JHK’s Three-Act Play
Any American influence left in Iraq should focus on rebuilding the credibility of national institutions.
— Editorial, The New York Times
Gosh, isn’t that what we spent eight years, 4,500 lives, and $1.7 trillion doing? And how did that work out? The Iraq war is just like the US financial system. The people in charge can’t imagine writing off their losses. Which, from the policy standpoint, leaves the USA pounding sand down so many rat holes that there may be no ground left to stand on anywhere. We’ll be lucky if our national life doesn’t soon resemble The Revenge of the Mole People.
The arc of this story points to at least one likely conclusion: the dreadful day that ISIS (shorthand for whatever they call themselves) overruns the US Green Zone in Baghdad. Won’t that be a nauseating spectacle? Perhaps just in time for the 2014 US elections. And what do you suppose the policy meeting will be like in the White House war room the day after?
Will anyone argue that the USA just take a break from further operations in the entire Middle East / North Africa region? My recommendation would be to stand back, do nothing, and see what happens — since everything we’ve done so far just leaves things and lives shattered. Let’s even say that ISIS ends up consolidating power in Iraq, Syria, and some other places. The whole region will get a very colorful demonstration of what it is like to live under an 11th century style psychopathic despotism, and then the people left after the orgy of beheading and crucifixion can decide if they like it. The experience might be clarifying.
In any case, what we’re witnessing in the Middle East — apparently unbeknownst to the newspapers and the cable news orgs — is what happens in extreme population overshoot: chaos, murder, economic collapse. The human population in this desolate corner of the world has expanded on the artificial nutriment of oil profits, which have allowed governments to keep feeding their people, and maintaining an artificial middle class to work in meaningless bureaucratic offices where, at best, they do nothing and, at worst, hassle their fellow citizens for bribes and payoffs.
There is not a nation on earth that is preparing intelligently for the end of oil — and by that I mean 1) the end of cheap, affordable oil, and 2) the permanent destabilization of existing oil supply lines. Both of these conditions should be visible now in the evolving geopolitical dynamic, but nobody is paying attention, for instance, in the hubbub over Ukraine. That feckless, unfortunate, and tragic would-be nation, prompted by EU and US puppeteers, just replied to the latest trade sanction salvo from Russia by declaring it would block the delivery of Russian gas to Europe through pipelines on its territory. I hope everybody west of Dnepropetrovsk is getting ready to burn the furniture come November. But that just shows how completely irrational the situation has become… and I stray from my point.
Which is that in the worst case that ISIS succeeds in establishing a sprawling caliphate, they will never be able to govern it successfully, only preside over an awesome episode of bloodletting and social collapse. This is especially true in what is now called Saudi Arabia, with its sclerotic ruling elite clinging to power. If and when the ISIS maniacs come rolling in on a cavalcade of You-Tube beheading videos, what are the chances that the technicians running the oil infrastructure there will stick around on the job? And could ISIS run all that machinery themselves? I wouldn’t count on it. And I wouldn’t count on global oil supply lines continuing to function in the way the world requires them to. If you’re looking for the near-future spark of World War Three, start there.
By the way, the US is no less idiotic than Ukraine. We’ve sold ourselves the story that shale oil will insulate us from all the woes and conflicts breaking out elsewhere in the world over the dissolving oil economy paradigm. The shale oil story is false. By my reckoning we have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in. The amazing thing is that the public might get to that realization even before its political leadership does. That dynamic leads straight to the previously unthinkable (not for 150 years, anyway) breakup of the United States.
Read About the Breakup of the USA Here:
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To me the only silver lining in our current predicament is that we don’t have to worry about the collapse being a “close call”.
Our nation’s politics is dominated by the views of utopian crackpots. Progressives, Libertarians, Neocons, and other kool aid kults.
Not only are they obivious to the real problems they face, but if any one of those cults gets free rein it will put us on a path to government by gang warlords.
But if that happens our misery will be short lived, because peak oil will then put us out of our misery.
Right. All you have to do is observe the absolute insanity in the ‘Stock Market’ to get that. The entire rigged gambling Ponzi could not be more uncoupled from reality. Today the MSN market hype line reads: Futures rise on global tensions ease. WHAT????
I guess I really missed something this weekend. Did Christ return to begin the thousand year reign of peace?
I disagree entirely that ALL political parties or forces are oblivious to the twin disasters of Peak Oil and Climate Change. The Green Party has a well-thought out strategy of Green Transition involving redirecting the wastes of the endless Wars costing $1 Trillion per year with the Pentagon the world’s largest oil consumer, into Green Transit, solar energy, insulating buildings etc. Although the Green Party has its electric car utopians claiming per usual that we can GROW the economy on non-fossil fuels, they also have a sizable contingent that realises that we have to reduce consumption and realizes the end of cheap oil is here.
Whether the Green Transition touted by the Green Party will allow the continuous of economic growth as we have known it, it is surely all the right things we have to do.
And number one on the list is ending the Wars and the merchants of death’s subsidies in the billions for spreading weapons of mass destruction around the globe.
It is truly astounding that the same neoconservatives who masterminded the brilliant Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are back on all the Corporate media talk shows and interviews. And that once again no reporters save DemocracyNow! ( http://democracynow.org ) seem to ask how dropping bombs on thousands of people as proposed by Obama is going to “save lives” or prevent a genocide.
This is the same logic used 50 years ago in Vietnam “We had to destroy that village in order to save it!”
Amazingly however just 2 weeks ago even crazed Republicans including my own Republican Representative voted against sending any more forces to Iraq except to protect the Embassy!
Americans are just getting more and more sick to death of the endless Wars and sending billions overseas to fight them…
True. Wars these days are not meant to be won. They are meant to be fought – endlessly – as a means of directing resources and power to the “right” kind of people, and denying those same sources to persons not comprising the inner circle.
Agreed that the easy access of the neocons to any form of mass media they choose is “astounding” – if we lived in anything resembling a democracy or a republic. But when either the neocons or their dearest friends own the media in question, and can hardly wait for the ‘rush-to-war’ views of the good old days of 2002-2003 to be trotted out again just because that makes them feel so gosh darn good – well then, it’s not so astounding after all.
It is my belief that our nation’s politics is dominated by vast sums of money donated by a relative handful of extremely reactionary persons. The only way in which utopia enters the picture for these persons is perhaps their vision of sitting on an endless sea of money brought about by their victory in a great game of musical chairs in which all the rest of us have lost.
“Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us.” -R. Nader
“Our nation’s politics is dominated by the views of utopian crackpots”.
Good sentence; bang on the money.
I agree with you on timing, although I thought it would be 2014. 2016 at the latest. I disagree however on your statement that no country on earth is preparing for the end of the oil age. I could point to Norway, Denmark, and possibly Germany. I applaud you on your avoidance of the “c” word, but unfortunately there is no way around it. The world was brought here by design to meet an unhappy end, a sort of petrol apocalypse. Who would do such a thing you ask? What organization or entity is always talking about the apocalypse? There’s your answer.
How about the “m” word instead?
“Let’s even say that ISIS ends up consolidating power in Iraq, Syria, and some other places.”
By “other places” I’m going to assume you mean Saudi Arabia whom you reference in later in today’s post. If the flow of oil from the KSA is interrupted, even the greatest computer whizzes on Wall Street and at the Fed won’t be be able to keep the wheals on the economy. We could well be living in the “World Made By Hand” before the year of the next presidential election. So it is entirely logical that the masters of the universe are pulling the strings of their rental politicians and winding up the war mongering screamers for the Sunday talk show circuit. They are a one-trick-pony and war is that one trick.They also know that they will be dangling at the end of a piece of Chinese made rope if they can’t keep business as usual going.
Almost as if they attended a performance of “The Big Slide”.
Steve-O,
A very concise explanation of the Ed Bernays trick bag of manufactured consent.
I agree with you. Sometimes the simplest explanation is also the most accurate. (From the world of construction, this would be very close to ALWAYS, in an analysis of cause and effect, leading to an appropriate response/fix.)
Global nausea? George W. Bush called it Mission Accomplished: http://www.hammeringtruth.com/?p=8099
In the valiant fight against the genocide of some religious sect nobody ever heard of until our government needed one, name me one religious war that was fought by a religion that practiced what it preached — peace and love. You can’t.
I would imagine that the ratio between humanitarian aid and bombs being dropped would be pretty much what you would expect when images of falling refrigerators and air conditioners competes with 500-LB bombs.
Then there is this nonsense about there being no American feet on the ground when all of these bombs had to be laser guided by somebody to their intended targets.
And our vaulted media running headlines about how our government has finally “re-engaged” themselves in Iraq. Nice little bit of propaganda that, like the “dis-engagement” of over-whelming military force that accomplished nothing will accomplish nothing better than defeat a second, third, fourth, or endless times around.
When does the insanity stop? Apparently, in a country that can pay all its bomb and drone bills with fake printed money, the wars will only stop when those in power say so.
Nothing will change until the people wake up. When exactly will that be?
Incredibly, with all the fake printed money we are making, we still are not technically paying for all of our “bomb and drone bills” since we continue spending more than we take in (i.e., the deficit keeps growing).
Maybe when the bond market crashes all bombing, invasions and war will come to a screeching halt? (as foreign $$ would stop coming our way and we could no longer spend $$ we don’t have).
Dick Cheney’s “The American way of life is non-negotiable”–perhaps the wrongest statement ever uttered in human history–is about to be exposed as such.
Agreed – that statement is the odds-on-favorite to win the Grand Prize in the “He/She Said What!!!” Category.
The only other statement I can think of that would give it any competition is Francis Fukuyama arguing that ‘we’ve reached the End of History’.
But on reflection, you’re right – how can you possibly top Cheney?
This religious war is being fought by those who practice what the prophet preached. The fact that you have chosen to believe the pap about the religion of peace is your problem. These guys are just literally following the word of old Mo.
I recall the first time you mentioned ISIS, which I call The Sith Jihad, a couple of months ago. You expected oil prices to go up because they had captured a refinery. Also, the map of the area they want to control includes a lot of Iraq’s and Syria’s oil fields. World oil markets were only slightly nervous and the expected rise in gasoline prices didn’t materialize. Instead, for most of that time, gas prices fell. Last Friday, that rise in oil and gasoline finally materialized as the fear premium returned once the U.S. started bombing The Sith Jihad. Futures shot up the night before, then settled down at a slightly higher level than before President Obama announced his action to protect the Kurds and the Yazidi religious minority. The traders thought that Obama’s actions “protected the oil supply.” Just the same, prices are no longer declining in the middle of crisis and summer driving season, which was anomalous.
It bothers me too, how everything seems “priced in.”
“The world ends tomorrow. Markets soar.”
In a few of his posts, Mish has brought up the odd arrangement by which American forces are now using weapons (mostly areal) to destroy other American weapons captured by ISIS forces in Syria-Iraq, which they – ISIS combatants – have been using to destroy and/or capture yet more American armaments, which Americans, in turn, will need to destroy at some point in the near future.
I hope the reader appreciates how difficult it was to compose the above sentence.
In any event, I’m certain that this arrangement is profitable for the thriving US arms industry. But why not cut out the middle man entirely? Why not destroy US made weapons as soon as they come off the assembly line?
This could be accomplished easily and safely, the economic benefits would be much the same, and American foreign policy officials wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of being made fools of by those pesky Middle Eastern types. This seems logical, no?
You are correct. Divide the money we spent in Iraq by the number of able bodied working males in Iraq. We could have paid each one $20,000 a year for the last 10 years just to stay home and eat Fruit Loops. But that means no profit to the war machine.
Does that $20K include the cost of the Fruit Loops?
We do something like that here, now. Except we pay the best and the brightest of those males, in some instances, to go and “serve their country” over in some of the places we’re speaking of. We just had a fine young man from Schenectady die by his own hand down at a military base in Texas.
I would like to tie all this in together, but I’m not as articulate with these things as Mr. Kunstler is. He’s able to use some really big words to clarify and make things more precise, which is one of the reasons I read this. I’m seeing parallels to what he says about extreme population overshoot and the expected results, and what I see in some inner city areas in our region. Maybe not the overpopulation so much, but some of the other conditions are the same, and it has to do with fewer good-paying jobs being available at the same time expensive automobile travel became a necessity to participate in the labor force.
Ironically, we don’t pay the young men directly to stay home and eat Fruit Loops. We pay their girlfriends, per kid. There’s a separate benefit, SNAP, for the Fruit Loops.
Suicide is at epidemic levels for a reason. You are told about defending America, serving your country, preserving freedom and liberty, yada yada yada and then you realize you’re just a Roman legionnaire caught in the wrong century. You’re torturing. maiming and killing other human beings for no good reason, and that’s a hell of a thing to live with for a 20 year old kid.
WWII was no picnic and I Believe the suicide rate was much lower, probably because these guys had something to come home to. 20 years old is not a “kid”.
As you know averages can be deceptive, but some generalities can be made.
The enlisted men would tend to be younger, e.g., less training time required. For example I was 18 years old for my early missions. John Comer, author of Combat Crew (also from the 381st BG), was 31 years old. Howver, our crew’s oldest member was Marty Tremble, our Flight Engineer, at 26 years of age.
Even so the average of the enlisted men career gunners (Tail, Ball and Waist) was probably 19 years. The higher trained gunners such as Radio Operator and Flight Engineer would average a little older at 20.
The officers would average around 21 or so.
Agreed – very, very logical. The only possible drawbacks might be a loss of both propaganda and fear value if the weapons didn’t actually blow things and people up. You would likely have to fire these things off now and then for a phrase like “Support Our Troops” to retain its full value. And somehow you have to instill a fear in your own populace that unless you blow these miserable followers of the latest ‘Hitler-of-the-Week’ to kingdom come that all you hold dear will somehow vanish.
But hey – what’s a little collateral damage caused by propagandists for the War Machine?
I’m sure that the same people who believe in infinite economic progress on a finite planet also believe in the infinite capacity for a kind of good from unending wars.
My above quote was from a biography I can’t edit it. My old man was in WWII way before my time. He was on a destroyer escort.
“I’m certain that this arrangement is profitable for the thriving US arms industry,,,” –G.K.
I was thinking about that this weekend when I heard that about
ISIS using captured American armaments. But destroying this stuff straight off the assembly lines would no doubt limit the ancillary revenue streams from transportation and distribution, and perhaps even some back-door shenanigans involving replacement parts or training and such. It certainly is not beneath these profiteers to work both sides of the fence.
Great sentence, BTW…
— Another Greg
Farmer; you and russ make good points. On the face of it my approach is entirely too simplistic. Still, if complexity is the problem…
The “enemies” of the moment the US is supposedly fighting have frequently been able to get their mitts on the US weapons allegedly arrayed against them. Thus during Vietnam, General Ky and other Vietnamese generals had no qualms about selling the weapons given them by the US to the very Viet Cong they were supposed to be fighting. It was no surprise when Ky was found to be fronting an organized crime outfit when he was given shelter in the US after the Vietnamese puppet regime fell. What was amazing after the fall was the news article which stated that 30% of the fallen US supported Vietnamese government was actually Viet Cong!
Of course this may be the usual switch of people to the winning side but even if only half were truly Viet Cong it is an amazing statistic.
A particularly egregious example of the stupidity of these kinds of arms giveaways was Libya when 20,000 rocket launchers were conceded during the first Benghazi Hearings being passed out to Islamic terrorists. Rep Kucinich was fantastic in that hearing which of course was never covered by the Corporate media:
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/10/10/kucinich-want-to-prevent-attacks-on-us-embassies-stop-trying-to-overthrow-governments-video/
“But why not cut out the middle man entirely? Why not destroy US made weapons as soon as they come off the assembly line?”-Greg K.
Because most of the corporate world is middle-men, and they do not take kindly to being dealt-out. That’s why.
This will continue until it can’t.
By the way, the sentence you refer to would probably get remixed and looped with a porn-groove worked into the background, (just enough to give it a really solid bass-line 😉 by an arms-dealer.
Smile Greg! You’re making penthouse creatures really happy!
Another good article, JHK, but when you write that no country on Earth is preparing for the end of affordable oil, did you take into account Iceland’s new and aggressive development of geo-thermal energy?
Oh that’s just idiotic MDG. First of all, Iceland has a small population equal to Rochester, New York. Secondly, they are located in a place of extraordinary geothermal (volcanic) activity. Few other places in the world have that advantage.
I was in Iceland not more than a week ago. I’m not sure they have planned for the end of oil.
They do have a good plan for sustainable energy to keep the lights on and the buildings heated, as long as the global economy continues to work. There would be, in the event of a collapse elsewhere, the matter of getting parts to keep their geothermal wells and hydro running.
Iceland has a nicely maintained road network to the bastions far from Reykjavik. That won’t do much good without fuel for their vehicles. They are, however, great sailors. That would help. So will climate change: they are starting to grow wheat now and the warming has been gradual on their island.
“Smoky Joe” went to “Smokey Bay”?
No doubt that true, JHK, but it was you who made the blanket statement, “There is not a nation on earth that is preparing intelligently for the end of oil.”
Unless you think that Iceland’s actions are not intelligent preparation for the end of oil, then there is at least one nation on Earth doing the right thing.
It is not hard to get lost in the power alternative issue. JHK is right. Iceland and geothermal energy is the exception rather than the rule. Just look at wind potential. Most states have less than 4-percent of their total land mass that would be suitable to sustaining wind turbines. You can’t just put up a wind turbine and the wind to run it will come.
A trade-off to the geo-thermal potential is the fact that volcanoes can, and do, from time-to-time wreak destruction to everything around them. Sort of like living near a nuclear power plant.
“Sort of like living near a nuclear power plant”-Petro.
Except with less lasting effects.
True (but don’t tell that to the Pompeiians – ha ha).
