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Gross All Over

     I was kind of relieved to be leaving the country again this week with Thursday’s Feast of Football looming, followed by the “consumer” buffoonery of Black Friday. Distance affords reflection and this is a good week to ask ourselves what, exactly, lies on the other side of this massive wall of suspense we have constructed around the fate of our money system?
       What a scary season! This is what it feels like to hit the wall of limits to everything the earth provides us. Our oil problems are for real and urgent, despite the arrant nonsense (“There Will Be Fuel”) published last week in The New York Times – a news organization that runs a direct hose-line of smoke up its own ass from the oil industry’s chief PR shop, IHS-CERA, The Times’s sole source on the energy beat. Meanwhile, Europe is back to imploding financially again (with Ireland as the rotting head of the dead fish in the current rotation). The US housing sector has flat-lined, the banks are so lost in the “mortgage-gate” morass of lost and robo-forged documents that the ghost of Roy Cohen couldn’t get them out of it alive – though Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon must pray to tiny gilded statuettes of old Roy in their late night sweats. Ben Bernanke is set to shovel huge transaction fees to the “primary dealers” (i.e. Lloyd’s and Jamie’s banks, et al) in his scheme to buy treasuries through them monthly at a whopping premium instead of directly from the source – with the side effect of making it an act of futility for ordinary Americans to save money the old-fashioned way, at interest. The fetid remains of decomposing CDOs line the vaults and stain the books of financial institutions everywhere. Accounting fraud is still the order-of-the-day in everything from Fannie and Freddie to your neighborhood HMO. Government at all levels is dead broke. Did I leave out endless war at endless cost (of money we don’t have)?
     There’s a lot to feel uncomfortable about. But the question remains: what will be there when we break on through to the other side (as The Doors used to say… remember them? Probably not). 
     You can bet there will be a “workout” of all the imbalances, distortions, perversities, rackets, obligations and other financial dead weight paralyzing this country. America will be dragged kicking and screaming through it – like a 14-year-old video gamer through the Okefenokee Swamp – and it all amounts to one thing eventually: a society with much less money, and perhaps with a lot of things in disarray. After being crybabies for a while – and if we don’t blow up the planet – we’ll face the task of reconstructing a society that has some kind of future. It probably won’t look like the way we live now. Are you ready to imagine what that might mean?  Readers are incessantly twanging on me to lay out some kind of agenda, some “positive vision” – or, resorting to the phrase I so disdain for its sad-sack sanctimony, to “offer some solutions.” Since it is Thanksgiving week, a time of gratitude and humility, I’ll try to oblige. I have stated a lot of this before, but readers seem to forget.
        Basically, we’re looking at a re-set to a lower-scale type of economy and smaller, more local, autonomous units of governance. We have to move from unmanageable levels and layers of complexity to more direct, local modes of activity. We would necessarily have to let go of a lot of things that have provided comfort, convenience, and incessant diversion from reality. I’m not altogether confident, for instance, that we can even keep local telephone systems operating – let alone cellular networks that can download porn movies, if that gives you any idea of how things might shake out. And forget about getting “back on track” with the so-called consumer economy. The struggle to hang onto all this crap may steal all our attention from the really necessary tasks.
     Will there be money?  And what will it be? A lot of idealists promote what they call “local currency.” Presumably this is some kind of paper medium-of-exchange representing claims for future work or goods. Their models are Berkshire Bucks and the scrip issued in Ithaca, New York. I do not believe this for a moment, anymore than I believe we’ll be driving psychedelic Volkswagon buses to rock festivals twenty years from now. I believe money will be silver and / or gold. If any paper is involved it would be something like a promissory note from a person with a lot of silver and gold, perhaps even one affecting to act like a bank, as the Medici did. There may be other miscellaneous kinds of tradable paper – bills of lading, letters of credit – but nothing like the abstract nonsense we’re swapping around today. I doubt that corporations as we know them will survive the end of the age of fossil fuel driven hyper-complexity, and by then their paper will be in utter disrepute anyway. There’s no reason that barter would not be a common feature of daily life, even if gold and / or silver are circulating. This is certainly how I imagined the future in the Witch of Hebron and World Made By Hand.
      The human race (North American division) had better reinvent small-scale farming or there will be no Homo sapiens around these parts. Plenty of knowledge and skill is still out there, though not widely distributed. There are people who still know how to breed working animals, train mules, oxen, and dogs. We can grow edible plants without dumping oil-and-gas byproducts all over the ground. Our soils are pretty played out, but we know how to improve them. A much greater percentage of people will have to take up this line of work. I see agriculture coming back to the center of economic life. It doesn’t have to be like the 13th century, but I rather think the social relations around farming could be starkly different than the model we know today, if only to keep the wandering riff-raff at bay. I don’t know if the countryside will be orderly enough, otherwise.
      We have no idea how we’re going to make useful products when the conveyer belt from China to WalMart grinds to a halt, as it surely will. I would not bet on nanotechnology or carbon ladders-to-the-stars or related techno-grandiose horseshit so popular these days at the corporate-sponsored conferences, where venture capitalists dressed in black like the old Viet-Cong spin their fantasies between plates of basil-infused duck with quinoa farfalle, sets by Vampire Weekend, and other blandishments of the dead-end techno-wankery life. My guess is we’ll be making a lot less stuff, and there will be little plastic involved (except what can be scrounged up), and it will be more like cottage industry than Henry Ford’s River Rouge assembly plant. Surely water power will have something to do with it, perhaps hydro-electric, if we’re lucky.
     It may be too late to improve the railroad system. There’s quite a bit left, though too many places have been cut off from it, especially small towns – which will regain importance as farm trading towns with or without the railroads. But our continued investments in new freeways and airport expansions have been about the dumbest choices we’ve made in recent years. And now that we’re heading into a vortex of capital scarcity – that is, lack of money for any kind of project – we may be out of luck on fixing the railroads. Especially as political mischief mounts and Sarah Palin huddles with Glenn Beck to put the final polish on her inaugural address. Need I mention that our fantasies about running the Happy Motoring matrix on alt.fuels is one of the most corrosive delusions plaguing our culture now, especially among people who ought to know better.
      There’s no guarantee that the USA will hold together as
a continent-sized federal republic, and if history is any guide the fact is that political boundaries constantly shift over time. Manifest destiny is looking less manifest these days. If anything, the federal government can only become more broke, more ineffective, and finally irrelevant. If there is any Big Brother, he will show up in your county courthouse in a cheap suit. Or perhaps we’re in for more interesting costumes. Personally I could go for something other than Land’s End casuals. But please, check the “no” box on ruffed collars and Star Trek outfits. I stray from my theme….
     Anyway, I’m convinced that a sore beset public, broke, hungry, idle, and hopeless, will beg somebody to push them around, or at least tell them what to do.  Our new “leaders” will range in style and disposition just like the honchos of yore, from Otto the Illustrious, to Charlemagne to Ethelred the Unready. Who knows what residue of Anglo-American law will persist. My guess is that some of these characters will act more in dispatch than in the interests of what used to be known as justice. 
    I do think the next ten days or so might be pivotal ones in the global banking system. Europe is not doing a very good job of sweeping its sovereign bankruptcy problems under a rug the size of Belgium. Faith is withering away in currencies and tradable paper of all kinds. Any sort of gross instability from any player in the global money game can blow up the equity, bond, commodity, and currency markets. And things are getting gross all over….
   Posted from the departure lounge, Sydney airport, en route to Perth….
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About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

629 Responses to “Gross All Over”

  1. asoka November 21, 2010 at 6:09 pm #

    First!

  2. lbendet November 21, 2010 at 6:20 pm #

    Sounds like nobody gets out alive.

  3. Sandwichman November 21, 2010 at 6:57 pm #

    On the bright side, carbon emissions fell 1.3 percent from 2008 to 2009. In the U.S. emissions fell 7 percent. The bad news is th 2010 bounced back and is likely to set a record.

  4. Lynn Shwadchuck November 21, 2010 at 7:51 pm #

    Thanks, Jim a review of the way things could shake out was not really redundant. There are new converts all the time. This past week there was a full-blown article on peak oil in our daily paper, big surprise. It’s easier to spread positive ideas of how to relocalize and make ourselves more resilient if we don’t sound like nutbars to most people. Eight months ago I met a woman working at the library who glommed onto me with my beans workshop poster, because she didn’t know a soul she could talk to about peak oil. Now she’s part of the Transition Town group. Bit by bit…
    Lynn
    http://www.10in10diet.com/
    Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill

  5. popcine November 21, 2010 at 7:59 pm #

    Here’s what we’re going to do. Build a railroad
    from Houston to Mexico City. Laying tracks is good
    for unemployment, you know. Then, as for the health
    care crisis, we put the old, sick people on the
    train and ship them south, where medical care is
    cheaper. Problem solved.
    Now, as for gasoline, we substitute air cars.
    They’re natural, they’re organic. Problem solved.
    AS for the rest, I’m working on it.

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  6. EDS November 21, 2010 at 8:08 pm #

    Oh woe is us. I am an Architect who enjoys and agree with your comments. I worked under Gropius and the like in the early 60’s and know that the modernists at that time deeply believed that technology and human wits would keep us going. They seriously taught that buildings should be replaced every generation. What Bull! Presently at 75 I still work every day and take a boat in the summer and subway in winter to work. We are lucky here to have a good public transportation system that has been expanded regularly for over 100 years. When I was in High school I worked summers in a rather marvelous Sewage pumping station on Deer Island here in Boston harbor. The work was dirty but the building was and is great. The vaulted spaces and pump rooms were inspiring. Power was generated from coal and methane(from the sewers. The pump engines were triple expansion steam engines, all brass and nickel and 20′ across, and ran quietly at 120 rpm for 75 years. One is now in the Smithsonian. The plant was self sufficient but pumped raw sewerage out into the ocean. I learned to respect the old building and realized early on that my teachers and the modernists were very very wrong in their assumptions. A new plant now treats the sewerage, produces methane and fertilizer, and generates its own power with the methane and windmills. Some engineers have been thinking and planning for the real future. Much of the inferstructure for water and sewerage is simple and runs on gravity and a few pumpsand will not be stopped by lack of oil. Remember that water and sewage control is rock on which modern health and medicine stand.

  7. Laura Louzader November 21, 2010 at 8:16 pm #

    The more aware and alert among the general population have twigged that we have arrived at the watershed defined by resource depletion and the population explosion, at just about the time some prognosticators of the 60s and 70s said it would.
    People are now groping about for ways to downsize, save money, build necessary skills, and prepare themselves and their communities for the inevitable slide.
    However, old paradigms die hard. For the past 80 years, since the Roosevelt era, the population has looked to our political leaders and policy makers for solutions for large problems, from housing to food production to manipulating the economy, and people nowadays are completely incapable of devising “solutions” that they implement themselves using what resources they have available, without resorting to political action and asking for funding. When local chapters of the Transition Town movement sit down to plot a course of action to, say, improve and rehab the local housing stock for energy efficiency, or start local gardens, the first thing they do is ask the local government for some kind of subsidy.
    Thus even our most aware and knowledgeable people have fallen into dependence upon systems that will surely fail as the cost of absolutely everything ratchets upward and local governments are hard put to it to even provide minimal law enforcement and emergency response. We will not be able to fund our police and fire depts adequately and will experience a great deal of difficulty in keeping our cities safe and sanitary. There will be absolutely no money available to help people with insulating their houses or fitting them with solar panels, or buying new, efficient furnaces. Our broke and indebted local governments will be more so as the increasing fuel costs drive up the cost of operating our cities and maintaining essential services and critical infrastructure.
    The first thing people need to get through their heads, is that when and if the “long emergency” becomes severe enough for the general population to notice that this is no ordinary economic downturn, our local authorities and services will be entering catastrophic failure, and will be absolutely unable to subsidize individual projects, no matter what their merit. We will be on our own out here, and we are no way prepared for it.

  8. trippticket November 21, 2010 at 8:35 pm #

    Spot on, Laura.
    “However, old paradigms die hard.”
    Speaking of old paradigms, I’ve served up a doozey this week about paradigm shifting over at Small Batch:
    http://www.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com
    Cheers! And have a Happy Thanksgiving.
    Tripp

  9. Centauro November 21, 2010 at 8:45 pm #

    Jim, I have really come to enjoy your point of view, but being relatively new to your blog and your podcast I confess to being a little put out by the casualness with which you write about what will in effect be an economic apocalypse. If you are right and we are witnessing the end of a 150 years of industrial/postindustrial life on our world–and believe me, I won’t be sad to see it go–how are 6.5 billion people going to live come the restructuring you write about regularly and again in this week’s entry? What is to say such a world won’t end up more like the one represented by McCarthy’s “The Road” and not your “The Witch of Hebron”? Just wondering–keep up the interesting work.

  10. Belisarius November 21, 2010 at 8:58 pm #

    Well i guess it is Monday in OZ.
    The incongruity of a leading apostle of the low oil consumption lifestyle jetting about the globe once again intrudes on my contemplation of his prophecies. Yet i agree that most all are likely possibilities.
    The financial system is a parasite on the labor of the productive, has its roots in fraud and eventually must collapse. A system that allows the priviledged to create money from nothing and lend it at interest, as well as collect a “tax” on most transactions deserves to collapse. I hope Jim is correct and we see its imminent demise, but i think it more likely that currency users and taxpayers will get to bail it out yet again, knowingly or not.
    I don’t think the USA is ready for the man on the white horse. Maybe they soften it up first with a false flag attack blamed on S Korea or Iran. Then another war to soak up (kill) the unemployed. If China gets involved, or the draft is resisted, or viral tax refusal, then maybe the man on the horse.

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  11. anotherplayaguy November 21, 2010 at 9:18 pm #

    “After being crybabies for a while – and if we don’t blow up the planet – we’ll face the task of reconstructing a society that has some kind of future.”
    The big proviso in that sentence is the only important thing. We have, I perceive, already blown up the planet, extincted everything above the size of a cockroach (ourselves included). We are the walking dead, too stupid to lie down and enjoy the repose of death.

  12. mika. November 21, 2010 at 9:18 pm #

    The hallmark of true nobility is honesty. With very few exceptions, America is the most wickedly corrupt and ignoble sewer hole on the planet. The more I learn about America, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be.

  13. Draupnir November 21, 2010 at 9:21 pm #

    Centauro, you must realize that 6.5 billion people cannot possibly live in the world Mr. Kunstler envisions. Like yeast reaching the edge of the petri dish, having consumed all the agar, we are about to undergo a great die off.

  14. trippticket November 21, 2010 at 9:25 pm #

    “On the bright side, carbon emissions fell 1.3 percent from 2008 to 2009. In the U.S. emissions fell 7 percent. The bad news is th 2010 bounced back and is likely to set a record.”
    Unlikely. At least from a global perspective. If fossil energy consumption did indeed increase in the U.S., it would have to be due to a net decline elsewhere. But I really don’t see it. Probably another “green shoots” maneuver intended for the growing number of smart people paying attention to all of this. Energetics equations don’t give a crap about how much paper we print and deploy.
    That’s really the silver lining in all this. That our life support systems started to recover as soon as we peaked. I wish more people got the proper charge out of information like that.

  15. Belisarius November 21, 2010 at 9:34 pm #

    I disagree. There are many worse.
    The USA gets more ink than those worse, because they only rarely resort to “disappearing” those who point out the corruption.

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  16. Glensufi November 21, 2010 at 9:35 pm #

    I’ve been sporadically following JHK’s and other God awful dark dystopian nightmarish musings on this current and perhaps unprecedented trip to hell. Of course I don’t want to believe it and in spite of what appears to be considerable evidence that this particular ride may irretrievably have slipped over the edge it just doesn’t seem possible. However, I suppose this may be the way these things happen. The world, our world, the only world we have really known begins to disintegrate and we can’t comprehend the new unfolding reality. It’s scary as hell and we cling to the past to no avail, Christ I hope you’re wrong.

  17. trippticket November 21, 2010 at 9:53 pm #

    “Like yeast reaching the edge of the petri dish, having consumed all the agar, we are about to undergo a great die off.”
    Always like the yeast analogy, although I usually offer it with the yeast in a barrel of grape juice. I’m afraid Draupnir is right. The planet’s pre-industrial human population was always under ONE billion. Less than one billion humans who were extremely well-versed in how to extract a living from Earth’s background energies. And not only more connected with nature, we were smarter then too. Richard Heinberg pegs “peak innovation per capita” in 1850, probably not coincidently, right about the time we started leaning heavily on coal. Oil soon followed, and made us even dumber.
    Respected permaculture teacher and award-winning author Toby Hemenway guesstimates the post-keyhole human population at roughly 500 million. And I doubt many of those half billion will be from fast food stock.
    Get lean, and do it fast. For a while now I’ve been suggesting that the survivors will be a lot more mentally prepared than fiscally.

  18. Workdove November 21, 2010 at 9:57 pm #

    Watch rebellion begin as the wealthy evict the poorest of the poor from tent cities:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrPdZmPB36U&feature=player_embedded
    Imagine you’ve lost everything due to greed at the top by Bilderbund nuts trying to run the planet, then the police show up to cut up your only tent shelter. Revolution is brewing.

  19. Kiwi Nick November 21, 2010 at 9:58 pm #

    I’m not altogether confident, for instance, that we can even keep local telephone systems operating – let alone cellular networks that can download porn movies — JHK
    I think Vodafone Australia is granting your wish, on the cellphone count. As for landlines, the actual network hasn’t collapsed, but Telstra’s billing system has.
    I would have thought that telecoms would do well, when fuel prices are high – as you can spend a few dollars on a conference call, rather than $2000 on typical flights to attend a face2face meeting.
    Another example is the telecoms connectivity to enable things like GroceryWatch (perhaps a user-driven version of GroceryWatch). So that people can compare prices without wasteful travel.
    But there is one thing that might have to happen: localised franchising of the telecoms industry – people are so fed up with dialing the 1800-TalkToTheHand customer service located in the Phillipines. We need to localise problem handling, enquiries, and subscriber connection/disconnection.
    An example I give for technical faults, is that subscribers can borrow test equipment from their local library. Or you can front up to the Library with your own computer and test with their known, working internet connection.
    Otherwise we’ll have the endless blame game between half the western world and the Phillipines – You’ve got a virus! – no I’m running Knoppix – I’m afraid we don’t support Knoppix, we only support Windows XP Septic patch 3 – but it was working well with Knoppix 2 days ago – can you connect using a yellow ethernet cable? – and so on.
    Nick.

  20. mika. November 21, 2010 at 10:01 pm #

    Little do you know. They made an American President and his brother disappear. And many others.

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  21. SoylentGreenAU November 21, 2010 at 10:04 pm #

    Coming to Perth JK? Let me know if you would like to catch up for a beer.
    If you were hoping to find any hope in the most isolated capital city in the world, sorry.
    Only the miners are doing ok, till China flips.
    The beaches are nice though 🙂

  22. Kiwi Nick November 21, 2010 at 10:08 pm #

    Whitehorse Council (Melbourne, Australia) has woken up. They’ve got a Peak Oil workshop next week.
    And I’ve met their current mayor a few times: he talks of localisation – adjusting the public transport ticket zones so it centres on Box Hill a bit better – and improving the Stalinist bus interchange on top of Box Hill station. Even North Korea has better stuff than that dump!

  23. Donny-Don November 21, 2010 at 11:56 pm #

    >”If fossil energy consumption did indeed increase in the U.S., it would have to be due to a net decline elsewhere.”
    Huh? Why? There are still massive deposits of coal that are only beginning to be mined, and at unprecedented rates (at huge environmental cost, of course, but still feeding the “growth at all costs” paradigm, nevertheless.)
    Similarly, at least here in North America, we currently have a massive GLUT of natural gas production that has pushed nat-gas prices down to levels not seen for years … which is encouraging nat-gas drillers to scale BACK their efforts to continue drilling, and scale BACK their production from existing fields.
    So — why, in 2010 or 2011, would an increase in fossil-fuel consumption in the U.S. only be possible if there were a decline elsewhere? Kunstler has got his disciples in a premature panic.
    Until we hit a peak in fossil-fuel production globally, your comment makes no sense … and we’re not anywhere near hitting that peak yet. Even the petroleum peak is probably 6-12 years away, IMO.
    Which, in my mind, is unfortunate. It’s only going to make our over-population and unsustainable-economy overshoot that much worse, and make the adjustment to reality that much uglier. But the peak is still years away. Regardless of Kunstler’s latest “disaster will befall us in the next 10 days” forecast.
    Yawn. Another week, another Kunstler Apocalypse.

  24. Steve M. November 22, 2010 at 12:33 am #

    I’m looking forward to the final dissolution of the Democratic party, going the way of the Whigs for being too ineffective and too split between the progressives and the corporatists. A new people’s party will emerge from the ashes, the Tea Party may inspire a George Wallace-style insurgency, and the election of 2012 could feature four candidates, as in 1860. After that, mayhem. If the Constitution survives, Democrats elected to the Senate this year will be in a new party in 2016, and the Republicans will be in wilderness much like the Democrats were during Reconstruction. The 2020s will be a second Reconstruction – we’ll literally have to rebuild America after what we have now is destroyed.

  25. Dr Doom November 22, 2010 at 12:54 am #

    Twenty fifth!

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  26. Dr Doom November 22, 2010 at 12:59 am #

    So, according to Jim, the Grinch really is going to steal Christmas this year. After all the threats, books and movies on this topic, it is finally coming to pass. Here’s hoping for some gold and silver coins in those stockings this year! No coal lumps, please.

  27. ctemple November 22, 2010 at 1:15 am #

    When you have much of the public, and particularly the people running things with a very shaky grasp of reality, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen next.
    They’ve set up situations where the rules don’t matter, you don’t have the down payment for a mortgage, no problem, the bank doesn’t have your mortgage, no problem, they’ll use a computer program to foreclose. If you’re in congress you don’t have to pay your taxes, it’s okay. And global climate change, it’s just a concept, nothing to worry about. If the banks don’t have capital, it doesn’t matter, they’ll just take trillions from the people they foreclosed on and hand out bonuses, and pretend things were never better. If Japan is in over it’s head, no problem, they can sell more bonds.
    The rules aren’t important, unless you’re some poor guy cooking meth in your kitchen, in which case they’ll kick your ass and put you in jail for ten years.

  28. Neil Kearns November 22, 2010 at 1:58 am #

    I’ve been battling bureaucrats lately, and let me tell you they are a growth industry. Of course the hypertrophy tracks all the other growth sectors of our society. Some of the causes (CPS,abuse-industry) tend to be like a train going up a long grade- it’s always been full steam ahead up the seemingly insurmountable problem. The tricky part is when the locomotive runs out of fuel, (funding) and nobody ever installed brakes (checks&balances since they would not be needed. The risk is that when it guzzles the last of it’s fuel it stalls and carreens back down the hill in the opposite direction, till past the bottom. All progress lost and since it never stayed in one place for long, there might not be lasting patterns that a changing society can latch onto and own.
    Here’s a video by the doors called “Peace Frog”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJKOtM-onM

  29. Eleuthero November 22, 2010 at 3:04 am #

    The cheapness of natgas and the dearness
    of oil is a perfect reason to invest …
    in NATGAS over OIL. Donny-Don, surely
    you realizes that the “glut” you speak
    of is already priced in and the natural
    shutting-down, decommissioning, and
    scaling back by producers will make
    methane’s price go UP, not down.
    I advise you to visit http://www.cftc.gov and
    look at the “Commitments of Traders Reports”
    for the recent week. You’ll be hugely
    surprised. The smart money (producers)
    is betting against nearly all hard and
    soft commodities right now but Henry Hub
    natgas they are LONG.
    Markets are usually the OPPOSITE of what
    they appear to be.
    E.

  30. SoylentGreenAU November 22, 2010 at 5:09 am #

    Jim, My wife says she will cook you a curry.
    There are Irish expats all over the place where I live – quite friendly too! You could do an interview and vindaloo!
    Enjoy Sunny Perth in any case.

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  31. WanderingOak November 22, 2010 at 6:57 am #

    “It may be too late to improve the railroad system. There’s quite a bit left, though too many places have been cut off from it, especially small towns – which will regain importance as farm trading towns with or without the railroads. But our continued investments in new freeways and airport expansions have been about the dumbest choices we’ve made in recent years. And now that we’re heading into a vortex of capital scarcity – that is, lack of money for any kind of project – we may be out of luck on fixing the railroads.”
    I remember hearing that many of the newly elected Tea Party candidates have already said that they are going to veto any funding for rail infrastructure improvements provided by the federal government. I wonder if the public is ever going to realize that those clowns are shills for the Koch brothers and other big-oil interests…

  32. ghostlimb November 22, 2010 at 7:23 am #

    Congruous with an overall attitude of living within and encouraging local interdependencies, shouldn’t the JHK books suggested at the bottom of these pages instead carry the message…
    “Purchase one of my books at your local independent bookseller — when you’re done, pass it on or donate it to your local library… if you have neither a local independent bookseller nor a library, purchase my latest novel _______ at Amazon.”??

  33. nothing November 22, 2010 at 8:12 am #

    Kudos Jimbo! By now you may be entering the land of the free and the home of the brave by jetliner, where you might get you groped.
    But never fear,you can protect your junk with the latest in airport apparel from http://www.thenothingstore.com

  34. PRD November 22, 2010 at 8:26 am #

    There are 30,000 acres of vacant land within the boundaries of the city of Detroit. Serious efforts toward converting some of it to gardening and larger-scale agriculture are underway.
    But beyond the logistical problems are those of attitude. It is not an uncommon reaction of otherwise well-informed people of color to think “plantation” when they hear “urban farming.”

  35. Leibowitz Society November 22, 2010 at 8:38 am #

    I think JHK is being optimistic that the dust can settle and we can assemble into anything resembling anything but a complete and total mess. The systems which pre-modern America ran on were carefully assembled over the centuries back in Europe. Are we prepared to go back to a future where 98% of the population is involved directly in food production? Or are we going to see chaos the likes of which the world has never seen as people try desperately to hang on to the last straws of what had once been their ordinary lives? The best we can personally hope for now is to keep our heads down and make it through the best we can. My small contribution is, as always, presented at:
    http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com

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  36. Andrew MacDonald November 22, 2010 at 8:39 am #

    Not only what’s happening out there that’ll be important but the personal resources we muster to deal with it. When scared and dispirited we tend to make bad decisions and to not see emergent possibilities – we’re just looking for the exit door.
    Here are some ideas in progress at http://www.RadicalRelocalization.com.

  37. greeno November 22, 2010 at 8:57 am #

    And let us not forget those self sufficient native Americans that we exterminated from the planet because of their simplistic animal like ways. Oh how we made a mistake with our euro-american greed, and overly tech confidence by committing genocide on those very noble people…. but we had nothing to learn by ‘savages’ as we already had that base covered.
    “True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly coloured and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?”
    Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle

  38. PRD November 22, 2010 at 9:13 am #

    Oh – and one other thing. I DO remember The Doors.
    “This is the end…”

  39. Smokyjoe November 22, 2010 at 9:23 am #

    JHK’s got it wrong about railroads. The tracks are there, and in many places because of freight they are just fine.
    We’re lucky in Central VA: a little company called Buckingham Branch (Google them while the Net still works 🙂 got local money to rebuild spur lines and spruce up old rolling stock. There’s a market for bulk goods like wood chips, logs, and slate products. There will be after the cheap oil is all gone, too.
    BB now runs freight at a good profit and are gradually expanding where CSX decided they no longer wanted to do business. In a local-tech future, these trains and ones like them will keep something like our civilization sputtering along, even when customers pay in silver or gold instead of illusions.

  40. Schwerpunkt November 22, 2010 at 9:34 am #

    While I don’t want to totally disagree, but I am not seeing any evidence that “the change” is on its way. I am becoming more convinced that nothing will happen. I remember growing up (in the late 1970s) in mortal fear of “the bomb.” Then… years later, nothing happened! Our national industrial military complex sorted about for ten years before finding another fear complex for us, but in those years… nothing happened. Today, our banks seem to almost collapse, economy, wars, etc, but nothing happens. What does happen is a slow drip of power to a select few, a slow loss of net worth as my pay cheque stagnates. However, nothing happens. http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/

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  41. conchscooter November 22, 2010 at 9:37 am #

    The breathtaking collapse of political credibility in this country should have led to a revolution years ago. Yet we still hold elections and vote one lot out and the other in as though change is imminent if only the right lot get their hands on the controls. Banks cheat and lie and we keep writing checks. Soldiers die overseas and there is no uprising to demand their return. Flying as a commercial airline passenger is more nightmarish than ever and no one is ready to sacrifice “safety” for “freedom.”
    Fat chance of getting political freedom if you don’t have the nuts to fly on a commercial airline without getting irradiated or felt up.And the TSA fiasco is just the distraction of the week. Next week when Italy defaults it will be the trun of some other starlet to get a camera up her skirts in an airport to keep from thinking about what’s really happening.
    So, where’s the revolution?

  42. David November 22, 2010 at 9:52 am #

    I was a construction inspector for 40 years and there were things done that I never understood. Like why encourage folks to move into a area that has been known to be semi-arid (no water unless it rains). Then they turn around and build hugh intensive water needed housing and bussiness parks.
    I wondered why encourage folks to move in and turn prime farm land into home tracks for Mac-mansions.
    I wondered why build bussiness parks in one side of town and then homes in another then not bother to improve public transportation.
    I wondered why a quarter billion area for basketball and hockey was necessary but not safe public housing.
    Then late in my carrer it came to me why. GREED

  43. walt November 22, 2010 at 9:57 am #

    Politics today can be described as the Great Reaction. Everyone is locking in their advantages, such as they are. The rich, as is their wont, are doing this better than everyone else. Once the realization gels that improvements to the Situation are unlikely, things get interesting very quickly. Man on a White Horse? Who knows? Republicans hear the message beneath the jet roar: war is coming. Democrats wring their hands and ask for order. The aircraft of state is losing altitude.
    There might be outcomes ranging from Mad Max to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to The Witch of Hebron to a nationwide Burning Man blowout. We’re crashing and there’s no way to tell who will survive or how. We may be stupid with corn syrup but we will learn to focus once hunger becomes the norm.

  44. lpat November 22, 2010 at 10:04 am #

    This is the end. Beautiful friend. The end.
    Of our elaborate plans. The end.
    I’ll never look into your eyes. Again.
    And I really didn’t need to hear the live version which Morrison begins with the chant:
    Bring out your dead, bring out your dead,….
    Yes, Mr. K. Actually, I had forgotten. Somehow tho’ Mondays echo with that song.
    Wierd scenes inside the gold mine.

