general misperceptions about the religion by documenting its rich tradition of nonviolence. To that end, the book examines the sources of Islam—the Qur’an, the main religious text of Islam, and the Hadith, the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. It contests the prevalent notion that Islam is built on violence in part by illuminating the role of the tolerant, mystical tradition of Sufism in Islam.
Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven played Backwards.
http://www.leoslyrics.com/led-zeppelin/stairway-to-heaven-full-backwards-lyrics/
Your little UFO was probably a spirit.
You are a Liar. Islam was spread by the sword and will be again. A better translation of Islam is “Submission” to Allah yes – but also his representatives on Earth. Or else.
Struck a nerve, Radu?
Try reading a book for a change, instead of your white separatist websites:
Pal, Amitabh. 2011. “Islam” means peace understanding the muslim principle of nonviolence today. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger.
The world “islam” is cognate with the word “salam,” which means peace.
We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person … it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. (Qur’an, 5:32)
Applies to Muslims, Jews, and Christians (of all colors) equally.
“If there will not always be oil, then when, what date, will oil not be available. If no such date can be given, the peak oil problem is revealed to not really be a problem, anymore than a certain rogue planet crashing into the Earth is a problem.”
You get my vote for “Most Tedious Motherfucker On Earth”. There really isn’t anything that can be done about a rogue planet. Well, you might be able to divert it’s path with some nukes. Since that would potentially kill some microbes that could be persuaded to become Muslims, I’m sure that course of action is unacceptable to you. Maybe you could meditate it out of existence for us.
There are all kinds of things that can be done about peak oil.
There seem to be an awful lot of misunderstanders of Islam. Maybe you ought to have a word with them.
How many acts of terror have been carried out since 9/11 by Muslims sanctioned by their imams and religious leaders? How many by Christians sanctioned by theirs. You are fond of facts go look that one up. Religion of peace more like pieces.
Really Islam means peace. That’s funny because everywhere it is listed as meaning submission and obedience serviced from a word meanig peace. Very selective with your facts again are we not.
For a religion of peace its followers hold do much rage. 1 terrorist require funding, equipment, training and concealment . In Northern Ireland it was recognised that a ratio of 60 to 1 applied. Applied across the board that adds up to an awful lot of “peaceful” Muslims.
Quite, it is an asinine comparison.
Pretty good report last night on BBC about the 10 million Coptic Christians in Egypt and their struggle for survival in a nation now controlled by violent Radical Islam (the religion of peace).
–WSP7
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The Egyptian president has just granted himself new powers. His edicts cannot be challenged by the courts, or anyone really. How the Egyptian military will take that remains to be seen.
Of course, as Asoka points out, Islam is a religion of peace and equality. In fact the most marvellous thing since or rather before sliced bread. Unless of course you are a woman. Or a minority religion in anywhere they hold sway.
Of course I am just racist ( a charge levelled at anyone who challenges the perception of the ” religion of peace” even though Islam is not a race, but a religion, a lifestyle choice)
Still when one reads such as this perhaps one can be forgiven.
“A woman may be likened to a sheep (even) a cow or a camel for all are ridden.”
Tafsir al-Qurtubi, 172/15 ????? ???????
Incidentally no one ‘converts’ to Islam. They are called ‘reverts’ as Islam has the arrogance to proclaim that everyone is born a Muslim. You merely stray from the path. I wonder what would happen if the Catholics maintained that everyone was born catholic? How roundly and loudly would they’ve condemned?
President Mohamed Morsy has often celebrated the fact that he has seldom used his legislative powers, using that fact as an index of his care not to abuse his expansive authorities.
But a new constitutional declaration issued on Thursday night actually harnesses more power for Morsy, which he says he is trying to avoid.
The seven-article declaration renders the president’s decrees and laws immune from appeal or cancellation. It also protects both the Shura Council and the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly from dissolution by any judicial authority, and further protects the assembly by extending its mandate to draft the constitution to eight months instead of six, as stipulated in an earlier constitutional declaration. Two cases against the Shura Council and the Constituent Assembly are currently awaiting a court ruling, but those cases will now be voided by the declaration.
The new constitutional declaration also gives immunity to all decisions and decrees issued by Morsy since he took office on 30 June and until the ratification of a new constitution, thus protecting those decisions from judicial or any other type of revision.
Further, Morsy granted himself the exclusive right to take any measures he sees fit to protect the country’s national unity, national security and the revolution.”
If I were a Coptic Christian or indeed any other minority living there I would be very worried. Mind you I think the Israelis might well be rather concerned too.
Asoka it is with some mirth that I see you compare Chritianity to some of the religious cults that have sprung up. A Saudi man recently marred three women from the same school, one of them a pupil. http://m.albawaba.com/editorchoice/saudi-multiple-marriage-452130. However under Saudi law this is condoned not condemned.
Remind me again, what happened to the branch davidians?
I seem to remember some other recent scandal regarding they marrying of minors in the USA. Were they not jailed for this?
Under Islamic law in Saudi it is assumed that a girl hits puberty at 8 3/4. There is no age limit for marriage. There is no age of consent as sex is banned outside of marriage. Once married a bride many not refuse, marriage is consent.
This is because Mohammed married aisha when she was 6 and consummated the marriage when she was 9.
As the Saudis follow strict Islamic law as firmly laid down in the Koran and the hadiths, anything else would be blasphemy .
Of course in civilised countries men who sleep with 9 year old girl are not called prophets.
Seems like a barracks religion, like Mithraism.
In civilized countries men who sleep with 9 year old girls are indeed not called ‘prophets.’ They are called Prisoners.
Treeman, thanks for spelling out what we are up against.
–WSP7
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There really isn’t anything that can be done about a rogue planet. … There are all kinds of things that can be done about peak oil.
Xhalor, thanks for getting back on topic.
The amount of fossil fuel under the earth is finite. There really isn’t anything that can be done about that.
Asoka it is with some mirth that I see you compare Chritianity to some of the religious cults that have sprung up.
===========
Yes, mirth.
Mirth is good.
Mirth is what is absent in many monotheistic cults.
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
— Jesus “Hussein” Christ
The value of Exxon Mobil — its stock price — resides in its major asset, its stored oil. The weather disasters arising from burning that oil would be so great that we would have to stop burning. That’s just Exxon Mobil’s oil. The oil stored by all the oil companies everywhere would, if burned, destroy civilization many times over.
Another way to comprehend this, as Bill McKibben has observed, is that most of the oil stored all over the earth is worthless. The value of oil company stock, if Wall St. were rational, would drop precipitously. Moreover, there is no point in drilling for more oil. Most of what we have already stored cannot be burned. More drilling is pointless. — George Lakoff
>>If there will not always be oil, then when, what date, will oil not be available. If no such date can be given, the peak oil problem is revealed to not really be a problem.
I just know we can get you straightened out on this.
There will always be oil. You need to understand that this is not incompatable with what peak oil theory actually says, which is simply that the rate of production will reach a maximum point. The simplest of logic demands that there must be such a point with any finite resource.
The reason that the peak in global oil production is a problem is that it represents the point beyond which it will never again be possible to satisfy increased demand through increased production. From anywhere. No matter how hard we flog the ground.
Peak oil theory does not posit that there will ever be a point in time at which no oil is available anywhere at any price. It does posit that there is a point at which the oil remaining in a well can no longer be extracted at a net energy gain; that the energy cost of extracting and processing the remaining oil exceeds the energy content of the finished product. It gets to where it’s like eating cold celery: the caloric content of the food itself is less than the caloric requirement to digest it. It’s important to get that.
Production does not increase up to a maximum point and then go over a cliff. It reaches a maximum point and then begins to decline. Hubbert’s key observations were that: 1) In oil production, this maximum occurs approximately halfway through the working lifetime of a well, and 2) That this pattern conforms roughly to the same logistic distribution curve whether the data are production numbers from a single well, or a field, or an entire oil producing region, or a country.
As we’ve noted, a lot of the reasons derive from the inflexible laws of physics as they relate to the geology and engineering of petroleum production. But there are also economic factors in play. In actual practice, wells are abandoned long before energy break-even point is actually reached, because as long as the extraction is being undertaken in the hope of earning a profit, it’s necessary not only that there be a net energy gain but that the profits on that gain exceed those that might be obtained by redeploying the equipment elsewhere. Something like 80% of the oil wells in the U.S. are now classified as “stripper wells” (defined as any well that produces ten barrels per day or less for any twelve month period) and there are a great many wells which were entirely abandoned in the past because the price of oil did not support further efforts to work them.
Many of those wells were shut down before half of the technically recoverable oil was removed, so it’s tempting to consider the possibilities for putting them back into production. Unfortunately, there is a somewhat familiar catch-22: The potential return on investment for doing that is typically so poor that it would take extremely high oil prices to make it profitable; the only thing that could drive prices that high would be demand from growing economies — but economies have a hard time growing in the face of extremely high oil prices.
Bottom line: a lot of that oil is going to stay right where it is. If we ever come up with technologies and energy sources that would enable to extract it effieiently, we will no longer need it, because the extraction of oil will no longer represent the best possible allocation of those resources.
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the extraction of oil will no longer represent the best possible allocation of those resources.