Nicely!
Cheers!
I wonder if beheading/dismembering is more prevalent in Iraq or Mexico. It looks as though humanity is on the precipice of another dark age.
Our robot overlords won’t be here soon enough, and Ebola, Earth’s latest shaking fever to ward off the human infection, won’t do the trick. In the meantime, we’ll continue to devour our host, and each other.
Read “Money Mania.” That is its unspoken premise. Rome fell because of the death of its money, and the world entered a Dark Age that lasted 1,000 years. After building 50,000 miles of paved roads, some of which still exist today, not another mile of road was paved for 1,000 years.
JHK sez:
“…My recommendation would be to stand back, do nothing, and see what happens — since everything we’ve done so far just leaves things and lives shattered. Let’s even say that ISIS ends up consolidating power in Iraq, Syria, and some other places. The whole region will get a very colorful demonstration of what it is like to live under an 11th century style psychopathic despotism, and then the people left after the orgy of beheading and crucifixion can decide if they like it. The experience might be clarifying.”
I would agree completely. This would be a ‘reasonable’ approach in the arena of societal strategies. No one does squat until the clown car has crashed into the brick wall at maximum speed. If this is a Rumsfeldian “Unknown”, then simply observing [without raising a finger or a cry] will surely make it an example of a “Known”.
If we take that full-speed-ahead crackup as a given, then we can easily assume that any “corrective measures” by the head clowns in the car will be ineffective, at best, or precipitating a larger disaster by a more lavish application of the status quo, at worst.
The “Volks” only learn through disaster, and in most cases, too late.
(Ps. Our recommendation of watch-and-learn would be roundly rejected as Isolationist Humbuggery by the current crop of clowns as there’s loot to be secured and power to be wielded. Until these factors a removed from the equation, things will continue on the present suicidal course.)
“The “Volks” only learn through disaster, and in most cases, too late.”-Oz.
Standing back and letting the crazies cap themselves is the optimal solution. The less wreckage left to clear away the better – plus it leaves us with an intact reserve.[*]
Charging forth on yet another well meaning but utterly misguided rescue mission, simply degenerates into an orgiastic corporate feeding-frenzy/cluster-fuck (feeling nostalgic for OIF already?) – leaving less than nothing for breaking our own fall when the time comes.
The time for kidding ourselves that we have any business trying to save the world from itself, or making room for more helpless folks is over.
But realistically, do I expect that the optimal path will be followed? Of course not.
The Show Will Go On… until it can’t.
— — —
[*] there’s nothing more irritating on a tropical day than a *half* blown-up bridge… You can’t cross on it, and you can’t start rebuilding until the old one is cleared.
ISIS (or ISIL or IS) won’t simply roll into Baghdad and the Green Zone. It would be more like the Beruit meatgrinder of the 1970s, with the Iranians (and the US) helping the Shiite militias who dominate a good part of that town, now walled off from Sunni areas.
Unless the global economy tanks first, it will take years of rubble-making devastation, or the collapse of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, for Iraq to sort itself out along its three major ethnic/religious lines.
ISIS has not moved into Baghdad yet. Their move against the Kurds either shows their inherent weakness vs. the well-armed Shiites, opportunism to grab oil and the Mosul Dam, or both. Either way, JHK has one thing clearly correct in this post: the sparks are there for a Third World War, as soon as Asia and Europe can’t get their energy supplies or Obama invokes the Carter Doctrine to protect the Gulf.
Yikes. Having just finished JHK’s latest book, I could see a Holy Land War brewing there, sure enough.
Humanity is nature’s only way (as far as we know) to witness itself. The universe’s only way to understand itself, and perhaps augment itself. It’s more than apparent that nature simply does not like what it sees in the mirror. We can lament and torment ourselves over our longterm viability, or our short-term inability to sequester those thoughts in the dark recesses while we enjoy a smooth ride out into the unknown. We’ve done a pretty good job of making things easy for many people, but the universe is a harsh place, and the Earth is an eat-or-be-eaten planet, and your mellow will be harsher and harsher again. Pray you enter and leave it while man still exercises a staggering degree of control.
Frankiti — Thanks for a very original, insightful comment. — JHK
“It’s a dog eat dog world and I’ve got milk bones in my underwear.”
Norm from Cheers
Your comment is just the kind I love to read: The wide-angled, philosophical and poignant view. My only regret is that I would have liked to be around to learn whether another species did more with what they had. When we look down through the panorama of history, all things considered, we have had a pretty good ride.
Very good – but I am pondering the last sentence “…Pray you enter and leave it while man still exercises a staggering degree of control…”
Just curious – were you referring to the type of control our usage of fossil fuels provides? Couldn’t it be argued that we had some degree of control in the days of Ptolemy, Al-Jazari, Galileo, etc.?
The problem is, if our control must be staggering, that gets us into the realm of “overshoot” and bottleneck”, and that gets us into the degree of problems we have now.
To cite an example from John Michael Greer, we thought we were exercising staggering control in the realm of combating and preventing infectious diseases, and then we find our efforts going for naught as the bacteria evolve and mutate and become resistant far faster than our ability to cope and develop new “wonder drugs”.
Or we might think we are exercising staggering control when we practice mountain top removal mining, and then wonder why the streams are acidic and the land no longer supports life.
Is it, perhaps, that some control is OK – but staggering control – or the illusion of staggering control – is not?
Nice comment. Spot on.
If you haven’t seen it, you should. In the movie “Melancholia” Kirsten Dunst’s character says: “The earth is evil. No one will miss it.”
Sure got me to sit up in my chair.
The point being that mankind has over-whelmed nature’s natural processes, and over-taken nature herself, without any consideration of consequences. Mankind has become the whole earth. The whole rationale being that if mankind has done this or that then it must be good.
Even mankind’s extinction at this point has become “priced-in”.
“Another day of unrest in the Middle East, with sectarian violence in…”
How many news reports have begun this way in the last 30 years? Sunnis/Shiites, Christian/Muslim, Catholic/Protestant. Irrational, delusional belief systems at violent odds with one another over which group has the most accurate count of angels dancing on the heads of a pins.
Competition over resources is ugly enough, but add in religion and things get truly horrifying.
Religion is not the cause of adversity. It is merely a pretext. If it weren’t for religion, we’d find other reasons to attack each other. Conflict is inherent to homo sapiens.
And that is the root of our current situation – our flawed DNA. Maybe the next time around nature will design a species with less flaws.
It certainly looks to me like the perfect storm (apocalypse) is near. With the confluence of nuclear confrontation (war) looking more and more likely, the clathrate gun having been fired (famine) and ebola (plague) on the rampage, what else can we expect? Is this what NTHE feels like?
Yes, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to be saddled up and ready go. He ha Giddyup!
I suspect that those boys been ridin’ hard for some time now, just not (yet) on the bulk of this continent…
By my reckoning we have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in.
James I’ll hold you to this one – and it’s not about a year. It’s a year, year and a half, then your prediction has to root.
Not that I’m in favour of the Walmart economy, don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see the end of that horrific American ‘lifestyle’.
kontrahend
Quite a number of years ago, I was talking with my grandfather about whatever the crisis in the Middle East was at that time. He was of the opinion that there was a real risk that a group denied access to oil they needed would destroy the resource for everyone. As for ISIS running the machinery themselves, I certainly think that there’s a possibility that they might take a dog in the manger approach instead. Isn’t the oil infrastructure evidence of Western decadence, or something?
Dear Jim,
Good post today, keep scaring the nation, they need it.
After watching the latest from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Max Keiser and others And already knowing the Shale Oil story from being a long time reader of The Oil Drum, the whole ball of wax is soon to be melted and stuck to a sidewalk near us.
I am warning as many people as will listen, and some of them have already seen the writing on the wall and left the building. not wanting to stick around for The War to happen right then and there.
Land, seeds, skills and tools that can’t be made easy, and then more tools as there isn’t to many tools if you have to go about making them all by hand for some future date.
When Gold is only trading at 1,300 an ounce and we already know that India, China, and Russia have been buying and not selling, that all the paper gold is the means to fix the price, the reality is that gold is off the charts in real world behind the scenes price. And that silver is also being fixed, that it is in reality a 4 to 1 ratio in real pound for pound terms but is a 63 or so to 1 ratio price wise, the smart money is buying silver, ( which I have been doing for some time now) . But when the reality sinks in, and Oil is harder to get, and the USA has made russia so mad that they will not trade any to us, we the people will be the ones hurting not the guys with the mega yachts like Bill Gates is vacationing on this week.
We could in a world that had more peace in it, survive on the footprint of the lower 48 living off the land in food forest set ups, with local trading amoung them and region trading too, because we humans have proven with more than one person that we can live off the land if we grow food forest like gardens. 1 person per 1/6th of an acre, see the book “The one straw revolution” by the japanese fellow that got me thinking further on this way, that he fed 10 people off 1/4 of an acre. We don’t have a feeding ourselves problem we have a greed problem, we have a human nature problem, we have bankers that don’t care for their fellow earthlings. That might not be a solvable problem, I might just have a dream that can’t be a reality.
But the dream states that we could if you so choose to , feed every human on earth, without killing earth in the process, we could it we really wanted to be friendly and able to get off the planet and be a nice unified race called humans, do this.
Will we? I doubt it… But for me I will still try to prove it is possible by doing it. Good efforts to all those that want a better world than what we have now.
Charles.
The price of gasoline is falling here, and it is attributed to plentiful supplies of crude, political turmoil not withstanding.
Last week the Financial Time of London printed a feature article about the prodigious amounts of oil coming in from rigs off the coast of Brazil. Another article covered expanding production in NDakota and Texas her in the US.
Jim you say stay out of Iraq, but what if ISIS initiates a genocide against Christians and Yazides, and puts it on Twitter? How could we not intervene to stop it?
–BRH
BRH
I suspect that supplies are plentiful because fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the stuff. G. Tverberg has some good explanations why both the supply/extraction and prices will both drop. This seems counterintuitive until you understand that the world be built was made to run on $20/barrel or less WTI grade crude oil. Most economists don’t understand this and it took me awhile to do so.
What is happening now has been foretold by many wise men who know how to run numbers and understand their consequences. We are almost at the keyhole, and if we make it through (most definitely not a sure thing), it will be interesting to see what the world will be like.
“maintaining an artificial middle class to work in meaningless bureaucratic offices where, at best, they do nothing and, at worst, hassle their fellow citizens for bribes and payoffs.”
I though Jim had switched topics to the US for moment…
That quote works in more than one context, does it not? The M-E is simply the most egregious regional example, at the moment.
When Gold is only trading at 1,300 an ounce and we already know that India, China, and Russia have been buying and not selling, that all the paper gold is the means to fix the price, the reality is that gold is off the charts in real world behind the scenes price.
If gold were off the charts pricewise you wouldn’t be able to buy it anywhere for spot. I can buy it for spot+ and walk out of any shop with it.
It’s really sad to see people buy this line about gold and silver being the only way to protect yourself. Yeah, it’s good to have a store of them on hand, just like dollars come in handy as well.
The Miles Franklin type bunch are doing a massive disservice, claiming that the dollar will disappear in a sudden event that may take as little as a few hours.
There is no evidence of this. Yes, there are movements to use euros or yuan, which is natural jostling to be king of the currency hill.
US dollars are still good as gold because they pass the litmus test of being universally accepted.
In a true apocalyptic emergency, gold won’t get you squat – it’ll be worth less than food, water, and other tangibles.
kontrahend
“In a true apocalyptic emergency, gold won’t get you squat – it’ll be worth less than food, water, and other tangibles”-Kontra.
True, and Orlov agrees.
Gold is useful in semi-collapsed situations (Stage Three and Four, failed-state scenarios) where there is still some semblance of trade. ‘Precious’ metals are then used as a less bulky alternative to barter goods (food, water, fuel, ammo, etc.)
Or, precious metals can be used during transitional periods when currency controls are in effect (ie., in a panicked dictatorship) but things can still be accomplished with something less track-and-traceable – like an anonymous cash-equivalent.
To Summarize:
The utility of gold and silver coin is in those in-between times, when things are still ‘up in the air’ … or free-fall.
Cheers!
I agree the gold and silver will only be a way to salvage your wealth or necessities-purchasing power in a semi-collapse. For real collapse with effective economy, I recommend small, very hard to manufacture items with high and ubiquitous utility like stainless steel screws and brass boat nails. Such things can easily be bartered for food. I recall Dmitry mentioning these in a post.
Agreed. Farm and garden tools of all kinds, horseshoes, crop seeds, bulk stocks of salt, canvas, cloth and other materials, also stored-up fuel or firewood will be far more valuable to me if you want some of my eggs, meat or produce. Your strong back and arms could be bartered for as well.
After the economy fails, you can keep your metal coins, I’ll have little or no use for them.
They can be melted down to make arrowheads. The ones with buffaloes on them are meant to shoot Buffaloes.
Another great post, Mr. K.
You said: “My recommendation would be to stand back, do nothing, and see what happens — since everything we’ve done so far just leaves things and lives shattered.”
This makes me wonder: perhaps the elites that keep the war machine going realize that if (when) petrol stops flowing out of MENA their stretch limo rides to their “cottages” in the Hamptons will get really expensive? That the fortunes they’ve amassed will dwindle away paying even bigger bucks for those delicacy lunches, and for mercenary “security contractors” who may well turn on them when they don’t pay out enough?
Truly for these guys, their ‘American way of life’ is non-negotiable.
I seriously doubt that the American public will come to any realization about anything. There is enough scape goat conflicts scattered all over the world for the public to stay zoombified perpetually. If not Gaza or Ukraine or ebola or a new plane crash or some other catastrophe or disaster or even Chinese ambitions in the southern sea – there is no shortage of conflicts to point your finger at.
I hope Putin will continue to exercise the “sit and wait” strategy with regard to Ukraine. Without Russia, Ukraine will fall apart economically on its own, even without the help of the separatists. Without any significant financial aid from the West and with all their natural resources already pawned to IMF, it won’t be long before they realize they “got had” (via a typical Latin American scenario played out by the US successfully several times already), but given the way the Kiev government operates, they will rather let the whole country collapse than form a new alliance with Russia.
The US is too bankrupt to fight several regional wars at the same time, so something will have to give, it will be interesting to see what. I disagree that ISIS, whose leadership was reportedly trained by the US and Israel intelligence agencies, are not capable of governing a large territory, but I fully agree that they represent the major risk for the breakout of a real WW3. This organization is not going away, their agenda is not purely financial but largely ideological (which makes them a very serious threat), they have money, connections, training, a destabilized region, in other words, everything a united ideologically-motivated army needs to succeed, so sooner or later, the situation will escalate. In my view, it is only a matter of time. My hope is that it will be a regional war, and not a real world war.
In the meantime, Russia will try to do everything to push the US into further military actions in Iraq against ISIS, as this can buy Russia time to regroup and recruit more countries into a new BRICS banking alliance.
But the US cannot afford a war that does not yield fossil fuels or nacro-dollars, whereas fighting ISIS is exactly this type of war with, i.e. with no benefits, so it will be interesting to see what excuses the US would find to minimize their engagement in military confrontation with ISIS.
While the US will continue to not fight ISIS in any serious way, Europe, and especially Germany, will quietly make new friends with Russia. I am not a supporter of any government or any modern “leadership’, I think they are all criminals and sociopaths, but these days, I agree with Putin’s strategy and hope that his KGB background will help prevent possible assassination coups from the Russian oligarchs acting in cohort with the US agents, something that had been strongly rumoured in Moscow in the past couple of months.
It’s no so much that Putin is right, but more he is in a better position. Capitalism encourages consumption, almost by definition, and Communism the exact opposite. Over time it is easy to see why Communism will win: in the end it will have conserved more natural resources. We were fooled into thinking consumption produces happiness; again the exact opposite is true.
Yes Communist doesn’t enhance human life but by its brutality it causes people to go into themselves and those close to them. In effect, it puts culture on ice and preserves it sometimes. Capitalist Consumerism destroys completely because it makes people complicit in their own degradation.
Conserved more natural resources! I really think you need to look into soviet ecological disasters. Not to mention the millions of tons of steel and aluminium in discarded tanks, ship and subs. Chernobyl wasn’t a one off. There are huge areas of the old soviet union where people are poisoned by the soviet disregard for safety and the environment in its rush to extract and consume or sell as many resources as possible. Unlike the west though they couldn’t even produce a decent car or tv set. The bodywork on the old Trabant in east german was a classic example. So toxic that even now the body shells lie abandoned because its impossible to recycle them!
Only one problem with that theory – Russia is not a communist country.
sorry, that comment went in the wrong place.
As far as when everything comes crashing down, too bad there’s no Expatriate Index that shows the number of elites leaving the US for life in S America, New Zealand, some tropical island or on their yacht.
I expect many politicians and zillionaires to do just that as the inevitable dive and chaos unfold.
Agreed; good points. The problem will be these expatriate zillionaires will in all likelihood expect to exert the same degree of control over internal U.S. affairs that they do now. If they leave behind some unit of a corporation, they will use that as a basis of control. Why not? Unlimited $$$ equals unlimited free speech, and I imagine the PTB will say the $$$ can come from anywhere.
That will be interesting. Being ruled by a picture on a monitor from some undisclosed location.
(I think Orwell beat me to that, come to think of it.)
It will be a short lived escape. People on sailboats might make it the longest, but when the supply chains go no one will make it beyond a few months. Hunter gather existence is not an option for anyone not born in a Amazon tribe.
Last things first:
“By the way, the US is no less idiotic than Ukraine. We’ve sold ourselves the story that shale oil will insulate us from all the woes and conflicts breaking out elsewhere in the world over the dissolving oil economy paradigm. The shale oil story is false. By my reckoning we have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in. The amazing thing is that the public might get to that realization even before its political leadership does. That dynamic leads straight to the previously unthinkable (not for 150 years, anyway) breakup of the United States.”-J H K.
