JHK’s Three-Act Play
Americans gathered around the hearth of CBS’s 60 Minutes must have been bemused to hear reporter Scott Pelley announce self-importantly that the US Department of Justice is investigating Lance Armstrong’s bicycling team for performance-enhancing drug use. Does it really matter if any pro athlete takes drugs? Why not throw Babe Ruth out of the Baseball Hall of Fame for drinking sixteen beers the night before a World Series opener? Or Ditto Mickey Mantle for that, plus smoking two packs of Marlboros in the dugout during every game.
Notice that Scott Pelley did not announce that the US DOJ is investigating Goldman Sachs, or Citi, or Merrill Lynch, or Bank of America or several other so-called banks for looting the American public and influence-peddling in the halls of government. Or the SEC and the CFTC for failing to regulate the trade in frauds and swindles. The window for that sort of action is closing, and with it the reasonable hopes of citizens in the legitimacy of institutions that manage things.
The failures in journalism are now so stupendous that there are only a few possible explanations.
1. The major media, hard pressed by declining revenues and the extremes of competition on cable TV and the Internet, are in thrall to corporate advertisers who expect cheerleading for the status quo in return.
2. Major media editors and producers – the officer corps of journalism – are not smart enough to tell the difference between what’s important and what’s not and can’t run their newsrooms.
3. Mainstream media only reflects the cognitive dissonance that pervades the collective imagination of a culture – too much noise to think coherently.
4. We really don’t want to know what’s going on – it’s too scary.
5. Sometimes a generation of leaders just fails.
For those of you interested in a digest of reality, here’s what’s going on:
• The global energy predicament really is a crisis, even though nobody is currently lining up at the gasoline pumps. It’s a crisis because peak oil is for real and oil is the primary resource of advanced economies, and there are no miracle rescue remedies (“drill, drill, drill,” shale oil, shale gas). Peak oil means that we can’t increase supply in relation to still-growing demand, which creates disturbances in the energy markets. Peak oil also leads directly to a crisis of capital (money), because a nation (an economy) that can’t get increasing energy “inputs,” can’t create more wealth, can’t generate more loans (debt), and most importantly can’t expect what we’ve come to think of as normal economic growth. This creates further disturbances and distortions in financial markets.
• Without that sort of growth you get stagnation and then contraction. We’re probably past the stagnation phase and into contraction. We tried to compensate for stagnation (and conceal it) by allowing the financial part of the economy grow from 5 percent of all activity to over 40 percent of all activity. In the process, banking changed from a boring utility aimed at directing capital into legitimate investment (highly regulated) to a swashbuckling realm of unregulated swindles having nothing to do with real capital allocation but rather aimed at the sales of worthless “innovative products” (CDOs, et cetera), the creaming off of huge transaction fees, the use of computers to game exchanges, colossal carry trades between banks and public treasuries (you borrow money at zero percent – for free! – and invest it in paper that pays, say, 2.5 percent and keep rolling it over), and let’s not forget pervasive accounting fraud practiced by government and private business to the degree that money matters are now completely opaque and dishonesty can run rampant. After a while, nobody can have faith in the way things work, and that is a dangerous situation because it leads to political problems. The ultimate question is: how does a society manage contraction?
• One way to think about it is to stop using the word “growth” and substitute the term “economic activity.” There are lots of useful things we can do to rearrange daily life in the USA that would put people to work, but they would tend to defy the status quo. We could recognize that peak oil means that we have to grow our food differently and make local agriculture a more up-front piece of the economy. We could rebuild the railroads so that people don’t have to drive everywhere. We could rebuild our inland ports to move more bulk freight on boats. Notice these are very straightforward activities, unlike the manipulation of financial paper and markets. We’re not interested in focusing on agriculture and transport reform. Business and political interests are arrayed against changing anything. Something’s got to give.
• Political problems arise when many people in a society lose faith that their institutions are competent, trustworthy, and fair, and seek ways to bring them down. We’re in a political crisis and we don’t know it. Other parts of the world know it, and more of them are finding out every day. Yesterday was Spain’s turn, as the governing party took a beating in local elections and unemployed young people moiled in the city squares. Many of them probably expected to work in corporate jobs. They may end up back on the farm or in the cork orchards. The rest of Europe has a lot to sort out, too, and after a half-century of being the world’s fairly-tale theme park, the terms of daily life have suddenly changed. The tensions between the requirement to adjust to change and the resistance to change will produce all kinds of disorder within and between the different nations of Europe. It will be hard to believe as it occurs, but essentially each nation, or region, will be thrown back on whatever resources it can muster, and that will be very difficult.
• The trouble in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is probably not so much over abstract ideas about “freedom” and “democracy” (we flatter ourselves to think so) as food scarcity and the pressures of exploding populations. The OCED nations might not care so much if this region didn’t produce so much of the world’s precious oil – but it does, of course, so we can’t help but meddle in the politics there. I would not bet on continued stability of the type that has prevailed for decades, and by that I just mean the expectation that regular supplies of oil will get to the market. The USA is pissing away vast money resources to keep these supply lines open. We’ve made an enemy of Persia (Iran) and they want to rule the region, so we are trying to make a baloney sandwich out of them with garrisons east and west in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s not working so well. Now, Persia is making noises about establishing missile bases in Venezuela. They may overstep on that one. Pay attention. China has a deep interest in keeping the oil supply lines open, and it’s possible, if the wells, pipelines, and terminals are not wrecked by whatever happens next in MENA, that China will get some oil even if we don’t. They offer engineering aid; we just send guys in desert camo with night-vision goggles and guns. Japan, you can possibly forget about. I maintain that they will be going medieval, especially now that they’ve foresworn further nuclear power development.<
/div>
• If the US is politically nervous, it is not showing a whole lot at the moment, but there is so much potential for financial havoc and economic hardship that I have a hard time imagining the 2012 election will play out as many suppose – another red-blue pie-eating contest bought-and-paid-for by Wall Street. We’re cruising straight into some kind of money crisis that is going to spin heads. This isn’t the first time I’ve said we could wake up one morning and find a Pentagon general in charge of things. If US economic history is any rule, Barack Obama would just be plain un-reelectable. But would anybody really vote for such a bumbling, glad-handing Babbitt non-entity as Tim Pawlenty? The things that really could tip the USA over are boring issues like interest rates and currency values – and the rule of law in money matters. They can’t compete for sex appeal with Lance Armstrong and whoever the latest incarnation of Lindsay Lohan is these days.
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First!
True. Why go after Lance and let the Banksters get away?
Hello Cabra1080,
You and others are being childish. It would be useful if you actually post a comment about the article that was just posted. I know that this will not discourage you or others that engage is a silly competition that is totally meaningless, superficial and a race to the bottom of the gene pool for this behavior.
I drove up to Lowell MA this weekend. Talk about the shape of things to come. It looks like our future. Everything was in need of some kind of repair.
But on the flip side, a room at the Foxwoods casino was going for $400 on Saturday night.
An odd juxtaposition. Every bridge and overpass in CT and MA looked like it was rusting from the inside out while the casino was able to charge an arm and a leg for a room.
It’s important to be distracted by flashing lights and ringing bells I guess.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
Howdy from New Zealand!
James – It continues to amaze me how we Americans are so focused on the minutiae of individual indiscretions pumped up by our media machine, and yet we consistently ignore the astounding evil that our institutions perpetrate daily upon the planet and the multitudes that inhabit it. The latest issue, surrounding the head of the IMF, is case and point. We are locked on the charade and ignorant of the entire stage that has been set for ongoing abuse and our willing self-delusion. Surely, we are doomed. Enjoy today’s offering. As always,
Sandy, the kulturCritic
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/the-imf-clusterfuck-and-the-african-queen/
Unfortunately, as long as the people get their free government cheese, they won’t do anything about the mess, certainly nothing that involves the R word.
CBS?!?
James, you must be the only one left in the world that still pays attention to the CIA/government mafia propaganda outlets.
You want some truth, you better pay attention to people like Alex Jones, Max Keiser, Alan Watt (cuttingthroughthematrix), Douglas Rushkoff, Antony Sutton, Carroll Quigley, etc.
I sense a change this week-a more serious post! Nothing about the rapture??
James, to address your points would require sober, reflective thought, all across America. Best luck with that.
Note that the losers in the Spanish elections were those calling for austerity. Does anybody think that our Congresscritters will ignore that reality?
What is at stake is a sense of legitimacy and rule of law. How will people react when they decide the rules of the game don’t apply to the banksters, perhaps one should go long on pitchforks.
Great summary of the issues facing us and one well worth waiting for. Speaking of which, what happened?
I’m surprised you didn’t write about The Rapture as a non-event the news media would rather report on than our real problems. I did, as I thought a blog about the collapse of civilization would be remiss if it didn’t have something to say about the supposed beginning of the end of the world. I guess you didn’t agree. However, we might agree on the following:
As for managing contraction, the New York Times reported on the Detroit suburb of Troy facing that issue. I blogged about it on Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, where I have a link to the original article. It’s a sign that contraction is hitting even the most well-off areas.
Good points, JHK
Let’s just define the news as the practice of misdirection. When I saw the subject matter I went out to do an errand, as my guy pointed out, when everyone’s doping how can you win if you’re not?
Of far more interest was the Scott Pelley interview NSA whistleblower Tom Drake, who is charged under the Espionage Act for exposing the NSA choice to go for “Trailblazer”, a massively expensive program.
That program epitomizes the neoliberal scheme to give billions of tax payer dollars to private contractors when in fact they already had a government program to be unveiled in Jan 2001, called “ThinThread” with a far smaller pricetag that could have averted 9/11.
In deep frustration, Drake spoke to a journalist in Maryland about this oh, shall we call it misdirection of tax-payer funds. Now he stands trial for espionage.
How ironic that the war criminals go unscathed and an American whistle blower now faces 30+ years in jail if convicted.
As Bill Moyers pointed out recently we are about to become a different kind of country and it’s not a democracy.
All I can say is wow, what a powerful and spot on summation. The media failures indeed, and what a gift to have someone out there willing and able to tell is like it is. A great big thank you and a keeper post.
http://alttransbikes.blogspot.com/
Of course you’re right, JHK, about the deafening silence of the non-prosecutions of our great plutocratic looters, Goldman, Citi, et al. That nadly needs to happen, and here’s hoping Eric Schneiderman enjoys a sexually fulfilling marriage and is not the next Lone Ranger to get caught in a hotel-room rape sting. And if these prosecutions don’t happen, we will be living an Orgy of Moral Hazard.
But one-and-a-half cheers, at least, for the investigation of Lance Armstrong. Babe’s sixteen beers (and six steaks, and ten eggs) before the big game didn’t give him an edge, for Chrissake. Armstrong’s ‘alleged’ doping most definitely did, plus it was part of a patriotic con job, same with McGwire, Sosa et al. ‘saving baseball’ after the ’94 strike…
Cuthbert J. Twillie “Novelties & Notions”
Many many problems…but really only one true solution.
Get your own house in order.
*Get your body healthy – get off medications, eat real food and do some exercise.
*Get your mind clear – turn off the tv, go out in the natural world, sit quietly
*Get ready to adapt to the changes that are here.
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
Ah, of course, I meant the prosecutions BADLY need to happen… Twillie
I am surprised that you watch 60 minutes which has not been a show worth a bucket of warm spit for years. Maybe it is trivial, however, but I do think the fall of Armstrong is a tragic end to what apparently was a fairy tale. He was not just a user, he was a pusher, or so they say. Too bad because I am sure he was a pretty good athlete without the EPO.
Well, anyway, if those drugs really work, maybe we could use them to get people off their asses to walk and bicycle around in lieu of the automobile.
I don’t know, if you like you say, Japan will go medieval. They are a resourceful and intelligent people with a long history of simplicity and austerity. Maybe they will rediscover their roots and find a way to survive tolerably in an energy and resource constrained world. We may need them as a model.
Much of the media is in the Obama cult’s compound. That explains much of it, but not all. If it were an R in the whitehouse we would hear a bit more, but certainly not all.
One other bullet that could be added is the increasingly hostile weather. Just last night, a mega-tornado (or multiple tornados) ripped through Joplin, Missouri last night flattening a lot of the city and killing multitudes of people. The massive flood on the Mississippi is still taking its toll as the New Orleans area is getting submerged. Just a few weeks before tornados did a big number in the South.
The sheer destruction of recent months due to intense and unusual weather events is overwhealming. The amount of Federal disaster aid events and the costs of these events is increasing as well. This increasing violent weather activity is hitting the United States in terms of life lost, damage to structures and infrastructure and economically in ways like never before. Is there a trend developing here? Global Warming/Climate Change maybe?
If the number and severity of weather events continues to increase in the future this alone could drive a major change in the living arrangements and economic situation.
Could not agree more with you. 60 Minutes is part and parcel of our intentionally misleading media, and not interested in exposing fraud and corruption that is destroying this country. At least Lance Armstrong had an honorable goal with his supposed doping, unlike our politicians, who do their own doping while they enhance their power and wealth through corruption and intimidation. As far as a military coup, that might be the only thing that can save us, so bring it on, please.
Wow Jim what an article! Talk about a dose of reality, you are spot on Jim, now pass the tums. I feel some serious heartburn coming on.
Does anyone really watch 60 minutes anymore? And why pick on Lance, I guess they figure a cancer survivor is a good target for persecution, and anyway the guy probably was put on some real nasty chemo meds to beat the cancer. So who could tell if he used those meds for cancer treatment or performance enhancement. What a crock.
So glad to see someone discussing the financial situation. I have a question about that whole mess, what the hell are these thieves doing with all the money they stole? Really after the first few billion doesn’t money become a moot issue for them. I mean you can only buy so many mansions, cars,yachts, etc… Where’s the money?
The situation in Japan has gone from disastrous, to seriously disastrous with hardly a peep about it onCNN or Fox. Harvey Wasserman has called for an international team to focus every bit of resources available to the human species to address the situation. But I don’t expect any action frm the current political system, they are to busy trying to secure oil supplies. As if oil matters when you glow in the dark with a nice radioactive tan.
loveday
Thanks, Jim for yet another synthesis of cogent thought and analysis. The DSK imbroglio provided the press a convenient cover relieving them of any serious dissection of the life-support status of European economics.
What I like that is happening around me is many neighbors are quietly growing more fruit and vegetables instead of ornamentals in their gardens.
Also, I see more people walking to and from the grocery store.
There is hope, at least on the mico scale.
Still listening to/watching “60 Minutes” Jim?
Oh dear.
May as well complain about having gut-ache 1/2 hr after having eaten at McDonalds.
Rick Perry will be the next President. Who else to save the Howdy Doody nation than John Wayne himself.
My personal actions can’t save the world, or the nation, but maybe my ideas can start something…#THINKPOSITIVE
Dear Clusterfuckers,
I will keep installing SOLAR PANELS, both for electricity and hot water. Plant more and more gardens, read Tripptickets permaculture etiquette blogs, Ride the electric bicycles, get this freakin electric car project done, install EV charging stations, install more rain barrels, teach kids sustainability, hyper-mile the ICE rides, give my community a real feeling of community, give up on hollywood paper money million stacks dreams and happily settle for an offgrid hand built shack in the city, maybe with a chicken coop too…
So will there be more people or zombies in the coming days???
PUSH ON. DO GOOD. KEEP SMILING.
Thank you for my Monday morning fix of peak oil doom. The interminable positivism of the corporate media is beyond merely beginning to drive me nuts.The major media will get it AFTER whatever it is has already happened at some point in the future, that is.
On at least an instinctual level I have expected very little from the economy now for nearly twenty years. I view people who confidently plan for the future making various entangling arrangments as little more than mental midgets [or is it intellectual dwarves?]. My next reading project is “Bright Sided” by Barbara Kingsolver [I think] which ostensibly is about how we’ve done ourselves in with our relentless positive thinking. Such as, send all the kids to school forever, nobody is too fucking stupid to absord the secondary level of education. Well bullshit. Were standards actually enforced on that level two thirds of the population would have to settle for an eighth grade education then an apprentice card in a trade, just as during the Victorian era before all this grade inflation kicked in. Refer to: Studs Lonigan by Farrell.
One of the corporate media’s most egregious sins of the moment is their relentless drumbeat to the effect that if you’re unemployed it’s your own fault for not going to college. What about all the unemployed people with master’s degrees that I know? That is the ones who are still surviving being unemployed, as not all of them have survived at this point.
Written like a true History Channel Prophet of Doom Mr. Kunstler!
Though it is contrary to the point of this piece, I’m going to address the Lance Armstrong allegations, cross-posted from where I posted this elsewhere today:
This is so backwards.
In a Nation where +6 American million school children in the USA today are *compelled* to take the Performance Enhancing Drug of Ritalin® each and every day it is the very height of Hypocrisy to shame and persecute our Professional Athletes with these pointless and retarded Witch Hunts for doing the same thing.
BTW, the kids aren’t stupid, and they can see right through it, despite being all hopped up on their Legal Prescription Goofballs.
What we need to have is a complete Ban on *all* Drug Testing in all Professional Sports, to include The Olympics and Tour de France.
Lord knows how many years of invaluable medical research, (that could aid 100s of millions of people the world over), that we’re losing because of these ridiculous Puritanical Standards being needlessly imposed on our Society and Culture.
” I know that this will not discourage you or others that engage is a silly competition that is totally meaningless…”
You “know this.” Yet you waste our time posting about it? STFU, moron.
Cabra1080
Excellent point! In fact, we could say the mother nature is getting the last word in on our rampant abuse and destructiveness to the ecosystems. For too long we have acted with impunity, believing the Christian charade… that we are masters of the globe. Well, not so fast… she is gonna keep on hitting us now, until we’ve run out of power.
CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS POST:
BRIGHT SIDED: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Would that be that was only CBS.
Wrote this on Saturday during the Height of our Global Corporate Mass Media’s Bloody Red Meat Rapture Feeding Frenzy:
At this very moment there are currently about +50K pissed-off, Los Indignados, Spaniards out protesting, as they have been for this entire last week, starting on the 15th of May.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/motionlook
Surrender, Dorothy.
Bullshit Rapture stories on Google News:
all 5,418 news articles »
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Rapture
Spanish Protests:
all 1,715 news articles »
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Spain+Protests
—
Comment just posted on the NY Times’ FB Wall:
Journalistic Malpractice.
Sigh.
This stream has been live from Spain for the last day:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/motionlook
They’ve been out there for a week now, enough time to completely taken over the scaffolding of that building on the left.
Can’t imagine anything like this happening in the USA, and even if it did, I won’t be counting on the Old Grey Lady of the NYT to report it.
Why is the NYT even covering this complete NON STORY?
What is *wrong* with you people?
Are you giving the Anti-Austerity/Unemployment Protests, which are REAL, and which have been going on for a FULL WEEK in Spain, the same level of coverage as this patently ridiculous religious story?
No, of course you’re not doing that.
Instead, you’re shilling story from a KNOWN, babbling 89 year old, FRAUDster, who has made tens of millions of dollars off of this Long Con Scam of his.
Nice to know where the State of American Journalism is today.
Shameless.
And disgraceful.
“The failures in journalism are now so stupendous that there are only a few possible explanations.”
Well, well. You list 5 reasons but should have included a 6th. For the most part (aside from the Washington Times, Fox News and a few talk shows) journalists, work for liberal media. If the news isn’t getting out what is it that the libs are trying to hide? Possibly, that the lib agenda, free cheese for all/lowest common denominator as a touch-stone ain’t fucking working. Not here nor in any other country on the planet.
Why is that? Well the libs will tell you its just because we haven’t tried hard enough. “We have to try even harder to be more equal”. So, by all means, the ludicrous failure of this policy (it goes against human nature for crying out loud, only the fucking clueless/hopeless want the same for everyone) will go unreported. Nothing wrong here. Keep moving, nothing to see…(Sure there isn’t.)
Interesting that JHK wrote about the media since it was on my mind after a short binge of catching up with the Daily Show for some needed fluff entertainment. JS exclaimed that the “news” was making it too easy for his show to lampoon. “This has gotten so easy it’s not even fun anymore.”
This had me thinking about how the media, the “infotainment industry” has become trapped in time and is so stupid that pointing out the failure of “journalism” is, in the words of JS, not even fun anymore. On NPR on my drive upstate to renovate my building on Main Street and count the new vacant store fronts in a town that could be thousands of others in the NE, NPR was discussing the new media and how everyone with a blog is filtering the news and passing it on to others because there is so much information out there and blah blah blah…. is there really any information out there in cyberspace, or just people (like myself) feeding at the same scant feedlot of limited sources – our own echo chamber of blogs, links, and IMHOing as few of us are getting to see primary source documents, talk directly to “leaders” and know what’s really happening….
My own un-sourced ranting….
http://www.schwerpunkter.wordpress.com
That’s pretty good and unfortunately accurate too. But I can’t agree it won’t happen again . I fact I expect next time it will be a freakin carnival. Take Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and the other not so serious names being thrown around to spread fear. It’s enough to make one loose one’s mind and vote for Obama again.
And that’s the plan.
Meanwhile, our illustrious Doorman In Chief is partying in Ireland, sucking down some Guinness. CNN says he’s “searching for his roots”. If this weren’t so unbelievably fxcked up, it’d be hillarious. Party on, Garth!
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
It’s Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote Bright Sided and thank you for mentioning it. I was unaware of this book. I’ve read her others, including my favorite: Nickel and Dimed, on Not Getting By in America.
I’m downloading Bright Sided to my Kindle.
The latest issue, surrounding the head of the IMF, is case and point.
===========
Kultur, you are probably some one’s favorite aunt or uncle and all that but there is something annoying about your showing up early each Monday to say “ditto” to JHK’s latest essay and leave your business card (link).
And by the way, the expression is “case in point.”
Fantastic little slideshow over at Club Orlov today.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/05/twilight-of-antipodes-and-cultural-flip.html
Talks about how any interest-bearing economy is doomed to collapse eventually by simple mathematics. Points out the misery involved in such market trade economic societies too – the more important part to me.
Cheers.
James – you wrote a most excellent essay this week. Very well organized, concise and yet detailed enough to outline all the problems encompassing “peak everything.” This piece stands on its own with respect to any attempts for clarification.
It really is just a matter of those with the power being able to keep it – and those who grow lacking in comforts continuing to endure without notice, accountability or redress.
I am no expert and certainly no “wiser” than anyone else when it comes to understanding human nature – but if there be one thought that keeps me up at night -it is that there is no stopping the miscreants at the tops of their financial empires from bringing about a new world order of such terrifying horror and massive global desperation that it will make the Great Depression and World War II look insignificant.
It will be interesting to see if any meaningful social-political subdivisions can be formed to resist or otherwise sustain themselves comfortably through these conflagrations. I sleep better knowing that there are others who share my daily nightmares of “modern society.”
QSHTIK – FU!!
There’s two different worlds you’re talking about.
The old one, described on network news, has
certain types of problems that can be talked
about, and the real world, described by
Internet reporters such as yourself, has
certain types of problems that sound too
eccentric to be plausible.
The old world cannot exist in the face of these
new types of problems. Reporters are hired based
on an understanding, usually an unspoken understanding, of what our world is really all about.
The types of problems you are describing mean
that the old world is soon to pass. From a reporter’s point of view, such talk belongs
on the opinion pages, and is therefore not
their job.
It takes somebody at the top to lead the way.
There’s plenty who could, but they’re not likely to get the opportunity.
The solution is to keep trying to get the message across, and not be discouraged when the progress you’re making is not readily apparent.
Kulturcritic- i am no fan of Q and his schoolmarmish ways, but he nailed you. Lick Jim’s balls and post your link… cheese n crackers. Make your point here, or fuck off. Same to all you blog-pimpin’ ho’s.
wow, what a powerful and spot on summation.
============
Drink, it’s not just you … there’s a slew of posters out there that continue to use the worn out phrase “spot on.” I grow weary. Can someone please think up a NEW way to say “Jim, I am in total agreement!?”
I agree with JHK that there are a lot of good things that could be done to manage the change we need to make if we are to come out better for the experience of the past sixty misguided years.
However, I suspect that at the higher levels of global economic planning, a decision has been made to run the USA into the ground through unwinnable military adventures and the general prostitution of our federal government for the benefit of whichever industry gives the biggest campaign contributions.
More wars are planned, with the media trying to drum up support as we speak. Syria may be next. Maybe Pakistan, too. The news that Iran wants to place missiles in Venezuela sounds like a perfect reason to invade them and try to secure their oil for our needs.
I missed that story. Who released that juicy tidbit, Haaretz? Sounds like a counter-move to Obama’s recent proposal that Israel should go back to their 1967 borders.
If history is any predictor, our government and private contractors would probably screw up the oil production of Venezuela rather than expedite it, just as they did in Iraq. Remember? Iraq oil was supposed to pay for its own regime change.
I see China and the countries in that vicinity coming out on top — but not without a fight from the country that has “The Most Powerful Military In the World”.
Whatever your plans for avoiding the collapse of America, protect your health for the day you need it: http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com
I’m not sure who is more annoying – “Helen Highwater” or “Sandy, the kulturCritic.”
The Justice department is surrounded by festering pools of political corruption, but they continue to masturbate over drugs in sports. The financial sector, the oil and gas sector, and the military industrial sector are cancer causing diseases totally infecting the rest of the nation.
Adams and Jefferson would call for an armed civilian uprising to take down these corporate vampires. They risked their lives and the lives of their families to go up against the royal corporate monarchists, which are basically the same what lives inside Goldman Sachs, Exxon, Bank of America, FOX, GE, Halliburton, and the rest–corporate monarchists.
The field of Grotesquely Oligarchian Psychopathetics– GOP–
and their leached Democ-rats are leading the nation into more wars and poverty.
And all that they do is titillate themselves over drugs in sports, which they impregnate their mistresses and frequent their hired hookers.
The corporate monarchists will do whatever they can to keep Obama in power, since he is doing their bidding. If he were to be defeated, then so goes our Federal Judges and a return to 1948.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Today’s entry is even more foreboding on the second read through….the “we could wake up one morning and find a Pentagon general in charge of things” part strikes a resounding chord.
As the days go by, one day into the next, I’ve been having a good deal of that…..”we could wake up one morning and……..” feeling lately. Who knows what will shake out of that but we can be sure the major media will jump to the front and pretend they were on it all along.
http://alttransbikes.blogspot.com/
Some two thousand years ago, the Jewish civilization (at the time a combo of Judea and what was left of Israel) was in steep decline, when a young sage named Joshua Ben Joseph observed that “the people will swallow a camel but choke on a gnat.” It’s what was apparent last night on CBS: the people don’t want the hard truth – even in small portions. So they are fed great gobs of pablum. All the news that’s fit to sell!
“Take Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump…”
No. Please don’t take them. Trump is, was and always will be a self promoting asshat. Newt? Give me a fucking break. He is so morally corrupt and so reprehensible there is not a serious Republican that gives him a farthing of a chance. Palin? Nope. Not that she wouldn’t probably be much, much better than Obama but she ain’t gonna run. And if she does, her negatives run about as high as Hillary Clinton and as such she could never be elected.
So, lets not talk about any of these clowns again. Because they ain’t gonna happen. Pawlenty? Jimmie wants to dismiss him with a simple “…would anybody really vote for such a bumbling, glad-handing Babbitt non-entity as Tim Pawlenty?” Well why not do a little home work on the guy. He happens to come from pretty blue collar stock. His old man drove a milk truck, his moms died when he was 16. And yet he worked his way through college and law school and became a Governor of a pretty liberal state.
Herman Cain? Pretty compelling story. Black, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. He is a former deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the civilian board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Cain’s mother was a cleaner and his father a chauffeur yet he persevered through Morehouse College with a BA and received his Masters in computer science from Purdue. You know the idiot Michelle Bachman? She has an advanced degree in tax law.
There will be others who step forward. Many will be painted by the liberal press as inept buffoons but they are anything but. Simply because they do not fall into a socialist agenda, close-minded morons will package them into something that can be easily dismissed.
Which brings us back where? To Obama. Been there, done that. The man is a fucking world class disaster. Want to continue down this road? Buy the faulty, liberal, media logic that every candidate other than Obama is an imbecile. And be prepared to bend over and spread ’em.
As I plan my route to self-sufficiency via rural Maine, I cannot help but wonder about the similarities between present day USA and Rome 476 AD. Morally bankrupt leaders, food and energy running out, a dishonest financial systems and apathetic citizens.
Would guess that in the year 2500, humans will be looking back at the end of America’s empire during the 21st century. Perhaps Twain was right: history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.
Sheckllll – I have the same two letters for u!!
Post it on your blog, butch.
Mr Bongo and Mr Shecky
What have we got here a pair of hall monitors? I do not see anything remotely resembling intelligence emanating from either of you two. Go sit in the corner and gossip about something!!
The Lance Armstrong story is a joke, just like the Michael Vick stuff and the Barry Bonds sideshow. (In Vick’s case, sure, dog-fighting is cruel and venal, but it is nothing compared to the pillaging of a planet, and more dogs will be abandoned (or eaten) by the newly-poor than Vick ever saw. And Vick, who faces physical danger every Sunday each fall to entertain the corn-fed, the bran-dead and the Goldman-Citi-JP Korgan crowd, too, at least earns his money honestly.)
I could care less about whether Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Michael Vick, et al, do, since I don’t have to watch, and their real or imagined crimes cause little damage in the real world.
I didn’t watch ’60 Minutes’ and almost never do. When they report the arrest of the people who looted us or who bomb and torture in our names, as our government, I’ll tune in. If the power’s still on, that is.
Global Warming/Climate Change MAYBE? There’s no maybe about it. Unfortunately, because people refused to believe how human activities have been impacting the planet, and because our so-called “leaders” did absolutely nothing but obstruct those of us who tried to do something, it is now too late to avert these catastrophes.
lil’jimbo: A “few” talk shows?! Are you serious?
Oh my lord. Here is a complete summation of this bloated, corrupt, incompetent administration. Possibly the funniest thing I have seen in years: http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0523/media-2963651.html#
Herman Cain: Black. You listed that as his first qualification for being President. For alot of people, that’s all that matter as per Obama. I didn’t know you were with them but you evidently you kind of are.
“Peak oil means that we have to grow our food differently and make local agriculture a more up-front piece of the economy.”
We’re doing this. Please see http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com.
Aquaponics is the most effective way to grow natural, organic food in the history of humanity. Compared to in-ground farming, it uses 2% of the water, 20% of the human labor, and 50% of the energy (and does not use petrochemical energy at all, and hence can be powered by a windmill, solar panels, or biogas!)
The situation in Japan has gone from disastrous, to seriously disastrous with hardly a peep about it onCNN or Fox.
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Yes Love, our attention spans have grown extremely short and the media recognize it.
It was only January and how many remember Jared’s last name?
June 15, 2011 LA Times headline: Terrorists Detonate Huge Nukes In NYC and London
June 19, 2011 LA Times headline: Maria Shriver Inks Talk Show Gig
Yeah. Add up CBS, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, NYT’s LA Times. Phil Enq. Cleveland Plain Dealer, Seattle Times, Slate, Time Mag.,Newsweek, Washington Post, San Fran Chron, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
The role of drugs in society is huge. Remember how big sports are in this culture. These guys are role models for our youth. That makes it important.
Britain went to war with China to make them keep importing their Opium. Many say that we grow Opium overseas to support our other nefarious activities. Illegals are turning our National Parks into pot farms – manned by armed guards.
Maybe sports figures shouldn’t be our heroes. In which case, someone else will be. And whether they used drugs will then be an issue.
In Spokane, the Feds keep raiding medical marijuana facilities. At this point, I think the main issue may be that they can’t stand the idea of States having any rights to make their own laws. But bribes from the big growers in California to keep it illegal and expensive sure don’t hurt either.
Lick. Me.
Shecky, I’m afriad there’s a lot more to say about the long emergency than Jim bothers with. His job seems mostly to be getting people tuned to the seriousness of the situation. And apparently loads of people are, more every week, judging by the comments section here. But he doesn’t say dick about HOW to transition, and so you get a lot of links posted around here to sites that do. Please forgive the blog posters who are trying to save your anonymous ass for no good reason other than the fact that most of them are just genuinely good people.
I certainly don’t need your competition for dwindling resources, but I also see strength in numbers of prepared individuals. If you don’t wish to be part of the remnant than good on ya, and godspeed.
I think what I love most about that video you posted was the amount of TIME it took for SOMEBODY to get the heck out of the car to check things out! I’ve been driving for quite a few decades and regardless of if I’m alone or with others, the instant the car gets stuck, breaks down, runs out of gas, we’re out on the pavement. We are either trying to find out what happened, pushing the damned thing, calling for help, or god forbid, walking. Mind blowing display of how NOBODY knows what the hell they’re doing!
“Mind blowing display of how NOBODY knows what the hell they’re doing!”
Amen, brother. This being the car of the leader (?) of the free world. Too fucking funny.
Jim—great column as per usual, but one thing I’d quibble with. I think the Repubs have written off 2012. It’s not that they think Obama is doing a great job—in normal circumstances, an economy this lousy would cause lines of applicants to show up at local news stations. But anybody smart enough to grasp the realities that you’re pointing out here understands that the person who inherits 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day 2013 will do so when a whole flock of black swans is idling on the White House lawn. Obama’s strategy at this point seems to be ape W and kick the can down the road to November. And if he survives that election, he’ll get to give us a reprise of all the speeches we got angry about when Jimmy Carter first delivered them 33 years ago.
Well stated, Tripp!!
JHK, you’re only now observing what has been creeping into TV for 30yrs? When news departments disappeared in the 70s and those units fell under the authority of the entertainment divisions of these companies, EVERYTHING changed. News IS entertainent now. Our local news now shows house fires from Topeka, shootings from Denver, car wrecks from Tampa. Not because these have ANYTHING to do with local news, but because they are deemed more ‘gripping’ than our local, boring, central VA news.
The TV watching American public doesn’t have the stamina (spelled ‘attention span’)to endure the reporting of the long emergency. Frankly, they’ve been so conditioned to pay attention only to the latest ‘crisis’ that our local station now rates the popularity of the previous weeks’ ‘MOST IMPORTANT’ stories based on the number of net hits the story receive on their site. Again, who cares?
The tv watching public also lacks the international awareness to care about the protests in Spain or the continuing collapse of the Greek government or the revolutions in the middle-east. Why? Because our schools are teaching students about multi-culturalism, the environmental impact of lawn mowers and spending 2 weeks of classrome time making a forest eco-system out of paper meche’. This is not to diminish the importance of our impact on the environment, but it is taught as a religion rather than as a necessary component of life. Multi-culturalism is B.S. plain & simple.
The elites of this country have worked very hard to dumb down public education in order to make the masses more easily controlled. Control the information and you control what is perceived as the truth. We have to go to foriegn media to find out what is REALLY happening in the U.S. Unless, of course, you want to know who won American Idol or which beer BHO drank in Ireland.
I was on the net, yesterday, searching rural properties with 20 or more acres. Small farms. My 12yo daughter asked me why I was looking. So I spent almost an hour explaining peak oil and resource depletion. I told her that I want her and her brother to be armed with real world skills that will be needed, when the resources run out or become impractical or too expensive to obtain. I immediately regretted bursting her optomistic bubble.
There is hope, at least on the mico scale.
=============
I googled “mico scale” and came up with the link below but I can’t tie it to what you’re talking about. Please fill me in.
http://www.mico.com/products/images/140_docfile.pdf
Getting the rail roads up and running again.
Great idea!!!
Hey, I’ll bet that the TSA perverts would love having the rail roads running again; that would mean more people, including children, for them to grope and order around. I can see it now, people give up individual vehicles to only learn that they have to have their balls and titties groped by sub-humans with badges and uniforms.
Great idea!!!! I’m sure lots of sheeple will go for this.
Welcome to police state Amerika where the slaves think they’re free (e.g. to travel, etc).
Geez you’re picky this morning.
I wonder if the Obaminator’s latest gambit to bring “peace to the middle east in our lifetime” is just another attempt to divert public attention from America’s monumental economic problems. If it is, then Obama risks making a blunder of historic proportions. Remember the former Yugoslavia? Once that nation ceased to exist as a viable entity, a nasty turf war broke out among the different ethnic groups over who would get the biggest piece of the pie. Now imagine Israel retreating behind its’ pre-1967 borders and you have the recipe for World War 3. Unable to defend itself against the combined forces of Islamic extremism that are hell-bent on its’ annihalation, Israel might not have any choice but to deploy the nuclear option. This is not a good time to be asking Israel for concessions because no concession short of the complete exterminiation of the Jewish state will be acceptable to the Palestinians.
rag,
Gotta be careful with the young-uns. Better if you sell rural property as a “big adventure.” Hell the fucking adults I know can’t handle this train wreck.
FU!
One of the reasons why Americans have such low social cohesion compared to some other cultures, which I won’t bother to name, is our very worship of success and competition. As Lao Tzu pointed out, athletics are corrupting in that they teach adherents to prevail by any means in what is essentially ritualized violence, or forcing your will upon others through main force.
This is the same mentality which labels people who use public transportation losers. After all, we must all control the means to do as we wish whenever we wish and damn the consequences. So yes, we will sacrifice all to retain our independent modes of transport, and moreover, to make our privately owned vehicles as over-powered as possible in order to squander as much fuel as our incomes will permit.
So we’re screwed. After all, only losers ride the bus to work.
” This is not a good time to be asking Israel for concessions…”
And yet I saw the Sunday commentators registering disbelief that this Jewish upstart had the audacity to lecture the President in the WH. Well maybe if fucktard, hadn’t come out with his brilliant statement prior to Bibi’s plane landing. What a fucking idiot. And this when we have no IDEA how any of the countries in the ME are going to come through the current upheaval. Every current, single leader (including Netenyahu) could be gone in a matter of months.
Yet this simpleton of a President is going to dictate the borders of a foreign nation? When he doesn’t even have control of our own Southern border.
Americans, seen by the rest of the world, are the least aware of world events, geography, politics and economics. CBS enables this of course, but they are not alone. When Larry Tisch took control of CBS and turned the news division into essentially an arm of the entertainment CBS division, well, here we are, where Scott Pelley expresses outrage at the idea that Armstrong might have done doping, while the bankers go free, the DOD goes free, a lying White House goes free. But most Americans don’t know this or don’t care, so it flies. It will be generations before the story of America’s downfall and stupidity can be fully told with political, economic, spiritual and intellectual clarity. Right now, it is chaos. We love (i.e. don’t notice) that TSA fondles our kids and wives, but we think it is ‘terrible’ that Lance might have done EPO. This is a sign of a very very sick society. Generations later perhaps the depth of our mental illness will be accurately documented. We Americans stand up for nothing except the winning team on the weekend.
Being a bicycle racer for 25+ years, researching the issue of PED (performance enhancing drugs) in my sport and having met Tyler Hamilton, I would like to comment on your post, much of which I agree on. But let me focus on my thoughts with drug use in bicycle racing.
If you don’t care about the health of athletes, go right ahead and call for a ban on testing. Clean athletes will get beaten and the people using the max levels of EPO, HGH and steroids will get cancer or die from other side effects, such as thickened blood due to excessive red blood cell percentages. I guess when they are really tired, such as mid way through the Tour de France, it would be OK to snort some cocaine at the bottom of a brutal mountain climb?
Regarding Ritalin use, I think that the medical profession needs to look in the mirror and chant “do no harm”. Our whole society has been sold a “better living through chemistry” lifestyle. With regards to bans, the first thing I suggest is a ban on prescription drug advertising to the general public. All prescription drugs should be advertised in medical journals. My father has practiced medicine for 50 years and he says that when the ads say “ask you doctor”, that’s really code for “tell your doctor to put you on the stuff”.
As in many decisions people make, just follow the money trail.
Tripp- you may be an exception… Way too many people here appear to be trying to maximize hits on their blogs for their own benefit. My anonymous ass notwithstanding, I see no value to me or you from the promotion of the egos or bank accounts of would-be pundits. Schwadchuck is gone ( I did enjoy her linked photos of dour, graying fellow travelers choking down their fart fuel), may KK soon follow. You too, Aimlow Joe.
Some folks post here in the flow of the conversation, and their contributions are what bring me back. (I have been here, in one incarnation or another, a lot longer than most posters.) Others seem poised to insert, very early in the day, links to their blogs. I followed KK’s link, and found nothing of value there. What the fuck time do you have to get up in Siberia to be one of the first five posters here?
My anonymous ass is not served by this practice.
I do not object to people posting links to their blogs, or to material germane to the discussion. I do get irritated when I find the same people in the first few comments posting “Attaboy Jim, y’all go here!” week after fucking week.
You, Tripp, as a specific example, participate in the give and take, and post your link to those who might like to follow up. No problemo. I almost contacted you recently. I was in Columbus, Ga, visiting family, some of whom garden seriously, but they were all so busy getting ready to rapture that I figured what the hell, we’ll eat beet greens in heaven.
Thank you for your contributions, and screw you for your condescending tone. Call it a wash.
Glad to have you back Qshtik! Wishing your daughter a blissful married life.
You are right about “Jared”…I know he was the shooter in AZ, but I can’t remember his last name.
As for Armstrong, Bonds, etc. I don’t give a damn what they do to their bodies.
Kind regards, Jen
Yeah, Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Mike Rosen, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett, Bill O’Reilly, Dennis Prager, Laura whats-her-face, etc, etc, etc, etc. Pretty good list of libs, alright. Dumbass.
“You are right about “Jared”. I like him in those Subway ads.
Yeah and she’s the princess type, as heavily promoted by Mrs. Ragtop. I thought maybe a dose of reality would get more synapses firing. She did appear to grasp the concepts, but it was apparent that I had spoiled her picnic.
There are plenty of adults who are paying attention and I know quite a few. Far too many more are oblivious, in denial or too heavily vested in the status quo to want to change. There is hope, though. Even as skeptical as I am, I saw the light a few years ago. It took a lot of research, for me to be convinced. Some folks need the mental equivilent of a 2×4, to the head, to wake up.
Pretty good list of libs, alright. Dumbass.
Talk about dumbass. Not a single person on your list claims to be a journalist. Jim was talking about the the failure of journalism. What the fuck are you talking about fucktard?
According to a Naturopath friend a Pharma is trying to have ALL Water in US taps laced with an Anti Depressant [depressing,eh]….they added fluoride
[gee thanks Rockefellers and Alcoa Aluminum]..
and this is a repost…………….
Tuesday’s Daily Bulletin paper, ran two articles on the front page side by side :
1- Calif ‘s 20 Billion Dollar Budget Deficit
2- The Calif Supreme Court ruling that ILLEGALS can attend college and get benefits.
Why don’t they just deport them when they arrive to register?
3- Last year they ran an article on the yearly costs to Calif Taxpayers from Illegals using Hospital Emergency Rooms for their general health care –
At just one hospital the cost to tax payers totaled over 25 million a year
Someone please tell me what the HELL’s wrong with all the people that run this country!!!!!!
We’re “broke” & can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,???????????
In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti Chile , and Turkey . And now Pakistan …..home of bin Laden.
Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
Our retired seniors living on a ‘fixed income’ receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$’s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when its time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.
AMERICA: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without ‘needed’ meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc,etc.
YET…………………
They have a ‘Benefit’ for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents clothes, bedding, doctors and medical supplies.
Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave ‘US’ the same support they give to other countries!!!!!!!!!!!
Another reason to flee California:
“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that “needless suffering and death” had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions.”
The Cult should have done with the Jehovah’s Witness’s did – declare that the world ended SECRETLY.
Now that Obama has become Irish, he has truly become a Kennedy Democrat – America’s first Black Kennedy.
Good post from JHK regarding the annoying and trivial reporting from the news media. Why is the media giving any attention to Birthers/Truthers/Deathers/End of Timers — are we so bored we need entertainment from freaks? And what about all those poor suckers who gave away their worldly belongings and ALL THEIR MONEY to Harold Camping who promised them rapture. Will the media investigate Camping and see what he did with all that money? That would be an interesting investigation.
But there seems to be hints of good news coming in — New Jersey is experiencing the growth of urban farming. Vacant and/or abandoned lots are sprouting up with poly tunnels and fresh veggies. Chicago is planning for a warmer climate in the future replacing street trees with swamp oaks that can withstand the heat and humidity as their climate appears to be growing warmer and warmer. Even the US Navy is investigating how to adapt to Climate Change. And although we are running out of fossil fuel and surplus is piling up temporarily at refineries and tankards everywhere, people are conserving their use of fuel and looking towards mass transportation. Trains and mopeds may be become the transportation of choice. Trains for long trips; mopeds for short ones.
So we learn and we adapt. And we’re smart enough not to believe the religious nuts or FOX News and use the many resources available to plan ahead so that no matter what, we’ll be ready. So while athletes and celebrities may entertain the masses, at least some of us are looking ahead.
Great post Jim. For those interested in a perfect expose’ of the current looting and destruction of the middle class by the oligarchy scroll down to Paul Craig Roberts’ amazing interview on Denninger’s Web site: (Roberts was Editor of the Wall Street Journal and Undersecretary of U.S. Treasury:
http://market-ticker.org/
Thanks, Ed
Reason to flee NY:
“A New York assemblyman says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency “panic button” that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job.”
Vive Le France!
“May 23 (Bloomberg) — Seven publicly traded U.S. corporations represented on President Barack Obama’s advisory council for jobs and competitiveness — including General Electric Co. and Intel Corp. — have devoted a growing pool of their non-U.S. earnings to investments in other countries.
As a group, multinational companies with current or former chief executive officers on Obama’s jobs council have, over the past four years, almost doubled the cumulative amounts they’ve reinvested overseas, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
By doing so, companies may be able to take advantage of faster-growing markets or lower production costs, and they can defer U.S. income taxes on profits from overseas sales. ”
Isn’t that special!
Cronkite was a tool too – he was just more dignified as befitted a tool back when America wasn’t as far gone. Did He or Lippman or Murrow ever take on the Federal Reserve? Nope – that was just nut stuff back then.
As Confucius said, the Superior Man is not an instrument.
Obama’s “Roots” are from Money Gall – sound about right.
Surprised to see people disparaging JHK for watching 60 Minutes. As a commentator on current events he probably watches a great deal of news shows, not because he’s a fan, but because he needs to know what lies the mainstream media is spewing this week.
Remember that old line “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer”. It applies for JHK too. Only a fool ignores information they don’t like.
We are slaves to be abused without our own Nation. This is just a “Country” trying to be an Empire.
Word of the week: “moiled”…. “moved around in confusion or agitation”.
And yes, I had to look it up. Just another good reason to read JHK’s column.
Didn’t take long for you to start with toilet mouth today, Helen. Oh, Lordy! What will we do?
“Thank you for your contributions, and screw you for your condescending tone. Call it a wash.”
You got it, mate. Thanks for the thoughts, and come on by whenever you get the chance. We made it through this false rapture alarm, but might not next time, so don’t wait forever;)!
You can’t blame the Palestinians for wanting to come back and take back their homes. The Israelis threw them out and changed the names of the Villages to Jewish names. The Palestinians will never forgive or forget.
The Answer? There is none. The “Answer” was not to have created Israel in Palestine to begin with.
Yes anti – we’re stark raving mad. The Terrorist have won. The Goverment now treats its own citizens like terrorists. We should ethnically profile like the Israelis do. Unpleasant? Yes, but better than treating all Americans like this.
I was reading your post quite happily, in agreement right up til you claimed that teaching multi culturalism is b.s. You are so wrong about that.
Unless we all understand other human cultures and day to day lives, we have no basis to grasp that this is all one world and there is only one human race. We are not so different, no matter what part of the world we occupy. Whether we worship this god or that, or none at all, whether we eat red meat or not, live in an industrialised society or an agricultural one, if you scratch the surface we are all the same.
All of us love our parents and our children and desperately hope for security in our futures. We value our friends and our way of life. We have much more in common than we have differences, and therefore we have a strong basis to begin discussions about sharing the world’s resources.
When we fail to teach our kids tolerance and understanding of other cultures, they don’t have the opportunity to learn how much we humans have in common, and that each of us is worth the same as every other living person.
To this Canadian one of the biggest problems Americans face is that attitude that the USA is the best in the world at everything and Americans better, smarter than anybody else. Now that’s bull shit!
It’s enough to make one loose one’s mind
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Yeah … enough to unhook the bungee cords, cut the duct tape and untie the ropes to loosen one’s mind 😉
I wonder if these thieving banksters,crooked politicians lying SOBs in the NEWs?Media are aware that they are on the path to suicide?Sooner or later someone with the right? attitude will realize what these scumbags are up to and put an end to one of them.This might start something some have been wishing for,for a long time.If a US president can be murdered in broad daylight,with the responsible mobsters still running loose unpunished,I would not dismiss the possibility of this happening.
Okay Jim, I know that you are allergic to conspiracy’s so let me give you a 6th option for the “failure” of American “journalists”….
That our “media” are held by less than a half dozen corporations (many of whom are also in the “defense” business) and they are sending out a very carefully crafted message, and that message results in a very passive and maliable population who will never riot over the price of food, but will riot when their “local pro football” team “wins” a game or when told to by their masters to support the maters agenda of war for profit and population control…… seems the USA’s CIA is keenly aware of peak oil and is carefully chiseling out an “Arab Spring” that will position Halliburton/KBR into the profit power stratosphere…
Your Allergy causes you to see the world as spinning out of control and not making any sense just because people are stupid…. illogical, and not adjusted to reality, and at Google’s boardroom that may be the case, but I assure that it is not the case at Brown Brothers Harriman, or any of their offspring.
If the Bushes are so “unaware” of peak oil then why did they happen to invade the wrong country in the wake of 9/11 in the form of Iraq? Seriously, if they were just stupid and wanting to make a war that Americans could wrap their heads around (Freedom VS Commies) they could have gone after Lil’ Kim and the DPRK… they did not.
Nor did they really go after “al Queda”… they went in and got busy securing energy contracts… not securing the country… it was job one!
Your leaders are not unaware of the oil situation, they have the situation well in hand, and when the sense that the tattooed masses are going to invade the Hamptons they will give the masses guns and cause “gang wars” the way they have in El Salvador, and the tattooed masses will not invade East Hampton, but rather Easton.
No things don’t make sense… but they do the second you realise that there is a lot more than golfing, cigar smoking, and brandy drinking going on at the worlds country clubs and think tanks…. there is war for profit being designed for the world to consume, and they are serving it up daily… and keeping you in the dark as to why.
The Flight of Whites from California is one of the biggest movement of people in US history, dwarfing the “Okies” fleeing the dustbowl into California. Bad schools, taxes, crime – all the reasons giving for flight are just symptoms of the Brown Invasion. We are surrendering our Sovereignty.
There are always exceptions in the mainstream media though, just look at Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone. The 2012 election is going to be interesting; imagine Obama vs Ron Paul. Paul might not have a chance, but he would certainly take the debate to a whole new level.
JHK leans on the “Passenger Railroad” theme in his books and blog, never much about freight railway network.
Noting wardoc’s complaints about rail transit equals groping, the ‘ol doc forgets why teenage boys favor early departure from school in favor of supporting their own private vehicle… And where has worldwide chase for private vehicle at puberty got us? We had our share of the oil too, poured into dozens of cars from letter series Chryslers to some fun with ancient 12 & 16 cylinder Cadillacs and a creaky 1931 Marmon, roomy 7 passenger behemoths. Happy motoring!
Boone Pickens tries to sell us on a fleet of LNG trucks, touted as a “bridge” through the Oil Interregnum. Too bad Boone doesn’t use some of his time promoting rebuild of the 100’s of US dormant rail branch lines, a more strategic and robust approach to separate America from Muslim oil. Boone, talk to Christopher C. Swan.
For the 1000’s of readers never posting, you must be thinking about Peak Oil or you wouldn’t be here; look up your own copy of the “Official Guide” of the railways circa 1920-1050, and be familiar with your locale’s railway territory. Look up your town or city in the back index, and note railway line(s) in service a half century back. When America was a lending not a borrowing nation.
Other Oil Interregnum railway information from “tahoevalleylines” postings at TOD, and also see Newsletter 42, article 374; and Newsletter 89, article 1037. For comprehensive Rail Map Atlas volumes see spv.co.uk for your state listing.
Planners in the 3000+ County offices, sooner or later Peak Oil lands in your town; why not be ready? County level officials can pre-empt transport emergency by beginning dialogue with the State Army/National Guard, regarding recommissioned rail logistics units: “Railroad Operating Battalions”. The skeleton ROB unit at Ft. Eustis, VA (former home of the 727th Railway Operating Battalion) has recently moved to Ft. Lee.
Recommissioned ROB will expedite rehab of dormant rail branch lines, with particular emphasis on agricultural traffic branches. California examples of Ag lines would be the Placerville, Rumsey, Calaveras, Madera and Isleton lines. Some preliminary investigation by planners with initiative will smooth the panic when Federal Executive Emergency Orders for motor fuel allocation come when we can’t borrow enough to finance oil imports.