============
In a world of rationality, where profit motive reigns, what you say is true.
“The amount of fossil fuel under the earth is finite. There really isn’t anything that can be done about that.”
Then you just run out. Humans exsited for thousands of years without it. You either do without or move on to something else. These options are not available when dealing with planetary collisions. That is why Treeman astutely and correctly identified the comparison of the two phenomena as “asinine”. That is why LifeSupport astutely and correctly pointed out that the on going cost of developing and implementing the technology to find increasingly smaller pockets of fossil fuel is making these energy sources impractical for maintaining large societies. The deepest wells are currently being drilled on Sakhalin Island. 12,345 meters! Still, just scratching the surface. One good twitch in the Earth’s crust and say good bye to your hyper-expensive drilling efforts and the communities that depend on their success.
Then you just run out.
Thanks for that clarification, xhalor. Except Lifesupport maintains we will never run out because we will just stop trying to extract it, assuming the profit motive is the primary mover. Of course, as we know from some of the religious fanaticism expressed by Treeman, WSP7, anti soak, and others, the primary motive is not always profit. Otherwise, how would the pyramids have been built.
As you say, it appears there is nothing we can do about oil. Just as in the case of a rogue planet hitting earth, we are so fucked!
“the extraction of oil will no longer represent the best possible allocation of those resources.”
============
“In a world of rationality, where profit motive reigns, what you say is true.”
No it’s a matter of sanity. If you had 2 bags of corn would you plant them if you knew you would havest only 1 bag. Or would you eat the two bags? EROI is just that. There maybe 100 billion barrels of oil in the ground but if it takes more than 1 barrel of oil to get 1 barrel of oil out of the ground then in the ground it will stay. Anything else would insanity.
Standing outside at 2 AM in the freezing rain to buy a plasma TV that you will be socially shamed into upgrading in less than two years.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Ah, tradition.
I hope that I stay alive long enough to see the next level of wanton consumerism.
C’mon…how much weirder can it get? Hunger Games?
This for Procon, too (an all-Georgia reply).
I read John Michael Greer’s latest post, and yes, it was interesting. The thing about Greer is he is very logical. There’s a danger in logic of putting too much emphasis on the argument and not enough on the premise.
I agree that Israel survives because the US supports it. I don’t buy Greer’s premise that nuclear war won’t happen because people are too smart (He said Hitler might have been crazy but he wasn’t stupid), that anyone in power evaluating the cost/benefit would opt out of nuclear war.
Greer’s modus operandis is to base the present and/or the future on what has occurred historically. Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis – the USSR decided it wasn’t worth it to start a nuclear war. Since Hiroshima/Nagasaki there’s never been a nuclear war – 68 years.
But Greer disingenuously says that not counting Japan there’s never been nuclear weapons used in war. But you can’t eliminate the Japan nuclear bombing from consideration in his argument. The fact is, two nuclear bombs were dropped on enemy, heavily populated cities during wartime. The precedent has been set. The nuclear clock isn’t set at 11:55 pm for nothing.
His whole premise that Israel is doomed may be correct, but not how he describes it. If Israel’s enemies obtain nuclear weapons, they will not hesitate to use them. These countries don’t care about Palestinians, they’d nuke the whole area to exterminate Israel. And if they launched, Israel would launch most of its own nukes. Bye middle east, bye oil.
There were other points Greer made that I’ll address in another post. But thanks for the heads up.
400th! Happy Thanksgiving, Clusterfuckers!
On a related note, I read in Elaine Supkis’ Culture of Life News that Japan’s top mayor is requesting nukes for land disputes with China. I’ve often heard it said that man has never invented a weapon he eventually didn’t end up using.
Wait until you get a peek at the Chemical and Biological arsenal. All the fun of advanced weaponry without the mess….and radiation.
Nukes. How totally 50’s.
David Fromkin (Europe’s Last Summer) thinks that the main cause of World War One was Prussia’s fear of Russia. The Prussian general staff believed that war with Russia was inevitable, and wanted to get in the first blow.
Fromkin doesn’t explain the reason for this fear, but it probably was based on Russia’s history of continual territorial expansion.
I looked up some maps in a history book I have and I discovered that the the Russians had been gobbling European territory since the time the Spanish conquered South America. Instances:
Under Catherine the Great and Peter the Great they took territory, through war, from Sweden, Poland, and Turkey (the Crimea). In the 1850s they tried to take control of the waterway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean but were thwarted by Britain and France in the Crimean War. In the 1870s they they made another grab for the Dardanelles in another war but were thwarted once again, this time by united French, British, and German opposition at the Congress of Berlin.
So then, by the time 1900 rolls around, the Prussian general staff is keenly aware that territorial expansion is a Czarist tradition and that Prussia might be the next target. And as Russia was industrializing at a hectic rate, she’d soon be strong enough to inflict defeat and too strong to be defeated. Therefore, when the Serbian-Austrian confrontation in the summer of 1914 gave the Prussians the opportunity to start a war they thought inevitable, they took it.
And from the Prussian point of view, the Russia- versus-Prussia aspect of the war was more than a matter of contesting national-political systems. It was also a contest between racial sub-groups: the Teutons on one hand and the Slavs on the other. Hitler had antecedents.
I’m no Egyptologist, but it seems to me that in attempting to approach what I see as two very different questions — how the Great Pyramids were built, and why they were built — most of us would have considerable trouble avoiding corruption of the data with our own cultural biases. It is interesting to see these questions arise here, given our host’s proclivity for interpretations based on the importance of architecture in defining the way public spaces are perceived and utilized — and all that follows from that.
Regardless of the motives that may have inspired their builders, the Great Pyramids are surely monuments to what can be achieved when enough human ingenuity and muscle power comes under the direction of a strong and durable centralized authority. I can’t really accept your premise that profit was not the primary motive; I mean, it’s hard to think of any more profitable occupation than absolute monarch, so any endeavor which would serve to reinforce that power might be regarded as profitable from that standpoint alone. The cathedrals of Europe would seem to me to be the closest correlates. Highly conspicuous displays of the wealth, power, and, perhaps most important of all, the stability required to build them, such structures are investments: wealth attracts wealth, and power attracts power. If you can borrow a little supernatural power as icing on that cake, so much the better.
In the modern corporate world, the same “mine is bigger than yours” contest inspires such imposing edifices as the Sears Tower, or, dare I say it: the World Trade Towers; formerly the inner sanctum for a new priesthood which wields powers so strange and mystifying that they too have an almost supernatural quality. The power to create vast sums of wealth with the stroke of a pen. The power to increase the collective value of assets by combining them in ways too complicated for ordinary mortals to comprehend (a particularly dangerous form of dark magic, as it turns out, one which incurs the risk of having the mixture explode in the magician’s face before crumbling into piles of worthless dust).
As for rogue planets, I’d say we have our hands full with the one we’re living on.
“His whole premise that Israel is doomed may be correct, but not how he describes it. If Israel’s enemies obtain nuclear weapons, they will not hesitate to use them. These countries don’t care about Palestinians, they’d nuke the whole area to exterminate Israel. And if they launched, Israel would launch most of its own nukes. Bye middle east, bye oil.”
The Palestinians don’t even care about the Palestinians. What sort of people base a rocket launcher next to schools or in hospitals merely so they can benefit from civilians being killed in the counter strikes.
Mind you even the normally pathetically sycophantic western press are beginning to get a clue.
The Daily Mirror (UK) have quietly deleted its article about the death of Mahmoud Sadallah(aged 4) whose death was blamed on a Israeli airstrike. In reality he was killed by one of Hamas’s defective rockets(one of many). This was the little boy whose death provided a nice photo opp for Egypt’s prime minister.
I don’t expect the Israelis will hold their breaths for an apology.
If Hamas could get nukes they would gladly ‘martyr’ half a million of their own to kill few thousand jews.
Most people fail to understand, this conflict has never been about land it is about the Jews daring to defy Islam. They will not submit, therefore they must be destroyed.
Everyone is free to advise other people how to live, including the Dalai Lama. But he does more than offer advice. In telling us that our purpose is to help others and not hurt them, he is explaining the purpose of human evolution. That’s what he is really doing.
But how does he know what the purpose of the human race is? In fact, he doesn’t. Further, he doesn’t know that it HAS a purpose. All he has is a religion-derived belief, which, in regard to human purpose, is of no more value than the belief of the man in the street.
The problem with the man in the street, however, is that he shrinks from his own power of choice. The idea that he has the freedom to choose how he wishes to live in all particulars–physical constraints aside–is a power that frightens him. He’d rather take instruction from the Pope or the Dalai Lama or some other moral scold.
The post-war French existentialists regarded religious leaders and their pronouncements as enemies of human freedom. Some of them are.
Michael Greer thinks that Israel will not launch a nuclear attack because if she did she would cause her own destruction, nuclear or conventional. But what if she was ALREADY destroyed, had ALREADY been flattened by a couple of five-hundred kiloton warheads? She’d have no reason to restrain herself then, especially if the messianic types were in charge. They might interpret the destruction of holy Israel as the end of history and launch away.
For a destroyed or defeated Israel to make a nuclear counterattack presumes the existence of an offshore command center and a couple of nuclear-armed submarines. How do we know that Israel hasn’t got both?