  45. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 10:05 am #

    Yeah, great song!
    “Made the scene
    Week to week
    Day to day
    Hour to hour
    The gate is straight
    Deep and wide
    Break on through to the other side
    Break on through to the other side”
    I think I can remember hearing it in concert!
    Or maybe it was on the album – coupled with some decent grass that made it seem like a concert.
    JHK, thank you for your weeks work. And THANK YOU for this discussion thread. This place is the wild west of thought – with pessimists, optimists, survivalists, permaculturists, racists, anti-racists – in fact with lovers and haters of all stripes.
    Keep it up, CFN’ers!
    The solutions are out there, somewhere.
    And yeah, don’t forget our host proposes real workable plans from time to time. Go back and take a look at the JHK for president platform:
    http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/07/my-tea-party.html

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  46. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 10:06 am #

    “Even the petroleum peak is probably 6-12 years away, IMO.”
    Then you’d be arguing with the International Energy Agency, who reported quite matter-of-factly in their 2010 record that peak oil occured in 2006. Which jibes with JHK’s position, among others, and is a year more lenient than Heinberg’s numbers.
    “There are still massive deposits of coal that are only beginning to be mined, and at unprecedented rates (at huge environmental cost, of course, but still feeding the “growth at all costs” paradigm, nevertheless.)”
    Ever tried to run an oil economy on coal and nat gas? I’ve seen a few municipal buses running on gas, but the idea that one form of energy is the same as another is wrong-headed. The supply logistics for oil are much simpler, and the energy return/investment far richer, than for the others. Chevron would be the first to tell you that they can extract oil with almost no environmental impact on the drill site. See Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”.
    Now don’t get me wrong, as an ecologist interested in tidal energetics, I tend to lump all energy together for mass analysis, but in the real world of the US, king oil reigns from a ruthless throne. And since the US accounts for 1/4 of the planet’s economy, it’s not terribly far-fetched to think that as we go, so do the rest.
    Coal and gas are merely riders on the oil train in the US. A decrease in oil use naturally spawns a decrease in the use of the other two. We rely on oil to help us exploit the others. That explains the glut in coal and gas supply fairly succinctly.
    The whole point of peak oil, now 4 years behind us, not out in the indeterminate future, is that we will never get the energy return per unit of energy invested that we did during the rise of oil. And that’s a point that really matters.

  47. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 10:33 am #

    Just as support of my contention, I wrote a piece at my blog about the love of money back in October, where I contended that a dollar is nothing more than a unit of energy, a new unit every time it changes hands. Coupled with the knowledge that millions of people are making (and spending) less money every year (our household income is 1/7 of what it was 3 years ago, partly by choice), then an immense amount of energy is going unspent that was previously being spent willy-nilly 3 or 4 years ago. That trend doesn’t seem to be changing, so less energy is getting spent each year. Thus the basis of my first post about carbon reduction.

  48. Downpuppy November 22, 2010 at 10:52 am #

    Is “Roy Cohen” supposed to be Roy Cohn?
    Cohn wasn’t much of a defense lawyer, less of a human being, & was eventually disbarred by a justice system that wasn’t yet totally corrupted.
    As amusing as it would be to see these banks get what’s due them, the determination of our plutocracy to protect their own has no bounds.

  49. lsjogren November 22, 2010 at 10:54 am #

    Steve M said:
    “If the Constitution survives, Democrats elected to the Senate this year will be in a new party in 2016, and the Republicans will be in wilderness much like the Democrats were during Reconstruction. The 2020s will be a second Reconstruction – we’ll literally have to rebuild America after what we have now is destroyed.”
    Are you serious? You think those Democratic clowns have any more clue what faces our country than the Republicans do?
    If so I encourage you to provide some evidence. It seems to me they are in denial at least as much as any other political faction. They want to massively expand a centralized government that provides all sorts of services to the public. That government is to be supported by an economy that is headed toward collapse.
    They are at least as clueless as the Tea Party, if not more so.

  50. Casual Observer November 22, 2010 at 11:01 am #

    Governments around the world are ‘kicking the can down the road’ with gigantic liquidity injections and bailouts. As long as ‘investors’ perceive confidence exists in the markets then stability will reign. I read Mr. Kunstler’s The Long Emergency and World Made by Hand. Enjoyed his perspective very much but I don’t see things evolving the way he does, at least not in the next 10-20 years, but a hundred years from now… maybe?

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  51. lbendet November 22, 2010 at 11:02 am #

    Heavy Metal in AFPAK
    By Friday of last week, (always a weak news day) as we headed into a weekend, two stories broke out. One was the Skeletor (Chertoff) special: To be full-body-x-rayed or to be manhandled, that is the question. That story took over the media like gangbusters all weekend. And what was obscured, you might ask?
    Well, we got a new assessment on what we need in Afghanistan and how long we’ll be there. The goal post to pull out has been set back from 2011 to 2014 and now we’re bringing in the heavy tanks.—–So look out, baby ‘cuz here we come! (with a vengence)
    So what’s the plan? Are we fighting Al Queda? the Taliban? or just the Pentagon and NATO digging in for the long haul to dominate the region?
    Oh, silly me, I thought this extension was going to be the parallel of the “Vietnamization of Vietnam”! You know, we have to get the Afghani troops to fight on their own…
    I’ve mentioned in the past about the various gas pipelines being constructed in the region to be completed sometime around 2014-15.
    But here’s the real kicker that I wasn’t aware of till this morning. Top headline of Asia Times on line today: AN ATOL EXCLUSIVE Pakistan opens its door to US ops By Syed Saleem Shahzad
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LK23Df02.html
    Pakistan has opened up visas to American officials, implemented two weeks ago to take the war into Pakistan!!
    “…quest to directly hunt down militant networks in Pakistani cities, where Washington believes major attacks in Europe are being planned and also from where the insurgency in Afghanistan is being directed.”
    Looks like this war is widening into new territory..(shades of Cambodia)
    According to Pepe Escobar, also of the Asia Times, this war will be infinite since we want to keep an eye on all things going on with Russia and China in the region, to hopefully foil their efforts to dominate the resources of central Asia.

  52. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 11:04 am #

    How can JHK be so glum when he is free to buy General Motors stock again? Hasn’t he read about the latest capitalistic triumph? One of the greatest turn-arounds in American corporate history, I’m told. Maybe they will bring back the Corvair. A hybrid model perhaps.

  53. Paul Kemp November 22, 2010 at 11:08 am #

    My guess is that Jim has glossed over the details of the collapse in his haste to catch his plane. From what I hear a lot of undeveloped nations are managing to keep cell phone working fairly well. That’s the least of our problems, IMHO.
    Relocalizing food production is not something that can be done overnight. Played-out soil needs years to be bought back to fertility, whereas the any break in the supply chain from giant Agribusiness outfits to our local grocery stores — and especially our electronic money transfer system — can break down instantly. Hunger and, for too many of us, dependence on keeping supplied pharmaceutically, will be quick to cloud people’s thinking.
    I heard that a mass bank withdrawal is being advocated in Europe by a French soccer star named Carmona for Dec. 7th (Pearl Harbor Day), so it might be wise to keep sufficient cash on hand before then.
    (BTW, Let’s not forget what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Can you say, “Coup d’etat?”)
    My contribution to this discussion is to remind that what we’re eating and drinking now is going to predict our future health ten or twenty years down the road. Physical activity is important, too. The hard times we all see coming will not be kind to the sick and the weak, so now is the time to lay a foundation of health.
    Here’s the best info I have collected over 50+ years of searching for the secrets of optimal health, simply and inexpensively:
    http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com

  54. Binnebrook November 22, 2010 at 11:09 am #

    I never much liked The Doors. They were all about style, it seemed to me, not substance, and there certainly wasn’t a lot of musical content there. But speaking of style, I’m thinking, for the coming years, of steampunk, of which I was just reminded by EDS’s wonderful description of Boston’s pumping station.
    And I have a question for all of you, to wit: Why is economic growth a good thing and a consummation devoutly to be wished? Forgive my ignorance, here, but I haven’t been able to puzzle this out on my own, and I’ve tried for many years, believe me. Why is bigger considered to be better? It’s like some people’s unfortunate view of cosmetics and perfume and fertilizer, that if a little bit is good, more must be better, right? Does economic growth mean economic stability? That seems like a false correlation and a bit of an oxymoron, but I really don’t know. The formulae don’t make sense to me. Expansion good, contraction bad? It’s a dismal science, economics, and this question is a puzzlement to me.
    And can I get some help, here, without the answers devolving into a flame war? And could we leave anti-Semitism, the Illuminati, and the Trilateral Commission out of the discussion? If anyone wants to address my question, that is. Likewise the Bilderberg Group and white supremacy? I mean, whites may be superior, may be not, but one should try to remember the ancient precepts of noblesse oblige, in any case.
    Thanking you all in advance.

  55. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 11:16 am #

    Don’t ask for gold or silver, ask for bullets!

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  56. J Lee November 22, 2010 at 11:25 am #

    Jim still sees a future civilization! Just smaller and more work oriented. We’ll breed cattle and grow our turnips and eat home-grown apple pie for desert. MMmmm doesn’t that just sound homey. And I’ve got some Rockwell’s that you can hang on your wall. And the third comment of the day congratulates us on reducing our carbon emissions by a minor amount because of the economic slowdown. Except there isn’t any mention or recognition that China, India and the rest of the world keep emitting and so do we. If we’re not past the point of no return we are right on the cusp. The whole thing is likely to end up as burnt toast or roast goose. When we’ve finally cooked the earth to that level do you really think that my Rockwell’s will still look good on your walls and that we’ll eat our own home made apple pie?

  57. Jay Schiavone November 22, 2010 at 11:27 am #

    Say what you want about Roy Cohn. He hated communists. Also he continued to have unprotected sex with men even though he had been diagnosed with AIDS.

  58. Cash November 22, 2010 at 11:35 am #

    Ecocomics is dismal, it’s not a science, it has all the validity of astrology. The best thing to do is ignore everything every economist has ever said about anything save two.
    The first is there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The second is that if something can’t go on forever it won’t. Those two things, IMO, are the sum total of the useful contribution to human knowledge and wisdom from the field of economics since it raised its dreary head as an academic pursuit.
    But if people insist on repeating these mystical incantations like “growth” then maybe the question to ask them is growth of what? To what end? For whose benefit?
    You hear the same sort of thing coming from the bullshit artists in the securities industry: “earnings growth”, “growth stocks” etc. Maybe “growth” sounds better than “shrink”?
    Maybe “economic growth” is in the same family of meaningless terms like “family values”. Does anyone have the foggiest what “family values” actually means? It sounds good. You take two words, “family” and “values”, which have meaning on their own depending on the context and you put them together and you have something that Sarah Palin can be in favour of. Or “support the troops”. Anyone know what that means?
    But anyway I heard some economist on televison saying we shouldn’t be aiming for “economic growth” but rather “economic security”. Whatever.

  59. helen highwater November 22, 2010 at 11:37 am #

    Once again Mr. “Live Local” Kunstler flies off to the other side of the world. Ever think about trying to find some kind of livelihood that doesn’t involve flying all over the place, Jim? I guess you’re just another one of those “what the hell, I might as well just use it up while it’s available” types, not somebody who really walks their talk.

  60. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 11:42 am #

    Word to the wise : Don’t sell your guns and ammo to buy drugs. 900 pound grizzlies with multiple “box-cutters” are easily fought off with large caliber handguns.

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  61. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 11:45 am #

    As Roseanna Rosannadanna might say : What’s all the fuss about body scans at the airport?

  62. Jay Schiavone November 22, 2010 at 11:46 am #

    I don’t believe I’ve noticed that you’ve pegged the local phone systems for failure before. What will precipitate this and how might it unfold? True, the former Bell system providers are eager to unload their copper networks and the plain old phone service that goes with them. However, AT&T and Verizon and the cable providers are working to deliver relatively high-speed broadband to their customers in lieu of phone service. That is, plain old telephone service would be available through VOIP. Moreso, the telecoms are throwing their investment dollars behind wireless in a big way. I would venture that their long-term planning leans heavily upon cellular technology. The main reason the telecoms are eager to abandon phone service is to stop paying techs, maintaining fleets and poles and cables and face-to-face customer relations. Hence cellular seems like the solution, even for broadband. Problem is the towers are all linked to the central offices via cables.
    In any case, I’m interested to learn your point of view, now that you have mentioned it.

  63. Paul November 22, 2010 at 11:53 am #

    I enjoy reading this blog, as entertainment. However, JHK takes a set of real problems and blows them way out of proportion. There are too many people who are too invested in this system (by this, I include myself and probably 99.9% of the people reading this blog). This ship is not going to go down in flames. It’s going to list this way and that, and we’ll all get through it somehow, largely intact. There will still be paper (or electronic) currency. There will still be rule of law. There will still be real estate transactions. My God, they had these things in the 1500’s, and we will still have these things next year. I do agree that lifestyles may become more local, more sustainable. But this will be a gradual trend and will not involve citizens roaming the countryside with guns and pitchforks. It’s a fun image, but that ain’t gonna happen.
    Personal note: My parents forecast the end of civilization in 1972, and we moved to a self-sufficient homestead, and lived off the land during my childhood. But civilization didn’t end then, and 40 years later, the USA is still going at it, as dysfunctional (yet functional) as ever. We can take pleasure in the titillating fear (or desire) of a return to a more natural or anarchic state of being. But do a reality check – the End of the World has been predicted on a regular basis since the Beginning of the World.

  64. reedjholmes November 22, 2010 at 12:00 pm #

    I think Jim and a lot of his followers are hoping for a quick economic collapse. But it’s just not going to happen, at least not in the near future. The economy has already bottomed out in this cycle and is on the upswing. Rather than wallow in negativity, take advantage of the opportunities that are now presenting themselves.

  65. antimatter November 22, 2010 at 12:02 pm #

    To see the future, go back to the 30’s.

    California charging people on the run from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl $50.00 to enter the state. Model T’s from all over the country carrying entire families from job to job picking produce.

    Meanwhile, the elite were doing just fine up in Chicago, over in LA, in NYC, in Boston. We’re rapidly heading back there.

    Nano tube ladders to the sky will be for the elite, while ordinary folks will buy Chinese built aluminum ladders from WalMart to use for odd jobs at the homes of the elite (drive around today to see this trend, only the workers with the ladders are Mexican).

    We can do without electricity, TV, and the Internet. Remember the debate that ensued when the idea of national electrification began? Only business and government need electricity, same for phone service, they argued in Congress.

    So, my advice: drag out those old AM radios that were powered by the farm’s windmill, and plant a garden, and oh, fix that windmill! That’s all you’ll need folks. Those iPod things, netbooks, gas heat—all extravagances. Ask your grandparents or their parents to get an idea of where we’re headed. But the elite will always ride in style and sleep above ground, east great steak, send their kids to Harvard, and travel to Europe–no matter what.

    Just relax, and enjoy that simple commoner lifestyle that is just around the corner. And don’t bother to vote, it’s gonna happen anyway, your permission or not.

    After all, it’s one thing to get all intellectual about what we’re up against, but in fact, TSA is fondling your kids today, and daring you to do something about it; Obama said this weekend that TSA needs to do its job to ‘keep us safe!’ That is a statement of what is ahead. Don’t intellectualize it, the TSA is out there now, and so are the tasers, being used every day on ordinary folks–to keep us safe, while borders are wide open. (why not have TSA on the borders fondling all the gate crashers instead of at the airports? —just a question)

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  66. helen highwater November 22, 2010 at 12:08 pm #

    Ever heard of the Titanic, Paul?

  67. ozone November 22, 2010 at 12:11 pm #

    “I enjoy reading this blog, as entertainment. However, JHK takes a set of real problems and blows them way out of proportion. There are too many people who are too invested in this system (by this, I include myself and probably 99.9% of the people reading this blog). This ship is not going to go down in flames. It’s going to list this way and that, and we’ll all get through it somehow, largely intact.” -Paul
    Sure, I understand your viewpoint and your argument of “prior investment” as a “reason” to continue BAU.
    What STILL puzzles me is why it might be important to you to “debunk” the concept of The Long Emergency? How does this benefit you, personally?
    I feel I must ask this, because I certainly fear for my continued existence when the psychologically unprepared vent their anger at the crushing loss of the unending “lifestyle” upon those of us who have calmly gotten to work preparing for just such an eventuality.
    Yeah, “life ain’t fair”, but this [denial] attitude will get a lot of people killed.
    “…we’ll all get through it somehow, largely intact.”
    Do you really think so? I’ll place my bets heavily on the other side of that balance, thanks. (And there certainly is no joy or thrill in that; I’ve enjoyed the era of “over-abundance of every-damn-thing”; make no mistake.)

  68. ozone November 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm #

    Wait a minute now…
    JHK gives another missive on how he thinks things may shake out (which leads to what one might do to prepare), and we get, what? MORE DENIAL that anything earth-shaking might be going on!
    I find this a good indication that something really IS going on.
    …Okay, how does it help any of us who believe “this sucker’s goin’ down” to tell us, “don’t worry, be happy”? So we’ll go along? Are we a “danger to normality”? What is the MOTIVE?? Borg-like, “resistance is futile”? Extreme lack of imagination on my part? WHAT? Tell us!
    Perhaps my creeping paranoia is showing, but, man, I’m not getting this!

  69. seb November 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm #

    Hello, again. I was able to re-register under my same old name. I got myself kicked off this site a year ago during a spirited runaway positive-feedback loop of verbal repartee with other readers who were, I may say, racist and critical/inflammatory, not that they all received similar sanction. One came back under another name. I did not want to do that. I should not get kicked off again since I do not believe Mr. Kunstler is vindictive.
    What would I have to say? I have fifteen posts worth of dialog in my head already discarded, so it’s not that. Actually, I see too many instances of a psychic connection to JHK. This week, it is the map of Australia (students of spelling, it is INFRASTRUCTURE (from an Architect, I can’t find the post), that country’s name I would have misspelled “Austrailia”), I saw, because a library patron left a picture book on the table I was at, with the Aboriginal seasons and what “bush tucker” you can eat in each one, in the children’s section (I have a child, I wasn’t trolling for one). I got a comment on my website from Brisbane (capital of Queensland), and I met visitors at the San Diego Zoo from Adelaide, so I just went, “A book like this will have an adequate map towards the front”, and it did. I memorized them. Perth is the one I already knew, from the “Square Mile of Gold” (it’s in the SW). Sydney hides below Melbourne; you have to go around twice to see it).
    What unifying concepts can I present? JHK is at over 500 posts under this name, CFN. The man is Jewish, and many such are phenomenal men of letters. I recently discovered Thomas Szasz, anti-psychiatric psychiatry professor, and, similar to JHK, a New York Jew. I just do not think Jewish-American is the politically-correct eponym (epithet?). The Diaspora (capitalized), refers to Jews. It’s important, it’s historical, it’s something to be uncomfortable about. Is it relevant? Well, that depends upon the success you have denying JHK’s conclusion about the fate of the USA. I’d search high and low for reasons we will survive and he is wrong. Perhaps the “we” he talks about doesn’t connect to me or my offspring.
    But no, it’s overwhelming. This is his work. He travels the world (I guess somebody grabbed his balls earlier today. I should give it a miss on that one), and plane tickets aren’t free. People must be listening. He developed a thesis and it was spectacularly correct. They put him on CBS News. Now we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that is always scary, or else his message was a short-lived, flash in the pan kind of deal.
    We can always hope. I am “into” Stage IV cancer now, if anyone else is.
    http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/12/hitchens-201012
    That’s “Miss Manners and the Big C”, December 2010 Vanity Fair.
    BTW, they can put almost any cancer into a stable state, it seems, at a cost of $100K every six months. The nature of a huge die-off has to be re-examined. You can’t luck right out of the future, I mean.
    JHK has crammed his post chock-full of wonderful references to read, but I have simply got to fill out reams of lovely forms for benefits, uh, first!
    P.S. Break on “thoo”, the song, was that about being dragged unwilling into a scary future? I guess, but it is a truth we did not know then. I think the readers of this site are over 50, making the early death of the heroes of our lifetime just an exception to the rule. They opted out of explaining the heightened reality of a year so far down the road as this.

  70. asoka November 22, 2010 at 12:26 pm #

    lsjogren said on November 22, 2010 at 10:54 AM: “Are you serious? You think those Democratic clowns have any more clue what faces our country than the Republicans do? If so I encourage you to provide some evidence.”
    Evidence can be found in the platform of the Democratic Party, which is formed, neighborhood by neighborhood, in an open and grassroots fashion. And I quote:
    “For decades, America has been addicted to unsustainable energy sources and bound to the status quo by special interests.”
    SOURCE: “We Stand for Energy Independence” at: http://www.democrats.org/issues/energy_independence
    Now, lsjogren, do you disagree with the Democratic Party statement: “For decades, America has been addicted to unsustainable energy sources and bound to the status quo by special interests.”?
    If you are interested in exactly what the Democrats have done, under Nancy Pelosi’s able leadership, I can provide that evidence as well.
    One more comment. In my personal opinion, men should be voted out of the Congress and replaced by competent, effective, and professional women like Nancy Pelosi.
    Consider this Nancy Pelosi quote about John Boehner:

    “He is known to cry,” explained the California Democrat, who was recently elected to lead her party once again when Congress returns in January. “He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills.”
    Pelosi went on to draw a distinction between herself and her Republican colleague.
    “If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that,” she said. “But when it comes to politics — no, I don’t cry. I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally.

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  71. asoka November 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm #

    LBendet said:

    According to Pepe Escobar, also of the Asia Times, this war will be infinite since we want to keep an eye on all things going on with Russia and China in the region, to hopefully foil their efforts to dominate the resources of central Asia.

    We do not have infinite oil to wage infinite war. I would say about 46 more years, max.
    The Pentagon and/or the White House is fantasizing about conventional warfare in a world where conventional warfare is no longer a winning strategy … nor possible to wage as “infinite war”

  72. ozone November 22, 2010 at 12:40 pm #

    “There’s no guarantee that the USA will hold together as a continent-sized federal republic, and if history is any guide the fact is that political boundaries constantly shift over time. Manifest destiny is looking less manifest these days. If anything, the federal government can only become more broke, more ineffective, and finally irrelevant. If there is any Big Brother, he will show up in your county courthouse in a cheap suit.” -JHK
    IRRELEVANCE…
    Dig it? (Just to reiterate, in case it was missed the first time. The loss of “central control” is one of the MOST important parts of preparation; no more handouts from Big Daddy. Get busy NOT expecting things from those who’ll have no ability to provide.)

  73. asoka November 22, 2010 at 12:42 pm #

    The Mook said: “How can JHK be so glum when he is free to buy General Motors stock again? Hasn’t he read about the latest capitalistic triumph?”
    Why is it that when Obama takes over GM he is called a socialist.
    Why is it that when Obama’s socialism succeeds, it is called “the latest capitalistic triumph”???
    We need more socialism in this country … more equitable distribution of wealth in a steady-state economy instead of destructive capitalistic growth.

  74. ozone November 22, 2010 at 12:43 pm #

    …On to the Happy-Talkers Hall of Smoke and Mirrors (and the blowing of aforesaid smoke up where it doesn’t smell so nice); I’m done.
    “…If you have any poo; fling it now.”

  75. neckflames November 22, 2010 at 12:44 pm #

    A good book on the subject of why growth is supposed to be good is Peter Schiff’s “How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes”.
    Growth. The Growth of Growth. The ideology of a cancer cell is how our economy works.

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  76. Smokyjoe November 22, 2010 at 12:58 pm #

    Though I like the Doors quite a bit and “The End” in particular, I’m an Xer.
    My peeps took cynicism to heights not seen since the Lost Generation–the prior bunch of worthless losers and cynics, some of whom were damned fine writers, who might compare to Gen X.
    So, ever in the service of snark and slack, I might suggest Elvis Costello’s “Waiting for the End of the World” as a better theme-song for this blog and, in fact, all of us Kunstlerians.
    Rock on, Doomers!

  77. asoka November 22, 2010 at 12:59 pm #

    Here is another take on growth fallacies: Herman Daly’s writing on steady-state economics at http://dieoff.org/page88.htm

  78. Draupnir November 22, 2010 at 1:05 pm #

    BINNEBROOK, the basis of our money is a ponzi scheme based on ever-increasing debt. All of our money, every single dollar of it, has been borrowed into existence. What you must understand is the debt itself is borrowed into existence – but the money to pay the interest on the debt is never created. At any one time there is more money owed then there is money in existence. Always. Debt as money, for obvious reasons, has been compared to a game of musical chairs. This is why there must always be growth because if growth falters, the music stops and the scramble for chairs begins. The mathematical law of exponents precludes continual and increasing growth in a closed system, a fact that is taught in grade school, which brings us back to the bacteria in a petri dish metaphor.

  79. DaveInDenver November 22, 2010 at 1:11 pm #

    NPR, The New York Times’ ugly twin on the radio, runs an industry-sponsored press release today too.
    Lack Of Drilling Permits Hurts Small Energy Firms
    I guess big energy and little energy just can’t get a break. Big surprise, right? Well, I guess the American Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) is getting their money’s worth out of their NPR advertising dollars, aren’t they?

  80. Tancred November 22, 2010 at 1:15 pm #

    “Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!”

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  81. steve from virginia November 22, 2010 at 1:21 pm #

    Hard to recognize end games until you are in the middle of one. The current ‘Denialist’ regime is at the end of its rope. There isn’t enough spare capacity in the society to afford more figureheads and fashionistas as policy makers.
    I suspect leadership in the developing nations to come from the periphery. Ireland is a good candidate; to re- evaluate then shrink personal auto transport and large fuel imports, to renew and reform agriculture, to shift away from centralized industry to go back to the soil. Japan is another candidate.
    The Luddites were right, the real problem is manufacturing and economies of scale along with an obsolete ‘throughput’ model.
    Even with large fuel cutbacks there will still be immense quantities of available energy for future use, not waste!. A non- waste US economy would be auto free — there is not enough profit to support an auto industry — and far more craft oriented.
    The concept is to decentralize and de- industrialize. The culprit is efficiency. We need to become a lot less efficient.
    A look around any US town older than the 1920s reveals what local production can accomplish. Look at the older buildings and their exotic decorations. Most small cities in the US had foundries, masons (and local quarries), window and glass shops, woodworking and cabinet shops, boiler makers and blacksmiths, brass/copper and tin shops, brewers and paint mills, butchers/meat processing; some had book publishing, almost all cities and towns had printers even multiple daily newspapers. There were also hosts of businesses that supported these.
    This is unlike today where the primary local business is government managing transfer payments to individuals.
    The challenge is to employ as many as need jobs so the solution is more skill jobs and less automation. This will be the greatest problem — — as with farming — much has been forgotten.
    Since skill- based localized artisanship was a comfortable social endeavor prior to mass production and monopolies, returning to this state is likely and would represent an improvement.
    … and the US would hold together and not dissolve into any more chaos than exists in auto- mad America right now.

  82. jackieblue2u November 22, 2010 at 1:23 pm #

    Thanks for stereotyping all of US.
    Hey I know many many people that are decent and honest etc. Probably not the ones’ In Power Tho Unfortunately.

  83. cato5555 November 22, 2010 at 1:23 pm #

    As a big fan of Jim’s for some time now I’m always interested to read his current musings on the state of the American economy and society. Despite the rumblings and uncertainty of the present day recession/depression I think we’re actually in for a “lost decade” like the Japanese experienced in the 90’s. It will be a time of denial, missed opportunities, and just plain muddling through. Joblessness will stay about where it is with both political parties braying to the electorate on a daily basis about job creation. There will likely be marginal improvements with gradual increases in the numbers of low paying/part-time/temporary type work, with each down tick in putative unemployment “numbers” ,however minute, a source of relief for the politicians and news(infotainment) media. Slight gains combined with things like extended unemployment benefits and maybe some betterment in the health care system will take the edge off real revolt. Obama will almost certainly be re-elected by a landslide due mainly to his 2012 opposition who will be the most extreme cracker/ Tea Party candidate (think Palin crossed with Mike Huckabee)deemed acceptable to the public.
    The real changes to life in America will revolve around two things. The first has to do with how gradual our decline is; a long slow one gives citizens time to adjust and thus moderate the likelihood of extremism. The second factor is based on how much longer it will take for ordinary working people to realize that the so called free market has ruined their lives and thus to begin new thinking. This will require getting beyond the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome for millions of self-deluded Americans who presently see their country’s troubles rooted in moral, religious, or Biblical inattention.
    What I tend to fear in the coming long emergency is not the advent of JHK’s fabled “cornpone Nazis” but rather a new raft of feel-good centrist technocrats in the mold of Clinton-Gore who compose alt fuel arias for the next decade or so and merely prolong our avoidance of real alternatives. I have thought for a long time that the so called American Dream was really nothing more than a post_WW II journalistic trope falsely converted by chronic boosterism into a theological tenet for the American people. The real American dream took place a long time ago when a constitution was written that(barely) began to guarantee liberty and justice for the ordinary citizen. In the 20th century we managed to conflate unremitting materialism with freedom, and thus……..this.
    Happy Holidays from the deep south.

  84. katbalou2 November 22, 2010 at 1:25 pm #

    I’m inclined to believe it will be a far more subtle transition as opposed to some disruptive event. I believe that the Chinese will begin to “reinvest” (as we have seen recently with their purchase of a good portion of GM) in what remains of our corporations, assorted businesses, defunct mortgages (read that “land and real estate”), you name it. If you will forgive me for being indelicate, the US populace will become the new “coolie labor” for China. What a concept! T’would appear that the worm has turned, indeed.

  85. jackieblue2u November 22, 2010 at 1:27 pm #

    Oops my bad. You said few weren’t corrupt. Sorry.
    But it’s more than a few also.
    There are so many people here to begin with, it does feel like a screwed up mess. It IS a screwed up mess.
    okay Seasons Greetings to all !

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  86. jackieblue2u November 22, 2010 at 1:33 pm #

    Made of what ? haha.
    Curried Kunstler ? Oh JHK please laugh at this.
    I hear that the Kiwis’ are very hospitable people.
    I have a friend now who is from NZ. One smart cookie.