We simply need to rebuild the branch rail footprint to maintain Societal And Commercial Cohesion when grocery aviation and trucking falters. It is crucial to have calm people in the room, responsible officials and business owners already savvy on rail component past & present in their respective locales. Interim, we establish container load/unload facilities enroute rail mains, giving rail access to towns and suburbs formerly having rail freight platforms.
Keep ‘Em Rolling
The Palestinians will never forgive or forget.
==
LOL! The “Palestinians” is an MI6/KGB/CIA fiction. And if it wasn’t for the constant British/Russian/US propaganda, financial and political support, these “Palestinians” would go back to being your regular garden-variety pan-arab jihadis, whether of the irrelevant “Egyptian” or irrelevant “Syrian” label.
Btw, if anybody thinks that MI6/KGB/CIA are enemy organizations, you better think again. They all work for the same banking elite, using the same dialectic. That is, putting on their kabuki shows of “good” and “bad” guys to sell you weapons and wars while they vaccum every penny that you earn working like a donkey on their plantation.
Well, get over it. I stand by my comment. Far too much public education time is spent on this and other ‘social engineering’ while our students fall farther behind the rest of the industrialized nations in important subjects like math and science. Multiculturalism is not tolerance. And yes we have racism, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD including Canada. I still think Americans are already among the MOST tolerant people on the planet.
If they want to make this subject a 9 week elective, fine. Unfortunately (for U.S.) it has become a day in and day out barrage that borders on brainwashing. This I know from personal experience and am addressing same, with my BOE. Interestingly enough, I have quiet support of MANY teachers who believe the same but fear reprisals from thier union, if they were to speak out.
I am not a spokesperson (note androgynous) for American Exceptionalism. I do believe that Americans have done great things BECAUSE they lived in America rather than, say, the USSR or Sweden or any other socialist country.
The U.S.A. IS the best place IN THE WORLD to live because anyone, with intellegence and a good work ethic, can make a pretty good life here.
Dr. Paul would throw BHO completely off his teleprompter.
Some of Harlold Camping’s followers maxed out their credit cards thinking the Rapture a way to cheat not only death but debt. The two are related as the word mortgage implies. In any case, Jesus is the answer to irresponsible spending – he let’s us get away with it apparently. How different than the austere doctrine the Druids believed where death was no excuse for non payment of debt.
And MIKA is a fiction of a brain. You are a kook who doesn’t understand basic Mid-East history.
More of the old lies – “A Land without a People for a People without a Land.” Palestine was heavily populated by Arabs and was a food exporter. It’ true they were downtrodden peasants of the Ottomans but that doesn’t mean the Jews had the right to disposess them.
Actually Shecky it is between 8 and 9 in the evening here in Siberia when Jim posts, just after I put my 2 year old son to sleep for the night. And Jim actually has said he enjoys my blog, so I continue to post here early in order that he can easily check it out if he wants. But, I have the feeling you really don’t give a shit what I say, so I’ll just wish you good luck and good night.
Ragtop, androgynous or not, you’re still wrong. If you’re so tolerant, why do you hate the teaching of other cultures so much? As for teachers agreeing with you, so what? Teachers can be brainwashed just like anybody else, and as a group they’re an unusually conformist bunch, so it doesn’t surprise me that some of them believe what the America First crowd tells them.
Speaking of the Greatest Country In The Entire World, did you realize you started a sentence saying you aren’t part of that crowd, then end it telling us why that’s true?
In closing, let me share the results of a search for best countries in the world. Lots of results from different orgs, but I chose Newsweek, an American publication, to quote here in placing the USA at Number 11. Top five were Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia and Canada. Just google that topic, you can probably find an org. that places you first.
Don’t confuse your ignorance with my knowledge and understanding of history and the region. I know this region and its history inside out. I’m also very aware of the outside interests that use the people of this region for their various looting schemes.
This “conflict” was planned many decades ago and is deliberately maintained by the banksters to keep their population of hamster-brains running on their treadmills. Keep the hamster-brains going deeper and deeper into debt and get them to give up more and more of themselves to maintain the bloated expense of their military and their fake wars.
Pod #157:
JHK: I think that every effort should be made to defeat these fuckers and keep’m out of your town. I’d even propose that a little bit of irrational emotion be brought into the picture.
JHK: I don’t think we’re really capable of disciplining these companies in the way they really need to be disciplined….
JHK: There’s too much bullshit in our culture right now about corporate freedom and corporations are persons and entrepreneurial zest. The thing is these companies are probably not going to exist in this form very far into the future. Everything about their supply lines and their business model is set up for failure fairly shortly as we run into resource problems.
DC: You don’t see this as a transitional form where McDonald’s could eventually be trained to build [responsibly]?
JHK: No…. They’re predatory organisms, these corporations, these fast food joints, that can only operate within a certain kind of nutrient system, and that nutrient system is going away, and they are going to go extinct…. We’ll get rid of these things, and they’ll die. Fuck’m.
Free at last! Free at last! Praise God I think he’s got it!
Ron Paul will not be allowed to run as the repub candidate.
Using Lance Armstrong on 60 Minutes as the starting point for this week’s commentary reminded me that 60 Minutes did a glowing puff piece on Lenny Dykstra (ex-baseballer turned trader maven), but they never did a follow up on Dykstra when he was indicted on fraud and obstruction of justice and multiple lawsuits for not paying his bills. That would be real news, albeit on a small timer, about how distorted the financial markets are and might cause an outlier percentage of their audience to start really thinking about our situation. And, of course, how wrong / duped they were in there first story. Might get people to start thinking: “If they are wrong and/or can be fool by this hustler, how reliable is ’60 Minutes’ and the old media.”
Mr. Kuntsler did an excellent recap of his thesis this week for those who are just becoming aware of the emerging crisis and following his blog.
More of the old lies
==
The only lying that’s done here is by you, Vlad. Lying propaganda is what you do. Without lying, your Vatican world domination agenda withers and dies. Your whole world construct is one big disgusting scam. From your imperialist roman religion, to your fascist economics, to your nazi politics, to your aggrieved genocidal imperialist white supremacist slave master spiel.
the bran-dead and the Goldman-Citi-JP Korgan crowd, too
===========
Yeah … them fuckin bran-dead sports nuts and that fuckin JP Korgan bankster crowd.
Remember back in ’05 how bad President Bush got hammered ‘for not doing enough for the Big Easy, ‘specially its esteemed black citizens, after Katrina? Well last night Joplin, MO was wiped out by killer tornados, killing hundreds. Where’s our current President? It seems on yet another overseas junket, sucking down Guinness in Ireland, “searching for his roots”, living large with Michelle, MESSIAH come to save the world!
Joplin, MO? Who gives a shit about the White Trash who live there?
-Marlin
“I know this region and its history inside out.”
No. You Don’t. You think you do. You have convinced yourself that you are smarter than everyone else and therefore you need to post here and teach everybody the “truth.” But you are just a kook.
Actually I have no more loyalty to Kulturkritic than I have to you. I just didn’t recognize your handle (possibly because of that “several incarnations” thing), and you posted your curse right after I had posted the link to Dmitry’s blog (who definitely has a useful thing or two to say about TLE), so I popped back at what I felt was a personal attack! I’m vain that way. Anyway, if I knew you better I would have treated you more like a peer and less like a pariah:)
At least I’m not ignoring you like I am the poster who thinks growing food in a system completely segregated from Nature’s free environmental services and unbelievably valuable ecological support (in the soil where food evolved) is somehow an actual boon to our future!
(Instead of condescension, that was an example of passive aggressive smarminess;) My mother-in-law would be proud. What’s next?
No I don’t think Ron Paul will be allowed as the repub candidate. He has a nasty habit of telling some truth, not all but some. The guy has some good policy ideas, but seems entrenched in the idea that individuals in society should go it alone. That is simply not the historical norm for human societies. Tribes existed for the benefit of all the members of that tribe, people cooperated and contributed for the survival of the whole tribe. Being ostracized or kicked out of the tribe was often a death sentence, cause loners just couldn’t survive. His ideas about abolishing the Fed, shutting down all overseas bases, disbanding most of the military, are pretty good.
But at this point I don’t think any leader can effectively navigate the nation through the contraction now occurring in the economy. Besides who says there will be a 2012 election, maybe we will see it deferred because of a jinned up security crisis.
Oh well, Memorial Day weekend coming up, get out the grills, beer and hot dogs folks, cause everything is just fine!
Qshtick, yup attention spans are gnat sized, despite all the Pharma crap available to “correct” that little problem. I think most people are experiencing information overload. This makes it difficult to discern what we should be paying attention too. Think this overload is intentional? I would bet big bucks it is.
Jared Loughner is a prime example of the crazed populous in the US. Look at his pics, very scary looking. The face of a lost soul for sure.
Phil Enq
=========
Hey Tootsie, it’s the Philadelphia Inquirer
I don’t think the general public has been so sheep like in the nation’s history. So many have lost so much in the past three years and yet the media reflects mostly the trivialities of human accomplishments and human failings.
We are at an economic cross roads in which all of Mr. Obama’s words about “hope and change” and his “yes we can!” attitude are what is needed, but he is revealing himself to be just a marketing gimmick for the powers that be.
Let’s start with the massive fraud that has been visited upon the public, in America and the world, by a cabal of the economic elite. Mr. Obama has compromised himself by bringing people like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner into the Washington halls of power. Are they there as Mr. Obama’s first choice, or has been ordered to bring them in, to act as check on administration? The attorney-general as Jim has remarked before is all too silent, I guess its hard to consider charges against the very people you rub shoulders with daily. And, Eric Holder is playing it safe, no Bobby Kennedy is he, wiling to take personal risks to go after the banksters. Sad, because these folks have caused much more harm to the public than the mafia did back in the sixties. They don’t carry guns, but they have no doubt triggered their share of suicides and economic caused lots of family breakups.
Then, the economic imperatives. There is so much sustainable infrastructure needed to move ahead, particularly public transport and the rail network to get things set up for the log term peak oil situation. The automobile will not carry America forward in the age of $200 a barrel oil. There is no shortage of economic value out there to keep an army of people employed.
Similar with education, its not constrained by physical shortages but self imposed economic ones. Mr. Obama spoke in Ireland today, praising the way Ireland steamed ahead by making education a national imperative and opening the doors of higher education to all. Meanwhile in Detroit, the school district is imposing third world education standards, such as class sizes of 60, due to the shrunken tax base. To think that this can happen in a wealthy nation like the United States, while a small island country can arrange its affairs to accomplish much better? What a travesty, a blot to America’s otherwise impressive record over many generations. Does America punish its children for the errors of the elders? I guess so, if that is what it takes so Wall Street tycoons can still afford the yachts in Fort Lauderdale and Newport.
Meanwhile the right wing media blab on about how higher taxes for the rich will mean less opportunity for the workers and the young, pushing the trickle down remedies, completely oblivious to history. The fact is that when the last time America’s debt was in this ratio of the GDP, post World War II, the heavy burden of taxes was placed on the rich to bring it down, and they survived it, even thrived through it, and jobs were not diminished. The post war years saw a much higher level of public spending for education. In essence, veterans were given the access to higher education that Ireland now extends to all citizens. Workers income actually rose in real terms due to both stimulus measures put in place to avoid the normal post-war recessions, and the popularity of collective bargaining. (Yes, hard to believe back then, the media supported unions, today they are seen as some kind of anachronisms at best and social evil at worst.)
And, despite the high taxes, life was not so bad for the elite either. Wall Street traders still came into work each day. General Motors had no trouble finding smart people wanting to become the CEO. Hollywood still made movies. Big money was still being made. Though they measured it in millions, not billions back then.
Nice week’s work, JHK, and thanks to you, as always.
The comments seem to be unusually good, so far, as well. I’ll take issue with those who complain about the “first” posters and those who post to justify advertising their own blogs. I don’t see the problem. “First!” away to your hearts content.
And some of the blog advert’s are quite helpful. And what’s the problem with them – some shortage of cyberspace electrons bothering you complainers????
Freak on a leash! I’ve got plenty of question marks, don’t I?? ?
?
============
Anyway, to cases this week – JHK has needled us in our generational divide, as the followers of 60 Minutes are attacked by those who don’t even know exactly what 60 Minutes are/is supposed to represent to the “hearth” of American Life.
And exactly why Lance Armstrong is *news?* hits at the generational divide. JHK comes sort of close to an explanation with this:
“3. Mainstream media only reflects the cognitive dissonance that pervades the collective imagination of a culture – too much noise to think coherently.”
-JHK-
True enough, but the problem goes deeper, or goes off into the generational divide.
The cohort being chased by advertisers is generally young, with malleable brand loyalty. They like happy news. They have “Live Strong” bracelets. http://www.livestrong.org/They have no knowledge of “banking,” or why “Goldman Sacks?” should be investigated. They do not care, either.
They also like short news, and entertaining news – which integrates seamlessly into American Idol.
Free Market Capitalism needs no conspiracy to explain itself – even if one does exist, somewhere.
Jeez, I dunno Jim, doncha think that the concentration of MS media in a small number of hands–the same hands that hold the reins of big corps like GE–might have something to do with the tales they tell?
Take a look back at Watergate. It took the Washington Post a couple of years to get people steamed (or at least interested) in the “cheap second–rate burglary” and Nixon’s role in it. And it took awhile for the rest of the media to tag along. Why’d the Post do it? ‘Cause they didn’t have a dog in that fight. (Well maybe they did but that’s another story.)
Put it this way, the oxen are owned by a small select group. You just can’t expect them to go around goring them.
There’s nothing I’m saying that can’t be verified from third parties elsewhere. There must be a lot of us “kooks” out there, because we’re all seeing the same thing.
Anyway, more and more people are starting see how they’re being managed and manipulated. Even the Arabs and the Israelis with all their emotional blindness are starting to wake up and see through this bullshit.
I haven’t posted here in months because Jim’s bigotry toward the american south is not only rude, but poorly informed and every bit as sloppy and weak as mainstream media. Today, however, we are back to basics, which is where he excels: distilling down our dire straits into useable talking points. Everyone who reads here needs to try and bring another person up to speed. It is pointless to deride people as lazy and uneducated putzes; a more charitable attitude will serve us all far better. I use my saturdays at the farmers market in this very way; sure Im selling eggs and produce and folk art…and also PO and sustainability and the signs of approaching tyranny. Go forth and evangelize!
Whas up, Tripp?!
“The global energy predicament really is a crisis”
Ummm…. no on this one as well. It’s not, Jim.
You have about as good a record calling this stuff as those kooks predicting the Rapture on Saturday.
This price spike happened in 2005 after the hurricanes and again in the summer of 2008. This time the price has started dropping (at least for now) about $10 for oil and 10 cents for gasoline in the last few weeks – without gasoline passing the $4.11 mark set in 2008.
But every time it happens, you start hysterically screaming that the Zombie Apocalypse is right around the corner. Do you ever go back and look at your own writing?
It’s YOU that needs to GET REAL, Man!
Peak Oil is very real and is a serious issue. But your hysterics, bad math, bad sources, and, in fact, HORRIBLE understanding of the underlying economics of the issue and the industry/geologic aspects are all part of the problem.
Stop making predictions. If 60 Minutes sucks, stop watching it.
You may not have noticed this, but Tour de France cycling has no significant fan-base in the United States, the bikes are super-eco-friendly/green/whatever, and what fans there are are probably closer to your snobbish intellectual ideals.
This is not NASCAR. What is your problem? Are you just suffering from cranky-old-man disease?
Is there nothing is our culture that you don’t hate. Why don’t you just get it over with and move to the 14th century already? Geez, Louise.
Hey marlin, I believe Obama is stuck in Ireland trying to get home, but his super-duty limo is hung-up on a driveway berm and they need three axle hook to pull it free. Meanwhile he is killin’ time on twitter, whatever the f that is. Enjoy tht Mosin for me. Russian made and refurbed in Finland? Didn’t they have a war leading up to WWII. I think the Fins kicked the reds asses if I remember correctly.
Did you hear about the 40,000 abandoned dogs in..
was in Bucharest?
Victims of gentrification.
And how many are Christian? atheist? Jewish?
Do you know?
Is there nothing is our culture that you don’t hate.
==
Probably not. And rightfully so.
And he doesn’t need to get over it and he doesn’t need to move elsewhere. He is perfectly within his rights as a citizen to voice his displeasure, organize, and do whatever he can to affect change. If you don’t like it, too bad.
The big easy has Creole Culture!
Fats Domino!
Mo=BFE
We could recognize that peak oil means that we have to grow our food differently….
Yes, we have to re-localize ag. Message received. However, I don’t hear anyone talking about re-localizing every form of business. Is that because doing so goes against the entire history of business since who knows when.
Everything that our fine theorists of capital–and our footloose libertarians–have theorized has pushed business further and further away from local communities.
Swift & Co. killed off New York butchers with Chicago beef. Woolworth’s and Sears killed off local five and dimes and department stores. K-mart killed Sears. Wal-mart killed K-mart. Japan killed Detroit. China killed Japan.
All our habits of thought and practice, all our theories and great business models are going to prevent us from being able work more than a hour or two ahead of the leading edge of the tsunami.
Hey Tripp, I was sure the predicted “Rapture” had started on Saturday, The clouds parted and a immense bright orb appeared in the sky! The light was dazzling! So much so that no mortal could gaze upon it! It was blinding yet beautiful! Alas I was again disappointed. It was only Ra, the sun god. The clouds closed up and swallowed him within minutes. Better luck next time! The Rain gods have blessed us again today. I am sick of being blessed!
“I know that this will not discourage you or others that engage is a silly competition that is totally meaningless, superficial and a race to the bottom of the gene pool for this behavior.”
Competition is king!!!
Here is link for ya Asia, Tragic but true. Even in the USA we kill millions of unwanted dogs, as long as it is a good shot and a quick kill, really what is the differance?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=13526972
Yo, Tripp: I was worrying about you and yours. (Worrying: it’s genetic. Got it from Mom 🙂 ) Do you have a storm cellar? Might be time to put one in. Could double as a root cellar. The pictures and video from Joplin are unreal.
One of my favorite paintings by John Stewart Curry.
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1227&bih=1016&q=john+steuart+curry+tornado+over+kansas&gbv=2&aq=1sx&aqi=g-sx7&aql=&oq=john+stewart+curry+
If that link doesn’t work, this one might…
http://www.muskegonartmuseum.org/collections-gallery/gallery
American Regionalists are some of my favorite painters. John Stewart Curry, Grant Wood and (“Oakie Baroque”) Thomas Hart Benton. So ends our small lesson in cultural literacy for today.
GrouchyOldGirl –
I’ve got to disagree with you about the benefits of multiculturalism. If there are there, they are outweighed by the negative impacts.
“This infantile belief that we can somehow save the world (or at least our own souls) by allowing the whole world to move here, this inflated idealism that sees America, much as the French
revolutionists saw France, as the “Christ of Nations,” is bound up with a classic flaw in human nature: the unwillingness to accept
rational limits.”
-Lawrence Auster, the path to national suicide-
“Man never rushes forward so confidently, it would sometimes seem, as when he is on the very brink of the abyss.”
-irving babbit-
http://www.jtl.org/auster/PNS.pdf
Auster, author of TPTNS is Jewish, btw.
I suspect some of you would dismiss him out of hand, otherwise.
Of course, his ethnicity may cause others to dismiss him out of hand, instead.
Go figure?
Ah yes. If we all just watched Faux News and got rid of Obama and replaced him with Sarah Bachmann we’d be back on track for the rapture in no time… and we’d have all the Wall Street crooks in jail to boot and we’d have free gasoline too.
That last comment was for Tripp. Did a “previous screen” and lost the “Replying to…”
How I feel about links … I check them out. If they seem valuable, I add them to my favorites. I have gone wonderful places and learned wonderful things, following those links.
Oh, I know. We all have pet peeves.
Oh Shecky relax, no one makes any money from blogging and if people post links to theirs on this one then what is the harm? It’s called sharing and a virtual community.
Don’t be a hater… it’s all good.
Aimlow Joe was here.
a whole flock of black swans is idling on the White House lawn.
===========
Bad,
There’s idling and there’s sidling. Both work but I think sidling creates the better image. Perhaps your ring finger didn’t press the s hard enough?
P.S. I’m trying to piss off as many people as I can today … maybe even set a new record.
A lesser known, but just as diabolical Wall Street scandal involving large sums of money is the auction rate securities scandal.
Do a google search or go to beruthless.net.
Truly, the greed of that breed knows no bounds.
There are lots of Kooks over there – and Rabbi Kook was the first. That’s where the word came from probably.
How bout the use of nouns as verbs: for example – He gifted me or It’s tornadoing outside?
Geez you’re picky this morning.
===========
Been holding back for weeks and was ready to explode..kinda like it used to be with sex.
How bout the use of nouns as verbs: for example – He gifted me or It’s tornadoing outside?
================
Or how ’bout when the elite inform you they’ll be wintering in St Thomas. I reply, “oh how nice, I’ll be wintering in New Joisy.”
Geez, I thought you were going to get me!
Sorry about the rain.
Central Park, what a place, surrounded by magnificent treasures!
I was just looking at pictures of the monument to King Jagiello, one of my favorites.
Asia, I don’t know exactly what it was that I wrote that you were responding to, but like Sam Kineson said to Rodney Dangerfield in his history class in the comedy “Back to School” I like the way you think. In other words, you do not suffer from positive thinking. The California you describe is exceedingly unattractive to this superannuated Cleveland boy. The last time I visited L.A. to see my auntie and cousins the mean cousins told me “you’re a foreigner”, and “nobody out here can afford American cars”, and “by shipping out with the merchant marine you’ll only end up in a war”. They were at least right about #3 as this was 1989 and I’d just gotten my Military Sealift physical at the U.S. Public Health Service where they spent an entire day sticking me with needles in preparation for some third world freighter travel.
My cousins also told me not to wear my Cleveland Indians hat as gangbangers would get confused and everyone would try to shoot me since the hat contained both blue and red.
Our problem in this country is always politics. In other words, the only reason that we can’t solve our problems is because it is politically impossible to do so. And then culturally we have formed, to use a favorite word of the posters on this blog, a FUCKTARDIC consensus in favor of a sort of false gentility in which each fresh outrage is greeted with the bland affect of the imperturbably medicated, as in psych. meds.. Those who insist upon pointing out what is happening are dismissed as ranting negativistic cranks who forgot to take their meds..
As Jim points out repeatedly we fantasize about rafting out the energy credit card over to coal powered electric cars from liquid petroleum to keep the game of musical chairs going awhile longer before the music stops. It would be too politically unpalatable to make real structural changes in our transporation system or the disposition of our communities. I think that this rafting out of the energy credit card to alternatives will work for awhile, until it doesn’t. In the meantime the hospitals and schools in California will just have to remain dysfunctionally generous to the undeserving.
Wow, Vlad –
Rav Abraham Kook as the origin of the word “kook” or “kooky?” Who knew?
I’d like to see a citation on that, if you please.
Meanwhile, here’s a Kooky Saying?:
“whoever is faithful to his self – he is a freeman, and whoever fills his life only with what is good and beautiful in the eyes of others – he is a slave.”
-Rabbi Abraham Kook-
Good stuff, I’ve got to admit!
PoC
aka the Master of Shift 😉
I know Glen Beck is an anathema here, but right now I’m watching his show, and he sounds a lot like JHK, ‘specially on the ‘Arab Spring’, energy depletion, and the collapse of the Euro.
Is Beck welcome here, in CFNation? Probably not, but its interesting that about 60% of the time they say the same thing, and arrive at the same conclusions.
-Marlin
Here we go again… Vlad has decided to resurrect Mika again.
Spot on.
I would add the troubles in the middle eastern oil-producing countries stem from the people wanting the power of that oil for themselves. They imagine a peaceful setting with a car in every driveway, kids in free schooling, and enough cash to chomp down medium-rare charcoal-seared steaks and slop beer like Homer Simpson every single clear star night.
The soccer moms of the USA have united and sent their boys to put down the uprising. Mom says, “Eat sand you punks”, in the same breath, “that oil is ours”.
No kidding. The bitterness is so prevalent in the land for some, they find a reason to bitch about things even if someone is giving them away.
Uh oh, your nut posed to uze “spot on” anymere her.
BTW, isn’t there a c in shtick
Case in point … I never would have found AimLow, except through here. I check in on his blog, frequently. A different slant on the world, an occasional giggle and episodes of Rolling on the Floor Laughing My Ass Off, have been known to occur.
Not too bad, MMMMMMM –
“the people wanting the power of that oil for themselves. They imagine a peaceful setting with a car in every driveway, kids in free schooling, and enough cash to chomp down medium-rare charcoal-seared steaks and slop beer”
-7m-
Just add to that that the RW corporatists and the LW utopians think that we can have a US population of 400,000,000 PLUS – all doing the exact same thing.
-mika as a creation of Vlad- neckflames
Possible, neckflames – possible.
-glen beck as 60% welcome on CFN- marlin
Possible, Marlin54, possible – now, if you would please extract out the Glen Beckisms that will make sense in the context of collapse and peak oil –
I know there are some good Beckisms – it’s hard to find them in the Bombast, sometimes.
Let it go, Grouch. I do not hate learning OR teaching about other cultures. I believe it’s a problem when it becomes the predominant theme in the school. Typical liberal to turn any comment she doen’t like, into ‘hate.’
It’s about priorities. There are far more important subjects children should learn. Public education should focus on math, science, proper grammar and teaching our young people HOW TO LEARN. Family and Life will teach them the rest.
I said I didn’t believe in ‘American Exceptionalism’ meaning that our shit doesn’t stink. A lot of Americans DO believe that. I believe that, as a country, we screw up on a fairly regular basis. I also believe that the world is a better place over the past 100yrs, because we were here. At least better than if we had not been.
“so it doesn’t surprise me that some of them believe what the America First crowd tells them.” Yes, America first. That is where I live and my family lives. I will look out for mine first. That doesn’t mean I won’t also look out for yours. You sound like one of those One World Government types who believe that government can always do it better.
Thanks for the Newsweek clip. Perfect example of why I would never buy that rag. I am very close with Americans who live abroad. Sweden, Greece, China, Bangladesh, Brazil. ALL say that the U.S. is the best place to live. Not perfect; just the best place to live.
To all the “First” , “Second” , and “Third” morons; get a life. Another insightful blog from JHK, and some interesting comments as well.
it takes me two hours to watch 60 minutes
Well said, Chucky.
168th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hurry down to your local dealer now for the super size carnival sales event BBQ and we’ll throw in a free pair of fuzzy dice. With zero per cent you just have to sign your life away on the dotted line. Just visit with one of our sales people who’ll be dressed like a clown. Sorry, no fiat currency will be accepted. Free Balloons for the kids. Peanuts for the monkey are extra. Hurry, this deal
won’t last long.
I just wanted to be last…but I know it won’t last.
I really love this blog. Everyone is basically on the same page, with variations here and there. But I can’t help but be cynical because other blogs that I read give riviting opinions too, and it all boils down to no one really knows what is going on. Jim sees it his way, (and he may be right), God people see it a religious way, (and they might be right), Obamaites see it his way, (I am not sure they are right), conspiracy people see it there way (they are most probably right),children see it their way, and teens see it the Jersey shore way. What is the right way? Who the F### knows? The world is so vast and carries so many stories, and realities change with the beholder. I truly wouldn’t be surprised if Osama (who is now officially dead) is someday spotted at a party on Wall street or Hollywood, or somewhere in France, and someone there will turn to a friend and say, “Hey, if I didn’t know better,,,I would swear that is Osama Bin Laden.” I mean really….who knows?
Oil. The center of our world. A sour tune is being sung about how small biz is running from CA because of “Liberal”`anti business laws. Yet what do the CA companies really complain about? The cost of processed materials and energy made from fossil fuel. We are going to see a lot of this. Beat taxes and government for a few percentage points to make up the ever increasing cost of oil. Really all carbon fuel. So we get Lance from the Media. More smoke and mirrors.JHK pounds one more nail in the box that is becoming the coffin of the Western World. The people we make fun of are living in a World Made By Hand. They will be the next winners and holders of the title Superpower. Nice work JHK!!
Wardoc,,,You are SO RIGHT!! The TSA FEMA outgrowth of the Terrorist War against our own citizens, continually fools people into thinking they are making them “safe” as they pat them down like prisoners entering lockdown in a state penitentary, or terrorists that will be shot if they don’t conform. The sheeple are then herded onto their transportation mini seats where they are strapped in and ignored or laughed at by their attendants (prison guards stewardess) who then charge them for everything they can get, (stealing legally)
and then they will eventually sit on a beach in Mexico and get shot at by the Drug Cartels who NEVER take public tranportation. Ha Ha Ha, the laugh is on the american tourist who is stupid enough to believe they are SAFER now that the Government is watching over them.
While we watch Obama kill Libyans to save them, because the US cares so much about human rights, it may be time to look back at the previous Democratic President’s attack on Yugoslavia, although it started under the Republican President. Sort of how Obama has continued the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that Bush started.
I recommend this to all, especially lbendet. Although it’s from 1999, the issues are the same as today, amazingly enough.
And we have been sold a bill of goods about Yugoslavia, which no one cares about enough to set straight. Well, some of us do.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs
Quite right Prog – we don’t need Chinese people to have Chinese Food. We can learn to do it ourselves if we want to eat that way. So just a few Chinese teachers will do – not tens of millions just so people can stuff their faces this way. Far out? People actually talk this way as if food is the biggest thing in life.
You are such a scholar when you choose to be! Now get some of his quotes about how non Jews are animals. And whatever happened with the other assignment I gave you – Black IQ?
Although I agree with you about the need for rail transportation and such, you seem to be falling for Obama’s lies again.
I don’t think that Ireland did well because of higher education. I think they participated in a banking scam that recently imploded. They are usually listed with Portugal and Greece, as naughty countries, in which the population must pay for the excesses of their banking elites.
Kind of like us.
You are a great sport. I’m not mad at you anymore but I still seem to be throwing some heavy artillery your way.
Sometimes I take things right out of the aire – and more often than not I’m right. It’s the kind of divine intuition Alex in a Clockwork Orange talks about. But not always. The rabbi Kook thing might be wrong. That’s why I said “probably”.
You actually don’t believe that there are Jews like Mika? Welcome to the death of illusion. There are LOTS of them. Welcome to adulthood.
Iceland is not going to pay back their debt. The smallest and bravest country of all. The process didn’t go so far there. If they tighten their belt, they can still be self sufficient.
hey Marlin, yea I know FOX is for dummy’s. Count me in the crowd. Sometimes I leave him on in the background when I’m making dinner. I just half listen to the way he hammers Oblama. Tonight he was all over the coming food, fuel, energy and resource shortages. I have not really heard much of that on main stream TV before.
…..And speaking about stories the media chooses to cover….
I just found out about radiation in Texas tap water. The problem stems from wells and more recently from gas extraction. Oh, the little details that get in the way of big business. Can’t we just brush them aside?
[For 29 years Texas has conspired to hide the fact that unsafe leves of radition were present in drinking water. Recently released documents reveal that the conspiracy to hide the facts goes all the way to the top. The federal agencies even knew and did nothing.
HOUSTON – “It’s a conspiracy at the TCEQ [Texas Commission on Environmental Quality] of the highest order… The documents have indicted the management of this commission in a massive cover-up,” Tom Smith of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said. The cover-up reportedly includes the knowledge of high-level politicians all the way up to the governor.]
I can’t find article that was most informative, but if you google radiation in Texas tap water you’ll find lots of recent articles about this.
Thanks, Wage,
I will check that out…it ties into something I want to write about when I have time. I have run into a topic discussed by both Kissinger and oddly enough Webster Tarpley, but I need to see what others are saying about this moment in time to build an interesting picture … till tomorrow.
Peak Oil is real. Agreed. But most people are living in the alternate reality bubble which is Society. My experience is most people have never heard of peak oil. Many people believe there is plenty of (cheap) oil and that the oil companies have capped many wells to keep the price up. I spoke with the head of an university Earth Sciences department and he had no clue about peak oil. None of the geology graduate students I spoke with had ever heard of peak oil. Politicians never speak about it. The financial analysts are oblivious. So… Ahem. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a sudden epiphany on the part of the masses. They really are clueless. As are the elites. I even envisage a long steady decline into collapse without ever hearing the phrase peak oil mentioned in the media. Unbelievable how stupid we are collectively (as a society). So… Given the appalling level of ignorance I expect the worse. If we’re not even aware that we are going over a cliff, how can we possibly prevent it from happening ?
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Announces Creation of Mortgage Fraud Strike Force to Protect Homeowners
LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced the creation of the California Attorney General’s Mortgage Fraud Strike Force, staffed by Department of Justice attorneys and investigators charged with protecting innocent homeowners and bringing to justice those who defraud them.
Composed of both civil and criminal enforcement teams, the Mortgage Fraud Strike Force will monitor and prosecute violations at every step of the mortgage process, from the origination of mortgage loans to the marketing of mortgage-backed securities to the investing public.
“Californians in search of the American dream all too often found a protracted personal and legal nightmare,” said Attorney General Harris. “Families are losing their homes, while those who perpetrated crimes and frauds against them walk free.”
At her announcement of the new mortgage fraud unit, Attorney General Harris was joined by Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, representatives from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Center for Responsible Lending, as well as homeowners harmed by unlawful lending, servicing and foreclosure practices.
“We will work to safeguard the homeowner at every step of the process – from origination of a loan to its securitization, and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who take advantage of trusting California families,” said Attorney General Harris. “We are setting a high bar for other states and we insist that homeowners be protected, respected, and informed.”
The Mortgage Fraud Strike Force will operate out of Department of Justice offices in Los Angeles, Fresno, San Francisco and Sacramento. Twenty-five attorneys and investigators will work together in three teams:
– The consumer enforcement team will target scams in the consumer arena, including predatory lending, unfair business practices in originating loans, deceptive marketing, and loan modification and foreclosure consultant scams.
– The criminal enforcement team will prosecute criminal frauds associated with the epidemic of mortgage scams, including fraudulent investment and money laundering schemes related to mortgage lending or foreclosure relief.
– The corporate fraud team will target misconduct involving investments and securities tied to subprime mortgages, as well as false or fraudulent claims made to the state with respect to these securities.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa offered his support of the new strike force. “With nearly 10,000 foreclosures in the City of Los Angeles last year,” he said, “this strike force is certain to help countless residents and families from becoming victimized.”
“The Attorney General’s authority and attention to this issue brings a critical law enforcement component to the table that will help stop the practice of predatory lending once and for all,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. “I applaud Attorney General Harris for her dedication to employing swift justice to the scam artists who prey on the residents of some of our most economically vulnerable neighborhoods.”
California has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, and by predators who seek to profit from the millions of Californians who are underwater in their mortgages, in foreclosure, or at risk of entering foreclosure.
Last year alone, there were foreclosure filings against 546,669 California homes. It is projected that between 2009 and 2012, a total of 2 million California homes will enter the foreclosure process. In the last year, the California Department of Justice has received thousands of complaints related to foreclosure scams, mortgage fraud, and mortgage servicing practices.
“The fingerprints of illegal activity are all over the foreclosure crisis,” said Paul Leonard, director of the California Office, Center for Responsible Lending. “The Attorney General’s effort marries the need to punish bad actors for the practices that brought our economy to the brink with the need to eliminate the scam artists who have since attempted to profit from it. Given the economic damage wreaked by foreclosures in California, this initiative is very welcome news.”
Attorney General Harris has long been dedicated to prosecuting mortgage fraud. In 2009, as District Attorney of San Francisco, she launched the first stand-alone district attorney’s mortgage fraud unit in California with $1.1 million from the U.S. Department of Justice.
If you are a homeowner who has been scammed, you can learn more or file a complaint online with the Attorney General’s office at: http://oag.ca.gov/consumers
You havent been to Soviet Monica lately!!!
JHk gave our LEED certified Solar parking structure an ‘eyesore of the month’ award!
Theres a great book on crime, that if you read
between the lines [more mexicans here=more crime]
is a real eye opener…by a police chief yet
SANFORD STRONG ‘STRONG ON DEFENSE’…
Its dangerous to wear certain colors to a ball game[that being said they are selling more booze at the games..they wont mention mexicans in their ‘search for a reason’]…..DEADLY DANGEROUS:
Suspect in Dodger Stadium Beating of Bryan Stow –
A man was arrested today on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in the … outside Dodger Stadium, nearly two months after the unprovoked attack that … After getting a tip from an informant, a Los Angeles Police Department … in a coma after being attacked following a San Francisco Giants/LA Dodgers game. …
WHOS GLENN BECK?
NOT ACCORDING TO THIS DISGUSTING LEFTIST..
WHO IS REGULARLY IN NEWSWEEK ETC….
My taco with Tancredo – latimes.comNov 23, 2007 …
. … Joel Stein …
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/
‘I never thought GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo would eat Mexican food with me’
JOEL I WOULDNT EAT NON KOSHER FOOD WITH YOU!
Most common animal killed at LA shelters,
the lowly hampster.
Most common small dog left there….Chihuahua.
Yes millions of dogs,cats,horses etc killed each year.
US consumption of chicken is up 100x? from 60 years ago.
Us cat owners kill 100 million birds a year by letting their cats roam.
etc…..
DID YOU KNOW PETA KILLS THOUSANDS OF DOGS AND CATS A YEAR..AS WELL AS SEALS FOR THEIR MOVIE?
I wonder what the carbon footprint of ‘pets’ is!
WOLFGANG PUCK RECENTLY SAID..’GROWING UP WE ATE MEAT 1X A WEEK’!
Jews are 100% in favor of the Hispanic Invasion at the higer socioeconomic levels. They have prospered here more abundantly than anywhere since the Roman Empire. This is their gratitude.
There are a few “Amren” middle class Jews who are against it. But they are dwarfed in both numbers and influence by the others.
I read the ladies were lined up for 1000 dollar handbags…Ireland had its greed too.
Google ‘Irish excess’ and see if the articles
appear.
Glad to have you back Qshtik! Wishing your daughter a blissful married life.
==========
TY very much Mom.
THIS IS WAHT 23$ BUYS TODAY:
CRYSTAL GEYSER JUICE 4$
RAISINS 3
CHEESE 10
CANDYBAR 2
PAPERTOWELS 4
I ROUNDED NUMBERS OUT….IT WAS 22.38+
74 CENTS STATE TAX [PAPERTOWELS?]
20 CENTS PENALTY FOR BUYING GLASS BOTTLED JUICE
SHEESH…I asked the cashier if hed overcharged me but no…
No comments from the peanut gallery..I typo’d
‘what’
I do believe in conspiracy theories because I read Machiavelli. My being manipulated and taken advantage of, to be propagandized, brainwashed, lied to, so that I may, or will act in what is against my best interest, that someone else benefits from by design is conspiracy. Vast Right Wing conspiracy? Does Satan have to resurrect Hitler at halftime at the Superbowl while the leaders of the republican party grovel on their knees in homage?
Our monetary system, democracy, and most of what we call our our culture is the result of conspiracy. PROPAGANDA is conspiracy. Advertizing is conspiracy. Dogma = conspiracy. Religion=conspiracy. Fox News is conspiracy. We’re in a Matrix of conspiracy as deep as the one in the movie. Our government is ran by conspirators. That politicians should be admired, or trusted, given any honor or accolades of virtue for having been elected is stupidity distilled. People that seek power, have it by taking it from you and any expectation that what benefits you, their constituent, will take precedence over what will benefit them is like giving a serial rapist Viagra, impunity, and the keys to every whorehouse and harem on the planet and expecting celibacy.
Our entire perception of our lives and reality is corrupted to what an unaffected observer would have little choice in concluding as mass insanity. Over 500 years ago Machiavelli put it plain. The nobility – aristocracy – rulers – powerful, (take your pic) always have the advantage because they are educated and avaricious. IE., predators that conspire to exploit – dominate – enslave – master, or do what ever it takes to live as best as they can at the expense of the peasants that simply want to be left alone. Predator and prey, master and slave, etc. Religion, ideology, patriotism (I pledge alliegence to the flag…) the public school system is/was a conspiracy to train the populace to live by the clock, obey bells and prompts, teach the rudimentary skills to work in factories owned by the very same plague of masters/owners “princes” fascists, priests, capitalists, that have caged our minds and/or bodies and trapped even our evolution from progressing out of the predator v prey Darwinian bestial law of the jungle that we so pride ourselves on being above, as advanced, intelligent, and civilized, while the very same selfish manipulators promote superstition, ignorance, fantasy, barbarism, circuses and stadiums to create some artificial abomination of unity to replace the personal/social/ bonding/ interaction to the tribal-extended family relationships that are and have been essential to the survival of our species, and that the English language doesn’t even have a word for! An Orwellian “new-speak” success.
News Flash Mr. Kunstler. Conspiracy is everywhere. Failures in journalism? How about this conspiracy theory. The media and what you refer to as journalism is censored and controlled by whose interest it serves and that isn’t us. Here’s another conspiracy theory. We don’t live in a democracy, haven’t for all of this century at least, without even considering the aspects of propaganda and the deliberate dumbing down of the population.
Conspiracy time. There is a conspiracy taking place right now by our government, including the the House, Senate, and Executive Branch between the media, Wall Street, and multiple government institutions to convince the American people the complicated financial instruments and procedures used by the banks are simply to difficult to bring to trial and have a jury understand. The regulators were behind the curve in understanding how these things worked. People didn’t see it coming, and being stupid is not a crime etc. Censorship and lies. Absolute bullshit. The only impediment to the successful prosecution of the crimes is the will to do it which brings us to the question of why.
There Mr. Kunstler is a mega conspiracy. Why has nobody been prosecuted. Why no congressional investigations other than obvious kabuki dances? How about a little interrogation? When asked yes or no, obfuscation is met with Contempt of Congress go to jail no bail. All the government agencies all over the place and nothing? How many state laws and jurisdictions are involved? Obstruction of Justice is a crime everywhere. Why wasn’t anything being done while all this shit was going on? Nobody knew? Everybody knew that wanted to know. I knew and I’m just a guy on the street. Finance is too complicated to know that there is no such thing as a free lunch? Houses appreciate by virtue of nothing? The financial centers all over America couldn’t understand you don’t get something for nothing? (banks a colossal conspiracy fraud from inception) The question of why is a huge conspiracy once past propaganda protecting that question.
Not satisfied? To complicated? Throw their asses in jail like the pieces of shit they are and see how fast they squeal on each other when they’re deprived of their first class citizenship and treated like how law enforcement and the judiciary treats crack dealers, Bradley Manning, or cop killers. No bail, stripped down, bent over, ordered to “spread’em” and cough while some morally bankrupt automaton stares at their rectum, orange suits, 24 hour lights, 65degree room with a steel bunk to suck the heat of them if they get to comfortable, institutional grade cold turkey meatloaf, and no more than 1800 to 2000 calories a day of food with little to no nutrition that is so disgusting it will take them days of being hungry to be able to force down. Can only talk to their lawyer through phones in rooms separated by thick glass. Confiscate and seize all assets. Give them a court appointed lawyer with 180 other “clients” that doesn’t want to hear anything other than plea bargain.
Oh, their rights. What f*.*en rights? Couldn’t be rights, because that’s another conspiracy. You, me, and everybody else has only what the government gives you, or you can buy, and “rights” we’ve all been told are not given, but inherent, which is all part of the conspiracy and fraud there is branch of government dedicated to justice and the rule of law, equal protection and application of it under the law.
Recovery? There’s a conspiracy the media, banks, corporations, and everyone is cooperating on. Why are thousands of people either permitting or committing the most massive financial crime in history bringing mathematically inescapable ruin to this country? The justice department does nothing. The Secretary of the Treasury is an admitted felon. As confessed, never prosecuted and should be in a solitary cell under Bradley Manning waiting years for trial. Proof positive Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan daily front-running trades reporting perfect Quarters without bothering to even try and hide their frauds.They are looting a burning building. Look at the fraud wide out in the open.
If everybody had full time employment tomorrow, by magic all the industry and factories popped up out of the ground fully functional with the latest and greatest, and all the people by the same magic knew how to run the factories, and do every job as good as the best in the world, it wouldn’t make a difference. The same reason none of all those trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve bank is directly and indirectly giving away is not being invested in industries like textiles, shoe factories, steel mills, TV’s, anything. Because there wouldn’t be any body to buy it. China is still selling shit to us, and they know we can’t EVER pay them. All these factories and jobs that suddenly popped up, employing the whole country, and what we do with all the stuff that we made, sell it to China?
That’s the why. And there’s the heart of the conspiracy. Just like peak oil that isn’t talked about. The thing no one talks about is that we were F*.*ked years ago. The banks have to lend money, like a shark has to swim or die. Why is it never asked, what else could the banks have loaned money for? We couldn’t and still can’t compete against China. Some one answer that please. Where are these emerging markets? There are not enough resources for us and them. They grow we stop. All systems end, and ours has ran it’s course. Nothing grows forever. Stars and entire galaxies stop growing just if they have to be blinked out of the universe through a black hole.
Who thinks the upper echelon policy makers of the US, especially the those directing our foreign policy don’t know all about peak oil? Think Penis Cheney and the executive branch full of oil people weren’t perfectly aware? Think that our government will eventually catch on and do something about it? They are doing something about it but not for us. How’s that for conspiracy theory? On the Oil Drum and elsewhere I don’t know how many times I’ve heard parroted, “Suadi oil reserves are a state secret” so no one can really predict beyond parameters set by the lack of information from some OPEC nations as to their oil reserves.
WTF? Anybody ever wonder why it’s not taken for granted that with all the military invasions, CIA assets, and over a trillion dollars spent, that the CIA or another branch of spooks knows the detail of every well in the middle east. With the million+ people we, our military has murdered before or after the fact in the middle east just recently, and assume they must’ve forgot about, or failed getting copies of the log books for the very reason we are there is ludicrous. To think that in a culture where bribery is normal our intelligence apparatus has failed to aquire through murder, mayhem, deceit, extortion, torture, robbery, or corruption, the detailed status of all OPEC oilfields in the countries of the middle east is illogical.
America is responsible for millions murdered in the middle east. We planned to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and knew children would be the most susceptible to the water born pathogens we were deliberately planning to create an environment for. Planned to the last detail, including the composition of all their water sources, pathogens too. Denied them antibiotics, vaccines, chlorine, and parts for their water treatment plants. Just another conspiracy.
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
Don’t like conspiracy theories? That’s easy to understand when there is a conspiracy to hide the entire legislative and executive branches of our government from their own duplicity in war crimes. The black hearted whore that so glibly stated killing hundreds of thousands of children was worth it, was never questioned during her Senate conformation hearing some time later to be Secretary of State what the difference was between a suicide bomber walking in to a public market and killing innocent civilians as a means of political coercion and the US siege of Iraq that was doing the very same.
You think the people that planned the invasion down to the toothbrush forgot to make an exit plan? Iraq was let tear itself apart. A military tactic I’d guess as old as Sun Tzu. I’m suppose to believe career military men forgot to advise the civilian leadership that the enemy would burn themselves out killing each other and nobody saw how that would be to our interests on multiple levels? We disbanded the army so how many (hundreds of thousands?) unemployed armed men could take there weapons home in a country without law, and us having banned the only people that new how to run the place from participating? That was an accident like all the water and sewage treatment plants we planned to blow up. The default point is where I just pointed them out to be. To assume anything else from the homocidal terrorists running the murder machine is where derision is deserved.
What about the Predator Drone conspiracy Mr. Kunstler? Does anyone question their purpose? Cheapest I saw on a quick google was 4.5 million dollars. Did we get the Taliban’s Secretary of the Navy and a couple of Admirals? We took out a the headquarters of an Afghan army division commander, three generals and a whole slew of brass last time? Who are these people we want to murder?
The most powerful military ever on the face of the earth. America the only country that can project an army size military force anywhere on the planet with air-force, marines, special forces, engineering battalions, and aircraft and missile naval support from an aircraft carrier group in a few days. Over 800 military bases and installations with US troops stationed on them (not including classified) all over the world, with multiple global satellite surveillance net worked to cover probably the whole planet. And we’re going to blow up some hut or stone house with a dirt floor, probably with no electricity, and only intermittent power if it has, because? We were scared the dreaded enemy might stampede a herd of goats? Get real? really GET REAL!
9/11? I don’t know what happened. Conspiracy theory? Definitely. What can I define? I know with the certainty of a man that has confronted death head on and without hesitation would or will stake my life on my conviction that I’ve been lied to by what I also know are amoral liars and homicidal sociopaths or worse, with a depiction of events that doesn’t stand elementary scrutiny from the first look. What happened on 9/11 is a puzzle not worth the effort to solve because it can’t. The muck surrounding the issue I don’t need. The governments explanation is like a cargo container of rotting fish and I don’t need to know what species the catch was comprised of to know what I’m smelling.
My opinion of anybody that believes such obvious nonsense in the light of what the Bush executive branch has indisputably done since, is that they are tainted. Like a computer with a virus or corrupt program. To out of hand dismiss the possibility that our government or a sector within it it could never be responsible for 9/11or that it could ever be kept a secret is ignorance.
Our government, the people that control it, don’t give a shit about American soldiers, or any of us, or “terrorists” other than it’s more convenient for them if they don’t have to create them, or any of the naive nonsense so prevalent by the brainwashed citizenry. Empires are Machiavellian, brutal, calculating, and ruthless. If the US could attain command- control of the middle east’s oil and eliminate the threat of Iran to US hegemony for the cost of only one hundred thousand dead American soldiers you could order the body bags today.
For the status qoa to maintain their comforts they would and will if necessary heard us in to soviet style work camps/gulags and work us to death, or refugee/concentration camps where typhoid, dysentery, and the usual pathogens and starvation kill off the surplus people if that is the solution that suits them best. Surplus People and Machiavellian morals is the key to understanding the actions of our government.
For anybody still hiding, the predator drones are there to terrorize the population. Psychological warfare with some miscellaneous murder. That spells terrorism to me. I bet, I bet anything, that if those things were flying around your neck of the woods and dropping on peoples homes and wedding parties randomly killing people you’d think that was terrorism, and you’d be right.
People believe when they are told by the president of OPEC at a recent meeting in Vienna that the world’s estimated oil reserves will last for some 140 years and that that is such a long time [since they uncritically believe such statements] there should be no problem finding new sources of energy. They are looking at the problem with the narrow focus of simply replacing petroleum with something else in motor vehicles, something which has already been proven to work, such as either electric or hydrogen fuel cell, and they assume that the details will all be worked out at the appropriate time. Part of this is based upon the confidence inspiring notion that the cliff if relatively far off, especially in terms of the time-scale of the individual, which is admittedly quite circumscribed. If they have children they might worry a little more. For those who are more worried they are easily fobbed off with tales of plentiful biodiesel to be obtained from salt-water algae. Other people fantasize that the oil reserves are being replenished via anaerobic bacteria or some sort of vague vulcanistic processes down in the mantle of the earth, the fantasies are probably limitless.
To me it is not a question of whether such technologies could not eventually be worked out but rather what happens to the damned economy while we’re in the process of running out of oil. And then we’re also nearly uniquely screwed in this country owing to our assumptions that there was no problem which has given us the unsustainably bloated exurbs replete with 20 acre ranchettes and hours’ drive from the nearest job which might conceivably pay a living wage.
“The Rain gods have blessed us again today. I am sick of being blessed!”
Send some our way. We haven’t seen any rain to speak of in almost 2 months. We’re choking on sand and dust down here. I’ve never seen farmers actually sprout their crops with irrigation. Kind of ominous actually.
Mean Dovey! Helluva handle to run across today!!
How the hell are ya? Still fightin’ that purple cabbage weed? Have really enjoyed hearing about your garden and seeing your recent art. Thanks for staying in touch. Did you get my message about being in Blue Ridge July 7-12? If you want to do a short course on permaculture or French Intensive gardening, let’s do it!
I dropped you an email this morning, just FYI, at your Walker address.
The reason Sports gets reported as real news is:
So here’s a seventh reason (I’d say sixth, but since someone declared that today’s news wasn’t libertarian/corporatista enough for him…): enough people still care enough about sports that it occasionally gets honest treatment.
(As compared to the news, in which people who watch ABCNNBCBSFOX don’t necessarily care enough about the truth to find it.)
Like the painting! But we’re not suffering from anything more than dry throats in south Georgia, unfortunately. If there is nasty weather on the way, will you just make sure it includes lots of rain? K? My crops are mostly up on raised French Intensive beds; they can handle a deluge. Lord knows I could use one.
Oyster mushrooms are running again, and we did manage to bring in over half a bushel of green beans today, 4 fat shiny purple cabbages, the season’s first zucchini and straight necks, and the last of the broccoli. I’ll miss you most, broccoli…
“This isn’t the first time I’ve said we could wake up one morning and find a Pentagon general in charge of things.”