Now, parsing it:
“We’ve sold ourselves the story that shale oil will insulate us from all the woes and conflicts breaking out elsewhere in the world…”
The American Public needs sell itself on something, otherwise real and effective *decisions* will need to be made… For the average 21st Century American, that is a road to unthinkable madness. 🙂
“By my reckoning we have about a year left…”
This forecast may actually be on the money (give or take a month).
The ‘Market’ [*] is wobbling at this point. Working forward from the date of the incipient crash + 6 months (the time it takes to burn through unemployment or other emergency-funds) pops you straight onto the cusp of Q3-2015.
“The amazing thing is that the public might get to that realization even before its political leadership does.”
The Public won’t have a choice: they live at the (figurative) water-line. They either start scrambling or they stop breathing. it’s that simple.
“That dynamic leads straight to the previously unthinkable…”
Not so unthinkable, anymore. I doubt that the Sack of Rome was unthinkable to non-patricians at the end. The patricians however, well it’s always the folks that were having the best time at the party who never want it to end.
Actually if we’re honest with ourselves, we can see the end from here… We just don’t like to look straight at it.
Cheers!
“Any American influence left in Iraq should focus on rebuilding the credibility of national institutions.”
Wouldn’t it be best used to rebuild national institutions in the USA?
Why punish Russia? Isn’t Ukraine Russia’s responsibility? If people in that sphere want to break off and join Russia why is it a concern of USA? Russia would be much more useful as a friend than as a foe. It’s like if Puerto Rico decided to join the union and Russia objected and started a war over it… Strange, indeed, this USA foreign policy of late.
Why expansion of NATO? Wasn’t it agreed a couple of decades ago not to expand NATO an additional inch eastward (toward Russia)? What purpose does NATO serve anyway, with the so-called cold war long over? Except, possibly, to start a new Cold War?
No doubt the nuclear warheads and associated launch vehicles on both sides are being dusted off, checked out and fine-tuned for immediate use on demand…
The breakup of the American family is one of the most tragic results of the recent past. Too many kids from broken homes roaming the streets that should be off to college or learning a trade. What a mess. The coming “end of oil” is going to change a lot of things for sure.
I’ve been following these posts for years. And, if I remember correctly (I am getting old), JHK was not averse to us entering into the war in Iraq (#2) and pursuing it. Now, that it’s only a bunch of Christians and Shiites getting the ax, that is apparently a-OK. “Let’s just see how that sorts out”. Hmmm.,,perhaps Israel should have said that after the death of those three unfortunate teens. But they’ve got their revenge now, ho hum. ISIS is plain evil. I have no problem with us getting involved to protect innocent civilians and our own people on the ground. Yeah, the Iraqis are incompetent and the country is in chaos, but it is “us truly” who did that to them. They were better off under Hussein’s rule. Now, we are witnessing what anyone with a brain would have predicted: Creation of a Muslim theocracy.
Yes, old Saddam would have whacked off their ears or thrown them in boiling oil in a heartbeat as soon as anything resembling ISIS came a-knocking…
However, as I recall, some fearless leader of a far away country swooped in to save the people of Iraq from this ruthless dictator, spent a chunk of change doing it and declared “Mission Accomplished” proudly from the deck of a ship in a sea far away…But then those dam consequences – that resulting empty vacuum and those who rose up to fill it…
>We’ve sold ourselves the story that shale oil will insulate us from all the woes and conflicts breaking out elsewhere in the world over the dissolving oil economy paradigm. The shale oil story is false.<
All of the recoverable oil under ND/MT/SK in the Bakken equals only about one year's use for the USA. Give or take a few months. So, there is less there than people realize. Just FYI.
Agreed.
When you do the numbers (even when you’re working with fuel industry numbers!) the deal doesn’t add up.
‘Shale Oil’ is a handful of candy thrown at the crowd to keep the hoople-heads happy. It’s a diversion.
JHK writes, “By my reckoning we have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in.”
That’s a very definitive statement. I mean, it’s hard to equivocate. I’d be interested to know what other CFNers think of JHK’s timetable for the broad popular recognition that we all live in a CFN! I also wonder if there is any special reason why JHK is more willing to put a timetable on the great awakening. In any case, I haven’t seen any comments on the JHK’s timetable, except for perhaps one by Mr Darling who refers to it obliquely.
Lost-in-north-dakota just posted a very insightful comment which pertains to JHK’s estimate of a year to the blowout.
Predictions are hard, risky and usually avoided by authors like JHK, but I believe that he is right and he won’t be off by much if he is wrong. Either the hegemonic lunatics in Washington will preemptively strike Russia with a nuke of the there will be a big methane burp in the arctic. One or the other will end trips both to Walmart and the bathroom,
Al, The quest for a credible projected collapse-event timetable presupposes the existence of a host society possessing a reasonably intact and cohesive system of shared institutions,ideations and values (economic, aesthetic, moral-ethical, ethno-racial, religious, political, geographic, etc.) that can be agreed (or disagreed) upon by powerful and sometimes contentious segments of said society.
Crises come to a head only when there is a wide-spread perception that such crises are genuine and of real import, rather than simply episodes in a endless series of media events.
In this day and age the plethora of ideas and entertainments afforded by the computer allows (nay encourages) every individual the opportunity to create his or her own private sub-culture. There is little time to develop a real consensus of what is important and what is trivial. The imminent return of Jesus can be as compelling as the destruction of the environment. It’s all OK so long are everyone can seek validation in his own custom cyber-world.
If Katrina, Sandy, the 2008 meltdown, the Gulf oil spill, the fall of Iraq, the burning of California, the catastrophic drought, etc., etc….If these events didn’t usher in a tipping point [this concept of ‘tipping-point’ will need to be re-visited. It may need to be discarded] then I can’t tell you what will.
Perceptions are markedly different than they were back in my day. The Millennials are a very different breed. They have an almost visceral understanding of the patchwork nature of society and can feel the incremental pace of its collapse. But they’ll not be storming the Bastille. They DO give a damn – just not about what you and I give a dame about.
“In any case, I haven’t seen any comments on the JHK’s timetable, except for perhaps one by Mr Darling who refers to it obliquely.”-AK.
I have a pretty good track-record for picking the right forecasts, and JHK’s is definitely inside the ballpark. For example: I was right about the events of 2007-2008 well in advance of it (saved some people some money)…
OTOH, I was wrong about the governments reaction (the combined response of the The Fed’, Dept. of Treas’ and The Street’s Oligarchy).
I knew that there was a lot of corruption, but I had no idea how much. I thought – wrongly – that political office-holders would see that this was an ‘us or them’ them situation and make a ‘business decision’.
I was very wrong about that. Instead of liquidating the TBIF parasites, purging their toxic trash from the markets, we were treated to the revolting spectacle of the pol’s doubling-down on bended-knee and backstopping the evil, politically cutting their own throats in the bargain.
And that was that…
So, now I don’t claim to understand what the upper-echelons of the public sector *won’t* do in the service of their masters.
Try to run Wall Street by hypothecating the blood of American first-born? Who T-F knows?
We’re all in an utterly creepy place, where they are concerned.
Uh, ‘Cheers!’… I guess?
😉
Al,
As JHK and Archie (the Druid) were discussing, “the folks” of all economic and geographical stripes are [at this very moment] convinced that the joint is being run by kleptocrats who are bought by and strictly beholden to corporate powers. — So there’s that aspect of “gettin’ ones’ mind right”.
A Greater Awakening will only occur when everyone is feeling the economic pinch (i.e. it costs nearly as much to get to and from work as it pays). Some will be able to weather it better than others of course, but it’s a further cause for a loss of confidence in leadership. This is as it should be… a domino effect, if you will.
SOOoooo, looking at all the financial fraud that was/is little more than a fleecing of the former middle classes, worldwide, on top of all these resource-grabbing kerfuffles, hidden under the rubric of ethnic and ideological purities, I think dire comeuppances will be due within the next couple years, War or no War. We must remember it’s all about access to and control over resources. Only a few here likely know of the next tricks to be pulled out of the black bag of the shadow govt., and they ain’t talkin’. Those will have an effect on the collapse timeline as well, but I suspect efforts by pathological liars and psychopaths will only hasten it and cause more ruination and despair than would otherwise ensue if things were left to run their own courses.
Like always you’re right Jim. We should just keep our nose on our face and stay the hell out of the problems and the wars in other countries. We have too many tattooed losers to worry about here at home (they could do a home invasion with weapons anytime to get what they want). Who really cares about those people being killed over there? We shouldn’t, because they are simply not our tribe.
It’s kinda like WWII. We should have stayed at home and let those socialist Europeans fight their own darn war. Sure, there was a certain community of people facing genocide, but what did that have to do with us? Why should we have cared? They needed to take care of themselves. This is a no hypocrite zone, right? We only help those with the correct passport now, it’s the right way. Screw the rest.
The final solution was to move the Jews out of Europe. The Holocaust story is an invention meant to slander the people of Europe and the White Race.
I’m sure Jim agrees with you completely.
Was your grandfather Otto?
Could ISIS be a hideous, Machiavellian, jiu jistu strategy to save the Petro-Dollar? Get your head around the implications of this June 2014 report, and compare it to President Obama’s announcement last week, along with U.S. military actions since then… http://nsnbc.me/2014/06/22/u-s-embassy-in-ankara-headquarter-for-isis-war-on-iraq-hariri-insider/
Good post Jim. Spent 80’s and 90’s flying into region for private military contractor. Very profitable for the company owners. Let them alone to tear each other to shreds would be a good pla at this time. But the honchos in that whorehouse on the Potomac will miss the coin. Here in Dimbulbistan (Kentucky), the locals populace just keeps getting fatter and poorer. Breeding and selling racehorses, prices are way up at the top end. Still some very rich people wanting to buy. Middle market almost gone as the tracks are fewer each year. Rich Arabs and South Americans coming in and buying up the big farms. The USA is looking more like Brazil, but without the good food. Solar will be implemented rapidly for those who can afford it. A solar canopy on your carport will let you drive locally, if you get in early and have the money for it. The thundering herd will sink to a level of squalor we’ve not seen in awhile here. They’ll still have a smart phone while living in a shack, like present day Honduras. Around here they work on farms for for $5.00 per hour. Tobacco and cattle. Horse farms pay 8. But don’t hire the whites. Endless Central Americans to choose from. It’s really scary to watch. From an outhouse to an outhouse in 2 generations. They still argue about the right to smoke at work, etc. Half the populace is dragging around an oxygen bottle and cannot make the connection. I wonder who is going to pay for all the health care they will need? Even the 7 year olds can hardly walk while wheezing through their facial fat. This country imported Europe’s white underclass to fill the nether regions and now we will pay the price. At least the Mexicans know how to show up and work. We are heading into a slow and ugly grind. Instead of equaling that the sky is falling, as so many of the comments here espouse, learn to thrive in the world you are in. Look to the south and you will see our future. Figure out what role you want. Rich landholder, corrupt government official, etc. As a sideline I am going to get a cow and some goats. Chickens too. Yee. Haw. !!!
Your contempt for Whites is shared by the Elite and is a big reason for America’s decline. You can’t betray your own people and get away with it forever.
Everyone defines their “own people” differently, and often it has little or nothing to do with ethnic background or skin color.
“Look to the south and you will see our future.”-Farmer Sandra.
I like your post. Fun-filled and informative. Little problem with that one line though: the people living south of the border always had the rich-folk living north of it to sell their ‘whatever’ into, and collect tourist cash from.
As that trade collapsed, their nation-states collapsed. That’s what so many of them are doing up here, climbing over the sides of our ‘life-raft’.
It’s just Survival, you see.
Who’s life-raft are we going to clamber into?
Cheers!
When I say south, I mean S. America. Lived there for awhile. You are rich or poor. Some middle class, meaning $500 take home per month as a professional. Lots of cheap labor. Central America is a lost cause due to deforestation and absolute corruption and violent crime, thanks to North American drug use. What is happening here is not going to be reversed. If you make less money, reinvent life. This placed is filled with little towns. Giant village homes can be bought here with $15 thousand. RE. Taxes are super cheap. I moved here because I thought, wow, what opportunity. And I was right. I have a whole list of businesses I want to start. None high tech. Real work, but a good life. Stop expecting to relive the past generations work and pay. I used to be a disgustingly highly paid airline pilot. Now pilots are hoping to sell apples on the corner. And the ones that are left are about to get their jobs offshore by dudes flying for Norwegian carriers, licensed in Ireland, with dirt cheap pilots based in Thailand. Flying in the USA. I can tell you those good old boys are hopping mad. So, sometimes you have to find a new path and build a happy life. I’ve never been so poor and so rich in all my life. And I shovel horse crap every morning after working all night. But, my farm mortgage is just about paid off. One more foal out of next years crop. And then that big brown 2 year old should be at the track in the spring. 100 acres, a big brick house, 20 stall barn. It took 8 years. You have to focus and go out and work. I haven’t taken a day off in six years. My health is better than ever at 55. Like, the 30 somethings are hitting on me. So, the bottom line is don’t carp about how it is. We could all be relocated to Bratislava, yikes! Take my word for it. Americans are a bunch of slack jaws and sissies these days. If you folks out there can’t carve out a new niche the future will be grim. Thanks for those that support my grumbling. On the coal thing, as a career path it is not recommended, sucks soot. Those guys need to broaden their horizons and learn to implement solar, it will shortly displace conventional utilities.
Farmer Sandra,
I generally like your attitude. Keep us posted.
A lot depends on your age. For people in the 20s thru their 40s your advice is excellent. Those young people have nothing anyway so why not reinvent yourself in a way that creates community and reacquaints you with Mother Earth.
However, for people in their 60s or older I don’t see the point in trying to reinvent oneself. What’s the point? You’re going to be dead soon enough and the powers that be are going to engage in one piece of financial legerdemain after another until they simply run out of ploys and it all comes tumbling down.
Unlike most, I think there’s still around one more turbulent decade before the gig is up and we’re toast. However, if one is, say, 65 now what’s the point of a “reinvention” if the brown stuff is going to hit when I’m 75 and five years from croaking anyhow? If it’s REALLY, REALLY bad then, frankly, I want to take the first bullet in “Mad Max” instead of trying to be Farmer Brown in the middle of Armageddon.
Of course, many people who are survivalists all seem to think they’ve got it worked out but they don’t. We don’t know exactly HOW it’s going to go down. If it’s Mad Max then it’ll be like the Soviet Union in 1993 when marauders went out to the countryside and stole farmers’ crops. Some of them were disaffected ex-Soviet Army guys.
Yes, we urban, pointy-headed intellectuals don’t farm and probably never shot a gun at animals for food. Your post is interesting but has too much of a BRAG in it … like how 30 year olds are hitting on you. However, your reasoning does not take into account that America is CONCRETE AMERIKA so how to we dig up that concrete and re-agrarianize? Answer: It cannot be done. We don’t have the money or oil to dredge it all up.
Good on ya if you enjoy six years without a day off and good on ya if you love your farm work. I recommend it for youth but see little point in people doing it at an advanced age unless it’s what you love. We’re all going to die someday. Even you. I’ll “carp about how it is” if I please, thank you very much.
When the US population was agrarian in the early 1920s the average lifespan was about 50 because those pointy-headed intellectuals hadn’t invented vaccines and other medicines or those thingies that move us around like cars and planes. Very likely, a day will come when whoever’s not destroyed must farm the earth like you do. Maybe. However, the likelihood of digging up America to reclaim dirt is about as likely as you winning the Kentucky Derby.
It’s not contempt for whites, just the lifestyle choices of the ever expanding white underclass. I ‘ve worked and saved and controlled my urge to over eat corporate food. I dropped out of high school and got scion as a waitress. My father went to the eight grade. He made millions and drank to excess and is penniless today. My family is white trash through and through. All of them. The escape route is working, saving and delaying gratification. Reading books, learning to be able to actually do for your self instead of expecting other people to give y money throughthe government transfer system. I work an off farm job, 8pm till 8am , 5 nights per week. Come home, clean all the stalls, bring in the mares and foals, mow, wrecks, break the colts, etc. Nap for 3 hours at lunch. I am from upstate New York and was imprinted with a lifestyle of thrift and work and self sufficiency by the local culture. This country has changed. The farmers around here get yearly government handouts, go to environmental working groups. Website and look at the farm subsidy database in your zipcode. Lots of military retirees, civil servant retirees, etc. Most others are on food stamps. Dressed in pajama bottoms at 11pm at Walmart buying a twelve pack of soda and ice cream sandwiches with their card. It’s tough to stomach. So fat they waddle and only in their 20’s. Contempt, disgust, call it what you like. It is what it is. What will happen to this country in the event we have to defend ourselves. What will all these Dependants do? Is there enough of a private sector left? Or will we sink under their weight? And their demands for more help? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Yes they’ve been corrupted, but their ancestors helped build America. You have the Yankee contempt for the Scots-Irish. Read Senator Webb’s book, “Born Fighting” – these folks have done great things. Your kind started the Civil War and helped bring in Political Correctness – our own home grown form of Communism. You believe Uncle Tom’s Cabin and To Kill a Mockingbird are a real view of how things were.
A few years ago during the last big Kentucky mine cave in, one of the mining executives said (during the recovery effort), the quality of labor has really gone down in the last few years (as if the cave in was the miner’s fault). We should bring in Mexican workers.
Well you are his equal in sensitivity. I say them let them try. The locals will bring down the mines on their heads. Even you admit that people want to work but the racist gentleman farmers refuse to hire them or pay them a fair wage. Are they fat? Yes, bad food and no jobs plus welfare will do that. But look at pictures from the Depression: they were real skinny back then. And note the hardness of their eyes: think such people will tolerate a Yankee bad mouthing them in their own Nation? You better hope America never falls sister.