Just because Nazi Germany ended in 1945 doesn’t mean European anti-semitism ended. Combine that anti-Jewish attitude with the Israelis’ terrible public relations effort (if they put out any effort at all), then mix well with extremely effective Islamic PR and people’s love of the (supposed) underdog, and you have the recipe for the world’s current position on Israel.
You are correct that it’s not a matter of land – other than the part of Jerusalem that contains the Temple Mount. It IS about modern Islam’s dislike (really hatred) of Jews, which began before Israel existed.
I place a lot of the blame on the Saudi Arabian religion of Wahhabism, which originated in the 1700’s. The following is taken from PBS.com, based on one of their programs:
“For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia’s dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies.”
Note the inclusion of the word “enemies”. This extreme form of Islam has a considerable influence on many mideast Islamists.
To continue from the PBS article:
“And all of these people are supposed to be hated, to be persecuted, even killed. And we have several clergy – not one Salafi (Wahhabi)* clergy — who have said that against the Shi’a and against the other Muslims. And they have done it in Algeria, in Afghanistan. This is the same ideology. They just have the same opportunity. They did it in Algeria and Afghanistan, and now New York. …”
* I added the parenthetical word for clarification.
Apparently Jews are most representative of non-Wahhibist Western civilization, and should be killed.
Finally, there’s one positive, obvious solution to the mideast situation, wherein all armed hostilities could end permanently instantaneously:
Recognize Israel’s right to exist and establish diplomatic relations with it. With just a few strokes of the pen the mideast could be at peace. This begs the question of why this hasn’t happened.
“…other day we buried a mango seed in an area covered with building debris…”
-welles, not realizing how gloating sounds-
dude wtf…get a grip, no one’s gloating. how is burying a mango seed bloody gloating? if you followed what i wrote previously i am saying that doing little things like planting work positively for the planet. and how am i mocking anyone by saying this?
don’t read into things, i’m shooting from the hip.
don’t tell me you can’t plant things in north america, that’s beyond absurd. what, you can’t compost there, or plant pine trees? fuck’s sake man, no one’s bloody gloating, it’s all about the little actions that make gaia happier and humankind healthier.
everyone back to their posts now. corps dismissed. your homework is to plant a seed, any little seed at all. they have the guns but we have the numbers.
peace peaceniks
I am VERY skeptical.
At Youtube is that and one on ‘Revolution9’ [Beatles].
My skeptical nature is due to, long ago.
A Beatles song where Lennon sings ‘Jai guru deva’.
In Rolling Stone [40+] years ago a letter writer
said ‘Play it backwards, its ‘love is good hash’.
Uh no, its ‘Jai guru deva’.
Little is known of the Israeli Nuclear weapons program. It is estimated that they have @200 usable weapons. The Jericho missile is their primary long range weapon. Their submarines have cruise missile launchers and it is believed they have built warheads for these as well. They also, obviously, have freefall airburst bombs as well.
Israel has never even confirmed it has Nuclear weapons let alone revealed their yield.
One thing is certain, their scientists and technicians are second to none and whatever they have built will work. They are also experts in airbourne electronic warfare with measures and countermeasures that exceed even the USA’s.
In a shooting war I’d rather not have them as an opponent.
If Israel was hit and its ability to defend itself was seriously impaired an obvious target for them would be the arab and/or iranian fuel storage,processing and production.
In western war plans against Soviet forces one of the primary targets were such sites. Like us, I cannot see them directly targeting civilian areas unless they contained high value targets.
Anyone know how to lead line a petrol tank…… I wonder how it will affect my MPG?
Just a few quotes, gives a slight hint as to why the Muslims hate the Jews so much. It is the word of God that they do so, unlike the bible which has several authors the Koran is the word of god through Mohammed. It is mandatory. Tends to make a peaceful settlement somewhat difficult. Christians are held in the same contempt too. So much for a religion of peace…
Ignominy shall be their portion [the Jews’] wheresoever they are found… They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them… because they disbelieve the revelations of Allah and slew the Prophets wrongfully… because they were rebellious and used to transgress. [Surah 111, v. 112]
And thou wilt find them [the Jews] the greediest of mankind….[Surah 11, v. 96]
Evil is that for which they sell their souls… For disbelievers is a terrible doom.[Surah II, v. 90]
Taste ye [Jews] the punishment of burning.[Surah III, v. 18 1]
Proclaim a woeful punishment to those that hoard up gold and silver…. Their treasures shall be heated in the dres of Hell, and their foreheads, sides and backs branded with them. . . . ‘Taste then the punishment which is your due. [Surah IX, v. 35]
“They [the Jews] are the heirs of Hell…. They will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is clear from what they say … When evil befalls you they rejoice.” Ibid. [Surah 111, v. 117-120]
Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment.[Surah IV, v. 56]
Because of the wrongdoing of the Jews…. And of their taking usury … and of their devouring people’s wealth by false pretenses. We have prepared for those of them who disbelieve a painful doom.[Surah IV, v. 160, 161]
Allah hath cursed them [the Jews] for their disbelief.[Surah IV, v. 46]
They [the Jews] will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is clear from what they say, but more violent is the hatred which their breasts conceal.[Surah III, v. 117-120]
In truth the disbelievers are an open enemy to you.[Surah IV, v. 101]
And thou seest [Jews and Christians] vying one with another in sin and transgression and their devouring of illicit gain. Verily evil is what they do. Why do not the rabbis and the priests forbid their evilspeaking and their devouring of illicit gain? …. evil is their handiwork.[Surah V, v. 62, 63]
O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. [Surah V, v. 51]
Fight against such of those [Jews and Christians] … until they pay for the tribute readily, being brought low.[Surah IX, v. 29]
Allah fighteth against them [the Jews]. How perverse they are![Surah IX, v. 30]
Believers, many are the rabbis and the monks who defraud men of their possessions… Proclaim a woeful punishment to those that hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in Allah’s cause…. their treasures shall be heated in the fire of Hell…. [Surah IX, v. 26-34]
They [the Jews] spread evil in the land …. [Surah V, v. 62-66
Back when Christianity was vital, it believed most of the same things. Jews do slander Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Christains. They do say that all non Jews are animals. They did try to crush the new religion – the Virgin Mary had to flee to Asia Minor. They did act as Rome’s terrorists against the Church.
Have you ever dreamed of not taking a side in this squabble? Or rather taking our own side for a change? And no, Israel’s interests and Jewish interests are far different than our’s.
Play Jai Guru Deva backwards and its Aved Urug Iag. But the Demonic Intelligence is not bound to this somehow. Somehow it can produce other lyrics if Pronounced. For example, Yes we can is heard as Thank you Satan. Ultimately, we’ll have to buy turn tables, rewire them to run backwards, and try this on our own.
Good article on White vs Black slavery. Black Chieftans were very offended when the British started end slavery since Islam teaches non Muslims can be enslaved. Meanwhile, little British children under 12 worked up to 16 hours a day and poor men were impressed into servitude on ships. It was an early form of Political Correctness: feel great about helping others while ignoring the pain closer at home.
http://www.referendum.1hwy.com/custom3.html
Scrolling thru this thread after a day out in the fields looking for relics … Treeman and LifeSupport, welcome additions, breathing new life into the comments section of CFNation.
–WSP7
What are you talking about? Ever see “Exodus”? The Jews had us eating out of their hands for decades. The scholars began to speak out about the lies and the atrocities, men like Edward Said and Israel Shamir. And later Norman Finelstein and many othes. You should be proud that some Jews have the humanity to speak out against other Jews. That’s not easy for a People who are so group oriented.
Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan admited brutality against the Palestinians but just felt Jews mattered more. They deeply desired all Palestinians to be driven out but in this they failed. And as they knew, the seeds of demographic disaster have sprouted.
Again folks, Israel isn’t a little a nation – it is a nation without borders, a nation that controls much of the United States and Western World. The Zionists themselves have said as much.
Thus it is the Zionist Entity.
It’s all rather obvious, right? Or do you think that I’m just being a Cassandra?
The fat bloke who doesn’t exercise and continues eating an unhealthy diet dies of a heart attack, right?
The alcoholic hobo bloke dies face-down in the gutter, right?
The heroin addict dies on a park bench, right?
The bloke who goes into debt and keeps running up his credit card bills goes bankrupt, right?
The country that elects the submissive gay coke-head (whose weaknesses make him easily manipulated) who gives all of the nation’s money to the banks and spends it on foreign wars goes morally and financially bankrupt, right?
If everything runs on oil and if oil has to be priced as US$90/ barrel to ensure sufficient supplies, and if oil at $90 a barrel puts an insurmountable drag on a world economy weighted down with debt, then it does down, right?
If the economy is not expanding, but is actually contracting, and the people don’t take any active measures to adjust to the new economic reality, then it’s going down, right?
Do you remember the silent, determined character “Orr” in the book “Catch-22”? He was the only one who knew what Reality is?
If Li n coln had to exterminate roughly a quarter of all Southern men of fighting age during the Civil War, then can we really say that Li nc oln “saved the Union”?
How does mass murder and tyranny “save the Union”?
I wonder if “Orlov” is the Russian equivalent of “Orr”?