We can only dream. Let’s hope he’s a patriot and not a globalist like those currently in power. But I doubt any patriots exist at the General level or in the Pentagon.
Still it’s nice to dream.
WHO POSTED THE PIECE LAST WEEK ABOUT THE SDS?
[a book….’duped’?]
In any case this is going out to that poster……
from fireandreamitchell.com
Now that Kevin Jennings is leaving the Obama regime, lates take a look back at just some of the Kevin Jennings greatest hits:
Hid pedophila from authorities
Inspired by NAMBLA founder Harry Hay
Promoted fisting to 14 year olds
Kevin Jennings
GLSEN 2005 conference promoted anal sex in parks with strangers at teen conference
Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings/GLSEN promoted book that detailed gay sex between FIRST GRADERS!
Well now it’s time for Kevin Jennings to move on.
According to CNSNEWS, is leaving his post as Obama’s “safe school czar” to lead a non-profit coalition-building organization called
Be the Change, which “creates national issue based campaigns by organizing coalitions of non-profits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, private sector and civic leaders, academics adnauseum…….
‘Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’
Jewish, foriegn born..got Clinton a seat at the real govt..CFR
He inturn made the bitch ‘Madame Secretary’
and they had the war on Kosovo…
hey mean dovey cooledge, i am not sure why JHK has it in for you southern dudes, I lived down south and found the people, both black and white, very hospitable? and prone to talk in depth about the matters which concern us all. Anyway, may the sun shine on your face and the rain fall gently upon your fields. RT
Hey Tripp, I feel for ya. I know yer havin’ a drought. I hope it does not become as dry as south or west TX. and I hope ya miss that shit goin’ down in the midwest. We seem to be lucky here in the NE region. not to cold, not to hot, no ‘canes or tornadoes to speak of, earthquakes, or “raptures”! just the iffy grow seasons and fairly steady weather. O’ course we do get plenty of snow but I like the snow!makes for a steady melt. I hope global climate change does not F with us too bad! Even if the ice caps melt I wil be above it. My kids will probably be fighting off foragers for the turnips though!
Tripp, your gettin’ green beans and squash! bite me! my peas are only 6 inches high and if I put in squash the seeds would rot! do you irrigate with rain barrels? Permiculture or not u need water! Just sayin’ I would put the beans in but I know they would rot in the ground. Luv your posts!
The Pain
O’ the Pain
The rain
O’ the rain
My seeds need me and I need them,
I am sorry I’ve forsaken them
They fight as I sow
To find Their root and grow,
From soil I have tilled
That their life should begin
But yet they are devoured
By Rot and decay
As the rains of the Gods
Fall incessantly from the heavens
My garden becomes fallow
The soul becomes but shallow
Someday the sun will come again
And thence might heart will rise!
The One Screen Rule:
If your comment takes up more than one screen, it will not be read. Get your own blog.
The Blog Police.
Here is what I meant to say before, I understand
it better than I did this morning. “Heresy”, this
is the concept. What JHK is saying is heresy, but
of course, there can only be heresy if there is first, orthodoxy. And without really planning it, that is what we have created, in this so-called culture of ours. There is no name for this orthodoxy, why should there be? What’s normal doesn’t need a name. Now, we have reporters, they are part of this construction, but they are hired to tell proper types of stories, and if any heretics should appear, to help expel them.
Like a computer with a virus or corrupt program.
==
You have it exactly right. They have us down to science. What WE need to learn is how to unplug the power cord.
Great article about Chicago’s preparation for gloabl warming:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/science/earth/23adaptation.html
Ya sidestepped my question, Tripp. Do you have a storm cellar or plans to build one? I really like the pictures of your place, but all that flat land gives me the fantods.
Here in the hills and mountains, we get the occasional twister, but nothing like you folks on the east coast. There was that weird, one off event in the early 70s down in Vancouver, Washington. Killed 6 or so people.
The funnel formed over the Columbia River and moved north. As it scrapped the ridge top, it destroyed a small shopping center. Then it dropped down behind the ridge and destroyed a school. Luckily, late in the afternoon when everyone had gone home.
So… in a word… Confidence. Humans are a confident species. So we aren’t worried about trivial happenings such as peak oil. Because we will find a way to wriggle out of it. In our mind. We must be a very confident species. Because we ignore the fact that all previous two dozen civilizations to date failed – every last one of them. The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans – all failed to create a sustainable and lasting civilization. Not to forget the dismal failure of the Easter Island civilization which should be a stark warning to Industrial civilization which is obviously unsustainable. So… in spite of those previous and numerous catastrophic failures, we are optimistic that it won’t/can’t happen again. Optimism must be a genetic feature. It’s in all races at all times. So… I think… we will go over the peak oil cliff to our destruction for sure. With optimism. Ha ha ha. Rolling on the floor laughing my a$$ off.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
How to dismantle the mind, piece by piece
The three basic principles “1) P = P” “2) P > not P” “3) Every event has a cause” have been the Three Lies that have imprisoned the mind of Western Civilization since the time of Parmenides. Those ancient philosophers are still laughing at us, in their eternity, playing with ever new universes, new mind structures invented, new sense organs, new contraptions that are used to think and experience, but these contraptions are planet size machines with so many moving parts, so many emotional and sensory states, they explore all states between extreme pain to extreme pleasure, and all mixtures, a linear combination of these 2 items into other items, in a never ending array of new experiences. An infinite recursion into new items, new delimitations, new states of states as in the same relationship an emotion has to sense organs, so has an item A to emotions, and hence the same an item B to A, for infinity, as in the limits of functions in mathematical analysis.
1) Principle of Identity: P = P. P is P ? What is “is” ? How can anything possibly be itself ? How can anything persist in time or space, no matter how small the interval ? Impossible, this principle is insanity, this principle is “false” if any principle has ever been false, nothing is equal to itself no matter how hard you try, it is totally impossible, and not of this world (in fact philosophers were talking about another world, they have a secret message hidden that goes by, “take everything we say and the truth is the exact opposite” but only a few chosen people have been able to see through this).
2) Principle of Non Contradiction: P > not P, means Nothing can be both True and False (wondering … at the same time and in the same point in space ?!?, or is that a metaphysical – platonic space where time and space don’t exist, hmm…another insane and impossible metaphysical problem that has popped into my mind). But this principle is not true, everything is both true and false and all the intermediate values (between 1 and 0) the real world expresses itself through. The principle of non contradiction is false, it is one of the most false statements in the universe (since there are degrees of falsness, it is a linear function, an analog function, it is not a digital 1 or 0). The real statement should be P = not P. How insane can you get ? How is it even conceivable and possible that P isn’t also not P ? How can you not see that P is everything you want it to be, even its opposite, especially its opposite since it can exist only by comparing itself and expressing itself through its opposite. The “Principle of Non Contradiction” is false (and by the way is true exactly because it is false, in an infinite recursion of the mind crashing its puny mental “logical” computer program).
3) Nothing happens without a reason. Another totally false statement, absolutely insane, since everything occurs without reason, everything is an event without a cause (and can you tell me what is the event and what is the cause, or is it the other way around, and do these events go from – infinite time to + infinite time (and space?!?!, or somewhere else, in some other fake, metaphysical box ?!?). The real statement should have been “Everything is Completely and Totally Unrelated to Everything or Anything Else”, it is completely independent from everything else, it is infinitely distant from any other item, entity, or delimitation the mind can conceive. Obviously the “size” of these entities becomes vanishingly small as they cannot have any extension of any constituent parts, since then they would be related to something, but this may also be a linear function, an analog situation.
Anyways, I could go on, how I love to demolish all of our certainties, at least demolish them before the world (which remember, is your enemy) will demolish them for you and before you, but you can play ahead of time, and fool god. There is no safe place, no safe logic you can use, no absolutes, no certainty, beware. But just take all of the above and assign as true the opposite of it (or is that the opposite of the opposite but at a higher relationship ?!? hmm… another infinite recursion, another Impossible Metaphysical Problem that popped into my mind).
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=175202
Tired writing about social issues, only one simple thing popped in my mind: why on earth doesn’t everyone prefer lower home prices and rent prices ? Why on earth is this “bad” ? If home rents were only 200 dollars a month, or home prices only 50,000 dollars to buy (what their real value should be) wouldn’t everyone gain by this ? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone ?
Shouldn’t all the economists worldwide chant “Lower home prices and rents”, as this is the easiest solution to increase the value of salaries, the possibility to consume and buy more increasing production, as this really increases “competitiveness” and freedom and flexibility in a society as people are freer to move, and change jobs and their pay goes much further and can do more things.
Oh, I forgot the banks and capitalists have to force people into huge debts paying so much monthly for a mortgage or rent, as they keep on hogging trillions upon trillions: go on obama, declare that from now on, rents will be no more than 200 dollars a month and homes shall not cost more than 50,000 dollars, go on man, you can do it, don’t be a scaredy cat in front of your real bosses.
Asia;
The person who posted about the SDS and weather undergound last week … that would be me.
I’m not surprised about Kevin Jennings. These people are prominent in the Democratic Party. In some ways its what the Democrats are all about.
Check this out. Here in Connecticut our new (Democratic) governor is attempting to wrest concessions from public sector unions in order to balance a $2 billion budget deficit and $20 billion unfunded liability to pay public sector employees generous pensions (up to $250,000 per year). His chief negotiator is a Homosexual activist actually ‘married’ to another dude. They had a ceremony performed by out AG, who is now a US Senator. I know people who attended. I wasn’t invited, but I hear on good authority that it was vey sweet. The official theme was ‘Lavender and Cream”.
Here’s the kicker. Three out of the four PS Union chiefs he is supposed to be negotiating against are Homo activists too.
Its one big circle jerk.
-Marlin
Machiavelli/old6699/spider;
Dude, give it up. Your wasting your f——g time.
I’m going out on a limb and speak for everybody here: We think you are a crank, and perhaps mentally unbalanced.
My advice to you: get a blue collar job where you actually have to do physical labor, which would go a long way in dispelling you of your bullshit philophys.
-Marlin
Let me add: the PS union chiefs that I mentioned … they were at the ‘wedding’.
-Marlin
The simple answer about rent and home prices is that these ownership units are supposed to represent equity. The private owner whether it’s is a landlord or a home owner is supposed to own the value of that property and make money on it.
The real issue here is that they bubblized the value of these units in the last 30 years and they became extremely expensive. A distortion of their value for the kind of debt peonage that you are describing.
That said, it would be very hard to turn back the clock by choice, as many people would be undermined.
What would it take for these values to go down would be a complete change in societal values and we aren’t seeing anything like that now.
Everything is being done to boost the prices up again. That’s the system we live in.
At this point it is becoming manifestly obvious that we don’t even need peak oil to do ourselves in; our managing of the economy is so misguided that we could sink ourselves even with permanently secured supplies of abundant and cheap petroleum. After all, should there be a technological fix somewhere down the road, not an entirely impossible eventuality, then we could merrily go on our way cooking the planet with our emissions, rendering the Earth uninhabitable.
People in general have a false sense of security or confidence for a variety of reasons. First of all they are being reassured by their presumed betters that the situation is well in hand, and they are plainly dumb enough to believe this. There is also the common inability to distinguish between the built environment and the real environment, which is nature. Since the built environment hasn’t yet broken down this in itself breeds a certain obliviousness to eventual consequences of our actions. And then finally, it is just easier to blithely trust that the situation is well in hand, the department of energy is going to rescue us by pulling thorium fueled reactors out of its ass, or incremental imporovements in the efficiency of internal combustion engines or fuel cells will miraculously combine to make everything okay.
When things don’t work out to everyone’s satisfaction then the boom will fall and adjustments will be forced upon us by circumstance. That is when unviable arrangements will be abandoned, vehicles will be skeletized to an ultra-light/off-road configuration, or many will even resume riding horses as their POVs. Of course with the demise of industrial farming it might prove difficult to feed those horses.
“I’m going out on a limb and speak for everybody here: We think you are a crank, and perhaps mentally unbalanced.”
-marlin, to spider-
I sort of like some of OldeSpiderM’s stuff. I wish he’d write shorter posts and address just one big idea at the time. And I don’t know why he double-posts so much – that’s a little strange.
But I wouldn’t call him a “crank.” He is a little obsessed – and it’s pretty evident that the throttle on his brain is stuck “wide open” much of the time when he’s in a mood to type for CFN and ILovePhilosophy.
As far as “mentally unbalanced” – a guy who named himself for two political approaches is having a discussion with a guy who named himself for a rifle – about a guy who named himself for an arachnid. Let us consider – –
“….motes vs beams in eyes…”
-jesus- paraphrased
“My advice to you: get a blue collar job where you actually have to do physical labor,..”
-marlin, to spider-
Maybe that wouldn’t hurt, Marlin – but I suggest our old Spider needs to get laid – a lot!
Honestly, he as much as said that last week. There’s somebody for everybody, Spider.
Have you ever tried computer dating?
“That’s the system we live in.”
True and I don’t see that much will be done to change that since Wall St. is the shadow government calling the shots and….Too Big To Fail.
For many years, a stable economic picture was back stopped with home values at 3 X yearly earnings.
Given the incomes of the folks where I moved to in the semi-rural sticks, no home would cost more than $100K, but that ain’t so.
Point well taken, PoC.
This is why I like your posts so much.
You & Tripp, my friends in Dixie …
-Marlin
Vlad,
About Iceland. Michael Hudson was a consultant for a number of European countries going through the IMF-bankster austerity plans. In the model of neoliberal globalism, Iceland was supposed to seel all its public assets destroying the nation’s future ability to make money on it’s infrastructure. I saw a number of videos with Hudson advising Iceland to not pay them back and allow them to get a foothold into the country.
Can we break this paradigm of little collapses for the fortune of a few?
One more thing I was thinking this morning is how allowing the Mexicans to flood this country not only lowers the rates for labor, but also dilutes the American culture. It’s a part of the Global paradigm that seeks to flatten the world both culturally as well as financially. They would like a one-religion world as well.
I don’t always agree with you by a long shot, but sometimes you make a good point.
Something for all you nice urban liberals, the “mob and rob” has become the new cultural outlet for african-american youth. It seems a donut shop in NYC got its revolutionary moment this week.
Then on the other hand it seems whites are waking up to the facts that they are discriminated against. I’m sensing a field of blackbirds moment coming on these days.
Anyway Jim in a country ruled by the religion of Political Correctness, enforced by the passive-aggressive sadists how could anything be seriously addressed?
Tripp – I will be out in New Mexico that week. But I would like to pull some honorarium $ for you to speak about sustainability and permaculture in the fall maybe.
That weed has aggressively colonized the field. It has choked out anything in its path – including the clovers that the bees depend on. The health of my tiny ecosystem is at risk. I understand the principle of letting it do its work – however a diversity of plant life serves the greater good based on my own observations. I did however, plant tomatoes right on top of the spring lettuces. I cut them like you said and left the tops to decompose.
Thanks, RT!
“I haven’t posted here in months because Jim’s bigotry toward the american south is not only rude, but poorly informed….”
-meandovey-
Hey, meandovey, and welcome back, neighbor. As I recall, you’re right over the southern spine of the Appalachians from me.
You’ve got to cut JHK some slack on his SouthBashing. He’s Jewish and seems to be a genuine true-blue Yankee – for whateverthehell that means. So, I can understand why he’d fear the South a little bit. I mean – I’m not that relaxed when I’m in New York City, to reverse the examples.
And there are a lot of Southerners who read and post to CFN, don’t forget.
So I just take most of JHK’s Southern Stereotyping as a literary device. Plus, when he says NASCAR, or whatever, that’s not truly a Southern Thang – anymore, not by a long stretch.
http://www.nascar.com/races/tracks/
Don’t get me wrong, MDC – there are plenty of people who hate and fear the American South. A couple of them post to this website.
I just think that, deep down, JHK is probably too smart for that. Plus, some of his SouthBashing is pretty funny. And living in the only American region ever subjugated by War – where it’s also hot as allhell in the summer – makes a sense of humor important.
Best regards,
PoC
“Last week David Stockman was on Tom Keene, making the usual media rounds (sometimes we marvel at his patience and endurance), as one of the few voices of fiscal prudence available to TV producers who seek to hold a balanced debate on the topic of US insolvency. Today, Reagan’s budget director was again on Bloomberg TV explaining the reality of the situation to Matt Miller for the nth time (by now even a 2 year old will understand the cul-de-sac facing the US), although presenting a new spin on the situation, namely that we have gotten to a point where both parties are implicitly pushing for a US default, while though their inability to reach a political compromise, blaming each other for this inevitable outcome. “The real problem is the de facto policy of both parties is default. When the Republicans say no tax increases, they’re saying we want the U.S. government to default. Because there isn’t enough political will in this country to solve the problem even halfway on spending cuts. When the Democrats say you can’t touch Social Security, when you have Obama sponsoring a war budget for defense that is even bigger than Bush, then I say the policy of the White House is default as well…That is the question that really needs to be understood better and appraised by the bond market. Both parties are advocating default even as they point the finger at each other.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/david-stockman-both-parties-and-white-house-are-advocating-us-default
“And he doesn’t need to get over it and he doesn’t need to move elsewhere. He is perfectly within his rights as a citizen to voice his displeasure, organize, and do whatever he can to affect change. If you don’t like it, too bad.”
===
Thanks. So you are a pedantic douche as well a kook. Wonderful.
And I think that the American South may be the last region where the underlying culture still understands the importance of shared sacrifice.
Georgia’s governor just signed a bill that is being characterized as *Arizona Lite?* to attempt to control some of Georgia’s problems with illegal immigration.
Well, the day of the signing was marked by a demonstration by 200 (mostly, at least those who spoke on camera said they were) illegal immigrants literally jumping up and down in protest.
But before that, Big Ag had been figuratively jumping up and down – to stop the bill and stop the signing as “Bad for Agriculture.”
And the Chamber of Commerce was quietly jumping up and down behind the scenes because the bill was “Bad for Business.”
None of that mattered – the bill passed, because Georgians are willing to press their legislators to sacrifice Profits for a longer term good.
Now, if 48 other states will do something, maybe we can drag the Feds along to also do the right thing.
BTW, I haven’t mentioned this in a while.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
Join FAIR.
What do ya think about this, was it SEAL team 6, Israeli trained pigeons with matches, or did Mr. I’madinnerjacket have a bad plate of beans for breakfast. Conspiracy theorists please run with it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-explosion-20110524,0,7106783.story
“My kids will probably be fighting off foragers for the turnips though!”
I often wonder if this is really how it’ll go. Most people wouldn’t know what a turnip looked like if it hit em in the head, much less what to do with it. I guess if you got hungry enough you’d just pull it up and chow down though. One thing we’re doing in our garden is planting a lot of things people don’t recognize as food – new perennial veggies just hitting the market, tree veggies, aquatic veggies, strange fruits, edible flowers and bulbs, etc. We’re naturalizing things like sweet potatoes in the orchard too, that would take a while to track down. Not to mention sporing in a wide variety of ‘shrooms all over the place. Ostensibly the “turnip bandits” could come through and “wipe us out,” leaving us “destitute” and “starving,” and there would still be plenty to eat. Just something to chew on.
The other prong of the attack is expanding the gardens and orchards out over a large acreage over the coming years, and employing young people entering the “workforce” as it dawns on them that this might be the only work around (and as they get into it they’ll quickly see the benefits of it I hope, and hold some loyalty). I’m shooting for 40-50 acres of (human powered) intensively managed gardens and orchards, so there will be room for a lot of people. My quarter acre of gardens is about more than I can handle as a full time job. At least in the establishment phase while helping raise two very young children. I’m excited that they get to grow up foraging among the fruit trees, herbs, mushrooms, and berries, all day long though, from their earliest memories. My barely 3 year old daughter is already learning what certain herbs are used for.
If the crash happens faster than that I’m not sure even we’ll be ready. Although I did just bring in 75 bulbs of garlic to go with yesterday’s list, and planted another big bed of okra at dawn this morning. My second round of eggplants is sprouting; we’re already eating the first round. Peppers are swelling, and blueberries and blackberries are ripening. We’ve got a dairy cow, a quarter horse, a pack donkey, 15 chickens, 3 geese, 7 ducks, and 5 rabbits, not to mention access to several ponds full of bluegills and bass. It would be tight, but we could probably get by. Just don’t have enough to feed anyone else yet. And that’s the part that’ll save us, in my opinion.
“You are a great sport. I’m not mad at you anymore but I still seem to be throwing some heavy artillery your way.”
-vlad-
Keep firing, Viad. I don’t mind at all as long as it helps you, or me, or somebody – understand.
“And I think that the American South may be the last region where the underlying culture still understands the importance of shared sacrifice.”
Some good points, PoC. There are still a LOT of gardens in my area too, including a big one at each of the three residences on this farm. Southerners are clannish, and do a fair amount of hunting and fishing, and wild gathering too. That’s mainstream culture down here.
I talked to a guy the other day that does some work for my grandparents, and I had always assumed that he was a dumbass. Not at all. He was telling me all about the closed food production system he’s been working on for years, piling up spent hay and manure from his livestock to rot for next year’s new garden plot. Interested in mushroom production too. Used big words. Never would’ve thought it.
Funny part is, Jim might make fun of southerners, but when they run out of food in NY, you know where he’ll be headed!
Hey PoC,
Indeed I am a short and quite beautiful drive away. I take your point, and I agree that a sense of humor for a southerner is most welcome, especially when August rolls around. However, where JHK is concerned, he doesnt seem to intend it as humor anymore than a master of put downs uses “humor” to mask hostility. But more annoying than the content is the sheer repetitive volume of the charges. In short, a borefest.
Our rich agrarian heritage, rolling ancient mountain ranges, literary and artistic wealth as well as our well-armed citizenry makes yankees crazy. grrrrrrherherherhahaha.
Good to see ya, PoC.
I agree with “The One Screen Rule”! Outcast sure was verbose this time, though if you add up all of the comments (read: arguments) from some of the others, it might be a few pages.
$1,000,000 in 1935 =
$65,500 in 2011.
“Because its up against the wall redneck mothers
Mothers who have raised your sons so well
He’s thirty-four and drinking in a honky tonk
Kicking hippies asses and raising hell.”
-Marlin
Really worthwhile post! Thankfully, only a few crank posters this week keep wanting to blame one political party or the other.
When some pundit says that politicians don’t have the political will to balance the budget, what that really means is that they are afraid of the political backlash from citizens.
If gov’t deficit spending rankles some, watch for the protests that would occur if we tried paying down the debt and asking for sacrifices.
JHK wouldn’t have to move South to grow food — food grows everywhere — you just need to find what works in your region. Also in the ongoing CFN battle between Southerners and Northerners, I lived in Texas for many years and I can tell you Texans are the nicest people on earth but they are a little naive. One asked me what state “New England” was. I explained that New England was a region, like the Southwest is a region. He nodded and then asked “But what state is it?” Sigh.
But if the world ever collapsed, I’d still rather live at the Jersey Shore. Nice, mild weather and a chance to sneak over to the beach and play in the sun and sand! Cheers!
Great post.
One quibble. The sects in Iraq did not start fighting each other until 2005, after the US decided to implement the “Salvador solution” after taking losses from united Iraqi opposition.
There was always a plan to break up Iraq, just like there is a plan to break up Pakistan. It’s called divide and conquer, and I think that it’s older than Machiavelli.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/05/19/bin-laden-death-script-the-needed-trigger-for-next-step-pakistan/
Why was the ultimate trump card of “killing Osama” played at this particular time? Check out the link for Sibel Edmunds opinion. She is the woman who worked as a translator for the US government, and now has a gag order preventing her from telling what she knows about the lies of 9-11.
Who appointed the blog police?
One word at the beginning of the comments every week always inspires hundreds of peevish scolding words.
People are told they can’t link to their blogs.
A fantastic comment gets criticized for screen length. What? You don’t have a scroll button? How dare you insist that someone limit himself to your particular short attention span.
And marlin takes it upon himself to speak for us all against spider. Speak only for yourself, Marlin. I always read the first part of spider’s posts, ignoring only the skyscrapers on Mars part.
As long as regionalism is one of the topics today, I’d like to take exception with Cash and all you other Canadians in CFNation.
Every time we get a cold front in New England its a Canadian Cold Front.
Keep you stinkin Cold Fronts Home! Don’t dump them on us. This is my last warning!
-Marlin
Wage, I hear you. It was presumptuous of me to speak for everyone.
-Marlin
And I don’t mean to be busting your balls Spider. In my college days I was friends with a bunch of Philosophy majors. They were pretty cerebral, not to practical.
-Marlin
Trippticket:
All that you are growing sounds good, but here’s an additional suggestion: Jerusalem artichokes. Since the plants look a bit like tall sunflowers, they won’t be a target for “turnip bandits”! They are really prolific, can be harvested in the fall – they store pretty well – or when the ground thaws in the spring. The are great used raw in salads, baked just like potatoes, in casseroles or strait out of the hidden-away-artichoke-patch in the backyard.
I like your ideas though; mushrooms are another good crop that aren’t usually considered by thieves…
And check out this video for a neat “Long Emergency gardening tool”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHEmnURcXdg
Isn’t New Jersey called the Garden State, because of it’s food production capability?
And wasn’t Long Island originally the source of much of Manhattan’s food?
We are lucky to live in a country of such abundant potential in so many places.
I live in a place that used to supply Chicago with food. They have turned many of the rail lines into trails, but they could be relaid in that nice straight, well-maintained land area.
We could have a decent country, if only we sent Wall Street bankers out to prison farms, to make an honest living, and dismantled the military-industrial complex and the Homeland Repression industry, leaving decent people to figure out a way to feed and house ourselves in a sustainable way.
No, I’m just sick of all your bullshit, all your thievery your genocidal machinations your degenerate sickness. We had enough of you fsckers. We want you to get the fsck out of our country our region and go back to where you came from. Take your money take your weapons take your propaganda outlets take your military bases take your thieving corporations take your CIA stooges/politicians and get the fsck out.
And can you pass that on to your boss when you clock out, fscker.
Automated Modified Mind Generator
These are supercomputers that generate 10^20 modified minds a second, each mind being infinitely different from the previous and all others, each mind experiencing wildy different worlds and lives and pains/pleasures/and many others, way beyond anything we can possibly imagine. And we have planets that are completely occupied by trillions of these machines, each one generating a new mind – universe.
Like one would be like this schematic:
QTWTT£&$YEUURURRRRRRRRR((8$))£O£=”=L$$£é°£Eé*E°§£é°ç::E;ç;ç;£çEEç;çD;ç;££=O$$?éE°£
for example, of course it is very far from anything we can relate to, but just to give you an idea.
Of course the principle of non contradiction and identity are a joke for these ones: there goes all of our logic out of the window. Cool, I like these new worlds.
On the ladies thing, I am impotent and not “cock-sure” and don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell to relate in any way to a nice lady, but that is the way it went. There are so many decent looking of many ages from Russia to Europe to Canada to the US and all Latin America, so much ass to chase and never getting any. But I probably don’t want any just like the conflicting will powers in the mind play games, you never know who you are if even you “are”. I will keep on chasing that ass and never getting any and looking at dirty pictures or almost any picture of ladies) or looking at them on the streets. But this is because we want that which we can’t have and the more we can’t have it the more we want it, no matter what, even if you had a 100 nice ones, you would want just another, or something else, or a Ferrari, or whatever, we are set up to be always unsatisfied no matter what. That is because our mind operates according to a puny computer program consisting of 1) starting point 2) path and 3) target. But we should reverse the order, create problems, ever more problems, ever greater, break it all, unsolve problems, like in thermodynamics, there is only one way to go forward but a million ways to go backward, a million ways towards pain and only one way towards pleasure: but fool the system, unsolve problems, go backwards, increase problems and pain as much a possible, reach SuperPain before god throws you in hell, that way you fooled him.
We should strive to be bored, to not do anything, to be still and static for trillions of years, like death, the end my friend.
If the principle of noncontradiction is true and operating how come I can think up it’s opposite ? Why does the structure of the universe allow this ? Because it is all a trick, a bluff…
On the blue collar labor, yes, it would be cool to have hobby factories where you could work an hour or two, and put the wheels on cars or make rockets, but we will reach that.
I still stand by cheap rents and free salaries, overcome this crappy capitalist system.
Please now, show me another new schematic of a modifed mind, this way my mind can wander on what it can possibly mean, I can imagine the most incredible things happening in those new minds – universes.
“JHK wouldn’t have to move South to grow food — food grows everywhere — you just need to find what works in your region.”
That’s a fantastic point, and one I had hoped to expand on today actually (I’m writing my blog post right now, and got sidetracked). I was listening to a chef and food activist online the other night. Can’t remember his name, but very enjoyable, and someone at the end of the interview asked him why he wasn’t a vegetarian. And he responded that vegetarianism wasn’t appropriate for his region. That he was surrounded by pastoral New England and said that grazing animals were far more appropriate for his landscape than fields of vegetables. Then he said, if you live in southern California, in that beautiful Mediterranean climate that grows such wonderful grains, fruits, and vegetables, then by all means be a vegetarian. But trying to force your “ethics” into an inappropriate ecosystem was damaging, not morally superior.
Now I suppose that I’ve taken too broad a brush in my application of that principle. When I think about North America I think about grazing hooved animals as being appropriate parts of the landscape in general, not just where they really fit in. And I apologize to anyone who lives in a climate where vegetarianism is more appropriate.
Like ASIA in particular! Maybe Soak too…although it’s too bad he got taken in the fake rapture last weekend, and isn’t around to hear my penance.
Marlin, as a resident of the fine province of Ontario, Canada, I take exception to your scurrilous remark about bad weather in New England being our fault.
We just had a whopper of a thunderstorm last night that we’re told is the tail end of the horrible weather that ripped up Tornado Alley in your country these last few days. I hear it’s now on its way to our Atlantic provinces north of you. Sometimes in the winter we get snowstorms from Chicago too. It’s a two way street, my friend.
Besides, we’re all neighbours anyway. When my grandparents came here, some of their family settled in Rochester on the south side of Lake Ontario. We’re only forty or so miles away by boat in Cobourg on the north side. For many years a ferry operated between us that brought coal and other goods as well as people back and forth. It stopped running about 1950. My grandparents would take my mother and her brother to Rochester regularly to visit their relatives.
I’d give anything to go on that ferry ride to Rochester.
“…watch for the protests that would occur if we tried paying down the debt and asking for sacrifices.”
Default is just another word for Jubilee. It will be much uglier. It is inevitable, so we should “get real” about the implementation rather than just let it happen willy-nilly like a tornado hitting Joplin. The national debt is built on fraud. All debts should be wiped clean, not just the debts of the filthy rich.
“Never would’ve thought it.”
He probably plays poker.
“Yesterday was Spain’s turn, as the governing party took a beating in local elections and unemployed young people moiled in the city squares. Many of them probably expected to work in corporate jobs. They may end up back on the farm or in the cork orchards.”
*******
Probably the United States and the world in general will require far fewer college grads in the future as the global economy mostly dissolves and everything becomes more localized.
There will again be a larger segment of the population involved directly or indirectly with food production and this will not require higher levels of education. In fact, education in general, including K-12, may be greatly constrained as the world becomes increasingly de-industrialized and falls back to a nineteenth century modus operandi.
For the few who are fortunate enough to attend college it will be like the old times – they bid their parents farewell, take a long, arduous journey to one of the few remaining universities and four years later return with diploma in hand. There will be few options in anything that resembles today’s “high tech” industry. Hey, we may see a return of horses and wagons.
Only the military will have a supply of “black gold” to keep their jeeps, tanks, ships and planes going into the farther future. The rest of us will have to do with what energy and transportation we can scrap together from “alternate energy” sources.
C-A-B-R-A-1-0-8-0
That’s a pretty nifty tool! Completely unnecessary down here in the sand, but nifty all the same. Plenty of people around the CFN garden in stony soil and might benefit from it more than I would.
Especially considering the fact that I don’t cultivate at all, once my beds are established. The footage of the gardener walking the corn rows on bare soil, churning up the ground in between is pretty much blasphemy to me. Then, to top it off, right at the end of the video he uproots a big beautiful queen anne’s lace with it! A better beneficial insect attractor is hard to find!! When will we learn…
Thanks for the reminder about the sunchokes though. My very first blog post, back in March ’10, had a bit about the sunchokes I grew. Couldn’t get any this spring, but they are on my calendar to order in the fall. Cheers.
“Hey, we may see the return of horses and wagons” Capra.
If only it were true, Capra. That would be a beautiful place to start again. Then we could rebuild from there.
-Marlin
You obfuscate, Vlad. Whether there are or are not Jews like Mika is not the issue. He is your own creation and a poor caricature at that.
N.
No you’re just an Anti-White bigot is all. Any slander or abuse is fine as long as it’s against Whites. Why can’t you be a good Leftist and be against Israel at least? This is the basically the only good thing the Left has done in a long, long time.
Yeah new tactic in South Africa too – take White farmers in on trivial or trumped up charges and throw them in with hardened Black convicts to be gang raped. Then drop the charges and release them. Just one more great way to destroy and humiliate a great people. What a tragic decison the White made in surrendering. They had nuclear power and the ability to be self sufficient agriculturally. If they had had the courage of their ancestors, they could have given the Blacks a huge Country of their own and given themselves a nice medium sized one too. But they wanted it all – the wealth, the Trade, the Black sevants, the applause of the world so naturally they will end up with nothing. Just more rapes and murders.
The Shia and the Sunni have been fighting for the last 1200 years. There was a relative calm in Iraq because Saddam, a nominal Sunni, had terrorized the Shia into submission. Is this your idea of Peace? And as Cash always says – your geographical egocentricity is simply stunning. It’s not all about us. But I know that you don’t care about the Truth – but only about stirring the Communist pot.
Yeah I really hope they stay strong. What can the “World” do – invade them because their own scumbag bankers sold the People down the river? Even Europe isn’t so far gone as to allow that. They have the right to default just like any Third World country has. And they are in a much better position than any Third, Second, or First Country.
The Land is hard and barren but the population is very small. They had only barely begun to succumb to immigration madness. They do raise enough sheep and grains to live. And they have extensive greenhouses too. And then there is the sea. And the great gift of geothermal energy. And the People themselves are the high IQ Nordics with the highest level of literacy in the world. And there is some genetic diversity from the Irish wives and slaves that the Vikings brought with them. As well as some of the native dark Mediterraneans that even Scandanvia had – like Bjork. And to all this is addend their location: far to the North away from fallout and alot of pollution.
They are the most favored of all the world’s people if they can just realize it and keep saying No.
Well, you’re wrong. I know that the corporate media tells us they have been fighting, but where were the battles?
The Shia and Sunni in Iraq were intermarried, and the ethnic cleansing carried out by the US and its Iraqi puppets involved chasing people out neighborhood by neighborhood.
It’s not all about us? Don’t be an ass, Vlad. The US invaded Iraq and occupies it to this day, but that has no effect on Iraq?
Over a million people killed, four million in exile, land and water polluted, Monsanto seeds forced on farmers, oil denationalized, industries turned over to crooks, and you sit there and deny that the surviving people of Iraq are worse off today?
I have to chuckle at the folks who say when we are all local and we have little the government will not be able to tax us. Let us think back 1000 years. Where did ones farm production go? 1/3 for tax, 1/3 for work animal feed, 1/3 to eat to stay alive. Death and taxes are not going away with localization.
As the title says “get real”.
The world will need more college grads. The corporations prefer cheap college grads. A friend of a friend with a Ph.D. in polymer chemistry interviewed at GE plastics in Pittsfield MA. He was told good news we have a job for you at our new research lab in China. It pays $1000 per month.
In Egypt college costs out of pocket $22 per year. In Taiwan $1000 per semester. In Europe free. The world has no need for US grads with $200,000 debt. They can not work for $1000 per month.
Yes, for those ‘reading the tealeaves’ WE GET IT!
I have mentioned a guy named Jon here, lives outside Sil Valley, trys to sell real estate to the rich Chinians of the valley.
He had mentioned an ad there:
WEB MASTER, BE ON CALL, KNOW CODE, ETC
the job paid like 500$ a week.
India is producing 10 million to 20 million
people a year! Even if only 1 percent is
‘very smart’ thats 200,000 potential Einsteins
[or Maos] a year.
Ahem, being part irish I want to weigh in on:
‘some genetic diversity from the Irish wives ‘
THAT IS ONLY 10% AND MOSTLY ON THE COASTAL SIDE SO NOT THAT DIVERSE.
College debt is now more than credit card debt.
The ‘for profit’ diploma mills are ‘having a field day’ and keeping the uneconomy going.
A Filipino I know says he thinks like us but doesnt want to go home.
‘Itll be Warlords controlling each island as things implode.’
In other words We Are Mexico.
WARLORDS WITH FIEFDOMS..THE NEW LOCALISM
WARLORDS WITH FIEFDOMS..THE NEW LOCALISM
WARLORDS WITH FIEFDOMS..THE NEW LOCALISM
WARLORDS WITH FIEFDOMS..THE NEW LOCALISM
Mika is israels creation, not Vlads.
It seems a donut shop in NYC got its revolutionary moment this week.
as in?
WARLORDS WITH FIEFDOMS..THE NEW LOCALISM
And as Cash always says – your geographical egocentricity is simply stunning. – Vlad
Wage, Vlad is right about this. Sometimes I think it’s simple chest pounding American chauvinism on your part, sometimes I think it’s a distorted view of how people in other parts of the world really think and act.
Imagine this: imagine for once not seeing your country in the worst possible light, imagine that the USA gave Iraqis a chance to rid themselves of a barbarous, murdering, fascist regime and to create a prosperous functioning democracy. But imagine that Iraqis took the opportunity given them, made peace between Sunni and Shia and Kurd, cut a reasonable arrangement for governing and sharing oil revenue. Did they? Nope. They went to war against one another.
Did Iraqis have a choice? You bet they did. They are not exactly helpless, Iraq had thriving, advanced civilizations thousands of years before Europe.
Imagine that evil Americans come up to Canada and encouraged Anglo and French Canucks to go on a bloodthirsty score settling spree against one another. And trust me, there are scores to settle. Or let’s say the evil Americans try to stir up trouble between the West and Ontario. To what end? Divide and conquer. After all, what we have up here makes Iraq look pipsqueak in comparison. We have everything a bloodthirsty empire (like the one you imagine the US to be) needs.
Would we go to war against one another because you guys “made us”? Um, no we wouldn’t. We generally use ballots instead of bullets. We’ve entertained two votes on secession by Quebec (1980, 1995). Did we send in the tanks? Nope. Was there any bloodletting? No there wasn’t.
It’s a matter of choice Wage. Canucks are adults. Iraqis too are adults, believe it or not, with a full complement of intellectual and moral faculties. Just like us. Such things are not just for European White people. Iraqis make decisions, their leaders make decisions. They have the option to pick up the gun and shoot or to not pick up the gun. As Vladdy says, it’s not all about you (“you” meaning the US).
Behold a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: It shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=175312
[quote=”quetzalcoatl”]
By changing neural matrixes/minds, you don’t change anything about the universe. You probably just create mental people who walk around fighting wars against dragons and knights when really they are just walking through the woods getting entangled by the trees.
.[/quote]
I answer:
By organizing carbon atoms in a way to create a thinking, conscious, living mind you don’t change anything about the universe, you just create beings fighting wars against other beings, their “will powers”, reality, the laws of physics, creating ever changing starting points – paths – targets, and after a short time dying. What is the difference ? What makes our life any realer or more valid than any other modified mind or virtual reality entity ? it is all a lie, all fake, all a temporary instability, all a temporary moment in which a chunk of Mass – Energy wants to lie to itself and believe and pretend that it is “alive”.
You just need an earthquake or tornado or sudden heart attack to die really quickly, so what happens to all of your “reality”, “memory”, “the story of your life and its assumed aggregate value” (another fairy tale, no one is keeping score, there are no scores to keep, there is no addition of results, only one fleeting instant after another and then none) all the fights you supposedly won and lost ? It disappears, it never existed, one momonet you are alive, and then eternity.
What happens to the laws of physics when you die ?
Did I say that the US was not involved? That we weren’t complicating things? That it wasn’t about us? I said not ALL about us.
Mesopotamia, Persia and the Middle East are ancient battlegrounds of religions and peoples. And they will be so long after the United States is just a bad memory.
Leave the agitprop alone now and then and just be content to be a human being alone under the stars. The rain down fiercely on our heads. Please. I don’t want a tornado to come and drop a house on your green ass.
You just need an earthquake or tornado or sudden heart attack to die really quickly, so what happens to all of your “reality”, “memory”, “the story of your life and its assumed aggregate value” (another fairy tale, no one is keeping score, there are no scores to keep, there is no addition of results, only one fleeting instant after another and then none) all the fights you supposedly won and lost ? It disappears, it never existed, one moment you are alive, and then eternity.
What happens to the laws of physics when you die ?
As a drop or “atom” of water, who are you to deny the Ocean its appearance of waves or causality? Your Parmenides is a dead end because he did just that. No science can come from such a viewpoint. If you don’t like my Vedanta, try Buddhism: pure cause and effect with no idea of substance or being at all. Go to Amazon and by “Buddhist Logic” for the full work up of Nagarjuna’s Anti-Metaphysic Metaphysic.
But who is it that experiences all this? Who is the One that once called himself Old? Now he is Spider feeling meaningless. But who or what is He? Who is feeling all this anomie? Just chemicals? Can you prove that? Don’t just emote and write – Look.
Again, you skirt the issue. You’re also using the handle ‘Mika’ aren’t you? You have yet to deny it…
N.
You think you create the Law of Physics and that they cease when you die? Are you God then? Are you the Ocean or just a drop of water?
Mr. Kunstler:
Certainly, your blog would be improved with citations to the claims you make. Much is being done to address the now obvious impending fossil fuel shortages (and climate change), so why focus on the uneducated masses at your local shopping mall or the news delivered by Fox?
Here’s a story about hardworking thinking folk taking action: http://www.edrgroup.com/about-us/press-releases/study-examines-economic-impacts-of-midwest-high-speed-rail.html
Don’t look under you skirt – you may not like what you find.
“i’d give anything to ride that ferry to rodchester.” isn’t it funny the things we long for from western society from that era. is it just nostalgia from our youth or a deeper longing for what our society has lost in the last half century? even though i am from the opposite side of the political fence i hear it in your words. i would love to be horseback and drink beer with my dad one more time. or eat my moms gumbo. along other lines ; i got a glimpse of the future this weekend fishing in guatemala. the trip was good, but conditions saddened me. obvious population overreach in a very poor place. seeing kids broke my heart. when i was going home sunday, i thought i would rather live in any of the broken down texas small towns i drove through than anywhere i saw in guatemala. i cant blame people for wanting to move here.
A follow up post about speeding up succession and fertility cycling in our food production systems, after last week’s discussion of a plant’s proper place in the scheme of things. Potentially game-changing stuff if you’ve got larger fish than normal to fry.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/05/fast-forward.html
Cheers.
Asia, just wanted to make sure you saw my post about you upthread before I sign off for a few days. I need to focus on the farm for a bit, and my back is hurting from too much time at the desk. See y’all next week, maybe sooner.
Tripp
The sun showed itself in full today, after a 2 week hiatus, so I took a MC ride down to the community gardens in the Farmington Meadows to check things out. They are about 2 miles from here, along the Farmington River, a fertile stretch of land where people have been farming for 10,000 years, first the Algonquin Tunxis Indians, then, starting in 1635, English from Cambridge, MA, by way of Hartford. Now the town rents plots out for a nominal fee.
Many people were out working in these fields, weeding, planting, hoeing, building fences, you name it. For all you CFNers who don’t like immigrants, at least 1/3 of the families I saw working out there were obviously not from here, Peruvians, Vietnamese, Russian, Jamaican, Haitian. Meanwhile, on the little country road, my neighbors sped by in BMWs and SUVs, tinted windows rolled up, AC no doubt on full blast. I was thinking maybe we could learn something from folks immigrating here, people who lived on the land in their native countries, unlike us, who abandoned all that generations ago.
-Marlin
NOT SURE WHAT YR SAYING:
‘I was thinking maybe we could learn something from folks immigrating here, people who lived on the land in their native countries, unlike us, who abandoned all that generations ago.’
people destroy the enviornment
Marlin,
Regarding immigration into the US –
You have a laudable soft spot for the less fortunate, Marlin. I share your sympathies, believe it or not, I truly do.
You’ve also got a wistful longing for the family style behaviors that you and I experienced in our youth – we’ve talked about that before. I acknowledge that in myself as well.
But, Marlin, the argument goes that the US can only support
Oops – used a “less than” sign – trying to be fancy.
Some mysterious (to me) HTML thing clipped out part of this paragraph:
“But, Marlin, the argument goes that the US can only support less than 100,000,000 without fossil fuel inputs. Since we’re at 313,000,000 and climbing at 1,000,000/year – do you not buy into any physical limits to US population, at all?”
That’s cute, Vlad. Obfuscate away. I’ve got you by the balls (such as they are) however, because you are also “Mika”. And you can’t deny it. Unless you want to tell a blatant lie. I’ll be happy to welcome you to the adult world if you ever get there.
N.
For you (and Prog)
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/02/nine-billion-li.html
“Seek YHWH, all who are humble, and follow his commands. Seek to do what is right and to live humbly. Perhaps even yet He will protect you in that day of destruction.”
You’re going to be sorry when a tornado drops my house on my head tomorrow. They’re predicting more and I don’t have a basement.
You and Cash are both willfully blind to the deforming power of dollars and weapons.
Sure, there are feuding tribes everywhere. There are competing drug lords. There are religious differences, and people who hate their neighbors.
But the US comes in and arms one side, or pays people to turn in their neighbors, or trains certain thugs in the art of terrorism, or actually drops bombs on one side in a civil war.
And you don’t think that that makes a difference?
Why, they always hated each other, and the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles supplied to them by the US makes absolutely no difference in their age-old rivalry. The million dollars handed to them has no effect. The mercenary thugs sniping their enemies means nothing.
Right.
Nice Bageant link, Wage.
A little pessimistic, even for Joe. No wonder the man decided to check out of his life, too young.
He acknowledges that “mouths and assholes” inside the US are far worse for the planet than those NOT in the US. But he can’t quite make the logical leap that it’s time for the US to stop growing its population through immigration or other means. (May he rest in peace.)
Here’s how it ends, for those of you too lazy to click links and read:
“Thus, I am moreover just waiting it out. Either I’ll watch my sorry assed species will walk right off that cliff, or I will croak first. Crappy set of choices. Meanwhile, on a good day I realize that I’ve still got horses to break, ball games to fix and beer to drink.
Stay strong.”
-joe bageant-
Meanwhile, in my corner of paradise – my wife is out of town for one of these increasingly stressful emergent situations that come with being blessed enough to have elderly parents.
So, I was grazing out of the garden for dinner. And I ate the first (maybe 2nd, 3rd, 4th – I wasn’t paying close attention) of those damn little green cabbage caterpillars that will signal the end of broccoli season in less than a month.
The juvenile caterpillars actually don’t taste that bad. But their elders spin webs inside the broccoli flowers that make the whole thing pretty gross.
After that I got into a wrestling match with a large slug for a late season strawberry for my dessert. (I won.)
This planet has physical limits.
The United States has physical limits.
If you garden, if you understand biology – you are aware of this. It’s time to do we can to spread the word.
I really wish it were possible to ignore the south. That is what it deserves. But the south specializes in atavism on every front. Anti-union, anti-gay, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, pro-war, pro-military, pro-empire. I have to be forgetting another long list, but it makes my head hurt. We insist on dragging the rest of the country down with us. I doubt very seriously Newt (carpet-bagger), Huckabee, Haley, &c. enjoy any real leadership on the right, but they and many other southerners certainly enjoy playing the role. George W. and his bubba didn’t go north, you’ll notice.
Now Brother K. is a bit of a petty-bourgeois old lady. He complains about boys’ drawers hanging low and porcine Wal-Marters when there are much more important issues to concentrate on. True.
But even getting back to basics, one of his primary points about the south is that we are way too spread out and way too damn hot. Large parts of the south are likely to be abandoned as unsustainable. As if we understood that concept.
And I don’t care. The sooner the country as a whole repudiates absolutely everything the south stands for the better. Good riddance. Pound away, Mr. K.
Deck chairs on the Titanic, Lpat; but I can’t resist kicking them into new arrangements, anyway.
If the south had won in 1864 the world would look very different, no doubt. But the physical environment would not be quite as degraded from the triumph of American Style Capitalism, because that triumph would never have occurred.
The South LOST – and your whole list of atavistic allegations flows from that. We lost in a Culture where losing became the worst of Sins.
That we are still fighting the conclusions of 1864 on CFN is, at minimum, an indicator of how deranged the current US policy of intervention and nation building in the ME, and elsewhere, actually is.
That the south is now full of previously pro-union retirees, world-wide legal immigrants, and Yankee expat’s – who vote in the atavistic manner you decry –
Is a triumph of marketing and brainwashing.
Whose?
This is a test:
Great article wage. Much I agree with. The us should do things differently for it’s own sake if for no other reason. We should use less resources and mind our own business more. Hypothetically if western civilization was removed from the planet it would not make a dimes worth of difference in the the third world. To lay all of the problems in the third world at feet of the u.s. Is ludicrous at worst and niave at best. Limiting immigration is essential for survival of the west. It is not hate just common sense. I garden, have bicycle, I am learning some other country skills. I think my professional skills would transfer to a lower energy scenario. On the other hand I do not feel guilty for having a nice car, traveling, turning on the tv or eating a steak. Only boat load birth control will ever resolve third world situation. Another boat load here would not hurt either.
OK, that paragraph made it, lets try para 2.
OK, we’re making progress … now #3.
Next up #4.
#5
This past weekend I spotted this blurb in the NYT:
I’m getting old and I hate it, says Blondie’s Debbie Harry. The 65 year-old said “Women’s calling cards are based on their looks.”
Such truthfulness you don’t often hear.
Vlad, judging all the jews by Mika is like judging all germans by Hitler. Mika is clearly a deranged maniac.
“Does Satan have to resurrect Hitler at halftime at the Superbowl while the leaders of the republican party grovel on their knees in homage?” Just wait. That’s coming.
I’ve read a lot about conspiracies and even read The Prince once, but you put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together in that post. Leaves one feeling kind of sad for all the sheeple.
“A Filipino I know says he thinks like us but doesnt want to go home. It’ll be Warlords controlling each island as things implode.”
Guess I can cross the Philippines off my list of places to go when the missiles start flying.
I’m reading the Qu’ran….just for fun. In the 37th Sura (page 286 in M.A.S. Abdel Haleen’s translation) it explains that Muhammed described a beautiful woman as being as precious as an ostrich egg.
Woooo hoooo!
Jen
“Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings/GLSEN promoted book that detailed gay sex between FIRST GRADERS!”
Safe Schools Czar? You mean Larry Sinclair replacement.
Of course that triumph would’ve occured minus an amputated south which existed only to feed cotton to feed the machines of the industrial revolution. If you think the south’s environment, yes, still largely rural, hasn’t been polluted by as many fertilizers and pesticides as the north and west, you may be dreaming.
We are not still fighting ’64; we’re fighting over the south’s continuing shitty history. The south continues to be in thrall economically and in imagination to the military. We welcome each and every intervention. No matter how bloody or completely stupid.
Alas. Most unionists lost their balls in the post-war labor peace. Snowbirds vote their class.
Muhammed described a beautiful woman as being as precious as an ostrich egg.
============
Having lived a large portion of my life in NJ, I had no idea that ostrich eggs were deemed precious.
You could have been living in my basement by now if you had played your cards right. I love women with green skin. I would have taken you to see Wicked too. After the show, I’d buy you a witch hat too so you could sweep the house while wearing only that.
Read “I’ll Take My Stand” – a famous anthology of the Southern Agrarians for another perspective. Also weren’t there a few good writers from that area: Faulkner, Williams, Flannery O’Connor etc?
Remember, history is written by the victors. And after Lincoln was assasinated, the North proceeded to try to destroy the South just as Sherman and Co had tried to during the war. Luckily, Southerners rallied and fought back the forces of Yankee and Negro nihilism with the help of some good Northern Leaders.
I don’t. But you have to realize his attitudes aren’t coming from nohwere – they’re the traditional attitude of Judaism. These hateful beliefs survived the Enlightenment even at amazingly high levels of wealth and knowledge. Do the research. Ben Gurion believed that Jews were superior and that someday the world would be run from Jerusalem. Tikkun Olam is just a recipe for Global Jewish Totalitarianism. And the Hate Laws are the path thereto.
A good juxtaposition of the Armstrong thing and the banking meltdown.
Reminds me of a few years ago when John McCain was holding some Congressional hearings on steroids use in sports.