Think you touched a nerve there sandra! Janos I have to ask, have you actually read uncle toms cabin?
Interesting response Janos with reference to the Civil War.
, many of the plantation slave owners in the south came to the U.S.indentured servants pre Civil War.. No condoing slavery, but at that time, they thought that was how the world worked.
No doubt African Americans have helped build this country too
Maybe the new rules will have them working together to be able to get on, some interesting partnerships may come up. It’s unfortunate, eat or be eaten planet will always be. .
Yup, they’re born fighting and still violent around here. Those ol’ borderer Scots. My grandpa being one of them, came over on a boat with his dad through Ellis Island. Worked all his life at the Union Carbide factory. Racist gentleman farmers, hardly. The rich local whites who farm cattle and tobacco are switching over to Mexicans as local help can’t stop meth. And crack long enough to get the tobacco cut and hung to cure. Some farms require a drug test few can pass. Don’t know about coal mining other than the high grade stuff is gone. Their own Nation, huh? Thought that was settled. This is really an Indian nation. We just killed them and took it. Now, we get to give them our gambling losses.haven’t read uncle tom’s cabin.not into the whole racists thing. I am however worried about this nations ability to survive an attack. How do you mobilize obese wastoids? And the Elite? They’re not the rich anymore. They are those that lead productive organized lives. The culture can change back, I hope. There isn’t going to be a pit of money taken from sober private sector workers to pay endlessly. Times have changed. Instead of whining about lost jobs, invent a business. I figure it was time to sell something tocthe rich swells. Have three things. Going at once. They like to pay more, much more. Makes them feel superior. It’s all in marketing and product placement. And it beats having to, say, eke out a living in Lagos, Nigeria. Nope, the old US. Of A. Even as it swirls down the drain, beats Lagos. Or for that, Iceland. Too much canned fish. Americans are going to have to buck up, all us pale freckly. Faced people are competing with billions of really low wage workers.
Indeed it is an indian country vis a vis, eat or be eaten planet. We all know what happened with that. And the rich, and the elite, of course you mean the organized productive job sucking vulture capitalists. . and The beat goes on. Wonder how many of those would be willing to have their bloody feet tracked in the snow fighting for this land as many did in the War of Indepence. Sorry to see what we’ve become in only 200 and some short years. Wonderful world we’re leaving the little people. So much for Earth Community. Fat chance.
This is an Indian Nation? Not anymore. We took it from them. We are the Native Americans. They were just living here. But you seem to be handling your guilt remarkably well – by transference. If you really felt bad, you could give you land to some Indian. But of course you don’t, just more of your bs. Btw, the smart Indians are with the Minutemen against the Mexicans. Their lands and treaties are with us not Mexico. Ask the Apaches how the Mexicans treated them.
We are in same position relative to the Mexican Invaders that the Indians were in relation to us. We must unite or be overrun.
Janos. You’re right, it’s not an indian nation, we are the native americans. Maybe I have handled my guilt pretty well,and I could if I felt bad give my land to them, but having descended from those on the Trail of Tears, probably not. I’m fighting now to hold on to my small piece.
But in what way should we fight Janos to preserve anything for our progeny? Mr. Kunstler’s right, we should try to come up with a way to run a half decent civilization without critical resources. Any suggestions?
My little piece, that they would probably want me to have, and it would be given, if our progeny could have a better civillzation, as I’m sure they too would want!
Too late for “bucking up”, Sandra. Way, way too late. I’m a retired guy who actually saved like an old widow and I live a life of reflection, thinking, conversation, music, and literature because I like it and because, for now, I can. The people in this country are irretrievably TRASHY. You and Janos can debate who is trashy or trashier but it’s a terminal generation of beasts that barely resemble human beings.
Might as well live under the radar in a low key way and do what you love … whatever that is … be it farming, calculus, playing the trumpet, or writing weekly columns. Between the incredible “trashification” of the USA and the amount of unreclaimable concrete that won’t be farmed again for THOUSANDS of years, there’s no use wishing that lifestyle X or Y will save us. The time for our civilization to have started that sort of thing was the 1970s. Now we’re fat, on SSRIs and tons of other head meds, and so vain that Narcissus would blush.
Ain’t no way out, sister. I wish that there were.
“Contempt, disgust, call it what you like. It is what it is.”-Sandra.
In challenging situations you can look around and see who the survivors are, and who has already given up.
The people on their way out don’t take care of themselves – even for the sake of maintaining morale – and like very sick mammals they foul their own nest.
It’s sad.
However, they are not to be trusted, any more than junkies can. They are compromised, malleable, easily conned and coerced into doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
My policy is: Steer clear. Not out of anger or disgust, but simple pragmatism.
Good luck!
(I mean that)
And Hilary Clinton thinks the US must take out Assad, and that Obama hasn’t been aggressive enough on that. Whose side is she on anyway?
Remove a secular leader of a country and she is ecstatic: “We came, we saw, he died.” What a bitch.
Today it was reported that Assads troops deliberately dropped barrels of explosives into a civilian area blowing up men women and children. Quite frankly his stance on religion is pretty much irrelevant he’s no better than ISIS or any of the other middle east loons. Next you’ll be telling us what a nice guy Saddam was or how Khomeini went round kissing babies! Well over 100,000 dead civilians in Syria, no mass protests though people expect little else from them!
This is probably more disinformation to serve US interests. WSJ is Ruppert’s baby now, so can you believe what it says? My guess is that this is disinformation created by the US government and spoon-fed to the US media who do as they are told. There may be a small amount of truth to it, but has been enhanced and tailored to make Al-Assad look like a tyrant.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/10-000-bodies-inside-syrian-president-bashar-al-assads-crackdown-1406315472
No guy with a wife like he has would be a tyrant! Al-Assad’s wife has to be the prettiest politician’s wife on earth. What a babe.
https://www.google.com/search?q=al-assad+wife&sa=G&hl=en&noj=1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=OGPpU8emD8P-yQSB6IKgDg&ved=0CHcQsAQ
Actually Al Jaz and other mid east networks report it too, however
I’m sure you just know differently, after all if it doesn’t gel with your agenda it’s propaganda right? As for using his wife as an example of why he can’t be a tyrant, I almost choked on the stupidity of the statement.
She’s becoming “manly” to get ready to run for president. We destabilized the country with an iron hand over it. Now the tribes are fighting and the result will be a Muslim theocracy. You can’t force “democracy” on people who have no concept of it. Mission Accomplished.
You do realise that countries ran with an iron hand invariably meansthat someone is getting the iron hand smacked into them. Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran to name but a few have leaders who make the Argentine juntas look like a boy scouts club. The current situation is a re balancing of ot with the added disadvantage of a regressive 7th century religion thrown in. About the only difference between Assad and ISIs is that Assad, like the Nazis, had the good sense to minimise public exposure of his crimes internationally.
You better hope America never falls sister.
don’t think anyone’s quaking in their boots over this one, America slid into social morass eons ago.
farmer sandra is unfortunately so right.
thank god that hard work ethic still exists among so many people.
kontrahend
How in the f”’ing hell am I gonna sleep tonight? Wars all over, Ebola on the loose, climate change, Methane release, ISIS, Gaza. Sh## . where’s my 1911. Sumbitch, piece of iron wit no ammo.I can use it as an anchor. DHS dun sucked it all up. I guess it will be the samurai disease. Been through it before. Bubonic plague, crusades, 1918 flu, crash of the ’30’s, we’ll get by. Keep your eyes open and ears to the ground.Be prepared. Apples are going gang busters. tomatoes also.
How in the h*** am I gonna sleep tonight?
Who needs sleep. That monastery looks appealing.Thats how they preserved culture in the middle ages.
Hey Rip the bite sized tomatoes ripening nicely but the big lunkers stubbornly staying green. Cukes are good, very sweet. Got some much need rain arriving tomorrow into Wednesday.
Column in NYT last Sunday states small local farms across the US, including organic farms, are losing money every one on the average about $1500 per year. Farmers need work outside jobs to keep operations going. Still, it seems like a decent ay of life.
–BRH
I run a local food website and here would be my one major comment: farmers need to become better marketers so they can set their own price. (Yes, yes, I know: people expect food to be “cheap”). It’s not a “mango”, it’s a Kent mango picked last night. Try some (offering up a bite). If Starbucks can serve up coffee in a paper cup at those prices, there is a market.
Our area has seen a HUGE growth in produce buying clubs (a box scheme using mostly corporate organics), while CSA membership has just grown a little. Truthfully, I think it’s that since they’re not growing themselves, the buying clubs have more time to be out there marketing and making it oh so easy to get their box weekly. Farmers need to learn to trade what they grow to someone who can market for them, someone who thinks like one of their customers.
“I run a local food website and here would be my one major comment: farmers need to become better marketers so they can set their own price. ”
Its practically gospel that farmers are price-takers, not price-setters. I’m not sure you understand that as a service provider and not a primary producer. Service providers in many markets can hawk their products with much greater price flexibility. But food doesn’t have the margins of web-design. The vast majority of consumers have basically voted on price- they don’t like it. If its the choice between an apple for $1 and one for $1.50 they’ll buy on price not quality, and certainly not for some abstract ideal like sustainable agriculture. You can shoot to sell more $1.50 apples to the 5% of the market that cares about organic, but then you’ll need to reach a lot more customers.
When every link in the value-added supply line seeks the lowest price, to whom is the farmer going to market their higher-priced commodity crop? In terms of greater profits, CSA is the marketing tool of choice for better returns on their labor. But there might be other ways for produce, other than value-added stuff (which can reach higher margins).
Any chance those race riots outside St Louis will spread to cities in the rest of the country? Its been over 2 decades since we’ve seen an honest to goodness race riot, LA in ’92 to be exact. This time around the goal seems to be to loot tire and department stores. There’s video of one guy running down the street carrying an oversized flatscreen TV; another of rioters stealing tires and wheels from a shop whose door was kicked in. The owner said they went for the expensive stuff, fancy mags for Mercedes and Beamers. Nothing but the best to dress up ghetto cruisers and lowriders.
–BRH
“…We have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in… The public might get to that realization even before its political leadership does. That dynamic leads straight to the …breakup of the United States.”
Possibly the public already knows, if not yet articulated. Oil, foreign entanglements, and dying business models may enter the popular calculus but the arrogant obliviousness of the DC-NYC axis to its domestic overreach could prove to be the catalyst. When the emperor rides into town on his golden chariot and entourage of hundreds redefining the reality of just crossing the street, even those above proletarian rank take notice.
Well, that didn’t take long;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-11/ukraine-quickly-backs-threat-halting-russian-gas-transit-after-europe-screams
And of course there’s this little ditty to factor in:
http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925
Yes, it is funny about how “strangely quiet” the regime inside the beltway has gotten about this issue, is it not?
…Along with a bit of spook analyst face-saving, or as it’s commonly term these days, ass-covering.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39375.htm
“…the U.S. analysts dismissed those original [Obama administration] suspicions because they could find no evidence that such a missile battery had been supplied by the Russians or was in the possession of the rebels, prompting a shift in thinking toward a scenario in which Ukrainian hardliners working with elements of the air force may have tried to ambush Putin’s plane but instead hit the Malaysian airliner, said the source speaking on condition of anonymity.”
Well now, we can see it was simply “a mistake” brought about by over-enthusiasm for Pooty’s head on a spike. Quite forgivable. After all, we made a small mistake destroying Iraq in a quest to save the folks of the world from gargantuan stockpiles of WMD’s. Turn your focus elsewhere; your spook brigade is on the job!
“…on condition of anonymity.” Really? Why would that be?
the universe is harsh….OUTSIDE OF EARTHS ATMOSPHERE.
just because some fanatics want to keep the western empires out of their business (whether it be opium or oil or education) does not mean the end of humanity, the second coming or ww tois.
there are plenty of groups doing positive, productive activities for their people, especially those not caught up in cnn, the dow and what they cannot control.
germany is trying to convert to solar because they do not want to be holden to russia for gas.
america is producing more gas but it will be too expensive for most things other than heating homes, which is the most important thing, really. things really hinge on how people react to the change in services not that there will be no services at all. i am looking forward to a relief from corporate america dominating the scene. she has kept the nation connected through chain stores and that will have to break up. yay. there will still be order and law. though every state will become more and more unique and specialized.
The general consensus here is that the shit is gonna hit the fan sometime before we all die.
The best advice I can give is to start planting fruit trees on land around you–whether you have title to that land or not. If nothing happens, you get shade, increased property values and tons of fruit. If it goes bad, those trees might help you and your neighbors survive a few extra months.
Nice tip, Mike.
I was taught to keep a mental inventory of all the fruit trees I came across as a child – just in case. Later on I applied that to whatever patches of persistent crops I came across (like potato patches and cassava).
People let their fruit go to waste. Most of the time it’s there for the asking, OR people die out, killed off, moved on and stuff becomes available.
Foraging is good training. It’s come in handy more than once. It’s fun to confound people by starting with nothing and having a full kit in a matter of a few days – without stepping on any toes, staying on the move the whole time.
Cheers!
Good advice. I’m progressing in that direction, but not fast enough, methinks. There’s a nice old-growth orchard nearby (no pesticides or explosive fertilizer) on game club land that’s kept mowed to attract deer for wealthy New Yawkers to plug. Who knows how things will shake out when they can no longer afford their 2nd homes in the country though. Hope nobody gets perforated over this resource, but I’m not ruling anything out when people get hungry…
(Shoulda bought that cider press when I had the chance to get it cheap. The phrase, “C’mon in, have a mug of cider!”, has an attractive ring, doesn’t it?)
Far, far off-topic, but having to do with things concretely Kunstlerian, I present this intriguing and very recent interview podcast for your enjoyment. (Last week, the post was rudely subsumed in a blast of foaming obsession; perhaps it will escape this time ’round. No promises.)
A brief note for those interested in “A History of the Future” —
JHK reveals a few plotting points and discusses the [pot-holed, crumbling] road forward.
http://wamc.org/post/book-show-1359-james-howard-kunstler
There ya go; check it out. (Joe D., as a former librarian, reads voraciously, and of course reads his guests’ books before interviewing; no delegated researcher’s question list to be mouthed by an ignorant host. Incisive repartee that also serves the JHK uninitiated well.)
thanks for the link, it is a very informative pitch to sell jhk fiction.
i prefer the legal problems proposed in the series because what is civilization without laws and rules of engagement?
compassion is still something that must exist for these characters to have life…otherwise its simply a survival story…running for your life.
i get the hint that jhk is not always for the death penalty.
He had us at nanu nanu.
john Kerry needs to lose that pink girls bike he’s riding around the cape on. and how about the chirpy little State Dept. spokeswoman with the oversized eyeglasses, Maria Harp. Putin is in the arena, shirtless, wresting bears for chrissake, and the Honcho at ISIS is severing heads and sticking them on a pike … image counts for alot in todays world.
–BRH
That feckless, unfortunate, and tragic would-be nation, prompted by EU and US puppeteers, just replied to the latest trade sanction salvo from Russia by declaring it would block the delivery of Russian gas to Europe through pipelines on its territory.
That is nuts, but all the sanctions are nuts if you peel back the official onion and look at their true effects. For example, the Western sanctions against Rosneft, that leaves its partnership with ExxonMobil for developing oil reserves in the Arctic Kara Sea intact, actually dares and/or encourages Rosneft to trade its oil production in another not yet existing currency arrangement rather than the customary petrodollars. And Putin’s salvo sanctions are in effect a sanctioning of Russia rather than the Western economies.
The Igor Sanction
JHK,
You write, “Which, from the policy standpoint, leaves the USA pounding sand down so many rat holes that there may be no ground left to stand on anywhere. We’ll be lucky if our national life doesn’t soon resemble The Revenge of the Mole People.”
Priceless! Kunstler at his best.
“If and when the ISIS maniacs come rolling in on a cavalcade of You-Tube beheading videos, what are the chances that the technicians running the oil infrastructure there will stick around on the job?”
What, you mean mechanical engineers and such don’t want to hang out with the crucifixion crews. I am shocked.
“By my reckoning we have about a year left of the drive-to-Walmart-economy before the public broadly gets what trouble we’re in. The amazing thing is that the public might get to that realization even before its political leadership does. That dynamic leads straight to the previously unthinkable (not for 150 years, anyway) breakup of the United States.”
Timelines, timelines, timelines. TPTB will prop the system up by any means necessary (self-delusion, accounting gimmickry, repression, war, etc.) until they can’t. And the more they prop it up, the harder the fall. I figure we have about a fifteen year window at most before things really come unglued.
Perhaps a financial collapse would be the best scenario, if it came early, taking the system down before irreparable damage is done. Of course, if the system churns along till peak oil takes it down, well here where I live, there are very few chimneys on the houses and a one hour drive is a “short jaunt”. A breakup of the US under these circumstances is very plausible. If “we wait” until climate chaos is the driver: any RPG geeks remember “Gamma World”? Get yourself a .75 cal Slug Thrower and hope the Purists don’t come calling. Options range from ugly to NTHE.
Anyways, great essay this week.
Regards,
dweebus
China and Russia Offer a Winning Alternative: Helium-3
http://larouchepac.com/node/31535
In just the past 48 hours, both China and Russia have advanced their concrete plans for the industrialization of the Moon for the mining of helium-3 and its export back to Earth.
Indeed, the plans presented are dramatic and reflect a clear commitment to fully realize the potential of thermonuclear fusion. The idea of mining helium-3 on the Moon evolved out of the Apollo program of the 1960s and later work at the University of Wisconsin inspired by the 1970s Fusion Energy Foundation promotion of fusion. The enduring and devastating legacy of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is made clear by the fact that the United States has abandoned manned exploration of the stars and has all-but-dropped the efforts at achieving thermonuclear fusion.