  87. San Jose Mom 51 November 22, 2010 at 1:33 pm #

    Helen,
    In JHK’s defense, he has to sell his books to make a living and book tours are just part of the job. I’m thankful that he hosts this site.
    He’s an influential man, and personally I like that his ideas about architecture are being spread throughout the world. It’s all good.
    Jen

  88. jackieblue2u November 22, 2010 at 1:36 pm #

    It’s call Rule by Fear…

  89. mika. November 22, 2010 at 1:37 pm #

    Thanks for stereotyping all of US.
    ==
    You’re very welcome. 🙂
    The problems in the US are deeply cultural. The minute you count yourself as part of that culture you have nowhere to run. Pointing the finger at the banksters is just another lie in the grand total of complete moral and cultural bankruptcy.

  90. mila59 November 22, 2010 at 1:45 pm #

    Out here in the perimeter there are no stars…
    Out here we is stoned…immaculate.

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  91. turkle November 22, 2010 at 1:45 pm #

    Even the basket case continent of Africa can run cell phone networks.
    Speaking of which, I think we have a blueprint for what America looks like “after the fall.” Pick your favorite 3rd world heck hole. Somalia is my favorite. But I kinda (maybe) believe we won’t fall that far, because central government here is not likely to fall apart so totally.
    As far as the oil dependency goes, it turns out the down slope is (thus far) pretty gentle.
    Of course, we always talk about getting what we need…uh, what about everyone else on the planet I wonder? Americans don’t tend to think of them so often.

  92. asoka November 22, 2010 at 1:47 pm #

    Could re-localization and permaculture efforts be aided by the disappearance of the World Wide Web?
    Is Facebook a threat to the continued existence of a neutral World Wide Web?
    The founder of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee thinks the Web is in danger. Read more here:
    Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web

  93. turkle November 22, 2010 at 1:47 pm #

    Oh, and Peak Oil and decline is a certainty. It turns out that the timing is more extended than previously expected. Those oil companies are technically ingenious. It could be 50 years, could be 100, but at some point we will be using MUCH less oil than today.

  94. Binnebrook November 22, 2010 at 1:59 pm #

    Antimatter said…”To see the future, go back to the 30’s. California charging people on the run from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl $50.00 to enter the state. Model T’s from all over the country carrying entire families from job to job picking produce. Meanwhile, the elite were doing just fine up in Chicago, over in LA, in NYC, in Boston. We’re rapidly heading back there.”
    It’s important to remember that the Great Depression was accompanied and exacerbated by an ecological catastrophe on a scale equivalent to, oh, I don’t know, Krakatoa? The Year Without a Summer? the Black Death? Anyway, it was a very big deal, the Dust Bowl, precipitated by the breaking up of the ancient steppe-land in middle America and the farming practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

  95. Hancock1863 November 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm #

    (this post is also for Beantown Bill)
    You said:

    Ah, but have you considered that Vlad and Mika may be one and the same (a Holy Di-inity, if you will)?
    Classic disinformation technique. Vlad rails against deceitful, racist “Joos”. Mika exemplifies aggrieved, spite-filled “Joo” in response. Fine and self-reinforcing repartee ensues. Ties in very neatly, doesn’t it?

    Well, shit fire and save matches! Great minds really do think alike! I swear to you that I had just begun having that very thought as I concluded my last posts from the previous week and was going to post my suspicions with this very first post of this week.
    Then I look and see you beat me to it. Bastard! 😛
    Given what we know about the internet and the nature of human beings, it seems that there is at least a 50-50 chance that Mika is actually a member of the Aryan Nations, pretending to be what they perceive to be a typical “Junior Elder of Zion” or whatever such nonsense. Probably closer to a 70% or 80% possibility he is that or something like it.
    Aryan Nations Mika is such a caricature, alternately running hot and cold, shifting tactics with the virulent vulgarity and seldom actually answering a question unless it forwards his getting his Aryan Nations Ideal of what Jews REALLY think out there and fooling people into believe that Jews are exactly as Vlad portrays them.
    I just started to realize this yesterday, and anyone intersted in confirmation, view Mika’s posts in the last couple days of last week’s “Sixty Lame Minutes” discussion thread keeping this hypothessis at the forefront of your mind, that Mika isn’t Jewish but is Vlad or one of his pals playing a Jew for their own amusement. See if it doesn’t make sense.
    In which case, BeantownBill, I do apologize for leading you to reveal the horrible story you getting beat up by people you thought were your friends, simply because you were Jewish.
    That must have thrilled Aryan Nations Mika to no end, even as he strokes you and flatters you, snickering his secret Aryan Nations laugh behind his anonymity.

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  96. Vlad Krandz November 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm #

    Commies like Pelosi are usually very hard people. To the extent they get weepy, it’s about things like the Revolution or seeing naked black and white babies together. About abortion on the contrary, the “fetus” (baby) is just biological waste. Marriage – for gays and just a contract. Sex, a purely biological process, but political as well: gay is good, gay is great.

  97. okie November 22, 2010 at 2:15 pm #

    just a ancedote on phone service…
    my parents live in rural OK. their landline has not worked for several months, and no amount of calling the phone company robo-line or visiting the office in town has made an iota of difference. they, and i, think the phone company is just hoping everyone out in the boondocks will opt for a cell phone and cancel their landline and then the company will not have to spend money fixing their ratty lines. plus cell phone plans are more expensive – nice gig, huh?

  98. Newfie November 22, 2010 at 2:18 pm #

    “This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.”
    – TS Elliot
    IMHO… There won’t be a collapse. Just a steady deterioration and gradual crumbling. Smeared out over 20-30 years.

  99. lbendet November 22, 2010 at 2:24 pm #

    Of course we don’t, Asoka. That’s just part of the craziness of our MO.
    I’m having a good laugh about our denial in yet one more area of utter waste. We will continue to spend many more billions on this illusion that we can get the Afghanis to fight against themselves.
    But more importantly, what I was talking about was the recent expansion into Pakistan.
    Big tanks, big problems. The air-strikes from the drones in Pakistan has just expanded into a ground war.
    Guess we couldn’t let the Pakistanis control their own nukes!

  100. turkle November 22, 2010 at 2:31 pm #

    What are you on about weirdo.

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  101. mika. November 22, 2010 at 2:37 pm #

    Aryan Nations Mika is such a caricature, alternately running hot and cold, shifting tactics with the virulent vulgarity and seldom actually answering a question unless it forwards his getting his Aryan Nations Ideal of what Jews REALLY think out there and fooling people into believe that Jews are exactly as Vlad portrays them.
    ==
    I see.
    So Aryan Nations Mika (previously, according to you, Mossad Mika) is a really only a “caricature” of a stereotype. So what exactly are “da jooz” like, Mr Jew expert? Maybe you can enlighten us with your knowledge.

  102. Vlad Krandz November 22, 2010 at 2:40 pm #

    I aint no Mika, but you’re not totally off. All Nationalism movements share similar characteristics. German Nationalism was reborn in the struggle against Jewish Nationalism in Germany. After WW1, the economy collapsed and Jews were buying up everything. Then it came to light that the British Jews had contacted Balfour with a proposition: give us Palestine and we will bring America into the war. Needless to say, all this caused a bit of bad feeling among the Germans when it bacame known. But nonetheless the Nazis and the Zionists had some common cause – to get Jews into Palestine – and they did cooperate for a time.
    I don’t condmen Mika’s Nationalism, his love for his Race/Nation – but he does condemn mine, as do you. In its place, your ideal is the “country” – a deculturated, deracinated political zone that has no real reason to exist except to enrich the Elite of the country. For all his faults, Mika would never fall for monkeyshines like this. Of course he is a consumate hypocrite for condemning in others what he embraces for himself and his people. Another example: Jared Diamond is a typical modern anthropologist and doesn’t believe race is real. But he is on record lauding modern DNA technology because it will help them determine who is and who is not a Jew.

  103. myrtlemay November 22, 2010 at 2:43 pm #

    Okay, get ready to scroll, but here goes nothing. First, I’ve been criticized on this post for failing to offer solutions (and mouthing off crudely at posters who piss me off). Sorry. I’m old and cranky. You tend to get that way when your body is almost constantly racked with pain due to the physical ailments of age…still – no excuse for bad manners.
    I humbly suggest that it is simply not true that I don’t offer viable solutions (albeit on a small scale). I’ve frequently stated that keeping and being mentally and physically fit will help keep you morally, if not necessarily financially fit. I mean it. Lose weight. Believe me, if I can do it, ANYBODY can. Pay off any and all debts as quickly as possible. My mortgage is mostly paid off, but I think I’d be in a slightly better position renting at present. I no longer advocate university education for all (American kids spend to much of their “study” time in the pubs – and at what expense? Try not to have any more babies. Yeah, I know they’re cute as the dickens, but they’re also expensive. Wear your clothes until they are thread bare. Reuse EVERYTHING you have. Try to support local farmers markets in your area..and WALK there if you possibly can.
    I gave up travel by air a few years ago after a major run in at the “grope and scan” section. Really upset the hell out of me. (By the way, kudos to the lad who stood up to those NAZI interrogators at the TSA. I hope all of you who must endure travelling the “friendly skys” engage in PEACEFUL, non-confrontational protests). When I must travel by car, I try to consolidate my errands. The gas in my car (to me) is “liquid gold”, meaning I cannot possibly afford to waste it as I’m on a fixed income.
    And PLEASE try not to support the giant corporations (Macy’s, Bank of America, Sears, et.al. who plan to rape you in the wallet this holiday season. Offer a gift of babysitting, knitting a scarf, mending a jacket, baking a cake, cooking dinner for a shut in, instead. And if you MUST buy (and face it, sooner or later we’ll all need that replacement toilet seat cover) try like heck to buy AFTER Christmas and clip those coupons! We Americans have too much “STUFF” to begin with. Try to reconnect with neighbors and friends and do a pot luck (no pun intended) instead of going out to expensive restaurants and bars.
    I don’t know about the end-of-the-world stuff. I’m not that smart. We are all going to have to accept the fact that we are all going to have to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. So stay strong in mind, body, and will. And have yourself a merry little Christmas/Thanksgiving/etc. now. Cheers! (Granny must have her hot toddy a little earlier than usual today – caught a major cold last week).

  104. asoka November 22, 2010 at 2:44 pm #

    Lbendet said: “The air-strikes from the drones in Pakistan has just expanded into a ground war. ”
    We are also bombing Yemen, and probably engaging in covert ops in other nearby countries. But there are four countries we are actively bombing from the air.
    This Long Emergency is going to be painful for many, not just for the USA.
    But I expect there will be active resistance to USA aggression in 2011 on USA soil. When Obama said the date to leave Afghanistan was moving to 2014, the Taliban responded that the foreign occupiers would be forced out before that date.
    One way the Taliban/Al Qaeda can make sure the USA leaves before 2014 is to make continuation of the war too costly in terms of USA casualties on USA soil.
    Think taking out a couple of coastal cities with suitcase nukes. If USA troops are not withdrawn after the first nuclear attack, I’m pretty sure they would be after the second. Coastal cities are too important to risk to further attacks.
    Of course nobody is talking about this openly. The official line is that our Homeland Security is protecting us from such nuclear attack. I suspect 2011 will prove that wrong.
    How am I doing in the doom ‘n gloom department? Batten down the hatches. War is coming to the USA.

  105. myrtlemay November 22, 2010 at 2:57 pm #

    I find myself in the rare position of having to concur with you. That is, if you are not being sarcastic.

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  106. asoka November 22, 2010 at 3:02 pm #

    Well, wonders never cease!
    Thank you Myrtlemay!
    That was right polite of you.

  107. Hancock1863 November 22, 2010 at 3:05 pm #

    QShtik said:

    Tripp, I too might enjoy a post by Hancock if only he could get a grip on his verbosity … just say his piece succinctly, leaving out all the mamby pamby modifiers which rob his message of power (examples provided upon request). But verbal diarrhea aside, I would be ecstatic if, just once, a post did not contain innumerable references to “RW Authoritarianism.” Truly, it gets old.

    First off, that’s a pretty cogent critique and one reason why I haven’t put you on the “Pay No Mind List” along with Resident Impediment and Aryan Nations Mika.
    Occasionally you have some honest and valid points to make, when you aren’t OCDing or playing the socialite’s “Aren’t I Just So Detatched and Witty?” game.
    But I am not writing to gain converts or power or fame or to make money. If I was, I would surely heed your criticisms, for they are relevant from that angle.
    When I first started posting on CFN, I didn’t bother as much with NAMBY-pamby modifiers, but cut straight to the chase about what I found at the end of 20-30 years of research and personal observation.
    It got in the way of communicating with others, and caused others to believe that I was CERTAIN that things were happening in just the way I described them.
    (facepalm)
    People’s who’s opinion I valued, such as Cash and Progressorconserve, and wanted to speak with further at length, believed in that level of my certainty, because I left out the “namby-pamby” modifers and just went “full guns” in the beginning.
    In order to facilitate discussion with them and others, I started fleshing out my positions with more modifiers, so that we could better understand each other and to show that the 100% certainty I seemed to have early on was nothing of the sort.
    So, now that I have fleshed out my positions with nuance, which takes time and verbiage, I get ripped for having to many namby-pamby modifiers and removing the power from my words due to said addition of nuanced modifiers that reflect my reason-driven positions.
    (DOUBLE FACEPALM!)
    Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, eh?
    Finally, your bitching about my repetive use of “RW Authoritarianism”, as Ozone pointed out, is somewhat disingenuous. If we were in the 1770s, you would be bemoaning my constant harping on the evils of Monarchy and Aristocracy. If we were in the 1850s, you would be bitching about my repetetive verbal diarrhea about Abolition and against slavery. If we were in late 1920s Germany I would be making you sick with my obsession with talking about RW Authoritarianism and the Nazis. If we were in late 1920s Russia I would be boring you with angry talk constantly harping on the evils of LW Authoritarianism and the Commies.
    The only difference, especially in those last two times and places, would be that you likely wouldn’t have to be bored and annoyed with my verbal diarrhea for very long.
    Will it help if I crack the old thesaurus for some synonyms to “RW Authoritarianism”? How about if I find some words that rhyme with “Right Wing Authoritarianism” so as to create a more aesthetically pleasing manner which will make readers more accepting of my verbosity?
    “Light Bling Car-War-i-tarianism?”
    How ’bout “Blight Sting Fool-a-Dope-a-tarianism?”
    That last bit wasn’t very funny, was it, Q? I readily admit I am nowhere near as good as you at the socialite’s game of “Aren’t I So Detatched and Witty?”.
    But then, I have little desire to play that game.

  108. asoka November 22, 2010 at 3:21 pm #

    Hancock1863 said to Q: “If we were in late 1920s Russia I would be boring you with angry talk constantly harping on the evils of LW Authoritarianism and the Commies.”
    Somehow I don’t think OCD-Q would tire of that!
    That anti-socialist piece of crap he posted a while back, full appeal to emotion, tipped me off.

  109. asia November 22, 2010 at 3:30 pm #

    it was so unfair you were banned!
    with mik making this camp runamok or runamik

  110. asia November 22, 2010 at 3:33 pm #

    TRIPP:
    ‘Because instead of legalizing the drugs we love, and taxing them properly, fostering a transparent business relationship, we promote gang warfare and black market perversion?’
    What i meant is miss clintons thrown all this antiamerican guilt at law abiding citizens.
    dont conflate what she said with whether social drugs are to be legal / decriminalized or legal.
    and im so tired of people always saying ‘lets tax it’..for what purpose? to pay govt workers more?

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  111. asia November 22, 2010 at 3:36 pm #

    Earth to JHK:
    ‘ Our oil problems are for real and urgent, despite the arrant nonsense (“There Will Be Fuel”) published last week in The New York Times -a news organization’
    what ???? the media lie and spin!!!!
    what planet are you living on Mr Kunstler??????
    isnt the Times home to krugman and freeman?

  112. lbendet November 22, 2010 at 3:55 pm #

    Just don’t see it playing out quite like that, but we are still in for a world of hurt none-the-less.

  113. mika. November 22, 2010 at 4:01 pm #

    I aint no Mika, but you’re not totally off. All Nationalism movements share similar characteristics.
    ==
    What does German nationalism have to do with France? What does German nationalism have to do with French Jews? What does German nationalism have to do with Poland? What does German nationalism have to do with Polish Jews? What does German nationalism have to do with Hungary? What does German nationalism have to do with Hungarian Jews? What does German nationalism have to do with Ukraine? What does German nationalism have to do with Ukrainian Jews? What does German nationalism have to do with Russia? What does German nationalism have to do with Russian Jews? And on and on.
    What you are, is a lying thieving imperialist blood vulture. You try to mask it under nationalism, but then you attack Jews and their national aspirations. So it’s not about nationalism, because you’re not a nationalist. What you are, is a Nazi imperialist. And I would go further and say that you’re really a Roman Catholic Church stooge and imbecile, because that is really the shadow puppet master from where all this shit emanates from, with the help of the anglo-american money establishment and secret societies.

  114. Bustin J November 22, 2010 at 4:12 pm #

    Shut up, bitch.
    Wow, that felt good.

  115. Bustin J November 22, 2010 at 4:25 pm #

    Seems to me JHK’s whole career is an exercise at railing against a lack of aesthetics.
    The new aesthetics is pretty poor. It lacks depth and history, focus and beauty. The media cult reigns supreme. Our political system is now subordinate in its entirety to the media.
    In the howling wilderness though, facts remain facts; their values remain unmolested. And these facts show a distinct counterargument to a scarcity portfolio. There is enough oil and gas to burn to generate enough CO2 to make frigid believers of the next generation.
    14 trillion dollars slosh around in our economy every year and that is a hell of a lot of dough, no matter how you slice it. 600 billion dollars is still only a fraction. The players are playing the game. To my mind, this is not the time to bunker up. We will not be eating our pets in a Cormac McCarthy Afterworld. No, plenty of cheap energy to go around to keep every strata of douchebag in the country content in their addictions, in their mindless self-indulgences, whether it is being a complete fucking dumbass on a message board, or just a cardboard cutout of a person, shlepping along mechanically with no goals or ambitions in life, a prisoner of personal mythologies.
    Who the hell are you to tell anyone else what to do? Look in the mirror you weak and pathetic creature. I am the same as you; only you try to hard to be your pathetic old self. Time drags us all kicking a screaming into the future. It prefers more kicking and screaming, only most are too busy trying to attract moss.

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  116. mika. November 22, 2010 at 4:34 pm #

    In the howling wilderness though, facts remain facts; their values remain unmolested. And these facts show a distinct counterargument to a scarcity portfolio.
    ==
    I hope you’re wrong. Because the New World Order is the Old World Order. And we already know what that’s about.

  117. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 4:51 pm #

    Rock. On.

  118. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 5:10 pm #

    “Could re-localization and permaculture efforts be aided by the disappearance of the World Wide Web?”
    That’s one of the more interesting questions I’ve ever heard. On the one hand, the idea that my input here has been valuable for that effort is reinforced every week, on-list and off. On the other, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, time that could be spent pushing those efforts more effectively here where I live. In a place that actually affects my family’s survival.
    So the question that begs to be asked next is, is it time to get selfish? If nothing else, it’s extremely valuable for me to hear a lot of the really intelligent discourse that these pages precipitate. I think I’ll stick around for now.

  119. helen highwater November 22, 2010 at 5:23 pm #

    Bustin J, you told me to “shut up, bitch” because I mentioned the contradiction in JHK telling us to live local while he flies around the world. Then you said it made you feel good to say it. If you can’t even be minimally polite on a comment board like this, how the heck are you going to behave when times get really tough? If you get your feel-goods by being nasty to someone else you must be a pretty sorry excuse for a human being. It’s your kind of attitude that makes me really fear for what things are going to be like in the future. Hopefully you don’t live in my neighbourhood.

  120. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 5:27 pm #

    Asoka,
    I’ve got to admit that I find your new – we are so doomed – persona to be refreshing.
    However, I’ll repeat my assertion that you really are not from around here. For example, you seem to lack any understanding of the National mythos of the United States, and especially of our military and political command structure.
    No native American citizen would make a statement such as this and expect to be believed:
    “One way the Taliban/Al Qaeda can make sure the USA leaves before 2014 is to make continuation of the war too costly in terms of USA casualties on USA soil.
    Think taking out a couple of coastal cities with suitcase nukes….”
    A fundamental misunderstanding, Asoka – reflecting thought processes of those born far to the East of the continental US.
    It was the misunderstanding of the Japanese that led to the first use of nuclear weapons on Earth.
    It was the misunderstanding of al-qaeda in thinking that the 9/11 attack would lead to understanding and *surrender?* on the part of the US.
    Think about the ongoing Hellish aftermath of 9/11. This was a “minor” attack and did not involve WMD’s. The hell continues in the middle East – affecting typical Americans only when we are being felt up at airports.
    Those who “know” me on CFN should understand by now that I do not speak as an *ugly American* “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” type.
    But the world should understand that a nuclear attack on the US will likely result in parts of the region that is “given” the blame – turning to glass. And long-term consequences would be damned by our national leadership – probably up to destruction of human life on earth, knowing the US and the way “we” think.
    This does not make me happy. It does not make me proud.
    It is, however, a fact. I would encourage all non-US citizens to spread understanding of this fact around the globe.
    Maybe someone, somewhere, will finally understand that “know your enemy” is THE important doctrine for dealing with the US.
    And that frontal sneak assaults lead to very unfortunate results for the attackers and their countrymen, from a historical perspective.

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  121. BeantownBill November 22, 2010 at 5:30 pm #

    You wrote:
    “The formulae don’t make sense to me. Expansion good, contraction bad?”
    It is the way of the universe. As, I believe Carl Sagan said, “We are starstuff.” Most of the atoms in our bodies were forged in the hearts of stars. When these stars exploded, they spewed out the created atoms into the void surrounding them, where they ultimately became part of the earth and its denizens. Thus we are part of the universe. The universe seems to be expanding – forever. In fact, what is called “dark energy” seems to be accelerating that expansion.
    Since we are made out of the stuff of the universe, it would appear that we mirror it. Our brains are probably hard-wired for a preference for expansion. Given our universal connection, that seems natural.
    Sorry, I don’t mean to get mystical,but our relationship to the natural way is amazing.

  122. Peter Jones November 22, 2010 at 5:37 pm #

    I find the stories and comments a great exercise in foresight thinking. None of us are completely right, and all of us have a piece of the future. A lot of what’s proposed will happen “in time” but on whose time, whose watch
    In the near term – adjacent futures of 5-10 years – the booms and busts within a decade of widespread deflation will leave behind a bitter landscape of haves and have nots. The unevenly distribited future that William Gibson says is here now.
    About 10 years out, more Atwood than McCarthy, the Haves will be locked within their secure villages while the rest, out of luck and money, will inhabit the thriving plebelands of old suburbia. A resource crunch will devastate the middle class, but money will continue to lurch along, devalued but concentrated.
    There is a third way that the democratic people of Cuba demonstrated in their resilience in the Community Solutions (Pat Murphy), Greg Green (End of Suburbia) film How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.
    Unfortunately, these United States are so polarized by Fox News hate speech that instead of working together locally, a low intensity civil war is more likely. The well-organized democratic neighborhoods of the peaceful socialists of Cuba show us how it could be done.

  123. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 5:37 pm #

    Hey, I agree with you on this one too. I drive the I-80 through Pennsylvania almost weekly and the number of towel heads in those big rigs makes me awful nervous as to what they could pull off.

  124. Neil Kearns November 22, 2010 at 5:48 pm #

    I suppose your questioning why we place so much stock in growth as a cure all is pretty central to things now. I look at it like, the way that all addictions work- you experience comfort as long as your blood concentration of the drug is increasing, providing that warm fuzzy feeling whether it’s alcohol, amphetamine, sugar, or the expansion of your TV screen specs or the current SUV’s weight.

  125. k-dog November 22, 2010 at 5:51 pm #

    We chased our pleasures here
    Dug our treasures there
    But can you still recall
    The time we cried
    Break on through to the other side

    The Doors
    But not getting to the other side means nobody will be around to recall anything, as JHK points out at least in North America. Small scale farming and self reliance has not been abandoned everywhere.

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  126. asoka November 22, 2010 at 5:54 pm #

    PorC papertiger said: “Think about the ongoing Hellish aftermath of 9/11. This was a “minor” attack and did not involve WMD’s. The hell continues in the middle East – affecting typical Americans only when we are being felt up at airports.”
    WTF?
    You don’t even connect the dots between post-9/11 trillions spent on military actions to the subsequent USA crumbling infrastructure, 9.5% unemployment, disappearing USA safety net, and the USA economy in the toilet?
    You, the USA, lost the last battle in 2001 because you over-reacted to 9/11, and now you are saying the USA would be stupid enough to over-react again, with Obama as president?
    Maybe you are the one out of touch with America, in a southern America-right-or-wrong Stone Mountain patriotism kind of bubble called Georgia.
    Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. You won’t know from which country the attacks that are coming in 2011 against the USA are being facilitated.
    You won’t be willing to turn 60 countries (including European ones) into glass. The evidence is the planning that happened in Germany for the World Trade attacks did not result in Germany being turned to glass.
    Soon you prideful Americans will know, if you don’t already, what it is like to be under constant seige, to live in fear, and to not be able to sleep in peace. Even in places like Georgia.
    Read this ProCon: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1094604/1/.html
    Are you going to turn Germany into glass because Al Qaeda operates there and plans attacks on the USA there? I think not.
    There is nothing you can do to prevent the defeat of the USA… a defeat that is well underway with the success of the 2001 WTC attacks which destroyed the American economy (with the help of Bush’s over-reaction, which surely you supported as Bush stood on the rubble and said those who did this will pay … but the USA paid and continues to pay).
    You are a weak country now and it won’t take much for Al Qaeda to finish you off.

  127. asoka November 22, 2010 at 5:57 pm #

    Those towel-heads you see are not Muslim. They are Sikhs. When the final blow to destroy America comes, you will be unprepared and won’t even see it coming.

  128. SoylentGreenAU November 22, 2010 at 6:03 pm #

    Hehe I can assure you all that soylent green is not on the menu. Maybe a side of Dal though.
    My nick is just a comment on the world as I see it, not a food preference lol.
    If you have not read Harry Harrisons “Make Room, Make Room”, then you should. It’s a classic, and almost prophetic in it’s accuracy.

  129. lpat November 22, 2010 at 6:06 pm #

    The Costello lyrics almost sound like they’re inspired by the story James Burke tells in the first episode of “Connections” about the passengers trapped in the subway of the great NY blackout.
    In fact, that whole first episode sounds quite eerily like much of what Mr. K. has to say.
    Most of the series is available on YouTube. Highly recommended.

  130. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 6:12 pm #

    Oh yeah, we are that stupid. Stupid like a missile!
    At least our leadership and our military is.
    “…you are saying the USA would be stupid enough to over-react again, with Obama as president…”
    I think now the overreaction would be worse with Obama than it would have been with McCain.
    Yep, that’s us, stupid like a ___________!
    The rest of CFN can fill in that blank.
    And, regardless of where the attack originates, some strategic region – not Germany – will be getting the blame and turning to glass.

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  131. Bustin J November 22, 2010 at 6:17 pm #

    Asoka roused rabble: “Soon you prideful Americans will know, if you don’t already, what it is like to be under constant seige, to live in fear, and to not be able to sleep in peace. Even in places like Georgia.”
    Are you from Central Casting, or what?

  132. ozone November 22, 2010 at 6:22 pm #

    Oho!
    …And shortly after your post, who should appear? (No, not a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.)
    None other than the vaunted personage[s] of those whose names the god-fearin’ dare not speak! One after the other [though the same], no less. I nearly choked on me Guinness (and losing any of that would be a blasphemy of damning proportions).

  133. Neil Kearns November 22, 2010 at 6:25 pm #

    My favorite line about Cohn:
    According to Republican political consultant Roger Stone, for whom Cohn was a role model, Cohn’s “absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded in that.”[19] He is buried in Union Field Cemetery in Queens, New York.(from the wikipedia page)

  134. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 6:30 pm #

    Good questions, Binnebrook –
    Others have done a good job explaining the “economic expansion” thing.
    I’d like to take a closer look at:
    “Why is bigger considered to be better?”
    I truly do not know the answer to this question. My family has a relatively small (new and energy efficient) house. We just bought a small and efficient car. We’re outliers, as far as BIGGER being better in the US.
    Is bigger/better uniquely American? Is it Western? Is it a product of stupidly cheap and subsidized energy? Is it a product of cheap and exploited labor?
    I have no idea!
    I’m trying to put an honest question out to CFN.

  135. lpat November 22, 2010 at 6:33 pm #

    Bageant (Algorithms and Red Wine) says that a “gallon of fossil fuel contains the energy of 40 man-hours.”
    The problem isn’t “efficiency.” It’s that we confuse work, calories of energy, money and cheap fuel. Trust me, when TLE hits–when our arms and legs are the main way we make things happen–we’re gonna love efficiency.
    If you use 10 gallons of gas going back and forth to work–and who uses that little anymore–you’ve got to produce the week’s work of 10 men just to break even getting there. How’s that gonna happen except by you burning even more fuel? How’re you ever gonna get ahead of that equation? You aren’t.
    Work, real work–even that performed by fossil fuels–and working people are so discounted and devalued in the modern economy that we refuse to think about them in any kind of real terms.
    Oil is just manna from heaven.

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  136. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 6:38 pm #

    “Asoka roused rabble:” – BustinJ
    Who you calling rabble, white? boy?? ;0)
    Asoka’s certainly not from Central Casting, but I do believe he’s from Central (east) Asia.
    Look at all the “you,” “you,” and “you” in his comment about the US responding to a nuclear attack.
    He has no idea how Americans think – but rarely has he demonstrated it with such clarity.

  137. BeantownBill November 22, 2010 at 6:47 pm #

    I suppose what you say could be true, but I don’t beleive it is.

  138. turkle November 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm #

    Anyone read that NYT article JHK linked in his post?
    I found it rather convincing actually, at least that the Peak Oil can will be kicked down the road a little ways. That there is more oil out there than previous estimated is not too far out. The initial reserve estimates are oftentimes quite low, for various reasons, one of them being that engineers are naturally conservative and cautious people. This increase in reserves has been seen in US fields that were once thought depleted but turned out to have a lot more recoverable oil in them than was previously thought.
    That’s not to say that Planet Earth has a creamy nugget center filled with oil or that one day most of the recoverable oil will be gone, just that the imminent and fast drop off predicted by Campbell et al. is probably not going to be how it all goes down. Probably a good thing too, because our bacon is cooked if it goes that way.