Which was apparently one of our nation’s greatest problems, while conspiring with Ted Kennedy to engineer a radical acceleration of population growth in the US constituted simply an innocuous little reform of our immigration system.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
A Wise Guy says:
“You saying P is not P is not you saying P is not P, therefore you are saying P is P.”
I answer:
You can invent a new relationship of P with itself such that:
not (P = not P) : this can be thought of as P cannot also be not P, or the classical principle of non contradiction;
not (P = P) : this can be thought of as P cannot be P itself, or the principle of identity is not valid for P;
So you can write this new odd relationship of P with itself by inventing a new symbol (just like the imaginary number symbol i was invented for square roots of negative numbers) as:
P :-: P (sorry if the symbol may already exists somewhere, ignore its any other meaning, just use it in this context here)
Now what is :-: ? It is real, it exists, it is a chunk of information and has relationships with other information, interacts with our mind, is a chunk of Matter, Mass – Energy interacting with itself, expressing a Reciprocal Information Relationship but we can’t visualize it, can’t conceive of it.
That is a [b]Metaphysical Relationship. [/b] You choose only some logic, you create intermediate values, you make up all kinds of wacky laws, and you can create new universes with them: this will be done in new modified minds that have new neural circuits and chips and other items like wild chemicals that allow these minds to experience new universes and lifestyles…
Oh, but you are fooling yourself, there is nothing new under the sun, it is just more confusion, it is just a make believe thingy where you make believe and think that you have defeated the hard – solid laws of Logic and the Laws of Physics. Good, but I like to make believe, now what ?
And doesn’t matter make believe it is alive by creating such absurd complex carbon molecules interacting in such a quirky way with itself through cells, insects and man ?
Oh, I see, Matter, Mass – Energy is allowed to break the rules, is allowed to invent all of its crap called life, and really believe in it, but we are not ? No way jose’, we will invent everything we want, and lie to ourselves as much as necessary, this is[b] MIND OVER MATTER BIG TIME[/b] (or is it will power over truth ? or a good capable to delude and lie to yourself ? well, who cares, as long as it works, but it never really works as we always have slight doubts, the variable C, entity of being convinced is never 100 %, even in the most rigid logic and math and physics, but this is part of that trick universe that evil god handed to us).
Now contradict me, the more you contradict me the more you confirm I am right, the more I enjoy, I like to win no matter what. Now what ? I love to be Wrong and lose, I am a loser, so what …
Hint, hint use boolean algebra to show me where I am wrong…
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
A Wise Guy says:
“You saying P is not P is not you saying P is not P, therefore you are saying P is P.”
I answer:
You can invent a new relationship of P with itself such that:
not (P = not P) : this can be thought of as P cannot also be not P, or the classical principle of non contradiction;
not (P = P) : this can be thought of as P cannot be P itself, or the principle of identity is not valid for P;
So you can write this new odd relationship of P with itself by inventing a new symbol (just like the imaginary number symbol i was invented for square roots of negative numbers) as:
P :-: P (sorry if the symbol may already exists somewhere, ignore its any other meaning, just use it in this context here)
Now what is :-: ? It is real, it exists, it is a chunk of information and has relationships with other information, interacts with our mind, is a chunk of Matter, Mass – Energy interacting with itself, expressing a Reciprocal Information Relationship but we can’t visualize it, can’t conceive of it.
That is a Metaphysical Relationship. You choose only some logic, you create intermediate values, you make up all kinds of wacky laws, and you can create new universes with them: this will be done in new modified minds that have new neural circuits and chips and other items like wild chemicals that allow these minds to experience new universes and lifestyles…
Oh, but you are fooling yourself, there is nothing new under the sun, it is just more confusion, it is just a make believe thingy where you make believe and think that you have defeated the hard – solid laws of Logic and the Laws of Physics. Good, but I like to make believe, now what ?
And doesn’t matter make believe it is alive by creating such absurd complex carbon molecules interacting in such a quirky way with itself through cells, insects and man ?
Oh, I see, Matter, Mass – Energy is allowed to break the rules, is allowed to invent all of its crap called life, and really believe in it, but we are not ? No way jose’, we will invent everything we want, and lie to ourselves as much as necessary, this is MIND OVER MATTER BIG TIME (or is it will power over truth ? or a good capable to delude and lie to yourself ? well, who cares, as long as it works, but it never really works as we always have slight doubts, the variable C, entity of being convinced is never 100 %, even in the most rigid logic and math and physics, but this is part of that trick universe that evil god handed to us).
Now contradict me, the more you contradict me the more you confirm I am right, the more I enjoy, I like to win no matter what. Now what ? I love to be Wrong and lose, I am a loser, so what …
Hint, hint use boolean algebra to show me where I am wrong…
From that link,
A Wise Guy says:
“You and I both know what those symbols mean to you, you know a purple giraffe isn’t an orange elephant. If the language I am using right now are unclear to you, you should go back to school and take an English course.
If we were in the Saharan desert and I told you there was a lion approaching, you wouldn’t think to yourself, how do I know his lion is my lion, how do I know what he means by lion is what I mean by lion, words aren’t static, they’re a product of blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada, NO, no you would run. You only talk like this now because you have the luxury of sitting behind a computer screen and pleasuring yourself with nonsense.”
I answer:
But why did Matter and Mass – Energy decide to invent the pleasure/pain circuits and interactions between life forms that force you to run ? It is a quirk arbitrary relationship that “natural evolution” developed because it wanted to “create reality”, it wanted to “wake up”. But it is not really successful as its individual entities perceiving and “living” die, so what is left ? It keeps on creating other new entities that perceive, feel, have action and reaction interactions through arbitrary pain/pleasure circuits (because there is some kind of internal score keeping game it INVENTED, like live long enough to reproduce ? or just fight for food ? or just avoid pain ? or any other puny computer programs, one transistor circuits, if pain BAD, if pleasure GOOD, billions of molecules and reactions that boil down to a one transistor circuit, go figure, so much for “intelligent design”).
But we invent “fluff”, we invent even higher levels of “not necessary”, of “quirks”, that is our destiny. We will change our minds and brains and visit new universes…
You want to see real “reality” ? Go on the SUN and look at what Matter should really be doing instead of making believe it is alive, or go on Mars and look at how the rocks are just there, they stay put, they don’t “do anything”, they are superior to this baby like game Matter plays with itself…
:-: means P can’t “not be itself”, but at the same time (and space, or where ?), it “can’t be itself”, so what can it be ?
I like :-:
Poor P.
From
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
A Wise Guy says:
“In a literal sense, ^^^ is ^^^. In a symbolic sense, ^^^ is nothing, unless we agree to make it something.
In an inductive (space/time) sense, the ^^^ here isn’t the ^^^ here. In a deductive (same/different) sense, ^^^ is the same as ^^^.
Perhaps you’re confusing the multiple senses.”
I answer:
Two things come to mind:
1) We decide when and how to make ^^^ the same with itself or different according to where or how or what we intend to do with it: but in a metaphysical, therefore real world, you shouldn’t distinguish, you should be above “different senses”. Oh well, just keep on doing what you want, there goes “rigid logic” out of the window;
2) Let us agree to make P follow those laws I stated, and namely it can’t be itself and it can’t be different from itself. Now what ? But P is real, it is an Information Relationship that lives in a metaphysical world, an infinite recursion of existence denying itself.
But, on a more general note, I know that so much philosophy in the 20th century has been imitating the Sciences, Logic, study of Languages, etc. (has evaporated into sub branches of math or logic or whatever (what am I to know, I am a drop out, ignorant who didn’t even finish high school, just saying ) ). And they have progressed, but I like this more old fashion stuff, it is more fun, you can do whatever you want with it, who cares if it is all wrong, we are not going to build Rockets with this stuff, or use it where all the real Sciences like Mathematics, Physics, etc. have a total hold on all things practical, as it is correct that it should.
Maybe I like the more “artistic”, or “poetic” aspects of some pseudo philosophy and metaphysics…
PoC;
Its hard to predict the future, ‘specially when it comes to economics. Jim gives it a try and what carries him forward is his obvious literary ability. He is often wrong. From where I sit, the country does not seem overcrowded. Those folks working in the fields I spoke with yesterday are doing exactly what we talk about on this site. To exclude them because their children, 25 years from now, may join the consumerist culture, seems misguided. For one thing, there probably won’t be a consumerist culture 25 years from now.
Yes, I am a Yankee with English roots, but one strain of my family comes from Portugal. I know when they first arrived here in the 1880’s they weren’t made to feel too welcome. But by the time I came along I’ll be damned if I could tell any difference between the Yankee and Portugese relatives. PoC, despite all the BS about ‘multiculturalism’, which comes from the academy, immigrants become assimilated. It takes only a generation or two.
As long as I have you here I have some questions for you. All of Joplin, MO has been wiped out, more tornados last night, massive flooding in the Mississippi Valley, and the President is in London drinking hot toddies and playing crochet with the Queen at her Palace outside London. I understand Michelle and her entourage have also embarked on one ass-kicking shopping trip, yet again. I never expected much from this guy, but why is he getting a pass, considering how bad President Bush got hammered after Karina? Also, where are all the anti-war protests? Why did they end so abruptly after Nov. 2008. Do they only come out when there is a Republican president? Same goes for Gitmo. Until Nov. 2008 it was the worst place since Kolyma or Treblinka. Now you hardly hear anything about it. Why do you think that is? Its a curious state of affairs, is it not?
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Spider;
WTF does ^^^ mean?
-Marlin
Vlad, there are people in every ethnic group who believe their ethnic group is superior. There are individuals who believe they are personally superior to others. There are whole nations who believe they are superior. In every religion there are people who believe their religion is superior. In every cultural group there are people who think other cultures are inferior. Even different regions of countries think they are superior to their neighbours (just ask Bavarians what they think of some of their northern Brüder, or Georgians about Yankees).
Deutschland über alles!!!
Why do you think that is? Its a curious state of affairs, is it not?
Agreed, Marlin
You make a good point.
Double standards no matter which side they’re coming from are infuriating. Both sides do it. The problem is the real progressives are most unhappy with the moderate Republican/free marketer who is Obama, but the right wing calls him Communist, Socialist and Hitler all rolled-up into one mixed race guy who shouldn’t be in the White House. So all this hyperbole creates sides that people stick to like glue. He’ll get to Joplin just as soon as he can….
Has anybody seen Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s R, MD presentation on peak oil?
It was on CSpan last night. The guy is 85 years old and brings with him quite a historical perspective. He has charts, like Glen Beck. He was speaking to an empty chamber, though. I don’t think many in Congress are paying much attention to what he is saying. He implies that himself. I watched closely and he seems to be saying we are f—-d. He is the only person in public life I’ve ever heard seriously discussing Hubberts Peak and Adm. Hyman Rickovers’ predictions on energy problems made back in the 1950s.
-Marlin
Yes, we’re all a bunch of hypocrites and won’t protest when it’s our guy who’s an asshole. But mostly, anti-war activity during this past decade has been anemic owing to there being no military draft as there was during the Vietnam era. Instead we have socioeconomic conscription for persons such as farmboys from areas where there are no jobs so they must enlist in the navy like both of us did. The people I run into at subvets meetings tend to fall into two categories: retired chiefs, and nukes who got out after one six year enlistment to work in the civilian nuclear power industry, so they’re doing well right now.
I cut hair in a quasi-redneck barbershop where one of the other barbers is one of these curiosities namely a northern born Confederate sympathiser. If the confederates had won there probably wouldn’t have been any of this bailing out the British Empire nonsense by the Yankees as they would’ve had more modest aspirations. There maybe wouldn’t have been any Teddy Roosevelt Panama Canal building and Great White Fleet gunboat diplomacy either. Had the Germans done better during the first World War there would’ve been no war reparations to drive them into the arms of the Nazis and the second world war might never have happened. With no WWII the Cold War wouldn’t have happened either. But we’d still be petrogluttons I’ll bet.
There’s a slight chance that without WWII the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb wouldn’t have been invented yet, but I wouldn’t count on that. At any rate it is largely our own national grandiosity and triumphalism which is undermining us right now. Then there is our antique 18th century government which tends to be polarized along predictable culture wars divides. Will the Pig Empire [Abby Hoffman’s amusing term] pull this one out of its ass and invent the limitless bio-diesel via salt water algae aquaculture industry in tandem with thorium nuke plants? Doesn’t look like it. We’re still wasting our money on sitting duck nuke aircraft carriers, the latest folly of the Skimmer-Puke Admirals oblivioius to the Russian SSGNs laying in wait to send them to Davey Jones’ Locker. Apparently they never got the word that surface craft are obsolete, or else they just like having a ruinously expensive gunboat diplomacy fleet for show. This reminds me of that issue of The Atlantic which depicted the navy’s surface fleet as a flock of ironclad sitting ducks, waiting for the Russian [now Iranian] missile boats, guided missile subs, and backfire bombers to blow them out of the water. And finally, this giant fleet also comes in handy for protecting convoys of Liberian freighers bearing uncounted millions of tons of crappy plastic consumer goods [produced by slave labor in China] to ruin our balance of trade while eliminating all employment for ordinary people here who couldn’t afford to go to medical school so they could have a nice little sinecure gorging themselves on the backwash from the insurance industry which has enslaved us, namely the American consumer formerly known as the American citizen back when the government actually expected something of us and was known to actually demand that young men serve in the military.
Q,
Your latest entries on this blog has addressed what you might call sexual politics (or the war between men and women as you see it). I bet you love Tolstoy. (A wonderful writer to love)
I have the impression the ladies just can’t win with you.
A few weeks ago when we were discussing Russian art, you described the ladies who attended an exhibit as older, dowdy wearing sensible walking shoes. Now you’re describing the need for women to attract the men even at 89.
My feeling as a woman is that one wants to put their best face on to meet the world. It’s like brushing your teeth and combing your hair so you look a bit better to the outside world than you did when you slithered out of bed that morning.
It’s not just about attracting men, it’s about putting your best foot forward.
“Of course that triumph would’ve occured minus an amputated south which existed only to feed cotton to feed the machines of the industrial revolution.”
-LPat-
Exactly my point, Lpat, AND cotton was on its way out of the South, anyway – due to soil depletion and the cotton boll weevil. Cotton was keeping slavery going – slavery would have gone away, also – when cotton went.
Slavery was nearly gone worldwide, already – to be replaced by Wage Slavery, a more efficient Capitalistic system.
The 1,000,000 dead of the Civil War died for what became the triumph of American Capitalism – and THAT’S what has degraded the planet’s environment, far more than would have happened without a unified US.
I agree that the south is more militaristic of the regions. That comes from getting our ass kicked and having the recurrent urge to prove that we are not LOSERS – over and over. Basic psychology and sociology applies to socioeconomic regions as well as individuals, IMO.
Maybe this region welcomes the “interventions” more than others, maybe. Although a lot of New Yorkers would have killed with their bare hands right after 9/11.
But, Lpat, the “interventions” are not designed in the South. They are designed in the Globalist Think Tanks of Washington, London, and New York.
That’s where you will find the people who really deserve the blame.
Sounds like the Right Wing Authoritarian Aristocratic Elite is following a design. This is scary – my ideas are converging with those of Hancock1864 – REAPPEAR, Hancock!
*****
Dayuum, boy! You can think and write!
PoC, the south was militaristic BEFORE the Civil War. I cite Andrew Jackson, our one true Soldier-President, and the Tennesseans and Cajuns, who became Texans, kicking ass against Mexico and the Comanche Nation 1830s-1840s.
-Marlin
Quite a post there BBheadmark, quite a post!
-Marlin
JHK probably doesn’t read this babble, but if he does, would he maybe start an organizatin devoted to positive action, like a garden community or a intentional community, you get the idea. This doomsayer material is well received and taken seriouisly by me, but what now? Seems like there’s a rational, graduated and sensible transitional plan to make and carry out; rather than the hysterical end of world rubbish of the extreme christianists and other fundamentalists. Should we wait for them to elect insane people who will look for scapegoats as the crisis unfolds? I believe in doing the best you can in the place where you are, but perhaps we can create something useful and beautiful out of this now, or start now, while there’s only smoke, not fire.
I’m sorry, Marlin, but you are presenting Hope as a strategy.
“From where I sit, the country does not seem overcrowded.”
-marlin-
There were +/- 50,000,000 Native Americans when Columbus got here. Their numbers were limited by the physical environment – no fossil fuel use for Ag and medicine, mostly.
Let’s double those numbers for modern medicine and technology. Let’s double them again because American residents are just naturally lucky. (Lucky?)
That gets us to 200 million – which was probably an OK number. Now we’re at 313,000,000 and climbing at a rapid rate.
This can not end well, Marlin.
also –
“to exclude them because their children, 25 years from now, may join the consumerist culture, seems misguided.”
-marlin-
US residents have been marketed to the point that the Consumerist Culture IS America. Common heritage – gone – ’cause Washington and Jefferson were White slaveowners, or Christians – or some such.
There is nothing to assimilate into, anymore, except a nebulous yearning for *freedom* which translates into air conditioning, personal cars, cheap food, and lots of *STUFF.*
You are well intentioned, Marlin. But, written across the whole of America, good intentions are taking the US over a cliff – pulling the rest of the planet helplessly behind.
There were no 50m Indians on this continent.
Anyway has the US surrendered to Israel yet, or at least has the anshlus happened?
Bibi gets 56 standing ovations, the armageddon cult has gone secular and mainstream, and JHK wonders why this country is falling apart.
Now I know its the primary season and the morons of the political parties are lining up rich jewish donors and all, but if this pro-Israel crap continues on into the general election, then I have one suggestion, build a bomb shelter.
A lot of people read this babble, Alannala.
JHK presented a plan about a year ago that might actually avert some of the catastrophe.
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/07/my-tea-party.html
“There were no 50m Indians on this continent.”
-nw-
You’re right, the situation is worse than I painted it above.
50m in all of the Americas.
20,000,000 in North America.
Now, 313,000,000 and climbing in the US alone.
Overshoot is a terrifying thing to face.
Thanks for getting back to me on that, PoC. You make some good points.
These people are here. They are not going anywhere. We are just going to have to make the best of it.
We’ll just have to respectfully disagree this time, that’s all!
-Marlin
El Toro Farm
“La Casa de la Dulce Tomantinos”
In electronics, If you take an inverter, the logical NOR gate, and feed the output back to the input, you effectively get A= not A. And the “physical” result is either it oscillates going back and forth between 1 and 0 or it gets stuck at some fixed intermediate value between 1 and 0, depending on the physical (random ?) details of the circuit, but most likely it would oscillate at a frequency (pretty high I imagine). So this kind of representation of the relationship vaguely reflects and suggests an “infinite recursion of existence denying itself”, as physics likes to tease us with some kinds of Metaphysical “suggestions”.
But also, this simple (one transistor circuit more or less ?) materializes in a sense that A can’t be itself, but at the same time can’t be different from itself. But you get some kind of defined behavior, it remains tractable because it is an entity made up of constituent parts, so it can just make believe it is one entity (indivisible and justice and liberty for none ?) when obviously it is not since it is made up of so many atoms, etc. and being made up of many parts it can trick the relationship and fool it easily.
Also, a person having conflicting will powers (everyone is always in these states somewhat) can easily say “I can’t be myself” and at the same time “I can’t be but myself” (go figure what the self is). Again this is because a person (or mind or brain ?) is made up of constituent parts.
But in Metaphysics, A is a completely abstract entity, just like numbers (much closer to mathematical – platonic entities, but mathematical entities are still not 100 % Metaphysical entities), no constituent parts, no extension in space or time, no nothing, simply a delimitation, an entity, an item.
And in this very real world it really can’t be either itself or different from itself so it exists in a way we can’t imagine, it is totally intractable, but we can look at it from a distance in awe, and appreciate how astounding it is.
And so tell me what is the square root of the square root of no number at all ? Invent your new symbols, go on, create a new schematic of a modified mind.. show me a new design.
Well Qshtik, you gotta admit nobody does “Rapture ” like Blondie!
So Jen, are u an ostrich egg? ;0)
You know, Vlad, the image of me living in your basement isn’t as appealing as I think you meant it to be.
And I’ve seen Wicked. I thought that it sucked.
Like Obama, it’s popularity is a victory of marketing over quality.
Q’s comments on women say more about him than women.
Shallow men are attracted to shallow women. It takes a lot of nerve for him to criticize all women based on his living with a painted-up Barbie doll and her Betty Davis mother.
But I’m sure that they deserve each other.
I keep recommending Kevin Phillips’ “Cousins Wars” to people refighting the Civil War on this blog.
The South and the North were settled by different people. They may have come mostly from the British Isles, but the South was heavy on the Scots-Irish breed, while the North was more English.
They were fighting before they got here, and it’s carried on since.
Wage,
Vlad’s vision for you is downright subjugation–scary stuff, doesn’t belong on this blog.
Q. is is just a misguided misogynist.
Just though I’d share an email I wrote to MSNBC reportage of the New York state election going to a Democrat.:
Attn.MSNBC:
Wouldn’t it be a mark of true democracy from our media if only issues like privatization and the global system were discussed in lieu of our budget.
Nobody talks about how much the privatized no-bid contractors are making in the security complex since 9/11. The only reporter who discussed this is Dana Priest and PBS was too scared to delve into the subject on Frontline a few months ago.
All you need to know is that nobody can account for how much money is being spent for so few results.
Our free market fundamentalists will not let go of trying to privatization our “Entitlements” that we have paid into all our lives. They are utterly dishonest, not the democratic party who understand that the costs will be far higher to the people than a fair tax system would be.
Our jobs and salaries have been systematically slashed, our home value destroyed, our interest rates destroyed for the global casino, who are now betting on our life spans.
Nothing will be addressed until, Too Big Too Fail, subsidies to the biggest monopolies of tax payer money and the truth, that no regulations make free markets impossible because all you get is a redistribution of wealth and cronyism is addressed.
We gave up our industrial base to become financial hegemon of the world, but the American people are the biggest losers!
Clusterfuckers may enjoy this video-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
A friend visited and returned with pix…
The out isles, and there are 1000’s [?] of isles..
are as beautiful as Hawaii is or was..
BUT IF A NATIVE THERE THINKS HES BETTER OFF HERE
[WHERE THERE IS RULE OF LAW] WELL…
“These people are here. They are not going anywhere. We are just going to have to make the best of it.”
-marlin-
Marlin – I never said anything about deportation of the people already in the US – not one single time.
Watch this to see the disaster we face if immigration rates are not reduced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ
“Replacement Level” immigration is the best – non racist, non divisive – suggestion, and it’s in this video.
What popularity? And really, McCain/Palin? BHO campaigned as a pragmatist and said he would try and be President for all, even the citizens that didn’t vote for him. He must be governing from the center, because he’s upset both the right and left wings. Give me a candidate that forces hard change on us and I’ll show you a candidate that has committed political suicide.
Independents, like me, have better things to do than protest what the Fed gov’t is doing (work in my garden, ride my bicycle, think locally, manage relationships, talk to my neighbors).
I guess some have forgotten that JHK continues to emphasize that the Feds will become increasingly ineffectual in the coming years. Stop looking to Washington to solve all our problems.
Good letter, lbendet.
I don’t think that Vlad meant his words to come out the way they did, but, whoa!
And Q is a jerk.
He’s not governing from the center – he’s governing from the top, serving his corporate masters well.
Just because we, the people, are divided into “right” and “left” doesn’t mean that we aren’t actually really divided into the top and the bottom.
Nice that you can tend your garden, and I mean that sincerely, but there are millions of people who no longer have their normal lives, thanks to BHO. And I’m talking about slaughtered children, war refugees, broken families and the rest that endless war brings to societies.
I care about those people also.
I thought you were a conservative. You know:
*”the gov’t that governs least is the gov’t that governs best”
*”starve the beast”
*”the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”
Why wouldn’t you want the Pres to be in London, i/o finding more ways to steal your money, through taxation?
JSS,
Why do you think it’s preferable to be gouged by each privatized for profit service than to be taxed. You should check out the prices of that which was once public with the price after it was run by a corporation or contractor.
Start with the military vs private contractors–that’s your tax dollars paying them.
Speaking of misogynists, has anyone heard that the legal team of Zionist DSK has made attempts to bribe the assaulted maid’s family in West Africa? Nice! I once worked with a young Zionist who was engaged to marry a gentile. He told me what a hot sister his betrothed had. So hot that he took it upon himself to set up a camera in her bedroom closet aimed directly at her bed. Said he got some nice footage of her “carpet” and hooters. Just goes to show you how Netanyahu and all the nice young perverted Zionists view us gentiles. And you thought they only hated Muslims! Silly! By the way, our bought and paid for CONgress put on quite the display of ass kissing for Bibi the other day. Hope you had a chance to see where all of your money has gone! Too bad Obama had to miss Bibi’s visitation. Then again, Obama might have had to deal with some awfully hard to remove stains from his suit – as Monica was loathe to find out.
“You could have been living in my basement by now if you had played your cards right.”
Actually, your mom would have never allowed it.
Wage,
Allow me to take umbrance on your behalf.
In a give and take forum where people express their ideas and beliefs, there was no place for this. And coming from Mr. I want to protect the greatness of the white race and all, I’m not impressed.
He totally disrespected you as a wife and mother, btw.
Oh great guardian of standards–where are your’s, I ask?
There were shades of “The Collector” by John Fowles implied in his comment. As they say even serial murderers started small.
Again read Brimelow, he goes into this kind of irrational thought about [ahem] ‘our tradition of immigration’ citing facts and figures…
Forgive Marlin, he was having a bonding experience with the invaders.
‘Seems like there’s a rational, graduated and sensible transitional plan ‘
IF it exists then offer it to us, we are all eyes, not just doomers and liberals.
‘grazing hooved animals’
Did I ask about their role in old Japan?
And did I get an answer? I know yr busy……..
SHARE YR LIST WITH US!
EVER HEAR OF A GUY WITH A SITE [ HE CHARGES]
TRENT? SAWYER…he was on C2C radio a few nites ago.
A friend subscribed to ‘Right move overseas’..wasnt that good a newsletter.
Wake up Lpat…
‘anti-immigrant, anti-environment’
Pro immigrant is anti-environment…….
thats a fact..ask vlad about the real story on the sierra Club…
Iask you this:
WHY ARE MANY OFTHE WOMEN HERE SUCH MAN HATING, SOUTHERN HATING LIBERAL NAZIS?
Wage,
It was the USSR/Russia that was by far the biggest arms supplier to Iraq. Next biggest were France and China. The evil USA was small potatoes.
This is according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Database:
http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/html/export_values.php
From 1950 to 2010 the USSR/Russia exported to Iraq arms amounting to US$31,640,000,000. France and China were next largest with US$5,062,000,000 and US$5,018,000,000 respectively. The USA exported to Iraq arms amounting to US$1,370,000,000.
According to the info given on the site the figures are given in constant 1990 million US dollars. So 31,640 (this is combined USSR and Russian arms exports to Iraq) means US$31,640,000,000 in exports from the USSR/Russia to Iraq expressed in 1990 US dollars. 5062 means US$5,062,000,000.
So the Iraqis were/are armed to the teeth. Blame the Soviets/Russians.
SIPRI website:
http://www.sipri.org/
Per wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_International_Peace_Research_Institute
Wage, I keep reiterating that the US is not the only power on this planet. I must have read 20 times that it was German firms that provided Sadam with the capacity to produce the chemical weapons he used against Iranians and against Kurds in Iraq. The Iraqi nuclear reactor that the Israelis blew up (and which no doubt was meant for purely peaceful purposes) was produced by France. A Canuck engineer (Gerald Bull) and his company were developing advanced long range artillery pieces for Iraq. Bull was shot (5 bullets to the head) outside his apartment in Brussels. Many speculate it was an Israeli hit team.
The USA is a power but it is not the only power. There are others with their own interests.
when I saw your name here my jaw literally dropped — Asia
=================
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM
Sometimes ya literally gotta die to be appreciated. CNBC biz show anchor Mark Haines died last night (age 65 — cause not reported) and the tributes are pouring in. He never let an interviewee get away with a bullshit answer.
“How bout the use of nouns as verbs: for example – He gifted me or It’s tornadoing outside?”
Actually it’s been “tornadoing” outside a lot recently – a sign of the times?
8 people shot in the past 2 days in New Haven. Some sort of gang war. People shot (or stabbed) during the past week in Norwich, New London, Hartford and Bridgeport. These are not big cities.
Meanwhile, what’s on the agenda of our State Legislators today? Oh yea, a ‘Transgender Bill’ so transvestites can legally use the ladies bathroom. I’m not shittin’ ya CFNers, its true!
-Marlin
And you want to bring in even more diversity to create even more violence. Where will it end? Remember, Soylent Green is people.
Yes it’s the begining of Art Bell’s super storms. At their height they will cover half the continent at at time. And during winter they will leave 10 feet of snow.
Viewed metaphorically, it’s a war between the cold air of the north and the warm air of the south. In human terms, it’s the conflict between the Whites and the incoming Third Worlders. It can only result in war – one which we are clearly losing. Hopefully Art Bell is right and an Ice Age is close at hand. We may be saved by the snow. And our fur clad ancestors will gradually reconquer this continent and the Light of Civilization will shine forth again in a new Aeon.
Well remember, you called me an ass and I am a Master of Words. And given your identification with the Witch, it just kind of flowed… But in all seriousness, I do hope for your saftety in this time of storms.
She takes her politics very seriously but not herself. Very unlike you or the average feminist. My kind of woman. Don’t care for the Communism though. This creates a tension which we ease with humor.
I think the word you wanted is spelled umbrage. Good word not used enough.
Yes absolutely, that is the last book I ever bothered to package & mail to my favorite British history professor from college. “The Cousins Wars” also explains the differences between the various British protestant churches as well.
The Scots-Irish were the presbyterian borderers in the service of the crown during the plantation of Ireland, so called. They were swineherds and they didn’t take no shit off nobody. They also knew how to distill their own whiskey. That sounds familiar don’t it?
The English of course were and are stratified by class. To get into the great universities at Oxford & Cambridge [collectively “Oxbridge”] you had to go to the right boarding school. Sound familiar? On this side of the pond you practically had to get into Episcopal boarding school if you wanted to go to one of the big three ivy universities. This last was a conscious aping of the English ruling class dating from the Gilded Age, which marked the recrudenscence of federalist Anglophilia. This lead directly to JP Morgan bailing out the British Empire while waiting for the Presbyterian President Wilson to come around to help out our English cousins with a little prompting from the Kaiser’s U-boats. When I’m thinking about this shit I always remind myself that JP Morgan was the richest lay Episcopalian in the United States and that New York city is the only real large Anglican city in the USA, and the final dedoubt of the British army at the end of the revolutionary war during the early 1880s. So to me there is a sort of New York cultural taint to this catering to the British we’ve had since after the Civil War with the attendant rise of Wall Street.
I don’t think that the English are weenies though. At least not the lower class who belong to the off-brand protestant dissenting chapels much as Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army drew heavily from the independent congregationalists and anabaptists in the ranks. Which is why my favorite movies are BRITISH GANGSTER FILMS. Is Ben Kingsley a foppish twit in “Sexy Beast”? No, unexpectedly for an English film he’s a straight ahead brute. Of course foppish twits can be sadists after all, I guess. Kind of like the British army officer in “Revolution” who forced Al Pacino’s character & son to drag a fox decoy across half of Long Island with the lobstertails in hot pursuit on their mounts.
Should be fur clad descendants not ancestors. Buy now before the rush. I’m going to wear a pig skin with the head of a boar still attached. In the cold weather I’ll switch to bear.
CORRECTION TO ABOVE: American Revolution concluded in 1783, not the 1880s, which were the gilded age.
Vlad said, “The role of drugs in society is huge.”
For myself, I abstained from Coffee and all other sources of caffeine for 5 weeks. Lethargy and disinterest followed, not just in the day to day drudgery of existence, but the whole enterprise of “constructive” labor.
A cup of coffee instantly revived that interest and motivation.
The fact is that you cannot separate the chemical and the mental realms. We are the chemicals we ingest, absorb, or synthesize.
Armstrong’s putative drug use and concurrent professional success is no different from the pattern of behavior predicting success in the real world. Unless someone had abstained their whole life, rest assured that anyone’s earned lifestyle was borne aloft on a series of small molecular chemicals and their endogenous receptor sites.
My personal feeling is that the performance differences between populations, cited so many times by Vlad, don’t control for the influence of such things as nutritive or chemical supplementation or deficiency.
All I know is that a rowdy gang of Khat-chewing Yemenis brandishing ceremonial knives makes for a most uncivilized display. Even the Nav’i got high on biochemically-mediated symbiotic interfaces. The Native Americans enjoyed smoking whatever was around, Sage, Kinnikinnick, or what-have-you. The Herbologists carry on this tradition today. The Organic Farming hippies will shove any number of phytotoxic and aromatic chemicals into their mouths along as adjuncts to the make-believe of folk medicine.
Nearly everybody needs drugs to get along, the DEA wants to control this empire of power and money and kicks back to the pols and churches in sanctimonious patronization. It is all just a war on personal freedoms, brought to you by the Democrats and Republicans.
Oddly enough, I don’t think anyone has ever called me a feminist. I’m not sure, but the word feminist describes an activist in a particular political movement. (of which I am not a part)
That said, I do take myself seriously, you’re right about that.
Outcast –
You’re new here, aren’t you?
This comment was so long that I basically ignored it. ShakaZulu quoted that thing about Satan bringing back Hitler while the Republicans cheered – and I thought that was funny. So I went back and read your comment for detail.
Good stuff, in large part, outcast. And the folks on CFN will tell you I’m no conspiracy theorist.
Cash – would you take a look at Outcast’s post and give us the “foreign” perspective?
Wage, what did you think about it?
Hey Wage –
Vlad said, “it just kind of flowed… But in all seriousness, I do hope for your saftety in this time of storms.”
That’s about as close to an apology as I have ever heard our Mr. Vlad approach. Then he added that thing about humor because of you two’s fascist/communist differences.
Ah, humor:
You ever watch Andy Griffith’s shows with Barney Fife, Vlad? Barney was always wanting to physically take on little Earnest T. Bass. Andy always told Barney not to do it by saying, “He’d kill you, Barney.”
That’s what I’m thinking about Wage and LBend.
“They’d kill you, Vlad.”
England is dedicated to the Dark Forces and has been increasingly so since the time of Henry the 8th. That’s why they drive on the left. The Pilgrimages to Jersualem always kept to the right. America kept this tradition while modern satanic Britain reversed it.
As Lewis and Williams put it: Britain is brutal Empire, Logres is Blake’s primordial Land – and England is the resultant of the struggle between the two. This three fold division could be found in many Nations.
It may well be Prog, it may well be. Are you aware of the explosion of violence among young women? As the Chrerokee say, a People aren’t defeated until their women’s hearts are on the ground. Our women are there. And they aren’t “our” women anymore but strong, self determined, independent (married to the Feds), own their own bodies, etc. Might such “independence” and the violence be connected?
Perhaps the Marxist Feminists are right: femininity is just a social construct and our young women want to prove that by emulating the worst aspects of masculinity. But illusion or not, I’m sure you agree with me that the old way was more beautiful.
-The Cousin’s Wars-
Haven’t read it, BubbleHead and Wage. Obviously I need to.
However, I have lived it. My dad’s family (14 brothers and sisters and a thriving mass of children – my first cousins) were straight-up Scotch Irish.
My mom’s smaller family was far more reserved and British.
The difference between those two sets of genes and those two cultures made my growing up years an interesting experience.
That tension thrums along and drives part of my spirit to this day.
———-
I married a girl from a pure Old Atlanta English/Episcopal family. I doubt her family would have let her have anything to do with me – BUT it was the ’70’s, Thank God – and family control had broken down for a while.
We’re still together – going on 31 years, now.
BTW, BubbleHead – nice posts. Please stick around and keep posting.
You’re stretching again, Vlad:
“England is dedicated to the Dark Forces and has been increasingly so since the time of Henry the 8th. That’s why they drive on the left.”
Have you ever heard the idea that cyclonic storms are worse in the Northern Hemisphere because WE drive on the right?
Think about it. Billions of extra counterclockwise air currents created daily – because of driving on the Right.
Should make a person go, “Humm?” or, maybe, “Huh?”
So in other words you’re not buying into the Tudor myth? England was a hybrid mess before America was the same only more so. The ancient Britons of the Roman province of Britannia were driven into the mountains of Wales by the Angles, Saxons, & Jutes. There is a German dialect just to the south and west of Denmark which is nearly comprehensible to speakers of English. The early medieval Anglo-Saxons were set upon by the Vikings who conquered eastern England. Then the Normans came. The English ruling class spoke French until after the Black Death, which is how they got the idea to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War. The true royal family of medieval England was the Plantagenets, but they fucked themselves during the War of the Roses which was good for Lawrence Olivier’s acting career, if nothing else. This is a huge historical mess which is why everyone in England is allergic to historical studies. It just goes on too goddam long. That’s what Joan of Arc called the English soldiers who burned her for wearing men’s clothes half a millenium before the advent of Twiggie: the “goddams”.
In Winchester Cathedral there is a medieval cardinal’s grave along with a statue of St. Joan of Arc in a protestant cathedral which also contains Jane Austin’s grave and a monument to whoever wrote “The Compleate Angler” [Isaac Walton]. There’s also a fanciful copy of the round table from Camelot. How can you take them so seriously? In their essence I find the English to be silly, but then I’m just English enough myself that they don’t make me paranoid even though I’m also German and Irish. Prior to the reformation the English were considered to be the best Catholics by the vatican! Maybe that’s why Anglicans are such crappy protestants. Of course the Papal States ended up slaughtering Italians during the Italian revolution.
To me the really cool thing in European history is Byzantium. It would be interesting to make a pilgrimage to Mount Athos to work as a volunteer laborer for the Vatopedi Greek Cypriot monastery, the richest monastery in the world and English speaking to boot.
Grandstanding baloney mark 10 at warp factor 7
That Obama says the west is still the best and the best agency for peace in the world, is pretty much the usual claptrap of exceptionalism and arrant nonsense. Having lunch with Beckham at the Palace helped him bend the facts. Half the world’s windfarms in China, the most extensive rail network anywhere. When the nodding donkeys start creaking and baying, who will be listening to this bloated culumny? Meanwhile Hillary Clinton goes to Greenland desperately trying to nullify the Arctic treaty because they think that the difficult, illusory, vast reserves will keep the economy going, is only going to accelerate the inevitable crash, which is pretty much fait accompli.
Want to know how to drive a Hummer when oil goes to $200? Answers on a postcard to Obama c/o The White House, Plan 9 from outer space.
I’m a Faberge egg!
Jen
Many of the Ulster Scots were once proud Celtic clans and the British, masters of divide and conquer, ensured their demise by pitting the most powerful clans against each other. For example, Clan Donald(MacDonald) coined the phrase ” never trust a Campbell” for their duplicitous allegiance with the British. Of course, many of these same Scots united in fierce opposition against their former nemesis in the Revolutionary War as the once vanquished earned revenge and retribution. What goes around comes around, again and again. Which should provide the Vlad’s of the world with a nice karmic shudder.
Marlin, I feel for ya, this country has gone to shit. My wife went to Nathan Hale middle school in NB, CT, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” a true CT. patriot and a real american hero! Almost as good a quote as ,”Don’t Tread on Me!” from the Gadsden flag!
Ah, Faberge ! I can see your inner beauty from where I sit! I am sure you are gilded in gold leaf and smothered in precious stones! can you come by thursday for an omelet? I will throw in some fresh scallions and maybe some baby radishes!hot but sweet ,but o so good. ;0)
call me a yanquee, call me whatch ya will, I luv my place and and I will not go down without a fight. I am not so much a patriot or a love my country type. I don’t follow the guvmint’ line!I just want to live my life as I please and allow others to do the same!
Oh Shit! now I am on the watch list again!
That’s right Buck – we will have our day. As for America – it would have been a great Nation even if it hadn’t rebelled against England. It would have been different – more like Canada. Better in some ways and not in others. What was absolutely necessary was the defeat of the Indians and the French. This victory insured the ascendency of the White Man on this Continent. Anglo Saxons were much more against race mixing than the French or the Spanish.
We are being divided and conquered as were the Celts by the Romans and later the English and as the Indians were by the English. White Americans are the new Indians.
Yes it took centuries of ethnic struggle to create England – but it has been thrown away in two generations. And some even think that English Culture will survive the Muslim Dominance. How crazy is that?
I love Orthodoxy too. Eastern Europeans are more balanced than Western Europeans – more conservative, ethnocentric, and intorverted/spiritual.
Solaren of California is on schedule to deliver 200MW of power to PG&E in 2016 to there substation in Fresno. It will come from a space based solar power satellite. The cost for this first proof of concept is high at “several” billion dollars. That is as much detail as they will give. But with SpaceX and sunk development cost their next project should have a much lower cost. If they get to $3000 per KW and 20 year lifetime they will change the world. Would love to know who the investors are. Humankind owes them a great big thank you.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=175312
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
and check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174921
Kill Thought and Kill Intelligence BIG TIME. After killing Memory and getting rid of this huge pile of crap we must Kill Thought itself, get rid of this pile of crap. Along with getting rid of the deceptions of the “principle of non contradiction” and “principle of identity”, the next thing we must do is get rid of thought, this constant chatter about nothing, this noise, and its corollary logic, language, concepts, the need to “communicate” and “communications”, and also INFORMATION, that’s right the very Reciprocal Information Relationships the universe is made out of, etc. And obviously we must kill Will Power another huge pile of crap, and all of the other structures that are inhibiting us, interdicting us from being what we should not be: and that is totally free and independent Metaphysical – Meditation – Philosophical Machines. And you think they would be afraid of falling into a “contradiction” ? What a joke!
And kill and obliviate all the pain/pleasure circuits that fool of Natural Evolution forced us to have, rebel against god, rebel against the Laws of Physics, show them who the real BOSS is, be your own BOSS.
Pain is the prison guard that forces us to follow logic and thought, but the first thing we will do is get rid of any prison guard like pain forcing us along a constant predetermined path, so free of pain we will be Metaphysical Machines, Emotion and Meditation Machines, pure monolithic blocks of higher states of Existence, Philosophical entities that travel to higher states and break ever more barriers.
One interesting thing about the Technological Singularity is that it was thought that higher “Intelligence”, machines evolving ever higher states of Intelligence would design even “Smarter” ones up to oblivion and Nirvana: nothing further from the truth, the first thing they will do is get rid of Intelligence and Smarts as is counterproductive, useless, must be killed and they would go the exact opposite path: in a way stupider and stupider machines, but something way past anything we can ever imagine, and actually try to get as far away as possible from Intelligence, be as stupid as possible, the exact opposite, and activate higher states of beings, Modified Minds, they won’t waste their Time on such puny noise and chatter , on a one line program when they can directly achieve universes of Metaphysics, Emotion States, and trillions of other entities way past anything even remotely related to us. That is why the path towards the Technological Singularity is actually the Instant Singularity, just stick wires with crazy signals in brains and wild chemicals in the minds and brains as randomly as possible, be as irrational and unreasonable as possible, it will be achieved (as in a faith thingy …).
Now please, design me a new schematic of a possible Modified Mind, one of those that the Automated Modified Mind Generator computers is producing.
How I long to trod the shores of orange lakes cool.
Congressman Jim Webb wrote a great book about the Scots-Irish in America. But did this love for his own heritage influence his voting? Not a bit of it: he voted for Eric Holder’s hate bill that protects everyone but Whites. He probably thinks like you that that Race is nothing and that Blacks can be Scots-Irish too. And then you criticize me for writing a speculative post about driving on the Left? As if that is crazier than believing that Black is White? Take out the beam from thine own Eye before you criticize the mote in mine.
Well, Jimbo, your first guess about why the
mainstream media would rather focus on biker
doping than the highjacking of the entire
American economy by financial gangsters was
THE correct reason i.e., the SPONSORS are
some mix of these gangsters and gangsters in
other quasi-monopolies telling reporters to
blow blue sky up America’s collective ass.
You see, they want us to believe in the current
stockmarket rally. They need collective hypnosis
so that they can get out in time themselves.
The financial services industry is creating the
illusion of economic activity through what remains
of the back and forth chit trading on Wall Street.
However, let us “get real” by admitting that
several other industries are participating in
the charade too, most notably HIGH TECH.
Most high tech is about as useless as tits on
a boar but we’re bombarded by images that imply
that all these gizmos add to our quality of life
when everything from lost productivity due to
email and obese kids glued to Xboxes indicates
otherwise.
The founders of Cybernetics warned us (in books
like “God and Golem” by N. Wiener) that the
purpose of computers is to LIBERATE people from
machines. Gadget worshipping is the exact
opposite of what they had in mind. Industrial
robotics was what they had in mind. Get computers
to do jobs that are dangerous and/or where the
precision of computers is vital (like mathematical
calculations). The idea of half the people in
public being fundamentally NOT PRESENT because
of their gizmo mesmerism is making them roll
over in their respective graves as I write this.
Also, the artificial complexity of these gizmos
combined with our obsession/narcosis with/by
them eats up loads of time so that we don’t
think of simple stuff like how to carve out
time for simple things like leisure, our kids,
our spouses, and getting work done for our
employers instead of web surfing on their dime.
We are a fucked up people and our fucked-up-edness
is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in our
relationship with our computing machines and how
it’s getting cozier and cozier as our
relationships with other people and objects grow
dimmer and dimmer.
E.
With a name like Vladimir I guess you would like the eastern church. I was chrismated into the Orthdox Church in the early ’90s by a Bulgarian priest named Father Vladmir at a skid row mission called St. Herman’s House of Hospitality. I did it there because they didn’t require adult sunday school of Catholics who were being received into the eastern church. It didn’t really take and I no longer attend church but I do respect them more than the wimpy western Christians. Besides, it only stands to reason that the holy ghost proceeds from the father THROUGH the son, and that it doesn’t originate with the son, which of course lead to monophysitism as they have in Egypt & Ethiopia where they deny the doctrine of the hypostatic union which is responsible in my opinion for the banal Jesus rantings of the radical protestants who are so insecure about the divinty of Chrrist that they’ve entirely forgotten the father and the holy ghost. Anytime some annoying baptist church lady is ranting “Jaysus” at me I invariably feel like snarling “shut the fuck up you theologically illiterate skank!”
One of the most entertaining spectacles in recent cinematic history was “Children of Men” in which the human race is dying out from infertility and the inhabitants of southern England near Canterbury, the seat of the primate of all England, have reverted to savagery but with a tiny admixture of Hinduism of all things! So there can be no doubt that the British are doing themselves in with all this implosion of the empire immigration nonsense. They might have had a chance if they’d confederated with the white dominions but it’s too late now. Nevertheless I don’t consider myself to be a racist but it is evident that there is some merit to your rantings about the decline of the white man. Let’s put it this way: only white men could have invented the social science known as anthropology. Every other race considers alien cultures to be little more than trash. The European colonists, by deigning to study their “inferiors” will in turn ultimately be subsumed by this tendency when Christianity dies and everyone is dabbling in buddhism. Of course buddhism has nearly died out in its country of origin which of course was India. I too am guilty of dabbling in buddhism so mea culpa. You have admitted in your posts that you’re interested in vedanta, which of course is hinduism. So we’re all fucked at least in terms of cultural consistency.
At one time I was very chauvinistic about the west but I found other church members to be so annoying that they finally lost all credibility in my eyes. If society is going to be rescued then we need a religion that people can actually believe in and not just this radical protestant crap with the hyper-divine Jesus mono-Christ divorced from the trinity practiced by various boobs and yahoos such as phony northern Confederates who vainly imagine that Robert E. Lee was some sort of proto Klansman when in fact he single handedly integrated the communion rail at his Episcopal parish church shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War.
E.
What a coincidence that you wrote about digital toys used to pacify the polity. I was thinking along the same lines yesterday.
With all due fairness to 60 Min this Sunday, it was a 2 hr. show. They led in with the doping story, but the next story was extremely important and I wrote about it on Monday:
[Of far more interest was the Scott Pelley interview NSA whistleblower Tom Drake, who is charged under the Espionage Act for exposing the NSA choice to go for “Trailblazer”, a massively expensive program.
That program epitomizes the neoliberal scheme to give billions of tax payer dollars to private contractors when in fact they already had a government program to be unveiled in Jan 2001, called “ThinThread” with a far smaller pricetag that could have averted 9/11.]
I noticed nobody responded to my post, nor did they respond to the story that for 29 years the issue of radiactivity in the Texas water supply was suppressed and this goes up to the governor, epa and others. No one responded to that post either. One would have to wonder what other dangers lurk that we have never heard about that have a direct impact on our health.
I think one thing we all agree with on CNF is that however you define the system we find ourselves in, it doesn’t work. The only ones who seem happy are the talking heads and their masters who pay them royally. It’s basically a closed loop system and we’re all outside of it.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
A Wise Guy says:
“Hahahaha, I liked you better when you were talking politics and labour obselescence 9, from whence this insane 180 degree turn came?
Why 9, why do away with thought and communication. My guess is, people weren’t taking your ideas seriously, so you gave up.”
I answer:
I got tired of asking the governments worldwide for CHEAP RENTS and FREE SALARIES, Complete Mass Transit systems in the form of BUSES (especially for the USA, but Obama said no dice jose’), and Rockets to Mars, and trillions of skyscrapers on Mars, trillions of skyscrapers on Jupiter and in the SUN, so I changed topic. They just won’t give it to me, so I had to give up. But they said that maybe the “hobby factory” and “free work” idea may have a chance, go figure…
I found this interesting block of text that I think I wrote (or was that someone else, who knows…?) when I still believed in James Kunstler’s PEAK OIL, Resource Scarcity, everything is ending mythology. I then meditated upon these concepts for a few years and switched my position as I now think that this myth just serves the Dominating Capitalist Class (this language makes me feel a bit nostalgic, it reminds me of when I was a hippy in the 1970s “fighting the system”, cool, who would have ever thought that I would be right back to all of this crap again ? Go figure..).
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=3&t=163929
“Those few that still think, being that thinking will be one of the first activities to end, given that its “energy return on energy invested would be hugely negative”, being that people couldn’t manipulate or change anything anymore, so thought would mostly disappear, but those that would think that there was once running water, free water coming out of a faucet would be flabbergasted and amazed. Just having water, drinking some dirty polluted water from the crowded wells, will seem like absolute paradise, and they would think, people really once had water for free ? from faucets ? they will never believe it. It is like a trillion years of technological evolution according to our “fairy tale extrapolation” of science and technology are closer to us than free water will be closer to them. A technological singularity, a virtual reality matrix is closer and more understandable to us, than just having water will be to them. Just to drink will seem like an absolute paradise after the end of free energy comes to be. There will only be a few millions left on earh after more than 6 billion just starved and died. People got sick and died, there would be no doctors or “health care”, another absolute science fiction item that people would never believe existed.
People will sleep in cars, all the old rusting chevys and buicks, those will be their homes since the old wood homes will have all been burnt to keep warm, and they will think “these once moved ?” how on earth is it even conceivable !?!? our beds once moved by that magic piece of iron in the hood and some mysterious black liquid ?!?! That is not even imaginable many will think. Another thing that will disappear is TIME. Time will flow ever more slowly, everything will flow in an increasingly slow motion. Why measure time, when nothing can happen ? nothing can change, all the motors are turned off, there is no more electricity, computers will be mysterious black boxes, people will look at them as some kind of mysterious magic boxes of the past, maybe some alien civilization left them, who knows what they did or how they “worked”. Why, did things actually “work” once ? No all this can’t be true, it must be some god that came down to the earth and describe a science fiction – metaphysical paradise, it must have all been invented by some mind going crazy because it didn’t drink some water after a few days.”
Texas Threatened with NO FLY ZONE
“In a point by point refutation of the DOJ letter, Simpson compared the battle against the TSA to the Texas revolutionary war against Mexico, writing, “Gentlemen, we find ourselves at such a watershed moment today. The federal government is attempting to deprive the citizens of Texas of their constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 9, of the Texas Constitution. If we do not stand up for our citizens in the face of this depravation of their personal rights and dignity, who will?””
Sam Houston would be ashamed.
http://www.infowars.com/financial-terrorism-tsa-holds-texas-flights-hostage/
“So we’re all fucked at least in terms of cultural consistency.”
Some of us still have the fortitude to resist evil. Churchianity should die. The Kingdom of God will continue to increase. Resistance is futile.
“I noticed nobody responded to my post, nor did they respond to the story that for 29 years the issue of radiactivity in the Texas water supply..”
-lbend-
L, I read all your stuff with great interest, and respond when I have something to add based on personal knowledge. I have no doubt that the “thin thread replacement” is true. It fits in well with the incredible waste of resources that WE spent on Cold War technology, manpower, and hardware.
There are always advocates for NEW programs.
Older programs lose their advocates because they become “sunk cost” with no new money to be made.