“Fusion is the energy source of the future, and it always will be.” -Dennis Meadows
Yeah, yeah. And water is wet
In a marasmic western view of technological progress as new i-phone or new social media idiocy, thermonuclear energy will always be in the future,
East now will get it done.
How much more noble and worthy to join efforts in a challenging project than to whine about “ultimate affordable oil” or to try to cut each other throat.
Oh and this week on NPR’s On Point Radio, the guest was Mohamed El-Erian (former PIMCO exec) and “Big Thinker”. His thesis was that an economic fork in the road is coming, but that if we reform our politics, well then, the Innovation Fairy will fly down, resolve Limits to Growth, and we will all be fat and happy. The delusional thinking is everywhere.
I was surprised by the amount of pushback, however.
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/08/12/economy-recession-growth-america-world
There’s those that say that what’s happening with this ISIS conquest (and all the other various festivities in the middle east) is a re-drawing of the boundaries drawn in the aftermath of the collapse of the Turkish empire and the two world wars. And I would say that, in part, that appears to be the case. Maybe those borders, for a whole raft of reasons, were unsustainable.
But what do you think would have happened if the allied victors hadn’t gone in cutting up and re-stitching state boundaries? Well, the utopian view is that the locals would have peace-ably got together and negotiated matters. But I think the more realistic take is that the process would have been anything but peaceful.
What happened when the last boy emperor of Rome got shown the door? A lot of nastiness ensued and, to my mind, hasn’t let up even after 1500 years. One blood-fest after another to carve out territory. I think that would have been the more likely scenario for the middle east post WW1 and WW2, that is, blood-letting to establish boundary lines. So maybe all that was accomplished in the last century was to forestall the inevitable burst of violence.
Which is to say that, as ugly as it is to let violence play out, maybe that’s the only way. People hate the US for meddling. OK, so don’t meddle. The locals do what they have to do and the locals live with the results. Nobody then to blame but themselves.
WW3? Over what? Oil? Well now, what about all that alleged shale oil? Let’s call the bluff. If there’s so much oil in them thar hills there would be NO need for another kerfuffle would there?
WW3 will not be over oil. It will be over desire of american people to over-consume and under-produce, oil including.
You’re right, BackRowHeckler, image counts for something.
Here’s a suggestion, the next time a US President gets caught getting “stress relief” in the Oval Office, back off. If ambitious reporters get ambitious about making a name for themselves and doing a White House “tell all” have some guys in dark suits go explain the facts of life.
In 80% of the world this is one of the perqs of high office, all the cut throats running things outside US borders know this. It’s accepted, what’s the problem?
So no more nonsensical presidential denials about having sex with THAT woman, no idiotic senate hearings about who did the president do, who is the president doing now and no impeachments and assorted baloney.
Seriously, ok half-seriously, all this just makes the Chief Executive look ridiculous. And, to paraphrase the movie producer in the Godfather, a man in the President’s position cannot be made to look ridiculous. Especially to foreign powers whose leaders know few limits. And yeah, wrestle some bears.
And this is too late but that hit on Bin Laden was way too anti-septic. A press conference? Sure, but it should have waited until they delivered the head of OBL to the White House. Picture this, Obama strides out onto the White House lawn, tosses the severed head onto the grass in front of the cameras. How’s that for imagery? So much for the effete college professor.
No doubt this would be seen as barbarous. Refined, wine sipping, dinner party-ing liberals would freak. And maybe conservatives too especially the war-mongering, combat-averse, chicken-hawk contingent. Let them all freak.
Hey V. in the early 20s Warren Harding was nailing his girlfriend, a showgirl, in a White House closet. quite regularly. From what understand it was common knowledge but nobody had any problem with it. What the hell! Boys will be boys! He was probably admired for getting a little on the side, and getting away with it!
–BRH
Do you have pics of the showgirl? (o; just kidding, Totally off topic, The world goes to hell in a handbasket and all i see on the news is lament for a millionaire comic who committed the big S. Boo-Hoo. He had to put the NAPA Valley place on the market for 35,000,000.00. to pay his bills. WOW. It happens all the time with nobodies. I’ve been there and cut em’ down. More sh#t for the junk drawer. Anyway I just finished the water harvest system. Two 275 gallon syrup tanks hooked up to the gutter system. I started last year but we’re looking at a big blow and I am a procrastinator so I did it today. I am curios to see what rainfall per inch measures up to water in the tanks.
Hey Rip what might that water be for? irrigating the garden, or having potable water around in case the water company pipes burst in the ground like they do around here all the time, leaving us high and dry? A few years ago I scrounged 2 water barrels with functional spigots from the community gardens when the season was over. (people leave alot of stuff behind for the taking) Its come in handy more than a few times. Neighbors even come over with buckets to get water for their toilets.
brh
Howdy BRH, I have 550 gallons from the roof and I still keep up a pool of 13,000 g even though the wife says take it down.. that should last the neighbors for a while as the rain fills the tanks. 41″ a year. The jamokes are clueless. I can always go up countrrry and raid o at the T####### vlub.
Hey their BRH, The water is for irrigation, I can filter it add chlorine and drink .I am on a gravity feed water system with sand filters . Water flows with no electricity input. still my reverse osmosis filter gets rid of all the nasty sh@@t. You might be also with Barkhampstead.
“And this is too late but that hit on Bin Laden was way too anti-septic. . . Picture this, Obama strides out onto the White House lawn, tosses the severed head onto the grass in front of the cameras. How’s that for imagery? So much for the effete college professor.”-Volodya.
A comic skit about this animated in the style of __Archer__ would be hilarious.
Back in the real world we have to realize that a POTUS with that amount of testicular-fortitude, would probably have kicked off his presidency with a meeting in the White House that went something like this:
Pres: “Can we have our security detail seal the room please?”
[muffled Secret Service procedural chatter, muted in the background]
“Okay. That’s great. Thank you!”
[Smoothly turns to the assemblage seated at the long table]
“First, I’d like to thank you gentlemen from America’s largest and highly esteemed financial institutions for joining with me here in the Oval Office today… Thank you, so very, very much.
“I’ve asked you to join me so that I can outline our plan for moving America forward, for *healing* America’s economic wounds.”
[Picks up a wireless mouse, points it at the presentation console and clicks, once].
The banker contingent inhale and gasp as one, gripping themselves or the table in horrified silence.
[pan to the POTUS placing himself in front of the words “S U C K IT !” pulsing in day-glo hues on the screen]
“SUCK IT! You are not getting sh*t from here on out. Bernanke is sacked – he’s been arrested as a matter of fact – and I rescinded everything that he promised in an emergency session this morning!”
[pauses dramatically for a moment]
“This is where we part ways. Excuse me Gentlemen, but I have urgent business to attend to… Security!”
YES… BUT, back in this universe and not the parallel reality cosmos ‘next-door’, this is political fantasy football-league BS.
It’s interesting to visualize though. A little levity is good for morale.
Levity? Your subconscious is trying to say Levite. Listen to it. Anyone who tries to reform our banking system will be called an anti-Semite or otherwise treated like one – that is to say destroyed.
Let’s call the bluff. If there’s so much oil in them thar hills there would be NO need for another kerfuffle would there?
If you believe this is what kerfuffles, at least the conflicts since the second half of the 20th century, are about.
If not, then kerfuffles could be the result of a global perpetuitous strategy of tension that rationalizes and justifies an artificially imposed and set price of oil by dominating insiders. This same strategy of tension is also used as cover to keep “easy well” oil production offline as is the case with Iraq. Iraq has never been allowed to ramp production throughout its short and tumultuous history. It’s tantamount to a giant strategic reserve purposely kept offline to create artificial scarcity and rationalized artificially high oil prices — an undemocratic and criminal fuel tax assessed by Oligarchs and implemented and championed by their technocratic minions in Finance, Academia, Government and the Media.
Stratfor hates it when I use their own information against them as I’ve done lately at Catcher In The Lie. I wonder if I’ll get an invite to the next company outing? I love three-legged races and tug-of-war.
“Iraq has never been allowed to ramp production throughout its short and tumultuous history. It’s tantamount to a giant strategic reserve purposely kept offline to create artificial scarcity and rationalized artificially high oil prices “-ColdNHolefield.
Interesting POV. I’ve seen this analysis before. I’d like to see how it calc’s out.
Also, I’m wondering how much of a difference Iraq’s full potential would make at this point, from a strategic perspective.
Las Vegas Will Go Dry If Water Levels Drop 7% Further – Lake Mead Hits Record Lows
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-12/las-vegas-will-go-dry-if-water-levels-drop-7-further-lake-mead-hits-record-lows
Why nobody even mentioning Kennedy’s era NAWAPA plan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance
Why is that Americans are ready to invest into destruction of other countries rather than building of their own? What is wrong with you, guys?
“In any case, what we’re witnessing in the Middle East — apparently unbeknownst to the newspapers and the cable news orgs — is what happens in extreme population overshoot: chaos, murder, economic collapse. The human population in this desolate corner of the world has expanded on the artificial nutriment of oil profits….”
– kunstler –
Yeah, no kidding, JHK. And one can easily and logically change “Middle East” to read “USA.” We might have chosen a different arc back in the early ’80’s – but our course appears to be fixed now. All it’s gonna take is time. And of course it will take more people. Such people are dribbling over the border illegally – while POURING in legally at 1,000,000 per year. Amazing. Disastrous. GIve it time.
Events in Ferguson, MO point to a theme that is a frequent referent of this discussion thread, and of JHK’s fiction. No one seems to have mentioned it thus far this week, though.
One partial solution would be to outfit every patrolling LEO with a gocam device – with mandatory recording at a separate and secure location under non-police control. (Yeah, yeah – who would control it??) Failing that and/or other creative approaches, the country is going to eventually have to resegregate – with different governments for the different minority areas, each with its own form of law enforcement, code enforcement, etc, etc. Give it time.
And thanks for the week’s work and for the open comment thread, JHK. Both are appreciated.
Each racial group with its own justice system?
Sounds like Tribal Courts.
For a long time it has seemed to me there are different standards of behavior for different populations within the US. Whitey is held to the highest standards. We can be prosecuted for as little as saying the wrong thing.
Eric Holder has said much the same thing you’re saying, P2C. maybe it’ll all be kicked off up around Dearborn, Michigan the day the US Constitution is suspended, and Shariah Law is imposed.
Or look at it another way. Illegal immigrants are not only immune from immigration and other laws, they are rewarded for breaking them. Illegals are truly a favored class.
P2C, I see on Drudge your public schools around Atlanta are being overrun and inundated with illegals from Latin America. Good luck on that.
–BRH
Yes the Black pols say Whites don’t have civil rights. Of course “civil rights” could mean special racial rights – or any legal rights at all as per the meaning of the word civil. Needless to say they will always push past the first meaning and towards the second whenever possible. As the great Theodore Bilbo said, the ultimate purpose of civil rights is to make White people slaves. Justice for Blacks simply means winning. They remain perfect barbarians no matter how expensive their suits or how shiny their shoes.
Well, given that their average IQ in Africa is something like 65 and over here it’s something like 80 or 85, I should think it’s a given that their thinking would be more atavistic than most other ethnicities.
However, if you listen to music in young people’s cars … whether white, brown, or black … or go to a disco to hear what they’re dancing to it ain’t the Blue Danube Waltz. In some sense, all the ethnicities (EXCEPT Asians) are converting over to being ghetto blacks. I consider it an old fashioned OMEN.
Many Asian cultures now have a degree of tenacity that the trashified whites and blacks in America could not comprehend if they lived to be 150. They’re slowly, inexorably buying America. They are what we were in the 1950s. We have zero chance against them. Dead … flat … zero.
Concerning living on a boat in times of collapse –
My guess is that Orlov is the inspiration for some of this among the non-boating collapse preparers. (NBCW’s) And such talk always brings a famous saying to mind:
“It’s better to be ashore wishing you were at sea, than at sea wishing you were ashore.”
And one does have to come ashore eventually. Back in the 1970’s, my retirement plan was to cruise the world on a shoe-string, like Josua Slocum – except with a bigger boat and a woman. And I owned a couple of boats and did some cruising in preparation.
Let me tell you folks – coastlines are NOT the same as they were in the 70’s. The Earth has picked up, what?, 3 billion people since then – and it seems most of them are living very near coastlines, many of them are destitute, and many of those are seriously pissed.
And then there would be encounters with any extant LEO’s/Pirates.
So, my opinion on taking to the sea as a collapse strategy is that of Bush the Elder or SNL,”Wouldn’t be prudent. Not gonna do it.”
Nice posts, Mister Darlin’ and Volodya. Better yet, you could have had McCain beat Obama and be the one to throw Osama’s severed head on the floor in front of Ben Bernanke and the Bankers before screaming, “WHO’S GONNA BE NEXT!”
Good on you for the roof-top irrigation, RT. And I’ll tell you how much water will come off that roof in a heavy rain. A WHOLE LOT! My backup water is the creek down at the bottom of the hill. I’m having a backhoe come up this fall. He can dig 15 feet straight down. I’m thinking of having him dig me a well down there and filling it with corrugated drain line and gravel – so I could put in a hand pump or a solar pump. I tried drinking out of the creek. It drains from absolutely pristine National Forest land, but the water still made me sick when I tried it. Surprised me. I assume I’d eventually develop an immunity to whatever microbes are in it, but I wouldn’t want to gamble on it. That’s a lesson for the attentive.
My tomatoes are coming in like crazy. 60 pounds so far, of perfect ones. Plus, at least another 100 pounds that spoiled on the vine or whatever. Summer is great for survival, you know? Chickens are laying well, garden is producing, fruit trees are hanging low. Life is easy, so easy. Makes you understand the laid-back “do it manana” attitude of those raised in rural areas in the tropics. That attitude works great until it doesn’t.
Hey Prog, Just over 2″ of rain so far and the first 275 gallon tank is full. Cats and Dogs are still falling. I have two tanks but I have room for more. I only have about 1/4 of the roof running into this set-up. I may need more tanks (o; Later RT
You got that rigged up with PVC? Ain’t much you can’t do with PVC pipe. Cheap, flexible, easy to work with, and comes in many diameters. I use it for all kinds of stuff around here, just rigged up a TV antenna using a 12 ft section as a base.
Hey Rip did you know in Germany you get taxed extra for capturing rainwater off your roof? I shit you not!
–brh
Here we pay a storm water run-off fee, I pay 20 bucks a year but it depends on the impermeable surface area of your property. I’m thinkin’ of sending the city a bill for the stuff I’m sequestering. We received almost 4.5″ this storm . The first 275G tank filled at about 2 ” I lost the rest because I don’t have my tanks tied inline yet. That’s Thursdays project. I’m sure it will rain again. I see some spots in NY got over a foot. RT
No PVC, I did a quickie with a 4″ gutter diversion pipe. I will tie the tanks together with PVC tomorrow. I figure I can get 10 bucks a gallon for clean water after TLE. ‘Course I’ll have to sleep next to the tanks with one eye open (o;
I was wondering about that the other day. How did primitive people “drink the water” without always getting sick? They must have had something we don’t have. Likewise with being cold: few Americans can last at the Monastery of Chartreuse – they are too used to central heating and can’t take the cold. Modern Civilization makes us dangerously narrow in our range of responses.
Checked out the thread over at Arch Druid Report. Extraordinary bunch of surrender monkeys. Their first response is always to give in. After all, Whites were just a bunch of “illegal aliens” so what right do we have to protect our own nation? The Druid let the Hispanic threaten people yet he banned me for a far less extreme post. He has a great mind but his heart is a rotten liberal apple. He can’t just be loyal to a given people and nation. He has to be “universal” and feel superior to other people.
I think our ancestors drank a lot of beer and wine. But yes, they were much hardier than we are today, which is why Joel Skoussen’s and JW Rawles’ scenario modeled from WW2 data of hordes fanning out from the urban areas following a systemic (grid) breakdown is flawed: the USA volk are so unfit and unprepared that they won’t make it more than 20 miles by foot, if that.
Re the Archdruid, I wonder if the “arch” is arch in itself, as if he were incapable of bemused self-effacement. Or even humility, and the notion that he could, possibly, be wrong about anything. Yes, a first-class mind, and he expects you to agree with that observation, as well as his opinions.
Our host here is clearly much more tolerant. Speaking of him, you should indulge in the latest Kunstlerkast with The Archdruid. After a while it reminded me of Phil Hendrie’s Bobbie Dooley, who used to loudly say “um -hmm” “UM-HMM” in higher and higher pitch while the counterparty (real caller, not Hendrie) spoke.
That’s why they drank beer and wine. The fermentation kills the bugs. Ale was ridiculously weak stuff but with out massessof sugars it always is. To get drunk you drank mead!
“P2C, I see on Drudge your public schools around Atlanta are being overrun and inundated with illegals from Latin America. Good luck on that.” – backrow –
Yeah, we’re gonna need it. My kids are out of school, and my grandkids are out in the rural sticks so far. So we won’t be affected on a personal level. Fulton County just raised taxes 17%, though. That’s what’s gonna get me. Property taxes are still pretty low in Georgia – but I’m going to slowly sell out most of my investment properties and not buy more. I can see RE taxes slowly destroying individually owned investment properties.
And honestly – the best thing for the country might well be a few million 12-17 year old, mostly male, illegal immigrants spread through the land – especially in “liberal” areas. That’s the only way future population growth due to LEGAL immigration might be dialed back before it’s too late. It’s already too late, though, in many important ways.
All the Big Libs round these parts are walled inside gated communities and send their kids to private schools. Diversity, integration, all that bullshit is for the little people, not them.