Hey Pucker,
Do you ever wonder why, despite the never-ending VOLUMES of discussion about Israel on this site, that this well-known problem never comes up?
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0322/World-Water-Day-Thirsty-Gaza-residents-battle-salt-sewage
Must not be as important as the conspiracy theories.
Yeah. That’s probably it.
The country that elects the submissive gay coke-head (whose weaknesses make him easily manipulated)…
Pucker, this comment is disrespectful of the Commander in Chief of the USA Armed Forces. Your characterization is also not true. Why do you make such statements? It just undermines your own credibility.
In 2008, against war hero McCain, the person you call a “gay coke-head” was not easily manipulated. He outsmarted the war hero and won the election by a landslide.
In 2012, against businessman Romney, the person you call a “gay coke-head” was not easily manipulated. He outsmarted the businessman and won the election by a over three million popular votes and a landslide of electoral votes.
According to some on CFN, the invisible puppet-masters control the Wall Street financiers and the Supreme Court and the multimillion dollar SuperPACs. In 2012 the puppet masters selected Romney to become president.
Obama outsmarted the puppet masters who control both political parties. Obama then cut the strings! The puppet masters are now powerless: they no longer control the outcomes. So they, like you, are reduced to slanderous name calling.
Message to XXX5:
he National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, estimates that overall sales in November and December will rise 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion
So, how is this possible since, according to XXX5, money is slow, credit is maxed out, the economy is the worst in USA history, poor folks have no money and are losing their houses, the middle class has disappeared, U6 unemployment is at Depression levels (according to XXX5) … indeed, according to XXX5 we are now in an economic Depression, not in a recovery from a recession.
Yet the box store parking lots are full, and it’s not rich folks going to Target and WalMart.
How do you explain this, XXX5? Might it be that you, being a misanthrope, engage in perpetual hyperbole? Might it be that your perception of things economic does not accord with reality and is not supported by actual facts? Who is spending $586.1 BILLION DOLLARS? Where are they getting the money (since they have no plastic)?
You say they are homeless, jobless, have no credit and have no money. You say we are in the worst economy of USA history. Yet, every year consumer spending increases.
In computer science lingo: DNC (does not compute).
Nah, Yossarian knew where it was at. Maybe Milo Minderbinder, too. BTW, Milo seems to be a perfect fit for today’s Wall Streeter.
Although, two of my favorite charaters were Lt. Scheisskopf and Major Major Major Major.
Orr might havebeenone of the smartest because he stuffed his cheeks and rowed (?) away.
Catch-22 – maybe the best book of the 20th century. “There was just one catch, and that was Catch-22”
Starhawk Update on Permaculture Convergence
http://www.thefifthsacredthing.com/2012/10/26/permaculture-convergence-an-update-from-starhawk/
Permaculture is a system of ecological design that teaches us how to work with nature to meet our needs while regenerating the environment around us. I just wanted to share a few of my inspirations from the Northern California Permaculture Convergence, which took place October 12-14 at Greenfriends Farm in Castro Valley, California. –Starhawk
The Sufficiency Economy – Envisioning a Prosperous Way Down: Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, People Systems, Society, Village Development, peak oil — by Samuel Alexander November 24, 2012
http://permaculturenews.org/2012/11/24/the-sufficiency-economy-envisioning-a-prosperous-way-down/
If a society does not have some vision of where it wants to be or what it wants to become, it cannot know whether it is heading in the right direction – it cannot even know whether it is lost.
This is the confused position of consumer capitalism today, which has a fetish for economic growth but no answer to the question of what that growth is supposed to be for. It is simply assumed that growth is good for its own sake, but of course economic activity is merely a means, not an end. It can only ever be justified by some goal beyond itself, but that is precisely what consumer capitalism lacks – a purpose, a reason for existence. It is a means without an end, like a tool without a task.
What makes this state of affairs all the more challenging is that the era of growth economics appears to be coming to a close, due to various financial, ecological, and energy constraints, and this is leaving growth-based economies without the very capacity for growth which defined them historically. Before long this will render consumer capitalism an obsolete system with neither a means nor an end, a situation that is in fact materialising before our very eyes.
Read more: http://permaculturenews.org/2012/11/24/the-sufficiency-economy-envisioning-a-prosperous-way-down/
Just a few quotes, gives a slight hint as to why the Christians hate so much. It is the word of God that they do so…
The Qur’an begins with the exhortation to “Read!” to learn, to further understanding between all people through gaining knowledge.
The Old Testament quoted by Christians begins with Genesis 2:16-17 (where God defines the first of many, many victimless “crimes” punishable by death)
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. Genesis 2:16-17
The Christian God is a bit schizophrenic. Dude didn’t know up from down:
The LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth–men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air–for I am grieved that I have made them.” Genesis 6:1-7
The Christian God is a sick, sadistic deity who ordered Abraham to commit the crime of murdering his own son, just to see if he’ll do it. If a character in an action movie held a gun to a man’s head and told him to slit his own son’s throat, we would consider him evil. Even if he changed his mind just before forcing him to go through with it, we would still consider it a horrible, cruel joke)
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Genesis 22:2
It does not surprise me in the least that Christians are violent people who have a history of violent Crusades, burning humans at the stake, etc. They follow a sick, violent God.
Treeman, just let me know if you want to go on quoting scriptures. I could do this all night to illustrate who the real violent ones are.
Or you could just answer this question: have any Islamic countries made national policy decisions to bomb the USA? To invade the USA? To occupy the USA?
Now, do you know the number of Muslim countries the USA has bombed, invaded, and occupied in the last fifteen years?
Who is the aggressor against whom? The Christian nation, or the Muslim nations?
Oh, and 19 guys with box cutters did not represent any nation (they were Saudis and we support Saudi Arabia). The 9/11 terrorists were condemned by Muslims all over the world. Muslims absolutely condemn terrorism. You are spreading hatred with your misinformation, trying to impugn 1.5 BILLION peaceful, peace loving Muslims.
http://kurzman.unc.edu/islamic-statements-against-terrorism/
“The undersigned, leaders of Islamic movements, are horrified by the events of Tuesday 11 September 2001 in the United States which resulted in massive killing, destruction and attack on innocent lives. We express our deepest sympathies and sorrow. We condemn, in the strongest terms, the incidents, which are against all human and Islamic norms. This is grounded in the Noble Laws of Islam which forbid all forms of attacks on innocents. God Almighty says in the Holy Qur’an: ‘No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another’ (Surah al-Isra 17:15).”
Treeman, I’m gonna help you out with my question of who the aggressor nation is, the Judeo-Christian USA or the Muslim nations. Here is a list of the countries bombed by the United States since the end of the Second World War.
Note that these countries represent roughly one-third of the people on earth. Several Muslim nations are on the list. Have any Muslim nations done anything to us to deserve being bombed?
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46, 1950-53
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Laos 1964-73
Grenada 1983
Iraq 1991-
Iran 1987
Kuwait 1991
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2008
Sudan 1998
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002, 2009
Yugoslavia 1999
“Watching the Obama Campaign host a ritzy New York City fashion show while 12 million Americans are out of work? Priceless”
— Republican ad mocking Obama.
Republicans immediately created negative ads that made fun of and criticized the Obama strategy, but it back-fired on the Republicans.
Negative attack ad campaigning does not work.
According to the New York Times, Obama’s campaign raised a total of $637.3 million throughout the 2012 cycle, versus Mitt Romney’s $388.1 million.
The negative approach failed and Obama got the last laugh on his way to re-election.
The Dow Jones industrial average shot up 172 points to 13,009. That’s the first close above 13,000 for the Dow since Election Day.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 18 points to 1,409. The S&P also racked up its biggest weekly point gain of the year. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 40 to 2,966.
For those who think Wall Street and Main Street are unrelated: The S&P 500 tracks 500 large U.S. companies across a wide span of industries and sectors. The stocks in the S&P 500 represent roughly 70 percent of all the stocks that are publicly traded.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks the 30 largest U.S. companies. This means it represents “large-cap” companies, which is the industry term for “very big companies” like Johnson & Johnson, McDonalds and Coca-Cola. Although the companies within the Dow Jones represent only about 25 percent of all stocks, the DJIA is widely accepted as the leading indicator of market health.
The Nasdaq Composite tracks the roughly 3,000 companies that are traded on the Nasdaq exchange.
A said: “Pucker, this comment is disrespectful of the Commander in Chief of the USA Armed Forces. Your characterization is also not true. Why do you make such statements? It just undermines your own credibility.”
What have I said that’s not true?
Obama is as queer-as-a-three-dollar-bill. He’s obviously living-in-the-closet. I don’t have anything against gay people, but one could argue that it could be used to manipulate and blackmail him, and that it probably is?
There’s a lot of strong eye-witness testimony about Oba m a. It’s a bit peculiar that he literally came out of nowhere to become POTUS. No one has ever really looked into his past. He looks like a made-man.
It’s undeniable that he’s given US$6 trillion to the banks, and wasted countless treasure on foreign wars while waving his “Peace Prize”.
It’s also undeniable that Ob am a vacations at an exclusive, private 5-star plantation in Hawaii. He obviously has “tastes” that can be easily manipulated and that he’s not a “Community Organizer”.