Same think with “selling public property” and relying on “private contractors” to perform what should be government functions. IMO, it all moves forward on paths greased by new money.
The question is, as always, what do we do about it?
Spider,
You resonate better with CFN as a pessimist. That stuff about the miracle of running water is very well done.
I’ve got to say, though, that “kill thinking” and “kill memory” seems indistinguishable from suicide or murder.
What is a human being without memories?
Vlad-
My response to you about the Brits driving on the left was intended as pure humor. You took it as “criticism.”
I think you are so used to being attacked, that you take everything as an attack.
And I can see where you think the fate of Western Civilization hangs in the balance. But here’s the thing –
You are not personally and individually responsible.
Lighten up a little and you will accomplish more.
“You are not personally and individually responsible.”
Never-the-less we will all {collectively} suffer the consequences of our individual and personal apathy.
“Rule by force, not by law: This is where it all begins; when the legal framework that serves to define a country and its behavior is dismantled and intimidation tactics take over. In the most extreme case, drone bombings and assassinations have begun of non-citizens, as well as U.S. citizens, leading only to a debate over whether U.S. citizens should be stripped of citizenship before assassination. Governmental assassinations are in complete opposition to the laws of America and all international laws and agreements. In the last week we have also seen the official elimination of the 4th Amendment in Indiana, which is a clear precedent-setting ruling to say that the State now believes that it owns the property and person of its citizens. As a result, the militarized police have been granted unlimited access, which will only cause an escalation in cases of police brutality and misconduct. This is yet another addition to the precedent set by TSA groping and sexual harassment in airports, Child Protective Services kidnapping children of activists in pro-liberty causes, public school surveillance, and the lawless detention of activists who videotape the police. All areas of society are now ruled top-down through state legislation adopted to justify federal grants that have installed a police state apparatus in America. And these federal agencies such as the TSA actually believe they rule supreme over the states. We now live in a country where CIA abductions, overseas detention, torture and assassinations can be carried out against anyone without due process and without recourse if later cleared; in fact, the Supreme Court has just ended the legal debate by refusing to even consider appeals. Consequently, an atmosphere has been created where the government is permitted to break countless laws, like warrantless GPS tracking of activists by the FBI, while average citizens are guilty of pre-crimes. The increase in executive power under the aegis of National Security is our greatest threat and has led to all that follows.”
a lot of links at the link:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/10-indications-united-states-is.html
MD, I don’t disagree.
But if I took all that as my personal and individual responsibility to correct – I would go stark raving mad.
People, throughout history, in hideously bad individual circumstances, have still managed to live balanced lives and do good.
We can not fight the sorts of things you describe as individuals. And if we obsess over these things AS INDIVIDUALS, we only degrade our own lives and accomplish nothing. There is power in numbers.
I think we’ve gotten off the subject if we get distracted too much arguing about cultural matters such as the comparative merits of various religions or the desirability of do-it-yourself spirituality versus “Churchianity”. I have heard this term before and I think that I know what you mean by it and I also agree with what you’re driving at.
Your comment could have a peak-oil connection in that a future low energy disconnected world will probably find global institutions such as the historic churches totally irrelevant. My personal problem with institutional churches is that I dislike nearly all clergy and am reluctant to encourage them in their manifest assholism by donating money so that they are enabled to persist in their careers as walking encyclopedias of personality disorders. I also have a problem with persons in general who are adept at adapting to and then using for their own benefit that which is without substance, especially when redolent of middlebrow social repression, bleating weenyism, and various douchebag and cheese-dick [is cheesedick hyphenated?] propensities which are clearly unoriginal and lacking in intrinsic value or true understanding from a gnosis standpoint.
Perhaps this sort of impedimenta will wither away in the world to come once the Exurban Cup Cake Land air conditioned nightmare of family friendly fascism has withered and mercifully blown away. Another anticipated benefit of post oil collapse would be the abollition of public education, an ongoing farce which forces people who cannot afford the attendant property taxes out of their dwellings and vulnerable to the predations of the greedy landlord class.
Churchianity should die.
==
Some good posts of late, MD. You’re starting to see the world through my eyes. You still have a long way to go, with much emotional deprogramming yet to take place, but you’re starting to make progress.
“Churchianity” and “god” are one and the same. They are inseparable. Both were invented for each other, to serve the government mafia and the elite that control it; one as form of mind control propaganda and the other as a form of unquestionable institutional authority. Both of these constructs have ZERO legitimacy in an enlightened world.
NC
The only things we can do is get our message out. That means pointing out that our present monetarist system isn’t the only option.
We need to point out that we need to consider the runaway costs of the privatized monopolies like health care insurance, energy, agribusiness, security complex, and banking are not adding value to this country, but are destroying our ability to keep the consumer based economy going that they say they want.
Without demand, the economy folds exponentially. Without interest rates that reflect reality people can’t make money on their money in FDIC backed savings.
It seems to me that everything they say they like has diametric oppositions built into them. Like the free market with no regulations. It’s impossible since the restrictions that are supposed to be part of the checks and balances would allow for more competition. Instead we get less.
If you privatize Medicare and don’t stop the costs from rising, then it’s impossible for people to pay for it themselves. When they get the hospital bill they’ll understand.
If you like globalism you won’t have jobs here. There won’t be enough revenues collected to support the country and all services will be a la cart profit centers.
When you don’t have good paying jobs you can’t pay for privatization.
You have to keep exposing the discrepancies.
This is definitely back on subject. One has to wonder “why are interest rates so low?” Unless matters are sorted out satisfactorily then people will have no recourse but to continue planning to drop out of society somehow or at the very least avoid unnecessary responsibilities and entanglements at all costs.
Hi Edpell, i read about Soleran and the concept sounds feasible. The problem I see is the energy will be transmitted via microwave energy down to the earth. The beam goes off target and cruises through downtown Fresno and turns everybody there into a crispy critter. Technology goes both ways. Look how well things are working out for Japan at Fukushima.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/fukushima-update-very-bad-situation/57915
Interest rates are low because we would be adding the interest rates to our debts which would make it virtually impossible to pay back. It’s just part of the rigged system.
I guess now it’s ok for the supply-siders to say deficits mattered after all. Once we went to a debt-based economy there was no other choice.
Big joke on the people, here.
Keynesian economics were far superior. But don’t tell the Reagan is Jesus people that.
“The illusion of economic activity.”
Here’s a good example in my opinion. The IPO of LinkedIn means that the company is now valued at around $9 billion. Huh? Last year, the company’s profits were $15 million.
On another note, I read the San Jose Mercury News this morning and the big front page story is that Oprah taped her last show yesterday. I watched her show three times in the past 25 years.
Last month, our family gave up AT&T U-verse TV. (We still have their internet connection, which is very fast.) They kept jacking up the price, and frankly it wasn’t worth it. We get local stations ABC, CBS, NBC & PBS and that’s it. I’m bummed that I can’t watch John Stewart and Stephen Colbert while I fix dinner, but that’s
the only drawback so far.
Jen
I read your comments also, lbendet.
At a certain point, the careful tallying of the destruction of our society and our environment becomes overwhelming.
If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!
MD’s link is a good one and I share it on Facebook.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/10-indications-united-states-is.html
Earlier I shared a link about the destruction of our environment. It talks about peak oil, and also about peak water, as well as peak fish. It’s depressing, but worthwhile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
There are concerned people everywhere, educating others.
But how do we organize to stop it? I am in the Green Party, but we are attacked and marginalized, and we have no money. Contrary to Cash and Vlad’s belief, it’s hard to affect society without the means to do so.
We may just be screwed.
Oh, we are indeed so screwed. There’s also the Coffee party as well, for what it’s worth, but today in this system, money is the only thing that counts.
Look at DKS. He’s now living in one of the finest pieces of real estate in NYC. In the lap of luxury. My sister just told me that when he gets out of jail the IMF he will be getting a $250,000.00 bonus mostly from the US tax-payer—what a system…but those politicians who get single-payer govt. healthcare will tell you we don’t have money for Medicare!!
Cash & Vlad aren’t being intellectually honest if they don’t see this. Even the rich and powerful know that’s why they want to be rich and powerful!
Double standards are what will eventually get people’s attention.
I obviously survived the tornadoes last night, but, let me tell you, it was scary!
We decided to go under the house, into the crawlspace, if necessary. Isn’t that like a basement?
But it’s dank and dark down there, with brown recluse spiders galore, so we kind of hung around waiting to see if there was really a tornado coming.
So when things REALLY got bad, there we were, standing at the windows, looking out.
Exactly what you’re not supposed to do!
“No, I’m just sick of all your bullshit, all your thievery your genocidal machinations your degenerate sickness. We had enough of you fsckers. We want you to get the fsck out of our country our region and go back to where you came from. Take your money take your weapons take your propaganda outlets take your military bases take your thieving corporations take your CIA stooges/politicians and get the fsck out.
And can you pass that on to your boss when you clock out, fscker.”
======
Oh my goodness.
Well, I suppose I could pass that on to my boss, but that would make me like you – batshit crazy.
What is your problem? Are they still making you use the plastic utensils at lunch? When are they going to give you a day pass?
You and Helen Highwater would make a great couple.
Well, prog, I agreed with it, except for the part about the Iraqis attacking each other, which is what set off Vlad and Cash.
JohnathonSS made a comment that we hear a lot, even though it’s ridiculous – that Obama must be in the center, because the right and left both hate him.
No, that’s like saying that the US occupation of Iraq must be a good thing, because the Shiites and the Sunnis both hate them.
Washington, DC is corporate-occupied territory, as Ralph Nader points out.
“I noticed nobody responded to my post …”
Ibendet, rest assured, even tho I do not respond to your every post, I do read each of your posts very carefully. I find them earnest, concise and informed, and based on fact. Actually they are quite refreshing, ‘specially on days like Tues. when, instead of discussions of energy depletion and its political ramifications, this board was beginning to resemble an issue of Der Sturmer, making me consider dropping out. I just don’t want to be associated with anti-semitism in any way, even on-line.
“The only ones that seem happy are the talking heads and their masters who pay them royally”.
I’d like to take exception with you on that one point. Most of the folks I know around here, mostly what are called Joe Six Pack types who are my friends, family and acquaintances, seem pretty happy. And I’m surprised, listening to them talk, they are pretty aware of what is happening, politically and culturally. Many have an “I don’t give a crap attitude, Where I work (pressroom of a daily newspaper), trout fisherman at the river, at softball games, at the range, people, while harboring a cynical attitude, seem to be enjoying themselves, especially since the good weather has arrived. And as far as employment goes, when I decided to go back to work I got a job on my first day looking, and that was showing up cold. Even all of my sons loser friends, with tattoos and piercings, have jobs. Round these parts anyway it seems if you want to work you can find work.
Speaking of these “talking heads, and their masters” … living in NYC, do you know any of these people personally, and indeed, are they happy?
-Marlin
El Toro Farm
“La Casa de la Dolce Tomatinos”
Wage,
That sounds downright scary. Yesterday they said there were 20 tornadoes forming on their radar between the mid-west and the south.
It’s scary to see footage and hear about people who have died, been injured, lost everything and survived, but hearing your story really makes it real.
Glad it missed you.
After that experience, you might be able to plan better the next time.
Weather’s very unstable this season. Wonder what the hurricane season will bring. That’s our problem here in the east.
Wagelabor, take care of yourself out there.
We will be saying a prayer for you and all of our fellow countrymen (and women) in the mid west beset by floods and tornados.
-Marlin
Funny you should ask if I know anyone in that position.
All I will say is that had I had the brains to come onto this site with a real handle, I could have shared more.
What I will say is that some movers and shakers are really just like the rest of us underneath the money and all. Same insecurities, same unfinished business with daddy and or mommy, needing to prove something…you know the score.
I looked at Outcast’s post. I read about 1/2 of it.
Re conspiracies. There’s “explicit” conspiracies like price fixing, bid rigging schemes or like the one behind the murder of JFK.
There’s also “implicit” conspiracies where there aren’t a bunch of guys in a smoke filled room deciding things but where people nonetheless act in concert with a view to manipulating others.
I would put some of what the real estate industry does in the realm of the “implicit” conspiracy. I would put the behaviour of the Wall Street banks, the Fed, the US Treasury in both the explicit and implicit categories.
One huge example of implicit conspiracies: Wall Street has for more than 50 years been touting capital gains on stocks as the route to riches. Never mind dividends. Dividends are for little old ladies and sissies. Investors are supposed to “hate” companies that pay dividends because it’s indicative of management that has no ideas. Plus they’re “boring”, not for the big swinging dick that Wall Street wants you to think you can become.
That’s been the line and the average investor has bought into it. Was it the result of Wall Streeters getting together and saying in February 1960 in a retreat at some resort “OK this is how we reel the suckers in”? I doubt it very much. Rather I think it was a strategy that took shape over time with Wall Streeters in twos and threes talking about how to sell to investors. But it’s a widespread conspiracy nonetheless.
Have to say one other thing. The conspirators are, by and large, not all that bright. I’ve worked at a high enough level to see senior corporate management in action. You’ve heard the talk of the “best and the brightest” in the business world? Well they’re not. IMO the “best and the brightest” go into medicine and the hard sciences, they don’t go into business schools.
I’ve seen people mistake impatience, aggression and abrasiveness for intelligence. Impatience, aggression and abrasiveness is what you see a whole lot of in the business world. And what you also see a whole lot of in the business world are howling misjudgments, fuckups, misapprehensions, illogical reasoning, wishful thinking and good old criminality. There’s an old saying that there’s 50 ways to screw up a crime and if you’re a genius you’ll think of 25 of them. In the business world a lot of people think they’re geniuses.
Bubble, I read* yours, Vlad’s and Messi’s discussion about religions and of course it all sounds so very well informed and whatnot, even though I was schooled by Jesuits yet haven’t a clue what ya’ll** are talking about. I am, for example, completely, utterly and hopelessly ignorant of what “churchianity” means, nor do I care, so I hope no one will bother trying to explain it to me.
What I can’t get through my head is how obviously intelligent people (and here I would throw in as an example someone like Bill Buckley who professed to be a believing Catholic right up to the end) can continue such discussion when the probability is so high that there is no God and thus .. end of discussion. Or, am I missing something? I mean we don’t need to just zero in on all the varieties of Christian nonsense when there are things like the tale of Ganesha to scoff at.
I think the current buzz word for the state you three put me in is “cognitive dissonance.”
Messi is a lost cause and beyond help but for Vlad and yourself it’s not too late (judging by your having tried the monastery for a year and leaving). You have no idea (or maybe you do) the sense of freedom when you finally dump that whole religious load of crap from your shoulders.
BTW, I love the “theologically illiterate skank!” line.
*pronounce as “reed” not as “red.”
** Although I’m from NJ “ya’ll” seemed to fit here. In conversation I use neither ya’ll nor youse (another repulsive word used by certain ignorant people in areas in and around NYC and Philly), both of which seriously grate on my ear. On more than one occasion I’ve come close to throwing a shoe through an expensive flat screen TV in our kitchen when my wife is listening to a particular cooking show hosted by a grey-haired woman with a severe nasally southern accent who endlessly uses the contraction “ya’ll.” My hatred of this woman is so visceral that muting just doesn’t cut it … I must change channels or shut the thing off lest I catch a glimpse of her. But I digress…
Marlin, you know what, you need to toughen up. Every morning up here we Canucks go out into the fresh air at the crack of dawn, chop a hole in the ice for water and rub snow on our feet and faces. And you know what we eat with our flapjacks? Raw muktuk. What’s Muktuk?
Muktuk:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=muktuk&hl=en&biw=1420&bih=742&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pYDeTc-lPKjj0QHQztmpCg&ved=0CDgQsAQ
Some of us up here (limousine liberals usually or champagne socialists) try to put on airs and eat it fried. They’re not fooling anybody.
And another thing, up here if you’re 13 years old and you’re not missing front teeth there’s something wrong with you.
“And if we obsess over these things AS INDIVIDUALS…”
This is the only way I know to obsess. I intercede in prayer and wait for obnosis.
batshit crazy
==
And? You should try it sometimes. You can start by getting off your medications. And I don’t mean just the prescription drugs. I mean the whole array of modern tranquilizers, from the MSM propaganda outlets and the other modern-day circus shows, to the cubicle world you built for yourselves. Because what you are is bunch of walking talking zombies. Numb and dead as cold stone.
“…which forces people who cannot afford the attendant property taxes out of their dwellings…”
The land should be divided and never sold. It should only be leased {valued} based upon potential. At the Jubilee all leased land returns to the owner. We are dirt. Sold {leased] into sin {law – less – ness} 1 John 3:4.
Have you ever heard a sermon or read an article where this verse was mentioned?
“Both of these constructs have ZERO legitimacy in an enlightened world.”
I suppose an “enlightened world” would be one where folks like yourself are running things. In other words, you and those like you would be making {and enforcing} the {man-made} rules.
“It is not within man that walketh to direct his own steps” much less the steps of his fellows. I resigned the office of g-o-d {rulemaker} long ago.
Obnosis, MD?
Don’t tell me you’re a scientologist?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/obnosis
Above is humor, don’t freak out on me. But “obnosis” is not found in “real” dictionaries, at least as of yet.
Cool looking word, though, I’ll admit.
I take your larger point. My point was more that “obsession” about anything is generally not a good idea –
And that it takes collective action to solve problems.
For most of human history, people in limiting physical conditions have persevered to think great thoughts and do great things.
Yet, in modern America, for all of our freedom from want and amazing ability to access knowledge and disseminate ideas – we privately obsess over small fragments, without taking action.
How many angels can dance on a pin head? This old riddle is quite trite for the seriousness of the issues addressed by JHK, but I deliberately use it in reference to the new documentary “Welcome to Shelbyville”. I hope to make the connection obvious. Here’s a hint; the exact number of angels I can’t guess, but I do guess that before they reach maximum count they’d probably be acting toward each other not so angelically.
The documentary is trite itself in face of the reality that humanity is facing calamity from population overshoot, but more particularly for America because it dallies on the tribulations of a small Tennessee town under assault of immigrant and refugee influx from Third World countries, bearing perspectives and religious/cultural practices retro by hundreds of years to that of developed Western societies.
Like most so called “documentary” productions on social topics it is unctuously condescending in oblique way. Notably in how and the order it presents the expressed concerns of the locals suffering this cultural/ethnic equivalent of the Joplin tornado (not different, that is to say, from the tsunami of illegal immigration and refugee influx across America – especially the southern states).
Essentially it’s a moral homily, subtly insinuating that instead of being horrified we American’s should be welcoming to this whirlwind of Third World origin refugees with their 9th Century beliefs, attitudes, customs, living standards, high birth rate, etc. that’ll have them in a few generations become – wherever they land — the politically dominant demographic.
Meanwhile, they gladly scab the menial jobs (only ones for which they qualify) at wages undreamed of in their countries of origin, displacing prospect that Americans fill the positions demanding wages respectable by First World standards.
None-the-less, so the homily goes, if these town’s people will just muster their “better angels” — compassion, hospitality and charity – all will be well. That is, make no objection to the platform of modern infrastructure and civic systems (built or evolved, intended as legacy to descendent generations) commandeered instead as launch pad for altering beyond recognition that cultural bequeath.
Throughout the script is shadow of a moral cant. In essence, it’s a calculation similar to seeking appeasement of a pissed-off god by throwing virgins into a volcano (akin to Rev. Falwell blaming God’s disapproval of homosexuality as cause for 9/11). Nature, by such reasoning, is a force not of indifferent physical laws, but rather one that can be altered by adjustments in human moral alignment.
The liberal (so called Progressive) pitch regarding global overpopulation is no less preachy, though secular. Accordingly, if human society fidgets enough with theories on economics, politics, social management and technological advancement in all areas of human endeavor, then all God’s growing number of children on the face of the earth can be accommodated – comfortably too.
Like carrying capacity of the earth, this is where accustomed Liberal thinking “hits the wall”!
My point is this: Liberal thinking in our era has taken on a religiosity, setting it apart from its origin in “free thought”. So morphed, it has assumed the same arrogance typical to religions general: limitations imposed by nature are subject to humanity’s disposition on moral abstractions. This sentimentalism is slimming America’s chance of exempting itself from the looming die-off. Good luck!
On tornadoes –
There was an horrendous tornado in Gainesville, GA in 1936. Killed a bunch of folks, destroyed the downtown area – scarred some of the survivors for the rest of their lives.
I sold a house owned by a ’36 survivor. (Sorry, I’ve been in RE off and on my whole life – I know that makes me a hated CFN subspecies.) It had a nice basement for tornado purposes. INSIDE that basement, this lady and her husband had had constructed a reinforced tornado shelter. It was a thing of beauty and structural integrity.
It was never used, except to store food – so far, and both she and her husband passed away years ago.
If you go in that crawl space, Wage, be sure somebody, elsewhere, knows to look for you there. And take a cell phone with you. There are ways to make sections of houses tornado resistant. But none of them are cheap.
On conspiracy – Wage and Cash, thanks for your input. I’ve got to reread some of these posts. Something is bothering me – related to immigration and conspiracy.
Am I becoming obsessed?
At least I’m working on the collective action thing in other ways and places.
Shelbyville, mythical town in “The Simpsons”, antithesis of Springfield. In that documentary, does Abu make an appearance? He runs the Squishymart where Homer and Bart buy their cheesedoodles, chips, beer and soda.
In 1953 a tornado hit Worcester, Mass., killing 90.
-Marlin
I can relate to your fruitless search for a Church where you feel at home. I recently turned away from the SSPX. I respect their ferocious traditionalism and purity but at the same time: I see where Liberals (both secualar and Catholic) get their negative views. The people are so grim about it all, so robotic. There are a few who seem to benefit spiritually from this penitential approach to life, but most don’t. It keeps you out of “trouble” – and everything is trouble. But maybe it keeps you out of alot of good things too. For my part, my Christianity is one of joy. That’s how I’m made. Any penitentialism comes after that.
Of course, the Liberals hate all this and threw everything away – the Latin, the beautiful prayers, the Chant, the good Theology, all for pyschobabble, White Guilt, Holocaustia, and Homo Worship. A new religion by any definition.
But tell me: do you not feel the Real Presence? There’s no point to it all without that. That’s what keep me going. After years of Eastern Meditation and Psychedelics I came back and I got it.
I then realized that Tom Merton was a generic Mystic. Real Catholicism has a certain “feel”. And Merton never talks about the sacraments or the Presence. He liked to still his mind. He loved the Brothers. He liked nature. And he liked to write. A nice guy and a good man but a Catholic? A Christian? In his Asian Journals he admits thinking about converting to Tibetan Buddhism. Red Hats. Consorts! No more secret Platonic dallying with Nurses but real married “monks”. I sympathize of course.
Nice post, Cave. And all I can say is join FAIR and any or all of the other organizations that are working to reduce immigration into the US.
They will give you the means to speak with a stronger voice to US legislators. That’s where the solution has to come from –
Because high immigration is enabled by legislative act.
The law can be amended to allow “Replacement Level Immigration,” as a starting place.
Stand by to be attacked by some on CFN for saying this, though:
“This sentimentalism is slimming America’s chance of exempting itself from the looming die-off.”
-cavepainter-
That’s lifeboat ethics, cave – for which I have been attacked by several posters, already.
If the world descends into 4th world chaos and death – there are a lot of people who believe it’s America’s job to lead the way – or something –
Rachael Maddow once told her viewers to watch the special on immigration coming on after her show. So I did. The Whites were presented with faux sympathy, their plight understandable but ultimately not as nearly important as that of the immigrants. The final word to them was to understand and accept the inevitability of the brown tide. In other words, submit. The show cut back to a live audience with speakers. The Hispanic speakers were actually smirking in barely concealed glee. They knew the Establishment, both Liberal and much of the so called Conservative is behind them 100%.
If Whites can’t find jobs they should join the military and fight the bad brown people while the good brown people take over and recreate the same hell that they fled from.
Thanks for the post. I’ve always been skeptical of all this high tech nonsense. A couple of good reads are Clifford Stoll’s “Silicon Snake Oil” or “HighTech Heretic.” This guy was a pioneer of the Internet and even HE’S skeptical.
It’s all just part consumerism. It’s all just a one-upsmanship pissing match.
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I really can’t afford to build myself a storm cellar strong enough for these tornadoes on global warming steroids.
Up until 2009, I never heard the tornado sirens except for the first Tuesday of each month.
Then we had that horrendous inland hurricane, followed by increasingly bad storms and tornadoes.
All I really want is what Dorothy had, a hole in the ground with a cover on it, but if you look at the footage of these tornadoes, I think we could be sucked right out of such a thing.
The tornadoes are sucking up the ground!
My husband has a cell phone, but I don’t. But when the electricity goes out, the phones don’t work.
I had a hatchet ready to take down there with me. I most certainly did not want to be under my collapsed house without a way to smash my way out.
Can you admit the possibility that there are things that you know nothing about – because you lack the faculty that would allow you to know?
How many people can read Einstein’s paper on relativity and agree or disagree with the math? They lack the mathematical faculty just as you are without any spiritual sense.
Or do you? Do you ever feel joy under the night sky just looking at the stars? Or at the sunset or sunrise? That’s how it begins…Or have you ever been in love? That’s closer…
Hey Wage, my wife is deathly afraid of tornadoes, even though we very rarly get them, the last one in my town was back in the 80’s sometime. It destroyed a bunch of planes at the Bradley airport airplane museum. on a differant note. Whatcha’ think about these dumbass cops and their raid for a pot operation. Wow! pot the evil weed!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/jose-guerena-arizona-_n_867020.html?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C214312
That link I just posted is F’d up beyond belief. We are really living in a police state. F’n gestapo. Oh, shit I am on the watch list again!
I ALWAYS read your posts. Unlike some handles that I neither read nor respond to. Do not feed the trolls. 🙂 .
Radioactive water in Texas? For years? Well, that might explain a lot 🙂 . But Texas is Texas and always goes on it’s own merry demented way. Read a little Molly Ivins if you really want to be upset.
Private contractors? I’ve been beside myself ever since I noticed that the on-line Postal Service and IRS on-line filing are actually run by private companies. I don’t feel comfortable with that. What’s their security like?
Our city owns a bit of hydro power generation that goes back years. It provides us with 30% of our power and makes our bills less than the next town over. There’s been rumblings from our city council to sell it off. Every time the issue comes up, I fire off a letter to the local newspaper and post on their forums. No one seems to care, but I keep doing it.
I don’t like being forced into doing things I don’t want to do. But they usually manage to get what they want by either charging you more or just discontinuing a service.
Or, I worked in a library system for years that was constantly upgrading and adding new bells and whistles. It was always done with the justification that “our clients are asking for it” (whatever the current “it” was.) Being on the front lines, I never heard a library customer actually ask for the next BIG NEW THING. It was mostly just the young folk in our IT department justifying their jobs.
Oh shit, as I sit here 4 f-15’s just scrambled out of Barnes airport runnin’ full burners, the east coast anti- terror base. Must be somebody got by the CIA, NTSB,FBI, and the NSA with a razor blade again. Or maybe they just feel like burnin’ about 100 large per plane every hour they mess around.
Our Language needs a plural form of you. Spanish has the vosostros form. Y’all is a charming and needed addition to our language – which is always changing. Does change in a language come from scholars, from Oxford, Webster or Funk and Wagnall’s? No it grows below. From the People. The Sabbath (language) was made for man not man for the Sabbath.
“Feudalism with cable.” Read that recently, somewhere. Don’t know why to attribute it to.
“…we privately obsess over small fragments, without taking action.”
Here’s somebody taking action…
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/25/136646918/paypal-co-founder-hands-out-100-000-fellowships-to-not-go-to-college?sc=fb&cc=fp
“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he told Techcrunch. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
I believe in the separation of Synagogoue and State. No more Menorahs in the White House and in our Parks and Squares. Israel as a Jewish State can do what it likes. They don’t recognize marriage between Jews and Gentiles as per Jewish Law. Muslims are second class citizens obviously.
I suppose an “enlightened world” would be one where folks like yourself are running things.
==
Exactly. I’m not any more special than any other person, and any other person is not any more special than I. I completely reject institutional authority based on fraud, and the only consent I give to be governed is one where the government is selected and elected through a real democratic process and is based on a real representative democracy. (The modern State of Israel being the prime example).
I am skeptical of any defense or security initiative that seems to promise a general sense of security. They tend to be expensive and, IMO, 21st-century versions of the Maginot Line in that their defenses can be turned or avoided by attacks that use unexpected or indirect approaches. I find it ironic how often the Maginot Line is lambasted in internet discussions but how seldom people realize the very same mistakes can be made today by the U.S., among other countries.
Cheers
I believe in the separation of Synagogoue and State.
==
I agree.
Religion is based on fraud and it has zero place in politics or anywhere else. In fact, I would go further and say that religion is little more than criminal insanity, and as such, those that advocate religious doctines should be charged with criminal insanity.
On beaming power from space using microwaves. Sunlight is about 1000W per square meter. The SPS beam is about 200W per square meter. So yes you would feel more heat in the beam like you were in the sunshine at high altitude. At the edge of the collecting field the intensity is down to 1W per square meter.
The beam can not be focused tighter to do so requires a bigger transmitter array in orbit and that costs money. Power providers use the smallest array possible to lower costs and it makes tight focus impossible.
Looks like JHK will have to find a new topic. Maybe soil erosion or pollution. With 30 billion people supported by too cheap to meter electric from space….
Yes, the police state is out of hand. Just because we aren’t all in prison doesn’t mean that we don’t live in a police state.
I posted the video of the police in Missouri kicking down a citizen’s door and killing his dogs, then arresting him for child endangerment!
The sick part is that so many of our citizens bow down to the TSA, the police, the FBI, Homeland Security, and all the rest, blaming the victims for their own deaths, and assuming that anyone who is arrested is guilty.
Not clear on the whole Bill of Rights thing.
Yeah, the waste of oil is incredible.
I live by a small airport and the kids just joyride around the sky all day.
Now, I’m seeing the occasional jet, which makes me very suspicious.
“…instead of discussions of energy depletion and its political ramifications, this board was beginning to resemble an issue of Der Sturmer, making me consider dropping out. I just don’t want to be associated with anti-semitism in any way, even on-line.”
-marlin-
Don’t drop out, Marlin! With whom would I then argue??
Seriously, the anti-semitism bothers me, too.
So does the anti-black, anti-brown, and anti-white rhetoric of various posters
Some rhetoric is so over the top that it’s best ignored. Some of it should be addressed. I know BeanTownBill and our host, JHK are both Jewish. I’m assuming several others are as well. I hope and trust that they will step into the dialog if things slip off in the wrong direction for too long.
Perhaps unlike you, I think it is best to keep things out in the open and address them in public like this. Antisemitism (and all the other “anti’s” that I just named) are, unfortunately, not that rare in the US and CERTAINLY not that rare around the World.
I learn a lot from this forum – more because it has such an open, self-regulated, and -generally- unmoderated nature.
OH – speaking of argument – you did see my post back to you that I’m not talking about deportation, didn’t you? I’m just talking about reducing future immigration to something approaching “replacement rate.”
Here you go, SJ Mom, something to watch while cooking dinner-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs
It’s very relevant now that the US is bombing the hell out of people in Libya for their own good.
And they’ve caught a “war criminal” from Serbia, so the Supreme War Criminal, Obama, is busy congratulating the “international community” on their devotion to the “rule of law”.
I guess the bragging and chest-thumping on the (claimed) Mafia hit of 3 weeks ago is already down the memory hole.
Can you admit the possibility that there are things that you know nothing about – because you lack the faculty that would allow you to know?
Yes, I can. Can YOU admit the possibility that there are things you BELIEVE you know, because you are sure you possess the faculty that allows you to know, yet you believe incorrectly anyway?
How many people can read Einstein’s paper on relativity and agree or disagree with the math?
A relative handful I am sure. Ironic that you should mention this though … This coming October I will be presenting to a conference of physicists and mathematicians at Princeton University my proof that E, in fact, does NOT equal MC squared
😉
…just as you are without any spiritual sense.
If having a spiritual sense requires belief that spirits exist then, you are correct, I am without any spiritual sense. On the other hand Asoka believes in spirituality despite simultaneously believing spirits don’t exist. It’s one of those “containing multitudes” mind game things I believe.
Or do you? Do you ever feel joy under the night sky just looking at the stars? Or at the sunset or sunrise?
Yes, especially under the influence of good pot. I also feel joy if I buy a stock and within the hour some company announces they’re making a cash offer for all shares of that company at a big premium to the current price.
Or have you ever been in love?
Yes, in fact tomorrow is my 38th wedding anniversary (no lie). When my wife is peeved at me she likes to say “I married you for your looks, not your personality.” And when she says “Say something sweet to me” I always say “You’re pretty” and she always says “I never know WHAT you really think.” It’s a regular routine.
Ummm, you are not watching the liberal point of view when you watch corporate media.
You are watching the point of view of the ruling class. They like immigrants, they like the cheap labor, they like the division of the working class into colors, they like the distraction that all this provides.
JHK keeps fantasizing that eventually the workers will wake up and take their pitchforks to the Hamptons.
Not a chance! It’ll be black vs white, reps vs dems, native-born vs immigrants, while the rich sit back and laugh.
Or maybe make bets on who will win, like the guards at Pelican Bay did.
That’s what the point of these news reports is all about.
Hobbesian?
With all respect..we are eating GMOs daily
Sorry but water in Texas isnt a top priority.
Cash, especially, is gonna like this:
-and maybe Montsegur, too-
Visegrad is a newly formed military alliance between Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2011/05/25/visegrad-a-new-european-military-force-by-george-friedman.aspx
“In the past, the Visegrad countries would have been loath to undertake anything that felt like a unilateral defense policy. Therefore, the decision to do this is significant in and of itself. It represents a sense of how these countries evaluate the status of NATO, the U.S. attention span, European coherence and Russian power. It is not the battlegroup itself that is significant but the strategic decision….”
-stratfor-
Every country has its elites.
NONE of them have the interest of the US elites as their primary concern.
Does change in a language come from scholars … No it grows below. From the People.
============
Of course, changes in language come from the people…
But as Safire once said “I just don’t want it happening on MY watch.”
😉
One man’s troll is another man’s treasure. I know you read my posts even though you like to pretend that you don’t.
ABC is planning a new series called Good Christian Bitches. Someone has defend the honor of our People since you guys have declined the duty. If that makes us fanatics in your eyes – who cares? We’re in the right.
They can’t help themselves apparently. They feel isolated, they are isolated, they want Christian Allies yet they can’t restrain themselves from vicious mockery and trying to debase us. It up to not to let them since they refuse to reform themselves.
What are you qualifications for a critique of the great Zionist Physicist, Albert Einstein?
If E does NOT equal MC squared what does it equal? Maybe we could all do a Vulcan Mind Meld right here on line and solve the energy crisis right now.
Reading my comments would or could confuse anyone [cognitive dissonance] because I contradict myself a lot. I have no doubts that there is a God. If there were no God there would be no universe and any sort of cohesion or structure would be impossible. In other words, if the atoms couldn’t cohere or differentiate and if there were no strong nuclear force or gravity and so forth we would have a total void and nothing else. Arguing about creationism and darwin is a waste of time. None of that biological crap can occur without an underlying quantum world which is not entirely chaotic or senseless.
Not only do we not have a void but we actually have a coherent existence at least on some levels. This has nothing to do with religion either. I know a lot about religion from majoring in European history. I learned what I know about religious life because I visited with many groups looking for a viable way to drop out of the rat race. If you consider matter to be purely materialistic or dead try reading “Beyond the Occult” by Colin Wilson. The term “churchianity” doesn’t really mean anything but was originally employed by free lance Jesus freaks who were do it yourselfers and found regular churches moribund.
Brilliant people are often believers because perhaps their faith is still their uninterrupted childhood faith. I find this sort of nominal habitual religiosity more common among Catholics but it is waning owing to the decline of Catholic culture.
Another great book is “Living Zen” by Robert Linnson [sp.?], a Belgian. Linnson dissects Christian theology and points out the metaphysical problems with Christain “dualism”; in other words, if God is all powerful then he would have no need to manifest anything outside of himself because he would be complete unto himself. Any need on his part to solicit worship from created contingent beings is ridiculous because no such being needs relationships. Therefore nothing exists apart from God which means God is all and all is God. This does not mean that each of us is God and Emperor of the Universe. It means that there is only one ultimate reality and that all is one which also solves the “problem of sin”. As explained by Alan Watts if both the American fighter bomber pilot dropping the napalm on the Vietnamese villagers and the villagers themselves are all God then it is God who is playing all the parts in this fraught drama and therefore nobody has ultimately gotten hurt. It is more like God is bored and likes to divide up his consciousness. That is also the thumbnail sketch of vedanta as indeed both systems come from a common root. And finally,what did the customer say to the hot dog vendor: “make me one with everything.”
That’s not a very enlightned attitude, dude. And your love sounds a bit more like lust. But 38 years is an accomplishment in either case.
Good come backs on your side though. My Faulty is often Faulty – proof that it is real. Nothing is more perfect than the imaginary.
It is possible to attend a tridentine pre-1962 mass at a regular Catholic church as every diocese is required to have at least one parish that does that. They perform the mass perfectly and even bring in choirs to have high mass. I’m not sure I could take the Society of St. Pius X seriously enough to bother with them. Schismatic high church Anglicans such as the Anglican Catholic Church in No. America can be fun and have even been known to have cocktails after mass in the church undercroft.
I have never taken Merton seriously. I also dislike the notion of the trappists and the cistercians of the strict observance. To me Merton seems like a really good or even “cool” guy but it was also obvious to me that we all have our pathetic human emotional requirements and that as a frustrate writer he was looking for a subject to write about so he turned himself into a latter day St. Augustine of Hippo for the writing gig. It also helped that monks got draft deferments and World War II was just starting up. Many people went into the church because they believed their sensitive nervous constitutions couldn’t withstand the vulgarity and worse of military life. Merton gave all indications of having pooped out on the Cistercians and may have been planning to move to a far more informal Catholic community in Nicaragua with the guy who eventually became the Sandinista’s Minister of Culture or whatever. There is also ample evidence that in his hermitage phase towards the end of his life he went beyond the platonic in his relationship with at least one woman, perhaps the nurse he fell in love with, and was also frequenting jazz clubs and drinking heavily.
I find the doctrine of the real presence to be a theological redundancy or gilding of the lilly as once explained by Alan Watts who pointed out, I can’t recall where, the if God is omniscient and omnipresent then he’s in the communion wafer already and needn’t put in a seoond appearance in the same place at the same time just because a priest made the sign of the cross over the elements at mass. Please don’t sick the EWTN transubstantiation lady after me [Eucharistic Miracles]. I ran into her once at the Cathedral in Cleveland. That was decades ago so she’s probably no longer with us.
CRIKEY – aren’t we all bitchy today!! I like to read this blog for amusement, mostly. But I usually agree with JHK about most things – especially gas!! We will soon be eating our offspring trying to get more gas. As for America, it does resemble the dying Roman Empire in many ways – arrogance, internal corruption and moral decay. Perhaps it is time to make it a true Empire, since the phony facade of Democracy is peeling away like dried bark on a dying tree. I have to go now – got to hunt rabbits with my boomerang.
38 years? For a 70 year old?
That means he married Barbie at 32 or so.
Was there a first wife who put him through school and then got dumped?
Before you congratulate him, make sure that he didn’t betray the principles you claim to uphold, of loyalty and fidelity.
Marc – read the Fathers. It’s not a redundancy, it’s Christ being PERSONALLY present – thus time and space are involved. If this isn’t important, why would He have bothered to come at all 2000 years ago. This is the essence of Catholicism – not only did Christ come, He never left!
Thanks for the “low down” on Merton! Drinks after Communion? Nothing wrong with that.
Let go of that calculating feminine mind and learn to love the Beast. Many men must marry Barbie. It’s pagan sure, but as a Communist why are you married at all? Isn’t it a Capitalist thing, an owning of the woman as Engels said?
Glad you’re alright. I got worried when I heard the forecast yesterday.
Hello Edpell, if sunlight beams down at 1000 per watts square meter , but the proposed space based solar system beams down 200 watts per square meter, why not just suck up the ol’ solar power on earth? Figures don’t lie, but liers sure can figure. Sounds like a boondoggle to me.
Asia,
Far be it for me to tell people what to be concerned about.
One can always choose organic and local veggies and meat if they want to stay away from GMO’s. One can also drink bottled water, if they knew there was radiation in the tap water.
The issue is more about the suppression of a danger that people have a right to know about.
It’s about political and regulatory failure in protecting the public health.
Think of how much money goes into the healthcare system (as GDP) and how much money and misery we could avoid if only we had a functional system.
Part and parcel of the thinking: Recently I read that the White House did not want the words “meltdown” used in reference to the melted rods at Fukashima. (There we go with the magic words. If you don’t say them, it didn’t happen. Each administration believes in magic words).
My concern is how endemic this is around the country when it comes to fracting and other issues that effect the environment and our health. Wouldn’t you want to make intelligent choices to protect your own health and well-being?
JHK wrote: “The ultimate question is: how does a society manage contraction?”
David Harvey in his excellent book “The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capital” says that in order for Capitalism to sustain itself and survive that the economy must maintain at least a 3% growth rate.
I was in Los Angeles for the past few days.
Universal Studios was fun. I particularly enjoyed The Mummy theme roller coaster ride. The Simpsons theme roller coaster ride was great too, except for the Mexican guy with B.O. sitting next to me.
Los Angeles—now there’s a city that’s a sitting duck waiting for Peak Oil to hit. 7 lane highways, abysmal mass transit network. Bizarre use of space. Gas seems to be around US$4.20 per gallon. I wonder how high the price of oil has to go before people in L.A. can’t finance their lives? It should be fairly easily to do the math here.
I finished reading Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting with Jesus”, an excellent book.
I particularly enjoyed Bageant’s description of how “brain dead” U.S. rednecks live in a mental hollogram created by the U.S. media.
“‘The People’ doing our hardest work and fighting our wars are not altruistic and probably never were. They don’t give a rat’s bunghole about the world’s poor or the planet or animals or anything else. Not really. ‘The People’ like cheap gas. They like chasing post-Thanksgiving Day Christmas sales. And if fascism comes, they will like that too if the cost of gas isn’t too high and Comcast comes through with a twenty-four-hour NFL channel. That is the American hologram.” (Deer Hunting with Jesus”, p. 91)
I read The Philokalia compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth, which is an exhaustive compendium of the eastern fathers which all the Greek monks at St. Gregory Palamas’ Skete in Hayesville, Ohio read. Gregory Palamas promoted “hesychasm” and a theology of the “uncreated light” as after all, the Orthodox Churches have glow in the dark saints, as the monks there were fond of joking. Although I was enthralled to first discover such things at the time I no longer have any belief of that sort. I do find that milieu to be much more congenial than protestantism however. I find low church protestant lay-people to be obnoxious from the standpoint that they have a tendency to play the little preacher themselves. I am now convinced that no one’s faith should be dependent upon events or manifestations in time.
They don’t give a rat’s bunghole about the world’s poor or the planet or animals or anything else. Not really. ‘The People’ like cheap gas. They like chasing post-Thanksgiving Day Christmas sales.
==
In other words, they be Nazis. Or in JHK limited analysis, they be corn-pone Nazis. Where I disagree with JHK, is that I see the whole of the US enterprise in the category of Nazi. Nazi imperialism is what you do. Nazi imperialists is what you are.
Yes Hobbes. Life will be nasty, brutal, and short. The living will envy the dead once the dollar fails.
“Any need on his part to solicit worship from created contingent beings is ridiculous because no such being needs relationships.”
God is not serving His needs, He is serving ours.
I read a brief compendium of Nick put out by the Classics of Western Spirituality. “Christ never laughed but in fact cried three times”. Another Brother Grim but such passion and purity – I cannot but admire.
Sounds like you lost your faith early if you ever even had it. You obviously got alot of bad catachesis (warning, preaching alert). The way the Faith is taught in the Seminaries is all wrong. Two years of pure rational philosophy before any Theology. Even if it is the real thing it just going to seem like a veneer at that point. The Theology should be taught from the begining and the philosophy in that context. As Aquinas said, “We distinguish but we do not separate”. That is how true cultures subsist – and how strong formations arfe made.
For my part, I cannot preach the Faith to anyone. The Bishops and the Popes have blown it so utterly by moving around the pedophiles and sheltering them. And I don’t connect with most Catholics: too blue collar American or too White Collar more liberal than thou. So I find myself alone, hidden in Christ with God.
Truth is stranger than fiction department –
Evil Brits driving on the left – BS
Rav Abraham Kook as source of “Kooky” – apparent BS
So,
I thought you were just jerking my chain with the ABC “Good Christian Bitches.”
Glad I checked before I called bullsh*t on it, too.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/03/04/critics-slam-abc-pilot-good-christian-bitches-inappropriate-damaging-title/
Amazing, nevertheless.
Fox News doesn’t seem to have comments enabled on this story.
Can’t say I blame them – but it’s unusual.
If E does NOT equal MC squared what does it equal?
=============
Vlad, when reading my comments and replies it is very important that you keep an eye out for winking smiley faces. There’s a message in them.
I’ve made many posts where I was surprised at
the apathy with which the ideas in it were
greeted. It’s not that I’m such a narcissist
that I think everyone should respond knee-jerk
just because I’m posting.
Usually it’s because when I talk about all of
our society’s “Mesmer boxes” (TV, internet,
Iphones, Ipads, etc.), I touch a nerve because
it’s likely that a majority of people on CFN
watch too much TV and/or spend way, way too
much time texting, IM’ing, emailing, etc., etc.,
etc. and people are reluctant to introspect on
how this is affecting their lives. After all,
introspection often leads to disquieting
admissions.
E.
I screwed up my last post somehow but no matter it was too long winded anyway. I have two observations:
[1] Belief per se is not really faith
[2] It sounds like you definitely belong in the eastern Orthodox Church and not the R.C. anymore. You could always compromise and become a Byzantine Rite Catholic.
I don’t think that the pedophilia scandal negates the Catholic religion. For one thing Catholic clergy are probably no more prone to child molestation than other groups. The problem is with the bishops who believe they can forgive crimes as well as sins.It should be a no-brainer that crimes should be reported to the police.
I was a believer for a long time. I didn’t change my thinking until I was in my forties. I ultimately became more disgusted with the Episcopal Church in which I was raised when I briefly returned to it after leaving the R.C. church. My objection to the Episcopalians was not the usual sort of disgruntled conservatism but rather I found that I disliked virtually all the clerics I met. For one thing, 60% of all Episcopal clergy were not raised in that church. This is suspicious because that church pays the best. But after leaving I discovered all the materials which pointed to unbelief. I don’t think that belief and faith are really the same thing. For one thing belief is just too easy, as is attendance at rituals and so forth. You’re just not doing your own spiritual work. I now think that whether we realize it or not we’re all one with the cosmos and consequently that we all participate in the godhead. We all have buddha nature. To me this is a more religious position than Christian dualism.
LinkedIn now sells at a PE of around 10,000
and probably for a thousand times book. In
reality, the current valuation bubble is every
bit as loony as the late ’90s.
E.
I’m bummed that I can’t watch John Stewart and Stephen Colbert while I fix dinner,
==================
What ever you do don’t watch that link Wage gave you. It’ll ruin your digestion and in general spoil a nice family dinner. It might corrupt your kids’ minds too (psycoses, neuroses)… you’ll turn them into paranoid Jareds.
My wife likes cooking shows while she’s cooking dinner or Cash Cab followed by Jeopardy.
The guy in Wage’s video reminds me of Howard Zinn … hates every thing and every body. Very uptight with lots of nervous fist clenching. That kind of person is not good for your mental well being.
Most of the well-off got that way by being smart, hardworking and ambitious. It is not all a grand conspiracy to fuck their fellow man.
Barring a miracle Wage will go to her grave still paranoid and miserable.
LinkedIn now sells at a PE of around 10,000
===========
If the 9B market cap and 15M earnings figures previously mention are correct the P/E would “only” be 600 to 1.
So bageant [?] lovers, I was minding my own biz when a news article appeared on yahoo…
‘most dangerous cities in USA’
and the things people posted below it
in top 10;
DETROIT
FLINT
BALTIMORE
LIL ROCK
ST LOUIS
OAKLAND [OF COURSE]
MEMHIS
I assume its as a % of population, as there are 10 to 30 thousand murders a year in the USA.
Im glad i did know much of Joe B…Vlad says he was a white hater.
AH WENT TO KATLIK SCHOOL FOR 9 YEARS AND LEARNED NOTHING OF THIS!
Wasnt Merton Jewish by Birth and into Buddhism?
youd watch that dyke
When has the left ever asked their pawns, I mean Black People what they think of Immigration?
SHARE YR LIST WITH US!
Well I don’t actually have a list, but I’m basically a believer in a soon-to-come nuclear war which will affect primarily the industrial nations in the northern hemisphere. Here is a guy who writes a blog who lives in SA and has info on where to go. I heard of him on C2C also:
http://www.eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/
from:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
A funny thing is that our mind really operates according to the denial of the principle of identity (that is for us often A is not A, but is A, etc.) and the principle of contradiction and every event has a cause. We are contradiction, we are an equation without any possible solution (or maybe a solution without any possible equation), we are emotion driven machines, rage driven machines, mostly hate driven machines (we love to hate more than anything else), we are pure contradiction always, confusion, we make up all kinds of causes and effects, all kinds logical errors, we never know what we are doing. We are many contrasting will powers in one, fighting each other, we are fights, that is our essence we define ourselves according to the fight. We want to dominate others and everything with our will power, we are a total mess and will always be no matter what. That is why people like to look at the old movies of Hitler with his huge army marching, ready to express contradiction, war, as in A against B, the fight is the representation and expression of contradiction coming alive, in real life.
And then again that is why philosophers started to try to get out of all of the confusion, irrationality, that is why they had to state that A is A, they had to be sure, a chair is a chair, because in our mind it is and it isn’t, we are vague, confusing and confusion. That is why logic and mathematics had to be carefully constructed, it is not obvious for us, we are always making all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of errors, confusing cause with effect, making up and mixing up all kinds of causes with effects, with events, etc.
But a funny thing happens: for us all three principles don’t really apply, for us, no matter what, A is not A, contradictions abound, we are contradiction always, pure contradiction, and events have any cause we want and no cause (we connect any 2 items and assign them cause and effect as we please, we make up all kinds of things) , etc. But at a second level, these principles are true and useful and have been successfully applied in technology and science, have allowed us to progress and get things straight in many endeavors. But on an even higher and Metaphysical level, these principles are no longer true again, they resemble what we think, but they are pure abstract entities that are too distant from us, we can only look at them in awe and bewilderment.
So in this sense, Physics likes to tease us with Metaphysical suggestions.
3 levels, 1) Principle of Identity is false (our level), 2) Principle of identity is true (math – science – logic level) 3) Principle of Identity is false again (metaphysical level).
But we will construct Modified Minds, we will insert huge slabs of steel and iron in the Sun to guide the plasma of the Sun from the core to the Surface through Super Computers using High Energy Plasmas to create digital calculations that will serve to produce 10^100 modified minds a second (I like big numbers). Steel bound, Iron bound, Sun bound Automated Modified Minds generators. The Sun an entire supercomputer, it will decompose the structure of equality, the structure of numbers and existence, these metaphysical machines will create ever more abstractions and symbols, touching sensations, new emotional contraptions tied into the structure of numbers and square roots, no end in sight, higher and higher states. (as in “dreamer in the chair that really fits you”, reminds me of what the YES were thinking in “Starship Trooper” or “Close to the Edge”).
Kill information, the less we know the better, misunderstand everything, kill god, kill mother(fkr ?) nature, kill the laws of physics, get them on the run, chase them with a baseball bat and crack their heads open, stick em stick em, show them who the boss is, be your own boss, be the boss, you are the boss, you can do it man, just do it.
Now please, show me another design and schematic of a modified mind, I found this one, it fell on earth from the Sun:
WH£HH$H$-.:::$$J%%%çç%°%é%*%%%;%%%Mmm%=%=M%MMM&==MM$M$$M$$=X B>:Z:;Z;;>>
Wow, who knows what is going on in there, it must be incredible…
And especially kill EMOTION and FEELINGS, kill all of these puny predetermined 1 transistor circuits, puny 1 line programs, we will create abstract emotions that interact way past anything imaginable. Kill life and death, but especially life, as that is much more predetermined , death is always superior, kill FREEDOM, kill everything we think and go into your metaphysical world..
Be crazy, who cares.
I was just thinking (as usual, I hate thought, KILL THOUGHT real fast !), that you really only need to express ( A = A ), as the other principle, that of non contradiction should emerge from this automatically, if A isn’t A then ( A = not A ) but you can’t have that relationship.