–brh
Mister Darling,
Yeah wouldn’t that be something. I could see someone like Putin doing something like that. Or maybe a bare-knuckle brawler like LBJ. Or Bobby Kennedy. But not Obama.
I’ll give Obama some credit. Because he did give the go ahead on the OBL rub-out. That might’ve ended like the debacle Jimmy Carter ended up wearing.
But it didn’t end in a mess with dead Americans all over Pakistan (or maybe worse, captured and starring in al-qaeda videos).
On the other hand Obama wasted so many opportunities like with the financial crisis.
They let Lehman go down the pipes, maybe it would have been a purgative to let the other walking dead Wall Street banks slide down the shitter too.
Another Great Depression? Maybe. But, to my mind, given the nonsensical business plans and government policies that got us all here, maybe another depression would have had a salutary effect. Mucking out the stables, re-setting the clocks.
Would we have starved? Maybe. For a lot of us it would’ve been lousy. The bad guys would have had to pay and none of this bullshit about prosecutors not having the personnel and resources. The courts have to do their job with no excuses.
What we’re doing now is trying to sustain the unsustainable. Washington and the Fed seem to think that if the old policies ended in disaster, the obvious corrective is more of the old policies.
You might argue that Wall Street subverted the legal system because in the end all the bad guys go free with their mansions and limos and boats. All the worse.
I don’t see how this ends well. Maybe the destination is a catastrophic collapse anyway. And then in due course, some guy on a podium with laser eyes and an arm-band. It’s happened before. Remember the Austrian corporal. And a century before, the little Corsican.
Do you know where I got the head-pitching idea? The opening scene from the movie “Gladiator”.
OBL rubout? who saw the body and where are the pictures? He’s probably in witness protection somewhere. He knows too much (or did). I’m way past the point of the pablum being fed to us by the DC crew.
Speaking of fruit trees…
Thanks to idiot decision-makers on US/EU axis, some nations are having a ‘learning experience’:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/greece-farmers-russian-sanctions-rotten-fruit
What did you learn today, Greece?
Hope they learned not to depend on their masters for basic rationality, but hey, they did sign that treaty, didn’t they? Just look at all the chubby benefits it’s been showering them with lately!
Here’s a practical skill they’d be well-advised to learn right quick:
http://www.amazon.com/True-Brews-Craft-Fermented-Kombucha/dp/1607743388
(I own this tome; most excellent.)
Hey O3, you talked about a cider press, My best buddy has one. Both a crusher and press in one. We only use it for grapes and vino. I gave away my grandpa’s wine press to be used as a garden ornament. It was huge and weighed maybe 400 lbs. ? Home-built. It’s really pretty simple, especially nowadays as you can use a good hydraulic jack instead of the traditional screw press.
RT,
Anywhere online that has an example that’s “pretty close” to what you’re using? (Some good collective skills of wood-butchery and welding to be had… maple and oak too, although I don’t know how much time we have to season it up.)
Mornin’ O3 , here is pretty much the exact cider press we use, only his is ancient and stained red!
http://ciderandwinepress.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/dsc_1558.jpg
There are lots of parts and machines on eBay.
Very cool! Thanks for the linkage and suggestions…
Are you getting sick of hearing the phrase’ “Boots on the ground”?
Tonite NBC news says more ‘jobs are being created’ right now than any time in US history, millions of jobs just this month. I see American people here criticized as being blind to the disasters which await us, always right around the corner, but most people, if they pay attention at all, get their news from network TV, and that news is usually good. A positive spin is put on everything, especially where energy and oil is involved.
brh
I bid ye hither, and hearken:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/08/permission-to-steal-everything.html
Remember, so that we will recognize the 6th stage if it should be our final misfortune to see it. What is the price of survival, and under what circumstance is it worth the paying?
“How did primitive people “drink the water” without always getting sick?” – janos –
They either developed an immunity to whatever was naturally occurring in their area or died really young, IMO. And in my own case I thought I had developed a pretty good immunity to local water borne diseases, having been exposed repeatedly through the years. And I had been gradually increasing my dosage of local creek water for a couple of weeks. But I walked down there on a hot day, saw the cool flowing water, got carried away, and overindulged in it. I’ll go back to the low daily sips as soon as my gut recovers. 😉
===================
“Justice for Blacks simply means winning. They remain perfect barbarians no matter how expensive their suits or how shiny their shoes.” – janos –
That is really nasty. pointless, and unfocused hate -, even by your standards Janos. And you wonder why people on this thread (and at ADR?) don’t want to listen to you about anything, ever?
It also happens to be the simple truth. You are still far from having correct vision evidently. Does it make it easier if I admit that the Mexicans are like this too? Or that there are plenty of Whites who only care for victory no matter what? If so, you have as I suspect, a cultural infection, a bugaboo about Blacks.
Albert Schweitzer, who knew them intimately for decades, summed it up. Most Blacks want a handout. The few who are willing to work hard do so for themselves or their families. The spirit of service as we know it is virtually unknown to them.
“They either developed an immunity to whatever was naturally occurring in their area or died really young, IMO.”-progress4.
Question: Is there now, or was there ever mining activity upstream?
Old mines have been poisoning streams in Montana – and elsewhere in the West – for decades. It’s known problem.
Couple of ‘appropriate technology’ workarounds with proven track-records:
1. Fill repurposed plastic bottles with the local water and place them in the sun for 5-6 hours.
2. Use a rice-cooker with a tight lid to boil your drinking/cooking water (friend of mine has been using this to survive in India on the cheap/off the grid for years. She’s never gotten herself or anyone else sick with her water).
These methods are not ‘pretty’ (you can pay 100’s to REI if you want ‘pretty’), but they do work.
By the way, I’m not assuming that you haven’t thought of this stuff already. I’m just check-listing your issue.
Clean water is basic. It’s awesome that you have running water on your land.
Cheers!
Watching this Ferguson situation develop is interesting. I keep watching how the media “narrative” develops and is managed. If Those Powers That Be are in charge of this on – it appears that they want to encourage blacks in and around Ferguson to act out.
And if you think otherwise urbane, intelligent thinkers always care about the idea of “innocent until proven guilty,” then you need to check out the comments to this piece: Many of them have already found the cop who did this shooting guilty of murder. If they had a tree a rope, and his neck – some of this HuffPost crowd would form a very willing lynch mob indeed.
Interesting times appear to be quite close.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/michael-brown-friend-shooting_n_5675097.html
Thanks for the Orwell link, O3. I always forget to read him.
Now I’ve gotta catch up.
There’s a new app that helps people avoid bad areas – which are synonymous with Black areas. You might want to get it since like most Liberals you love Blacks but I assume, want to avoid them as well. Better hypocritical than dead.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/08/app-that-crowdsources-sketchy-areas-fights-charges-of-racism/
Here’s another interesting view of Snowden. It’s based on a Wired Magazine piece, I believe.
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/edward-snowden-a-uniquely-postmodern-breed-of-whistle-blower/
How many of you have heard this little tidbit, about a man who may still be a genuine patriot? I had not.
*Snowden volunteered for the Army special forces in 2004, inspired by the 9/11 attacks:
“I still very strongly believed that the government wouldn’t lie to us, that our government had noble intent, and that the war in Iraq was going to be what they said it was, which was a limited, targeted effort to free the oppressed. I wanted to do my part.” (In training accident, Snowden broke both legs and was discharged, leading to his transition to intelligence.”
*Snowden on returning to the US and facing charges:
“I told the government I’d volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose. I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can’t allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I’m not going to be part of that.”
And before you totally lamblast the man, backrow – read the article, would you?
P2C, I must have missed something.
Why are you drinking untreated ‘Creek Water’?
Why not just go inside your house and turn on the tap?
As far as Snowden goes, I’m not interested in him any longer. I believe he was a Russian or Chinese asset all along. He’s in russia for keeps. There always seems to be a good reason for treason, usually to serve some ‘higher good’, which is the conclusion I’ve come to after reading about Aaron Burr and General James Wilkinson, and later traitors like Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins and the Rosenbergs.
–BRH
BRH and RT,
Brit Jam Sunday. Admission: $10
This year’s DOOR PRIZE:
Triumph Bonneville T140
YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN (that is all)
“Why not just go inside your house and turn on the tap?” – brh –
Well. People have been drinking out of creeks for 10’s of thousands of years. Turning on the tap is a relatively recent innovation. And in my case, when the electricity goes off I’ve got at most 8 gallons of water left to come out of that tap. After that, water’s not coming back unless the electricity comes back or I get up and do something.
And yeah, Mister D, there’s lots of things I can do short of putting my lips down in the creek and sucking water up like a wolf. hah! I’ve used most of them. And, honestly I’ve got extra plastic bottles, a few spare gallons of chlorine bleach in case of emergencies. I’ve also got a food grade barrel and an infinite supply of creek bottom sand should I ever need to rig up a sand filter for longer term use.
Drinking out of the creek was an experiment on my part, and as I said the results surprised me. I’d been sipping away on that creek water for weeks this spring with zero ill effects. It wasn’t until I slugged down two cupfuls quickly that I got into problems. Country folks used to avoid too much water drinking, said it “would rust their pipes.” I always thought it was superstition, or else something intuitive about water soluble vitamin loss. Now though – I wonder if it has to do with avoiding microbial overload.
And fwiw, I’m no stranger to microbial challenges from the real world. I’ve been hunting, fishing, and submerging myself in dirty water since I was a little kid. In one memorable experience SCUBA diving in an abandoned railroad tunnel in the N. GA mountains I surfaced and found myself facemask to eyeball with maybe 100 bats, inches away. My dive buddy and I thought it was pretty cool to see, and we floated there talking about it for a couple of minutes. Then I realized that the surface scum coating my wetsuit hood and exposed skin was a mixture of bug pieces and bat guano. We got out of there pretty quick. And washed off pretty quickly. But I did worry about rabies for a couple of weeks after that.
“In one memorable experience SCUBA diving in an abandoned railroad tunnel in the N. GA mountains I surfaced and found myself facemask to eyeball with maybe 100 bats, inches away. My dive buddy and I thought it was pretty cool to see, and we floated there talking about it for a couple of minutes. Then I realized that…”-progress4.
Funny story. . . Don’t be shy with those.
😉
Cheers!
“Does it make it easier if I admit that the Mexicans are like this too? Or that there are plenty of Whites who only care for victory no matter what?” – janos –
Not only does it make it easier, vlad, it makes it into a completely defensible and rational statement that makes one want to consider that you have other worthwhile ideas.
That other statement, about shiny shoes, expensive suits and barbarians – just makes one want to ignore any other idea you ever mention here.
Words to the wise, dude.
Well it’s always a matter of percentages. All peoples have their barbarians but with Blacks, that’s where they are as a race. Since you like trashing your own, it will give you satisfaction to know that Whites have been devolving for a long time: the rich and intelligent have very few kids and the lowest have the most.
No one, not even their friends, deny that Blacks are mad about conspicuous consumption and bling. They are tasteless when removed from their original folk environment – which destroys their culture very quickly. Traditional Black cultures can be criticized too of course, (especially the cannibal ones) but they were obviously better than Blacks wandering around clueless in White Nations.
The same thing has happened to Whites, though not as quickly. Only very specialized peoples like the Jews or Gypsies can maintain their culture amidst strangers and constant change.
“As far as Snowden goes, I’m not interested in him any longer. I believe he was a Russian or Chinese asset all along. He’s in russia for keeps. There always seems to be a good reason for treason, usually..”
– backrow –
It’s funny backrow – I can consider that Snowden is everything you say and worse. And it the same time I can consider that he may be a genuine American patriot. You’ve got a pretty big brain, backrow. Can’t you occasionally hold opposing views at an objective arm’s length in there?
I do think, the words “treason,” and “traitor” are becoming overused and misapplied. I am hearing them applied more and more to Robert E. Lee and other icons of history. That saddens me. Especially when one realizes that Geo. Washington (for example) committed worse treason against established government.
Washington only had the good fortune to be on the winning side, that’s the difference. The winners write the history we read.
That’s why America loves a winner so much, perhaps.
It’s gonna get particularly grim if we ever really lose one.
Nothing lasts forever.
I don’t consider Lee, Davis, Jackson, Stewart et al traitors, C. The only place i see that sentiment nowadays is in publications like the New York Times and Washington Post. (and who cares what they say) The confederates staged a preemptive counter revolution, that is, it was the north, with its massive immigration from Germany and Ireland, and its rapid industrialization, that was revolutionary. The traditional agrarian south was responding to what was happening here.
P2C, this whole domestic spy network run by the NSA, as revealed by Snowden, isn’t it a response to so many foreigners living within our borders, and the potential threats they pose to the well being of the country? There are millions and millions of people here who do not consider themselves American and could give a sh-t less about this country.
I see in Missouri the President, the Governor and Senator McCaskill are not backing the police but are backing the looters and rioters. i guess just a few decades ago Ferguson was a majority white town and a decent place to live. Not now. Whitey cleared out. The whole business district is being looted and burned and by the end of the week there won’t be much left. Let the goddam place burn. There are still many good small towns across Missouri and they are filled with the descendants of Bloody Bill Anderson, William Quantrill and Jesse James.
–BRH
Swift boat the bitch. And if Elizabeth Warren runs, she must always be portrayed with feathers in her hair. No mercy for the frail vessels carrying cargoes of lies and hypocrisy.
Are the Republicans serious about winning? McCain replied to a frightened women that Obama was a great American – an incredible lie. And Romney never got tough either – showing respect to a being that deserved none. They obviously don’t want to rock the boat since they might be rocked out as well.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/new-book–being-assigned-to-hillary-clinton-s-secret-service-detail-%e2%80%9ca-form-of-punishment%e2%80%9d-213322171.html
Lizzy Warren? (pardon me for a minute while I stick my finger down my throat). That’s what we need another wealthy law professor with no interest in protecting the law. If I remember Barry O was a constitutional law professor. I guess he forgot his lessons or just cheated because he ignores the Constitution when it suits his needs. I’m from MA. and have no love for Lizzy as you can tell. Lizzy Borden I could take, ( at least she was not afraid of public scrutiny) but not Lizzy W.
Re | ‘Very Short War’ watch:
Putin to the EU: Settle *Down*.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-14/gazprom-europe-we-own-you-least-until-2016
*Now*.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/12/my-moneys-on-putin/
Florida Power, P2C
The main beverage of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, the Puritans in Boston and the gentry who landed in Virginia to set up tobacco plantations, was beer. They drank it by the barrel.
The Indians loved it too, along with pork and muskets. It was Squanto, the English speaking Indian who greeted the English at Cape Cod, who said of them, after he downed his 1st mug of brew, “They are but Gods”.
–BRH
Couldn’t drink the water back then. Ferment it and you have a safe drink, plus on a good day if your a happy drunk (me) it is “GUARONETEED” to put a jaunt in your step. Not so much for mean drunks. They should not drink.
Thanks BRH,
“They drank it by the barrel.”-BRH.
It was a wise decision on their part. You have to boil water to make beer (that step is called making the ‘wort’). So, that’s a simple purification step, right there.
http://i.imgur.com/jlEvg4X.jpg
Furthermore, if the brewing vessel is unsanitary other ‘opportunistic’ microorganisms besides (*good, wholesome*) brewing yeast take over and the beer becomes undrinkable. So, that’s an easy litmus test for whether the beer is going to make you sick or not.
http://i.imgur.com/jlEvg4X.jpg
In addition, one scientist was perplexed by why so many ancient Egyptian prescriptions mandated _beer_ as the remedy, and he was also puzzled by the presence of *TETRACYCLINE* in ancient Egyptian cadavers (mummified).
So, he brewed a batch using their translated ancient recipe and discovered that it created tetracycline-laced beer… Their beer was not only nutritious, but medicinal and healthier to drink from than the Nile, by a longshot.
Personally though, I wouldn’t depend on beer to be my ‘Flussig-brot’ during daylight hours – I’d go with Kvas.
Thriftier to make, much lower alcohol content and ‘thirst-quenchier’ – and still more sanitary than many alternatives.
Of course, there’s always brewing up a massive pot of weak tea in the morning with breakfast, and tugging on that for the rest of the day.
Just some thoughts…
B T W, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I like beverages.
😉
Cheers!
Nice post. MD!
Like I once mentioned you have a good storehouse of knowledge in that head of yours, as well as the ability to put it down in words.
In addition, you come across as a real gentleman.
–BRH
“In addition, you come across as a real gentleman.”-BRH.
Thank you for that. . . I do try!
Cheers!
If a Black cop killed a Black kid under exactly the same circumstances, no one would care. This is just racism on the part of Blacks, an excuse for them to loot and riot – and a feeding frenzy by the Media. And White politicians do what they do best: pander and crawl. We need a Putin who would pulverize and crush. Well not really – that’s the old Janos/Adam. I don’t like a militarized police either. We simply need to get away from Blacks and leave them to their own devices. You can’t win with Blacks. If you give them the policing they need, it’s too much. If you don’t, you’re seen as ignoring them. They need to be heavily policed by their own. That’s all.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/08/whos-to-blame-for-the-ferguson-riots/
This much I agree with. If you are an American who isn’t black, and you are interacting with an American black, at any level, you are the bad guy.
Don’t talk to them? You are racist. Talk to them? You are butting in. Don’t police their areas and teach them? You are ignoring them and not developing them. Police their areas and teach them? You are an imperialist. Don’t hire them? You are racist. Hire them? You’re a corporate oppressor.
Interact with from a higher level? You are a racist who acts superior. Interact with them at an equal level? You don’t understand their history and their need for special privileges and affirmative action. Interact with them from a lower level? You will get abused, cheated, and possibly killed.