Unemployment reached 10.2% in 2009 (Bush is to blame)
Unemployment was brought down by Obama to 7.9% in 2012.
A majority of the American people liked how Obama brought down unemployment.
People who didn’t like it stayed home and didn’t vote. Not enough voted against Obama.
Obama was re-elected.
could be used
it probably is?
It’s a bit peculiar
He looks like a made-man.
You are not helping your own case by innuendo that does not accord with reality.
Obama is Christian, married, and a devoted father. He is not gay.
Obama has not given US$6 trillion to the banks. He doesn’t have authority to give money to anybody. Congress appropriates money.
Hawaii is Obama’s home state. It is natural that he visits Hawaii. He was a community organizer and still is able to use his community organizer knowledge to defeat weak and inferior opponents like McCain and Romney.
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related article?
‘he wasn’t stupid), that anyone in power evaluating the cost/benefit would opt out of nuclear war’
Was [insert despots name] smart? Was he sane?
I dont know history, wasnt here for WW2.
Did FDR warn the Japanese?
Did they ignore the warning? Or was there no warning?
It would not take a leader, just one angry male with
access to 1 nuke.
Did Israel supply South Africa with Nukes?
Christians
I wonder if Dale got this site listed as a ‘hate site’ with ‘hate as a business’ SPL/ACLJ?
Thank God we have an intelligent person like Ambassador Susan Rice. I can’t wait until she explains how things are to McCain in the upcoming hearings.
McCain finished at the bottom of his class, then went on to crash several jets (he was a terrible pilot). McCain doesn’t know what hornet’s nest he has disturbed by calling Rice not bright.
McCain keeps reminding us that he still thinks Palin was a great pick. When the man who gave you Sarah Palin tells you that Susan Rice is not bright or qualified, it’s best to run that through the McCain filter for context. Susan Rice can tell you what she reads, and she has never pointed her fingers skyward to claim that being able to see the skies gave her foreign policy experience. Susan Rice has actual foreign policy experience as the USA Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
In fact, Susan Rice would have been a better VP pick for John McCain in 2008 based on her resume alone. To wit, according to her bio, Rice “served as a Senior Advisor for National Security Affairs on the Obama for America Campaign. She later served on the Advisory Board of the Obama-Biden Transition and as co-chair of its policy working group on national security. From 2002-2009, she was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where she focused on U.S. foreign policy, transnational security threats, weak states, global poverty and development. From 1997 to 2001, Ambassador Rice was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. As Assistant Secretary, she oversaw the management of 43 USA Embassies and over 5,000 USA and Foreign Service national employees, with a bureau-operating budget of over $100 million and a program budget of approximately $160 million annually. In 2000, Ambassador Rice was co-recipient of the White House’s 2000 Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to the formation of peaceful, cooperative relationships between states. From 1995-1997, Ambassador Rice served as Special Assistant to President William J. Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House.Prior to this position, she served as the Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping on the National Security Council staff from 1993 until 1995.
Also, Rice has a PhD in International Relations from New College, Oxford University, England, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
Should be fun to watch her whoop McCain’s ass.
Obama is Gay!
Gay rights!
Gay power!
Come out Barry!
Those who doubt, ‘Google images’ Rahm E. in Ballet outfit.
2 of a kind.
Great one, Pucker, one of yr best!!!
Have you read ‘Obama Nation’?
Read the rumors online of ‘dead friends in Ctown, once ‘friends’ with Barry?
And his friendship with Bodyman Reggie Love!!!!!!
I hope he did. This place is crawling with people like Treeman and WSP7 and xhalor and anti soak who are fomenting hate for Muslims.
Keep it up, anti soak.
It was nonsense like yours that got Obama re-elected.
This Canadian academic writing for the NY Times says that the only way to solve the problem of corruption in China is to create a Confucian form of government.
It’s all going down…..
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/22/dawn-of-a-new-china/corruption-in-china-could-very-well-bring-down-the-state
So there’s really a bloke named “Reggie Love” who has written on his resume that he is/was President Obama’s “Body Man”?
You can’t even make that story up, so it has to be true…..
Maybe it is what it looks like?: U.S. Presidents are selected on the basis of weaknesses that can be manipulated?
Bill Clinton: power-hungry wife who told him to run for POTUS, chased “trailor trash” and bimbos.
George Bush, Jr.: Lazy moron alcoholic fake evangelical.
Oba m a: Lives in closet, likes power and status….
I don’t have anything against Ob a m a’s homosexuality (apart from the fact that he lives in the closet, which can be manipulated.)
In fact, if all black males became homosexuals, it might be a big step up for black males? I think that this is something that the U.S. government should actively encourage. If fact, Oba ma should tax rich white people to teach black males to become homosexuals.
Nicole would still be alive today, if O.J. was a homosexual…..
“Now you respect him alot so ask him whether your mindset about Man being reduceable to physical matter and energy is valid.”
I’m increasingly a fan of JMG largely because I don’t believe the things you claim I believe. Not sure where you get this idea. Quote?
Members of the church of scientism are not Greer’s dominant demographic.
Although if you’re suggesting that we humans are animated by “souls” destined for either eternal paradise or fire, no, I don’t agree with you there.
“Recognize Israel’s right to exist and establish diplomatic relations with it. With just a few strokes of the pen the mideast could be at peace. This begs the question of why this hasn’t happened.”
Go find a dog-fighting pit as far away as you can, insert a beautiful fluffy little bunny, make the dogs sit and agree that the bunny should not be harmed, then go back to Boston and carry on with your day-to-day business.
I don’t know, Bill, maybe it could work…
Asoka, Official American Shill for the Worldwide Caliphate, and Muslims everywhere, including the Muslim living in the White House.
Asoka, do you work for CAIR? The DNC? Or are you a freelancer?
–WSP7
WSP –
You’re a fine man, there’s no doubt. And I’ve seen you do some real thinking and refining of your positions, here on CFN, over the past year or so.
And there is no doubt that our resident..impediment is a shill for something. There really are organizations that pay people to troll around the internet to advocate positions. Wrong.
But there it is.
And of course, no one pays ANYONE to advocate for what is best for your average native born US citizen. That is also wrong. And most unfortunate, but there that is, also.
============================
BUT when you say, “including the Muslim living in the White House.”
You go too far – way too far.
First, it’s probably not true.
And even if true, there’s little/no proof.
And, there’s nothing to prevent a Muslim being Pres. If anything, the Constitution is emphatically neutral on the subject, and the Govt. is aggressively pushing the issue.
I know you just want what’s best for your Country and your family, WSP. So do I.
But, you need to work on your Public Relations skills, man. Otherwise you do no good, and may do harm.
Point taken, P2C.
This section is chock full of hyperbolic, crazy bullshit. I might be wrong, but then again I might be right. In the future there will be many truths revealed about this current president, truths currently obfuscated by a sycophant, worshipful, ass kissing NY and Washington media.
–WSP7
Yeah, JMG is a very deep and logical thinker.
I’m hoping he will address US population issues.
But, he said something is his comments to commenters this week to the effect that, “the former US will be speaking Spanish in 100 years.”
This leads me to think that he is in the company of of many “fast collapse” thinkers, which group seems to include you, Tripp.
This group believes that collapse will take out border controls and “we” will all “stabilize” at some low energy level. Which is all well and good if collapse happens pretty soon.
Meanwhile, though, the US is allowing itself to be packed full of people, young people with high birthrates. And we’re not talking natural speed migration using foot power. We’re talking airplanes, cars and trucks, and literally millions of migrants.
And we’re subsidizing many of these folks with social welfare programs – “tricking?” them into believing that the consumer nirvana of petroUSA is going to be reality forever.
Most unfortunate, IMO.
Wonder what JMG would have to say?
In the future there will be many truths revealed about this current president, truths currently obfuscated…
yep, always in the future…the New Age will be ushered in, Consciousness will be revealed…the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius…always just around the corner. Just like peak oil, the crash of civilization, mass starvation. god are you people so disenlightened. asoka is among the very few that have a clue. it is human nature to make things better, to advance technologically. this ‘blog’ is for 14-year olds playing Doom.
Keep up your wishful thinking, it’s what motivates and drives you forward, even if it is ungrounded in reality.
Reality is an arrow pointing forward, live it, love it, learn it. Plant a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, and improve the world.
peace peaceniks
“And we’re subsdizing many of these folks with social welfare…”
=============
The majority of welfare recipients are white.
Immigrants pay taxes. Immigrants create jobs.
You never acknowledge those facts. You only characterize immigrants as takers.
I support and accept all immigrants — illegal and legal.
But Whites are still by far the majority so of course they use more welfare. Social services should be for the People whose labor created the wealth.
Hispanics and Blacks use welfare and food stamps at a far higher level than Whites. And have created far less wealth.
The rate or percentage is the key here as you well know. Using the gross number is just one of your dumb immoral tricks.
Everything else aside, Cyber Monday is fast approaching. Get your credit cards ready! They’re already maxxed out you say? That’s no excuse. Its time to buy more sh*t (that you do not need and cannot afford, same as Black Friday). No excuses accepted.
–WSP7
Until you believe in the spiritual, you will be very far from the People of the Earth who don’t believe the Earth is mere “earth” or matter much less themselves.