  139. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 6:57 pm #

    a sleigh and 8 tiny reindeer LOL!!
    funny stuff, O3.
    you too, Hancock.
    I had actually hinted at the possibility of Mika not being Jewish several times.
    Evidence:
    1. Misspelling of l’chaim
    2. citing a libertarian website based in Alabama (Ala’freaking ‘Bama??) USA.
    3. other things too boring to mention 😉
    But an Aryan nationer pretending to be Jewish?
    Wow, that’s deep, Hancock!
    And btw, you’re correct about those RW authoritarians – I do believe that’s the way we’re gonna slide – if TS begins to inch closer to TF in these United States.
    And it may be that Q, Vlad, and multiple unknown others believe that the slide to RW Authoritarianism is just hunky-dory!
    Or at least that it’s not n(m)amby-pamby!

  140. Qshtik November 22, 2010 at 7:00 pm #

    the shadow puppet master from where all this shit emanates from
    ==========
    Arghh!! Groan!!
    The awful double (redundant) preposition grates on my ear. Stop Mika, I beg of you.

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  141. budizwiser November 22, 2010 at 7:03 pm #

    You know, we could all play a game to see how we all “sort this stuff” out.
    I’ve noted many times that much of the clusterfuck in discussing peak Oil is a result of the fact that we don’t moderate nor agree upon identical meanings for words.
    What is the “future” you reference? What quality of life change constitutes “shit hitting the fan?”
    How much of the nation’s population must suffer for things to be “chaos” or “suffering?”
    I look for the analogies provided by the rest of the world. Haiti exists, yet rich still live there ignorant of any palpable sense of desperation.
    Most of this nation watched TV during and after Katrina. And in these things I assure you we can see our futures. But we can’t “see” what we will sense of them.
    I can start a game in this web place. A game that starts with facts but allows opinions as well.
    The game starts in the distant future with all “facts” and ends in the near future with mostly opinions.
    The game starts with me assuring you that Sun will have changed so much in five billion years that life on earth as we might know it will not exist. So play along and take it as fact that we know we have less than five billion years left.
    I can also state with some certainty that petroleum production cannot increase at the same rate that it has increased across the last twenty years.
    If there is no energy production expansion like we have had in the last twenty years from petroleum then argue for what technologies and life style changes will negate its effects.
    There you go, all you really need to know about JKs long emergency is that it will have occurred over the next 20 years whether or not anyone writes about it, acknowledges it, or fails to sense it.
    What do you know about the next 20 years?

  142. Jose Camaron November 22, 2010 at 7:19 pm #

    I’m gonna be like Kunstler and predict the future:
    People will not wear “Star Trek outfits“, nor will they dress like “Miles Standish”. They will not beam their consciousnesses onto intergalactic vessels, nor will they use hardtack biscuits to barter for their games from the App Store.
    You see, you have two New York boys whose names begin with “K”: Kunstler and Kurzweil. One is on one extreme, one on the other. They both sell books.
    I’m gonna write a book about the future called “The Future Will Look A Lot Like The Present, With a Few Modifications Here And There”. Think I’ll find a publisher?
    Of course not. To get published, to get people to read your blog and pay you to speak, you have to be _extreme.
    There will be less oil. It will cost more. Less people may drive, and the cars they drive will be smaller. They may drive shorter distances and the government may fund some more Amtrack-like rail systems.
    We will muddle through, buring some coal, building some moderately cleaner nukes, throw in a little wind and solar. Some gasoline, that will cost more….
    The cartoon of 300 million people driving their Hummers to Walmart has never been a universal for this country anyway. Some people live on farms, some live in cities.
    It ain’t exciting, but it’s life. Always has been.

  143. mika. November 22, 2010 at 7:29 pm #

    Arghh!! Groan!!
    The awful double (redundant) preposition grates on my ear. Stop Mika, I beg of you.
    ==
    Heh. Well, dearest Sir, I suggest you lock thee self in Buckingham Palace, and stop mixing with the riffraff. 🙂

  144. Pucker November 22, 2010 at 7:31 pm #

    I am wondering what readers think of the book “Collapse”? The first chapter about the collapse of the Easter Island civilization was impressive. (Society goes to Hell because the people single-mindedly denude the island of trees in order to build giant stone statues.) Thank you.

  145. mika. November 22, 2010 at 7:32 pm #

    1. Misspelling of l’chaim
    ==
    LOL!
    PC, thanks for that. That was a good one. 🙂

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  146. mika. November 22, 2010 at 7:40 pm #

    PC,
    Asoka is correct about his assessment about American resolve. You have none. Better not put his correct assessment to the test. 9-11 was a CIA inside job. The next attack might be the real thing.
    Will you be willing to fight for JPMorgan, the Rockefellers, and the rest of that bankster gang. I don’t think so. And neither will the rest of the US.

  147. mika. November 22, 2010 at 7:42 pm #

    Asoka is correct in his assessment..

  148. myrtlemay November 22, 2010 at 7:42 pm #

    In many ways, what you say rings true to me. I’m old enough to know that we, as a country, have been on the “Walmartazation” phase for about 50 years (most of my life, btw.) Downscaling NOW is an absolute given for me. I do share concerns with fellow posters, like Tripp (love the guy), and Pro (a distant fantasy) that we are ready to embark on some serious shit, the likes of which my parents’ generation only dreamed of having experienced. I remember very well, October, 1962. An absolute nightmare for me, a young mother with small tots (look it up, those of you under 50). We are (and have been) indeed living in a cartoonish world which absolutely must end…whether we, the unwashed masses, wish it to be so or not.
    When TSHTF, it may, as Asoka pointed out earlier, end up on our own turf. In that case, heaven help us! I do know that the majority of the world is getting more sophisticated in the use of nuclear technology and the use of “dirty” bombs.
    Oddly, I’m not too terribly afraid of this crap. I’ve been fully aware (thru newsreels and tv shows) of the horrors of nuclear war since the 1940’s. That is not to say I WANT any of this crap to descend upon us. I most certainly do not! And YES, it concerns me greatly. I have a family. My greatest hope is that we can get out of this world situation as relatively unscathed as possible. Alas, I dare say, I don’t think it is either possible or probable.

  149. latchkeykid November 22, 2010 at 7:49 pm #

    again, the first asshole to comment here uses the spotlight to proclaim “first”.
    How come health care didn’t factor into this article? With so much dispair hanging around the corner won’t affordable health care be a real issue?

  150. Pepper Spray November 22, 2010 at 7:59 pm #

    Very dark this Monday JHK…

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  151. Eleuthero November 22, 2010 at 8:00 pm #

    Good post to Donny-Don about his “opinion”
    that peak world oil production is a decade
    away. I saw that same IEA announcement.
    Ain’t it weird that this IEA announcement
    was treated as an AFTERTHOUGHT on Bloomberg,
    CNBC, and Fox Biz??
    But what’s worse than PRODUCTION is the real
    killer that you pointed out: The amount of
    energy we must INVEST to get a unit of energy
    back!! This is stock-in-trade JHK stuff yet
    so many people on this site pooh-pooh him,
    including self-anointed geniuses such as
    TZA-TZA.
    Tza-tza, as you may recall, called JHK a
    “moron” because it’s only $1500/vehicle to
    convert to natgas and so on. Tza-tza, of
    course, overlooks the entire point-of-sales
    infrastructure for energy. He only looks at
    the raw conversion cost per vehicle. Can
    you imagine, just for starters, the cost to
    convert all gasoline stations to natgas
    stations?? Everything from containment
    vessels to discharge hoses would have to be
    uninstalled and reinstalled. Also, natgas
    is such that there are a lot of SMALL wells
    (which means it doesn’t scale as well as oil
    where seven fields supply about half the
    world’s oil) and when natgas runs dry there
    is NO WARNING. It just stops.
    Tza-tza, in his feverish ardor, overlooked
    that one of JHK’s main points about changeover
    to alt energies is that we LACK CAPITAL. JHK
    is correct. Tza-tza is wrong.
    E.

  152. catman306 November 22, 2010 at 8:34 pm #

    The highway is for gamblers better use you sense
    Take what you can gather from coincidence.
    It’s all over now baby blue Dylan by the Animals
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUmmSIMGm-E&feature=more_related
    200 songs warning of the failures with our climate and environment
    http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F021912A3436BA08

  153. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 8:41 pm #

    I just re-read my last post after having some dinner, and I’m afraid it might come off as more arrogant than I intended. Sorry about that. I benefit more from you guys than you benefit from me, I’m sure.
    Tripp

  154. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 8:42 pm #

    PepperSpray is correct about JHK’s dark piece of writing for the week. Very accurate, PSpray.
    ==============
    But then we have Mika:
    “Asoka is correct….. about American resolve. You have none. 9-11 was a CIA inside job.”
    “The next attack might be the real thing.” ????
    “Will you be willing to fight for JPMorgan, the Rockefellers, and the rest of that bankster gang.” “I don’t think so,” Mika opines.
    =================
    Apparently, Mika’s not from the States either – though the jury’s still out on his Israeli residence.
    Because Mika, you misunderstand. Except for families in the US who have men and women in the service (my large family has ONE, presently deployed in Iraq – and that makes us a rarity), there is no more concern about US citizens being “willing to fight,” as you put it.
    Almost none of our politicians have family under arms. Almost none of the jackasses who shape opinion on Fox news and elsewhere have family in the service.
    War has become a sporting event we watch in the States.
    And if we have a WMD type attack on US soil we’re gonna go even crazier than we already are – vengeful insanity is guaranteed.
    Especially after a nuclear terrorist attack. The US would retaliate. And sadly, tragically for humanity, no fighting for *any one* of us would be necessary – just entering some launch codes and pushing some buttons.
    Again, I’m not proud of this.
    I’m not happy about this.
    But I know my country.
    I wish our jihad enemies had this same sort of understanding.
    We consider them crazy because they want to die for Allah and some virgins.
    We in the US ARE crazy to the point of MADness – the generation in power has been living under the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction our entire lives.

  155. mika. November 22, 2010 at 8:57 pm #

    And if we have a WMD type attack on US soil we’re gonna go even crazier than we already are – vengeful insanity is guaranteed.
    ==
    No, my friend, the US will exercise restraint. And should there be so much as a hint of a disproportional reaction, you will be voted off the island.
    Your days of swagger are over. And you better face up to reality real quick. Ben Shalom Bernanke might be allowed to do his sleight of hand for another year or two, but after that it’s over.

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  156. The Mook November 22, 2010 at 8:58 pm #

    I doubt it. 53, armed, and a member of Tripp’s book club! Sorry Oprah.

  157. Qshtik November 22, 2010 at 8:58 pm #

    Well, wonders never cease!
    =======
    The expression is a question:
    Will wonders never cease?

  158. asia November 22, 2010 at 8:59 pm #

    JD’s books are OK….for careful assessment see the one and 2 star reviews at amazon.
    see what vlad said about him, posted earlier today.

  159. asia November 22, 2010 at 9:01 pm #

    ‘Tza-tza, of course, overlooks the entire point-of-sales infrastructure for energy’
    and many, most overlook the damage to the earth cars do. plus they are made form things that last 100’s 1000’s even 10000 years..so the talk of green cars is a bad joke.

  160. anonymouse November 22, 2010 at 9:01 pm #

    Kunstler –
    i hate to say it but you are waaay off base. have you ever read about the end of the roman empire….it wasnt 10% bad, it was ‘dark ages’ bad….LOL. there was a documentary on about roman tech and i was thinking about the size of population the roman empire could support with everything based on wood and stone. man, they had cut every tree down by the time of christ and they didnt have 1/10 the population we have today.
    without lots of oil and plastic we will have to make everything out of wood and stone…fat f’ing chance with billions of people today. how do you make clothes without oil. bowls/cookware, silverware, car parts, bedding…all out of wood…..ha!?
    we are not going to have a reduced quality of living…we will have a massive die off.

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  161. asia November 22, 2010 at 9:02 pm #

    maybe blame mika..he sets the tone with his numerous posts and adhominems

  162. BeantownBill November 22, 2010 at 9:06 pm #

    The truth is, nobody knows the future. Extrapolating to the future by what is happening now is somewhat valid, but prone to a lot of uncertainty. I see two doomer scenarios consistently played out here: We either have a long, slow slide to irrelevancy or extinction (TLE) or a fast ending (TSHTF), both of which are pretty much the same, only differing by timescale.
    But, how do you really know which one? You don’t. Or other scenarios; we can tech our way out. You got all these good reasons to show why this or that scenario can or won’t happen.
    I believe in the tech future, but I can’t prove it will occur. I think things are going to get hairier and hairier, and TEOTWAWKI will happen, but that’s not necessarily bad, IMO, as Tripp and some others state. It could be a wonderful, but different world.
    It’s funny, but prepping and trying to become more self-sufficient, seems to me to be the 21st century version of a traditional insurance policy – you never want to place a claim, but if you have to, at least you’re covered.
    All we can do, you and I, is enjoy the trip while it lasts.

  163. asia November 22, 2010 at 9:07 pm #

    ‘It was the misunderstanding of the Japanese that led to the first use of nuclear weapons on Earth’
    as in? misunderstanding??????

  164. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 9:14 pm #

    Mika,
    I’m hoping for the sake of humanity that you are correct about this:
    “Your days of swagger are over. And you better face up to reality real quick. Ben Shalom Bernanke might be allowed to do his sleight of hand for another year or two, but after that it’s over….”
    And understand, I have been wishing, hoping, and Praying (praying?) for a less swaggering USA since Ronnie Rayguns was coronated in 1980.
    And as Cash points out, the Chinese have all the best industrial parts of our military industrial complex. But we still have the best of the military part. And we have enough nuke’s to destroy civilization – not a city, country, or region – but CIVILIZATION, several times over.
    And nothing in nature is more dangerous than a wounded predator. So I may hope you are correct.
    But I fear that you are terribly wrong.

  165. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 9:27 pm #

    “‘It was the misunderstanding of the Japanese that led to the first use of nuclear weapons on Earth’
    as in? misunderstanding?”
    Yep – the Japanese thought they could destroy our fleet and then run around the Pacific at will for a couple of years – and that we’d lose interest in the meantime.
    They attacked the Russians in 1905? in a sneak attack – and that worked out OK for them.
    Attacking the US at Pearl Harbor – did not work out so well for them.
    The Japanese misunderstood the US military mythos of “frontier justice” and massive retribution.
    If our enemies today have the misfortune to make a nuclear attack on a US city – they are making that same mistake.
    Make no mistake.

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  166. networker November 22, 2010 at 9:28 pm #

    Jay, from a Long Emergency standpoint, POTS is much preferable to Internet-based “products” such as VOIP, as it generally works when the power is out. I have no idea if JHK is learned on this subject, (I also would like to know what scenario he sees unfolding) but telecoms have to maintain far more infrastructure, (and far more complicated and newer infrastructure) when deploying cellular and regular VOIP than they do with the standard telephone network – in other words, it’s not like they are saving anything on truck rolls now. They certainly are not saving anything on techs, as they must pay engineers who have more complicated training, the fleet maintenance only gets a larger footprint, the equipment deployment is cutting edge optical, and customer service calls are just as numerous when switching to digital.
    “Problem is the towers are all linked to the central offices via cables.”
    Therein lies the rub.

  167. networker November 22, 2010 at 9:30 pm #

    We have never let the Pakistanis control their own nukes. The CIA and the ISI have been in bed together for decades.

  168. mika. November 22, 2010 at 9:30 pm #

    But I fear that you are terribly wrong.
    ==
    I’m not wrong. You will be done in through the credit market. As I said, Ben Shalom has about another two years or so to do his shtick before it’s over.

  169. networker November 22, 2010 at 9:31 pm #

    “The initial reserve estimates are oftentimes quite low, for various reasons, one of them being that engineers are naturally conservative and cautious people.”
    turkle, four words for you: Twilight in the Desert.

  170. networker November 22, 2010 at 9:32 pm #

    Shut up asshat.
    People get to say whatever the hell they feel like “here”, whether Myrtlemay likes it or not. (Yup, feels good.)

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  171. networker November 22, 2010 at 9:32 pm #

    tripp, for God’s sake what are you apologizing for??

  172. BeantownBill November 22, 2010 at 9:35 pm #

    So now we’re arguing about US response to a nuclear attack. Oy, veh! How the hell does anyone really know what the US will do? Just list the most likely scenarios and assign probabilites. We can’t say either ProCon or Mika is right.
    Personally, I’d rather discuss where our society is heading government-wise, not nuclear-war-wise. What amazes me about our political discourse here is the amount of labeling and pigeon-holing going on. What the hell is the difference to you or me whether we are going left-wing authoritarian or right-wing? The issue is what is our life going to be like in the future – which brings us full-circle to TLE, or TSHTF or TEOTWAWKI scenarios.
    Since we are governed by our constitution, doesn’t anyone notice how our liberty has been extremely compromised? Come on, would an American in the 1870’s stand for letting his balls or a woman’s crotch get fondled by a male stranger? Or allow the suspension of habeas corpus; or let his telephone line be tapped (not the 1870’s in this case; or allow the government to take his money and just give it to the bank, etc. etc? We’re no better than the Russians who rebelled against their monarchy and then sold off their liberty for security.
    And our path is taking us on the road to dictatorship. Who cares if it’s left or right wing or fascist or what? Dictatorship means loss of liberty no matter how you cut it.

  173. mika. November 22, 2010 at 9:45 pm #

    The way I see it, the US will soon be selling its aircraft carriers as scrap metal, if the US will still hold together. And I don’t think it will hold together.

  174. mika. November 22, 2010 at 9:49 pm #

    The problem in the US is deeply cultural, Bill. I don’t know how to correct that. Maybe hellfire is the only way.

  175. empirestatebuilding November 22, 2010 at 9:51 pm #

    I have no hopes of making it to the other side and so I live each day like I am in an amusement park that is going to close at the end of the season.
    Aimlow Joe was here.
    http://www.aimlow.com

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  176. progressorconserve November 22, 2010 at 10:25 pm #

    OK, Bill –
    Oy, veh! How the hell does anyone really know what the US will do?
    Truer words were never spoken, IMO, if we truly are closing in on the end of *”empire.”* And that’s really the only point I was trying to get across to non US citizens A and M.
    So let me try to change the subject(s).
    I don’t know why Tripp is apologizing. I’ve never seen him do a bad post – and certainly not an arrogant post.
    And hey, Myrtle, I’m glad you’ve got the hots for Tripp and me. You’re in South Carolina, right. I may drive up there to visit if I can just get that note from my wife. 😉
    I think I’m feeling peevish tonight and taking it out on Asoka, Mika, and CFN at large because I’ve done something uncharacteristic and very un-CFN like.
    We (my wife and I) bought a new car – a super efficient (for gas powered) American (actually Canadian) made crossover sport utility. And I feel bad about the purchase, well just sort of bad. We bought our last new vehicle in ’98.
    And I felt bad for buying a new truck in ’98. And I’ve been waiting since ’98 for TS to hit TF. And actually hesitated this summer because of Macondo and the Gulf – and deliberately did NOT buy a car.
    So we just took the plunge and now we’re lifting up the “battered US consumer economy” single-handedly, it seems.
    And I know, I know, CFN – TS is gonna HTF some day. I just decided that we need a super efficient car so I can go a lot of miles on our LAST gallon of gas scrounging for turnip seeds and a nanny goat when TSHTF.
    And then we can park that super efficient vehicle, turn it into a hen house, and the chickens will enjoy using the sunroof as a speedy exit. And if times get really hard the new goat family will probably enjoy munching on the leather seats.
    So now you know.

  177. mika. November 22, 2010 at 10:27 pm #

    The problem in the US is deeply cultural, Bill.
    ==
    ..This people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn..
    But blessed are your eyes, Bill, because they see, and your ears because they hear, and your heart because it understands.

  178. trippticket November 22, 2010 at 10:39 pm #

    “And hey, Myrtle, I’m glad you’ve got the hots for Tripp and me. You’re in South Carolina, right. I may drive up there to visit if I can just get that note from my wife. ;-)”
    Should I drive the Jaguar or the Hearse, Maude?

  179. seb November 22, 2010 at 10:48 pm #

    Thank you for the vote of confidence, Asia. JHK was not super unfair. That’s how the banhammer works. It is a feature found on websites, a tool, and if there were no such thing, man would invent one. The power is available to the blog owner to retain control of the site. It is an inducement to get good writers to post in a medium which is not a wilderness, which has a measure of safety, a degree of pacification, and not to have them watch their efforts be misused and suffer degeneration into no more than the literary equivalent of a sandbox, a schoolyard bully taking over all the time. I say, “One post a week,” everybody gets. When you are in an ethnic group, nothing is further from the brotherhood of like minds than to witness the opposition POV time and again like shades of the Holocaust. It’s counterproductive to pour out your soul only to cast pearls among swine.
    I see some Vlad Kranz; he was another guy. Asia, you and I communed. Asoka I read a succinct critique of JHK’s post one week; I wish I’d written it. But the Abbeysbooks character put “word salad” on what I wrote, and that question of what is sane or insane reared its ugly head. I say fight the bad creatures first. Let’s not lose focus on what will kill us next. Actually, whether unfairness is systematic or just one person’s take is controlling; JHK doesn’t have to apologize for having an opinion.
    It could be parochial or it could be quaint (it could be senile), when JHK says, “I don’t think plastics, except scrounged ones”, or, “It ain’t going to be nanotechnology”, because it seemed a little coarse-grained. IOW, he shoehorns treatments of “proposed solutions” (JHK said all three of these this week)in his post where he has consulted sources without attribution, MAYBE. He might subscribe to “Futurist”. They had a little high-rise city on the cover, with bldgs made out of words, incldg, “Nano Robotic Self-Generative Communities”, JHK’s bullshit line where he made his bones before going big time and losing his shirt in the market or getting waxed in an online discussion. So, you never know but he might have bigger fish to fry, like a yearning to join country clubs that don’t accept Jews, what Woody Allen calls by the code word, “restricted”. The mortal souls of men are tragically lost when they succumb to the defining blindness of their age. Mark Twain is banned for the N-word. We don’t wish to become incoherent with rage if we want to have civil discourse.
    JHK bent the topic over to George Orwell’s “1984” when he mentioned Big Brother this week, but I ran across another novelist, the equal Jack London, on a work called, “The Iron Heel”, which implies that if we talk about the Cornpone Nazi, then we had best invoke the vision of a facist America you find here. It’s just not as famous, ppl will likely not get the reference. He even suggests that readers won’t get the ref to the Doors. I know why: at the age of 60+, you feel trapped in H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”. I mean, history back 40 or more years is obsolete. You don’t need a weather report from 1968 to know which way the wind blows.
    Blows, blows, yeah, it sure blows to see Sarah Palin. In Australia, a fun-loving ppl who wish to retain their identity moving forward, they always have an out-of-power party to keep the in-power party honest. They sure are simple folk. It was as recent as 2009 we had a changing of the guard in the USA. We will not remove the legacy of author GWB soon. I wonder if he covers the Diaspora in his new book. “It was a mi-GRA-tion”, you can almost hear him defining what it was for us. I want that. I’m a non-Jew; I want my posts to be read in the voice of George Bush. See what he did for the white race?

  180. budizwiser November 22, 2010 at 10:51 pm #

    not worth posting – not worth discussing, whether there is a coherent way of “posting” ….
    It does make a difference – if some one, any one, can write eloquent prose that means something, and is tested in the public’s eye for accuracy and intelligence…..
    Ahhh – the clusterfuck…..

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  181. Imagainstit November 22, 2010 at 11:43 pm #

    When the still sea conspires in armor
    And her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters…
    True sailing is dead!
    Awkward instant
    And the first animal is jettisoned
    Legs furiously pumping their stiff green gallops
    Poise, consent, delicate
    In mute nostril agony…
    Carefully refined and sealed over!

  182. Imagainstit November 22, 2010 at 11:46 pm #

    Or something close to that. This from memory. Scared the shit out of me at six years old.

  183. BeantownBill November 22, 2010 at 11:50 pm #

    Deaths of millions of Americans is something I don’t relish. I don’t agree with you that the US would never retaliate against a country after a nuke takes out an east or west coast city. You could be right, but I don’t think so. As far as changing our culture to something better, I am not so optimistic. I just don’t know if all the bad qualities I’d like to see changed are symptoms of the US or most of humanity. I am cynical, so I think it’s the latter.
    I meant to state in my post of 9:35 pm that my poor country has already been taken over by authoritarian forces – and probably for a long time. TPTB see the rapids coming up downstream and are accelerating their grab of the resources to insure their survival.
    And thanks for the blessing.

  184. mika. November 23, 2010 at 12:19 am #

    Bill, there seems to a lot of misunderstanding, so let me clarify:
    By ‘hellfire’, I mean the ravages of deprivation. This whole scenario of a nuclear war is really PC’s contribution. I didn’t say the US would be attacked with nuclear weapons, quite the contrary. Talking of stamina in the context of a nuclear war is absurd, so that’s obviously not what I was talking about. PC asserted that the US will retaliate to another conventional attack with nuclear weapons, to which I am highly dismissive. I don’t see the use of nuclear weapons as an option. PC does. My contention is that should the US use nuclear weapons, it would be a pariah state for the next hundred years. No one will have anything to do with the US. It will literally be voted off the island.
    I hope that clarifies my position.

  185. BeantownBill November 23, 2010 at 12:32 am #

    Cool. I get it.

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  186. mika. November 23, 2010 at 12:48 am #

    Here are another 2 that get it:
    http://youtu.be/j49_UAxtolc
    I don’t watch TV, but if this is what people are objecting to on FOXNews, and I see a lot of venom directed at Glenn Beck, then I think they really need to have their head examined, because Glenn Beck is spot on.

  187. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 12:59 am #

    Bean and Mika –
    Asoka lead us off down this road to nuclear destruction of US coastal cities – as a way to force US withdrawal from Whereverthehellistan by 2014.
    I was pointing out that Americans – especially our military and political elites – would only harden up their positions and retaliate against responsible parties for such an attack.
    So Mika, I never suggested nuclear retaliation for a conventional terrorist attack. You misunderstood.
    That sometimes happens when we deal with other cultures. 😉
    Cluster Fucked – indeed!
    ===========
    And Bean, I am interested in why you think an authoritarian government in the US could be anything other that RW, given today’s trends of culture and politics.
    Are you seeing something up in Boston that I’m missing down here?

  188. mika. November 23, 2010 at 1:08 am #

    You misunderstood.
    ==
    Then I apologize. I would never want to attribute to you something that you didn’t say or mean to say.

  189. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 1:25 am #

    No problem – thanks for the apology.
    Regarding Beck and the TSA – I watched your youtube link. “Pornography or groping?” was the question they kept asking.
    Pornography? Pornography?? – from millions of distorted and faceless pictures of random flying (mostly overweight) US citizens. Disgusting maybe, but pornography it ain’t!
    This whole controversy is being ginned up out of thin air, IMO. I first heard Rush Limbaugh mention it about 2? weeks ago. Now Fox is running with it – so naturally the “Lamestream” media is piling on also.
    It captures the purient interest. It somehow puts the Obama administration in a bad light. It’s occurring right during the traveling Holidays.
    And it’s probably a distraction from some pocket picking that’s going to be going on somewhere in Congress or around the world.
    It’s perfect in every way for a CF world. ;-(

  190. mika. November 23, 2010 at 1:36 am #

    And it’s probably a distraction from some pocket picking that’s going to be going on somewhere in Congress or around the world.
    ==
    Yes, of that I have no doubt. Pretty much everything on the MSM/CIA propaganda channels is meant as a distraction. I do share your skepticism on that. But I do think that Beck has hit on some truth with his point 3 and 4.
    Btw, the Mises Institute is the premier Libertarian organization as far as I know. Why they have their web servers in Alabama (if indeed that is the case) or why it is significant I have no idea.

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  191. daofirry2 November 23, 2010 at 1:39 am #

    hi everyone, I have always been a lurker but I will try to chip in today. I agree, things do not look good. I helped start a local community garden, and I have gotten my body back into condition to bicycle, or even to “longboard” (long, stable skateboard), fairly long distances. But it’s such a tiny drop in the bucket… I’m still as busted as everyone else.
    I saw a neat website, Strange Maps, with a map of how western America could have looked, if we laid out states according to river watersheds, instead of arbitrary rectangles. Maybe, as we rebuild, in the decades ahead, we can try to bear this type of thing in mind.
    http://bigthink.com/ideas/24964

  192. Eleuthero November 23, 2010 at 2:30 am #

    “tripp, for God’s sake what are you apologizing for??”
    I couldn’t agree more, NW’er. Tripp is too
    damned nice some times. You weren’t “arrogant”,
    Tripp. I think you were just ADAMANT and I,
    for one, like it when people are bold enough
    to make unequivocal statements.
    I don’t think you were a tenth as arrogant
    as someone who called JHK a “moron” and asked
    “does anyone on this site know anything?”
    I think Tza-tza, in saying these things,
    displayed arrogance. Some engineers know
    many specific technical things but then they
    try to exceed the limits of their conclusions
    with unwarranted extrapolations.
    The world is a complicated place and when it
    comes to resources, it’s a maelstrom of
    variables from ERoEI to sales infrastructure
    to general liquidity to human resistance to
    change. In other words, I think Tza-tza’s
    assertion that since it’s $1500/vehicle to
    go to nationwide natgas cars, JHK (and our
    entire society) are “morons” to pooh-pooh
    it.
    If it’s THAT EASY, trust me, it’d be done
    already. Why? Because it’s called the
    oil AND gas industry for a reason. It
    isn’t oil VERSUS methane like it’s oil
    VERSUS biomass or oil VERSUS hydrogen.
    E.

  193. asoka November 23, 2010 at 2:41 am #

    ProCon said:

    I was pointing out that Americans – especially our military and political elites – would only harden up their positions and retaliate against responsible parties for such an attack.

    And I was pointing out Americans know who organized the attack against them in 2001. The American response only created more terrorists than it killed (as Rumsfeld publicly admitted). Al Qaeda is stronger. Taliban is stronger.
    The American will to even coordinate efforts to find Bin Laden faded away when Bush closed down the Bin Laden desk and stopped efforts to kill Bin Laden.
    Big bad military without teeth. No will to fight. No ability to kill Bin Laden. An incompetent and corrupt military of which no one is afraid anymore.

  194. asoka November 23, 2010 at 2:51 am #

    Gross incompetence all over. Another example of incompetence in a theatre of war… while Taliban grows stronger:
    KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
    But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
    SOURCE: New York Times http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40327256/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

  195. LewisLucanBooks November 23, 2010 at 3:43 am #

    YES! “Horse Latitudes.” It was the S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G that got to me. Then to find out that it was based on historic incidents. Spaniards jettisoning horses over the side of the ship when becalmed. Chilling. And maybe not so far off the topic of this weeks post.