It’s a no win situation, a catch-22. There’s nothing you can do but systemically avoid them.
Justice for Arfee, a young Black Male (Lab) gunned down while sitting in a van.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Njp-QC7KMQ
Anyone aware of stimulator’s show, ‘It’s The End of The World and I Feel Fine’?
Well, here’s the most recent one, entitled, ‘riot4gaza‘:
I have yet to watch it and am also downloading ‘globalfukinwarming‘.
I suspect many of you lot would like it.
“P2C, this whole domestic spy network run by the NSA, as revealed by Snowden, isn’t it a response to so many foreigners living within our borders, and the potential threats they pose to the well being of the country?: – backrow –
Yeah, maybe backrow. In which case it would have been far easier and less destructive to liberty – to have kept those elements out in the first place. And I’d be pretty sure NSA, Homeland Security, and the TSA would have gone to nearly the same excesses regardless. There were fat contracts to be signed, congressmen to buy, and lobbyist positions to be filled.
“I see in Missouri the President, the Governor and Senator McCaskill are not backing the police but are backing the looters and rioters.” – brh –
Yeah again, backrow – most disappointing to see. At least Pres. Obama managed to criticize the looters and rioters for violence, before also criticizing the police. At least he didn’t say, “If my son burned down a Quick Trip, it would have looked like that one.”
One thing nobody anywhere has deliberately mentioned is how SMALL the number of people involved in protest in Ferguson really is. Somebody on Fox said 60 last night. That’s not enough people to worry about – the cops really would have been smarter to back off. And they keep showing that same burned QT over and over.
It’s a small geographic area, too.
I suspect the story is being magnified and manipulated.
Whether to sell add space, or for some far worse reason – that’s the question that we might want to be worried about.
“I suspect the story is being magnified and manipulated.
Whether to sell add space, or for some far worse reason – that’s the question that we might want to be worried about.”-progress4.
Good point(s). Why there, and why now? Indeed.
Meanwhile, don’t you dare ‘fall through the cracks’:
don’t be…
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/homelessness-now-crime-cities-throughout-u-s/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-cities-crackdown-on-homeless-people-is-close-to-ethnic-cleansing-9645189.html
…homeless, in America. . . It’s simply criminal.
America has always been a hard place, MD, from day 1.
I don’t see it getting any softer.
did you know that the east coast of what is now the United States appeared on Spanish and German maps as early as 1506, and Greek scholar Ptolemy drew a map pf the known world, in the Alexandria Library, in the year AD 150, showing the earth as a globe?
In 1497 Spain and Portugal met up and divided the world in half, Spain getting the Western Sphere and Portugal the Eastern. CFNers complain about the American Empire, but those were some real empires.
–BRH
Hi BackRow!
Personally, I’m not interested in ‘complaining’ about the American Empire.
My attitude toward that was and is always one of pragmatism: how well is it doing the job of being an empire? Inept, decaying empires are only good at creating meaningless waste and suffering.
There are some things that organizations (including empires) do when they’re on their way down. That’s the stuff that I tend to mention.
Regarding this:
“America has always been a hard place, MD, from day 1.”-BRH.
Not quite true, BackRow. Even before Day 1, American colonial settlements took care of the helpless and/or permanently disadvantaged.
For example, Boston collected an annual tax earmarked for the care and feeding of Widows, Orphans and Veterans disabled in the service of the king. These taxes were called the ‘poor rates’.
Empires take care of the helpless – especially helpless veterans – for sound political reasons: “Behavior which is Rewarded, is Repeated”.
So, if I make mention of the criminalization of the disabled or unable (for whatever reason) that’s me saying: ‘this is another milestone’. It’s not me saying: ‘oh, look how bad it’s getting’.
I’d like to be clear about that.
Regarding the Portuguese and the Spanish being granted a 50/50 split of the unconquered non-Christian world by papal authority (a Borgia Pope!)… Yes, *that* was one of the all-time high-water marks of kray-kray imperial hubris.
Cheers!
Meanwhile the Aztecs were sacrificing at least a hundred thousand people a year – and eating them. The Priests sometimes wore the skin of one of the victims. The skull were used as decoration in buildings. Quetzlcoatl came as Cortez and punished this dark Civilization that had so perverted his teachings. Krayzy stuff huh? Better stick to your Howie Zinn.
MD
In the 17th, 18th and into the 19th century each town around here (NW Connecticut) had a place called the ‘Poor Farm’, where indigent families would live if they had nowhere else to go. these were real working farms that were mostly self supporting but did receive help from the town and greater community. From what I’ve read these places were not at all Dickensonian, but quite decent.
The population at that time was largely homogeious, everyone descending from the English midlands. Most families were in someway related, so this was a case of people taking care of their own.
I have a theory, not unique by any means, that the people you see rioting and looting in Missouri this week were created specifically by the welfare state, and cannot be ascribed to race. This welfare state creates monsters and will eventually crush anybody.
–BRH
Yes, remember that passage from “The Devil and Daniel Webster”? The Devil claimed that he was more American than any. “When the first Indian was mistreated, I was there. When the first slave ship pulled into harbor, I was there.”
Don’t ever second guess me again.
“Are the Republicans serious about winning? ” – janos –
I’m beginning to think that both sides are far more intent in keeping that status quo in place, than they are about winning or helping regular citizens.
================
Nice discussion about water and ways to make it safe to drink. Nice to know beer has such honorable origins. I’ll have to drink more of it out of respect. And kvass I’d never heard of; makes me want to go ferment some bread! And thanks for the comps, md – I’ll try to think up a couple more stories.
=================
And Glitch, from last week; I’m far from “retentive,” more like the opposite to those who know me. And I do enjoy a good verbal brawl now and again. That’s why I mentioned the guy who attacked gringos in last week’s ADR thread – hoping somebody would want to keep it going over here @ CFN.
Nice analysis of the Druid and his threadriders, btw – from both Janos and Florida Power.
Ok, fair enough.
In a sense, there’re no gringos, only victims of prisons we call states.
Meanwhile, back in the west, it seems like not a day goes by without some unarmed person being beaten or killed by the “forces of law and order”.
I have always said this would be a powder keg during and after the collapse, now we have full scale riots with ever increasingly militarized police and other “forces of law and order” bringing in SWAT teams. Welcome to the future of the US.
Still no word about that Malaysian commercial jet that was shot down by two Su-25 fighter jets from the neo Nazis in Kiev, described as riddle with bullet holes from “massive” 30mm cannon fire in what is one of the most outrageous acts of terrorism since 9/11.
Let’s talk about ISIS and the never ending hatred and bloodshed between Israel and the remnants of Palestine instead. How about Justin Bieber, Robin Williams, and the usual nonsense as well? It’s just as irrelevant to me.
News from the west. The Canadian government gave a green light to tearing up community gardens that were being planted on unused land. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/community-gardens-ripped-up-along-arbutus-corridor-1.2737029 This follows news that the Canadian government sent the terrorists in Kiev untold millions of dollars in “non-lethal aid”. Apparently the Canadian government sucks just like the US government
Illegal camping, jay walking, selling cigarettes, etc are now capital offenses in the US or at the very least, grounds for a generous application of violence.
it usually happens to Afro American or Hispanic people, and they are taking notice. Exceptions include mentally ill people of all races.
The cops on steroids. The future of the US
Overzealous overreactions: They’re not just for Black American people anymore…
http://www.laweekly.com/2014-07-24/news/busted-for-off-leash-dog-man-ordered-not-to-leave-southern-california/
“Still no word about that Malaysian commercial jet that was shot down by two Su-25 fighter jets from the neo Nazis in Kiev, described as riddle with bullet holes from “massive” 30mm cannon fire in what is one of the most outrageous acts of terrorism since 9/11.”-MI Native.
Ad then there’s this to add to the ‘mix’;
The NYT ‘discovers’ something:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/57556/the-new-york-times-discovers-ukraines-neo-nazis-at-war
+ the Serbian connection (pro-Russian ‘volunteers’).
http://www.dw.de/serbian-mercenaries-fighting-in-eastern-ukraine/a-17855479
= The Ukraine ‘Area of Operations’ (AO) is getting very ‘saucy’ ;]
One of the *righter* things that JHK has written were observations about certain risks peculiar to Japan.
As enamored as so many of us are with things that are Japanese, we have to admit there are… Well… Some problems.
B/c QE just works SO well;
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/08/13/the-raging-success-of-abenomics-in-one-chart/
… yes, I am being sarcastic.
(= /s)
Oh yeah, and remember that whole ‘Fukushima Thing’?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-14/ice-wall-go-eth-japan-scraps-fukushima-freezing-plan
… it didn’t fix itself, as a matter of fact… ;]
True nausea is the Australian people, that now believe the “poor” are now car drivers.
“Joe Hockey’s (the Australian Treasurer) extraordinary, grovelling apology is a measure of just how seriously his Wednesday gaffe suggesting “poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far” was viewed in the highest reaches of the Abbott government.”
This rather nauseous right wing creep was for once telling the truth, but the “right wing” and other press operations all ganged up on him with their belief that the “poor” drive cars.
Did Kiev’s Poroshenko today successfully shorted the US Stock Market?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-15/did-ukraine-attack-its-own-tanks-white-house-cant-confirm-russian-convoy-was-destroy
With no military victories to show for the past few months in SE Ukraine, Kiev’s regime invented “Russian military convoy” of armored vehicles that his brave military supposedly had destroyed. News which at first blush correlated with what may be the 2014 equivalent of the Archduke Ferdinand shooting sent all major US indexes tumbling.
World trade is now a game in which the US produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy.
Liberal America’s Great Black Hope has turned out to be just another two bit thug like baby Tray. Foiled again, dupes. Meanwhile the show goes in Fergusson, Missouri. The Minstrel Show that is. Ready for a change White Man? It can be done by only by and for ourselves, Ourselves Alone. As the Irish said, Sinn Fein.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/08/get-out/#more-49038
How much more could it cost to hire Molotov-cocktail throwing hooligans in Ferguson, Missouri than in Kiev, Ukraine?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/ferguson-looters-stores_n_5683880.html
Listen,
if stars are lit,
it means – there is someone who needs it.
It means it is essential
that every evening
at least one star should ascend
over the crest of the building.
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY
The stars are just the campfires of those who have gone before us. The Milky Way is the Ghost Road.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39414.htm
“I have a theory, not unique by any means, that the people you see rioting and looting in Missouri this week were created specifically by the welfare state, and cannot be ascribed to race. This welfare state creates monsters and will eventually crush anybody.” –BRH
That’s a good theory, backrow. Makes sense and explains a lot. We’ve certainly got plenty of European-Americans in these parts who have fallen into this trap. It’s best to stay well away from them. And it doesn’t have to be classic welfare either – any sort of unearned payments, like disability or whatever, can cause it.
Of course shiftless white trash (and black, brown, or mixed trash) has been around forever. The numbers seem to be increasing.
I’d add to your theory that things get worse and generally will not improve – when children grow up with parent(s) who are on unearned benefits; be those benefits welfare or anything else.
I would add to the welfare recipients anybody who is not involved in day-to-day productive activity – stock market traders, advertising professionals, general paper-pushers, things like that.
I’ll 2nd that, FM.
Nevertheless, the Black trash are the ones rioting and the more dangerous in general. Blood will tell – even at the lowest levels of human life (not just the hightest).
Back to the memes of the media – whether undirected or purposefully malign.
MSM (actually ABC) said this morning that there were 200 demonstrators/rioters/whatevers in Ferguson last night “of unrest.”
WTF! Seriously, WTF!! It’s a town of 20,000 in a region of millions and 200 people are causing all this damage and media coverage.
I say again, WTF?
This whole media event is stupid. What is driving it? I’ve got a couple of theories, and they are not happy ones for the great mass of US citizens, regardless of race. Anybody else got a theory?
Isn’t that what exactly happened in Kiev in March? A relatively small number of extremely violent “protesters” mixed with the crowd of well-meaning dupes caused all the hipish(trouble)?
Exactly – just like the American Revolution. Just like the Arts and Sciences. Just like everything. Reality is Elitist – and this is true for both good and bad. Educate people in most complete sense of Tradition (not just academics) and hopefully they will back a good Elite. But that doesn’t mean they will become the Elite. As ever, a small number of people do and think, the rest will try and figure out who to follow. And most of those will be watching (even as they pretend not to) to see which way their neighbors go.
Thus below the Elite, the Sub-Elite play a crucial role in which way the herd will go. Thus the Elite fill the Sub-Elite with Agentur. The Bad Elite are better at this since they have no qualms. Thus they have won most of the time in the modern era. Can we match their methods without becoming them?
On the other hand, you’d need some police collaboration, but that’s probably a given.
Is America getting a little taste of it’s own “orange revolution” techniques?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39414.htm
The remarkable thing C., is that, despite the looting last nite, no arrests were made. It seems like the Police, in this case the State Police, stood by and let it happen. What kind of law enforcement is that?
One of the businesses destroyed was the store young Mr. Brown, the man who triggered all this, robbed. they’ve released the police officers name — I hope he and his family are protected and kept out of harms way. It doesn’t seem like the Department is backing him up. Who the hell would want that job?
–BR$H
“….the State Police, stood by and let it happen. What kind of law enforcement is that?” – backrow –
Taking the long view, brh, it’s the only sort that’s going to make sense.
If people want to riot, confine them close to where they live and let them tear up their own communities stuff. Just have a plan to keep them the HELL away from my stuff and family. I may watch the Tube and think it’s sad – but I’ll be otherwise OK with it, you know?
Above post should have been, “community’s stuff.”
Then regarding:
“From what I’ve read these places were not at all Dickensonian, but quite decent.
The population at that time was largely homogeious, everyone descending from the English midlands. Most families were in someway related, so this was a case of people taking care of their own.”_
– backrow, on poor farms in New England –
Ah yes, backrow, what might not be possible with homogeneity?
I know a little something about the “welfare state” model in Denmark, because I have extended family from there. And I understand that Sweden, etc – have much the same model. And it appears that the original US welfare state was modeled on those to a large extent.
So – – the welfare state model that seemed to be working in extremely prosperous and extremely (at least originally) homogeneous countries was force-fitted into the US, where it basically destroyed the relatively stable two-parent black communities that existed in the US prior to the easy availability of classic welfare in the 1960’s.
On a side note – welfare systems (afdc, snap, workman’s comp, etc) may ALL be a way to keep US populations complacent and fat – even as real economic opportunity has been slowly taken away from lower (and now middle) class US populations. This came on black populations first; but now affects the white underclass as well.
Homogeneity? Of course, but it’s just one factor. You have to have quality first. An all Black, one Tribe nation will still amount to little. The genes just aren’t there, yo. Sorry, but your ideas of equality are just fantasy. Prove them. My thesis has already been proven in the lab, classroom, and test tube of daily life – to the satisfaction of all reasonable men who have taken the time to look.
“I would add to the welfare recipients anybody who is not involved in day-to-day productive activity – stock market traders, advertising professionals, general paper-pushers, things like that.”
– fm –
I share your distaste for such people, FM, but I’m quite certain that it’s possible to raise good kids with a work ethic even if the father is a Wall Street M&O lawyer or worse. The secret is that the breadwinner (could be the mom, for that matter) APPEARS to work, e.g. leaves the house on a regular basis.
It’s when parents sink into a miasma of dependency – receiving a check without ever leaving the sofa, for example – that any unfortunate children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren sink even further into that same soul-sucking miasma.
Gotta’ get. I’ll check the thread tomorrow, sometime.
“Meanwhile the Aztecs…”
Yawn…
Yes, and a pack of Spanish wanna-be “Hidalgos” (the word meant “son of somebody”) countered the Aztec horror with the merciful horror of The Inquisition’s tortures and impalements.
What a way to take he moral high road, there… (Yes, I’m being sarcastic)
You’ve either lost the thread of what I was saying in my reply to BRH, or you simply don’t understand something which doesn’t stoke you’re seeming bottomless well of hurt feelings and unfounded paranoia. For the sake of personal effectiveness, you might want to get that looked at – by a professional.
Janos, we were discussing what the collapse of the social welfare system and what it means. Not the entire compendium of horror that forms the substance of European Conquest (in the Americas and elsewhere. As I’ve said before, those bodies are in the ground and thoroughly decomposed at this point, and I’m not particularly interested in any of them.
In addition, the process of Conquest – by anyone against any other party – is the foundation of subsequent horrors. That is why a ‘war of aggression’ is a top-level domain war-crime of which other war-crimes are subsets.
Janos, you occasionally put forth interesting and coherent opinions, which are useful. Let’s have _Less_ being butt-hurt about our little persecution complexes, and _More_ clear thinking and writing, shall we?
Remember the quote (hope I have it right), He who does not remember the past is destined to repeat it.
You brought up the past in order to slander Western Culture and/or Whites and/or Christianity. I countered. Now you lose interest. I’ve seen this kind of hit and run from Leftists before, both on the streets and in the classroom and blogs.
I count coup on this one Mr D. Fight fairer, harder, or don’t fight. Cuz you’re not getting away with such tactics – not on my watch. You talk about “butt hurt” and “feelings”? How many times have you tearfully refused to continue a discussion with me – Already, in the short time you’ve been here?
“You brought up the past in order to slander Western Culture and/or Whites and/or Christianity.”-Janos.
Untrue. I characterized the presumptuous splitting of the world between the Spanish and Portuguese as an example of hubris – which it was, (and ridiculously short-sighted and premature)… [1]
For some reason, you made the leap from that to a generalized “slander” of an entire culture, or ‘race’ or religion, or… one of the myriad things that trigger you.
It’s careless comments like that originally gave me doubts about you.
You know Janos, just between me and you (and the small number of readers that will ever see our little exchange), I’ve been entertaining the very reasonable notion that you’re not human at all.