Ok, but then why did they have to express that other relationship separately ? Maybe because ( A = A ), but if this isn’t so, then something else, then some metaphysical relationship applies which isn’t ( A > not A ), but isn’t expressed in any way, or maybe can be expressed with some new symbol ? Another interesting Metaphysical Relationship, another abstract, unknown, intractable relationship.
They had to explicitly write down:
1) ( A = A )
2) ( A > not A )
But why did they have to write down 2) ( A > not A ) ?
So some possible new relationships : (?)
( A = A ) is not true, but A is something we can’t know.
( A = A ) is not true but this can be expressed as ( A = not A ). So this is the example of the item that can’t be itself, but can’t be not itself, the “infinite recursion of existence denying itself”.
( A = A ) is not true, but ( A :;:; A ). What is :;:; ? Something really far out, man !
( A = A ) is not true but this can be expressed as ( not A = A ), but this is different from expressing it as ( A = not A). So what is ( not A = A) ? Something really far out, man !
So even the simple identity relationship becomes an infinite recursion of metaphysical symbols, concepts abstractions expressing themselves to the vanishing point.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=175312
A wise guy says:
[quote=”quetzalcoatl”]
All those things our intellects are composed of are real, if you get rid of the gene for pain [even subjectively] then you can cause yourself damage. One lady without that gene [sorry I forgot the name of the condition] sat on a radiator waiting for someone, she severely burned her legs because she didn’t notice the were being scolded.
A computer or even a brain on LSD may be able to imagine different worlds and intellects, but they wont correlate with this world or with other people in this world.
You seam to be assuming that we are entirely subjective beings and that the real world does not exist, while the former may be true [though I’d contend that] the latter is not. We cannot just create a new intellects and worlds, then expect this one to magically cease to exist. You do that and you would never see your loved ones again and then die, at which point your made up mind and world would also terminate [at least from an earthly perspective].
:)[/quote]
I answer:
Consider this more poetry than science (I find it hard to believe that most can’t just play around with ideas, can’t execute a kind of suspension of disbelief, we won’t build rockets with this stuff or cure a sickness, SCIENCE is different from PHILOSOPHY, repeat!): but it is real science in as far as the “made up mind and world” is made up anyways, only Natural Evolution or god, or the Laws of Physics decided to make up some stuff. There is no necessity in the way we are constructed, the way carbon atoms are organized and interact with the so called “real world”, there is no “real” world, no external reality, no extension in space or time, only Reciprocal Interactions, Information Relationships, Instantaneous Reciprocal Information Relationships defining themselves, matter talking to itself.
So change the organization of carbon atoms into something new, and you get an entire new universe, go on change the mind design, the structure of the mind, go on man you can do it.
And even if there were a necessity, we can just dump it, lie to ourselves, lie to god, physics and the universe, and nature (kill nature), you are the boss.
And any structure just lasts some time and dies, who cares, even if it lasts a picosecond, what counts is the experience, but no one is keeping score, it is not recorded anywhere (in people’s puny memories, but memories die too, and the universe has no memory), but then why would it be recorded if time and space don’t exist, if there is no external reality ?
Also forget everything, kill memory.
Everything must be compared to the state of DEATH, maybe that will clear it up.
And any structure just lasts some time and dies, who cares, even if it lasts a picosecond, what counts is the experience, but no one is keeping score, it is not recorded anywhere (in people’s puny memories, but memories die too, and the universe has no memory), but then where (or why ?) would it be recorded if time and space don’t exist, if there is no external reality ?
E.
What’s really amazing about the gadgetry phenom is the way people socialize. My guy and I have observed on numerous occasions couples in restaurants or walking around who are actively engaged with someone they’re speaking to on their cell phone. What I would consider rude or cut-off from each other is very commonplace now, especially with younger people. I wonder whether these people really like/or are satisfied by the company they’re keeping…
What would an anthropologist think of the denizens of this country?
Eleuthero –
I always read your comments. OK, don’t be too flattered by this, because I always read everyone’s comments. But my eyes glaze on some of them and when I finish I am unaffected and unchanged.
That doesn’t happen with your ideas. They are good, and worth anyone’s time to read. If I don’t comment back it is usually because I feel I have nothing to add in elaboration based on my own knowledge and beliefs.
You are like most of us who post. You have a hold on an important set of ideas – and you keep hammering away trying to perfect those ideas or make something happen by making other people recognize their truth – in hopes that some groundswell of action will start.
Not a bad plan – as a beginning point.
Pucker,
Recently I heard that the youth of China are not interested in democracy at this point. The Tiananmen Square fight for freedom has been replaced with a chance for affluence, so now a political movement is off the table. No one wants to rock the boat.
I imagine that our leadership sees that Leninism works with Capitalism–in other words the meme that Capitalism is the gateway to democracy is not bearing out.
And we need to recognize that not only are Americans screwed up, but humanity as a whole is.
Spider, you sure have been talking about death a lot, lately:
“Everything must be compared to the state of DEATH, maybe that will clear it up.”
-spider-
Don’t you get suicidal on us, please.
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do [it] with thy might; for [there is] no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”
True enough, perhaps, but let’s not be in a rush to get there and find out for sure.
“I touch a nerve because it’s likely that a majority of people on CFN watch too much TV and/or spend way, way too much time texting, IM’ing, emailing,…”
-E-
Some of this is generational, E, some of it is probably basic human nature. But, figure that children born post-1980 or so have been so wrapped up in entertainment/noise that multitasking is SOP for them.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely rude and superficial, though – to ignore the real situation you are in, in favor of other, fantasy-based situations.
Which logically brings me to my recent big idea – reducing the rate of legal immigration down to replacement rate.
I’m surprised how little feedback I get on this idea, myself – on a peak resources website.
PC,
reducing the rate of legal immigration down to replacement rate.
Yes, if only the Corporatocracy wanted to come up with a logical plan. Instead they want slave labor and they want to drive all salaries down. Since the Nation state is a quaint notion to them–they are so much bigger than that, we continue to have illegal immigration here.
They really would like a North American Union. Oh, but here’s a kicker. I recently heard that Mexico wants to do something like universal (govt) health care like the rest of the civilized nations.
Ha–They’ll get there before we ever do.
We are insanity, lets face it: any other culture and model of interaction between a group of people can be seen as insane compared to any other, everyone can see the other as completely wrong, or primitive, there is no end to how many contrasts, misunderstandings, etc. there can be as someone said somewhere about the European man seeing all other “primitive” cultures as trash and “sinners” during the 15th to 18th century, etc. This is because man is an infinitely programmable machine, any input can be tied to any output, any model, thought system, any program can be inserted in his puny mind, and if the emotion, feeling system is “satisfied”, then he will be satisfied no matter what the external behavior be (or internal thought patterns, emotion and feeling patterns whatever, and how they are all arbitrarily connected between each other).
So you can have monks that spend all their lives just looking at symbols on books, that is everything, nothing else is needed, that occupies 100 % of their time from 0 to 100 years old, or like the muslims shaking their head while they read the koran, they invented a program of behavior, they are executing it, they are 100 % satisfied, they are ok, their metaphysical soul is “saved”, etc.
Or Hitler and his army fighting Russia (totally insane, didn’t they just see how big the country was ?!) so there is no end to insanity, as insanity can be any behavior at all, since it is all arbitrary, cultural stuff, fluff, optional. Man is the optional machine.
Any thought can change instantly, any situation can change instantly, can be a tool for another thought, or itself, or someone, any misunderstanding is possible, nay, we only constantly misunderstand everything, we never can win, there is no hope for us, or anything can go backwards, upside down, who knows.
Dependent and independent, we have large chunks of ourselves that just talk to ourselves as in all the subsystems of our cells, chemical reactions, etc, but then the global item must interact with something that “challenges” it, the independent outside world. So we search out the contradiction, the independence, the challenge, but want to win, but can’t just be stay put, but then we don’t want the challenge, and so forth and so on. So Man is insane from the outset, is a quirk, is a totally contradictory machine, he will kill himself off in some war, there are no justifications to any social model, any justice system, any rules and laws, we are doomed.
Yeah, going back to the pessimistic view of:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?t=149592
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=3&t=163929
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=3&t=163669
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=3&t=162953
My take on it is that of total cultural relativism achieved, total metaphysical relativism achieved in that any modified mind can create a new universe.
But as usual, the metaphysical impossible problems will always pop up: like if there are no absolutes how can you talk about anything ? So what is it, who knows, another intractable problem, another infinite recursion of dependent entities depending on non dependent entities, absolutes based on non absolutes and then again based on absolutes; an organism needs a challenge to feel or be alive to interact, but wants to win, but needs the challenge, but wants stability and security, now what ? etc.
We are complete contradiction, complete insanity no matter what, it may be better to believe in a religion, at least all is solved forever.
Now show me a new modified mind from the Sun, one that disconnects numbers from themselves, one that creates new elementary particles directly from symbols and logic from atoms and electrons, differential equations that must find “emotional – sentimental” solutions, go on, mix it up, mix it all up, invent all you want, the more far out the better, go out and play until mommy calls you in for dinner.
But most of all: Everything must be compared to the state of DEATH, maybe that will clear it up.
Merton was of English stock and an Anglican [Episcopalian] but I think also half American. His father was a New Zealander which then was the virtually the same as being English. He attended Cambridge University in England where he was a party animal and a skirt chaser! He fathered an illegitimate child. He then moved to the united states where his grandparents put him the rests of the way through college at Columbia University in New York. While teaching college he first tried to join the Franciscans but when he admitted his former antics they rejected him. He started saying the office himself as if he were a diocesan priest or something to that effect. Finally he discovered Our Lady of Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky and the rest is history. He wrote constantly and towards the end of his life developed an interest in Buddhism. After being the novice master for a long time he was finally given permission to move into a little cinder block hermitage in an isolated location at the abbey. I know several people who were monks there and dropped out one of whom studied under Merton. Most aspirants to the monastic life come to their senses and quit, and by most I mean 90%. There is evidence that Merton was going to quit as well. His brother was killed in the war. He was against the war in Vietnam. His wrote a novel which went nowhere as a young layman but his “Seven Storey Mountain” was a huge publishing phenomenon. In his day they still farmed the old fashioned way with mules there. They also still had monastic tonsure haircuts and absolute silence. He was accidentally electrocuted by a frayed wire on a fan in the bathroom he was using at a monastic conference in Bangkok, Thailand. His body was shipped home on a MATS transport plane with bodies of dead soldiers from the war in Vietnam. When a younger priest he was extremely orthodox and traditionalist but loosened up over time and became quite liberal. He was constantly writing and published many books considering how he had to follow the full monatic schedule most of his life. For example Cistercian monks go to bed at something like 8pm and wake up at 2:30 for their first choir office.
“Yes, if only the Corporatocracy wanted to come up with a logical plan. Instead they want slave labor…” -lbend-
LBI – That’s the part of the conspiracy I just can’t seem to get. Your “corporatocracy” is us, as US citizens as a group, demanding:
1. Cheap food
2. Cheap gas
3. Pensions and investments that go up in $
I grant you that there are some wanna-be oligarchs in many of our corporations -skimming off far too much profit. But they couldn’t be skimming without the complicity of the populace.
===============
What I’m saying is that corporations should be expected to look out for corporate interests.
And great old environmental organizations like the Sierra Club (with 750,000 members – some of whom post to this website) should be expected to look out for the US and global environment by lobbying for reduced LEGAL immigration.
But they don’t. Why?
This one was irresistable, so forgive the over-posting on my part. An anthropologist would have different reactions depending upon where he’s from, but in general, our society has become hyper-commercialized, hyper-active multi-tasking, every man for himself devil take the hindmost, elder abandoning, child abandoning, status worshipping, deracinated, superficial, celebrity worshipping, hyper-sexualized, and forgetful of the past. The aliens keeping track of us [there is evidence that the CIA believes we are being monitored from space] are simply allowing us to gas ourselves to death so they can then take our water & minerals without having to bother concealing themselves from us anymore.
I tell younger adults in their thirties that we’ve been totally fucked ever since the Nixon administration. They don’t get it. They think all old fogies bitch about the how it ain’t like the good old days. They have shit for brains. All that can be said is BOHICA {Bend Over Here It Comes Again].
Sierra Club … should be expected to look out for the US & global environment by lobbying for reduced legal immigration.
But they don’t, why? ” -PoC
That’s an easy one, PoC. Because, above all, they’re Big Libs, that’s why!
The ‘Environment’ is the last thing on the agenda of ‘environmental organizations’ like the Sierra Club. The main thing for them is to raise swag from their contributors and members, most of whom are Big Libs themselves. To do this you must stick with the Big Lib Orthodoxy, which says to restrict massive 3rd world immigration is racist, amongst other things. I’ll just speculate and say that the leaders of the Sierra Club live pretty large, with log cabined themed houses far out in the country and big 4 wheel drive SUVs (painted green) in the driveway. It kind of reminds me, a few years ago, when Steven Rattner became Obamas ‘Auto Czar’, encouraging everyone to drive smaller cars that he would compel the auto companies to build. Then Fox News sent a helicopter over his 10,000 sq.ft house in Marthas Vineyard, with a half dozen massive SUVs parked in the driveway.
Big Environmentalism is basically a scam, a construct to elicit contributions from naive but well meaning people, eager to be duped.
-Marlin
PC,
I agree with you. It makes no sense that environmentalists wouldn’t be up in arms about illegal immigration and population overshoot.
Ok, but you need to understand that in order for people to continue this charade they are being led to believe in the culture of ME and how I’m the center of the universe.–Only problem is that it’s just an illusion and at the right moment it will all be taken away through a “disaster”.
Yes unfortunately BubbleHeadMarc says it like it is. (except the alien part)
This country went through a silent coup moving away from real representation to illusion of representation.
All you need to do is follow the money, cause that’s the only thing of value in this culture (irony being it is being stripped of its value). It is being concentrated upward. The government is feeding our tax-payer money to the corporate interests, surely you see that..I call the govt., The retarded handmaiden of the transnational banking cartel.
Every time we give corporations and other countries through international aid money it is spent however they want and not how it was intended to be used. Why aren’t there stipulations on how the money is spent?
We are all at fault to some degree especially if we don’t research anything on our own. But the most guilty among us are those who know better and are manipulating reality to their own end.
Might I recommend some great reading today:
Charles Hugh Smith has been writing amazing and insightful posts especially in the last 2 months.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Cash & Vlad aren’t being intellectually honest if they don’t see this. – L
I’m confused. What am I being intellectually dishonest about?
Marlin, good answer. I regretfully concur.
“Big Environmentalism is basically a scam, a construct to elicit contributions from naive but well meaning people, eager to be duped.”
-marlin-
LBend, I’ll try to make time to read that. Meanwhile, I continue to research on my own and provide excerpts that seem particularly relevant.
I found “Negative Population Growth” and their 21 FAQ’s helpful. #21 addresses the biggest stumbling block for the US, perhaps:
http://www.npg.org/faq.html
“21. Is opposition to high immigration rooted in racism?
Immigration, as it relates to population, is not a racial issue; it’s about numbers, not race, ethnicity or skin color. It is not racist to consider what doubling or tripling our population would require of our resources and environment.
NPG condemns racism in all its forms. But we also condemn taboos that prevent open, honest public discussion about issues so vital to all of us. With two-thirds of our population growth a direct result of immigration, the American people deserve some say in whether this kind of staggering increase is desirable. Immigration policy must be designed within the framework of overall U.S. population goals.”
-npg-
“I completely reject institutional authority based on fraud, and the only consent I give to be governed is one where the government is selected and elected through a real democratic process and is based on a real representative democracy. (The modern State of Israel being the prime example).”
Problem is your “prime example” is also based on fraud. Democracy is where 51% of the people decide to have 49% of the people for lunch. A legitimate government must be based on legitimate authority. A republic which devolves into a democracy has lost any legitimacy it may have originall enjoyed. I wonder how long it will take for you to realize the smart fookers {like yourself} are the ones running things now, and a huge part of why things are so screwed up.
Jen has already made it clear that she has nothing in common with mindless bimbos.
Someone who goes ballistic over grammar errors shouldn’t cast stones at someone who gets angry at mass murder.
You know, ripped, I thought that too, but then I thought that maybe my math was wrong. It sure doesn’t seem to make sense!
But then, it takes a more fossil fuel energy to make ethanol than is produced, but that program is nicely funded!
Well, that’s your problem, Prog.
The corporatocracy is NOT we, the people.
That is a name invented (I think) by John Perkins, author of Diary of an Economic Hitman.
The word describes the small (1%) number of people who own most of the wealth, most of the corporations and most of the media in this country and around the world (which is what globalization means).
They control what most people hear and therefore, believe.
They are for illegal immigration because it lowers wages. Period.
There is a massive propaganda campaign to make “liberals” believe that it is racist to oppose illegal immigration.
At the same time, there is a massive propaganda campaign to make “conservatives” hate Mexicans.
Then “liberals” and “conservatives” can fight each other, while immigrants are worked to exhaustion for pennies, and American workers have their wages lowered.
A side benefit to the ruling class, is that they can use the debate to further the oppression of the US population. We are serfs, tied to the place we live, when we must be registered with the government to travel. Now they want to make people on Amtrak and Greyhound submit to the indignities that airline passengers submit to. It has nothing to do with safety or immigrants.
It’s about making us submissive serfs.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-hate-muslims-and-mexicans-more.html
Cash,
Normally I try not to get involved with comments calling out people on this blog who may construe what I said as an attack. What I was responding to was a comment Wage made about the importance of having money to affect politics and political movements.:
Wage: Contrary to Cash and Vlad’s belief, it’s hard to affect society without the means to do so.
I said: ….Cash & Vlad aren’t being intellectually honest if they don’t see this. Even the rich and powerful know that’s why they want to be rich and powerful!….
T’is all I meant by this.
Barring a miracle Wage will go to her grave still paranoid and miserable.- Q
==================
Yep, Wage’s one joy in life is being miserable … still paranoid and miserable and ever on the search for acolytes to be paranoid and miserable with her because, as we all know, misery loves nothing better than company.
Short and sweet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwfdPpZdQsU
I was trying to convert her to Hetero via mental radio via the TV.
I belive Blacks have been polled – they are against Mexican Immigration but their Leaders as good Democrats are for it.
democracy – a more descriptive appellation – mobocracy
This is what I was afraid of. I was hoping against hope. A High School Science teacher once asked a student what electricity was. The Student said that he had forgotten. The Teacher caustically remarked that the only person who knew what electricity was had forgotten it.
How is the Pyramid coming? Don’t forget to make a little window at the apex so you can sit there and wave to your neighbors passing by.
A Straw Man. Go back to our original posts. Don’t rely on what she said we said. I merely said that Shia and Sunni have been fighting for 1200 years -not an opinion but a fact. The United States has only existed for a litte more than 200. So how did our money create this fight?
I don’t deny the malicious influence of the United States. But ridiculous claims do nothing to remedy this but only discredit the claimants.
Interesting read. One thing about keeping the Wall Street Bubble going “for the good of the little people”, i.e., pension funds.
In the name of protecting pension funds, people are asked to pay taxes for the banks. Either way, they’re losing money!
Webster Tarpley pointed out that giving the banks money,hoping it will trickle down to the people, is like infusing a vampire as it sucks a victim’s blood, hoping that somehow the blood will go the other way.
FDR pointed out that the money-changers had only one plan “faced with a failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money”.
He put a stop to it.
Obama put it on steroids.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-is-wealth.html
“You can start by getting off your medications. And I don’t mean just the prescription drugs. I mean the whole array of modern tranquilizers, from the MSM propaganda”
===
Good Comeback. (I know you are, but what am I?). You are a moron.
I asked where these major civil wars were. Certainly not in Iraq, until the US went in and fostered ethnic cleansing and death squads.
You could say that the Catholics and Protestants have been warring for centuries. And you could point to places where that has been true. Look at the squabbling on this blog.
But there hasn’t been torture, burning at the stake, or the like for centuries.
If a man gives you good info as I have – don’t be so quick to dismiss his more extreme beliefs. Driving on the Left as a symbol of English Satanism and Abraham Kook as the origin of Kooky -have you Disproved these? How in the case of of driving on the Left since it’s not a fact but a judgement? First you’d have to define evil…
And in the case of Kook, you’ve disproved what I said? Please inform me. I looked it up on Wikepedia and they were vague – something about cuckoo birds. So it might have started with that and then the nutcase Rabbi came along and it got changed by a syllable to that.
Here we go again. No fighting because the Shia were in terrorized submission. By overthrowing Saddam we also overthrew the Sunni structure. As soon as we leave the situation could well devolve into civil war. We’ve become the new stability, the new Saddam so to speak. What an awkward position to be in.
And the 1,170 years before Saddam, when you claim there was civil war?
Belief is not faith – how true. That God is all that exists – of course. But we are therefore God? That’s problematic. We are created beings not Being. Sure the wave comes from the ocean but can it still be a wave if it becomes the ocean? Some Theravadin Buddhists happily view Englightenment as suicide – a good thing since life is so bad. The Mahayana Masters say it is a mystery or assert that it is not the end nor continuance. And they view that kind of Theravada as nihilism.
I’ll stick with Christianity. We’ll see as much as we can bear to see; as much as He reveals to us. As the sun reflected in the pot of water, He will let us look up and see the Sun Himself, our Eternal Source. As St Louis Montfort said, He is the only one who can really say I Am. As beings we are purely derrivative. Perhaps in Ecstasy we can identify with our Source – if the Source allows it! – but we will always fall back to our created selfhood, at least while in this world. In Heaven, only He knows. Perhaps the Beatific Vision will be unending…and we will spend our eternity always growing towards it as beings even as we idenitify with it absolutely “already”. Thus the conflict between the mode of Being and the mode of growth or evolution would be transcended…
True. People can be duped quite easily because first they overwhelmingly have no intellectual curiosity, then second, they’re not logical anyway so what reading they do bother with is usually aimed at confirming their prejudices and in any event is often written by persons of no learning themselves such as Sean Hannity, that hop-head asshole Rush Limbaugh, and so forth.
But most of all, people “can’t handle the truth” because they really believe in mental hygiene and instinctively shy away from anything which might perhaps prove disturbing. This is why the establishment smiles patronizingly at angry dissenters because they are considered to be maladajusted losers who don’t know how to play the game. Never forget that in this country [USA] everything is a game, and winning isn’t everything it’s the only thing. Unemployed need not apply, etcetera ad nauseum ad infinitum.
All I know is when I see Indian immigrants working in the local sandwhich shop I am compelled to wonder “do we really need immigrant labor to work a job which could be filled by any teenager with two hours of training?” The answer of course is “no”. People who cannot see this are clearly insane. It is inevitable that we, as a nation which dumps human fecal matter into our drinking water supply are doomed to choke to death on our own effluents.
Have you ever read ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’? Yogananda says the same thing. The Christ-consciousness can be experienced here and now. Meditation is essential for most of us, especially the kriya yoga meditation practice he taught.
There was no “Iraq” only the Ummah, the Super Tribe of Islam. They had already taken “Iraq” from the Persian Empire. I’m not sure if they had conquered “Iran” or the Persain homeland yet. Anyway, in the midst of their conquests and killings, suddenly they had a successsion problem that reflected theological differences. Thus Islam split. Nothing to do with America or Communism. The Universe is big, Wage. Let your spirit walk sometimes. It will refresh you.
I have no use for theravadin buddhism as it is an orthodoxy and like all orthodoxies there’s just no way it’s going to really make sense in the final analysis. For one thing, the S/E Asian theravadin believe that only monks can attain enlightenment, and that the laity accumulate “merit” by donating to the monasteries so that these creepy weirdoes can live better than the peasants. So fuck them. It is also interesting that Watts really maintained his distance from the Japanese Zenists as well. After all, he was not really a Zen Buddhist but a professional philosopher.
In Buddhism even “god” isn’t really “God” in the semitic desert religions sense. Yes, we can be emanations of the godhead. For one thing just try disproving that. Once someone has attained Gnosis [I haven’t] and they are convinced that they’ve attained Satori or whatever you want to call it then they have a proof of the pudding and needn’t bother with proving anything to anyone. My intuition tells me that this phenomenon is for real. I believe that there is also evidence of reincarnation and periods spent in an afterlife between incarnations and that moreover this evidence is not dependent upon any sort of religious confirmation. Everyone needs to ask themselves: “am I a Christian/Jew/Muslim because that’s how my parents raised me?” Overwhelmingly the answer to this question is of course “yes”. Try reading “Why I am not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell.
OK, not to agree with the Vlads and other decriers of the downfall of civilization, but, geez, this is going too far!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVo4VcZ7-C8&feature=player_embedded
Every country has its elites. NONE of them have the interest of the US elites as their primary concern. – Pro
I would go further. The one and only thing each country’s elites care about are their own interests.
Anyway that was a really interesting article. WW2 left some bitter memories especially in Poland which lost 20-25% of its people. Everyone forgets that it wasn’t only Germany that invaded Poland but the USSR also.
Times change but people don’t. Germany will eventually get over its post WW2 guilt complex. Russia meanwhile is sitting on a huge stockpile of nukes and conventional weaponry probably in laughable security conditions. Those countries squeezed bewteen Germany and Russia have more than enough reason to feel threatened.
Nothing is preventing teenagers from applying. Don’t you believe in competition in a free marketplace? You think teenagers should have a lock on those jobs?
What I wonder is whether you ask the same question when the immigrants are Polish, or British, German, etc.
Your wondering about “Indian immigrants” sounds racist to me.
But maybe I’m just insane.
I knew an old psychic [I was his servant] who knew Yogananda..in the 40s or 50s
And knew someone else who said Yoganandy would appear to her [in the 1980’s].
See ‘the cross and the rose.com’
However ole Yoganada was not without controversy.
‘All I know is when I see Indian immigrants working in the local sandwhich shop’
Bharat is producing 100,000,000 to 2000,000,000 people a decade..may be first country with 2 billion people.
They are sneaking into USA via Mexico.
In yr 2000 there were very few Indians in SoCal…now they are all over the place. yuk.
Watts was a drunk,womanizer and his talks on radio are ‘boring and dated’.
Yes he was a nice man and it’s good stuff. I went to a conference once and I saw the leaders wearing saffron shirts with the priestly collar. I found the mixing of traditions disturbing on the social level. Same thing in a different way at the Vendanta Society. Spiritually, it’s more complicated. Sometimes traditions can enrich each other, but it can also lead to alot of confusion. Maybe the Mountain Peak is the same, but there are different roads to getting to the top – and the guides use different techniques appropriate to those different paths and different climbers.
One time Thich Nhat Hanh tried to equate the Triple Gem with the Trinity of Chrisitianity. Everyone thought that was nonsense. If instead of trying to equate the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha he had tried the Triple Body of the Buddha or Trikaya, it would have made a whole lot more sense. But that would have been getting very estoteric for a popular book.
Contrary to Cash and Vlad’s belief, it’s hard to affect society without the means to do so. – Wage
I’m not sure what Wage is talking about. I think Wage is attributing stuff to me that I never said.
What I said in previous posts that if Iraq was/is armed to the teeth it’s because of Soviet/Russian arms sales to Iraq, not American arms sales. That’s according to stats from database set up by an institute for peace in Stockholm. Also that the US is a power in the world but not by any stretch the only one. There are many other societies, elites and interests in the world.
I’ll give you one example that will make you snicker. You know the nasty little nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India? Guess who sold India its first nuclear reactor that enabled it to produce nuclear fuel for weapons? Answer: Canada.
Why did we do it? I have no earthly idea. Nuclear proliferation concerns? Hell with those apparently. Did we learn? Nope, we’re hot on the trail of new nuclear business there.
Like I said many non American interests in the world some of which do stupid things with horrendous consequences like selling nuclear technology to third world pissholes in unstable violent neighbourhoods.
Thank you, that was interesting.
One wonders what will happen if the Visegrad military maneuvers using NATO’s name cause loud protests from the Russians.
Cheers
What I consider to be an important distinction: some Nations care about their citizens not in and of themselves, but for the Glory of China, Japan etc. Our Elite used to care about Americans like that but that’s a thing of the past. The only Nations who care about individuals per se, is perhaps the small nations of Western Europe. Iceland, Finland, maybe Denmark – the people have been polled and they register a higher satisfaction with their goverment than anyone else anywhere. The common characteristics of these fortunate Nations? Small, peaceful, highly educated, democratic, Western, and up to now homogenous. That latter is changing and I say that that will change the delicate balance that created the satisfaction – and the freedom.
Was America ever there? If so, not for very long. Consider the Irish Catholics – both the Elite and the People considered them subhuman savages. Yet did not the American Elite foist massive numbers of them on their own people – to the detriment to the American Anglo Saxon working man? What utter hatred that indicated. No consideration except the desire for cheap labor as quick as possible.
Re: Germany, Russia, and central / eastern Europe.
And it gets worse. When Schröder was the chancellor of Germany, he pushed through the undersea gas pipeline deal with Russia to avoid having to give the Poles a cut of the deal. In doing so, Germany turned its back on EU interests because the immediate business return was better.
The German leadership wants to incompatible goals. They want to call the shots on EU financial and economic policy, but they also want to operate on their own, the wishes of other EU members be damned, when it suits Germany to do so. In the long term, that won’t work.
Probable outcome is that the EU will either become a mere formality among its members or it will undergo severe change, with a likely shrinking of the group that uses the Euro.
Cheers
Servant? What does that mean? Like assistant? Did you handle the apports?
The great anti-feminist Ludovici was Rodin’s secretary in his youth. He said that no women cared for Rodin until he attained money and acclaim. Then he had to beat them off with a chisel. It is ever the same, is it not? And we only care for their beauty not how “nice” they are. Nature is an ugly thing. The Theravadin Gnostics may be right in their disdain for “Her”.
I would assume after watching the link you provided that Canada might have some issues with becoming unionized with the U.S. Mexico? Not so much, me thinks. Hell, most of the Southwestern part of our country already looks like and sounds like Mexico. Moving forward, we’d do well to learn how people can survive as well as they do in Mexico (absent the growing and selling of drugs). Their schools are run by the Catholic church. From what I gather, the priests seek out the most intelligent boys and groom them to become priests, thereby ensuring that those children enjoy a prosperous life and solid employment. The rest of the student populace returns to mega farms and corporate factories. With the continuing evaporation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, lines are now not so much being blurred as erased.
The super highway being built to connect Mexico with the rest of North America will inevitably destroy the last vestiges of American hegemony. At a glance, it almost seems counter productive for our corporate masters to systematically reduce the standard of living of Americans who will no longer be able to afford things like washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, or air conditioners. Will the new consumer class be in China and India? That would appear to make sense, in so far as those products are being built there already. This would certainly reduce the amount of money it takes to ship these foreign goods to North America, but it’s hard to fathom how the average worker in China and India could afford such luxuries given their meager wages.
An Hindu Yogi coming to America to raise the consciousness of the West would have to be controversial. the cross and the rose.com doesn’t exist.
Once aliens get to management levels they only hire their own. Kids can’t get jobs anymore in most of America.
We thought you got raptured. Is God really a Black Woman? Did she throw you back?
Do we need immigrant labour? Especially as our captains of industry are hell bent on exporting domestic jobs? We let in people from other countries who reasonably expect that if we let them in there will be good jobs for them. Then the immigrants realize, after spending a torrent of resources and effort in getting here, that there are no good jobs. This does not sound like a recipe for happiness and societal solidarity to me.
But shush yourself, to towering morally and intellectually superior liberals this is racism in disguise. And to us little people squeaking about about economic viability: the back of the hand.
It sounds like you went to an SRF event. I have found that any organization that grows up around a vibrant spiritual personality inevitably squelches much of the richness that was originally present. That has happened at SRF. It certainly happened in Christianity. What appeals to me about the spiritual tradition of India is that it emphasizes the personal experience of God, or the divine, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not about merely believing creeds and going to church.
My ideas are definitely not rascist. I am concerned about immigrants for reason of populatioin density and projected carrying capacity of the land based upon possible outcomes. I also dislike that immigrants overwhelmingly appear politically cnservative and dog eat dog in their economic orientation.
It’s also true that we don’t need them. For instance why can’t more Americans go to fucking medical school for christ’s sake? Are we too stupid to be doctors? But why bring them here when the jobs are being outsourced anyway? That last point just doesn’t add up but the INS just keeps letting them in. What’s wrong with their native countries? As an American just try getting land immigrant status to Canada anymore. They’ll only let you have a cottagers 6 month visa. Then the only work you’re allowed to do is guiding or cooking at a youth camp resort or general adult resort outfitter during the remaining seasons. They probably think 50 million people would move there and pull a Texas on them. They do have incredibly cheap well watered land up there in the Canadian shield rocky areas treed mostly coniferous. About $150 per acre, available in such quantities that you could start your own county in some places.
Glad you liked the article, Cash.
-you too, Monty-
That Stratfor analysis that I linked to was courtesy of John Mauldin.
I’ve never met John Mauldin in person, but I’ve been following his work for years now. He strikes me as a genuinely good fellow.
He’s got a newsletter service that I subscribe to and he does financial management for “accredited investors.” (greater than 1 million US in liquid assets)
So, not only does Mauldin have more money than God has little green apples, but he works with truly high-end investors. (some of them are that 1% elite that Wage says are deliberately out to get us)
Despite all that, Mauldin gives good advice to the “proles” (my word, not his) and is genuinely concerned about the future of the US and our middle class. (He’s conditionally in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy, for example)
I recommend him for any of CF Nation who think that the wealthy are always evil lizards, or whatever.
Then you say – “Times change but people don’t.”
-cash-
That’s what worries me about high and growing US population and a few other things. US financial capabilities may be about to “freeze up” and then remain fixed for decades or start to slide irreversibly down, down, down –
Higher US population numbers are going to make this process worse, not better, for all involved around the globe.
I agree that the EU will likely become a mere formality. Too many divergent national interests. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems the idea of European citizenship hasn’t caught on in any meaningful way. Germans are still Gernmans, the French are still French, the Brits are still Brits.
I had a discussion about the Euro with an Italian colleague of mine working in Milan. I expressed doubts about the viability of a common currency given the constraints on labour mobility imposed by language and culture. He said yes but look at the history of Europe, they had to do something so that disasters like WW1 and WW2 never happened again.
I thought that trying to use a common currency among countries that were and are so different culturally, economically, linguistically was not going to work. We have this perception in North America that all Europeans are fluently multilingual and can live and work easily anywhere in Europe. But, from what I’ve seen, a lot of Europeans speak some English besides their native tongue and some speak a bit of other neighbouring languages. It seems to me that moving, for example, from Germany to France or vice versa and learning the neighbouring language well enough to be functionally literate is the preserve of a very few highly educated people and doesn’t give you a critical mass. At least not enough to give you a common economy where labour moves around easily and not enough to be able to justify a common currency. I’d be interested to know what is your perception of this.
“Your wondering about “Indian immigrants” sounds racist to me.
But maybe I’m just insane.”
-asoka, to bhMark-
Here’s the problem, Mark. Your observation of “Indian immigrants” working in a sandwich shop was almost certainly based on a genuinely true observation of, guess what, “Indian immigrants” working in a sandwich shop.
I’m sure it does sound racist to asoka. Pretty much anything involving immigration into the US will be said by asoka to sound racist.
I believe we need to review the definitions of racism for asoka, again.
Q, you interested?
My quote of the week…
“The nasty things that you think are coming always take longer to arrive than you think they will, but once they get here, they make up for their tardiness by being worse than you thought they’d be.”
-Richard Maybury
OK, Vlad – apparently I need to use more of those emoticons. ;0) 😉 etc.
RE: “Kooky” I said “apparent” bullsh*t
I looked it up myself and found etymology going to “surfer” language and a Hawaiian reference to scat, or something.
RE: Brits driving on the left as proof of “evil.”
As you yourself said, that’s a pure value judgment – on both of our parts.
Therefore I call freely call bullsh*t! BullSh*t!
You come up with some good stuff, sometimes, you old racialist you.
But, damn, man – you are quick to take offense and slow to see humor in anything.
There is more of it than I expected. I’m not sure how the mechanics of it work; I think in some cases everyone speaks a common pool of limited English and in others the immigrants speak a limited version of the host nation language.
The Euro, along with fallen trade barriers, made it easier to move goods around. But even so, I find it intriguing that there are various products made in all the countries that just don’t get exported for a variety of reasons. It is kind of refreshing in one sense and vaguely annoying in another.
The “labor moving around” has mostly been expressed by firms importing cheap labor from poorer countries to put pressure on their domestic labor pools – whee!, another victory for the forces of the market . . . . In some cases, there were genuine labor shortages (IT workers in Germany, for example) and outsiders were brought in to bridge the gap.
Cheers
If memory serves Asoka is a self admitted racist that hates White people. He says he’s an elderly Black man. He may actually be Black. Who knows. It may explain his hate. On this type of forum it’s impossible to know if he really is Black or if he’s a “he” or a “she”.
Whatever. In my experience nobody hates white people with such unreasoning fury as White liberals. In the liberal pantheon of demons there is no demon like the White Anglo Saxon Protestant. No use arguing. Facts, history etc are pointless. Maybe Asoka is actually a White liberal. One thing he is not is a sexagenarian as he’s claimed. Someone that age would have exhibited some knowledge of conditions in the 1950s/60s/70s and such knowledge would have coloured his view of current events. But this knowledge/perspective is absent in his postings.
Test of small
“About $150 per acre, available in such quantities that you could start your own county in some places.”
What is available {visa wise} if you don’t need employment?
Last night the Patriot Act was extended by Congress for another four years. But during the debate, a key question was raised, which ought to disturb every American. It is the fact that the government’s INTERPRETATION (i.e., application) of the Patriot Act is being kept as a SECRET. So objections were raised by Senators Wyden and Udall.
Here is the congressional record discussion about this:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2011_cr/wyden052411.html
Yesterdays alternet.org noted that Vermont is going to institute a single payer health plan.
Democracy is where 51% of the people decide to have 49% of the people for lunch.
==
That is nonsense sold to people by the rich elite so they can maintain their ill-begotten wealth and privilege and their grip on government through a system that encourages corruption and a democratic deficit. It is a Republic that is a fraud, and history is very clear on this fact, both recent history and ancient history. Your American “founding fathers” made it very clear that their political system was modelled after Rome because that was the best system to serve the interests of the rich.
Regards democracy, that 51% majority is extremely fluid. Its composition changes all the time as new ideas new alliances new demographics new circumstances, etc., are injected into the body politics. You just have to look at Israeli parliamentary politics to recognize this. If you want to study what works, study the Israeli system.
MD, if you applied just a little bit of critical thinking instead of parroting the drivel that’s fed to you, you’d see these things as self-evident. Instead, what you are is intellectually lazy and emotionally blind. I’m not going to hold your hand. And I don’t care to have any more these idiotic discussions with you. As I said, these things are self-evident. If you can’t see that, that’s your problem. The only person that can help you is you.
I can’t figure out why the subject of this BLOG always turns to racial, comparative cultural issues.
As near as I can tell the the social-political construction of the population of the US more closely revolves around how each group receives its sustenance.
My neighbor, the fuckhead who has lived off the government all his life, keeps acting as if his job with the NSA has any value, while telling me how much he can’t stand all those leftist liberal slackers.
Similarly, the mortgage-banking manager likes to talk about all those riff-raff that took out loans on homes that are now underwater. “Imagine, those bastards, not wanting to follow through with payments on homes that are worth less than they owe on them.” All the while,the banker is happy to pocket the bonus with the help of his firm’s bank holding company revolving $5 billion in TARP money. (the bank being underwater as well)
I mentioned four types of people – but they only act as two groups. The former being equally lazy, the latter being equally irresponsible.
Clusterfuck Nation is indeed a confusing and sometimes seemingly contradictory landscape of all manner of human fuckups. Its takes much more than race to define any element.
My point being, there are
Okay yes, “sounding” racist based upon the PC admonition that one must “not go there” at all due to fear of being labeled a neanderthal kind of like when they shot “Basic Instinct #2” and some idiotic development officer at the studio tied to make it less offensive to lesbians thereby neutering the project although of course at that late date the project was kind of a joke anyway according to that lunatic Hungarian screenwriter Joe Esterhaze or something that at least sounds like that.
Actually being racist is a different matter. In point of fact I am not actually a liberal but much more a labourite which of course is not really the same thing. I don’t think we need unskilled immmigrants at this point depressing wages & forcing more students to take out loans because they can’t work their way through community college & Commuter State U. DOWNTOWN. Then again the part time sandwhich maker could’ve been a retired phsyics teacher for all I know and native born Americans are definitely NOT smart enough to staff all the physics teaching vacancies. At least not focused enough let’s say.
I do believe that the human race has the smarts and the flexibility to adapt to a hive-like existence with higher population than hitherto was envisioned here in No. America but as Jim repeatedly points out afresh living and working arrangements would have to be radically adapted to a more efficient arrangement, not a tantaliziing prospect to Joe Sixpack [classism!].
In the long run we are probably capable of anything, including outgrowing our zenophobia, abolishing nationalism, and migrating to other celestial bodies perhaps even outside of our own solar system, but that is mere speculation and largely science fiction at this point, considering how mired we remain in our own filth.
Not too true – I am in turn stern and silly. My ideal is Giacomo in that old Danny Kaye movie “The Purple Pimpernickel”. He was King of Jesters and Jester to the King (God) – and also an assasin. Being silly was his job – among men he would demand respect. It’s up to other people to figure out which I’m being – often when I’m acting silly, I’m being serious. And when I act serious I’m kidding. But you see a fact is a fact no matter what my mode. Thus you (generic) are tested – are you serious enough to respect what is? As for the my kooky left handed ideas – not facts per se I admit, but not to be dismissed out of hand either. The show must go on my dear fellow. If you want to upstage me, fine. But you better be ready to come up on stage after you’ve egged me off.
In person, people who know me can read me. On the internet, it’s much harder and that makes it fun too.
Danny Kaye knocked Giacomo out and then impersonated him. Sounds like what’s happened in our Society to the Old American Elite. Am I kidding just because the movie was a comedy? Sometmes I’m stern and silly at the same time or sternly silly.
Did you ever just get an idea and have it turn out to be true? I have many times. I’m not limited to “sources” – I’m often my own. Later on, I’ll hear some authority repeating what I figured out on my own. It’s wonderful, part of becoming a real Human Being. I’m not done yet, but one does welcome Landmarks.
Are you a Mason by chance? You seem so sometimes.
woops wrong flower
by ‘controversy’ I meant moral uh, rumors of his having been less than moral.
reintroduced me to the Reverend Yogacharya Mildred Hamilton of …
http://www.crossandlotus.com/…/MemoriesOfMother_Body&BackCover-noHeaders.pdf
[PDF]
The Way of the Mystic Christ and The Cross – The Cross and the Lotus
[PDF]
The Cross and The Lotus Journal
Race in the modern World is what Sex was to the Victorians – terra incognito. Sure we could ignore it – as long as we were homogenous. As it is tens of millions of aliens are pouring into America. The largest group, the Mexicans are OVERTLY hostile to us. This hostility is being encouraged by the CFR and its client groups like the NEA. In one of the Arizon Textbooks in Ethnic Studies, it actually calls for the killing of all Whites over 16. And you want us not to be talking about it? We should have been talking about it 30 years ago. We should be in full action mode by now. Obviously the army should be posted along the border in full force until a Wall is built. Then we can begin to relax as the illegals are pressured to leave of their own accord.
Yes that’s what the Elite do: create a problem (and the Mexicans and Muslims ARE a problem) and then have a solution ready that strengthens their agenda. They wouldn’t be able to use the Muslims and Mexicans if those groups weren’t here to begin with. You Communists want to use these groups for your own purposes. Neither you nor the Elite care about the Nations in which you reside. You might personally – but the movement your part of doesn’t by definition.
BUBBLEHEADMARC….
You’re new to CFN, so you probably don’t know that Asia is the world’s greatest expert on gurus, saints and sages. At times, I can barely understand his writing, but this is probably because he’s in some funky altered state.
SJmom
P.S. I have several Alan Watts books, and enjoyed them thoroughly.
I’m glad to learn that JHK paints. It is such a genuine authentic activity, and a consciousness-raising counter balance to the worldly madness he deals in. At least I would think he experiences it that way. I admire people who paint as a avocation but with seemingly a deeply engaged attitude. Anyone painting outside the Art Powers Machine is generally more genuine, authentic. I wonder if he writes about it.
“Hell, most of the Southwestern part of our country already looks like and sounds like Mexico.”
===========
As it should. The Southwest was taken by violence and kept by an illegitimate treaty
In The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Article X guaranteed the protection of Mexican land grants. But the USA did not respect Article X, so it is only right that the Treaty be ignored.
The Mexicans are simply taking back their lands.
Yo digo: ¡Viva la reconquista!
If memory serves Cash is a self admitted defender of the use of atomic bombs on civilian populations. He says he’s a Canadian man of Italian descent. He may actually be Canadian. Who knows. On this type of forum it’s impossible to know if he really is Canadian or if he’s a “he” or a “she”.
Whatever. In my experience it is a waste of time to speculate about the provenance of a poster. The only thing that matters is the intellectual content of the post.
We thought you got raptured. Is God really a Black Woman?
==========
I was raptured… and yes she is divinely Black.
There are internet cafes in heaven… but they make you sign an NDA upon entrance… so I can’t say much else. “Illegal immigrants” are welcome here.
Asoka, CFN Chapter #1
Heavenly Region
Don’t ever look under the bed. It IS there. Just go to sleep and dream that it isn’t.
Oh you’re writing from Heaven. Somehow I expected more. Maybe I’ll reconsider my travel plans…. My Goddess has Dark Tresses but very Fair Skin. The contrast between the two is the very bliss itself.
Is “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” your favorite song? My fondness for Alan Watts is confined to the print realm. Asia is perfectly right that he had his problems. Also, as an occasional Zen attendee, I am aware that serious meditation people don’t like Watts. I like the way Watts faked everything his entire life including pulling that Episcopalian priest gig out of his ass or rather by blowing sunshine up the Bishop of Chicago’s ass, as it were. He was so far ahead of the other students at Seabury-Western Divinity that they sent him to the crypt to read the fathers in the original rather than waste his time on the pedestrian curriculum they had there at that low-church seminary. He never attended undergraduate university and didn’t have a B.A.. He did go to prep school at Canterbury Cathedral where he carried Cosmo Lang’s cope in the procession at his coronation as Archbishop of Canterbury.
I’ve seen films of Watts and don’t like them either. I’m sure that his radio talks were tailored to the requirements of the spaced out bay area cannabis aficionados, which of course would’ve been better for him as well instead of the steady diet of gin martinis which I’ve gotten first hand reports of even prior to his death when I met with a philosophy professor at Baldwin-Wallace to discuss “The Supreme Identity”. I would read and reread his books as if trying to decipher some sort of puzzle.
I am not really new to CFN but avoided posting for a very long time. Or at least I was too dense to readily figure out how to log on for some time. I’m sure that Asia knows more about gurus than I do but I do have a short list of my own: Madame Blavatsky, underestimated until recently and now enjoying a comeback from the grave; Gurdgieff of course; Suzuki Roshi of San Francisco zen center now deceased of course; Krishnamurti, who resigned from his organization which was trying to promote him as an avatar of the godhead. I like his idea that the truth is a pathless land. Krishnamurti strikes me as being pretty compatible with the thought of Watts.
My favorite though in a sense is Colin Wilson, that is as a philosopher of sorts. He wrote “The Outsider” while camped out in a public park in London! I like his writings on false messiahs and psychic phenomena. I also like his energy, readiness to email lengthy passages from books yet unpublished, and his continued high productivity.
I still believe in Watts’ reluctance to be a joiner. I am suspicious of Zen practictioners disdain for him. There is too much of a fetish for zazen it seems to me. Some of the Taoist hermits seem “cooler” somehow or at least have smaller walking staffs stuck up their asses. Watts entire career took incredible guts. I am thankful that I managed to quit drinking 20 years ago myself.
“If memory serves Cash is a self admitted defender of the use of atomic bombs on civilian populations.”
-asoka, to cash-
Cash, I don’t believe I’ve seen you “defend” the use of atomic bombs against Japan. I have seen you explain the decision in its historical context.
Our fathers and grandfathers made that decision. We could argue about it forever, but the unique set of events that led to that decision is gone – forever.
But someone who deliberately chooses to be a racist now, based on the behavior of generations past – chooses hate and envy
whether as a “he” or a “she.”
“And I don’t care to have any more these idiotic discussions with you.”
Just when something surfaces that you don’t want to discuss, you stomp off. After making insults, of course.
Even the “awake” can have major flaws. Look at Adi Da, totally wacko, yet near the end of his life he produced transcendent art,IMO. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote beautiful books–his book on spiritual materialism is a classic in my library, yet he died an alcoholic.
I’m pissed at Asia because he totally writes off Adyashanti. Wanna bet he’s never been to a satsang with Adya? I have…and I volunteered at his offices for several years. Adya is the real deal.
But for reading, I’m totally crazy for Ken Wilber.
He’s brilliant…and I’ve met him and he is a potty-mouthed guy with a huge ego. But I don’t really care because he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.
SJmom
SJMom said: “Adyashanti is the real deal.”
==========
Yes, Adyashanti is the real deal.
And so are all these enlightened beings:
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Aaron Wigg
Joan Tollifson
Jackie O’Keefe
Darryl Bailey
Rupert Spira
Jerry Katz
Robert Wolfe
Paul Hedderman
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Osho
Isaac Shapiro
Christine Wushke
Greg Goode
Leo Hartong
David Carse (read PERFECT BRILLIANT STILLNESS!)
Randall Friend
Richard Collings
James Braha
William Samuel
Rodney Stevens
Jason Swanson
Suzanne Foxton
Ramesh Balsekar (1917-2009)
Bob Adamson
Peter Brown
Timothy Freke
Tony Parsons (THE OPEN SECRET)
Sosan (Chien-chih Seng-Ts’an)
Jeff Foster
Catherine Harding
John Greven
John Wheeler
Stephen Wingate
etc. etc.
The world is not lacking when it comes to enlightened women and men.
I never claimed to be an expert..
and Watts reads better than he sounds
[on KPFK sunday mornings]
As far as asokas list…I dont find anyone there worth Investigating! [i.e…a bunch ofnew agers and self promoters i assume]
Nirsagdatta,hes Good…the westerner who ‘discovered’ him is a friend of mine.
Are some of these White? Asoka, how could you?!
What’s wrong with Adya Shanti, Asia?
What art by Da are you talking about? Wilber is very smart but in denial but about race. He knows that Black Africans are in the “red zone” of being yet never admits that more than 60% of it is genetic. Africa can never be other than what it is – until they are replaced by the Chinese. Why should we care? No one cares that we are being replaced. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
“Are some of these White? Asoka, how could you?!”
==============
Vlad, I am not a racist so, when it comes to enlightenment, I recognize enlightened beings of all races, regardless of gender, religious heritage, or nationality.
I found his lecture boring…
‘wrong’..is he a real teacher or what is he?
Is he a Buddha?
some? some? hahahah
white city…you are better off with Hindu, Tibetan etc
and Bubbleheadmarc …
Ah, how soon we forget the great ones! I ran across a book the other day by a great philosopher and teacher that I hadn’t thought of in years. I’m sure he was instrumental in the formation of my intellectual and spiritual life. He was a great artist, too!
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/ashleigh_brilliant/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Brilliant
It’s all in fun, Lew
I don’t know – that’s why I’m asking you. SJ thinks you hate him.
And just think: we’re supposed to be talking about peak oil. The Purists clench their fists and gnash their teeth in helpless fury. The Troll has conquered!
You are so good. How can I become like you and overcome my Klan Consciousness?
Burroughs called Emerson “the great physician” and wrote a beautiful eulogy. And Bucke considered Whitman a forerunner of the Cosmic Consciousness – which would someday “leaven the race”. And John Muir called Emerson “Master” – as Ginsburg called Casidy, but with a whole different meaning.
You should move to Brattleboro. The hippies run the state from there. Contra Dance every Wednesday – for the last two hundred years.
I don’t know how many readers, here, have already pointed out the rather obvious speculation made by (among others) Max Keiser, that banking interests have control of most big mainstream media operations. Thus, there is some fundamental reason why the media (mainstream) are disinclined to air any story that is related to banking industry crime and corruption. I suppose that must sound to you like the disturbed ravings of a “conspiracy theorist”. In the absence of believable information, I feel there is little option to do other than speculate on conspiratorial motives.
If the economy was not manipulated by speculators we would have peace and there would be a balance among nations.
The value of a currency should not be a certain amount of gold, but the value of the job or the commodities for that amount.
If a computer was worth 1000 $ in US and the same equivalent in Yuan or Euros or Rubles, if a carpenter in US was paid the same amount as in Russia or in China, everybody would live and WORK in his country.
There would still be a lot of exchanges, but based on the need and not on the value of the currency.