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  196. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 8:44 am #

    Love that movie, along with the soundtrack. You bring the Netflix, I’ll supply the popcorn, and Pro, you bring some beer. I got a new “shipment” from my friend, “Sherry” yesterday. Delivered, yet! Smaller than my usual order, but that’s the way it goes. Oh, and pay no attention to the man glaring at you from across my living room. He’s just my diversion when I don’t have you guys to chat with. He’ll get over it. Can’t remember if he’s into that movie or not(short attention span, maybe?) Too young for Alzheimers (54 in January). Reminds me to get started on that sweater for his birthday. Now where the heck are my crocheting needles?

  197. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 9:29 am #

    Any thoughts, CFNers, about this North Korea fracas with South Korea this A.M.? Just got done reading Denninger’s blog, and I have to be honest. I am almost never correct in my analytical assumptions when countries fire on each other (Yemen in 1990s, etc). About the only thing I do know is that the men behind the curtains who pull this B.S. always have some alterior motives. Murder means nothing to them.

  198. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 10:20 am #

    alterior motives
    ==========
    it’s ulterior but we caught your drift.

  199. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 10:31 am #

    No thoughts about the Koreas this morning, Myrtle.
    We’re too busy deciding whether to be groped at the airport OR be porn stars at the airport.
    Jeeze, TSA, why do we have to make a choice?
    Why can’t we do both?

  200. Alexandra November 23, 2010 at 10:35 am #

    North Korea is going through a hand-over period of power (Father to son)…. so you need to keep the folks on the ground, of the home side on song.
    And what do they want? Much the same as what the sheeple in the West really want.
    They want to believe that things will always get better, if not for them, then for their genes (kids), growth is good, recession is bad – and that with the every few years change of govt things will once more come good – this is how democracy works….after all… doesn’t it…
    Does it, does it really?
    And when (Sarah Palin) gets in come 2012 (or any other god, loony-tunes, deity ordained leader type) it will in reality make b#gger all difference anyway – apart from the illusion that any form of ‘change’ is in fact some part of positive progress, which then the lamestream media gets super excited about… and what’s amazing but true with this too oft repeated slight of hand act is….that it works each and every single time, pavlovian reflex anyone?
    So what would a change of captain and shift of helm next time bring?
    No really what, change if ever, given:
    • The accelerating depletion of important resources including fossil fuels, fresh water, food and minerals
    • The increasing and accelerating shifts in damaging climate change
    • Continued financial shenanigans, currency debasing and market volatility due to the inability of our existing monetary, banking, and investment systems to adjust to both resource scarcity and soaring environmental costs
    And lets say you work in a non-sustainable service sector of public sector job, and reside in the (packed-to-the gills suburbs) of a non-resilient city, populated with saturated fat fed lazy folks, with monster senses of entitlement – residing in either the US and UK, what would a change of political regime bring?
    Dare I say an exercise along the lines of rearranging the deck-chairs on the RMS Titanic…
    You see there are simply times CFN’ers where the decisions made that do bring real awful consequences fast, and some journeys that we willing decide to embark upon that do indeed end bad….
    Think any poor f#cker whom willing boarded that American Airlines flight 11 one sunny morning in Logan, headed for LA on Sept 11 2001….
    Sometimes when that imminent SHTF moment actually presents itself… sadly you get that gut-churning moment when you realise the route you’ve embarked upon, well you no longer can simply step-off….
    I think that is exactly where we are – right now kids!
    What we have ticking along here nicely is the doors locked and controls set to automatic, and those directing and flying the system no longer able to read the signs or instruments of what’s really going on…
    And the happy-clappy passengers, well as long as the fizzy sugary drinks and distraction-snacks keep coming…. all’s well naturally!
    But where we’re headed now clear to see….. and it’s no longer way off view….
    So sit back look at the in-flight entertainment and enjoy the ride….
    Be seeing you….

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  201. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 10:38 am #

    I think it was yesterday’s NY Times that ran a couple of pics of an average male from a TSA scan. It was a frontal shot and his legs were roughly at “parade rest” position. His penis dangled straight down perhaps 3-4 inches (soft, shrinkage?) and it made me think that if I were flying today I’d get me a penis prothesis on the order of that monster Mark Wahlberg wore in Boogie Nights. No way I’m gonna be xray’d with puny “junk.”

  202. asoka November 23, 2010 at 10:58 am #

    BANK OF AMERICA IN BIG TROUBLE
    Bank of America may discover that it has millions of loans on its books that it thought it had transferred to trusts that issued mortgage backed securities, because 96% of Countrywide loans were ostensibly securitized.
    As the Congressional Oversight Panel explained, that outcome alone could cause massive damage to a bank’s balance sheet.
    And as bad as that would be, it isn’t the only problem that could result from Countrywide hanging on to the notes.
    If the mortgage-backed securities aren’t in fact “mortgage-backed,” investors who bought them could be able to force Bank of America to buy the securities back. A significant number of buybacks could on its own destroy BofA’s balance sheet.
    Nor could BofA stave off either outcome retroactively by delivering those notes today.
    First, the contracts that created the trusts would typically forbid transferring the loans into the trusts now.
    Second, even if somehow that could happen, such a transfer would destroy the special tax status the mortgage backed securities enjoy and give the investors a different reason to put back the securities or sue over them.
    SOURCE: Daily Finance

  203. mika. November 23, 2010 at 10:59 am #

    Take a pill, Q.
    100 Million People On Drugs: The World Has Gone Insane – http://bit.ly/fJytnB

  204. dale November 23, 2010 at 11:17 am #

    Paul, You’re right!…..this blogs only value is as entertainment. You’re making way too much sense to be posting around here. In this little world hysteria is either the ‘coin of the realm’ or the ‘drug of choice’, ….take your pick.
    Nice to hear from someone who suffered but survived a history of parents who thought they could predict the future….or who listened to someone else that thought they could. No one, and I mean no one, knows what is likely to happen next with any degree of certainty. Guys like JHK make a lot of money misleading people (although I have no doubt Jim is sincere).
    Skepticism is always the best approach to someone who is just absolutely certain his assumptions are correct, and the more certain they are, the more skeptical you should be. Have a good 2011.

  205. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 12:18 pm #

    Take a pill, Q.
    =====
    I assume you mean a “woody pill” like Cialis (for “when the time is right” or you have to travel by air). How unseemly would that be? A 70 yr old man with white hair walking around the airport with a huge lump in his pants and a shit-eatin grin on his face … and then have to consult a doctor because it lasts more than 4 hours;o)

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  206. San Jose Mom 51 November 23, 2010 at 12:39 pm #

    Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go…..
    Not the case in 2010! On his way to San Jose for Thanksgiving, my brother spent the night in a motel in Barstow, CA. Seems the city water wells have been contaminated with jet fuel and the whole city is drinking bottled water. He didn’t even bother to take a perchlorate shower in the morning. I wonder how long it will take to clean up the city well?
    SJmom

  207. messianicdruid November 23, 2010 at 1:32 pm #

    “And then we can park that super efficient vehicle, turn it into a hen house, and the chickens will enjoy using the sunroof as a speedy exit.”
    My grandfather had an old 50’s Pontiac station wagon {huge!} behind his place. All the interior was removed and he kept chicken feed under the hood. Haven’t thought of this in a long time, thanks.

  208. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 1:33 pm #

    A year from now we’ll hear that “Male TSA Pat-Down Agent” has become the new vocation of choice for defrocked Catholic priests ;o)

  209. BeantownBill November 23, 2010 at 1:38 pm #

    Naughty, naughty, Q, but funny.

  210. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 1:55 pm #

    I’d get me a penis prothesis
    =======
    make that prosthesis

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  211. seb November 23, 2010 at 2:24 pm #

    I hate to remind you of sex. I’m androgenous, and boy, am I beautiful. It’s a good thing you can’t see me since when you and I get together, things start happening.
    Sorry, this is my third post. I have a difficult lie. It seems that none of you ever remembered JHK’s birthday. This is ten years now, folks. Sheesh, I’d hate to be you. I forgot too? No, I was B&. This isn’t about me anyway. Worry about yourself. Okay, I did “forget” (I don’t see how as the only cucumber who remembered, I am the one who forgot). All you have to do is say, happy birthday, Kunstler/. You are already posting. This is his only fan club. This is awkward as fuck.
    I deal with people every day, sucker. I know what makes ’em tick (Jack). I have one downstairs now. Nope, in the room. Now it has gone to pee by itself. I bought sugar cane and demonstrated it. Naturally, kid thinks it’s bamboo. Asks me not to kill him. I butter my toast with X-acto knives. They’re sharp.
    A jumble of disconnected thoughts, …well, if it was you, I bet you would want to write it. Do you want to write it, or, do you not want to write it? I have real time impinging upon research and dialog here. How about we cal it a jambalaya, like a soup, a gumbo. Argggggh! Another chance expansion of the topic. It’s “combo”, a fast-food reference. Time out. New paragraph.
    In the misquotation of Break on Through/ by (only) one of you (the rest didn’t notice), we find the adjective “stone”, meaning very. It isn’t that we are stoned AND immaculate. It isn’t, but it is. This adjective served to remind ourselves that we get stoned, yes. Otherwise it’s terrifying kept all bottled up. Rush Limbaugh,a fat person, uses the word, “combo” out of context with foods, in order to sneak in commonality with fat listeners. Clear? “We is stone (this or that)”, and I am also crazy, so that’s to the bone/ (must be the skull).
    Tell ’em about (Appalachia, say), Steve. No, I have a few things to say, but only a few are in nice phrases, and Nick’s demolishing the downstairs.
    I’d like to go to a chronology. First, I am watching HARLAN COUNTY USA. My mother’s from Pike. My son’s half-Colombian. He blends in here (Cali). Hillbillies represent the independence of the West being crushed from rich coal-mine capitalists. It’s been in the news. Y’all are talking about what we are going to do when the coal runs out. They never conceived of it, for that would mean they’d’ve lost their chains, they’d be free, of death and black lung. Sure it’s better in New Zealand.
    Kunstler utilizes Georgia. It’s not on a coal seam. It’s on his radar as a rust-belt or something due to his organization, his “orientation”.
    I thought of Appalachia, I thought of Kunstler, I typed in Kuntler, I got him anyway. I wrote his next post, I used “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, like he uses Morrison today (I know, running over). I pictured him saying, “I’m the Devil and I’m on my way to Georgia, it’s my birthday, …” then I go, “Hey!” I bet something was fucked up, and it seems to be so. The birthday is what Vern Troyer, the midget, has injected into the lexicon from a commercial. It’s a victory dance.
    You’re getting a decent writer for free and you can’t even say happy birthday when it comes around. You ought to be ashamed. There’s a post entitled “Surrealist View”, on the 18th, 645 comments, no celebratory wishes. He is born, not hatched, on a Tuesday, IOW, “Tuesday’s child has far to go (He’s in Aus).
    Ppl twanging on him is code for flying on airplanes; he uses it (twanging) this week, too. Don’t go find it. I can’t leave my son this long.
    Uh, God wants me back in heaven. I won’t be here, but if you want, go to Amazon.com and it will remind your sorry ass what to do and when to do it next year, on the off-chance you are used to computers. Get it? Got it, good.

  212. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 3:08 pm #

    No shit Prog. Mika doesn’t get it either – does not Mica mean a kind of proto-glass? And are not the cities of the plain covered with it? Evidently a higher authority took an exceedingly dim view of their lust and greed. And on that note, didn’t Jay Leno say that if God doesn’t bring the hammer down on us He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology?
    Still with me? Ok let’s come lower down and closer to the Earth. Asoka isn’t an American anymore than Mika is. Being born here doesn’t make your heart American. Forget about the letter of the Law, I’m talking about the spirit. And here’s my point: Asoka isn’t alone, most Blacks aren’t American. After 9/11, the Black Caucus was deeply uspset – they knew their agenda was going to be put on the back burner for a very long time. Realize that your education has blinded you to the basic realities of human life. Your warmed over, PC Christianity hasn’t helped at all but just completed the process. A heart divided against itself cannot stand. Neither can a Nation. Let’s give the Blacks their own Nation in the South. You and Tripp can stay and “enjoy” the ambiance if you want to – but I wouldn’t reccomend it.

  213. Funzel November 23, 2010 at 3:15 pm #

    About peak oil and the shit hitting the fan.Watching the earths volcanic and earth quake activity,I can visualize the huge quantity of caverns created by the extraction of oil creating increased movements of the earths crust.I would not be surprised if the whole middle east will collapse one day.Filling the voids with water,which does not compress or act like a lubricant likely will cause more forceful earth quakes and other seismic movements,not expected.Adding this to our future,I believe interesting times are just around the corner.
    Certainly not millions of sky scrapers and high speed rail.

  214. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 3:37 pm #

    Good questions Mike. Indeed why are modern nations filled with hostile minorities? Such caused the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Hapsburgs. A hostile minority called the Jews brought down Russia and the Romanovs. According to some, the order to kill the Czar and his family came directly from Trotsky (real name Lev Bronstein). Several times Lenin was heard screaming at Trotsky about that – he knew that a weak king had just become a martyr.
    Fess up jude dude. I’m not the first to call the Jews a Nation without borders. It was said by Chaim Weitzman himself – one of the founders of Zionism. Herzl, usualy considered the Father of Zionism, said in his journals that Anti-Semitism was often rational since Jews have agendas contrary to the interests of the nations in which the dwell. A moment of great private clarity.

  215. mika. November 23, 2010 at 3:49 pm #

    I don’t know about Cialis, but maybe this will finally give your woody a slow, painful death.
    http://youtu.be/FPfTrTBImxU
    Enjoy.

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  216. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 3:50 pm #

    Yes Tripp – dollars and other paper are at best “currency” conveying the particles of value that you mention. Only gold, silver, and other things of intrinsic value can really be money. Of course there are other ways to run an economy – you could have paper if it was based on a commodity such as grain for example. And of course you hope for barter – which certainly will become much more important whether the crash is slow or fast.
    Our system was mandated by law to be based on gold and silver. All notes were to be based by those. So we should try to get back to that but realistically we might never. As Ron Paul says, Fort Knox may have been sacked years ago. So we should be ready for barter in any case.

  217. BeantownBill November 23, 2010 at 3:55 pm #

    What? I’m so disappointed – no trillions of skyscrapers or trillions of dirigibles on Jupiter!
    You make me very sad.

  218. mika. November 23, 2010 at 4:15 pm #

    why are modern nations filled with hostile minorities
    ==
    The minorities were invited. And these territories at that time were not modern nations. They were kingdoms and empires ruled by the usual “aristocratic” psychopaths.
    As for the hostility towards these “aristocratic” psychopaths, whether of the French or German or Russian or English or whatever variety, if you had to suffer their depredations or die for their idiotic wars or suffer their endless tax abuses, land thefts, pogroms, political executions, etc., I’m sure you would develop quite a bit of hostility towards these fscks as well. As it was, it wasn’t only the Jews that turned against the Romanovs, it was the entire Russian population that turned against them.

  219. Erik Curren November 23, 2010 at 4:15 pm #

    To have a realistic understanding of how to deal with the passing of oil, we should make sure we really get just how deeply our civilization depends on petroleum. From the turkey, to the candles, to the relatives and friends who flew in to town, every player in every family’s Thanksgiving vignette is brought to us courtesy of black gold.
    “This Thanksgiving, grateful for oil” at Transition Voice magazine

  220. mika. November 23, 2010 at 4:26 pm #

    Jews have agendas contrary to the interests of the nations in which the dwell
    ==
    The only agenda of Jews is to preserve their identity. If your national agenda is the abuse of Jews, the abuse of their national identity and national rights, don’t be surprised by the blow back.

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  221. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 4:35 pm #

    Why is bigger better? It’s a sign of some kind of greatness or power. The best people usually seek more in life – at whatever level. A person who is simply satisfied is either a vegtable or a sage. Usually a vegtable. So the problem is not the quest per se but rather the low level the quest assumes in most people. Examples: some people rebel by overthrowing nations. Lesser being by not flushing the toilet after they use it. Just so with positive growth: some seek “more” by owning bigger and flashier cars. Others by getting super healthy as if they could live forever. Others by building companies. Others by amassing wealth by fraud and manipulation. Others by seeking political power. Others by seeking knowledge. And finally, a few by seeking God – the topmost kind of seeking.
    Sociobiology offers a very useful paradigm here: what works as far as survival of the species? Women have alot of power here and they select men who make lots of money. Until they bring ethics into their criterion, men will try to make money any way they can for the most part – and will be discouraged from seeking at a higher level. If they seek higher, they will probably not make as much and thus be at a disadvantage relative to the men who kept their noses to the grindstone. Thus their genes will not be passed on. This dynamic enchains humanity and has done so for thousands of years. For women to choose not to choose is not any viable answer. It just insures than the Brown and Black Barbarians win.
    Forgive my many posts – I’m snowed in. I expected this but not so damn soon. Maybe the Tripster is right and I should consider settling west of the Cascades instead. It gets colder and colder the farther west you go. And when you go over the continental divide it gets really cold. Havre in Central Montana goes down to -40.

  222. asia November 23, 2010 at 4:38 pm #

    In europe the most popular / common name for a newborn male is ‘mohamed’…..
    Uk tries to close the barn door but maybe the horse already escaped……………..
    ‘We can’t go on like this’
    SO MUCH FOR IMMIGRANTS BEING GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY
    LONDON (AP) — Britain will impose a tough annual limit on the number of non-Europeans allowed to work in the U.K. and slash visas for overseas students as it seeks to dramatically reduce immigration, the government said Tuesday.
    Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons that the number of non-EU nationals permitted to work in the U.K. from April 2011 will be capped at about 22,000 — a reduction of about one-fifth from 2009.
    But thousands of people who are allowed to work in Britain on intracompany transfers aren’t included in those figures — or under the new quota. Critics said that means it’s unclear how Prime Minister David Cameron’s government will meet a pledge to cut net immigration, which also includes students and families of visa holders, to below 100,000 by 2015, from about 196,000 last year.
    “We can’t go on like this, we must tighten up our immigration system,” May told legislators as she announced details of the new rules.
    Public anxiety over immigration — and the burden on public services caused by new arrivals — was a key issue during the country’s national election, when then-leader Gordon Brown was angrily challenged by an elderly voter over workers arriving from eastern Europe.
    As a member of the European Union, Britain must allow citizens of most other member states freedom to live and work in the U.K.
    Business leaders had urged Cameron’s government against stringent restrictions on non-European workers, arguing vital sectors would be left short of staff — particularly in health care and for energy infrastructure projects.
    Indian officials also warned Cameron over restricting the rights of their citizens to study and work in the U.K. during his visit in July.

  223. asia November 23, 2010 at 4:40 pm #

    JIM:
    Re your: “There Will Be Fuel”
    its : THEY WILL BE FOOLED
    but ya cant fool all of the people forever!

  224. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 4:43 pm #

    Black Gold – better than Columbian Gold. Texas Tea indeed. Jed Clampett we need you. In any case, the Spice Must Flow.

  225. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 4:48 pm #

    NOTE TO SELF: ADD seb to scroll list. Over and out CFN’ers. The scotch on the coffee table ain’t gettin any younger. Later, y’all.

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  226. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 5:03 pm #

    Your quote:
    ” Sociobiology offers a very useful paradigm here: what works as far as survival of the species? Women have alot of power here and they select men who make lots of money. Until they bring ethics into their criterion, men will try to make money any way they can for the most part – and will be discouraged from seeking at a higher level. If they seek higher, they will probably not make as much and thus be at a disadvantage relative to the men who kept their noses to the grindstone. Thus their genes will not be passed on. This dynamic enchains humanity and has done so for thousands of years. For women to choose not to choose is not any viable answer. It just insures than the Brown and Black Barbarians win.”
    In the past, and even still, I find myself strongly offended by your remarks (yeah, I know, TFB!) At any rate, your discussions bear a distinct hallmark of philosophical ingenuity. I don’t quite know what to make of you. Perhaps after a few more scotches I’ll be able to obtain somewhat of an orientation as to your opinions. Until then, cheers!

  227. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 5:03 pm #

    Fine, but you can’t have it both ways. Either have loyalty to Israel or America. As far as Judaism as a religion, it’s an individual’s private affair. As you probably know and heartily approve, America’s foreign policy is innundated by Jews who have dual citizenship and sole loyalty to Israel. They obfuscate the existential choice to others (and perhaps to themselves) by saying that America’s interests and Israel’s are the same. They are not. Oh and btw, I’m against any dual citizen holding office in America no matter what country it is.

  228. The Mook November 23, 2010 at 5:16 pm #

    Great news people. Costa’s supermarket in Smethport has Troyer Farm cheese doodles on sale for 5/$5. Savings of $9.95. Get your orders in early. Sale ends Sunday!

  229. The Mook November 23, 2010 at 5:23 pm #

    How about CNBC’s opinion. Those money grubbing cheerleaders said around noon today , that if nothing happens in the next 24 hours, everything is peachy and stocks will be heading in the “right” direction again. Pitiful!

  230. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 5:28 pm #

    I think….I’m going…to …freaking cry! LOL! Completely INSANE!

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  231. The Mook November 23, 2010 at 5:33 pm #

    As the chicken farmer in Napoleon Dynamite said ” I didn’t understand a word that boy said” (Do chickens have large talons?).

  232. mika. November 23, 2010 at 5:34 pm #

    Fine, but you can’t have it both ways. Either have loyalty to Israel or America.
    ==
    I can have it any way I want it. And I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks and insists that I should think. I am my own man. And if Rockefeller or Ratzinger or Putin, you or any other bastard don’t like it, you can go shove it.

  233. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 6:10 pm #

    Mika Agreeing with Glen Beck!!!! you’re about as Jewish as Atilla the Hun.
    Mika = Vlad
    Vladdy my boy, you don’t disguise your handy work very well do you?
    So Vladdy how is the gambling career going?
    Remember a month or two ago you were going to give it all up to live in a trailer park and play blackjack in order to make a living.
    How is delivering pizza and turning tricks to get by working our for you?

  234. turkle November 23, 2010 at 6:24 pm #

    Yeah, I am aware of the Simmons’ book but haven’t read it. I probably should. It is referenced in the aforementioned NYT article. I’m thinking the Iraq invasion was based upon the depletion data coming out of SA, but that’s just a guess. Compared with its estimated reserves, Iraq hasn’t produced much. It is the new SA or will be in a few years (at least claimed in the article).
    So I wasn’t saying that PO isn’t a reality, just that the predictions were a little off. The low reserve figures for US fields have actually turned out to be true, at least that’s what a USGS professor claimed in a class I took. That’s what this article argues. That’s for a couple different reasons, which we can discuss.
    But like I said, there’s no getting around the fact of PO and subsequent decline. It is a scientific certainty. Just the timing and the slope of the depletion curve is up for debate.
    Man, I liked this blog better when the comments section was more about discussion of PO/resources and less filled with Aryan Brotherhood spew (yeah you Vlad). Why don’t you take that vile crap elsewhere?

  235. Qshtik November 23, 2010 at 6:29 pm #

    NOTE TO SELF: ADD seb to scroll list.
    =========
    Don’t give up on SEB so quick(ly?) Myrtle. SEB used to post here until about a year ago when JHK booted him. We never found out why: anti-semitism? … talking gibberish? … or, my guess is, for always entering a link to his own blog titled How To Make Methamphetamine. (Question for SEB: what was the reason and how did you get back on under your original handle?)
    Whatever. SEB is interesting on many levels: a soap opera life and, my favorite, endless plays on words. Take the remark “No, I was B&.” B + and = band. It’s the reader’s job to figure out that he meant banned.
    Think of trying to understand what SEB is talking about (there’s a certain genius in it) as an exercise to slow the onset of alzheimers … way better than eating blue berries and doing crossword puzzles.

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  236. turkle November 23, 2010 at 6:29 pm #

    dale….hello sir. Welcome back. How’s things?

  237. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 6:32 pm #

    Myrtlemay
    you wrote this about about Vlad.
    “In the past, and even still, I find myself strongly offended by your remarks (yeah, I know, TFB!) At any rate, your discussions bear a distinct hallmark of philosophical ingenuity. I don’t quite know what to make of you. Perhaps after a few more scotches I’ll be able to obtain somewhat of an orientation as to your opinions. Until then, cheers!”
    Philosophical Ingenuity!! More like rantings and ravings of a Nazi lunatic.
    You will need 2 bottles of Johnny Walker to make sense of this idiot.
    Keep Drinking!

  238. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 6:44 pm #

    I was essentially kidding, asshole. Where’s your sense of humour? Did you bury it at Wounded Knee?
    The local Casino nearest to me has turned out to be little more than a slot machine parlour. It’s horrible to see all these White Degenerates throwing away their increasingly worthless money – instead of weaving straw into gold like Vlad Krandz! They even kids play – great training for life. I played for an hour and won a small jackpot that covered my losses and paid for lunch. And that’s that.

  239. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 6:48 pm #

    Vlad
    you wrote
    ” Women have alot of power here and they select men who make lots of money. Until they bring ethics into their criterion, men will try to make money any way they can for the most part – and will be discouraged from seeking at a higher level. If they seek higher, they will probably not make as much and thus be at a disadvantage relative to the men who kept their noses to the grindstone. Thus their genes will not be passed on. This dynamic enchains humanity and has done so for thousands of years. For women to choose not to choose is not any viable answer. It just insures than the Brown and Black Barbarians win.”
    Do I detect in your writing some bitterness at women as a result of their choice of partners?
    Can we take it that your anger at women derives from bitter experience at having been dumped for being a racist bum and ongoing difficulties in getting ‘dem ladies to like ya’?
    Or could it be you were dumped in favour of a “Black or Brown Barbarian”?
    Thinking about your ex(s)playing hide the sausage with a ‘Barbarian’.
    Ouch!! That must hurt.

  240. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 6:52 pm #

    Vlad
    You wrote
    “..weaving straw into gold like Vlad Krandz”
    You’re getting all Brothers Grimm on me now.
    Are we to call you Rumpelstiltskin from here on out?

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  241. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 7:01 pm #

    Gotcha Vlad/Mika
    So you are Mika after all. You reply to my comment to Mika accusing him/her of being Vlad without so much as a ‘WTF! Mika? Me? what are you talking about?’
    You’ve been outed Vladdy.
    CFNers Take Note
    MIKA = VLAD = Rumpelstiltskin
    See ya later alligator.

  242. mika. November 23, 2010 at 7:09 pm #

    Mika Agreeing with Glen Beck!!!! you’re about as Jewish as Atilla the Hun.
    ==
    Hehe, thanks Feodor, that was very prescient. I am Atilla the Hun, and in more ways than you could ever imagine.

  243. trippticket November 23, 2010 at 7:15 pm #

    Some friends posted today that it was 11 degrees in Spokane this morning, and everything was covered in wicked looking ice crystals. All this chatter about being snowed in and frozen solid makes me chuckle a little as I sit here in my shorts and long sleeve t-shirt eating fresh tomatoes from the garden…

  244. Debra Suling November 23, 2010 at 7:19 pm #

    You know Kunstler, you are a very depressing man and I’m not going read this crap that you print anymore! Don’t you ever have anything good to say? And how is it that you do all this traveling that you speak of… hot air balloon? bicycle? Of course not! You make fun of everyone in this country, like you are in some way better that the rest of us because we drive to the supermarket for food and to the store to buy clothes. Do you grow all your own food and cotton to make your clothes? If you’re so relieved to be out of this country why don’t you not come back, stay wherever the hell your at. This country isn’t perfect as you love to point out every week, so why do you still live here?? Go where it is perfect and don’t come back here.

  245. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 7:20 pm #

    Listen
    Mika/Vlad/Rumpelstiltskin
    Atilla the Hun regardless of the bloodthirsty warmonger he was achieved some reasonably impressive military feats in his life.
    You on the other hand are a small pathetic racist bigoted internet troll with grandiose delusions about your understanding of this world.
    Keep weaving that straw!

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  246. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 7:20 pm #

    You only call it crap because you can’t refute it. Liberals have a horrible character structure with no intellectual inegrity whatsoever.

  247. trippticket November 23, 2010 at 7:24 pm #

    I’m just kidding…I’m wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt.

  248. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 7:24 pm #

    Mika
    You reply but don’t question or respond to my accusation that you are Vlad.
    Confirmed again
    MIKA = VLAD KRANDZ

  249. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 7:28 pm #

    Thank you Mrytle May – Myrt means death? So Flower of Death? You might enjoy Baudelaires’s “Fleurs de Mal”.
    Like Long John Silver, I can speak like a book when so minded, but with characters like Turkel Turkey and Dostoyevsky (Spleen) ruling Academia, why bother? But I promise you their reign shall be short. Society just cannot endure such uncleaness for long.

  250. mika. November 23, 2010 at 7:31 pm #

    Atilla the Hun regardless of the bloodthirsty warmonger he was achieved some reasonably impressive military feats in his life.
    ==
    Feodor, you disappoint. What Attila achieved was far far greater than military success. What Attila achieved was nothing short of bringing down the Old World Order. It’s only morons that talk about military tactics. War is won long before any military tactic is put to use. And you, Feodor, you’ve lost the war, no matter how much you may try the belittle the occasion.

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  251. Vlad Krandz November 23, 2010 at 7:34 pm #

    I’ll see you in Hell! The bottom of Hell is cold.

  252. mika. November 23, 2010 at 7:39 pm #

    You reply but don’t question or respond to my accusation that you are Vlad.
    ==
    I already told you I’m Atilla the Hun. 😀

  253. turkle November 23, 2010 at 7:42 pm #

    Refute what exactly? What is “it”?
    Oh, noes, Vlad called me the L word. I’m going to go pout with my Chairman Mao doll and read Das Capital again.

  254. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 7:49 pm #

    Vladdy/Mika
    You wrote
    “Like Long John Silver, I can speak like a book when so minded, but with characters like Turkel Turkey and Dostoyevsky (Spleen) ruling Academia, why bother? But I promise you their reign shall be short. Society just cannot endure such uncleaness for long.”
    Quoting the fictional children’s book character Long John Silver is about right for you “Yer smart as paint” Vlad.
    “Shiver me timbers”, Arrrrr, so I rule academia, news to me what a pleasant surprise. Tell me where I can pick up my “ruler’s” cheque. (we spell check ‘cheque’ in this part of the world)
    I agree society cannot endure this uncleanness any longer so your befoulment of this blog must cease
    lest “Them’s that die’ll be the lucky ones”
    “Now clear up them there shambles, or I’ll feed you piecemeal to the rats in the cellar.”