What do I claim that you believe that you don’t? Facts are the facts: you are still clinging to Cultural Marxism that teaches that man is a function of his mode of production – as if there aren’t good and evil hunter gatherers. As if the Australian Aboriginess were’t brutal cannibals who hunted people from other groups as game.
Fast collapse would offer English speaking Whites the best chance of maintaining their own language and culture – what little is left of it at least.
The Hispanics have waxed strong and prolific on our wealth given to them by a Traitor Goverment. Once that is removed – we’ll see who the better men are.
The Apachees didn’t think much of them as warriors by the way. They should know since they fought both us and them. They’re incredible criminals forming huge gangs – and the Goverment is often no better than another gang. But if we can get them away from us and then have a border again – well, I wouldn’t bet on them at all at that point.
Americans buy thing they don’t need, that they didn’t make, with money they don’t have.
But you hate Christians! Except the kind that say that God is Black and White is Evil. You have no problem with that, right? As Kipling said, you are half devil and half child.
Is she on the down low like Condi?
I support and accept all immigrants — illegal and legal. – Assoka
Of course, there’s nothing like an impoverished and marginalized underclass to push around and exploit. Is there?
Yes, yes, immigrants pay taxes, something the One Percent really hate to do themselves. Don’t they? Let the little people pay. Right?
Yes, yes, the majority of welfare recipients are white. Not surprising given that the majority of the population in the USA is white.
Not so surprising either given the history of offshoring of jobs by the One Percent. Why did they deserve reasonable wages? Right?
Much better for the One Percent to be paying slave level wages in some craphole despotism whose policy it is to hold down worker’s wages by force if necessary. Isn’t it? As for the ones that throw themselves off tall buildings in despair at their miserable lot, well, their lot wasn’t so miserable. Official government statistics show it. Right? Data and evidence, data and evidence, data and evidence, we’re all for data and evidence, especially data and evidence conjured by corrupt and subverted government statistical agencies. Right?
Ideology has always been a refuge for simpletons, a place to park their grey matter, such as it is, and switch it off. Especially academics.
Is this post supposed to be provocative and hip and radical? It’s not. This is old, old, old, old shit. Boring. Your grandfather would have heard this tripe. Just a stupefying recitation of talking points concocted a lifetime ago. The evil USA did this, the evil USA did that, the evil Americans blah, blah, bloody blah…
So, as analysis goes this gets a big fat fucking fail. Bereft of thought, no consideration of historical circumstance, motive (malign or not) or anything else. Nothing. Nada. An incantation for idiots.
And, if we’re going to get a list of events with no mention of historical context, why not go whole hog? So why start at 1945? Why not mention that the USA bombed the crap out of Germany and Italy and Japan and France and dropped nukes on the poor defenceless Japanese who were innocently minding their own business… go ahead, we’re waiting.
We want to hear again how depraved white men, especially Americans, get stiffies nuking cities. Do it.
And, also noteworthy, never a peep about the depravities of Imperial Japan or Communist China with their histories of inflicting misery and murder and their combined body count in the tens of millions. Or the misrule, mayhem and death at the hands of Muslim rulers. Or for that matter that of the USSR with its own history of oppression and genocide and mass killing. Carefully, studiously blind. No, no, no the USA sets the standard for evil.
For younger readers (if there are any): youth is not a character defect, astonishing advances have been devised by young men and women who didn’t know that something couldn’t be done (or weren’t listening). But, to the young, the world looks freshly made and everything in it brand, spanking new. It isn’t. You see the same things happening over and over. The point is that the rancorous, divisive politics you see in the USA nowadays and as exemplified by Assoka’s post with its unthinking spewage is old stuff. And it’s happening all over the world, not just the USA. It’s been given a boost by modern marvels like television and the internet but, as a behavior, its roots go deep. Like, for example, the nastiness of the Civil War. And the McCarthy era. And the inter-generational culture wars of the 1960s. And, whether the JFK assassination was an old fashioned Made-in-the-USA rub-out by a lone, deranged gunman or one by a foreign power or possibly by some combination of the two, there were Americans who were secretly and not so secretly delighted with his demise which was symptomatic of serious societal toxicity. So the talk we hear nowadays is lousy and there’s no excuse. But there’s been worse.
Jam,
Great post.
No doubt, Hitler wasn’t the first with his line of thinking, nor will he be the last, judging by the racist commentary on this site. Racists are like cockroaches, for eveyone you happen to see, there’s hundreds more.
The territorial expansion of Russia you talk about sounds like what’s been happening since before writing was invented and not only in Europe but everywhere else. How many times have you read about the prehistoric mile by mile migration of neolithic farmers into Europe from Anatolia and the Middle East, of the colonization of Japan by a handful of farmers from the Korean peninsula and displacement of the indigenous hunters.
People say that religion is responsible for wars and they point especially to those evil Christians (while giving other religions a pass). I say that religion is the alibi and justification. The real motive is a grab for territory ie fertile farmland and fresh water. Always has been.
Whether it’s a surplus of restless young men or overpopulation or self aggrandizement by an individual ruler or by an elite or collective aggrandizement, the end result is new guys owning and ruling a patch of dirt. And they either kill off or displace or enslave or marginalize the old owners and rulers.
Remember, the only Jewish Demographic that’s even replacing itself are the Orthodox – and they believe the boundaries of Israel are the Two Rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates. Now what were you saying about Peace?
We don’t even hate to go that far: read the Israeli report, “A Clean Break: Securing the Realm” about the Israeli plan to destabilize every Middle Eastern Country. Also read the prospectus from the New American Century foundation. Hint: some of the same “Americans” worked on both. Now believe it or not, some of the Muslims can read and have probably read these reports too. What we’re you saying about Peace?
Some of the Neo Cons have written that America should nuke Mecca. These men have immense wealth and the ears of the some of the Mightiest in the Land. The Muslims also know about that too.
Billy, go home and do your homework.
And you New World Order types want to conquer the World for Peace and Money. And oh so selective about your moral outrage – no tears for Dresden? Get back to me when you grow a heart.
Rhino the reason the USA is the villain is that no other country has bombed so many other countries on so many continents. Can you name one?
No other country has used nuclear weapons on civilian population centers … only the USA has been so barbaric … even though many countries have nuclear weapons.
Now I’ll wait for you to repeat your tired excuses for completely immoral USA behavior in so many countries around the world. Bring it on.
Don’t you know when I’m being sarcastic? Guess not. I’ll try to be more obvious the next time.
Surrounded by such other natural wonders as the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon, you’ll have to pay a $15 fee for an escort to guide your vehicle through the Zion-Mt.
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Uh, what’s wrong with recognizing a country’s right to exist? Just because you don’t like its politics isn’t a reason for wanting to exterminating them.
That should be exterminate, not exterminating.
I’m not a long-time reader of Greer’s, so I don’t know what his position on US overpopulation is, but from what I can see of his most recent commentaries about the future of America, I think he believes there will be no overpopulation here due to our collapse and struggles.
I do agree with you, however on the overpopulation/immigration issue.
Asoka, I’ve been observing Obama for five years now, and I’ve come to the unescapable conclusion that he is an alien from another planet. You have to believe what I just said because I’ve now stated it publicly. My statement has as much validity as other statements made about his homosexuality, being a Muslim and not having been born here. If he wasn’t an ET, how could he have possibly been elected president as an Islamic communist who never had a job?
OK, so go to the Galleria [made famous in the Zappa song, Vallee Girl] and you can buy Asian made goods
and eat Asian food.
Only the food is made in the USA, by a Central American and s/he is on food stamps!
USA today, yikes.
“I hope he did. This place is crawling with people like Treeman and WSP7 and xhalor and anti soak who are fomenting hate for Muslims”
You see this is the vacant argument of the left. If you can’t produce a logical response accuse them of hate crimes, racism or being pedophiles. Smear them it’s easier than facing your own fallacies.
Asoka, I knew you would reply with a list of bible quotes, it is so lame.
Please show us ANY western government that has gone to war by using quotes from the Bible as justification in the last 60 years.
Every single war/bombing you have listed was ordered by the elected government of the day, not on the basis that god has ordained it. In fact the christian church in the western world has been in opposition to war.
Without effort I can tell you that two of the wars of your list were fought on behalf of Muslims to protect them(bosnia kosovo, to protect from the serbs/ kuwait to protect them from saddam).
Even when the west intercede on behalf of Muslims other Muslims hate us for it.
The biggest killer of Muslims is, you guessed it, other Muslims.
For a religion of peace they sure do a lot of killing. But they can do no other because their actions are condoned, indeed instructed, by Allah.
How many Catholic Bishops have put out fatwas demanding that authors be killed for books about Jesus. How many Protestant clergy have issued decrees demanding the heads of cartoonists.
There are peaceful Muslims but Islam is not a religion of peace.
Back to your evil USA. Every action carried out by them is a reflection of the will of the voters, including you.
When the USA bombed Japan they faced losing hundreds of thousands of men to invade the mainland.
Do you think that casualties in war should be even? The object is to win and to minimize your losses.
That is war. The Muslim version is to strap bombs to children and the mentally disabled.
Please spare us the bull about them not having the money to buy weapons. The largest number of suicide bombers ever used came from Iran. In the Iran/Iraq war children as young as 12 were used.