This morning I read that in Poland they are building a new freeway Berlin- Warsaw and who is building it?
Chineses…
The Polish go to work to England and Germany, Germans go to Norway, English are unemployed and so on…
Isn´t that ridicolous?
Wouldn´t it be better if the Americans produced in US, Polish in Poland and so on?
Go in.
PorC said:
Which logically brings me to my recent big idea – reducing the rate of legal immigration down to replacement rate.
I’m surprised how little feedback I get on this idea, myself – on a peak resources website.
***************************************************
I’ve noticed that most of the bytes on this site
are troll wars between Vlad and whomever or replies to the multiple personality disorder that
IS Asoka and similar mental masturbations.
The deep thinkers like you, LBendet, LewisLucan,
Cash (though some may disagree) … get very
little play on this site. That’s why I’m one of
the few vociferous critics of the “democracy”
that is the Internet. On nearly any blog, the
bad eventually drives out the good and those who
are the loudest and/or most prolific posters
crowd out the “signal” with their “noise”.
You may have already noticed that I often
disappear for weeks, write a spate of postings
over a short span of time, and then disappear
again. However, when I do visit, it’s always
a pleasure to read the articulate posters and/or
the sensible and nice folks like SJ Mom. My
sympathies to several other posters who’ve also
had their “signal” drowned out by the noise.
A lot of pseudo-issues get huge play here while
critical issues (degradation of media, especially
the “news” media, resource scarcity, the collapse
of parenting/mentoring/educating, etc. etc.) are
like incidentals to many.
This site has followed the predictable path that
all blogs follow. I’m afraid that situation is
only going to worsen over time.
E.
I was looking back at some posts about god, and noticed how many metaphysical problems and concepts are aggregated in this container. So the concept of god aggregates, puts together in one entity, in one delimitation many metaphysical problems, that in Metaphysics are distinct or seperate (or maybe something in between, another infinite recursion). Like he can contradict himself but also not, he can exist but also not, he can etc. Does he exist or not ? So many impossible problems can discharge their mystery in this concept of god, since these oddball problems are present with us in life no matter what, like absolutes based on non absolutes, etc. And Matter and Mass Energy like to tease us with suggestions of metaphysical problems.
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=149592&start=25
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=5&t=149761&start=0
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=5&t=149458
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=5&t=149550
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=151201
But Metaphysics just leaves these “problems” (are they even problems or experiences ?) suspended nowhere, it doesn’t have a hidden social agenda of power like religion, but the religious clowns highjack some metaphysics, put the mystery in god, the believers are confused and awed and bewildered and thus they believe. The religion operates it’s simple 1 transistor circuit, mostly you wil be punished, pain forever, in fact religion is just psychological hate and fear in people, but using some metaphysics, it is just pure hate and violence, they can express how much they would love to torture forever people in hell with this, how much they desire to inflict pure pain. What insanity.
But especially all of those religious structures trickle through society and the ruling class love these structures since everything can be put in this religious framework, you are fired, you are not competitive, you are lazy, you are not innovative, hence punishment, etc.
But real philosophy and metaphysics has no social agenda, is not a social endeavor, it is pure astounding awe at all of the infinite recursions our mind and logic produce but can’t solve. You can’t do anything with it, it ha no goal or use, it is a total void, that is why it is so great.
But most of all, all of those metaphysical problems that would be dismissed as not real, or not logical, when applied to god become real, the believers of god will go to any length to convince anyone and will find any way to justify any absurd logic, like god is everybody but also not, he feels the pain of all in hell, but also the pleasure of all in heaven and earth, and you can go on forever with all of the contradictions present in god and religion.
Everyone justifies god as being able to be contradictory, but Metaphysics and Philosophy can’t be, otherwise it is trash, not valid.
But it is the other way around, the contradictions of Metaphysics and Philosophy are the only kinds valid, those of religion are simply people expressing their will power and power structures.
I was thinking about what I said some time back, that philosophy is new everytime you look at it, that there is no progress, well this could apply to alot of things, but what is new and old ? how to distinguish ? another infinite recursion of intractable problems. Also we are thought no matter what, no matter how hard we try we are always thinking, we are always in some reference system of thoughts, measurements, comparisons, goals, targets, feelings, emotions, whatever. How to decompose thought ? Another infinite recursion of intractable problems, we are obsession machines, everything is and can become an obsession, why can’t we control our own minds ? Who controls my mind ? or any mind ? On and on, forever, lost forever in a Metaphysical world of insanity and absurdity that this trick universe dealt us. What a bad hand of cards, if any god dealt us.
Now give me another modified mind that fell from the sun, I found a new one where they have thought decomposers connected to square roots of existence generators (how I love math symbols, those huge complex equations, I like to write and make up all kinds of imaginary equations, but I mostly suck at math in the real world, but that is ok, there are those who know how to do it, symbols as far out as possible, trillions of new symbols, the less you understand it the better, like foreign languages, the less I understand it the better, the more I like them, let everything become an infinite mystery, everything unknown, an unknown world for a mind that can’t decode it, cool) all kinds of converters, like free will to absolutes converters, numbers to symbols converters, infinite to zero converters, decomposers of infinity mixed with existence particles in high speed virtual particles, etc. But these are just very vague descriptions of what they are really doing, they do things so far out and incredible, you can never imagine it.
SD:-_____EJDJDé*ç°°°°°°°°°°°°°:;LKMNN£($/%%%%%%%%%%%%%_______ç;))(/$&%%K&K&K
Wow, notice the difference fom the other minds that came from the Sun that is now a supercomputer self improving itself at exponential rates, incredible. What could that % ever mean, too far out, too impossible.
Please give me another radical brain that falls from the Sun, another new universe, let me dream on.
Thanks for the moral support about high tech,
LLB. However, in this culture our stance is
akin to pissing into a hurricane. You just
get piss all over your own face making you
wonder why you take a stand at all.
The irony is that most of the biggest cheerleaders
for high tech are people who don’t know anything
about its internals. If they did, they’d never
do ANY financial transaction on the Web.
“Computer Security” is an oxymoron because any and
all operating systems are like owning a house with
two thousand doors and even YOU, the OWNER, only
know where 200 of the doors are. Computer systems
are far too complicated in their current state to
EVER “secure”.
The early Cyberneticists were much humbler and
more realistic about the ability of man to handle
increasing complexity. Nowadays, the young
programmers don’t have half the ability of the
programmers from the 1970s and 1980s yet they
have TEN TIMES THE EGO so they think they can
tame any dragon.
If it wasn’t so tragic it would be comical in
the Kafka-esque sense.
E.
I wonder if any of you saw Jean Twenge (author
of “Generation Me”) on Fox Business. I must hand
it to Fox … I guess every dog has its day.
Twenge’s message is that our entire culture, and
not just Gen-X/Y, has narcissistic personality
disorder. Few people, young or old, scale their
expectations in life to what they have earned with
the sweat of their brow or the cleverness of their
minds. They think that the sheer “divinity” of
their very being should be honored.
What frightens me about the immodesty of the
personal expectations of most is what it implies
for their ability to LOVE. One senses in their
thinking that they are the axis around which the
social world should revolve. It feels COLD
because it’s an entitlement which has no
concomitant RESPONSIBILITIES.
People with an inflated sense of self (seemingly
a majority of people in the USA) feel that they
ought to be loved and entertained but they don’t
seem to feel as though they have to be lovING and
entertainING. In metaphorical terms, we live in
a country now where everyone has “champagne
tastes and a beer wallet” … they want all the
best but never question what this means for their
obligation to GIVE the best.
E.
LA is actually doing a better job than most US cities to establish functional rapid transit. There is already trolley or subway service from downtown LA to the Mid-Wilshire District, North Hollywood, Pasadena, East LA, and Long Beach, and from Norwalk to Redondo Beach. Most of the system operates on exclusive rights-of-way, the biggest exception being the East LA end of the Gold Line. The Expo Line is currently under construction as far as Culver City, with an extension to Santa Monica nearing final approval. An extension of the Gold Line from Pasadena to Azusa is under consideration and a crosstown trolley line along Crenshaw Boulevard is in the planning stages. This is all in a county that had absolutely no trolley or subway service from 1947 to 1993.
There’s also an extensive heavy rail infrastructure in the LA Basin, very little of which was ever decommissioned and sabotaged in the manner of the old Red Cars. Metrolink and Amtrak run fairly good commuter services on this network from Union Station to the San Fernando Valley and San Diego, with spottier services to Santa Barbara, San Bernardino (on two lines) and Lancaster. Metrolink and the Pacific Surfliner aren’t nearly as good as some of the commuter services back east, but they’re better than what exists in most cities (which is often nothing).
LA has pretty comprehensive local bus service, although most of it is pretty slow and there have recently been severe service cuts. LA Metro has a decent network of limited-stop bus routes parallel to major local routes and a few really useful express lines, e.g. to Disneyland and El Monte. Most other freeway express routes have schedules that are too limited for most commuters, however.
Orange County has a local bus network that is similar in geographic scope to LA Metro but generally has somewhat less frequent service.
There is also a more ingrained culture of carpooling in urban Southern California than in most of the US–another thing that is easily lost on people who are stupefied by the sheer size and traffic volume of the region’s freeways.
These are all indications that SoCal has done a pretty good job of establishing alternatives to driving. It’s not surprising, since Angelinos have long expected everyday driving to be a pain in the ass worth tolerating only if necessary. So I see peak oil sparing transportation in LA and OC more than most places. The shit will hit the fan with a lot more force in places that don’t have any of what I’ve described.
Speaking of LA, survivalists take note: Los Angeles and nearby cities have a little-known but huge industrial sector away from the glamorous neighborhoods. This sector includes just about every sort of food processing known to man. It might be more advisable to move to where the nonperishable food is than to run out of canned goods at the doomstead when it’s too expensive to ship new supplies to the back of beyond.
There was a line in the brilliant 1976 movie ‘Network’ that comes to mind whenever I hear a egomanianical idiot like Glen Beck rant about the failings of liberal Democrats and the need to turn America into a Christian-fundamentalist, Free Market paradise. “It’s madness I tell you! You’re beginning to believe the illusions were creating.” We’ve been lying to ourselves in the West about our supposed greatness for so long that we can’t see the shitstorm that’s headed our way.
“The value of a currency should not be a certain amount of gold, but the value of the job or the commodities for that amount.”
You are contradicting yourself. It takes a set amount of labor and technology to produce an ounce of physical gold {or silver}. And it retains this value well. Thieves {creators of fiat currencies} hate it because it is in competition with their “money”.
Belarus just devalued their currency by almost half. Forced by reality to admit defeat. Soon the others must join the race to the bottom. Get rid of your paper.
E.
Your last post about cultural narcissism really hit on something, as I keep trying to figure out why the people of this country are putting up with the criminality of this country in so many ways.
One constantly wonders why people aren’t outraged even about DKS living in one the poshest properties in NYC. Also Lindsay Lohan is under house arrest too and living in the lap of luxury.
The banksters are running the international economy and siphoning wealth from each country that falls into debt,incl. us to the tune of $Trillions.
With punishments like that, how can anyone take the legal system seriously?
Again we are witnessing the double standard of our new aristocracy and the people accept it and in fact those under arrest are thumbing their nose at the law.
Our people can’t seem to take out the time to be responsible to know what is happening around them, since it may just not register with them. It’s almost as if they live in a bubble of some kind and don’t care about facts, only attitude.
It’s easy for politicians to lie to their constituents if only to cajole the into believing that they represent them, while they are only representing the most wealthy.
One more note. I heard an interview with someone who used to work with Sarah Palin. He said that she used to write her own sterling letters of recommendation and requested influential people sign them. A very interesting insight into her character, I would say. She so much a model of the PR self indulgence–she might just be the perfect metaphor for where we are right now.
No–I won’t be voting for her.
Two books which pertain to the pandemic of narcissism: BAD: or the Dumbing of America by Paul Fussell and CLASS: A guide through the American Status System.
He points out that class identity is confusing to many so they attempt to base their social class on where they went to school. Consequently, everyone wants to go to more school than they could conceivably make use of considering the reality of the bell shaped curve in that the population is overwhelmingly dull normal rather than brilliant. So most people go to these open-admissions schools then when they get their “degree” they mistakenly imagine that they are in fact well educated when in reality they lack the intellectual capacity to be anything of the sort, nor do they know or care.
This reminds me of when I was in the navy and had dropped out of OCS at Newport, RI and made the mistake of going out for drinks with a civilian who had also dropped out of the program. After getting a few under his belt he turned on me because I was still a petty officer in the regular navy, and he was this disgruntled spoiled asshole who didn’t realize he’d have to work to get his commission, even though he had some second rate master’s degree. So he started drunkenly ranting about how he’d always thought that sailors were “cool” but that everyone at OCS including me were “losers”.
It was obvious to me that his idea of the navy was clearly only the Hollywood celluloid navy. That was his only reality. And in that reality the ordinary people who do all the work are always going to be losers because they aren’t glamorous. Back at the in transit barracks the other sailors waiting on orders had a good laugh when they saw pretty boy getting picked up by one of his girlfriends. None of the real sailors were pretty nor did they have current girlfriends. Real sailors don’t go out on dates; they visit hookers! And that’s even if they’re married. Of course this was prior to AIDS and when you’re travelling by ship you’ve got plenty of time to cure your dose of the clap before you get home to your wife.
IMO the alternatives that Truman and his advisors faced were all evil and arguably the nukes looked to be the least of all the evils. What I’ve seen opposing the nukes are mostly easy, breezy poseurs adopting stances that they hope will get them applause from their peers.
But I have heard some serious people that argue in favour of alternatives such as a full scale invasion of Japan and the millions of dead and wounded that would have resulted or a negotiated peace despite the risks like a possible subsequent 1930s style Germanic remilitarization and revival and a re-start of the war. They argue these could have resulted in better outcomes.
As you say we could argue about it forever but what’s done is done. You can’t rewrite hsitory.
Talk about narcissism: you should come up here to Canada and listen to people. Terms like self restraint, self discipline, self reliance, obligation and duty are not in anyone’s vocabulary. They’re part of a quaint past where grandma baked cookies, mom cooked dinner and father knew best.
Memorial Day is one of my favorite Holidays. I participate in ceremonies in my home town, a ceremony that has been with us, same time and place, since 1866. Its one of the few traditions that has endured ’round here since most agriculture and industry has been abandoned, and we’ve become a shoppers paradise.
PoC, what is Memorial Day all about in the South? Are Confederate Veterans Included? Here a Civil War theme still somewhat exists, in that the ceremony culminates at a Stone that commemorates the 40 or so local soldiers who never came back but will remain in the South forever. A wreath is laid. There is the invocation and a short speech by a local dignitary. It is really quite simple and patriotic, true to New England. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, which doesn’t always happen.
The reason I ask about Memorial Day in the South, PoC, is that I recently read that Vicksburg, MS, didn’t recognize 4th of July until 1946!
Ibendet, isn’t Strauss-Kahn paying for his own luxury suite in Manhattan? Or is the City providing it? I’m not clear on that.
-Marlin
Interesting couple of posts, E. I do agree with you on the decline of quality postings on this website. I used to post more often, but I cut down only because I saw the few replies to my comments ultimately devolve into criticisms of race and religion. I’m not interested in that. You and I disagree a lot on technology, but at least we can stay on point.
The theory that our entire culture suffers from narcissistic personality disorder leads to a question. This disorder is a mental dysfunction; how can an entire culture be composed of members who have mental disorders, and particularly, the same one? It’s as if evolution selected only for misfiring neurons. I can’t see the evolutionary advantage for this. Does this mean that egocentric behavior is more effective for survival of a species than altruistic behavior?
If so, why is our civilization as we know it heading for destruction?
Howdy Marlin, check out strauss-Kahn’s “Lock-up”
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/strauss-kahn-moves-into-luxurious-prison/articleshow/8628259.cms
If it was you or I we would be in the county jail awaiting trial! I usually am in the Memorial Day parade also, unless I am on duty. I usually drive either a ’35 seagraves engine or a ’57 Maxim tiller. weatherman says it will be in the ’90,s Monday.
I think narcissism has become more prevalent…but across all generations. But I also think that there are still a lot of good people.
On Thursday night I attended the senior awards night at our high school–my son is graduating next week. In order to graduate, students have to complete at least 40 hours of community service. Some kids got awards for doing over 400 hours. To be honest, I’m sure the motivation for doing service varies…some did it to pad their college resume. But one girl worked tirelessly for years helping out with autistic kids–no fancy school for her, she’s going to attend West Valley Jr. College. I’ve mentioned before that when I volunteer at Sacred Heart Community Services, most of the student volunteers are Chinese and Indian.
A glaring example of narcissism is a couple that lives right next door to me. They have all the gadgets of success, and big fancy cars, but they can’t remember to put water out for their dogs before they leave for work. I end up hearing the dog’s distressed barks and put a hose through a hole through the fence to give them a drink. How can they be so careless?
SJmom
The below is a very interesting essay by John Ruskin, which might prove relevant, since so much of our “culture” feels so convoluted and unnatural. I suppose I like Ruskin because at his core he is a naturalist. But he requires a close reading as his thesis twists and turns over itself, like a oak branch towards the apex:
THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER NATIONS
http://www.readbookonline.net/read/2781/11997/
The following excerpt is from The Oil Drum. The article parallels some of the similarities between the fall of the Soviet Union due to Peak Oil and ultimately the same fate for the world’s economy. Well worth reading the entire article by Luis DeSousa
“…So knowing the world rate of oil production has already peaked, then what can we expect? The Soviet Union’s collapse offers a preview. We can expect a great stagflation, where you simultaneously see a declining economy and hyperinflation. We can expect to see high unemployment and a collapse in the world economy. We can expect to see governments without any money to pay for things like health care, pensions, environmental problems, prisons, education or defense. We can expect to see infrastructure decay. We can even expect to see a decline in population. Finally, similar to the post Soviet Union, we can expect to see protests, political turmoil and revolution….”
In reference to the afore mentioned article, the fact that many citizens of the Soviet Union had their own small gardens and were able to sell their produce in farmer’s markets helped in their survival after the collapse. Small communal villages helped also, with neighbors bartering chores for goods and services. The article concludes with a brief analysis of our present economy, where there is no “safe place” to put money, due to the housing bubble burst, unstable MENA, speculative stock market, commodities trading, and currency instability. The backdrop to all this is the shenanigans of our corporate masters selling national assets out from under citizens…whoops, let’s make that “consumers”. Tally ho!
If God can do anything, can He makes Himself Non-Existent? That’s like asking 2+2=5. Or a square to have three sides. Or asking about the son of a baren woman. It’s verbal play not real Philosophy or Love of Wisdom. God IS. Is Existence. He, She, or It cannot be other than than and still be God.
The Firefly felt cheap and asked the Sun to blink out so he could feel brighter. Be content with the night. That’s mercy enough. You don’t know what you are asking. If God ceased, so would you. If the Sun shut down, the Firefly would too in short order. All his light is borrowed, get it? So is our’s.
Memorial Day: largely a Celebration of my Country right or wrong. A celebration of unnecessary wars and death even as our Country is invaded from the South and the enemies within triumph.
I have no objection the rememberance of the fallen who died in service. Quite the contrary. But this good is used to support the evil status quo. Credit where credit is due: the Enemy is brilliant in his tactics. We have been divided from ourselves.
I’m guessing that many Americans are experiencing “buyers remorse” after the good shafting from the newly elected Republicans: 5/27
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Finally! A run of mostly thoughtful, coherent posts.
Yes degrees are bullshit just as Frank Baum said. The wizard giving the degree is bullshit too. Nobody can give the Tin Man what he didn’t already have. It’s a very American Message on one level: if we just believe in ourselves that’s enough. Not totally untrue of course, but our total committment to that psychological stance has lead to pathological bright siding.
I’m trying Luke, but the madness is building up. Your ignoring me doesn’t help at all. I’m another great communicator like Ronald Reagan. I’ll talk to anyone. This is foreign to Liberal Elitism, Speech Codes, and Silencing Tactics – all of which you seem to give your tacit assent to.
Navy wives: 50% high school sweethearts & 50% hookers. The navy has the same divorce rate as the state of Wyoming: 75%.
Going to the tolling of the boats ceremony at the WWII gato class diesel submarine USS Cod between the naval reserve center and the Burke Lakefront Airport off of East 9th St. at the Lake Erie shore. This is a memorial service for every American submarine which was ever lost at sea for any reason up to the last to be lost the USS Scorpion in 1968, lost off of the Azores with all hands.
Our country is full of narcissistic personalities because that is more profitable.
Look at the advertisements we’re subjected to daily. “It costs more-but you’re worth it” “Be all you can be”.
We get the little magnets with inspirational sayings on them, mostly paeans to following your dreams, doing what you want, etc. Never a thought of anyone else.
Women are encouraged to turn their infants over to paid employees to raise, and to leave their husbands if they feel like it. “It’s better for the kids”. Uh, no. It’s not.
As Robert Kennedy pointed out decades ago, every divorce and every car crash increases the GNP. And the talking heads only talk about the GNP and Wall Street moves when they talk about the health of our country.
Any talk about conserving resources or protecting wildlife is promptly shot down with the mantra “we’re creating jobs”, as if the destruction of our planet is fine, as long as someone profits from it.
It’s a wonder that we’re as sane as we are, saturated as we are with propaganda glorifying selfishness.
Nice response to BeanTown, Wage.
He asks – ” how can an entire culture be composed of members who have mental disorders,…”
Yeah, it’s the media, no doubt It’s the common thread.
That’s why your wonderfully bonded family structures and work ethics of your first generation immigrant families won’t last more than one generation, Marlin.
And Corporate marketing gets more powerful with each passing year, too.
Wonder if the framers of the Bill of Rights would have put an escape clause in Amendment # 1, regarding ads to children especially, if they had seen this future coming down the pike?
Yes, In a classic ‘govt run amok’situation
90% [?] of the food was grown by the private sector on 5%[?] of the land…
The ‘babuskas’ grew the food.
And the USSR has a shrinking population…
would be nice to think itll work here..
But the US has alot farther to fall than the USSR did…they were near the bottom before their collapse.
PoC, what is Memorial Day all about in the South?
Marlin, Georgia celebrated Confederate Memorial Day on May 26th – even giving State workers a paid holiday until fairly recently. (They may still, I’m writing this on the fly without research)
When I was a kid, CMD was a big deal in my small town on a battleground. Little parade, couple of speeches, surviving widows on the podium and in the parade. God, I miss small town America sometimes, warts and all.
Vicksburg was captured on July 4th after a long siege that involved death, starvation, and at least a few civilians. You might be able to understand why they weren’t that eager to celebrate the US Memorial Day.
Of course, the REAL US Memorial Day is supposed to be on May 30th. This practice of moving grand old holidays like that to the nearest Monday may be good for the 3 day weekend travel/business industry – but it’s very bad for preserving the original intent of several holidays.
I’m sure somebody is already angling to Independence Day to a Monday.
I know it’s July 4th, but some think tank has got to be working on making it fall on a Monday every year, right?
Oh well, everybody try to have at least a couple of thoughtful seconds on “Memorial Day,” tomorrow.
“in that reality the ordinary people who do all the work are always going to be losers because they aren’t glamorous.”
-BHMark-
Not just in the Navy, Mark, not just in the Navy.
And a tip of the hat to RippedThunder and Wage and anyone else who’s going to be “on duty” sometime this weekend on a 24/7 job – a sacrifice that’s hard for a lot of average folks to grasp.
Thanks guys!
“I do agree with you on the decline of quality postings on this website. I used to post more often, but I cut down only because I saw the few replies to my comments ultimately devolve into criticisms of race and religion. I’m not interested in that.” -beantown, to E-
Bill, I knew I’d not been seeing a whole lot of you, now I know why. That’s too bad, especially since I’ve had a hand in some of the discussions that you don’t like. And because you’re one of my favorite posters – when you do show up. 😉
Due respect, though, JHK is all about religion and race in his fiction that I’ve read. And I don’t think that’s just a literary device – I think he’s accurately predicting problems based on certain possible outcomes.
Everybody’s got to do what they’ve gotta do – but I think it’s far better to address attitudes (one’s own as well as those of others) on a website like this, and hopefully far in advance of a societal crisis situation – as long as it can be done with honesty and polite (or at least respectful) dialog.
And seriously, man – if you see me saying something that looks antisemitic, you need to call me on it – because it’s unintentional.
OH, ONE more thing – “decline of quality postings on this website…” btb-
I was looking at the archives of posts from 2 years ago. Looked then, just about like it does now – good days and bad days, but generally thoughtful posters trying to figure things out from where they are in life.
“As the twentieth century approaches its end, the conviction grows that many other things are ending too. Storm warnings, portents, hints of catastrophe haunt our times. The ‘sense of ending’, which has given shape to so much of twentieth-century literature, now pervades the popular imagination as well. The Nazi holocaust, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the depletion of natural resources, well-founded predictions of ecological disaster have fulfilled poetic prophecy, giving concrete historical substance to the nightmare, or death wish, that avant-garde artists were the first to express.
The question of whether the world will end in fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper, no longer interests artists alone. Impending disaster has become an everyday concern, so commonplace and familiar that nobody any longer gives much thought to how disaster might be averted.
Those who dig bomb shelters hope to survive by surrounding themselves with the latest products of modern technology. Communards in the country adhere to an opposite plan: to free themselves from dependence on technology and thus to outlive its destruction or collapse.”
From “The Culture of Narcissism”, Christopher Lasch. 1979.
So, one can see the generational extent of these themes, JHK’s lyrical pen giving them new life with lustrous, lusty prose.
An economic determinist might argue that the aggregate profit from bicycle transportation pales in comparison to motor vehicles which need fossil fuel, parking, financing charges, insurance, etc. Low tech transportation might hurt some folks bottom-line. So why not focus on bicycling as the sport of hopped-up drug deviants?
Who is making more contributions to politicians; financial services companies and the motor vehicle industry or the bicycle industry? It is only logical that the greatest political contributors would get respite from the government. Who cares about the environment? Who cares if people find more affordable and healthful transportation?
What has posterity ever done for us?
I still believe that JHK permits some of the nit-wits on this site to have free reign to run riot in order to understand that those people are out there. Maybe, even your neighbors. Hiding behind an internet handle, they spew poison you’d never hear from them in “real life.”
But if you keep you’re ears open you might hear small verbal clues as to where their affiliations lay. Every once in awhile, I’ll run across someone that makes me think to myself “Ah, they will be a good little fascist.” Some of those verbal clues I have picked up here. When the SHTF, it may be very handy to know who to avoid. Or, who to shot, shovel and shut up.
In writing this, it occurred to me that it’s a bit odd that on this blog we have many “types” of personalities, but in some instances, only one person of that type. Hmmm. Interesting.
asia said: “But the US has alot farther to fall than the USSR did…they were near the bottom before their collapse.”
=======
On the flip side of that, the USA has a lot more accumulated wealth that can be recycled for quite a while, decades I would say.
And because we are not near the bottom like the USSR, when things get tough and there are no jobs, the youth do not riot in the streets, they move in with their parents.
Cuba has survived decades and they did not have the wealth base the USA has. Our decline will be very gradual. There will not be any moment in which TSHTF… there will be 47 years of adaptation to a third world lifestyle.
We will survive and be better off by adjusting to becoming a third world nation.
============
This is a very hopeful observation, asia.
Knowing how to behave in “real life,” and having the capacity to alter behavior depending upon one’s context, is an indication the so-called “nit wits” are actually rational people.
I don’t think there is much difference between us. We could have a CFN family picnic and enjoy each others company.
I value our differences and respect our various perspectives. It would be boring if everyone were the same. It takes multitudes to make a Clusterfuck Nation.
CORRECTION:
This is a very hopeful observation, LewisLucanBooks.
Our country is full of narcissistic personalities because that is more profitable.
==
It’s more profitable to have all your bones broken, but I don’t see that happening. No, the prevalence of narcissism in US culture has little to do with profit(s). There’s something much deeper going on here. I think what’s really going on here is a severe case of inferiority complex. I think deep down inside the collective American psyche, you know how fscked up you are and you know how fscked up your country is. You know that EVERYTHING you claim to be about, was and is lies and propaganda. Really what you are, when you remove the self-serving propaganda, and you take a good hard look at yourselves, is at best a bunch of spineless dupes, and at not so best, a bunch of callous racist fascists.
Three hundred million people, and you can’t organize a decent demonstration against anything? WTF! What kind of people are you?!?
Hi Prog, I have this Monday off and will tiller the ’57 Maxim Ladder in the parade . I really dig being in the parade. Everybody is wavin’ flags and shit. I am not really a patriot but it is nice to see the kids. I appreciate your comments and the thanks expressed for doing my job. It IS a job and I have seen lots of s**t in 31 years. No thanks are needed however as I get paid OK and I chose the profession. My uncle always said “I’d rather see the firefighters sittin’ in front of the station bullshittin’ than out at a car wreck where somebody is messed up. The FD is like an insurance policy, seems like a huge waste of money till YOU are the person who needs us. I work a real oddball schedule and sometimes that messes with the family stuff. I am off for the next four days now! “Yippeeohkiyeh MF”, as spokin’ in true “Bruce Willis fashion! Happy but Somber “Memorial Day” to all! remember your friends and relatives who gave it all.
Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up? I never hear that in real life. Is that the Fascism you are talking about?
Have you ever defined “anti-semitism”? I mean does it make sense to use a word and let it influence you if you don’t even know what it means? The Jews would like to make any criticism of Israel or any Jew at any time or place and for any reason, illegal. Do you really want to buy into that? That’s their definition. If you want to have one, fine. Just know that it may not be the same as their’s. Hopefully not anyway. And why we’re at it, why is there no word like anti-gentilism?
Thanks for the response, Wage. I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I’m not sure that is the case, entirely. I just find it hard to fathom that one specific value such as the pursuit of profit, out of many, many cultural values and influences can cause a vast majority of a given population to suffer from a severe mental disorder.
I will admit, though, our society is sick, even if
many of its individuals aren’t. Could it be that narcissistic personality desorder (which for the sake of brevity I’ll call NPD) endows those who have it with powerful, dominating personalities, so that they influence our culture far out of proportion to their numbers?
And I’m not convinced that unhappily married couples staying together because they have children is automatically bad for the kids. From my own personal experience, my parents were miserable together, and the result of their of their misery had a profound affect on their children. In fact, I could say I’ve spent a great portion of my life struggling to overcome the issues resulting from their union (mostly I’ve succeeded). My wife is amazed that I never turned into a vegetable. I’m amazed my parents remained married for 77 years.
SJMom,
The real deal, eh?
I’ve been to a few Adyashanti satsangs. He’s Buddha-lite, or perhaps Vedanta-lite. He’s enlightened compared to a drunk I guess.
Notice his loopy followers that go gaga over him. They come up and ask him really stupid narcissistic shit. He’s patient with all, but that’s not enlightenment. I knew him when he was Steven Gray. His wife Annie, who now calls herself Mukti, leads satsang these days. Is she supposed to be enlightened, too?
One needs a teacher who enables you to dive deep into the teachings. With Steven, sorry, Adyashanti, the water is only a few inches deep. Can’t even swim in that. But you will get wet if you roll around enough.
BR
Did you grow up in Cupertino?
married for 77 years? that has got to be close to a record! My father had 19 brothers and sisters in his family, all single births till the last, which were twins.Canucks, what can I say? Talk about population overshoot. 77 years? did they live to be 97 and married at 20? I love a good romance story! I am in western MA and your handle tells me that perhaps you are around Boston.
RT, here’s the story: My parents met at a party when they were 16, in 1929. They went together for 3 1/2 years before they got married in 1933, when they were both 20 (good guess, RT). My father died last year at almost 97. My mother is still alive and will turn 98 in 2 months. My mother is the longest-lived in her family, but my father had 1st cousins that lived to 102, 97 and 95. He has 2 cousins still living who are 90 and 97.
My father’s mother was one of 14 children, but your father’s family beats that. If I had that many uncles I could never remember all their names!
I live about 10 miles south of Boston, but I’m originally from the northshore.
BTW, my parents house burned down twice, once when I was 11 or 12 when I was out hiking for a few hours in Breakheart Reservation; I came back to find our furniture out on the street. The second time I was in college, and couldn’t contact my parents for awhile – they were staying in a motel. So I appreciate the FD very much; it’s true you don’t pay attention to them until you need them. Every Christmas my wife and I make up a big basket of food goodies to give to the local station.
Don’t worry, Procon, I’m not going away; and no, you’re not being anti-semitic – you’re one of the good guys.
In an earlier post you mentioned you’ve been a real estate broker off and on for most of 30+ years; I thought you were an engineer. The reason I ask is because if this is true, you and I have similar backgrounds. I have my degree in the sciences, but I never went to grad school, so I became a real estate broker and own my own agency.
I know what people think about brokers, but I don’t give a shit because I know I’m honest and ethical; all I care about is being able to look at myself in the mirror every morning without my gut clenching. I’ve seen it all in 43 years in the business. I think the NAR is full of shit, myself, though.
I’ve noticed that too: people often lose all dignity and just become children again in front of gurus. I think such people need therapy more than a guru. A guru is not supposed to be a father or mother figure after all.
I think that if you go back to a social sciences bookshelf stuffed with popular titles dating back to the 1950s the overall tone is fairly dark in terms of issues related to authenticity and narcissism, for instance. So assuming that some of these writers knew their stuff then the predictiions have apparently been borne out at this juncture.
In addition to stressors inherent to rapidly changing post industrial societies we’ve also had feminism, the end of Jim Crow and colonialism in the third world, plus the unraveling of the old trade unionism and government jobs patronage system as formerly practiced by the large urban democratic machines.
Apparently in the near future we’ll all have to return to being yeomen farmers of some sort. So no wonder we’re all screwed up especially if we’re not excercising some level of discrimination in how much electronic media bombbardment we’re inflicting upon ourselves, an idea which occurred to me while listening to “Strictly Commercial”, the Frank Zappa CD.
Oh BTB, We love the goodies, there are several people bringing them around on the Holidays! It is not that we can’t cook or bake for ourselves. Some of the guys are wizards in the kitchen! Freebies are always appreciated. So CFN nation, stop by your local Firehouse, drop off some brownies, and talk to the guys. They are for the most part down to earth fellows and are serious about their rescue work! Believe me we train to be the first people to help out if a disaster strikes. Cops are kool too, but they are more inclined to deal with aholes! To them everyone is an ahole until proven otherwise. To a firefighter everyone is a victim. Oh shit, now I am on the watch list again!
My Dad had 17 brothers and sisters. No multiple births. Volga-Germans (aka Germans from Russia.) Lived in Western Nebraska. Named by the VFW (?) America’s No. 1 service family as all the boys served in WWII or Korea, in all branches of the service.
Dad left home at 14, rode the rails and finally joined the CCC.
Interesting. All the kids, other then the crazy Cooney Adams branch had 2, 1 or no kids.
Vlad said: “A guru is not supposed to be a father or mother figure…”
==========
Agreed, Vlad.
In my experience, a guru is a midwife who helps give birth, not someone to slavishly follow. You can give thanks to a midwife, you can become friends, but you don’t become a “follower.”
–Osho, “The master’s function is not to save you” Question 1 (In: Light on the Path).
As is said in Doctor Zhivago, during the Revolution, some people were reduced to living on human flesh. Same thing in China. Any reason why it can’t happen here? None at all.
Nice. But did it work out that way in Poona or Antelope in your experience? What was the short Indian woman’s name in Antelope – she was a trip. Da Free John talked that way too – but his followers worshiped him as God and he covertly encouraged it even as he said the opposite. He also abused them – breaking bones and marriages. He used to like to wrestle his male devotees – which might be ok. But he hate to lose. Once when he was losing to a larger, younger man, he kicked him in the balls. Another time he was wrestling a smaller man in a kitchen – he picked him up and put him down on a stove and then turned on the jets.
Ken Wilber took alot of heat for never distancing himself from this incarnation gone bad.
Vlad said: “Nice. But did it work out that way in Poona or Antelope in your experience?”
=============
Yes, in my experience that is exactly how it worked out. I was in Antelope and in Poona and I am only speaking of my experience.
My stay in Antelope lasted one week because I did not like Sheela’s authoritarian vibe or the guru cult dynamic happening there, so I left. My connection with Osho was unaffected and remains intact today, 29 years later.
In Poona I was only able to visit Club Med a couple of months each year to be with Osho. It was a beautiful experience each time.
The meditations, dances, and discourses were free of charge. There was not a guru cult thing happening, and no financial exploitation, just an ecstatic community celebrating life together, with lots of laughter and irreverence. That was my personal experience.
Do you ever see Osho’s face in your mind’s eye during meditation? What would be a good book of his for me to read? I’ve only read a little of him and seen a few tapes.
The lack of substantive actions on behalf of
the American people against the criminality
of the banks is emboldening a horde of people
in America who already have diminished superegos.
Our leaders often don’t realize that their lax
standards for their own behavior and the behavior
of those under their purview send a subtle cue to
the general public … especially those who are
on the fringes of society either through poverty
or a diminished superego.
I expect the USA to increasingly resemble Russia
i.e., with many de facto “mafias”, a large and
increasing black market, increasing identity
theft (good Lord, phishers are now about HALF
of my spam), and boiler room scams replacing
most of an honest market.
It’s already happening with businesses like EBay
where Middle Eastern, Asian, and Eastern European
people who try to “buy” a good you’re selling
there give a bogus address that can’t be found
by Google Earth/Maps. I expect EBay to collapse
eventually just because they don’t back the duped.
Shorting EBay, long term, is a sure winner in a
world like this one.
E.
You make an EXCELLENT point, BHM, when you
talk about the insignificance now of a
“degree” when total nitwits are getting
into plum graduate programs.
Basically, there are too many colleges in
the USA and now the lower birthrates and
the failing budgets of states are making
colleges, in desperation, turn into “revenue
mills” who take your tuition and give you a
worthless piece of paper.
I can tell you that as a college teacher for
22 years, the rigorous teachers are NOT the
most beloved by Administration. Administration
just wants that head count kept up. They could
care less about “excellence”.
I’m even seeing functional illiteracy in
junior level college English Literature classes
because Bay Area teachers don’t want to alienate
the huge mass of Asians in the Bay Area by making
language-sensitive courses (English, History,
Sociology) true college-level material.
In the Bay Area, educators are contributing to
cultural balkanization by dumbing down all classes
relating to language skills.
E.
I say SHAME to you liberals who have
criticized Cash for his realpolitik
about race and ethnicity.
As I’ve said dozens of times … THERE
ARE NOT A HUNDRED HONEST LIBERALS WHEN
IT COMES TO THE ISSUE OF RACE. Most of
them, if they are, say, white, have
nothing but lily white friends, live in
lily white neighborhoods, and don’t take
strolls in barrios or ghettos.
ALL races are racist. Asians are incredibly
racist. What should concern Americans is the
following: Unlike post-WWII immigration where
people truly INTEGRATED into American society,
current immigration is nothing but a
BALKANIZING influence and these newbies get
better perks than people who were BORN here!!
I don’t see recent Asians, Indians, and Russians
in the Bay Area doing anything but sticking with
their own even well into 2nd generation … and
doing business pretty much with their own as
well.
You egalitarian, self-promoting liberals, I
ask you … IS THIS SOCIAL JUSTICE?? Is this
the “melting pot”? The QUALITY of recent
immigration in the USA is atrocious!!! You
have to see them en masse, AS I DO EVERY DAY,
to appreciate the stark truth of that.
Cash … stand your ground and maintain your
excellent rationality on your points about
this issue.
E.
Do you ever see Osho’s face in your mind’s eye during meditation?
No. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
What would be a good book of his for me to read? I’ve only read a little of him and seen a few tapes.
I would recommend AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SPIRITUALLY INCORRECT MYSTIC (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000)
After the rapture
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/629281-after-the-rapture
This is worth watching … (90 seconds video)
Especially from a CFN perspective on resources.
http://RICHARDDAWKINS.NET/VIDEOS/629281-AFTER-THE-RAPTURE
CORRECTION: 153 seconds video (still worth watching)
The new date for the rapture is Oct. 21, 2011 (getting closer to the Mayan Calendar all the time).
Of course, according to the Bible, nobody can know the exact date…
But we can still hope for an instantaneous reduction of world population by the sudden removal of billions of Christians.
E.,
Yes, the organization of criminal gangs is probably going to be how people survive the global mess our leadership has created.
What you might not remember, but Lou Dobbs reported this, Clinton was advising Dubai big wigs where to invest in US infrastructure and the Dubai Ports deal was the brainchild of such negotiations. Bush then tried to push it, but the real Republicans pushed back.
In US News & World report Dec. 2005, there was a fascinating article around that period. Their article covered the largest organized crime group in the world and what was it from? India. And where were they located? Dubai.
We were saved from that fiasco and you could say the conservatives won that round over the neoliberals. Once in a while something good happens, but I’m sure they’ll keep chipping away at this nation.
LLB You might know the title:
LLB[Every once in awhile, I’ll run across someone that makes me think to myself “Ah, they will be a good little fascist.” Some of those verbal clues I have picked up here. When the SHTF, it may be very handy to know who to avoid..]
I cannot recall the title of the book by Milas Kundera, but it was about someone growing up to become a little facsist. I’ve searched for book titles by Kundera, but alas cannot find it. Back in the ’80’s he became a favorite of mine and I read a number of his books.
A Czech, born in ’29, he lived under the Nazis occupation and the Communists later, so his description of the war-torn eastern European countries showed great insight of how people survive repression.
It could happen anywhere. As we watch our checks and balances being undermined by conflicts of interest and financial influences, we can only wonder where this is going. The Patriot act has just gotten another 4 years. Wonder why they even bother voting on it, since we have so many new contractors living on our tax dollars.
Oh, but keep fighting the color wars (Red and Blue)…That’s what they think we should pay attention to.
Great post, E – all of it!
“I expect EBay to collapse
eventually just because they don’t back the duped.”
-e-
Yeah, concur – one should expect higher standards from a paid service like Ebay. I mostly use Ebay to find webaddresses for real firms these days. Then I look for a physical address and call them on the telephone before doing business.
I advertise on Craigslist a good bit. It’s OK, still, at least in my area, for certain items and for rental property listings – but it seems to be slowly degrading in some areas.
I was trying to sell a few cans of automotive Freon, for example. Weird responses – must have been what the grifters and low level criminals had an interest in at the time.
Vlad –
No, I looked up antisemitism to be sure – prejudice against Jews or the Jewish people is the straight forward definition.
So I don’t want to be antisemitic.
I don’t want to be antiblack.
I don’t want to be antiasian, antihispanic, etc
Neither, do I want to be antiwhite.
You, Vlad, are definitely antiblack and antihispanic.
Asoka is definitely antiwhite.
Those are racist attitudes against which all good people should fight.
==========
And I’ll answer your first question that you’ll pose to me, Vlad.
Is it possible to be prowhite without being antiblack or antianything else?
Answer – It probably is.
But Vlad, that’s not what you’re doing.
Which means you are undermining your stated goals.
BeanTown-
I started doing a little property management in college in the 70’s. Then I got licensed and actually made a little money as a sales/listing agent in the ’80’s. I let it drop and followed a science related career for 20+ years thinking I’d pick up RE upon my wife’s retirement, our move to the country and my planned “career downsizing.”
Well, that coincided with the RE collapse – I still haven’t even reactivated my license, as of yet.
If you’ve been a broker all those years you’ve seen a bunch of changes. A lot of those changes have squeezed out the money for smaller scale agents. (that would be me)
Property management and ownership can still put bread in the table, though – if one is careful with one’s equity positions.
Nice to know a RE broker on the south side of Boston, Bill. If this global warming thing pushes us up that way, maybe I’ll look you up for a job interview. haha!
Regards,
PoC
PS – SNAFU is the only “self-declared?” engineer who regularly posts to CFN. I’ve been wondering where he has been for the last couple of weeks.
Get Real…
Riiiiight. What I am seeing is more and more mounds of incredibly distractionary postings here.
I try to wade through to find the actual thought-provoking views, and it’s starting to become as difficult as parsing for the “truth” in an old issue of Soviet-era “Pravda”.
Please excuse me if I’m having visions of camo-clad “heroes” busily pecking away in a great hall of desks to fill [formerly] thoughtful blogs with propaganda and generally useless, space-taking bullshit.
I’m stubborn enough not to be driven away, but I’m finding less and less to really “discuss” as far as the content of MOST postings. (Assuredly, I’ll be accused of “reinforcing my own prejudices”. This may be quite true, but most of this current spewage takes its’ eye FAAAAAAR off the ball. How the fuck are some of you going to survive what’s coming down the pike? I’m TRYING to be realistic, and I know MY odds are very slim.)
“Get Real”, indeed. It’s looking like most posters no longer even read JHK’s Monday ruminations. I’ll be looking for a few of you (and that includes some I have little in common with). Self-appointed arbiters of content? -meh-
***My quote of the week…
“The nasty things that you think are coming always take longer to arrive than you think they will, but once they get here, they make up for their tardiness by being worse than you thought they’d be.”
-Richard Maybury
-debt
****
Thanks D;
…and that’s what I’m talkin’ about…
Thanks, Prog. I was supposed to work tomorrow, but I sprained my ankle and I’m on crutches.
I’m not religious nor patriotic, so I don’t really mind working the holidays.
My family is used to celebrating our versions on different days entirely.
Wow, that’s pretty amazing.
I forget if it was here or on Facebook, but someone posted a thing saying that what you fear the worst always takes longer to get here than you thought it would, but it makes up for it by being worse than you anticipated.
And I thought, yep.
Hey O3,
Personal opinion, when you say something like “distractionary mounds of postings” you need to be more specific.
And this week seems better than some, IMO.
Otherwise those of us who put some thought into our posts will say, “wow, why does ozone hate my words.” And those who blather, will blather on and on the same.
You got a bone to pick with me, for example, you ought to know I’ll be happy to pick back. 😉
Late tonight or tomorrow, though.
I’m out for the day.
Well, I don’t think that Americans have an inferiority complex, deep down, or anywhere else.
Most Americans sincerely believe that this is the greatest country, ever, on the planet. And they are fine with the US military bombing anyone else on the planet into democracy.
The ones that don’t have had major demonstrations. I went to two against the attack on Iraq. It’s a long way to Washington, DC. for most of the people in this country, but there were probably over half a million people at each demonstration. If you didn’t hear about them, that shows the problem with demonstrations. Half a million people spend time and money to go to Washington, DC and parade around with signs proclaiming their disapproval of mass murder, and they are roundly ignored.
And we do indeed break every bone in our bodies, frequently, or at least a lot of them.
Over 40,000 people a year are killed smashed, burned or otherwise crushed in car crashes. Millions other survive with various lesser injuries. Robert Kennedy mentioned the carnage in that very speech I quoted.
Apparently, you’re not an American, so you may not realized how much we are encouraged to spend money.
They’ve dropped any pretense of any other reason for being an American, and pretty much exhorted us to spend money as our patriotic duty.
Witness Bush after 9-11. Go to Disneyworld. Go shopping.
This is an absolutely bizarre thing to say, but it was passed on as words as wisdom.
However, I was reading a business magazine the other day, and it said that even US corporations now sell most of their product outside of the US.
Now that they don’t need us as consumers, it’s time to knock any worker making more than minimum wage down.
As Obama said, we need to be competitive with the Chinese. And they don’t make much money.
That was kind of my point. We are encouraged as a society to be narcissistic, so that we will indulge ourselves with commodities, but most people still have some humanity.
And, yes, I think sociopaths and the like, rise to the top. It’s the way the system is set up. Moral people quit in disgust long before they reach the top.
My parents fought too, but I would have been much worse off if they had split up.
When my parents had been together 50 years, my Mom called me and told me that she was afraid that my Dad was near death, and that she would miss him so much, because they’d gotten along so well the last 10 years or so.
That was true. Now it’s been 64 years, and they’re still getting along pretty well.
I think there are criminal gangs already in charge.
The heads of Wall Street firms are openly lawless. You’ve pointed that out before.
Interestingly, the CIA was formed and staffed by Wall Street members in the beginning. They recruited at Ivy League colleges.
The US military and OSS made an alliance with the Mafia in WW11, and that went on at least through the Kennedy assassination.
The same gangs of people show up over and over again in US post WW11 history, from Howard Hunt in the early years, to Cheney and Rumsfield since the 70s.
And the Bush family, participating in Wall Street since the 19th century, and in control of the presidency for 20 years of the 31 years since 1980, busily looting the US Treasury for the benefit of their family and friends.
I went to an art show, showing the work of Mark Lombardi, this artist who made diagrams showing the connections of various businessmen and politicians. Until he “committed suicide”.
For instance, Jackson Stephens, a major contributor to the Bushes, the BCCI, and WalMart, was also a former roommate of Jimmy Carter.
Now. Shouldn’t that raise some eyebrows?
He also contributed to Clinton. This red/blue thing is just a veneer, as you’ve pointed out.
Sarkozy, the president of France, is a step-child of Frank Wisner Jr., the son of one of the most notorious early figures in the CIA, and a CIA employee himself for a while.
Seriously? The US and France have intermarriage between power circles, like the royalty of old Europe?
If a certain group of people rules over you, stealing you blind, and keeping you in line with armed goons, are we not ruled by gangs?
Typically I don’t post unless I see something to respond to and your post is catnip. Yes, you are absolutely right. It’s getting to the point where the dumbfucks have so compromised academia that genuine nerds would almost have to become hermits in order to do their thing, as the schools are used overwhelmingly for socialization now, not academic training. A few years ago there was an article in The Atlantic by “Professor X” about marginally literate community college students who were grudgingly taking freshman composition only to get promotions at work, such as cops who wanted to become detectives, and these people simply never had read enough to be capapable of writing an essay, nor did they know how operate a computer well enough to email their compositions in to the instructor.
Then there are all these stupid younger kids and the teachers cannot get away with pointing out the obvious, that is that they have absolutely no academic aptitude whatever, and moreover, are little assholes thrown into the bargain, who also make it impossible to teach anyone else within hailing distance. We are collectively going bankrupt because of this idiocy of over-reaching and it the direct result of the dismantling of the manufacturing sector and there being no factory jobs for the anti-intellectual masses. The way to compensate for “no jobs” is to get some fucking jobs goddamnit, and not jobs that are over people’s heads, but the dumb jobs that these types always had in the first place. This is simply insanity and nothing else.
It’s a money maker.
College debt is now more than credit card debt.
We allow the banks to prey upon our children. Joe Baegant once asked – what kind of a society allows its children to be tased? Tased and hosed, I’d say.
Our children are told that their only hope for the future is to get a college education, because, as you point out, there are no more factory jobs.
Then they are encouraged to go into debt, only to find that there are no jobs for the college-educated either.
The colleges go along with it to get money. Period.
By a coincidence, one of my Facebook friends posted about a new book about Frank Olson, the guy pushed from a window in the 50s.
Check out this blurb-
“In the first half of the book, the author describes Olson’s life, the government programs that touch upon his work, Olson’s death and its aftermath. The latter part of the book picks up from the initial public revelations surrounding his death, coming over 20 years after it occurred, and the following investigations, including the reopening of the murder investigation by the New York City’s District Attorney’s office in 1996. Throughout, we are entertained by a kaleidoscopic sequence of characters, including former CIA chiefs Allen Dulles and William Colby, CIA psychiatrists, Watergate burglars (for instance, we learn James McCord was the CIA agent initially sent out to deal with Olson’s death), former CIA agents, hotel managers, hired assassins, mobsters, high-priced attorneys, dubious informants, U.S. diplomats and generals, politicians (including a mid-1970s appearance by both Don Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney), and many, many more.”
That’s what I meant by the same people showing up.
OzoneP;
BTBill;
Good to see WMass & EMass back in CFNation! Two of the best posters here (in that you stick with the ‘zeitgeist’ of this blog). Welcome home.
-Marlin
Good information, PoC, on Confederate Memorial Day. Up the road here, around Ripthunders hometown, lay buried a number of Confederate Soldiers. I think they might have been POWs. Anyway, our VFW Post and other Legion Posts in the area conduct a ceremony there, so they won’t be forgotten. Those Confederate Soldiers were truly a Lost Generation.
-Marlin
DC,
Got a name just fer you!
“Dmitri Orlov”
(You probably already know that one, though! ;o)
Thanks for bringing him up! To all interested CFN’ers, take the time for Max Keiser’s interview with Dmitri Orlov in July ’09 (about 10 minutes). Chilled me to the marrow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eymoUFoduTE
Sorry. Here’s the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eymoUFoduTE
As Obama said, we need to be competitive with the Chinese.
==
When did “we” become the corporations? Competitive in what sense?
I might not be an american, but I’ve spent enough time in the US and around the world to understand what’s going on.