  255. turkle November 23, 2010 at 7:51 pm #

    Hey, Vlad.
    Tell me exactly why I’m a “Liberal” because I find your extremely racist, off-topic posts on someone else’s blog objectionable. I’d like to hear this…should be entertaining.
    “Liberals have a horrible character structure with no intellectual inegrity whatsoever.”
    Says the Jew-baiting Nazi…look in a mirror lately, bozo?
    Liberalism is the reason you don’t live under a king with divine right to throw you in jail for questioning their divinity. Ain’t Liberalism great?
    If you don’t like Liberalism, you can always go someplace a little more conservative and religious….say, Somalia. They’re all about conservatism 7th century style. Being the new barbarian you are, I’m sure you’d fit right in, at least for the 15 minutes you managed to survive.

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  256. turkle November 23, 2010 at 7:55 pm #

    “Turkel Turkey…ruling Academia”
    Yes, Vlad, I rule over all of Academia with my iron fist of Liberal Tyranny.
    I think you’ve got your tinfoil hat on a bit too tight their buddy.

  257. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 7:56 pm #

    Feodor, you disappoint. What Attila achieved was far far greater than military success. What Attila achieved was nothing short of bringing down the Old World Order. It’s only morons that talk about military tactics. War is won long before any military tactic is put to use. And you, Feodor, you’ve lost the war, no matter how much you may try the belittle the occasion.
    ==
    Rantings of a little Nazi.

  258. mika. November 23, 2010 at 7:58 pm #

    Very good, turkle. Whether Vlad is smart enough to know it or even understand it, he’s really a stooge for the Catholic Church.
    Vlad, what’s your opinion about the Catholic Church?

  259. mika. November 23, 2010 at 8:01 pm #

    Rantings of a little Nazi.
    ==
    Because I liked what Glenn Beck had to say in that clip? You’re totally fscked. (And probably CIA).

  260. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 8:03 pm #

    Oh Mika/Vlad
    Give the charade a rest.

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  261. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 8:06 pm #

    Oh yes
    I’m CIA, FBI Trilateralist, Builderberger, Rothschild, Iluminati and Liberal all rolled into 1 and I’m coming to get you!

  262. mika. November 23, 2010 at 8:09 pm #

    You are CIA. Better start looking for new employment now. Your criminal CIA wont be there for much longer. You can count on that.

  263. LewisLucanBooks November 23, 2010 at 8:15 pm #

    Fuck ya, Tripp: 😀 It’s going to be 11 degrees here tonight in little old Centralia, Washington. As long as the natural gas and electricity hold out, I’ll be fine. Next months bills will be a killer. And the mind wanders to a future where either electricity and natural gas will be gone (at least locally) or too expensive to afford.
    Funny how the mind works. I have a hundred other things to eat around the place, but I’m fixating on Mac & Cheese. Errands that I wanted to run tomorrow morning, but due to the weather, probably shouldn’t. They’ll have to be put off til Friday, cause Thanksgiving is Thursday and the world comes to a stop. Sigh. I hate the holidays. The simplest task takes twice as long as EVERYONE ELSE IS NUTS!.
    Think I’ll go with my gourmet nachos. Broccoli, diced olive oil drenched garlic and tomatoes. Mushrooms. Topped with sweat basil and low fat cheese. If I can brave the unheated back room/ cooking area to make them.
    The electric coffee pot gave up the ghost this morning. A tragic disaster. Of course, given the weather, holiday, black friday, etc. it won’t be replaced for awhile. Dug around and found a little 2 large cup old perk pot from the 30s. Discovered if I nuke water and pour it through, it makes a hot good cup of coffee. How’s that for adaptable?

  264. LewisLucanBooks November 23, 2010 at 8:16 pm #

    PS: I don’t care how fucking cold it is where YOU are. All I care about is how fucking cold it is where I am. 😀

  265. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 8:18 pm #

    Mika/Vlad Krandz
    VK Troll alert
    After the CIA I plan to join the World Government and I’m going to force a carbon tax on you and bleed you dry as you try to stay warm using your Tin Foil Hat (yes you Vlad) shaped into a solar cooker.
    (Evil Laugh with pinkie pointed at the corner of my mouth)
    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

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  266. mika. November 23, 2010 at 8:24 pm #

    Keep laughing, it’s good for you.

  267. Debra Suling November 23, 2010 at 8:26 pm #

    I don’t know if you are replying to my comment but I can tell you this… I am not a liberal. And I was not trying to refute anything – I don’t have to. Nothing is perfect in this world and that’s a fact that you can’t refute. Kuntsler thinks if we could somehow go back to the stone age we would be happy and everything would be great. By the way, how did he get to Australia? He flew there. He takes advantage of all our modern conveiences yet he makes fun of everyone for doing the same things that he does. He is a hypocrite and you can’t refute that either.

  268. turkle November 23, 2010 at 8:33 pm #

    “Kuntsler thinks if we could somehow go back to the stone age we would be happy and everything would be great.”
    If that’s what you think he believes, you are reading him wrong or you haven’t really read him at all.

  269. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 8:36 pm #

    I’m laughing Vladdy
    all the way to the Rothschild Bank to deposit my carbon tax that I and my World Government buddies have screwed out of you, and Oh I forgot as I head to the bank laughing I’ll be apologising to the “Barbarians” for being white as I have no ‘race pride’.
    It’s such fun taking the piss out of you. (translation – Its such fun making fun of you)

  270. turkle November 23, 2010 at 8:39 pm #

    “He is a hypocrite and you can’t refute that either.”
    Oh, checkmate. You got him. Jim is such a hypocrite. I guess you won the whole argument or whatever, so you can stop posting now and go back to watching cable television.

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  271. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:43 pm #

    ‘Kuntsler’..intentionally spelled this way?

  272. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:45 pm #

    you cant beat year round living

  273. turkle November 23, 2010 at 8:45 pm #

    And BTW, I believe Jim’s view would be that international air travel is one of those modern fossil-fuel based enterprises that is worthwhile. He just says that it will probably go away or be curtailed as the oil supply dwindles, e.g. for most it will become prohibitively expensive (and is already pretty expensive). He would further argue that NASCAR is not such a great way to use up our limited fossil fuel resources, nor is powering fleets of recreational vehicles or over-sized land barges. A fine distinction? Perhaps.
    Anyways, most of the recent posts have not been about Happy Motoring or the fat tatooed masses but the financial crisis and mortgage issues, which is unfortunate to my mind, because other sources cover that stuff better. Jim is at his best when playing a sort of modern day Mencken railing against the boobs, and I wish he’d go even deeper down that rabbit hole rather than regurgitating whatever is hot on Financial Sense.

  274. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 8:48 pm #

    Tripp, LewisLucan, all posters with cold weather,
    Yeah, I’m in the mountains of N. Georgia. I’ve got a cord of wood stacked on the front porch. I’ve got three cords stacked in the basement. It’s been there for a year now – boy, does it burn well!
    I live in a passive solar house. Damn, it’s warm. We’ve had one fire one night so far. We had to open the windows.
    So honestly, I’m glad to hear it’s cold somewhere in the US. Looking around here for the last two years – it looks locally like that global warming thing is a done deal.
    I’ve already got plans for blocking some of the south facing windows completely in the summer.
    We used to have relatively cold weather in north Georgia – even 10 years ago.
    What the hell has happened to our winters??

  275. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:48 pm #

    and at the reverse end of the spectrum….
    venice california farmers market
    ‘heirloom’ tomatoes…5$ a pound

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  276. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:49 pm #

    yeah go get him!

  277. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:51 pm #

    what the hell has happened to our winters??
    maybe they are turning into summers
    but you say GW is a ‘done deal’

  278. mika. November 23, 2010 at 8:52 pm #

    The Rothschild Bank = the Vatican Bank. And that’s where everything ultimately leads to. So how does it feel working for the Vatican? You have all the facts in front of you, and you still can’t connect the dots.
    So what do we have, Feodor. Either you’re too stupid to figure this out, or you already know all this and you’re still shilling for these fscks. Either way, you’re not worth my time. Sayonara, Feodor.

  279. asia November 23, 2010 at 8:53 pm #

    thats a cool map…once i saw one in the mainstream news, with all states divided by the mississippi..
    do you know if that maps online?

  280. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 8:56 pm #

    “What the hell has happened to our winters??”
    ==
    They are being consumed little by little, 1 ton of carbon dioxide at a time.
    Here in Australia its the same. Warmest winters and hottest summer records constantly being broken.
    Another 30 years and these last 10 years will look like a picnic.
    Rooftop Gardens (if practical) go along way to keeping it cool inside.

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  281. turkle November 23, 2010 at 9:02 pm #

    I don’t understand how someone (let’s say Vlad) is perfectly happy to characterize an entire race of millions of people with broad generalizations about them being evil and dastardly and then goes on to say that other people have no moral sense or backbone.
    Saying that “the Jews” have some shared characteristics that make them somehow worse or more evil than other groups is about as immoral as one can get in this day and age. It is that line of thinking that lead to the Holocaust (among other atrocities), which I hope we can agree was an immoral enterprise. Concentration camps were essentially zones where no morality other than a pure power principle was applicable. That means he (or the group) who has the power makes the morality. But that is a fairly vacuous and dangerous basis for a functioning civilization. And BTW, many other people were killed in these camps, not just Jewish people but anyone considered “undesirable.”
    Not that I’m a moralist by any means. I’m with the old philosopher that said, “There is no good or evil but thinking makes it so.” If you want to call that amoral liberalism, hey, I’m fine with that. It’s the truth, and someone realized that 2000 years ago. The Universe does not have a any moral system that it follows. I just find it quite odd that a person who is obviously so immoral in their thinking can be so obsessed with the idea of other people’s supposed immorality.
    And of course, different societies and groups do rub up against one another and have differing moral systems. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is a good look at the actual situation. It isn’t about “The Jews” versus anyone. The European/American power bloc and how it interacts with other civilizations is a far more relevant way to look at current events.
    Or perhaps Vlad is just trolling and flame baiting to get a rise out of people here in the comments section. Some of his shtick is straight out of Mein Kampf.
    Any-who, you clusterfuckers have a fine evening.

  282. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 9:02 pm #

    Sayonara Vlad
    Brother Ratzinger sends his warmest regards to you together with a complimentary pack of condoms, now that he has ok’ed them for male prostitutes.

  283. turkle November 23, 2010 at 9:04 pm #

    “And that’s where everything ultimately leads to.”
    LOL. You can’t be serious! You might as well go get your magic chalkboard, fruit cake.
    No one bank has anywhere near total control over anything. Only a conspiracy-obsessed, navel-gazing idiot would think so.

  284. SNAFU November 23, 2010 at 9:07 pm #

    “All this chatter about being snowed in and frozen solid makes me chuckle a little as I sit here in my shorts and long sleeve t-shirt eating fresh tomatoes from the garden…”
    Howdy Trip,
    I am still digging carrots and turnips from my garden way up north in NY (~10 miles south of the St. Lawrence river) and I just finished eating a nice piece of baked golden Hubbard squash; delicious.
    My favorite most SHTF scenario is that it occur in late Fall or Winter such that the city folk will all head south cause it is cold hereabouts on occasion. I’ve lived in LA, TX and CA; way too hot for my northern born ass. Nothing pleases me more than an indoor temp of about 60-65 on a blustery Winter’s day; usually between 40 and 50 in the morn when I arise, just abfab.
    I think I used the window air conditioner in my bedroom 3-4 times this past summer; you?
    When I was a teenager back in the 50’s and 60’s by this time of year we were skating on the ponds, now one would be unlikely to do so until Christmas. However; one ought not jump to any conclusions that the fabled “global warming” is producing such effects, naw it is just a climate change happens all the time. Interestingly I remember not Winter after Winter so mild when I was a young un.
    Well Trip hopefully you will be fully acclimated to the heat and humidity in GA when or if the SHTF produced brown/black outs reduce your air-conditioning to levels such as I enjoy hereabouts.
    SNAFU

  285. turkle November 23, 2010 at 9:22 pm #

    In a SHTF scenario (not sure what that would entail exactly or what you’re imagining), why would people abandon the cities? That’s not the behavior you actually observe. If you take a look around the world, there are cities with far worse conditions than anything in the US, and people are not leaving them en masse. It seems to me that if conditions worsen across the board, it is more likely that people will gather in urban areas for protection and because central governments are likely to prioritize high population areas for resource distribution. In the type of situation you imagine, a more likely scenario would be that food is appropriated by force from the countryside to feed the cities. I heard this described in a blog about the Argentinian currency crisis.
    As it stands, the US is not likely to have a permanent food crisis causing mass starvation, which is about the only real SHTF scenario I can imagine. Otherwise, people are mostly going to stay where they’re at.
    Of course, there is always the possibility of a Black Swan event like a nuke going off in a major metropolitan area, and if that happens, of course all bets are off as to what then occurs. There are some events in the realm of possibility that might also cause a world-wide SHTF, like the sea levels rising significantly. Seeing as how many major cities are adjacent to the ocean, that could get real interesting.
    I just think of it like this. Per capita income and energy consumption in China is far less than in the US. Or pick any country at the bottom of the per capita income distribution. And yet these societies still function, at least you don’t see mass starvation or anarchy most places. So the US has a long way to fall before society breaks up in some kind of Apocalypse. I think most people here underestimate people’s ability to adapt to circumstances and not go all Mad Max when things get a little difficult. The societies where this does occur for an extended period of time are anomalous and constantly making the national news (e.g. Somalia, etc.). Even there, most people in Somalia manage to get by (just barely), while making less than $1 per day in a situation of extreme violence and resource scarcity. Political structures are likely to hang together even as resource depletion becomes severe, though they may become a bit more rudimentary with a different orientation.
    That’s my somewhat Devil’s Advocate view of the situation.

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  286. mika. November 23, 2010 at 9:29 pm #

    No one bank has anywhere near total control over anything.
    ==
    I absolutely agree.
    And I understand your derision to my conspiratorial point of view. I had your skepticism just a few years ago. But somehow, despite my severe skepticism, I managed to learn more on the subject. And now I have the point of view that I do.
    Turkle, you seem to be a fairly intelligent person. Much of what you say, I’m in complete agreement with. My only wish is that you try to be more open about the possibility that what I say might be true, and that you would at least try to investigate it.

  287. trippticket November 23, 2010 at 9:53 pm #

    Cash, you asked me about Gareth Bale last week, and I don’t think I answered. Who doesn’t love Gareth Bale? I’d be glad to see him at Arsenal! Looks just like one of my cousins too.

  288. trippticket November 23, 2010 at 9:56 pm #

    There’s a great quote, very descriptive of our general predicament I think, in the latest Organic Gardening magazine:
    “Hunger and overconsumption are simply two faces of malnutrition. We may recognize the first but fail to recognize the second, since it sometimes takes on the paradoxical disguise of obesity.”

  289. trippticket November 23, 2010 at 10:04 pm #

    Your stock rose sharply today! Great movie, isn’t it? I’ve probably watched it 20 times over the years. Maude is quite the character, and you remind me of her sometimes.

  290. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 10:04 pm #

    Vlad
    You say through your Mika handle
    “The Rothschild Bank = the Vatican Bank. And that’s where everything ultimately leads to”
    the you say “I absolutely agree”
    to Turkle’s comment “No one bank has anywhere near total control over anything.”
    Then you say
    “And I understand your derision to my conspiratorial point of view. I had your skepticism just a few years ago. But somehow, despite my severe skepticism, I managed to learn more on the subject. And now I have the point of view that I do”
    So which is it.
    If you had “managed to learn more” you would be sharing this mine of credible information with us clusterfuckers in order to convince us. But no you
    wish for Turkle that he/she
    “try to be more open about the possibility that what I say might be true, and that you would at least try to investigate it.”
    Come one Vlad/Mika direct Turkle to your enlightening sources of credible information regarding the Vatican Bank’s control over everything.
    Surely now that you have found the “truth” you will be willing to share it with us dupes who have not yet found the truth.
    Come on Vlad /Mika lets have it then!

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  291. Eleuthero November 23, 2010 at 10:14 pm #

    Funny post comrade Dostoyevsky!!!! So who
    is the REAL “bogeyman”?? Is it the Joooooz?
    Is it the Catholics?? Is Queen Elizabeth
    really an alien shape-shifter as David Icke
    contends. Do tin foil hats channel forces
    from the Pleiades??
    Ya gotta laugh at some of this stuff. I
    think the prosaic truth is that the world
    has gotten so STUPID that people aren’t
    even smart enough to be diabolical. You
    can’t even keep the President’s Cabinet
    from leaking to the press so how can one
    really believe some gigantic, multi-generational
    conspiracy that’s gone a millenium without
    leaking.
    Doesn’t make any sense to me but my hats
    are made of wool. 🙂 🙂
    E.

  292. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 10:19 pm #

    The Real Bogeyman is David Hasselhoff
    How can you trust a drunk who pretends to be a lifesaver at the beach and whose car speaks??
    I rest my case

  293. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 10:42 pm #

    Nighty night folks
    Vlad/Mika Lock your doors lest the trilateralist bogeyman gets you in the wee hours.

  294. BeantownBill November 23, 2010 at 10:53 pm #

    “What the hell has happened to our winters??”
    I’ll tell you what. You come up here for the winter and I’ll stay in N. Georgia.

  295. mika. November 23, 2010 at 10:58 pm #

    It’s really little more than a sophisticated shell game that they play. These people are very clever at setting up holding companies (the Rothschilds being one such holding company 200 years ago), shell entities, keeping themselves 3 steps removed, and playing peekaboo accounting. But one thing they can’t hide, the connections all lead to Rome.

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  296. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 11:11 pm #

    Just an FYI: Anyone who is interested in the very classic opera, “Baudelaires’s “Fleurs de Mal”, made mention by a previous poster; do so feel inclined to listen to a most enjoyable listening experience (this I say in the most aristocratic, IRISH PEASANT descendant that (whom?) I am!

  297. myrtlemay November 23, 2010 at 11:14 pm #

    Sorry! Youtube, of course.

  298. Dostoyevsky November 23, 2010 at 11:15 pm #

    Vlad
    those pesky shell and holding companies.
    Ok
    Lets have a chart or a document or something other than your rather dubious word. Rothschild holding company 200 years ago oooooooooh that sounds spooky! Peekaboo accounting (now why didn’t I think of that??) even more sinister.
    Your post as a response to a request for proof or credible information is the equivalent of Sarah Palin’s contention that she knew much about foreign affairs because you can see Russia from Alaskan Soil.
    Come on Vlad/Mika you cant get out of it that easily. Restore, no make that GET some credibility and refer us to your evidence/proof that “all connections lead to Rome”
    The Vatican can’t stop their priests raping young boys worldwide nor can they mount an effective cover up, try as they might, but according to you they control everything/world banking.
    Come on Vlad/Mika lets have it stop wasting everyone’s time we want proooooooooooooof.
    Substantiate your claims or admit you are an internet troll with NFI who believes in busllsh#t conspiracy theories.

  299. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 11:15 pm #

    Vlad answers:
    “Why is bigger better? It’s a sign of some kind of greatness or power. The best people usually seek more in life – at whatever level. A person who is simply satisfied is either a vegetable or a sage.”
    AND
    “…survival of the species? Women have a lot of power here and they select men who make lots of money…”
    Sociobiology is intertwined with human genetics.
    And, sadly, there lies the answer.
    These very human traits of desiring – bigger, better, faster, more, more, more – were adaptive for all of human history, up until industrialization and mass use of fossil fuels.
    Actually, these traits are probably still adaptive at the level of individual breeding humans – for a while, yet.
    But, damn, these traits are now screwing our species and our planet into the ground.

  300. progressorconserve November 23, 2010 at 11:24 pm #

    SNAFU, I’m surprised that that big analytical brain of yours is not seeing a pattern of evidence that supports global warming.
    You say:
    “…back in the 50’s and 60’s by this time of year we were skating on the ponds, now one would be unlikely to do so until Christmas. However; one ought not jump to any conclusions that the fabled “global warming” is producing such effects, naw it is just a climate change….”
    I agree the evidence is subject to interpretation.
    And I’m sure we’ll know for certain in 10 years if that “anthropogenic global warming” thingy was valid or not.
    Of course if it is valid it will be too late by then, but –
    c’est la vie??

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  301. asoka November 24, 2010 at 2:43 am #

    Turkle said: “The societies where this does occur for an extended period of time are anomalous and constantly making the national news (e.g. Somalia, etc.).”
    Let’s put that to the test. I am thinking of a country. Let’s call it Country X.
    Country X has produced several millions of internally displaced refugees over the past decade because Country X has death squads, paramilitary armies fighting each other, and American troops stationed there. Thousands of civilians have been killed in the cross-fire and by assassination of death squads and paramilitaries.
    Now, Turkle says such countries as Country X are “constantly making the national news” so it should be easy to identify Country X.
    Any takers?
    My point? Society can deteriorate and horrible things can happen that affect millions of people without many “news” media even mentioning it. Anomalous or not, don’t count on national media coverage. Our media has by and large become entertainment, not news.

  302. Kiwi Nick November 24, 2010 at 2:55 am #

    my parents live in rural OK. their landline has not worked for several months –okie
    Lay a complaint, give them a week or two, then lodge a complaint with the FCC (1888-call-fcc or link. I don’t know how they compare with Australia’s TIO, but that should get things moving. One thing I don’t know is whether the FCC handles complants from Oklahoma, I can’t seem to find the information I saw a week ago which says which states have their own complaint systems.

  303. Kiwi Nick November 24, 2010 at 2:58 am #

    Now to respond to a couple of other interesting phone comments …
    1. I’m currently on wireless broadband. It is sold as fixed broadband with built-in phone service billed at landline rates. It’s not that good. High pings (90ms at best, 150ms usual, 7000ms max), high packet loss (and intermittent internet interuptions).
    And it’s a fair call to say just about everyone on Vodafone has suddenly found themselves without much service at all. Stupid things like can’t receive calls in the CBD and suburbs of the largest cities in Australia.
    It’s a pretty good advertisement against the (Australian) Liberal Party’s Broadband-by-wireless policy for Australia.
    Hopefully Australia can keep going with its fibre-based NBN project.
    2. Cellphone service might be OK, but … it’s never going to have complete coverage in rural areas (why Okie should crack the whip), it is subject to congestion, and it’s a lot more expensive for the consumer.
    On a different note: Telecoms is doing OK in Europe … which got me thinking: low fuel prices -> disfunctional telecoms? High fuel prices (as in Europe) -> better telecoms?
    Kiwi Nick

  304. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 7:41 am #

    “With her father close to retirement, wildlife film-maker Rebecca Hosking returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, England to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is.
    Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.”
    This is a wonderful documentary sent to me by a friend in Burgundy. 45 minutes, I highly encourage everyone who can spare the time to watch it. Maybe over dinner with your mate? Presents the case for our need to radically overhaul food production in the first world quite eloquently.
    Cheers!

  305. lbendet November 24, 2010 at 8:11 am #

    Early morning propaganda
    Ah- Morning Joe and my first cup of coffee — already I’m hyperventilating!
    As I turned on MSNBC the first thing I heard was the assurances of the station telling us that our best days are ahead of us.
    Who could forget Hoovers greatest hit “Prosperity is just around the corner”?
    Now the corporations are coining hopeful messages to the people as the ship slowly sinks.
    —I feel so much better now, hearing that from the war-contractor corporation. It’s true for the banksters, as we are told they have done fabulously well this year, while everyone else is suffering and whole neighborhoods are disappearing where the mortgages blew up in their faces and they lost their jobs. All for the sake of the banksters’ profits. The middle class dies for their sins.
    ok, on to the next little tidbit, Time Magazine has a special edition about the first decade of the 20th century. Richard Stengel points out the millions of people were taken out of poverty–that is in India and China. No mention of what’s going on in the USA. I guess the hidden message is that we’re trading places.

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  306. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 9:11 am #

    You know, I suppose it would increase viewership if I included a link. Just guessing.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2750012006939737230#
    Again, cheers!

  307. seb November 24, 2010 at 9:54 am #

    Post 4.
    I told this list yeterday that none of you thought to wish JHK a happy birthday ever. At this point in the cycle, I do not expect to survive long enough to correct the matter.
    JHK’s attitude towards the readership may suffer on this account. Further, any logic applied to the bigger picture may reveal that I am a will-o-the-wisp. I’m not real on the internet in the same sense that I would bother with birthdays of people I can see, that I know, ones I can touch. The internet is unsatisfying on that account.
    What you see here is the result of it being only 5 am, while others in this country can be at 8 a.m.
    Since it never is any other day than today, it can’t be tomorrow in Aus. I now agree with my wife on this issue. I also agree with her about lies. I heard her tell my parents we would arrive at ten, then said later to me we would leave at eleven. It takes an hour to get there. She told me not to take it personal. If I lied to you, don’t take it personal.
    You have no way of knowing, but I am a racist. Early in the morning my racism disorder is worse. -ism is a suffix used to denote a belief, -ist is a believer. -ponym has such rich meanings that I can’t treat it. You can’t ordinarily find suffixes by Googling. I just bleat out my whole question to the thing and it usually finds it.
    It can’t find the country you want, sir, and I had a minor fit about the intellect capable of presenting this problem. I don’t know the players here as well as I should, but they say you are Asian, and I see this Chinese puzzle, so, this paragraph contains subject matter not suitable for children, in its “meta” version.
    There are 150 countries with American troops. Refugee camps dot the world. People don’t advertise their paramilitary death squads.
    Ignoring North Korea. I wrote to the president back in the ‘Nineties. This is the third Kim Jong Il in a row. It costs a little bit of money to write to Korea, but I don’t think the Post Office basically refuses mail to anywhere. What did I say? Oh, Clinton said to N. Korea that if there were nukes used, it would be a generation before anyone knew there was a North Korea. I needn’t have written. I don’t suppose Kim would like Clinton’s wife doing it either.
    If I saw A Few Good Men, it had (lawyer)Cruise saying it wasn’t what he believed, it was what he could prove, and, with the -ist ending on the word, you would conclude that no, a true believer is he who can take belief and mold it into proof.
    Yeah, I know, Col. Jessup says you can’t handle the truth, but truth is big, so, how about “You can’t handle a second chance!” Isn’t that what it is?
    The asian face does not have almond-shaped eyes. It has a ball for an eye, like everyone.
    We have to get away from linking truth and proof, because the intermediate form, “troof”, is the word for truth in ebonics.
    Yes, I can’t sleep. It’s getting light. I had a receipt in bed with me. I use them for bookmarks. I opt for tossing a book to the floor when I get sleepy. There’s nothing in the English language that will change that. The receipt was crackling like cellophane in the dark.
    My hammer (not a symbol), didn’t get put back after Nick cracked nuts with it. Getting a child ready has caused me to forget my own stuff and to yell at the child for not watching my back. My landlady removes things left out in the house, name of Vasquez, but I cursed Mexico this time before finding the tool in my room. Mexico is a Spain to the USA, and a Spain is a “mat” on the “floor” of England.
    Turning now to Jewry, …

  308. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 10:29 am #

    AJC has a “vent” section. I guess most papers have them. Here are a few I like from the paper I’m reading today:
    “Second hottest year on record – Thank you Chamber of Commerce for blocking climate change legislation!”
    “I was conservative; now I’m more concerned. I’m voting libertarian.”
    “Obama has piloted his party’s ship into a reef and not all of the Democrats will make it to shore.”
    And my favorite:
    “Didn’t we already try the whole don’t tax the rich and they’ll help the lower classes approach? Oh yeah, it’s called European history.”
    Now, if anyone is curious enough to research, they’ll find that these Vents are from the Wednesday, 10/20/2010 AJC. Why am I reading that today? Because we can’t get the paper delivered up in these mountains. So my in-laws save their papers for me and I read them on the appropriate day of the week – one month in arrears. It gives me a unique view of the “news.” And talk about recycling!!
    And apologies – my 11:15 post last night was supposed to be a response to Vlad, not SNAFU.
    Keep on CFing, CFers!!

  309. SNAFU November 24, 2010 at 10:41 am #

    “SNAFU, I’m surprised that that big analytical brain of yours is not seeing a pattern of evidence that supports global warming.”
    Progressor, I am convinced that Shirley you jest.
    SNAFU

  310. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 10:48 am #

    I’m not jesting – although I did reread your post and *perhaps?* detected a trace of irony.
    And don’t call me Shirley! 😉
    BTW, my take away from the PV power “debate” on CFN was that PV could work quite well for peak power in most climate regions. And the PV will never replace the need for baseload power from another source.
    And that the economics for PV will work out a whole lot better if panel prices drop some more – and especially if utilities will ever buy peak power for what it is really worth.

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  311. ozone November 24, 2010 at 10:55 am #

    And… you can’t beat living year ’round.
    ;o)

  312. Cash November 24, 2010 at 10:56 am #

    I remember seeing him play a few years ago in his first couple of EPL games with the Spurs. I think he was 17. He was great to watch. Total confidence, pure happiness. One particular corner kick he took, I remember the look on his face, he couldn’t have looked happier if he was getting laid.

  313. Binnebrook November 24, 2010 at 11:04 am #

    Tripp, what’s the name of the Hosking documentary? Does Netflix have it?
    Also, is anyone else having password trouble on this blog? Every time I try to sign in, Moveable Type tells me the login information is incorrect. I perform the appropriate clickings and link followings, enter the same password without changing it, and am able to sign on.

  314. ozone November 24, 2010 at 11:07 am #

    “As it stands, the US is not likely to have a permanent food crisis causing mass starvation, which is about the only real SHTF scenario I can imagine. Otherwise, people are mostly going to stay where they’re at.” -Turkle
    As per usual, more than one single factor will be the “decider” in the issue of go-or-stay. (Likely an overflowing basket of factors.)
    However, temperature will be a large factor when fuel for heat gets too expensive, wouldn’t you say?
    Let’s be realistic, processing wood for heat is a lot of work. (Just ask me; I have to “work up” about 7 cord for year-round heat and hot water.)
    A big bunch of people not used to labor are gonna bug out, looking for that “easy living”.