For some time now I’ve maintained a spreadsheet with three columns for your responses: one for those that could’ve been generated by a ‘Bot [2], one for those that could be an Avatar run by a team of army kids in Ft. Huachuca, and one for the knee-jerk spoutings-off of an actual Person.
I didn’t bother responding to your posts until the later two columns each had a score in the same ballpark as the first…
SO… Who knows? Maybe there is someone actually ‘there’ to interact with – even if the ‘Janos’ persona is doing so under entirely false-pretenses.
“I count coup on this one Mr D. Fight fairer, harder, or don’t fight. Cuz you’re not getting away with such tactics – not on my watch.”-Janos.
If you are an actual person, then you’re someone with little professional experience, and rudimentary ideas about the way the world works.
How much time or energy should I spend on any one of the possible versions of ‘Janos’?
I’ll reply when and how I want, at my convenience entirely, and you’ll like it or lump it. What are you going to do? Rave about the terrible “lefties” supposedly tearing the world apart, and then cry yourself to sleep?
Cheerio… ‘Janos’.
🙂
— — —
[1] But the Borgias had their *own* short-term reasons for making promises that needn’t be kept, and that was that.
[2] The ‘Janos’ persona produced far too many “Aha! So you admit it!” and variations on that theme for awhile there. Also, a demonstrated inability to follow the thread of an argument more than one comment back, was another tell-tale.
So then it came to mind that the DoD is trying to automate it’s cyber-warfare activity.
Others are actively testing AI using online personii for proto-typing.
One testing hurdle is interacting with humans. Informally there’s a standard that says that if a person cannot tell that what they are communicating with is non-human, then for all intents and purposes that AI is a ‘person’.
An entire portfolio of different persona could be developed for testing within this framework, from the less-demanding to the very difficult to see what works, and how.
For example, a ‘LittleJohn’ persona would be at the rock-bottom level of ease (all it has to do is reply with variations on “O-KAY!” and “WHAT!?!”).
A persona in the mid-range would be a ‘BeerBro’ or ‘NaziBot’.
At the extreme upper-end there might be a persona that not only requires intelligence but a highly developed sense of social nuance.
Now think: why would the Establishment install Nazi Bots – since that is a philosophy whose triumph means the end of them? Yes, they want to create chaos but a certain kind of chaos. Thus the bots are always Leftists. It would be dangerous to parrot Far Right memes because they know that would begin to imprint on people. Of course in a specific situation or organization, they might use agents or provocateurs with such an agenda, but that’s different from their general practice. All the bots or bot like agents here at Clusterfuck have always maintained the Party line: mass immigration and minorities are always very good. We’re not important enough for the specialized attention you are implying. Plus since the norm here is Leftist, any agentur would be to the Left of that. I’m so far Left that I’m Right. Reality is Round – haven’t you’ve realized that yet?
In summary, I am not now nor have I ever been, a bot. Moreover I have pontificated and taught on an amazingly wide range of subjects beyond just Race.
You got to hand it to these chaps in Ferguson, MO, up all night, looting, rioting, lighting stores on fire, fighting the police in the streets, yet, up the next morning reporting to their jobs bright and early, ready to put in a full 8 hours work.
That takes stamina and dedication.
–brh
Yes, they are morally superior to us. The rage is outrage at the injustice. The cure? Free beer, cigars, and flat screen TVs. If only Ferguson had Department Stores! It’s not right…
United States are hell-bent on igniting new war in Europe to contain Russia as a leader in world-wide rebellion against US-lead system of contemporary financial colonialism.
Based on historical precedents of 2 first World Wars US leadership thinks that US will not be affected behind two oceans.
Unfortunately for them they themselves perfected the system of “war by internal destabilization” and it was well recognized and studied by analytic centers elsewhere in the world.
US as much vulnerable to their own techniques as Ukraine or Iraq or Syria.
The driving force in US was and is the same – money.
Why street gangs fight each other and shoot innocent bystanders? Well, the prize is a lucrative street drug market.
Why would the thugs in Ferguson make trouble on the streets? To get hard federal time in prison with no monetary reward?
In our troubled times it is all about ROI – return on investment. Relatively small investment in street violence in Ferguson could rip off huge policy benefits.
And finally the good news.
1. Ukraine apparently recognized huge Russian convoy of almost 300 trucks as “humanitarian aid”.
No doubt the order came from Washington/London. Hopefully, we are ready to talk sense.
2. Finnish President Sauli Niinistoe met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Sochi in an effort to defuse tensions he said risk dragging the world into a new war.
In the past (1970s) Finland successfully negotiated peaceful solutions
between the West and USSR (Remember Helsinki’s Human Rights accord?)
Hopefully they will serve as peace negotiator now as well.
3. Flight MH17 is all but gone from the news. Neither West, nor Russia are pressing charges. (Apparently Russia has enough hard evidence of Kiev’s (may be even Washington) involvement but keeps quite about it for now).
re | the Ukraine ‘situation’, There is one common denominator for those who want ‘something’ to be done by the USA about it;
The less they know, the more they want it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/
” part two:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/14/when-will-the-europeans-wake-up/
The silence over that act of raw terrorism has not gone unnoticed by Ron Paul and others. The official Malaysian press has charged the neo Nazi lead western Ukraine. The silence is probably due to a cover up and/or damage control by Washington.
Initial reports came out from international investigators on the scene that the cockpit and fuselage were riddled with bullet holes, “massive gunfire” the kind that could only have came from one of those 2 Ukrainian Su-25s that so many reported seeing tail the airliner.
This came right after the US was pressuring a reluctant Europe and other NATO dupes including our little bitch boys north of the border in Canada who bend over and take it up the ass whenever Uncle Sam tells them to to jump on the sanctions bandwagon.
Then Obama, John killer Kerry, and Hitlery Clinton went on the offensive, blaming Russia almost immediately after the tragedy without a shred of credible evidence. If the truth is ever allowed to come out, all of them should be impeached. Likewise, I hope the people of Europe will rise up and overthrow their assholes in power and dissolve NATO when they realize they were duped. Fuck the UK, like Canada, those faggots will always be little bitch boys for the queen, the US, the neocons, or that horse faced wimp that likes to play polo (prince Charles? that queer that could get head from princess Di…tell me he isn’t gay. what man could pass up shit like that?). Like I said, little bitch boys for the US with no balls, the brits. Shove your tea and crumpets up your ass.
All eyes should be on the wreckage and Diego Garcia, where we hijacked that first, identical Malaysian jet and are/were storing it for some nefarious purpose, some future false flag event the neocons dreamt up. They should be watching both sites 24/7 anything that comes in or goes out, so to make sure the bullet holes from 30mm machine gun fire are not covered up, the blast pattern and rods from an air to air missile are not fabricated with cubes and damage from a BUK AA missile, the original LIE put out by Washington.
Meanwhile, back in the realm of the classicly Kunstlerian;
Ghost tracts:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/08/10/val_rie_anex_photographs_ghost_estates_in_ireland_in_her_series_ghost_estates.html
…There not just for Americans, anymore.
A genocide occurring right now in N Iraq. There is something about severed heads of Christian Children which to focus ones attention. Like I mentioned before, the world hasn’t seen anything like this since Einsatzgruppen A, B, and C rampaged across Russia in the summer of 1941, killing everything that moved
“There is something about severed heads of Christian Children which to focus ones attention.”-BRH.
Yes, BackRow, it is horrible.
I will add that it used to bother me how selective ‘compassion’ is among most people. It’s almost as nauseating as the evil fucks that perpetrate these atrocities.
Now, not so much.
I’m writing this as someone who’s seen his shared of dismembered children, so NO, I’m really not interested in any back-chat from uninformed and inexperienced, __punks__ who *presume* to know enough to comment.
Who precisely am I referring to? Well, if the shoe fits…
😉
Cheers!
there is a primitive barbarism loose in the world right now the likes of which we haven’t witnessed in a long time. Its name is Islam..
brh
Courage! The future is bright. The last female bishop of the Episcopalian Church will be burned at the stake as a witch in 2055 in the Holy Land of Maine, also known as Greater Massachusetts.
https://www.traditionalright.com/victoria-preface/
re | Frackin’ It… “By any means necessary”.
So, it got out that they’re using diesel to frack-out natural gas:
http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=news/reps-waxman-markey-and-degette-report-updated-hydraulic-fracturing-statistics-to-epa
+
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/15/drillers-are-illegally-using-diesel-fuel-to-frack-doctoring-records-to-hide-violations-report/
Somewhere, there’s a snake eating its tail (and poisoning the water-table… yeah, this will end well /s ).
“I will add that it used to bother me how selective ‘compassion’ is among most people. It’s almost as nauseating as the evil fucks that perpetrate these atrocities.
Now, not so much.” – md –
I’ll ask you to elaborate on this one if you get a chance, md.
And I”ll also appreciate your thoughts as a veteran from our wars.
I’m thinking that in a theoretical world where physical resources are unconstrained and unlimited – that compassion for evil doers might be expected by some* to be also unlimited. (*The idea that when it comes to criminal punishments that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged flits into my mind for a second, here.)
And I’m also thinking that the dominant (yes, white, janos) majority in our apex country of thought-to-be-unlimited resources – was expected to always show public compassion, tolerance, etc for some sorts of evil doers.
And I’m thinking that we’ve never had a world that really had unconstrained and unlimited resources; and that resources are now being experienced as finite and declining, even in the US – so what we’re seeing is a decline in the compassion being expressed, especially for known and identified evil doers.
And I’m thinking some people are so evil that killing them is the only solution. But I’m remembering that there are some folks around who believe that we (every one of us) in the US is so evil that killing us is the only solution.
Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking. Any thoughts from anybody?
And if you think I’m one of those punks you referenced, md – then I’m not expressing myself with sufficient clarity. And yeah – nothing’s worse than the death of a child caused by the madness of adults. Nothing.
“And I’m thinking that we’ve never had a world that really had unconstrained and unlimited resources; and that resources are now being experienced as finite and declining, even in the US – so what we’re seeing is a decline in the compassion being expressed, especially for known and identified evil doers.”-progress4what.
Things get scarce and the knives come out – this principle will hold true (and ‘scale’) from a closed environment like a prison, right up to the entire global market.
Assisting this process are a bunch of rationalizations for why the right of some people to have or control something, is less legitimate than others – like one’s *own* group, for example.
When times are good, there’s less heat in these confrontations. When they aren’t, the blood will flow. Strip away the BS ideological veneer and it really is that simple.
OTOH, we must remember that there are very good and useful reasons why we avoid doing certain kinds of killing – like killing children. I can cite two very pre-modern sources for why that is – Clausewitz and Homer – and why doing so is not only contrary to the values of what we can refer to as ‘Western Civilization’, but military efficacy as well.
It’s just a bad idea, no matter whose kids they are.
“And I’m thinking some people are so evil that killing them is the only solution. But I’m remembering that there are some folks around who believe that we (every one of us) in the US is so evil that killing us is the only solution.”-progress4.
Well, there it is: The Old Paradox. On the one hand, To Kill is very wrong. On the other To Kill is sometimes very necessary. The better killers tend to be those that focus not just on winning the battle, but the entire war. To do that, you have to be very clear in understanding __what the war was about in the first place__.
To really win that war, you have to have wanted to end it from the start of it. Not just keep it going and profit from it, or to get off on the bloodshed during it. Profiteers and psychotics are part of the problem, not the solution.
Right now, we are all in a ‘world of hurt’. Literally:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/08/15/countries_in_crisis_at_record_high_humanitarian_emergencies
There are only 11 nations that ARE NOT in some sort of bloody confrontation, and it looks like that number is trending down.
Welcome to The ‘Die-Back’.
Stay Alert. Stay Lucky!
PS., No, I was not referring to anyone that who communicates about these issues in good faith as a “punk”. We all have our own points of view. Hopefully, we can learn from each other.
Cheers!
I’m thinking that it’s getting harder and harder for Reverends Sharpton and Jackson and the other advocates for the grievance coalition to keep the narrative under control.
“A previously unnoticed detail in a background conversion of a video taken minutes after the Ferguson shooting could change the course of the investigation into Mike Brown’s death.
The original video poster appears sympathetic to the narrative that Mike Brown was shot unarmed with his hands in the air. But he unknowingly picks up conversation between a man who saw the altercation and another neighbor.”
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/168698-eyewitness-recalls-important-detail-background-video-mins-ferguson-shooting/
This thing is trending fast on social media. If it’s valid, it begins to look like the shooting of Mr. Brown was justified. And it must be valid – who could fake a thing like this, who also would?
C. in one of JHKs books he talks about, in a time of hardship and resource depletion, a lot less tolerance for criminal and deviant behavior. In other words less sympathy for drunks, drug addicts, looters, muggers etc. If things got bad enough these people could even be dealt with summarily, extra legally, without further ado.
Any chance this police officer is railroaded and dragged before a Holder justice dept. kangaroo court, so as not to further inflame the ‘community’? Its gotta be hard to be a police officer with the knowledge your own Department doesn’t have your back and will just as soon throw you to the mob for political expediency when the going gets rocky.
–BRH
I’d say his local PD Chief has his back pretty well, so far. Release of that store security camera footage was his decision. He blamed it on the FOI act requests he was getting. But it was still a pretty slick move on his part – and the State PD commander was visibly displeased.
And, IMO, Holder and Obama would railroad that cop in a New York second if they could get away with it.
BTW – three thoughtful posts from Therian today. I wouldn’t have seen them this evening if I had not searched for ” 17, ” without quotes but with the spaces and the comma.
The Black put in charge of the situation apologized today to the Black Community. In so doing, he has charged and convicted the White Officer in effigy so to speak. After watching all this, do you really doubt that Blacks just want to win? The Truth is simply called “character assassination”. The Mayor backed down too. Sickening. But what’s a White suck up supposed to do if your constituency is 65% Black?
I remind you of the OJ trial. Many (I admit not all) Blacks thought OJ was guilty but were glad he got off. Whites have it coming they said. Square that with justice as you understand it.
I was writing out a true story from one of my uncle’s days as a cop, first as an MP during WWII and then as an Atlanta police detective back when I was a kid. Great guy. Good cop.
But I lost the story into cyberspace. Maybe in a week or two I’ll redo it.
Gov. Jay Nixon (D) announced early Monday morning that he had signed an executive order sending National Guard troops to Ferguson.
“Given these deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent attacks on lives and property in Ferguson, I am directing the highly capable men and women of the Missouri National Guard…in restoring peace and order to this community,” he said in a statement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/17/ferguson-protests_n_5686601.html
When Russians announced of resignation of Igor Strelkov as a commander-in-chief of SE Ukrainian rebels “due to transformation to a new assignment” they didn’t mean foreign trip, did they?
Life as video game. The latest reality Xbox simulation is the new leak that Kiev shot down that Malaysian plane. We were on the Russians faster than Al Sharpton was on the Duke Lacrosse Team. Watch the lack of comment from Washington and Brussels. They won’t apologize because they’re morally inferior and gutless.
Meanwhile, Proximity One has come out with color code charts about real personal income change per person from 2008 to 2012. If the myth of “recovery” had anything to it, nearly all metro areas would have grown sharply since 2008 was a very low point from which we could scarcely go up. The real truth about the “recovery” is that monetary velocity in 2014 is LOWER than the bottom of the 2009 recession and workforce participation continues to make 36-year lows.
The following cities have had a DECLINE of 5% more in RPI from 2008-20012: Las Vegas, Reno, Miami, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Tucson, and Los Angeles. Then there’s the list with 2-4.9% declines: Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, and any part of northwest WA that is not Seattle proper. Finally, the list of cities that have had stagnant (-1.9% fo +1.9%) RPI change in that
interval: Portland, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Houston, and Boston.
The only places with strong RPI growth are in shale spots like North Dakota, the part of CA near Bakersfield, pieces of Texas, and the couple of slivers of the US involved with the ridiculous tech industry that is in the phoniest boom of all time i.e., San Jose, and Seattle.
Check it out for yourself at: http://proximityone.com/reis/rppi0812b.png
Note how many yellow, orange, and red areas there are and how huge they are relative to the splotches of blue and green in the USA. Finally, keep in mind that this is a “recovery” from the deepest recession since 1932. Simply incredible.
“The real truth about the “recovery” is that monetary velocity in 2014 is LOWER than the bottom of the 2009 recession and workforce participation continues to make 36-year lows.”-Therian.
The velocity of money stats from 2007 to Now kills any argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary in any way.
What would have happened had there been someone in actual political power in Washington DC 6 years ago?
The FDIC would have done it’s job. The financial markets would have cleared. Confidence would have been restored. We would be in a far different place than we are now – one with a lot more ‘runway’ between us and the End of Cheap Oil and affiliated issues.
Thanks for bringing this out, Therian.
Russian scientists developed nanoparticles with biocomputing capabilities
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2014.156.html
Nanoparticles with biocomputing capabilities could potentially be used to create sophisticated robotic devices with a variety of biomedical applications, including intelligent sensors and theranostic agents.
For instance, they could be used to deliver cancer cell killing drugs just to affected cells, sparing he healthy ones.
We live in a time of wonders and of utmost barbarity.
I wonder what they’ll make of us, 200 years hence?
Quite frankly, we should be more concerned what we could make of our lives now.
For such a well informed writer, Jim is not mentioning recently discovered gas deposits in the Middle East at all, as if they didn’t happen (!), and the role those discoveries play in all this “mess”, which ends up not being a mess at all but a very well orchestrated plan to grab resources from other countries, in the good old traditions of the UK/USA strategic alliance.
Outside North America, it is a well known fact that ISIS was founded by the United States and funded by Saudi Arabia.
May I suggest this resource for Jim’s attention http://www.voltairenet.org – there is a tab for English.