500,000 people might be a decent size demonstration for country like Israel, not for a country like the US. Even from you (and you seem to have some understanding of what I’m trying to convey) the passivity and acceptance of the situation is just unbelievable.
Wilber never denounced Adi Da/Da Free John, but I heard him verbally skewer the guy.
Adi Da changed his name a lot! He started out as Franklin Jones. If you go to his followers website..probably “Dawn Horse” something-or-other, you can find a link to his artwork. They published a book on the art, I would love a copy, but the book is over $100…yikes. Adi da was a genius, but had personality problems that made it inadvisable for him to become a guru.
I guess that’s why the lineage system works to some degree. Presumably, it can weed out the wackos.
Wilber refused to take the role of a guru. He knows he can be abusive towards others.
SJmom
Excellent points, and you also manage to neatly tie up the bow on the package of how the banking industry in collusion with higher education is soaking everyone by threatening them with lifetime unemployment if they don’t pony up. Then of course the mass media is leading the charge with these late afternoon local puff piece news programs with the kittenish news readers continually intoning that this or that educational beckons so don’t be one of those losers walking around with a tool box getting dirty! Because then the newskittens and their ilk will withhold their sexual charms and you’ll become an embittered loner who scares all the nice people in their fresh plastic houses out in CupcakeLand.
This is why the shrewder blue collar males are going to proprietary schools to at least shorten the agony. Then at least they can make the jump to technician status and perhaps have opportunities to flirt with the “administrative assistants” while they’re servicing the copy machine or the computer networks.
Unfortunately, many of these proprietary schools are offering curricula which are insultingly devoid of real content and may not give the trainees much of a leg up such as the plethora of culinary classes which should really be largely redundant provided one actually knows how to read and thought to buy a few cookbooks. And then of course we have the scam of beauty academy and suchlike which exist only because the hair trades abolished apprenticeships decades ago so that the more well financed and connected practitioners in those trades could get rich by opening large shops with cut rate prices where trainees do the work under disclaimer and are merely practicing a craft themselves while receiving essentially no academic instruction whatever. And not for cheap either: my alma mater in the barber trade Allstate Barber College in Cleveland now charges about $10,000 for 10 1/2 months of do it yourself hair experimentation on perhaps the cheapest segment of the population, those who won’t even pay for a competent haircut from a real barber, but go to apprentices in a school shop to save say 2/3rds off of the retail price. During that entire year in “school” the students read only one book. The instructors loaf a great deal while answering only occasional “check” calls from students who’ve finished with their current lopsided hair amputation.
After the kids “graduate” most of them find barbering intolerable in practice because it never occurred to them that barbering is really nothing but a form of outside sales where perversely, you’re also expected to manufacture the product on the spot after selling it to someone.
“We” meaning the American people.
And, ironically, Obama was exhorting Americans to get educated “to compete with the Chinese”.
The real way we will become competitive, of course, is by becoming cheaper labor.
Which, apparently, is closer than we think.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28173.htm
We are now in Memorial Day weekend, when the usual celebration of war, which is a constant background beat in America, rises to a frenzied pitch, with ritual genuflections to “our heroes” wherever you go.
It is inescapable, and pretty intolerable, if you have any sense of the victims of US imperialism.
Years ago I was married to a veteran, and he used his GI benefits to get a mail order TV repair course, which, of course, he never completed, but they got the money. Same with his friend, and a washing machine repair course.
Small time scams, now gone main stream.
I have nothing against Hispanics – in their own lands. Is the United States to become one of them? People like you, afraid of being called racist, have allowed this travesty. I have every right to hate this – and them, the Enemy. Hate is part of life – if you can’t hate you don’t love. Accepting the anti-hate propaganda is another collosal failure on the part of White America.
Anti-Semitic: Is that someone who doesn’t like Jews or someone Jews don’t like? There’s a big difference. Jews don’t like you if you criticize Israel – or if you are against immigration or if you are pro-White. Your blindness never ceases to amaze me. Your only defence is that it is the blindness of the average American – if that is any defence at all.
Your concession that being pro-White is Ok is just technical, just a concession to logical argument. You are still opposed to Whites really having rights – like the right to self determination and any sovereignty anywhere. The proof of this is how you said that “someday” Whites should form an organizatin to maintian their rights like the NAACP for Blacks. Why someday? We’re already losing our rights, we’re already third class citizens. You don’t want to deal with it. You’re good at that as are most Americans. Masters. Kick it down the road for our descendants to deal with. But I thank you for the logical concession. It’s a start.
There was a study done recently that indicated that some Whites are begining to wake up. They felt that Black gains all come from White loss. Obviously true – they aren’t starting their own businesses and towns typically. It’s a zero sum game for the most part – and Whites are losing because of Affirmative Action and having to pay for social programs that minorities use massively. Mexicans have more children here than in Mexico – on our dime and because of it. They win because we lose. And then you accuse me of being anti-hispanic! Wake up.
Sorry that I can’t remember where I read this, but someone pointed out the difference between old time religion and the new, well-financed stuff.
He was talking about some old farmer he knew, who read the scriptures and related to the “dust to dust” part, cause he knew about compost and such.
But the Rapture people plan on disposing of their bodies, like so many fast food wrappers.
Just another manifestation of our new culture.
When the ruling class noticed that traditional religions were talking about helping thy neighbor, and the sick and the poor, they started putting a lot of money into the new big box religions, back in the 70s, and continuing until now.
No more Jesus loving the poor. Now people have a “personal relationship” with Christ, and he’s going to get them into heaven, like a bribed maitre d at an exclusive restaurant.
What’s more, he’s going to get them money right here on earth, if they go to the right church. He’s going to make them rich!
Thank you. I have read many of Wilber’s books – he was a huge influence on me – and our generation I believe. He comes up in the oddest places. In his published journal he refers to “Bill and Hillary” – I believe it. He’s that influential.
His criticism of the green meme as the “mean meme” is spot on. As is his analysis that since they refuse to recognize hierarchy they effectively throw down the ladder that made their own achievement possible – and damn any society in which they have gained power to mediocrity at best.
How is his health? He’s been struggling with cancer for years now.
Thank you. I would take issue with your blanket statement though. There are many forms and levels of meditation. You have to start with the mind before you can get rid of it. Also many disciples spontaneously see their Master in their mind’s eye and just go with it. Many Traditions approve of this as beneficial although not the ultimate state of course.
About 10? years ago he talked here in sovietmonica..
what a waste of 15$!
I walked out midway.
And SJM, maybe read MEHER BABA, he knew how consciousness works and the perils of ‘advanced adepts’, tragically flawed practitioners like muktananda and his dreaded student bubbafree john or whatever he called himself.
Or you can continue to be a ‘new ager’ and judge/misjudge others, me ive been in this 40+ years..dont claim to be an expert and bemoan the commercialization of hindu/buddhist teachings in USA.
You are pretty astute for a chick! [sexism!] No really, you are noticing that such people are not spiritually advanced in any sort of loving-kindness sense but have merely adopted Jesus as their imaginary playmate. That gives them a spiritual/emotional level commensurate with perhaps a four year old.
Keeping in mind that what I just said is inevitably going to sound really patronizing and make me seem like a creepy snob, it must be kept in mind that many or most persons attending a megachurch are no doubt perfectly normal and well adjusted and in some respects could easily be superior to you or I. They are there as nominal members out of convenience, for their own reasons.
Nevertheless, this process has been going on since much of the population grew wearing of Calvinism and began drifting into anabaptist sects which were more demonstrative and less stuffy or academic. This was parallelled by a move from high church protestantism [Lutheran & Episcopal liturgical churches] towards Arminianism typically Methodism which is also looser except with regards to vices such as drinking & gambling.
At each step of this devolution the religion becomes more deracinated, and less earthy and European. To members of megachurches Lutherans and Episcopalians must look like quaint 16th century burghers grovelling at the feet of their antique Renaissance deity.
How much more copacetic it would be to attend something like a drive in church with a flambuoyant preacher who originally attended baptist bible college. But now he is more down with the entreprenuerial class making all the deals in their plastic wonderland with no sidewalks. After all, pedestrians are clearly not of the ELECT and need watching from the authorities, ever alert for predators from the inner city Bantustans, as the South African equivalent of our slums were called prior to the collapse of the Apartheid regime there.
The real deal, eh?….compared to what? or who?
Bubba Adi da Lovanada ruchia avatar [aka frank jones]?
Compared to St Francis? Karmapa?
You knew him when he did what for $…WORK A DULL JOB? what did steve do when he was a nobody?
Ever hear of a fraudster who calls himself
BAGAVAN NO ME of Santa Cruz?
There are at least 3 excellent exposes by former rajneeshis on what really went on there.
His body guard, a wealthy ny Jewish woman and
a [then] young British woman all wrote scathing exposes of his cult.
He was a talented leader of a cult a popular writer.
Like Bubba, trungpa and others he had problems with drugs.
Not the title but the author. Kundera is … way beyond my interest or intellectual capacity. People say I’m “smart” (highly suspect in this corner of the world) but I’m afraid my tastes and interests are pretty pedestrian.
Like you I made the mistake (in some cases) of going with my real identity on the Net. Though my stands on different topics run from way on the left to way on the right (and a lot of stops in between) one fellow stated he wouldn’t set foot in my “liberal” bookstore. I observed that a good cookbook or gardening book was neither liberal nor conservative. Then again, the man probably wouldn’t set foot in ANY bookstore, not even the John Birch Bookstore that was here into the 80s.
But, on our local newspapers forums, I am constantly making statements on topics where I point out a “Big Lie” (thank you Hitler and Goebels), wedge issues (“This is a wedge issue to distract you from what is really important.”) and times when some riff echoes “Wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” I’m also pretty outspoken about privatization. All with appropriate attributions.
Sometimes, I think of myself as “the voice of reason.” Often I can bring a really ignorant thread to a screeching halt with calm and well measured observations. Even if no one responds to my threads, I notice the number of views are sometimes staggering.
It has probably hurt my business, a bit, but I’m phasing that out anyway. Do I worry about my personal safety? A bit. But, I’ve also made to secret of being a well armed liberal who will not hesitate if push comes to shove.
Come January, I’ll pretty much drop off the radar. If things go the way I’ve planned, I’ll be out of sight and under the wing and protection of an old local family (impeccable credentials dating back to Klan membership in the 1920s.) But change is possible. If this were the 1940’s in Europe, they’re the kind of folks now, who would be stashing Jews in their root cellar.
Two interesting anti-fascist cultural gems that are often overlooked come from the film world. Given the star power involved, I’ve always thought it odd that they are so hard to come by.
One I’ve never been able to run down, though I’ve heard of it, is a 1956 film staring Bette Davis called “Storm Center.” Bette Davis plays a small town librarian who refuses to remove a bit of agit-prop that appears to be pro-Communist from her library on principle. She loses her job, is branded a subversive and then they burn down her library. I need to try and find that one, again. Tried once to get it on an interlibrary loan, and it was nowhere to be found.
The second little gem stars Tracy and Hepburn. One of their only very serious movies. The one no one has ever heard of. 1942, “Keeper of the Flame.” That one I’ve seen a couple of times and it’s a zinger. Tracy is a reporter, recently returned from 1930s Germany, so he knows what fascism looks like. He’s trying to get an interview with the widow of a “Great American Patriot.” Turns out he was a fascist and Kate may have done him in to “Save America.” Interesting stuff.
“Wilber refused to take the role of a guru. He knows he can be abusive towards others.”
==============
Wilber is keenly aware of the possibilities of abuse in the “new age” religions. He even wrote a book about it (with Brown and Engler: Transformations of consciousness: conventional and contemplative perspectives on development (1986) in which he examines the different types of psycho-pathologies possible.
If you have read Wilber’s work, there is little chance you are going to be taken advantage of by a guru or a bible-thumpin’ preacher or any other charlatan.
Still, being “taken advantage of” is not the worst thing in the world and can be a positive learning experience, as I imagine some of the die-hard May 21, 2011 rapture folks have found out.
Marlin, thanks for the reminder about the “zeitgeist” of this blog, named Clusterfuck Nation (provides ample latitude, I’d say)
But maybe you are implying that this blog should really be named “Peak Oil” and we should be talking about that?
Most people are just not interested in peak oil. Unfortunately, what is common knowledge for experts in sustainability is not for the average consumer.
How can we, as members of CFN, find ways to better disseminate this information to the consumer in order to encourage acceptance of renewable energy technology to cover for the inevitable shortfall in oil in the future?
Got any ideas, Marlin?
I think the first step in acceptance is awareness, and awareness comes with meditation practice. So, from my perspective, meditation is part of a solution to the issue of “peak oil” …
We need intelligence dissemination, and responsiveness to consumer needs, if we are to be ‘change agents’ with the goal of encouraging sustainability in the marketplace.
Becoming less focused on “material things” and more focused on spiritual matters can also become part of the solution, and once again, meditation has a role to play there.
I don’t see meditation and societal change as being antithetical … but, of course, I am large and I contain multitudes.
Oh, I get through it pretty fast. There are people I read (the list is long, you’re on it) and people I don’t read (also a long list), or responses from the people I do read to the people I don’t read. Clear? 🙂 As the week goes on, I burn up the scroll key.
What am I going to do? Come January, with a little luck, I’ll be out in the boonies, hermiting away and growing potatoes. Under the wing and protection of an old local family. But, I’m lucky. No family obligations and I can travel light.
I’m thinking about war. After all, this is Memorial Day weekend. This is my take on American wars:
French and Indian Wars – 1750’s. A fight between 2 European powers for control of North America’s land and resources and financed by business interests in each country+.
Revolutionary War – 1776-1783. Colonial businessmen attempting to get greater profits by eliminating forced revenue-draining by the royal government and its backers.
War of 1812 – 1812-1815. Attempt of former ruling country to get back control of land, trade and resources.
Indian Wars – c1607-1890. Pillage, looting and murder of native Americans for their land and resources.
Mexican War – 1836 and 1845. The wresting away of land and resources from a bordering North American country.
Civil War – 1861-1865. Regional and tragic conflict for control of cheap labor.
Spanish-American War – 1898. Wresting away territory from a former European power at the end of said power’s long decline.
WWI – 1917-1918. Preventative measure to maintain market dominance threatened by uncooperative European powers.
WWII – 1941-1945. Further preventative measure to maintain market dominance by defeating scary European rival power.
Korean War – 1950-1953. Attempt to penetrate Asian markets.
Vietnam War – 1962-1975. Measure to prevent rival European power from gaining influence in Asia, and gift to military-industrial complex.
Middle East wars – 1991- present date. Measures to gain control of vital natural reasource while simultaneously usurping power through governmental bribery and fear-mongering.
Who are the villians in this long, tragic tale? Why, big business/the Elite and politicians.
Here’s to the memory of countless brave, dead American soldiers who unwittingly became cannon fodder.
Happy Memorial Day.
I’m tempted to assert that higher-education instills a hedge against hyperbolic exaggeration, but after reading some of the ridiculous claims by some of the “educated ” from this site I’ll have to pass. “ No more factory jobs” – come on, that’s sensationalized drama. It’s one thing to cite a trend, and an entirely different thing to proclaim extinction. In fact, I provided a link a week or so ago which chronicles a real shortage of qualified American workers in certain industries, most notably skilled machinists. Many companies in the aforementioned industry are raiding each other for skilled talent.
Does anyone ever read the business section of their local or national newspaper around here?
Palin Pisses Off Rolling Thunder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4WgLCE4k4
Palin/Bachmann 2012 (Please, God, let it be!)
All you political activists, don’t throw away ye olde mimeograph machine. Under the Homeland Security Act (just renewed), Obama can kill the internet at any time. And then you will be bereft of my guidance and the pleasure of my company.
Authoritarianism is a nasty germ that lies dormant but rears its ugly head when times are hard and things are going wrong. People look for a strong man, a good man to set things to rights, to re-set the clocks. Look at the blind, unreasoning adulation of Obama during the presidential campaign. After the Bush years people were looking for messiah to get things back on track.
I think also that people generally go along to get along. They don’t want to be out of the mainstream in terms of their publicly stated views and attitudes.
One example: if you go back into the 1990s we saw the Canuck politicians of all stripes, publicly affirming their view that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Fast forward 15 – 20 years and such a view would be seen as hopelessly retrograde in these parts with same sex marriage being legal. And roundly condemned besides.
This development wrt marriage rights is seen here as a good thing. But events can go in all sorts of directions. Right now the boundaries are being legally tested again in polygamist Mormon communities (Bountiful BC) where some men have multiple wives.
And I would expect Muslims to take up the cause. If I were Muslim I would say this is supposed to be a multi-cultural country where tolerance is ALWAYS preached. So why do you respect the rights of gays but not an age old religion like Islam where polygamy is permitted or cultures where polygamy is the norm?
I would expect that, after some legal folderol, the courts will agree, that as an officially multi-cultural country we walk the talk. Somehow I don’t think that legalization of polygamy is a cause that “progressives” and feminists will get behind.
The point is that times change. We wouldn’t have envisioned such things 50 years ago. A Black President and First Lady and their family in the White House would have been unthinkable.
But things can go in directions we can’t now foresee, both good and bad. Changes don’t have to be revolutionary but rather move in incremental steps. If you had told Germans in the 1880s that their country would be responsible for the eradication of European Jewry they probably wouldn’t have believed it.
As you say, you wonder where this thing is going. For every “progressive” development you can point to one that’s “regressive”. Most things that happened in the last hundred years came as a shock to people living in the times but look perfectly foreseeable in hindsight. I have great faith in people to make good things bad, to make bad situations horrific. I wonder what garden of horrors we’re cultivating right now, unseeing and uncomprehending. As shitty as the 20th Century was I wonder if one even shittier is lying in wait for us.
Thanks for that nice summary, Beantown.
I would only add that the pro-war folks sincerely believed in what they were fighting for. For example, World War I was said to be “The war to end all wars”
But, ultimately, I agree with you that the soldiers who fought and died were just cannon fodder. They died in vain.
Memorial Day is just another day and the wars will continue … until those who fight them put down their weapons and refuse to fight.
I didn’t want to mention that since I was on a temporary “truce” with Asoka. But like Muslim Truces – it was meant to be broken at the maker’s convenience. I did read the expose by his security guard – about him sitting in a barber chair doing nitrous chanting “I’m so bored, I’m so bored.”
But then the giant question becomes: what about Asoka’s connection and experience? It can’t be competely unreal. Even the guard said Rajneesh was an advanced yogi quite capable of giving his devotees the bliss they craved so much. After all they were trippers, hedonists, seekers! Spirituality is supposed to be the ultimate trip, the most fun of all.
I once sat with No Me. Get it? No Me! But I guess there was a pretty big I in there someplace.
============
I respect your strategy and your use of the scroll key.
Your strategy does have a flaw. You say you “make lists” of people to read and people not to read. It is easy for people to change handles and you may end up accidentally reading someone you have no intention of reading!
My strategy is different. I read everyone and do not deliberately avoid anyone. You never know when a good idea may surface, from places least expected.
As Ken Wilber says, “No one can be in error 100% of the time,” and I believe Wilber is correct.
We all have something to contribute to CFN and I am enjoying reading all of your posts.
Interesting… call it synchronicity, chaos theory or just plane old chance. I was rummaging around for something to read last night (happens more often than not, even living (camping out) in the back of a bookstore) and pretty much at random picked up Fenton Johnson’s “Geography of the Heart.” Turns out his family lived pretty close to the Gethsemane Monastery.
Merton is just mentioned in passing, but there are several little episodes of the Monks sneaking over to partake of his families hospitality (usually around meal time) and long evenings of music, booze and smokes. How the family would often have picnics outside the grounds and the Monks would join them.
I have never been to that part of the country, but Johnson in a few short paragraphs sums up the geography and society of that region. The Kentucky Knobs are a hook shaped extension of the Appalachians. Southern Baptists on one side, other Protestants on the other and Catholics up in the heights and on the hills.
How television changed the place in the 50s and 60s. Only reception on cloudy nights when the signals would bounce off the clouds and deep into the valleys and hollers.
Vlad, I have read all the anti-Osho books, all the books by former disciples, all the press reports critical of Osho, and have had long conversations with “ex-Rajneeshees”
Believe me I’ve heard all the dirt and rumors and second-hand reports, many from people who never knew Osho and may not have even read anything by Osho.
He was a spiritually incorrect mystic and one of his strategies was to provoke bad press coverage. He was good at it!
The most recent book I read detailing this strategy is: DANCING WITH A MAD MAN: TALES BY A BRITISH JOURNALIST ABOUT HIS LIFE WITH A CONTROVERSIAL INDIAN MYSTIC
(ISBN 978-93-80151-81-6)
The result is we are still talking about Osho in 2011. Books are still being published about him (for and against). And his movement has grown since his death. Negative publicity is publicity!
You are a riot. Tell you a story: Bogie and Bacall were good card carrying Liberals. They decided to do their civic duty and go support the Hollywood Ten. They were amazed by the Ten’s utter contempt for the United States, both its people and its Traditions. They came away sadder and wiser admitting that they had gone in way over their heads. You are in over your’s as well -oblivious to the Evil on the left. We’re not in danger from religious fascism. It was a possibility but it didn’t work out that way. The Powers that be are using the Capitalists and the Communists both. You only see half of the story.
That itself is telling – to seek negative publicity is usually a worldly thing. Every knock is a boost is the strategy of a clever con man. Spiritually, the opposite hold true: every boost is a knock.
There are occasional exceptions: the Malaymati (sp?), the Sufis who follow the Path of Blame. But they are not organized, have no foundations or wealth – and the chain of sucession is very subtle and mysterious.
I promise you though that I will try to keep an open mind about Osho. Maybe he was a Malaymati too.
I try to be the one that looks behind the curtain. Things usually aren’t what they seem to be at 1st glance. I think I started looking at things differently when I was a boy. Back in the day, automobile accident death totals were always reported in the news after holiday weekends. The media would warn us a week or so in advance about driving carefully during the Memorial Day weekend. Holiday weekend deaths usually were 450-650 per weekend. Horrific.
The young me always thought it was nice of the newspapers and tv news people to try to keep the death toll down. But then, liking to play around with numbers, I calculated that since there were 50,000 auto deaths per year, an average week had 1000 deaths. Suddenly 600 deaths on a 3-day weekend, while higher than normal, was not out of line with normal expectations.
Given that people drove more on holiday weekends, the death rate per passenger-mile was probably pretty similar to non-holiday weekends. Therefore, at best, driving during holiday weekends was only marginally less safe than normal. So why didn’t the newspapers publish auto deaths after every weekend? Why only on holiday weekends?
Then it hit me. The media were trying to scare us. If we were scared, we’d buy more newspapers after the holiday weekend to see how bad things were the previous 3 days. It was all about business and profit, not about trying to do a public service. If they published death statistics every weekend, nobody would be interested.
From that day onward, I always tried to look deeper into things, to find out what was really going on. And I stopped trusting the media.
okay, I’m busted. I do read the business section and having looked into machinist apprenticeships at one time am aware that tool & dye & machining are in high demand right now. Nevertheless, manufacturing has declined, and that is undeniable. Nor can just anyone go to minuteman to get a factory job anymore. Machinists are highly skilled and take years to reach that level.
Read it as well and very recently. Fenton Johnson’s book is very thorough and pulls no punches. I won’t try to belabor any points here right now. Camping out in a bookstore as you are you’d also be interested in the free documentary online about that bookstore called Shakespeare & Co. in Paris across from the Notre Dame Cathedral. A Canadian journalist who wrote true crime camped out there while working for them, and the founder’s daughter now runs the place, so it isn’t going anywhere. The founder like to provide free room & board to young struggling writers in exchange for volunteer labor at the bookstore.
You can’t be serious. America has lost tens of millions of factory jobs over the last three decades. A few small skilled jobs like watch making or something can’t hold a candle to all that. You show a lack of perspective.
When I realized most things were not as they seemed, and I looked behind the curtain, I realized that life is really absurd. If there is a god, he has a wicked sense of humor. I bet he laughs uproarously all the time; he created us for his own amusement.
In that vein, and for this weekend, I now state my 2 favorite war stories are Ernst Lubitsch’s film “To Be or Not to Be”, and Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch 22”. Both are black comedies. I wonder if any CFNers are familiar with these works and have any comments about them.
Indeed, the ‘Issue attention cycle’ old as the news [pun intended].
I know people who go to mega-churches, and they are normal people.
What I’ve been told (but not by them) is that the services are not the main attraction, that there are small groups that meet, and also, there are services that these churches provide which meet the needs of struggling people.
I know that I’d rather go to a church with a rock and roll band, and dancing and singing than one with someone droning on and on while you squirm in your seat.
Luckily, I don’t go to either.
Nice summary, Beantown.
It is indeed sad to think of all the young lives lost. And that’s just the soldiers.
The millions of collateral damage lives lost are staggering.
Catch-22 is brilliant: Any Army Air Corps flyer who requests to be grounded because he is afraid of getting shot up by flack over the target in a quasi-suicidal daylight raid [the specialty of American airmen, the more sensible British flew at night and did carpet & fire bombing] is sane, and therefore remains fit to fly combat missions. Anyone who wants to fly because he has a death wish will also be allowed to fly in spite of being crazy because he is compliant and therefore not a problem to the superior officers. The movie was pretty cool as well. One of my barbershop customers William Stevens wrote a novel “The Gunner” which was optioned for the movies but then never shot and as a novel is even better. It’s about a rear gunner who deserts and wanders around in Italy.
I agree. Megachurches are not cults. Even in fairly bizarre sects the majority of the adherents are only nominal members and remain average, common-sense, high functioning people. Even elevated levels of religious enthusiasm usually don’t make people deranged. Many adult evangelicals for instance are really just reformed swingers and party-animals such as might become officers in the Salvation Army, for which I once volunteered when a catholic scholastic briefly in St. Loius during a misguided attempt to resign from the rat-race. As a Church of England seminarian once reasoned in his M.A. dissertation: “The twelve apostles were not guilty of enthusiasm”.
A friend of mine said “looks like no one was good enough to be taken.”
the Rapture may have happened, just no one good enough to go !
Thought that was pretty good.
How would we know.
The Rapture, I for one don’t believe in that B.S.
IMO it IS B.S.
and some of my closest friends believe in it.
to each his / her own.
I pretty much look at the world with a skeptical jaundiced eye. My bullshit detector is pretty fine tuned. 🙂
And, I attribute that to an early exposure to Mad magazines. And, the little paperback collections they used to put out.
I recently ran across a collection of Mad from the 70s. The sections on the gas crisis even made allusions to greenwashing. Not using that term, but that’s what it was.
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”
It’s MEmorial Day Weekend, I am going to hear Boz Scaggs at the Blues Festival. I found a spot where I can sit under the Redwoods for FREE and hear it all !
Saw the Moody Blues in Saratoga, love Justin Hayward, but froze my *** off.
No one is getting any younger ! Was an older crowd. But to me truth is timeless and ageless. Music influences us so much, especially when younger.
Try and enjoy the weekend doomsters !
I’ve been off computer for weeks and reading books, but came back to check in and say hello to my “friends.” they know who they are.
And when you drive please don’t tailgate. I got rear ended and may have pain for the rest of my life. Whiplash.
Do what’s right, drive polite. I made that up.
What A concept.
Give thanks to those who fought for our freedoms, and hope we don’t lose too many more (freedoms) and soldiers.! that is.
Jackie! Good to have you back! Was just wondering yesterday where you had got to. 🙂
Was trying to jog my memory about a book I had read, and ran across what I think is the documentary you are referring to. “Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man?” I’ll keep an eye out for it.
The book I read was “Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojurn at Shakespeare & Co.” by Jeremy Mercer. Worth a look. No one here but my cat and I. 🙂
Even though Fenton Johnson is the polar opposite of Joe Bageant, the parts of the book that talked about his early life and growing up, reminded me of Bageant, a bit.
FYI, Heller’s title was Catch-8, but his novel was scheduled to come out while the Elizabeth Taylor movie Butterfield 8 was playing. Heller’s editor thought Catch-8 would be too confusing, what with the movie, so they worked out a new “catchy” title, and voila! Catch-22.
I always loved Mad Magazine, but when I was reading it regularly it was in the 1950’s, I think, and I was just a boy. I loved the satire, but I think I was too young at the time to see the skepticism. That’s ironic because as an adult I’m so skeptical. Maybe Mad’s skepticism affected me on a subconscious level and contributed to my own skepticism.
If there is a god, he has a wicked sense of humor. I bet he laughs uproarously all the time; he created us for his own amusement.
==
There is no god. And it is as funny as getting ten thousand spoons when all that’s needed is a knife.
Yes on both counts. Never heard of Bageant though. I am equally impressed that BeantownBill is a devotee of MAD Magazine, AS AM I, in the words of William Shatner.
The Canadian crime writer Jeremy Mercer is also in the documentary and in fact appears prominently in same. Mercer finally realized that living at work kind of sucks and moved on, but then he had had a good career even if he was really down on his luck when he moved in.
Wrong again Vlad.And you lack precision. Losing jobs is a far cry from “no more factory jobs”. Consider the below:
” Mark Perry, professor of economics at the University of Michigan, argues that despite global market pressures, U.S. manufacturing, taken by itself, would currently rank as the sixth-largest economy in the world, just behind France and ahead of the United Kingdom, Italy and Brazil.
Perry also said that, at $2.155 trillion, total U.S. manufacturing output is 45% higher than China’s. Despite the increase in output, however, the number of jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector is down more than 7 million since the late 1970s.”
To reiterate, I didn’t say the U.S. wasn’t losing jobs; I just was simply putting the “no more manufacturing jobs” mantra into “PERSPECTIVE”.
Now back to the dugout for you Krantz. Give it another try after you learn to see the spin of the ball.
Yeah, Mika, I know there’s no god. It was just my way of saying that intelligent(?) life on this planet is really so ridiculous that you just gotta laugh and shake your head. At least for me.
If there is a god, he has a wicked sense of humor.
========
A poem for you:
THE LAMP IS EMPTY; THE OIL IS USED UP.
THE TAMBOURINE IS DEAD, THE DANCER LIES DOWN,
THE FIRE IS OUT, AND NO SMOKE RISES FROM IT.
THE SOUL IS ABSORBED INTO THE UNIQUE,
AND THERE IS NO LONGER A DUALITY.
–Kabir
There is no god, but there is something much better.
Ken Wilber does not have cancer, he has CFIDS, or something like that. He was exposed to toluene when he lived at Incline Village back in the 1980’s and it messed him up. He still suffers, and spends a lot of time in bed (with outrageously younger women) but he is still writing.
On the subject of Adyashanti (who according to Sarlo’s guru rating website is one of he top 20 guru’s of all time, helping many….Sarlo, FYI is an Osho devotee) Off the top of my head, that list includes Ramana Maharshi, Jean Klein, Osho, Adya, Nisargadatta, Papaji, Krishmanurti, Ramesh Balsekar.
As for Adya’s pre-guru life, I went to high school with his older sister. He was seriously into bike racing, and not so much into school since he is dyslexic. He did do some college, but mostly did meditating. His wife, Annie, (Mukti) is a acupuncturist (Chinese med doc), and a Hatha yoga teacher.
SJmom
It’s not life on this planet that is ridiculous, it is the programming inside the matrix that is ridiculous. It is beyond ridiculous. The programming is fatal. We are being set up for death on a planetary scale. And we’re being deliberately stifled by political machinations political institutions and craven and corrupt politicians to be able to do anything about it. There’s only one outcome following this trajectory, and those that can see beyond their nose can see it very clearly. It end very badly.
I saw “To Be or Not to Be” shortly after Carole Lombard’s death. She was one of my most favorite actresses. I remember feeling somewhat guilty laughing at this WWII comedy (also starring Jack Benny)knowing that one of the most beautiful, talented actresses in Hollywood was gone.
Nice to “see” you again, Myrtlemay.
A coincidence that this week there has been so much talk about the nondual teacher, Adyashanti. I was just listening to him last week. He was being interviewed on a conference DVD called “Science and Noduality: Anthology Volume 2.
http://www.scienceandnonduality.com
Right back atcha, cowboy!
That’s when I was reading, too. The 1950s. The 70s collection just fell into my hands a couple of weeks ago. By the 70s, I had moved on from Mad, so all of this volume was new to me.
I always thought that the scene near the end of the movie in which “Hitler” walks into the English pub is priceless.
Yes, Carole Lombard’s death (in a plane crash) was a tragedy and broke Clark Gable’s heart. She was just coming into her own as a movie comedienne.
It is good to have you back MM. I missed both your acerbic and ribald wit.
Joe Bageant. He just died recently, but his website is still up. Amazing writer and observer. His book “Deer Hunting with Jesus” is great. Haven’t run down a copy of his last one, yet. “Rainbow Pie.”
You, BT Bill and me. All Mad fans. Just a bunch of big ol’ boys, under the skin. 🙂
Miss MyrtleMay! Good to see you back! First Ms. Jackie Blue(after a long absence) , and now you. Roundin’ up that ol’ gang of mine. Life is good. Life is complete.
Fascinating article, James. Style as drily magisterial as ever.
But what a significant point you made about the need for a change from focusing on “growth” to the less ferally aspirational “economic activity”. The mindset required to face the necessity for a radical change of outlook and goals.
Thanks for the kind words, Bean! I’ve been out of the loop due to medical woes…don’t get me started! When you mentioned that movie, I just had to make a comment. Carole Lombard was one of those great comediennes I really didn’t appreciate until after they started showing her movies on television in the ’50s…when I was a tad bit more sophisticated than a pubescent teen in 1942.
The programming inside the matrix has been created by the human mind.
Speaking of which, I created a thought experiment – a mind game – for my own amusement. I call it Galactic Council.
In it I am the chair-entity of defense on the Milky Way Galactic Council. Disturbing news has just reached me from our scouts who have been monitoring the behaviour of a civilization on a planet cicling a typical G2 yellow dwarf star in a spiral arm of the galaxy, 30,000 light years from galactic center. The species calls itself “humans”.
Every civilization seems to go through an adolescent phase, wherein it becomes rambunctious, egocentric and rebellious.
Each civilization either gradually outgrows this phase and matures, along with its technology, or it doesn’t and destroys itself. But this civilization is different. It is in the midst of its adolescence, but shows signs of a too-rapid technological development, giving rise to the possibility it will break out into the galaxy before it matures and wreak havoc among the galactic civilizations.
As Chair-entity of the Galactic Department of Defense, my duty is to keep the galaxy safe. With this possible threat, I really have only 2 viable choices: To destroy the human species or to leave them alone and hope they either mature or destroy themselves.
I made my decision. What was it and why did I make it?
I’m impressed that you’ve studied/meditated with Osho. 🙂
SJmom
Hi Lew! I always have to smile when I read about your “adventures” camping out in the back of the bookstore. I’m glad you’ve mapped out a plan to survive TLE! Sounds like you’re surrounded by good people. Just proves good karma attracts good karma. Cheers, and happy Memorial Day!
Speaking of great movie comediennes, a favorite of mine was Gracie Allen. I loved her! She was so nutty and madcap. Every time I saw a movie of hers I split my sides laughing. Nowadays she’s hardly known. She sure was the talent of Burns and Allen.
I don’t want to get you started, but I do hope whatever your medical issues, they are at the least, manageable.
If you think the problems started with Barack Obama, you’re nuts. We had George W Bush for 8 years. We’ve had Barack Obama for 3 years. If Republicans were still in the White House, I’m certain the military would still be looking in the mountains for bin Laden.
Remember all the crap about building the mosque in New York City? It took Jon Stewart 9 minutes to reveal that Rupert Murdoch’s business partner at Fox, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, was funding the mosque, and he has known ties to terrorism.
Welcome back Ms. Myrtlemay!!!!!
SJmom
Thanks, and great to be back SJ mom! Wish I could stay up and chat, but my daughter will be in here soon, making me take a little pill (doctor’s orders). I think it was Bette Davis who said, “Gettin old ain’t for sissies.” Alas, how true!
Your decision is not yours to make! This is a collective matter and a collective decision to be made by EVERYONE involved, including those on the planet circling that typical G2 yellow dwarf star in a spiral arm of the galaxy, 30000 light years from the galactic center.
Your programming is just as faulty as the one we’re subjected to. This leaves me in an extremely pessimistic mood. We’re should be, and we are, better than that!
We should be, and we are, better than that!
Deer Hunting With Jesus sounds cool enough to bother reading. Hopefully it will be better than that other masterpiece ” When Will Jesus Bring the Porkchops?” by the late George Carlin. And yes, MAD was the cat’s pajamas during that crucial phase between the ages of 12 and 14, which for me was 1966-’69, an insane period in general, in which the first album I bought myself was “Are You Experienced?” by Jimmi Hendrix. The movies had also gone nuts during that period as well. Then right after the MAD phase we started sneaking into the Sheraton Inn in Rocky River, OH to buy PLAYBOYs out of the vending machine in one of the hallways. The hotel was converted into a low end retirement home after the swimming pool was filled in with sand.
Gee, I’m sorry if I got you depressed. I was trying to create an allegory as to whether the human race is to be considered worthy enough to continue. I don’t think the answer is obvious.
One thing that’s interesting to me about your comment is that it reflects on our different cultures. Although we are both Jewish, I believe your modus operandi, collective activity, is more traditionally Jewish/European. It has a lot to offer.
My background is American, and I’m Jewish/American culurally. Americans are imherently individualists. In my culture, as Chair-entity of the Defense Department, I would act on my own (but maybe with the help of some advisors) making a decision because that’s my responsibility. I like my way because it’s decisive, and I would consider your way too complicated.
But all that’s a matter of cultural upbringing, and I’m not sure I can say which way is better.
In any case, life is short and brutal, as you well know, so to me, it seems logical to try to have as much peace of mind as possible. That would rule out pessimism for me.
Funny, I lived in Cleveland during that period. Cleveland was so socially and politically conservative, I didn’t know what was really going on in the country until I moved back to boston
The scenario you outlined does not rest on culture, it rests on morals and ethics. The fact that you did not recognize this is very troubling. The Galactic Department of Defense needs to be abolished and its Chair-entity and political architects sent to Israel for remedial education. That’s what I think. 😀
Rest in peace, Harvey Pekar! (American Splendor.)
gee…we added 100m people and lost 7 m jobs..
where are 107 million jobs gonna come from Mr wrongagagin?
Finally checked the bag-ant guy on Amazon…
this is the most interesting readers comment…
‘how popular this book would have been if it had been renamed “Deer Hunting with a Jew”.
And actually, that’s what the book title *is*: “Jesus” is the Anglisized form of Y’shua.
Yet I suppose it’s safer and more PC to target Christians than sons of Abraham.’
Current photovoltaic solar roof shingles have a 20 percent efficiency rate.
New technology has over a 90 efficiency rate:
Apologies to those averse to techno-miracle news.
CORRECTION
“Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar energy as theoretically possible and bring it to the commercial market in an inexpensive package that is accessible to everyone”
Many such discoveries on many fronts rolled together constitutes a techno-miracle.
Will it scale? … Yes.
Is it available to everyone now? … No.
Will it happen eventually? … Yes.
Will it be inexpensive? … Yes.
Will it be easily accessible? … Yes, as easy as buying aluminum foil in the grocery store is now.
Time is the prison guard of Mass Energy that forces it to fight itself, it whips Mass Energy into action, which means contradiction, since any change means contradicting something, means a transition from state A to state B which imposes some particles to get out of the way, to not be in the same spot of time and space as before, which means that a fight, a war between 2 particles was fought and 1 particle won, the other lost, but always temporarily since time will whip them into action again.
But why did Mass Energy want to wake up and fool itself into thinking it could win a war with itself, why is it trying to exist, even though it doesn’t, even though it is destined to lose the war it is fighting against itself, no matter what, why does it want to trick itself into believing it is that which it is not ? So it creates man, that exists only to fight himself and others, and ties this into his emotional and pain/pleasure feelings, and forces man into action, man, a reflection of the Metaphysics of Mass Energy trying to exist, trying to free itself from the prison time put it in, or from the prison the “laws of physics” put it in. So it creates pain, which is a way of Mass Energy to show how much it really exists, and it does, quite a bit, but why does Mass Energy want to punish itself ? because it wants to fool itself that it can win: a young person is full of hope, is happy, is winning all the time, the great endeavor of fooling itself, the attempt at thinking that you can really win, when, no matter what, something will always defeat you, because the essence of existence is simply fight, win some, lose some, but in the end lose no matter what. The world is independent of you, it is not your friend, it is your enemy and religions want to try to make you believe that it is not so.
So the Instant Singularity, and eventually, Mass Energy will create such incredible complex organizations of Matter, such that it will experience untold numbers of new universes, experiences, it will win in those new environments, maybe ? It will win always for some time, but it will defeat time. Of course the number of new possible configurations of Mass Energy playing games with itself, into fooling itself into existence and winning may be never ending, who knows how far they can go ?
Why did a few carbon atoms in my mind force me to write this crap, when I really didn’t want to ? I write things that I would like to read on the internet, but since no one writes them I write them myself and read them, saying, finally someone has something interesting to say. But it is all fluff, useless, all just a narrative, an invention, and we can invent a trillion new stories about anything, a trillion new sequence of symbols, that are supposed to reveal something, but there is nothing to reveal, the world is essentially dead, nothing, there is nothing in it, it is independent of anything, and anything we want to think and feel, (although we do tie into feelings all kinds of imaginary narratives that the world is playing out, “to make us feel good”, or better about it, to fool ourselves into thinking that it is controllable, containable, we can grasp it within the controlled environments of our puny minds).
So next time you see a fight, or want to fight, just remember it is contradiction expressing itself, it wants to win, it wants to fool itself into thinking it can win. But what on earth is winning and losing anyways ? Only pain/pleasure define these ? Nothing spiritual and metaphysical ? Then a 2 dimensional universe with 2 dimensions pain pleasure and a 1 transistor circuit ? Or a 1 transistor circuit generating an infinite amount of fake narratives like this ? Another infinite recursion of impossible – intractable problems…
Existence is only pain, and extreme pain makes existence realer ? Is that why god created hell ? Why does god love hell so much ? So we are always winning infinitely, we are in the highest possible state of pleasure and existence always, we are existence achieved only because we are not experiencing the extreme pain of hell, is that the gift of god ?
The again religions, all of them, are exactly the same, they exists only because of hell, that is the only concept that exits and counts in religion, it is the only concept they propose, there are no other concepts, a one concept ideology and narrative, a one bit universe. All of the other ideas are just noise and fluff, religion really just wants to talk about hell and extreme pain, this is their power, the power to terrorize. How many people really have the courage to stop and think of what really awaits them, since we will all go to hell no matter what, god loves hell and pain and punishment, that is his universe, totally incredibly terrifying, what total insanity!
A universe without a god may even just be infinite pain forever ? are we lucky ? maybe god is just trying to avoid us to be in that other quirk universe ? A godless universe is more terrifying ? Total Metaphysical Insecurity ?
Now, give me a new modified mind that fell from the Sun, one where only extreme metaphysical entities are playing games with each other, are playing with themselves, symbol constructor, time to number converters, logic to contradiction decomposers, go on, here is another one that fell in my backyard, where I play until mommy calls me in for dinner, and play around with all of these weird Modified Minds coming from the Sun:
ççPLLAZ
Then again religions, all of them, are exactly the same, they exists only because of hell, that is the only concept that exits and counts in religion, it is the only concept they propose, there are no other concepts, a one concept ideology and narrative, a one bit universe. All of the other ideas are just noise and fluff, religion really just wants to talk about hell and extreme pain, this is their power, the power to terrorize. How many people really have the courage to stop and think of what really awaits them, since we will all go to hell no matter what, god loves hell and pain and punishment, that is his universe, totally incredibly terrifying, what total insanity!
But they tend to drift towards sex, one way or another to change topics, to have some fun, seeing how gruesome and depressing their 1 bit universe really is, better to play around with innocent stuff…
Then again religions, all of them, are exactly the same, they exists only because of hell, that is the only concept that exits and counts in religion, it is the only concept they propose, there are no other concepts, a one concept ideology and narrative, a one bit universe. All of the other ideas are just noise and fluff, religion really just wants to talk about hell and extreme pain, this is their power, the power to terrorize. How many people really have the courage to stop and think of what really awaits them, since we will all go to hell no matter what, god loves hell and pain and punishment, that is his universe, totally incredibly terrifying, what total insanity!
But religions tend to drift towards sex, one way or another to change topics, to have some fun, seeing how gruesome and depressing their 1 bit universe really is, better to play around with innocent stuff…
Funny the symbols are different from on :
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
Now that is weird, these minds are real!
Now, give me a new modified mind that fell from the Sun, one where only extreme metaphysical entities are playing games with each other, are playing with themselves, symbol constructor, time to number converters, logic to contradiction decomposers, go on, here is another one that fell in my backyard, where I play until mommy calls me in for dinner, and play around with all of these weird Modified Minds coming from the Sun:
Another try, maybe this will work:
$&%&&%%% CCCCCP
The symbols were yet again different, hmmm…
Some spelling corrections of you want to copy and paste it for some homework:
Then again religions, all of them, are exactly the same, they exist only because of hell, that is the only concept that exists and counts in religion, it is the only concept they propose, there are no other concepts, a one concept ideology and narrative, a one bit universe. All of the other ideas are just noise and fluff, religion really just wants to talk about hell and extreme pain, this is their power, the power to terrorize. How many people really have the courage to stop and think of what really awaits them, since we will all go to hell no matter what, god loves hell and pain and punishment, that is his universe, totally incredibly terrifying, what total insanity! But religions tend to drift towards sex, one way or another to change topics, to have some fun, seeing how gruesome and depressing their 1 bit universe really is, better to play around with innocent stuff…
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175379
[quote=”Twiffy”]
Enter science. Science could reasonably be defined as the study of objective truth. All science is about objective truth in this sense; math studies objective truth that is independent from the laws of physics, and relies solely on logic. Physics studies the most fundamental objective truths that depend on the laws of physics. Chemistry and Biology study emergent properties of physical systems. Psychology, even higher, and so on.[/quote]
Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind – brain – memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.
So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.
But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.
Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :
WHHWHEGGRR T (IIIUU) ) ———–
You can also invent your own bible if you want…
Some correction so you can just copy and paste it in for you homework assignment, tell the teacher you just made it all up, she will like it…
I am now going out to play in the backyard with some new brain that came from some stars this time, the Sun is taking a break. Mommy will be back soon, she want to the shopping center to buy some potato chips for me.
[quote=”Twiffy”]
Enter science. Science could reasonably be defined as the study of objective truth. All science is about objective truth in this sense; math studies objective truth that is independent from the laws of physics, and relies solely on logic. Physics studies the most fundamental objective truths that depend on the laws of physics. Chemistry and Biology study emergent properties of physical systems. Psychology, even higher, and so on.[/quote]
Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind – brain – memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate to us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.
So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.
But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.
Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :
WHHWHEGGRR T (IIIUU) ) ———–
You can also invent your own bible if you want…
Ooops, some other spelling correction:
Some correction so you can just copy and paste it in for you homework assignment, tell the teacher you just made it all up, she will like it…
I am now going out to play in the backyard with some new brain that came from some stars this time, the Sun is taking a break. Mommy will be back soon, she went to the shopping center to buy some potato chips for me.
[quote=”Twiffy”]
Enter science. Science could reasonably be defined as the study of objective truth. All science is about objective truth in this sense; math studies objective truth that is independent from the laws of physics, and relies solely on logic. Physics studies the most fundamental objective truths that depend on the laws of physics. Chemistry and Biology study emergent properties of physical systems. Psychology, even higher, and so on.[/quote]
Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind – brain – memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate to us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.
So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.
But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.
Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :
WHHWHEGGRR T (IIIUU) ) ———–
You can also invent your own bible if you want…
Isn’t EXCESS CAPACITY cool ? You can just keep on double posting forever, the memory just never ends…
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175379
“Fundamentally there is no way for me to show that there is such a thing as objective reality. I acknowledge all of this, and I know that philosophically that’s an important thing to acknowledge.”
And you should “show” this to who ? Or what ? And why should you want to “show” this to “it” that you want to show it to ? And what if you showed it to “it”, but the “it” lies to you and says, “yes, I have now seen objective reality, thank you, but deep inside he is thinking, I haven’t seen anything, the guy is a crackpot” , would you ever know ? could you ever know ? do you want to know ? And if you knew, could you be sure that you knew it ? And what would you do with it ? How would you use it, what is the “intentionality of use” ? But essentially do you really care, aren’t you just talking to yourself anyways ? Another infinite recursion of impossible – intractable problems (or are they even problems and not experiences of the mind playing games with itself ?).
This is the way to show that there is objective reality: just say it. Now who cares if the other mind accepts it, doesn’t, if it is even true, if you even care to believe in it, if the other mind is even alive or real, everything is just a sequence of symbols that make believe that they are real.
Wake up, you are in a simulator.
Wow spider, you sure have a lot to say this morning!!
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
[quote=”nameta9″]
Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind – brain – memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate to us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.
So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.
But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.
Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :
WHHWHEGGRR T (IIIUU) ) ———–
You can also invent your own bible if you want…
[/quote]
[b]But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all,[/b] so P can really be anything at all imaginable, anything, any delimitation, any entity, even just a glass or a cloud (typical metaphysical and philosophical devices I use often, I wrote some nice equations with clouds) and you can assign all the causes and effects you like, relate anything to anything, go wild man! So P can also be something totally unrelated to A, as just writing symbols on a piece of paper or just thinking of them, or just imaging them coming down to your mind from the stars. Also, since the theory states that you should be really wrong, then be as wrong as possible, break any kind of logic, lie as much as possible, after all these minds can deconstruct the structure of truth, so they are not under the thumb of “being true” or not.
The imagining that other people have minds, that they judge, can judge you and measure you, and you should “care” (and in fact every judgment or feeling a person can have for another can be converted into the opposite in new brains), is a delimitation, is an act of faith, is abstract just as much as believing in the easter bunny. Don’t buy into it, other people are just fake robots, that simulate your own mind, they just imitate you and try to make you believe they are real, but modified minds decompose the structure of “real”, they invent new memories, they construct new structures of “Lies”, the lies and delusions is one of the elementary particles these minds are composed of (but lies are always composed of some traces of truth, but I want pure lies, but that is lie based on truth base on lie, uh oh, here we go again, sounds like the absolutes based on the non absolutes, based on the absolutes, another infinite recursion of impossible – intractable problems, go figure…), go on man, you can do it, go wild, you are the boss, show them who you are.
Kkkkkkkklooo -p-p-0=======/////////////6/777$ee5%%%
Go on, tell me what this ones is doing (this mind is more real than our entire universe, is more real than you reading that sequence of symbols a trillion times more)…
Forgot the BOLD…
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175386
[quote=”nameta9″]
Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind – brain – memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate to us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.
So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.
But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.
Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :
WHHWHEGGRR T (IIIUU) ) ———–
You can also invent your own bible if you want…
[/quote]
But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, so P can really be anything at all imaginable, anything, any delimitation, any entity, even just a glass or a cloud (typical metaphysical and philosophical devices I use often, I wrote some nice equations with clouds) and you can assign all the causes and effects you like, relate anything to anything, go wild man! So P can also be something totally unrelated to A, as just writing symbols on a piece of paper or just thinking of them, or just imaging them coming down to your mind from the stars. Also, since the theory states that you should be really wrong, then be as wrong as possible, break any kind of logic, lie as much as possible, after all these minds can deconstruct the structure of truth, so they are not under the thumb of “being true” or not.
The imagining that other people have minds, that they judge, can judge you and measure you, and you should “care” (and in fact every judgment or feeling a person can have for another can be converted into the opposite in new brains), is a delimitation, is an act of faith, is abstract just as much as believing in the easter bunny. Don’t buy into it, other people are just fake robots, that simulate your own mind, they just imitate you and try to make you believe they are real, but modified minds decompose the structure of “real”, they invent new memories, they construct new structures of “Lies”, the lies and delusions is one of the elementary particles these minds are composed of (but lies are always composed of some traces of truth, but I want pure lies, but that is lie based on truth base on lie, uh oh, here we go again, sounds like the absolutes based on the non absolutes, based on the absolutes, another infinite recursion of impossible – intractable problems, go figure…), go on man, you can do it, go wild, you are the boss, show them who you are.
Kkkkkkkklooo -p-p-0=======/////////////6/777$ee5%%%
Go on, tell me what this ones is doing (this mind is more real than our entire universe, is more real than you reading that sequence of symbols a trillion times more)…
“Three hundred million people, and you can’t organize a decent demonstration against anything?”
What good does a demonstration do against a democracy? This is the way the people want it. You think they are going to demonstrate against themselves? Who can complain? A minority of ONE?
“I made my decision. What was it and why did I make it?”
Laissez Faire. Prime Directive.
Why? Advanced individuals have learned they are not qualified to dictate incomes.
I see you are here with all your friends.
No, these are my peers.
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