  315. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 11:08 am #

    Speaking of irony – and recycling – and why an education in the Language Arts is important
    Some time ago I was taking a load of metal to the scrap yard. Some of it was old brass valves that I had collected from various jobs and projects. And scrap brass is worth a lot more if it is just brass, with handles and other fittings removed.
    So I had *cleaned my brass* as best I could with the technology available to me – two pipe wrenches.
    But some of the short galvanized pipe sections in some of the valves refused to unscrew.
    And I was weighing these “impure” pieces of brass with the scrap yard guy and trying to negotiate price. He finally agreed to pay me 75% of the “clean” brass price.
    And he wrote an explanation on the weigh ticket – so his book keeper would understand what he had done.
    The ticket read – “BRASS – IRONY”
    Well, my son’s English teacher thought it was funny, anyway!!
    Prosaic note to CFN; There’s still a lot of money in scrap metal. Those Chinese want our old junk to make new Chinese Junk. haha

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  316. SNAFU November 24, 2010 at 11:19 am #

    “In a SHTF scenario (not sure what that would entail exactly or what you’re imagining), why would people abandon the cities?”
    Howdy Turkle, What I am imagining is a scenario only a bit more draconian than that which JHK envisions in that when the effects of peak oil (as pointed out previously in this weeks CFN postings the IEA contends it occurred in 2006) manifests as cycles of economic rebounds and collapses ultimately resulting in a collapse which produces a new definition for economic depression. There likely will be scant foodstuffs to wrest from the death grips of we country folk, very little oil to waste burning in home heating systems and not much fuel to be used hauling food and fuel about the county. Kinda like the 1930’s on steroids since we now have a shit box full more of humans. I don’t see a large gain to remaining in a city that has no heat, electricity, food, water, sewage and garbage disposal, (I reckon the garbage and the humans could/would be eaten and turned into sewage; eventually garbage and unprocessed soylent green will become more and more scarce)…… That is why I envision the survivors in the cities getting the hell out of Dodge. The smart and mobile will leave early the non-mobile will not.
    SNAFU

  317. Cash November 24, 2010 at 11:22 am #

    Hi C,
    About climate change: I’ve read a few times about changes in the Earth’s climate over the last couple million years.
    The conclusion seems to be that our current situation climate-wise is that we’re in an interglacial period ie we’ve had recurring periods of intense cold when most of the northern hemisphere was encased under two miles of ice punctuated by short ten or fifteen thousand year periods of warm like what we have now.
    The thing is this: from what I’ve read we’re apparently due for a recurrence of glaciation. The current thinking is that these glacial periods are because of wobbles in the Earth’s rotation. This affects the amount of sunlight we get. That plus other factors. So all other things being equal we should be in for the start of another long period (tens of thousands of years) of intense cold, a resurgence of ice sheets.
    So why aren’t we? According to one theory making the rounds human behaviour is the cause. When we started farming 10-12 thousand years ago we progressively deforested large parts of the Earth. This released large amounts of carbon dioxide which warmed up global climate and effectively stalled the normal cycle of glaciation and glacial recession.
    So we have a dilemma apparently. If the big thinkers are right and we’re due for another peiod of glaciation imagine the consequences for humanity: the northern hemisphere would becaome uninhabitable, areas like the prairies and the Asian steppes which are great for grain farming would become ice boxes, there would be mass starvation, mass human migration to equatorial latitudes and massive die offs. What’s stopping it? Carbon emissions from human activity.
    But if we don’t take action on carbon emissions the Earth’s climate warms up. How much will it warm up? IMO climateology isn’t yet in a state that anyone can tell us. So what are the consequences as far as we can see now? Melting of polar ice and glacial ice sheets, a rise in sea levels, maybe other nasty things like desertification of certain areas, the release of greenhouse gases from places that are now permafrost.
    The alternative? A resumption of the historic cycle of glaciation.
    So what do we do?
    Any ideas out there?
    Tripp you’re our resident scientist. What do you think on this stuff? What have you been reading?

  318. ozone November 24, 2010 at 11:23 am #

    Thanks, Tripp.
    Keep ‘er goin’!

  319. James Crow November 24, 2010 at 11:32 am #

    “We are the walking dead, too stupid to lie down and enjoy the repose of death.”
    Best line so far. Daring to “disagree” with Kunstler’s ongoing doomsaying is only to admit to being thoughtful enough to see that he basically has to say these things. He offers a product every Monday and to do anything less than offer the same old product would discourage those who hold his opinions so highly. Y’know the ones who think being “first!” is so important that they actually compete amongst themselves to see who wins the weekly Kunstler Lotto. And the utter hypocrisy of Old Jim flying off to Europe or Australia for oh so important speaking engagements is so funny it’s not even funny. He has found his niche and is obviously quite comfortable with it. Who needs to walk the talk? He is held no more accountable the demopublican apparatchiks in washington, d.c.

  320. myrtlemay November 24, 2010 at 11:35 am #

    It’s “ironic” (sorry, Pro, couldn’t help the pun) that you should mention brass/metals. A few weeks ago I hired a handyman to reattach an old, heavy, french door in my dining room. Since my condo was built in the ’20s, the brass hinges were at some point in time (before I bought the place) removed. He informed me that the brass hinges sold in the hardware stores today could not possibly hold up this solid, beautiful door. Well, I took him down to the building’s basement, and low and behold, we scavenged around and found an original set of SOLID BRASS hinges (not the light-weight crap we now import from our Chinese “friends and partners in trade”. Point being, we export our best metals (in this case, brass)to China and get a flimsy piece of “brass-lite” crap to hold up a particle board facsimile of a beautiful french door.

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  321. seb November 24, 2010 at 11:40 am #

    I doubt Time magazine came out with a giant splash issue on the first decade of the 20th century.
    LBENDET Fair enough.
    STEVE You had coffee.
    LBENDET You saying I’m impaired?
    STEVE Yes.
    LBENDET What?
    STEVE I’m saying you said ‘enough’ right here.
    LBENDET So?
    STEVE It’s enough. Coffee can do that.
    LBENDET Got any more?
    STEVE Yeah. Umm, in my head? Heh, these metaphors old Jewish writers use. They’re all the mores stinging since they are so bitter. Well, they are directed at the system, so it doesn’t hurt me so bad. But, I’m not asking you to reply, but metaphors are in the fiction category, so, are they true? Is the USA heading down a “road” to the future? is an argument “going” anywhere? Nah. So, ‘yes or no do you want a piece of this?’ is about the extent of intelligent discourse on “Do you believe X, yes or no?”, with metaphors. JHK is a metaphor freak. Time’s the last one. Ergo, it’s almost extinct as we speak. We’re thisclose (National Enquirer, much more of a hardy species) to overeating, or what!
    Then, let’s see. It was the difficulty of doing calculations while keeping the vernacular straight, after watching that British show linked above. An oil crisis sounds okay with a British accent. Cockney’s the worst, they call four, “ruof”. So, I bet you guys don’t reduce everything to numbers, but ‘nine’ is good because it almost sounds like “mine”, meaning belonging to me, not mining, good grief. I talk for awhile then I say numbers for awhile.
    LEBRON JAMES Mm?
    STEVE ‘zat about describe you?
    LBENDET TL,DR
    STEVE No yeah. JHK, see, this is how to straddle the middles of centuries. The future is just July 12, ’07, but it’s on page one of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1951). Midcentury is 1950, I was born in 1952, JHK in 1948, and so, you set your bovine future story in the time of flying cows, put it out of reach, but require that there are actual readers reading the dates you put there as real dates. Plus, the literary license to allow lying means it is really fun since you know where the lies are.
    Since a bullshittist is a bullshitter, bullshittism can’t be the belief in the lies themselves, but of the use of lies, believing in it.
    Yeah, I had coffee, and some other stuff. Somebody in here farted. I had some of that.
    STEVE Were you born in 1955?
    POUNDCAKE But—no. I said I was 55. Can’t you listen?
    STEVE Waitin’.

  322. malthus November 24, 2010 at 11:46 am #

    I agree with everything you say but I take exception with the idea of gold and silver and have to take the side of Rubini on this one. It won’t work. Period. The gold bugs that are paid by the association of gold producers and speculators to push sales and demand are as bad as the crook bankers on this one. If someone comes to me and offers to buy something I am selling with gold I will blow his head off and take it all.

  323. Alexandra November 24, 2010 at 11:51 am #

    If you’s be smart, i.e. your diet’s not lacking in the right quality nutrients…
    Then it’s patently obvious that it’s the to 2002 cheap abundant oil age that has fuelled our u’man-bean ferocious lust for growth and a god-given right to an American dream lifestyle…
    So what the difference betwixt us and locusts… ?
    (Not much me thinks)
    And thanks to the magic of our now 7bn peeps and ever expanding exponential appetites for most of what we need for the current mix of complexity we are at or past peak everything…
    This is a kool vid…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRT7nKxiS4
    (about 9mins in Chris explains something about metals quality)
    Watch, listen and learn, CFN’ers and adapt yerself (future) lifestyle as necessary…
    Toodle-pip
    (Air kisses to all regulars as necessary)

  324. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 11:53 am #

    “A Farm for the Future”, and I’m not sure about Netflix. Can you not play the link?

  325. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 12:02 pm #

    Concerning climate change
    AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming
    You raise valid questions concerning glaciation vs. AGW. The main difference will be time scale.
    AGW, according to best evidence, is occurring now.
    For example:
    “According to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 20th century”
    And a increase of 1.33 degrees F in 100 years should be considered rapid when viewed against geologic time.
    Re-glaciation would be expected to proceed at a slower pace – and give some warning signs visible to any human with eyes. In other words, the Great Lakes wouldn’t suddenly freeze solid and there wouldn’t be a big glacier blocking Union Street in Detroit.
    It would be a slower process, where snow melted later and later over a period of years (decades?) – then one year snow would not melt in the summer.
    Someone would look it up – snow did not melt in the summer – and yell out, “Hey, boys, that there unmelted snow is a dad-burn glacier – IN DETROIT!”
    “We better do something, now.”
    Of course my assessment could off by orders of magnitude. Climatology sometimes seems almost as dismal a science as economics.

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  326. mika. November 24, 2010 at 12:06 pm #

    Very nice, Steve. Your writing reminds of a Jackson Pollock painting. Kaleidoscopic chaos with pearls of color and truth. Keep the colors bright. The painting works best that way. Again, very nice.

  327. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 12:18 pm #

    Totally agree with you on this one SNAFU:
    “…I envision the survivors in the cities getting the hell out of Dodge. The smart and mobile will leave early the non-mobile will not.”
    Except I believe it’s human nature to hunker down in one’s ‘hood for as long as possible and hope for the best. And life in any urban area would be pretty grim after 48 hours without food, electricity, or police protection.
    IMO, city dwellers have to hope some anonymous force takes care of them – lest they die.
    We country dwellers know we don’t have an anonymous force upon which to hang our hopes.
    We’re all we’ve got – lest we die.

  328. seb November 24, 2010 at 12:25 pm #

    Ah, the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC)! Where do you want me to put you down as living? Mountains in Georgia? You and the guy who bombed the Olympics.
    Ah! EPL, for “league”, post-it notes, …
    Ah! English Premier League. Putting you down as English. I liked the way your ppl set climate change legislation back. Way back, I’ll pass you this soccer ball.
    Naw, they had those English clubs since it was Natural Philosophy. I always was curious what went on in them. Oh, I wasn’t curious. That’s right, the wonder about that sort of thing was planted there by the Disney Corporation.
    You can read the e-mails and see they aren’t crazy or a bunch of lunatics. It’s, well—I can only assume they don’t show that. What is it, the International Order of Pips and Cuatro (IPPC), Climate Change, dude, (things with CC), Panel, an orange panel truck.
    Wow, I seem almost like (channeling now) Zippy the Pinhead, or any random pinhead, the pinheads being the ones who say “Look at him, he’s reading delusional blogs. Get him some help.” He’d say, “I don’t believe in the muu-muu any more”. They re-educated him but he went over the wall.
    Then you got a lady in my reply, who is on about brass, could not tell quality without the weight, like JHK, Mr. “Chipboard”. I have a ref to laying down the lead ‘specially for you.
    Be the resident scientist, Tripp. Just writing them down. I got to do my writing.
    MYRTLEMAY. Oh, myrtle. Well, Myrtle Street is on the way to Dwight, at corner with Nile, flight 182 crash, San Diego, 1978. Nick’s babysitter’s at Myrtle and 39th.
    I define myself as a student of human nature, like a Dr. Mengele without the money. Is it already a lie?
    This lady with Fr. doors can’t be a reader of comic books. Thx for reminding me. JHK can always stay Jewish, he’s a rock. Harvey Pekar, the writer who depicts ordinary life in American Splendor, died last July. He was, I mean, he isn’t going under a pseudonym, he is JEW-ish, read my lips. Well, nine JHKs under the bridge, Harvey has been drawn by 100 different ppl. He didn’t go on the network like JHK, where our hero just let Katy Couric do all the talking. He told Letterman he was a “shill for GE”, and Dave kicked him off. Dave got mad! But, in all fairness, it’s a lot easier than it looks.

  329. seb November 24, 2010 at 12:34 pm #

    Happy to meet you (I don’t know what they’re talking about, nonsense. About you. Yeah. Well, don’t you worry none, Aunt Bee. Barney Fife’s on the job). Thz for visiting my site, I mean thx (close together). Two index fingers (looks at the tips). Whut?
    ( .. )
    self-portrait

  330. myrtlemay November 24, 2010 at 12:34 pm #

    I think Q might have been right about you. Mika, too! At any rate, trying to ascertain your opines, if it helps stave off Alzheimers, following you may mean the start of a beautiful friendship (thanks Bogart – Casablanca). Or maybe if I just lay off the scotch….nah…as they say in Brooklyn, fuget about it. Happy Thanksgiving, Steve! Also to CFNers!

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  331. Cash November 24, 2010 at 12:41 pm #

    P,
    My problem is I’m not a scientist so when I read something on climate change I can’t judge whether the author is just some university prof that wants to get his name in the paper, whether it’s some media outlet trying to drum up business, whether it’s politically correct posturing by someone on the left or whether it’s some oil company funded Palin-esque Reagan-ite heaping scorn on those goddammed hippies in academia but putting it in scientific sounding jargon.
    But I have this feeling that maybe we dodged the glacial bullet inadvertently by spewing carbon over these 10,000 years. One book I read by a reputable sounding scientist said that maximum global warmth was about 10,000 years ago when there wasn’t polar sea ice or mountain glaciers. She said that the Alpine and Rocky Mountain glaciers you see nowadays are about 5,000 years old. She said that over the last ten thousand years things have been getting colder with the exception of recent decades. Who the hell knows.
    I have this idea that half the stuff you read on the issue is nothing more than advocacy dressed up as science. It just seems to me there’s too much left vs right animosity infecting what should be a purely scientific debate.
    Back to what you were saying. I agree the continental ice sheets are a multi-thousand year phenom. It’s not like you can accumulate several million cubic miles of ice in a few years.
    But my suspicion is that cold-ness or dry-ness can inflict itself rapidly and by that I mean within a span of generations. You just won’t see ice cliffs on the horizon for maybe 20,000 years. But the growing season can get shorter and the winters colder and agricultural productivity lower. And those grinding glaciers might go on advancing for 50,000 years and then when the Earth does its orbital wobble thing and then things turn the other way. The glaciers stop advancing and over the course of 15-20,000 years they recede.
    Beats me. Maybe I’ll go back to university and do what I should’ve done in the first place and get a degree in science.

  332. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 12:59 pm #

    I see the possibility of us triggering an ice age as very plausible. And there is some evidence that they can come on fast for sure, like a matter of a few years. We should be building resilience into our life-support systems. You’ll need fat, oil crops, so an example might be, here in middle Georgia where I live, planting olives for increased heat and drought, and hazelnuts for cooling trends. Apply that to every facet of your preparations and you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

  333. seb November 24, 2010 at 1:03 pm #

    Invokes a crow. I’m awestruck. I love crows. I think the world is more that of crows than humans. They’re always laughing. Who else is going to come to your window at night when the light is on?
    Yeah, you began to delve into the psyche of JHK, but none of this method (assume a fact and fire out reasons supporting it*), see, to be a hypocrite he’d have to be an American, like he purports to be. But, I mean, check it out; we invade Afghanistan, Kunstler starts his blog. Here it was an anti-Arabic hatred I can’t fathom. Under it, you’d fly all over the world perpetually, to use up gas, in the hope that we kill one more Muslim to do the resupply. He’s not so antiwar when it’s cash in his pocket, see what I’m sayin’. Uh, flowers of doom, how holy the stench, remarking on tennies, my scuffmarks, …just ad libbing. No, he tells “you”, on you genuflecting a “War is not the answer”, to the point, “I guess’n if you wuz drivin’ a sports utility vehicle (SUV), war IS the answer. If you want to keep gas in it to hit the protest march.”
    Any to all of this, he has an anti-torture method, like Michael Caine in the Ipcress File. He comes on and swipes away the arguments like cobwebs, and proceeds to do what he does best. A few things remain of his arguments, and since they’re big-ticket items, a few’s all it takes.
    *or else that’s what I’m doing

  334. asoka November 24, 2010 at 1:45 pm #

    SEB said: “There are 150 countries with American troops. Refugee camps dot the world. People don’t advertise their paramilitary death squads.”
    SEB, in Country X there are no “refugee camps.” There is a “civil conflict” which has forced millions off their land and into the cities. They are called “internally displaced persons”.
    There may be USA troops in over 150 countries but only a handful of those countries have over 2 million internally displaced persons.
    Since no one has named Country X, what Turkel says must not be true. It is not the case that having millions of people forced off their land, having paramilitary death squads killing thousands, etc. … none of that makes “news” anymore.

  335. asoka November 24, 2010 at 1:58 pm #

    Republican legislators who say they hate “Obamacare” have suddenly become silent when offered the opportunity to repeal Obama’s health care legislation. Democrat Gary L. Ackerman is introducing legislation to repeal Obama’s good work and has invited Republicans to co-sponsor it, in other words, put up of shut up. So far, they are being shown up for the HIPA-CRITs they are. They don’t want to play the Blue-Red game and they know there are differences between Democrats and Republicans. And they know the American people support Obama and are giving thanks this Thanksgiving for Obama’s hard work on their behalf.
    Go ahead, make my day. Become a cosponsor.
    Here is the text of Ackerman’s letter to Republicans:

    Dear Colleague:
    There’s been a lot of tough talk recently about repealing the health-care insurance reform law. Now, it’s time to put up, or sit down. So, you want to repeal the health care law? Here’s six shots at it:
    * The First Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the prohibition of unreasonable rescissions.
    * The Second Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the prohibition of establishing annual limits for a health-insurance policy.
    * The Third Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the prohibition of establishing lifetime limits for a health-insurance policy.
    * The Fourth Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the prohibition of preexisting condition exclusions for adults.
    * The Fifth Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the prohibition of preexisting condition exclusions for children.
    * The Sixth Health Insurance Protects America–Can’t Repeal IT (HIPA-CRIT) Act repeals the requirement for dependent coverage until age 26.
    The Affordable Care Act contains these and many other foolish protections for our constituents. So, join other Members of Congress who want to deprive their constituents of these silly safeguards from the big insurance companies. You can cast your courageous vote on a series of SIX bills to do it. Feel free to call it the HIPA-CRIT Act when you explain your vote.
    Fulfill your promise.
    To cosponsor all or one of these bills, or if you have any questions, please contact me.
    Sincerely,
    Gary L. Ackerman

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  336. seb November 24, 2010 at 2:07 pm #

    Happy Turkey (HT)Day! Must call ahead to pick up resupply for my ancient parents no longer cook. They have plans for Thanksgiving. Probably others at the other end of the spectrum in my extended family. There’s hurt feelings yet.
    HT Qshtick!
    Lot of comics about Jews on Christmas.
    I needed a random victim for some verbal challenge to their mind, if I could detect that they wrote after listening too much to their inner voice.
    I am pacified, due to your kindness, all. That harkens back to motivation, what we call modus operandi, and thx to Stephen J. Cannell, who put “signature” up for the forensics alternative to motive. Yes, a gun leaves a mark, too. We aren’t part of the crime. I mean, I commit crimes, I don’t—well, no, I guess I’ll call 911, too. No law against that. Guy almost hit my car, he was drunk, but the cops never got there and he abandoned the car and escaped on foot. In criminal circles, that’s bad form, what I did.
    But, of course, motive is intent, and the insanity defense takes away intent. It’s no shame not to have intent, you just have to be a rubber ball. That’s getting into Szasz, where anti-psychiatry is not anti-science, but all hypotheses and theories, they’re fictions of science, not science fiction, which is how to spin the metaphor.
    Is this a religious holiday? It’s already Thanksgiving (and snowing!) across the Dateline. What am I doing? I have time, why, a kurkey tooks firty minutes. I don’t really want to go! They spent my inheritance. It’s better in Germany. I like the way they complain. They don’t complain so much. They’re compliant depending upon how you spell it.
    I used JHK’s grand design to convince my father to leave his …money’s a monkey real fast, in the stock market. Thx for the Reverse Psychology, Jim.
    Cannell dies of what I got, but it wasn’t the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). I mean, who do you trust more (never mind answering. I’m gone), Al Gore or Dan Aykroyd?
    It was good 1900-1910. Dorothy Parker was seven.

  337. asoka November 24, 2010 at 2:12 pm #

    CORRECTION
    Democrat Gary L. Ackerman is introducing legislation to repeal Obama’s good work and has invited Republicans to co-sponsor it, in other words, put up or shut up. So far, they are being shown up for the HIPA-CRITs they are. So far, not one Republican is supporting the legislation to get rid of the “evil Obamacare”
    They are being shown up to be the cowardly liars they are. Where is “you lie!” Jim DeMint now that he can go on record to vote against Obama? Cowering, cowardly Jim DeMint.

  338. asoka November 24, 2010 at 2:14 pm #

    SEB, the clue as to which country is Country X is very close to you.

  339. The Mook November 24, 2010 at 2:49 pm #

    What city in the USA will have the most “internally displaced persons”?

  340. The Mook November 24, 2010 at 3:08 pm #

    Is the blue sky ugly to some people? Is green grass repulsive to others? Then why are quite a few people around here, and other places I go, so repulsed by gold? Have you ever seen, or held this crap? It is awesome. Not as curiously neat as mercury, but beautiful just the same. Many large black men have a real penchant for diamonds. Are they beautiful (the diamonds)? Yes. Do I want one? No. Would I take one if you were handing them out? Of course. They will always have value. Is pork fat beautiful? If it’s on my plate it is. It will always have value. Is the dollar beautiful? Probably, if you never saw one before. Will I take one if your giving them out? Sure. But probably not in the near future. But if you’re still giving out gold, diamonds, mercury, or pork fat, at that time, I’m sure I’ll still be accepting them. Cowshit will continue to be accepted also.

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  341. BeantownBill November 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm #

    I read somewhere a long time ago that after examining drilling cores, scientists determined that a full-blown ice age from start to peak occurred in 20 years. Scary.
    Volcanic eruptions release vast amounts of ash, which remain airborne and carried aloft by winds, spread around the Earth. If enough eruptions occur over a short timespan, the resulting particulates could set off an ice age – in spite of human-induced warming.
    And what happens if we enter a greenhouse phase, temperatures rise substantially, and THEN volcanoes erupt? What happens? That’s why it’s next to impossible to predict the future – too many unknowns. And that’s why it’s best to live one day at a time.

  342. BeantownBill November 24, 2010 at 3:59 pm #

    This reminds me of whenI was a teenager and went door-to-door to collect scrap metal and newspapers. I can’t remember for sure the prices, but I think junkyards at that time (late 1950’s) were paying $.60/100 lbs of newspapers, $.18/lb. for brass, and the jackpot, $.22/lb. for copper. My friend and I would make eight or nine dollers total. With this, we were able to take the bus both ways to the beach in Revere (just north of boston), buy a couple of hotdogs and play pinball most of the day in the penny arcades. Just recently, my friends wanted to take their 3 grandchildren to see Disney on Ice, but wouldn’t go because it would have cost them over $700 for the evening.
    After graduating high school in the early ’60’s, I got a summer job in a large junkyard operating the weight scale. The most money made by small scrap metal dealers was for cast iron, which paid $22/ton. Light iron paid $7/ton. The contractors who got city contracts to remove old sewage lines and replace them made a lot of money from the tons of cast iron they salvaged.
    Later, the owners of the junkyard would drive to Logan Airport to pick up their Japanese customers, who bought all their scrap metal. It was a pretty lucrative business.

  343. Pucker November 24, 2010 at 4:03 pm #

    I imagine that during the Easter Islander society’s slow collapse that the people actually believed in those giant stone statues, in much the same way that we today believe in money. Whomever on Easter Island had the biggest statue had the most authority, in much the same way that today whomever has the biggest pile of money has the most power. I imagine that the Eastern Islanders may have actually believed that if they just kept building bigger stone statues that the gods would listen and that they would be saved, in much the same way that people today believe that if they just amass a larger pile of money, then they will be saved.

  344. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 4:37 pm #

    “What city in the USA will have the most “internally displaced persons”?”
    I would say Detroit to present, and LA a decade from now.

  345. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 4:39 pm #

    “But if you’re still giving out gold, diamonds, mercury, or pork fat, at that time, I’m sure I’ll still be accepting them. Cowshit will continue to be accepted also.”
    I trade in all these items as well, except for Hg, but I think cow shit is probably the most valuable of the group!

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  346. asoka November 24, 2010 at 4:50 pm #

    Mook said: “Will I take one if your giving them out? Sure.”
    Always looking for a handout. Go out and get a job if you are so enamored of gold and silver, worthless metals that they are, and someone will be happy to sell them to you.

  347. asoka November 24, 2010 at 4:56 pm #

    Mook said: “What city in the USA will have the most “internally displaced persons”?”
    There are no internally displaced person in the USA by definition:

    Internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict

    No civil war, no IDPs. The USA does not have and will not have in the future, armed insurrection. Not now and not in the future. I guarantee that.

  348. Eleuthero November 24, 2010 at 5:46 pm #

    Dostoyevsky said:
    The Real Bogeyman is David Hasselhoff
    How can you trust a drunk who pretends to be a lifesaver at the beach and whose car speaks??
    I rest my case
    ***************************************************
    You are a genius, Dostoyevsky. Therefore, you
    realize that if you had chipped away all of
    Tammy Fay Baker’s make-up you would have discovered the missing body of Jimmy Hoffa.
    I, too, rest my case.
    E.

  349. turkle November 24, 2010 at 5:52 pm #

    asoka,
    Thanks for the thoughts.
    Let me clarify, because my post was a little on the muddled thinking side.
    When I said “national news” I really meant “international new”, and what I was trying to point out was people’s amazing ability to adapt to new circumstances. In other words, if people live in refugee camps and slums, that doesn’t mean the Apocalypse is here. Most make do, survive, and breed more. Some of them even move up the social ladder.
    To me, I don’t see anything anomalous from standard operating procedure unless there is a massive worldwide food shortage and the die-off occurs, as in Catton’s concept from “Overshoot”. Because when people have rudimentary shelter and enough food and water, they basically have everything they need in order to survive. Of course, this is the barest subsistence level, and even most of the poorest people on the planet have more than this.
    So, yes, I’d agree with you. There are millions of displaced people in many countries. There are death squads. But this is not anomalous. It has been going on a long time. And world population is still growing. If and when there is a big down tick in world population, then something new is happening. Maybe we have entered the die-off period then.
    But until then, people are going to keep muddling along, even if they have to deal with living in a mud hut while being terrorized by death squads.

  350. Eleuthero November 24, 2010 at 6:09 pm #

    Oh, and by the way, comrade Dostoyevsky …
    “Don’t Hassle the Hoff” 🙂 🙂
    Happy Thanksgiving!!!
    E.

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  351. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 6:11 pm #

    About Glaciation – maybe it would come on slow and then again maybe not. There is evidence that Ice Age Conditions can come on very quickly. As soon as the snow stops melting in Summer – that then cools things that much more. It’s can be an accelerating process that works its way South very quickly within a decade or so.

  352. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 6:15 pm #

    Have you tried heating with it? Also, can you explain the effect of pine needles on soil? How long does it take for them to compost?

  353. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 6:33 pm #

    The Stupid Founding Fathers believed in Conspiracies – the Illuminati/French Revolution Conspiracy and the English Central Banking Conspriacy. I mean it would be strange for them NOT to believe since they were Conspirators themselves. Back when America was doing alot better, most people believed in Conspiracies as well. But the media was subverted and has done its job of dumbing down very well. So now people think themselves oh so very clever to debunk what is obviously the case. They are so programmed now that they do their Masters job for them with just an occasional reinforcing key word needed.
    Ever hear of Sturgeon’s Law? Someone once asked Theodore Sturgeon why a smart guy like him wrote Science Fiction since “90% of it was junk”. Sturgeon answered, “Ninety percent of everything is junk”. Ok? So what if there are alot bad Conspiracy Theories going around? It doesn’t disprove anything. You have no point at all.

  354. BeantownBill November 24, 2010 at 6:57 pm #

    My own belief is that our world has three “source problems”: Human greed, sloth and lust for power, in other words our basic character flaws; overpopulation; and for now, a limited supply of resources.
    Overemphasis on the pursuit of wealth and power creates behavior with no regard for consequences; sloth, a particularly American trait, means we’re too lazy to put out the effort required to resolve what is wrong; and overpopulation cuts the pie into smaller and smaller pieces.
    The world does have operating rules, and one of them is that actions have consequences. If we maintain or increase our population, then we must make additional resources such as food and energy available to us, or go to a lower-consumption lifestyle. Otherwise, nature will take matters into her own hands, in ways that will threaten our continued existence as a species.
    Our minds, I believe, have the capability to find ways to increase supplies of food and energy without altering the environment in a bad way (This seems to be a major point of argument on this site). The major stumbling block is whether or not we can overcome our own character flaws to get the desired results.

  355. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 7:20 pm #

    Capitalism must continually grow, for the same reason that the money supply must continually grow.
    There is always more money owed than there is in circulation, and there are always more profits demanded than money paid out in wages.
    That’s why capitalism must expand to other markets, to try to get their profits from other countries and the wage earners there, but the other countries resist and then you have trade wars, which lead to real wars.
    What they did here in the US was to become the world’s ultimate buyer of goods. This involved using the world’s currency, the dollar, to keep the goods flowing.
    It also involved getting heavily into debt and having a very large trade deficit, which they are now complaining about.
    Of course you can have a sustainable society. People did it for hundreds of thousands of years before class society.
    It involves keeping your population at the level in which you can live within your local conditions, and not having a parasite class demanding more and more from the rest.
    We don’t have that here.