This from a country swimming in oil and cash.
But considering Japan for a moment. Their atrocities against US and UK troops are well documented. The horrors they committed against the Chinese less so but far more revolting. Maybe you should look up how the Japanese forced Sikh prisoners to sit as targets of the rifle ranges. A target pinned over their hearts. This was to get the troops used to killing. The list is endless.
The Germans, well lets face it their actions are well documented in a large part by themselves.
I am sure Radu has tons of it, sort of hero worship. Of course their friends left little to be desired, the grand mufti among them. His ‘nephew’ Rahman Abdul Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini ,known to us as Yasser Arafat, was a credit to their joint aims.
We won’t even get into the various soviets, who’s toll ran to tens of millions of their own citizens. Or the Kyhmer Rouge or Rwanda. All these Asoka seem to get a pass from you. Is it because you approved of their actions or just because it wasn’t the USA so the victims don’t matter.
Unfortunately for Asoka the truth is a hate crime.
Radu if the Jews had a big conspiracy to take over the world they’re really rubbish at it. The press slates them at every turn, even though allegedly they own all the news outlets. They run the world through secret cabal that even losers, that could not finish high school, know about.
They run the banks so badly that the shekel is dodgy every time anyone fires a rocket.
Their genocide of the Palestinians so bad that the population has doubled in Gaza alone. So bad that the W.H.O has them placed high on the worldwide tables for obesity.
In truth the Palestinians are lucky their opponents are Jews had they been Muslims they would all be long dead. Hamas and Fatah declared war on Israel (including the Arab Muslims and Christians living there) a long time ago.
Yet Israel allows aid through its borders to feed them, heat them and treat them, provides free medical care to sick Palestinians(its not free to Israelis). This I know as my brothers late wife’s sister was treated for breast cancer at the Barzilai medical centre in Ashkelon. She survived and made a full recovery, unlike his wife who was treated on the NHS.
The hospital there also treats the wounded from Hamas’s rockets, including the Palestinians, on whom Hamas’s rockets seem to fall in equal numbers.
No other nation at war treats its enemies so decently.
I wonder if Putin had food delivered to the Chechens? We know he didn’t send or allow medical aid because MSF raised the matter several times.
Prior to the recent spat the Israeli wrote to the UN ten times asking them to intercede over Hamas’s rocket attacks or even just to condemn them. The UN,as usual, did nothing. Over 800 missiles, had that been Russia or the USA or even Mexico the Gazans would have been toast by now.
Radu you raise some good points sometimes but by your own admission I would be your enemy. I was born in Wales as was my father and all my brothers, but my mother was born in Shiraz in Iran (though my mother always called it Persia after the Mullahs took over, she hated the zealots).
Horror of horrors that makes me mixed race!!!! Quick to the gas chambers with me…………
Obama a muslim? Obama a homosexual? Not a clue, but he does remind me an awful lot of Tony Blair. That alone would be a good reason not to vote for him. Both career politicians who have never held a real job. Both had autobiographies out within five minutes of achieving office, and both out to line their own pockets.
“Asoka, I’ve been observing Obama for five years now, and I’ve come to the unescapable conclusion that he is an alien from another planet. You have to believe what I just said because I’ve now stated it publicly. My statement has as much validity as other statements made about his homosexuality, being a Muslim and not having been born here. If he wasn’t an ET, how could he have possibly been elected president as an Islamic communist who never had a job?”
See, now THAT is sarcasm! Can’t miss it. Hilarious too, by the way.
“Uh, what’s wrong with recognizing a country’s right to exist? Just because you don’t like its politics isn’t a reason for wanting to exterminating them.”
But dammit BB they are Jews, they control the world dontcha know.
Though I can never remember whether it’s through the bildebergers, the illuminati, or whether they are actually lizards from niribu!
If you ask Radu nicely, I’m sure he will check his copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for us 😉
“Obama a muslim? Obama a homosexual? Not a clue, but he does remind me an awful lot of Tony Blair. That alone would be a good reason not to vote for him. Both career politicians who have never held a real job. Both had autobiographies out within five minutes of achieving office, and both out to line their own pockets.”
Crikey! Just reread my comment. I have just summed up pretty much all the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic….
“Americans buy thing they don’t need, that they didn’t make, with money they don’t have.”
Disco. Damn.
“you are still clinging to Cultural Marxism that teaches that man is a function of his mode of production”
and you are still clinging to the idea that a spear is as dangerous as an ICBM. Look around, when people in these pages – many of whom I consider to possess a fair amount of functional gray matter – talk about their various “devils,” they are always talking about large farming cultures. It takes a particular sort of evil intent to data-mine and compare a war between foraging tribes that cost the lives of 4 men to the Civil War in the U.S. that cost 600,000-ish young American men their lives.
Appropriate tech has more than one useful meaning.
Likewise, cannabalism has only ever had one place in history. As a desperate measure of people at the very end of their ropes. You better hope it doesn’t come to that in the U.S. I’d hate to have to watch you make the choice between honor and life.
“We don’t even hate to go that far: read the Israeli report, “A Clean Break: Securing the Realm” about the Israeli plan to destabilize every Middle Eastern Country. Also read the prospectus from the New American Century foundation. Hint: some of the same “Americans” worked on both. Now believe it or not, some of the Muslims can read and have probably read these reports too. What we’re you saying about Peace?”
USA plan RED for the invasion of Canada, gee good job the Canadians can’t read. Or CONPLAN 8022 for the preemptive nuclear strike against Russia. Lets hope Putin is illiterate. The list is endless.
The job of think tanks and the even military planners is to plan for ever eventuality. It would turn your little white ankle sock grey to see the scenarios devised and planned by NATO alone.
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“Plant a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, and improve the world.”
At the other end of the size spectrum, I brought home some chunks of sugar cane – about 3 nodes each, 1′ long-ish – from my grandfather’s neighbor’s orchard down in south Georgia. We were there for T’giving. I’ll start ’em indoors and plant them out after last frost. I’m tickled by the idea of having majestic tropical sugar cane tossing in the wind next to vertical orange fruit-laden branches of cold-climate seaberry…together the start of a pretty darn tasty and vitamin-rich smoothie. I mean, once I get that bicycle-powered blender up and running. I don’t know what tropical Brazil has in store from climate change, but I’m planting for both trajectories in the lower Appalachian mountains.
Energy descent is just as likely to trigger the onset of a cooling trend as it is to witness the continuation of the current warming one, I think. Overdue for the next ice age after all. And even at a smaller scale, pomegranates tend to do really well in seasons when currants don’t, and vice versa. Got any pics of your projects?
“This leads me to think that he is in the company of of many “fast collapse” thinkers, which group seems to include you, Tripp.”
I don’t know, POC. I wouldn’t consider talking about collapse in terms of centuries as a “fast collapse” perspective. Plenty of the people here believe that “TEOTWAWKI” could come any day now, including our esteemed host. I’m with Greer, for sure, and his catabolic collapse scenario.
Partial collapse, stabilize, new normal. Partial collapse, stabilize, new normal. Always in the direction of less energy available per capita.
As in, when I first moved back to Georgia gas was hovering around 90 cents a gallon. Today it is around 3.50 a gallon. Partial collapse, stabilize, new normal. I drive just as much – I’m a proud American after all;) – but I don’t use electricity at home now, compared to barely even considering my electrical use back then.
Different rates for different folks, but more or less all in the same direction. I’m surprised you would consider Greer a “fast collapse” constituent.
Nana Mouskouri
Her voice brings back memories of crackly cassettes from the 1970s played in the tiny stereo system of my parents’ peoplemover on long journeys. Ever since I can remember, Nana Mouskouri’s distinctive sound has been part of my music collection. The Greek songstress has carved out a career spanning generations my tapes came to me from my mother, to her from my grandfather.
When you possess a full, shimmering soprano like Mouskouri’s, you could practically sing the phone book, and leave an audience in bliss.1
Joanna (Nana) Mouskouri was born in Crete in 1934. She was born of fairly poor parents, and first learned to sing from the movies her father was a projectionist. Her mother had dreamed of becoming a singer, and pushed her daughters to do likewise.
Nana had some slight imperfection in her vocal chords, yet she studied for nine years at the Athens Conservatory. Her studies there came to an end when her professors, finding that she was singing Jazz and pop in her spare time, told her to choose between the classical or the popular styles. She chose the latter, and left the Conservatory.
Mouskouri’s decision to devote her career to popular music rather than classical was probably influenced by her success in the first Greek Song Festival in 1959. Shortly after her advent into this new field she released her first record. The Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis wrote several songs for her, including the now famous “White Rose of Athens” her first million selling recording. She recorded it in several languages Greek, English and German amongst them.
She formed a pop group, The Athenians, with her husband George Petsilas on guitar. In 1962 she traveled to America to record an album of Great American Themes. She began touring with Harry Belafonte, who had heard and loved her work. Nana toured throughout Europe, Australia, Asia and New Zealand, choosing France as her new home. Her albums began to go gold, then platinum, and she won several awards. By the end of the sixties, Mouskouri was fixed as an international name in music.
At the end of the sixties and into the seventies, Nana became a well known television personality with her show “Nana and Guests” (sometimes billed as “The Nana Mouskouri Show”). The format seems strange to me when I hear about it now, but was very common then. Nana would sing a song, converse with her guest of the day, sing another song, do a little more chatting, and so on. Guests were generally other musicians, pan-flute player Gheorghe Zamfir in particular made frequent appearances.
Nana’s popularity continued to climb through the seventies and eighties. Bob Dylan composed a song for her (“Every Grain Of Sand” on Song for Liberty (1970) – Thanks Professor Pi for that info). Mouskouri generally traveled with foreign language dictionaries learning the languages of the songs she sings.
In the nineties, Mouskouri branched out even more. She had never had as much exposure in America as in other countries so she launched a tour and a CD and became as much of a legend in the states as in Europe. In addition, she became the world representative of the entertainment business at UNICEF, and the Greek Deputy to the European Parliament. Nana Mouskouri’s career continues in full swing today, she is still recording and still performing.
“Hispanics and Blacks use welfare and food stamps at a far higher level than Whites. And have created far less wealth. ”
The three groups are distinct cultures, with highly variable worldviews. Why we think they should mix well together is beyond me, but that has been a very recent revelation. Where you and I depart, and do so in a serious way, is that I don’t believe one is superior to the other. The black worldview might look lazier, but the white one more destructive. Which of those is worse? Fortunately for the future of the discussion, no one needs to go back to Africa, or Mexico, or Ireland or Poland for that matter. Village life and politics, at a far lower energy level several generations from now, can occur for the various cultures here, without leaving the continent. Whether small white farming enclaves get wiped off the map by Mexican ones, or by a white horticultural society for that matter, is for the future to work out.
“consider Greer a “fast collapse” constituent.”
tripp
Yeah, you’re probably more correct.
I’ve been reading Greer about 9 months, now.
I may have let his very plausible analysis of Israel’s future and his China in Africa and the collapse of the US – think that he had accelerated his timelines.
But the fact remains that we are using petroleum and various “peak oil enabled” social welfare programs to fill the US to far beyond numbers the land will support.
I’d like to see our dwindling resources spent on reducing immigration, not facilitating it.
More mouths are going to equal more hardship
At some point in the future.
From my perspective, if you disagree with that you need to gather an army and show me how maladaptive my worldview is. See, at horse-pace, how in the world does your white brotherhood in northern Idaho become a threat to my (um, white-dominated) community in the lower Appalachians? Don’t you have bigger Phish-adelphia to fry? Do you think that the white power clan is stronger than those with a less venemous, but not all that different, worldview? I don’t. Quite the contrary.
That last comment was an addendum to my comment to Radu Voda at 6:30.
Well again the Marxism: Culture is a given people’s response to an envirnonment. Thus, if cannibalism serves it, as it did in Central America and Australia, then fine and dandy.
Higher Cultures do not tolerate this kind of thing, Tripp. The Sioux despised the Pawnees for it. And if the Chinese or Muslims had gotten here first, they would have stopped it here.
Capitalism too for that matter (not you). Early and Mid America held to the Ideal that men must be moral to make the Law work. This is what the Founders taught. Then that got twisted and people began to believe the Law could solve everything or that an Ideology like Libertarianism or Marxism could.
And your idea that morality is just grace before meat is a variant of these two – although you are more influenced by the Leftists of course.
In New Guinea with its steep valleys, there are hundreds of cultures in a similar environment and technology. But very different cultures. A unique blend of personalities creates that – we are not just slaves to our environment.
Yes, it is good that the Earth will have a chance to rest and recover, I’ll give you that. But it’s a terrible thing to be hunted – see the movie The Naked Prey about a White being hunted by African Tribesmen. It’s based on a real story of Indians hunting a White Mountain Man. They slaughtered the others but because he was fit they decided to have some sport so they gave him a head start.
I’d hate to see you end up on somebody’s dinner table with an apple in your mouth. In some cultures, the human is called Long Pig. And Tripp, it’s no big deal for them. People are just Game. You can’t grok that because of your Western decency – which is a very real thing as much as you hate to admit it. Again not all the Indigenous were like this, but many were. There was a bit of cannibalism even up into the Northeast among the Iroquois group in colonial times. And in the South and Southwest earlier at least.
The Boasians make an incredible effort to hid all this in order to make Whites feel uniquely evil.
I can’t disagree with that, Mr. C. But how far would we have to travel mentally, as a society, to redirect our shrinking resources totally into pushing back immigration, securing our borders, and hunkering down for the long descent? And who’s to say who’s “American” at this point? Almost every person that just re-elected our first sort-of-black president would have to undergo a radical mental shift to agree to what I just outlined. And they are obviously the majority still. Most of them value “tolerance” more highly than survival simply because they really have no idea that that is really what the choice boils down to. It’s just a timeline variation between them and you and me. But I think it’s a significant, and highly political one, and I’m afraid we’re just going to have to deal with radical overpopulation, and rely on successful adaptation strategies to get us through. Which is something we haven’t really had to do in a very long time. Recognizing that Nature’s future selection might finally NOT be in our favor is a tough place to find oneself.
We’re facing some rough waters ahead, no doubt.
First, if you can grow Sugar Cane in the mountains there, more power to you!
I think ol Vlad/Jago/Rada looks at Africa and thinks
‘these folks are primitives, and it is in their DNA’.
Hence Haiti, Detroit and Yes[!] Macon.
Rada sees Whites as being Scientists, Inventors.
What inventions are from the Kenyans and the Mayans?
Did the Abos even tame fire? Have the Wheel?
Exactly. A Greek Composer composed the National Anthem for the Palestinians. He was scheduled to come to the BSO but when the Jews found about what he had done, they had him cancelled. His life in Classical has been much harder since then.
The creation of Israel was an unnatural, crazy, and evil thing to do. Your business? No, because you used your influence to get our money to do it. And now our lives to keep it all going.
Imagine leading Irish American Catholics in a Crusdade to take back Asia Minor since the Celts had live there long ago. Crazy right, in a half a dozen different ways since the connection are so remote and convoluted? No crazier than what the European Ashkenazi (Turko/Slavs) did. Semites my ass.
Vlad, you and I may be slight variations of the same parent culture, and probably a little more distinct philosophically, but we have both benefitted mightily from 10,000 years of good “decisions” coupled with a fair amount of luck. I mean honestly, how much wisdom did our forebears possess when they inherited genetic defects that allowed them to get through the Black Plague largely unscathed? During the ascent phase, we (at least our ancestors) had everything it took to succeed. But life behaves differently in a descent scenario. Contraction selects for different traits. Don’t get caught believing that 10,000 years of precedent gives you license to succeed in a novel environment.
Yeah, Nana Mouskari.
I just lost a response to you, welles, and I’m not going to redo it.
You do “shoot from the hip,” as you put it.
And I don’t think you are really reading what I’m saying to you, either.
Good luck down there, man.
Because of climate alone, you need slightly less “good luck” than I do up here.
==================
And I won’t accuse you of “gloating,” about your climatic good fortune again. That seems to upset you.
So let me say that you seem to be –
boasting, touting, swashing, bragging, gassing, blowing, blustering, vaunting, AND/OR gasconading*
– about your climatic good fortune.
*and I have NO IDEA what gasconading means. But it popped up on this website – and I’m specifically including it for you because it sounds vaguely Central American.
http://www.synonym.com/synonyms/gloating/
Well they had fire. And they sure know about makon whoopy Goldberg (Jew?). Tripp has a morality: the worship of Gaia. They haven’t developed a ritual practice yet. No doubt it will involve human sacrafice since humans cause all the problems…
Oh I know: my skin is not suited for North America. It was evolved in the cloudy forests of Eastern Europe. I better get to the Northwest Coast before I get skin cancer. North America is really quite an extreme place compared to Europe.
Culturally, the Mexicans are able to work hard, not ashamed to beg, perfectly willing to scream about minor infringements of their dignity and “rights”, cram into together many to an apartment, seem to really like each other and hate outsiders etc. They are perfect for the current Zeitgeist. And if things go South, they will still have the advantage since they are closer to their peasant roots and are not conflict avoidant.
Our advantage? We own the Land. And hopefully will be able to hold it. Just think of that little tribe in the Amazon with 1500 people that has held a chunk the size of Rhode Island for 500 hundred years. That’s inspiring. They are very small just over 5 feet high and their neighbors are terrified of them.
History trumps philosophy, religion, and wishing on a star.
Israel has as much right to exist, expand and prevail as any other culture. The determining factor, historically, is success. Might DOES make right. The meek shall inherit the earth, as they fertilize it with the bones and blood of their vanquished, failed corpses. Ask any Apache.
Likewise, Palestinians have every right to exist, expand and prevail, at the expense of the culture that is their competition.
If white America falls to the brown usurper, that is what should be. The tactics of the lion and the tapeworm are aimed at the same end.
This is the way of the world. It does not matter if you like it. Your children will win or lose, live or die, prevail or fail, as the result of your actions. Choose to lose, and you will.
If you build your worldview upon a foundation of idealism, rather than observed reality, you will be disappointed and outraged. You will also be incorrect, which, in any practical sense, is worse than being wrong.
We are the martial ape. Look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair.
Nice response, Tripp.
Especially this part:
“Most of them value “