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  356. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 7:40 pm #

    I have also waited for the collapse of US capitalism, and been surprised by how long they have kept its corpse alive.
    However. As a nurse, I’m around dead people a bit.
    It seems that the most shocked family survivors are the ones whose loved one had a long chronic illness.
    They are dumbfounded. How did this happen?
    Every other time their loved one was near death, somehow, they survived. And the near death experiences were frequent, in some cases.
    So how could this one end up differently?
    And we’re always like, dude, he looked dead for the last six months. I can’t believe he lasted this long.
    Either way, the end does indeed come.
    I think Cash talked about how it happened at his company, and how they saw it coming, but it was still a surprise. (If I’m remembering the story wrong, Cash, I apologize).
    Anyway, I’m still trying to learn how to garden, just in case.

  357. Eleuthero November 24, 2010 at 8:19 pm #

    VK said:
    “Ever hear of Sturgeon’s Law? Someone once asked Theodore Sturgeon why a smart guy like him wrote Science Fiction since “90% of it was junk”. Sturgeon answered, “Ninety percent of everything is junk”. Ok? So what if there are alot bad Conspiracy Theories going around? It doesn’t disprove anything. You have no point at all.”
    **************************************************
    This does NOT, ipso facto, mean that your
    conspiracy theories (which are rather hackneyed)
    are NOT part of the 90%.
    I not only had ONE “point” in my post … I
    had TWO. One is that many of you guys take
    yourselves soooooo seriously that there is
    never any stop for whimsy and laughter. It’s
    unceasing seriousness.
    Secondly, I hold the main point which you
    appear to have missed i.e., if the highest
    offices around the world can’t maintain
    secrets for a week, what gives you the idea
    that some putative group can maintain secrets
    for a MILLENIUM. I mean, for God’s sake Vlad,
    not even the proceedings at Bohemian Grove or
    the initiation rites of 33rd degree Masons are
    a mystery any more so why would your Illuminati
    theories hold any water??
    E.

  358. trippticket November 24, 2010 at 8:49 pm #

    “It involves keeping your population at the level in which you can live within your local conditions, and not having a parasite class demanding more and more from the rest.”
    What humans make it down the mountain will have a far more beautiful, healthier world to enjoy, I think. In fact I believe we’re already heading that direction. (To my mind peak energy = peak exploitative ability. Very comforting for someone like me.) Who knows who will make it through, but I’m done helping the permanently entitled classes gain a survival advantage over me.

  359. mika. November 24, 2010 at 8:49 pm #

    E,
    If a tree was cut in the forest and MSM did not record the lumberjack yelling timber, did the tree really fall in the forest?
    I’ll let Vlad answer with his own answer, but many of the conspiracies that *I* talk about are open conspiracies. The information is openly available for those interested. These are *not secrets*. Often there are volumes of books and extensive references written by historians on these things. But the MSM refuses to cover this material. The MSM will cover every meaningless distraction possible, but they will not cover and talk about what needs to be covered and be talked about.

  360. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 9:02 pm #

    Those are the old clothes, the outworn forms – the outer court perhaps. The Council of Foreign relations has outer layers too – even air heads like Diane Sawyer and Angelina Jolie are members. But the higher echelons are quite selective and secret. Skull and Bones is quite secret as are the Bilderbergers. Yes, we know some of the rituals of Skull and Bones, but not exactly what they talk about.
    Can’t maintain their secrets? Hardly. Put it this way: are you consumed by a desire to spill your guts to bums and alcoholics on the street? Of course not. Well that’s how they see us and they are not tempted either. Now over the years of course there have been many defectors from Masonry so we know the rituals. I concede that, but as for the rest – they are not popular mass movements the way Masonry was and is. Washington and Jefferson were deeply concerned about the subversion of American Masonry by the Illuminati of Weisphalt. They were very real, very deadly – and very secret. The world was made aware of them when one of their messengers was struck by lightening while carrying dispatches.
    Finally, I’m not part of some kind of Anti-Conspiracy Movement. I fool around alot. I also believe in being serious about serious things sometimes. And yes, Icke is absurd, but the first parts of a couple of his books are full of very good, foot noted information.

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  361. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 9:11 pm #

    You are my other self, my gollum I see in the mirror. But you do things I don’t do – I rave at you to behave and you rave back like a bad mirror should. Did you get that movie “Fight Club” in Israel? I am the Aryan Brad Pitt. You are the little schlep, smendrick, schlemiel whose name I can’t remember. Forgive my idish – it’s been awhile.

  362. mika. November 24, 2010 at 9:16 pm #

    Haha. Admit it, Vladik, you’re Jewish!

  363. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 9:23 pm #

    Just like State Capitalism also known as Communism. Is Mao one of your two favorite political philosophers – like Anita Dunn, Obama’s Communication Czar? What a gaffe! This statement was posted at the NEA’s calendar as the Diversity Event for October 1. It was taken down immediately just like Tim Wise took down his rant about White American Gentiles days being numbered. The Guilty are always afraid. They have reason to be now that the Folk are awake and watching. Our right wing attack media is doing a great job keeping these creeps off balance.

  364. mika. November 24, 2010 at 9:32 pm #

    Vladik, you stupid idiot, there’s no such thing as “left wing” and “right wing”. It’s a false dialectic! Kabuki theater for gollems like yourself. Figures you would fall for that crap. You have the analytical skills of a chipmunk. I take it back, you’re not Jewish, you’re a gollem goy chipmunk!

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  365. Dostoyevsky November 24, 2010 at 9:34 pm #

    Eleuthero
    Thank you for your kind wishes and I wish you a happy thanksgiving too.
    D

  366. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 9:42 pm #

    With worldwide Jewish Dominance, many are now pretending. Jews in prisons demand kosher which tends to be higher quality food than ordinary prison fare. So gentile prisoners have started listing themselves as Jewsish. Likewise, to get out of Russia, I’ve heard that many Russians have called themselves Jews and gone to Israel – and then openly despised the place. You tell me – anything to that story? I would have thought that Israelis were a bit harder to fool than that. And not to be openly mocked in their own country. But on other hand, many have obviously have sucumbed to their own liberal poison. Look at how they let in the Falashas, the Ethiopian Jews. Tests have shown that this group has the same low IQ as other Sub-Saharan Groups. And look at how Turkey and the Junk Yard Dog have attacked you – Hitler warned the Jews that the Liberal Goyim Golem/Zombies that they helped create would someday turn on them and rend them. Stalin was merely the first.

  367. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 9:54 pm #

    I already know that you id-iot. You’re just my distored, funhouse reflection, a piece of undigesed matza ball that I ate. Watch out I’m throwing a brick at the mirror. Ouch!

  368. Dostoyevsky November 24, 2010 at 9:55 pm #

    Vlad Mika
    you wrote the following piece of drivel.
    I’ll let Vlad answer with his own answer, but many of the conspiracies that *I* talk about are open conspiracies. The information is openly available for those interested. These are *not secrets*. Often there are volumes of books and extensive references written by historians on these things. But the MSM refuses to cover this material. The MSM will cover every meaningless distraction possible, but they will not cover and talk about what needs to be covered and be talked about.
    Sigh !
    Vlad/Mika
    I have been asking you ad nauseum to provide us CFN’rs with a source/a reference/something to enable us to uncover the TRUTH about just 1 of your myriad conspiracy theories, namely that the Vatican Bank controls everything
    Remember “All roads lead to the Vatican” or some such drivel that you uttered many posts back.
    Come on,! we are keen as mustard to know the truth as you know it.
    But no, no reference just verbal diarrhea thrown out into the ether.
    Your cretinous utterings are an attempt to show your intelligence but they are so bad that you barely achieve fake pseudo intellectual status.
    Happy thanksgiving

  369. mika. November 24, 2010 at 9:58 pm #

    A very large population of Ethiopians lives in the city I’m from, so I have direct experience with them. I can tell you that I’m very impressed with them. They came to Israel with nothing. No money, no education, no language, nothing. What many of them achieved in less than 20 years is nothing short of a miracle. Some of the Ukrainians on the other hand, complete basket cases. Even the young, twenty something, are rotten drunkards. They have the most opportunity to succeed (half the population speaks Russian), and all they can manage is low level construction work and getting drunk. Really pathetic.

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  370. Dostoyevsky November 24, 2010 at 9:59 pm #

    Vlad/Mika
    Your attempt at dialogue between your two names is a bit cheesy don’t ya think?
    However Gollum does sort of sum up who you are a little internet troll with NFI.
    F

  371. Eleuthero November 24, 2010 at 10:27 pm #

    Watching the dialog between Mika and Vlad
    reminds me of the Jane Curtain/Dan Aykroyd
    spoof of “60 minutes” where, after Curtain
    makes her point, Aykroyd (posing as James
    J. Kilpatrick) says: “Jane, you ignorant
    slut!”.
    Mike and Vlad, you are both Commie, transgender,
    alcoholic, meth-headed sluts. 🙂 🙂
    And your respective mothers wear Army boots.
    Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
    E.

  372. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 10:28 pm #

    That would be New Orleans.
    Duh.

  373. mika. November 24, 2010 at 10:31 pm #

    Merry Xmas to you too! 🙂

  374. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 10:40 pm #

    What The F… are you talking about?

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  375. progressorconserve November 24, 2010 at 10:42 pm #

    Ah, Happy Thanksgiving to all!
    The quintessential purely American Holiday, originally a religiously inspired feast in celebration of harvest time. (also celebrated in Grenada, The Netherlands, Liberia, and Canada; though not necessarily on the same dates)
    Moved by Congress under FDR to its present position in the calendar – to encourage consumers to consume and benefit the economy.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving
    If you are in the United States – whether native born, legally immigrating, or just visiting – enjoy your Thanksgiving tomorrow. Please find something important and be thankful – to Divine Providence, TPTB, or plain old fashioned Good Luck.
    And hey, if you’re not in the United States tomorrow – have a really Good Thursday!

  376. BeantownBill November 24, 2010 at 11:03 pm #

    Enough already with who is who. Does anybody really care?
    E, I’m surprised at you for joining in the fray.
    Conspiracy theories are a by-product of human brains always trying to see patterns and making connections.

  377. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 11:05 pm #

    That’s not how it works, Asoka. Attacking a country, real or false flag, makes the people circle the wagons, so to speak, as Goering pointed out

    “Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on
    a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of
    it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people
    don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in
    Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the
    country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
    drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
    dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
    voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
    That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
    and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the
    country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

  378. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 11:06 pm #

    I appreciate your posts.
    Don’t listen to Q. He’s a cranky old dipshit.

  379. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 11:11 pm #

    Although JHK probably doesn’t want to take a slow boat to Australia, I agree that he should take Amtrak instead of flying.
    WTF? How hard is that? I take Amtrak, and it’s most definitely doable, although not efficient.
    But until enough people refuse the TSA bullshit, and choose to take Amtrak even though it’s slow and underfunded, things will not change.
    Walk the talk.

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  380. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 11:18 pm #

    I disagree. I don’t think that the majority of humans insist on expanding.
    There are a minority of sociopaths that can not be satisfied with normal human delights, and insist on imperialist expansions, but the rest of us are perfectly content to indulge in sustainable happiness.
    The fault, dear Beantown, is not in the stars, but in our sociopaths.

  381. wagelaborer November 24, 2010 at 11:24 pm #

    That is ridiculous, Asoka.
    The USA attacks the countries it wants to attack.
    It makes no difference who the announced perpetrator is, as you note, but then you ignore your own statement to proclaim that the US will attack those “responsible”.
    In 9-11, the “terrorists” were officially proclaimed to have planned in Germany and trained in Florida.
    Although I called for the bombing of Florida at the time, the USA chose to bomb Afghanistan, which was the place in which Unocal coveted a pipeline, to transport fossil fuels.

  382. BeantownBill November 24, 2010 at 11:29 pm #

    You are certainly entitled to your opinion, Wage, but we can agree to disagree. Just wondering though, what are “normal” human delights? When anybody says “normal”, I immediately begin to suspect what they are really saying is “acceptable to me”.
    Also, I never tied in expansion with imperialism. There are many ways to expand, such as one’s mind.
    Now see what you have done? You’ve made me talk like Asoka.

  383. Vlad Krandz November 24, 2010 at 11:35 pm #

    Oh sorry, I got carried away. I wanted to know which you prefer: Russian or Chinese Communism; Mao or Trotsky/Leninism?

  384. Dostoyevsky November 24, 2010 at 11:40 pm #

    Rubbish
    you were sprouting your usual nonsensical cr#p

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  385. Eleuthero November 25, 2010 at 12:37 am #

    Bill said:
    “E, I’m surprised at you for joining in the fray.”
    Bill … not you. The whole point of my goofy
    hyperbole was to poke fun of the deadly seriousness
    with which Vlad and Mika take their theories.
    I didn’t think I’d actually have to EXPLAIN that
    when I called Vlad and Mika “Commie, transgender,
    alcoholic methheads” that it was farce.
    You mean you really think I was SERIOUS?! Happy
    Turkey Day anyway!! 🙂
    E.

  386. BeantownBill November 25, 2010 at 1:01 am #

    Jeez, I just re-read your post and the humor is obvious now. Maybe I’m just getting too serious, or I was reading too fast, or it was getting late. Sorry. I’m going to bed. You have a good Tday, too.

  387. turkle November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am #

    “worldwide Jewish Dominance”
    The Jews barely even control a tiny sliver of desert, much less the entire planet. Read Quigley man. The power establishment is based on an Anglo-American empire, not some sinister Jewish conspiracy. I’m thinking Rockefeller.
    If anything, the Saudis and the Chinese are the ones dominating the world right now, but like I said before, the idea that one group or organization has anything even approaching total control or dominance of our whole civilization is a false premise to begin with.

  388. turkle November 25, 2010 at 1:19 am #

    Yeah, okay, so Skull and Boners get together and skull fuck Geronimo’s hollowed out cranium in secret. Why does it proceed that they somehow dominate or control our society?
    Do they try? Maybe. Do they succeed? Nope.
    And then you get all hot and bothered about the secret worldwide Jewish conspiracy, but your examples are crusty old Anglo fraternities.
    And Bilderberg…eh, I dunno. It is the equivalent of a yacht club. Just because a bunch of rich people hob nob and don’t publish the transcript doesn’t mean they are plotting world dominance.
    Have you thought about perhaps reading some real political science and history texts instead of, you know, getting everything you know from Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Just a thought.
    If you want to understand human history, things like diseases, technology, population dynamics, food supply, and geography (among other things) play much larger roles in the destinies of civilizations than a bunch of stuffy snobs with a secret handshake getting together and making sinister plans for world dominance.

  389. LewisLucanBooks November 25, 2010 at 1:26 am #

    Funny. No one seems to use emoticons, anymore. I just noticed that after several exchanges were thought to be serious, but weren’t.
    Maybe they don’t work on blogs? Well, I’ll just give it a try…
    🙂 😀

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  390. LewisLucanBooks November 25, 2010 at 1:33 am #

    Hmmm. They work. When did people stop using them? How did I miss that. Oh, I admit the little smiley face was overdone. Occasionally, when writing to someone I’d say (inset overused smiley face here.) Which was pretty 🙂 , in itself.
    It’s kind of like when I went bounding into a “music” store and asked the clerk where the vinyl was. I had (seriously) missed the whole CD thing.
    Well, a Happy Thanksgiving to ya’all. (Ya’all in honor of Tripp) 🙂
    ….even the whack jobs.
    PS: I think Alexandra will end up a famous Lady Pirate! But, alas, the “boys” will tire of her cutting in on their profits. She will be betrayed and hung on Canary Wharf in London.

  391. ctemple November 25, 2010 at 1:35 am #

    There seem to be loads of people in this country who think nobody knows anything but them, like the people who listen to Rush Limbaugh every day and act like they’re hearing Benjamin Franklin, or the people who think Sarah Palin would make a really good president. What about these global climate change deny idiots, what are they going to say is just a commie plot next, gravity?
    One of the things I don’t like about JHK is his constantly belittling somebody in the middle of the country, if anybody talked about blacks the way he talks about southerners he’d be the first to yell racism, it’s alright for him to be a bigot apparently.
    Has the Democratic Party learned a thing from their latest beating? I don’t see it if they have.
    General Motors is back now, and better than ever, they’ll bring back the glory days of 1050 selling everyone a forty five thousand dollar hybrid car.
    I know that what happened to Natalie Holloway is more important than Ireland going into bankruptcy.

  392. treebeardsuncle November 25, 2010 at 2:08 am #

    Took a long time to catch up. Developing the following scroll-past list has helped.
    The first to be added to the scroll past list was
    8M: He lives in a fantasy world. He repeats the same statements again and again, ad nauseum. He keeps doing it again, and again, and again.
    The next to be added was Asoka. I like the name resident impediment, but it shows a cultural myopia, a kind of mental construction that upholds absolutists standards, which is wrong. You might even say it is speciest.
    Third on my list was that fucked-up crazed whack-job bitch Myrtle-May. Have you heard she swears a lot ass-munch? That is like so bite me or better yet gag me with a spoon. You be like hip to de jive they be speakin. BEEEACH!
    Fourth on the list was new-comer on the list, Alexandra. It would be fine by her if you all go to hell. Sniggers. I be seeing you. What an acid wench!
    Fifth on the list was SEB. The inscrutability of the implicity referenced prose depended upon a substructed backstory — or perhaps should you say a familiarity with an implicit frame of refence made explicit through a jutaposition of titles and identifying verbal habits for said monicers– that rendered his discussion orthogonal to current discussions, but I digress. Now where did I put my coffee cup. Dammit, Timmy! Get out of there!
    ***
    Mika almost made the list but in his briefer comments the ratio of acerbic wit to clutter was sufficient to survive the first cut.
    ***
    Now lay off the tiresome litany of: “We are so fucked! The Shit will hit the fan. It is hopeless. There is nothing one can do. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. It will the the end of the world as we know it.” There is around here a plethora of paranoid, hostile depressed pessimists with learned helplessness or perhaps innate helplessness who can’t do more than cat-call and string together conspiracy theories.

  393. asoka November 25, 2010 at 2:55 am #

    Happy Thanksgiving to all, even those with Asoka on their scroll past list.
    I am thankful for government workers like teachers, police, firemen who work hard everyday.
    I am thankful for government (Obama’s actually) student loan reform which cut out the middle men (banks) and gave more scholarships to students.
    I am thankful for government’s first amendment guarantee of freedom of speech in the USA and allows JHK to have this blog.
    I am thankful for all those working for peace: anti-war activists, pacifists, conscientious objectors, soldiers who refuse to fight, soldiers who are dissidents and fight DADT, soldiers who risk imprisonment (or worse), soldiers who refuse, instead of obeying, illegal orders.
    I am thankful for labor organizers who fight for unions, for ACORN organizers who fight to eliminate poverty, for organizers who register people to vote, and for those who are any kind of community organizers… including the one who became president.
    I am thankful Obama’s health reform (see Gary Ackerman’s invitation/dare to Republicans to repeal it)
    I am thankful for public transit (buses and trains)
    I am thankful for my health and nature’s abundance.
    There is much more to be thankful for but then some would have to scroll that much longer, so I’ll stop there.
    Oh, and I’m thankful for the Tea Party.
    PALIN / O’DONNELL 2012!

  394. Gregor Ronald November 25, 2010 at 5:23 am #

    You’re in Perth? I’ll be interested in your comments about how sustainable that place is, 1000s of km from even the rest of Australia, with no assets except sunshine and the mining/gas industry. It seemed to me that it would take very little to render the place uninhabitable.

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  395. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 6:03 am #

    “That would be New Orleans.
    Duh.”
    I’m an idiot. Of course you’re right. Katrina? Helloooo? Although Detroit is converting 10,000 acres of former city back to farm land, which certainly requires some serious displacement (over time), and is also seriously cool in my book.

  396. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 6:09 am #

    “I am wondering what readers think of the book “Collapse”?”
    Awesome. Coupled with “Guns, Germs, and Steel” it’s like a college degree in deep human history. “The Third Chimpanzee” is just as good too. Haven’t read “Why is Sex Fun?” yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say…also awesome.

  397. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 6:24 am #

    Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate such things!
    I’m thankful for such a thought-provoking group of people to chat with regularly about issues of the highest import.
    I’m thankful for Earth, my mother, and global energy peak, because it means she gets to start recovering now.
    I’m thankful for permaculture, and its optimistic realism about what will be required of us in an energy descent world.
    I’m thankful for my incredible wife and two amazing children. May we be sharing our thanks together 60 years from now when we’re old and broken from a long life of transition work!
    I’m thankful for soccer and disc golf, my two favorite sports, and stoked that they will probably make it through because of their lack of complexity.
    And lastly, I’m thankful for my species’ adaptability, because we are really, really going to need it.
    As MessianicDruid says, there will always be a “remnant.” Here’s to being part of that remnant!
    Have a great holiday everyone, especially you people who still punch a clock for your vittles!

  398. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 6:40 am #

    So the debate that is raging in my head these days is this:
    Will it be better to live farther from “town” and store up loads of provisions? Or better to live within easy travel of some sort of commercial center and go to market more often? Like maybe daily?
    There are obvious strikes against the first – less interaction with other humans, and the neighbors you do have stand a good chance of being sort of backwards, or at least probably not radical thinkers. Also, hoarding is how we got stratified and abusive agricultural society in the first place. At the platform of our departure from this system, is it wise to start it all over again so quickly?
    And really, how much hope can we have to produce everything we need ourselves? Very little I think. You’d be at it constantly.
    I’m leaning toward a daily market kind of arrangement. A few acres on the edge of town within bike or horse distance to commerce, enclosed by a wickedly thorny living fence of black locust.

  399. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 7:00 am #

    The permaculture literature talks about maximum power/efficiency ratios being optimized in the 5-15 persons range for communal life. Fewer than 5 and power is sacrificed. More than 15 and efficiency dwindles. We are 4 here, and looking for another like-minded group of 2-10 others, with the hope of sharing a property of at least 4 acres of intensive and integrated food forests, gardens, and livestock. The old permies say 2 acres is plenty for a family of four with realistic expectations about what the world can provide sustainably.
    We have 2 acres of arable land per person on Earth today, not counting deserts and such, which can be repaired with some effort. We are so many because we live on oil, and I think we will die by oil as well, but the natural resources are there for making a go of this. We just have to radically change the way we think about those resources.
    “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead…only try to realize the truth. What truth? There is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

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  400. lbendet November 25, 2010 at 7:57 am #

    Thanks Turkel for your sane entry:
    “If you want to understand human history… diseases, technology, population dynamics, food supply, and geography… play much larger roles in the destinies of civilizations than a bunch of stuffy snobs with a secret handshake getting together and making sinister plans for world dominance.”
    On Washington Journal, they said: “Turkeys have been visiting the White House for years”.
    How sad, but true!
    Hope you all spend the holiday with those nearest and dearest to you.
    –L

  401. Pucker November 25, 2010 at 8:30 am #

    Did E. say that Queen Elizabeth is a “shape shifter”?
    Come again!?

  402. trippticket November 25, 2010 at 8:51 am #

    Oh, and one other thing. I’d really love to know just how many tons of collard greens moved through the economy of Bibb County, GA this week for Thanksgiving. I’ve never seen such a thing in my whole life…

  403. Cash November 25, 2010 at 9:31 am #

    Hi Wage,
    You got the gist of the story right. We busted our asses for 5 years to keep the company alive, through 2 dips into the Canuck version of chapter 11. But the end was really fast. As you said, a “surprise”.

  404. myrtlemay November 25, 2010 at 10:08 am #

    I like you, too! 🙂

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  405. Cash November 25, 2010 at 10:32 am #

    East Europeans I’ve met are way too prone to get into their cups. I worked with a Polish woman a while back and got to know her, her boyfriend and some of their group. When you open a bottle of vodka with those guys the drinking doesn’t stop until it’s gone and then you open another and they don’t stop until they fall off their chairs. My boss at the time was Croatian. He said his relatives are the same. I went to a Ukrainian wedding. The amount of alcohol they go through at Ukrainian weddings is mind bending. Can’t imagine what their livers look like.

  406. Cash November 25, 2010 at 10:38 am #

    Did you see that movie Robocop 2 where Omni Consumer Products Corp was going to buy Detroit and run it for profit.

  407. mika. November 25, 2010 at 12:00 pm #

    My girlfriend’s father passed away from liver cancer. He was a hulk of a man prior to being stricken with the cancer. Horrifying seeing pictures of him in his last days. Despite his weakness for Vodka he was a very talented man. Started as a Russian news camera man, became producer, then the owner and manager of a very successful Russian news production company. He died at the age of 54. I never developed a taste for Vodka. Although it isn’t a rare occasion for me finish a bottle or two of white wine in a night’s reading.

  408. mika. November 25, 2010 at 12:02 pm #

    ..isn’t a rare occasion for me ^to finish a bottle or two..

  409. Cash November 25, 2010 at 12:14 pm #

    Hi Wage and Tripp,
    Wage, I agree this capitalist system is a corpse. It survived repeated maulings from Wall Street and our captains of industry. But it’s not infinitely elastic and adaptable. It just doesn’t yet know it’s dead.
    Tripp made an interesting reference to the Matrix. Working and living in a capitalist society is kind of like being attached to The Matrix. To some extent, like the Matrix, our capitalist society is an artificial world that exists because we’re conditioned to believe that it really does exist. Like the Matrix it’s a rules based world. We live in webs of relationships tightly governed by these rules, where we use conceptual constructs like “money” that are real because we’re told that they’re real and where we all really believe that they are. Like in the programmed machine world of the Matrix, our betters make laws, our courts hand down rulings, and when the cops say move along, like the good little doobies captive to The Matrix, we obey.
    But then there are people like Tripp and some other people on this site that, if given the choice between the artificial but pleasant world of the “blue pill” or the rough reality of the “red pill”, they choose the “red pill”. For them ignorance is not bliss. I think that they don’t want to be like Cipher, willing prisoners of a system that exists only in their minds, eating juicy, mouth watering steaks that really aren’t there.
    So what happens if everyone attached to the Matrix realizes the truth, that there is no spoon? And what happens when people stop complying with the rules of our capitalist system? What happens if we stop believing in “money”, if we no longer give legitimacy to age old institutions, if we stop giving any credence to the powers that be, if we stop paying our bills, stop paying our mortgages, stop showing up for “work”, stop voting, stop showing up for court dates, stop obeying the police, stop showing up for military service, stop paying our taxes?
    I’ll bet that people like Tripp would rather not find out, that they don’t want to be dependent on this capitalist “Matrix”, that they would rather have independent means that support their existence.
    You are a subversive Tripp and good for you. Did you ever say to yourself in a dark moment on your urban farm “why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill”? I’ll bet you didn’t.

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  410. Cash November 25, 2010 at 12:23 pm #

    Sorry to hear about your girlfriend’s father. Cancer is an ugly thing.

  411. mika. November 25, 2010 at 12:49 pm #

    Cash, excellent post. Feodor can laugh all he wants, we have woken up. In the words of Leonard Cohen: It’s over, it ain’t going any further.
    Her father was such a giant strong man, it’s very hard to digest that anything could strike such a person down. But there it is. 🙁

  412. Qshtik November 25, 2010 at 1:20 pm #

    Dostoyevsky at November 24, 2010 11:40 PM said: you were sprouting your usual nonsensical cr#p
    spouting
    turkle at November 25, 2010 1:19 AM said: Yeah, okay, so Skull and Boners get together and …
    do what all college age men do: talk about getting laid. That’s it … nothing to do with world domination.
    LewisLucanBooks at November 25, 2010 1:26 AM said: Funny. No one seems to use emoticons, anymore.
    Emoticons are mainly a feminine (mamby pamby) thing. I use the winking smiley face 😉 when I fear that something said in jest might be taken seriously. Even then certain people are incredibly thick and don’t get it.
    asoka at November 25, 2010 2:55 AM said: “Happy Thanksgiving” and that he is “thankful for government …” the bigger the better.
    Q is thankful for his walk-in vault that he enters daily and sits on the floor giggling and tossing handfulls of gold and silver coins in the air and letting them bounce off his head like Scrooge McDuck ;o)

  413. SNAFU November 25, 2010 at 1:32 pm #

    “Filling the voids with water,which does not compress or act like a lubricant likely will cause more forceful earth quakes and other seismic movements”
    Howdy Funzel, You are incorrect with both statements concerning water. Any substance can be compressed if enough force is applied to it. Agreed liquids and solids are not as compressible as a gas and therefore the compression of such is not as easily detected or self evident. As to the lubricating qualities of water, unless you live on a planet where the physics of substances is markedly at variance with those found here on the Earth you must have had experience with the lubricating properties of water such as with a kids toy called slip and slide, the effects of ice with water upon it versus ice sans water, water, wet leaves and grasses, mud versus dry earth; shall I continue?
    You are potentially correct about possible increased seismic activity; however, not because of water’s apparent in-compressibility but because of it’s ability to lubricate the fault lines and allow the layers of earth to slip more easily. When I lived in CA back in the late 60’s and 70’s the state of CA entertained the concept of drilling along the San Andreas fault to do precisely that force water down wells to lubricate the fault. It was theorized the water would initiate slips that would be less severe than allowing the stress to rise to a point at which a more powerful release would be initiated. Enter the lawyers. If an earthquake occurs naturally it is an act of god (in legal parlance) no one can sue the state; however if the state actively attempts to induce lesser earthquakes and they fuck it up and a big one occurs, Katy bar the door.
    SNAFU

  414. budizwiser November 25, 2010 at 1:35 pm #

    Happy Thanksgiving you Clusterfuckers!
    Over the years I’ve become very thankful for the mountains of porn on the Internet. And unlike many others, the websites with pictures this web space is a great place to enjoy hours of mental masturbation.
    What’s more frustrating, figuring out how most people are so fucking oblivious to the need for some serious reformation, or watching politicians and media create freak shows out of titty touching at the airports?

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  415. wagelaborer November 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm #

    I consider normal human delights to be eating, drinking, sleeping, hanging with others, partying, dancing and stuff like that.
    Those things seem to be pretty universal.
    But whatever floats your boat is OK with me, unless it destroys the environment.
    So that would have to be a rowboat or sailboat.

  416. wagelaborer November 25, 2010 at 2:35 pm #

    Oh, and sex, of course.
    And I like Asoka, usually.

  417. mika. November 25, 2010 at 2:44 pm #

    The universe seems to be expanding – forever. In fact, what is called “dark energy” seems to be accelerating that expansion.
    ==
    “Physorg.com is running an interesting story about the work of Oxford-based theoretical physicist Roger Penrose. Penrose has been studying CWB radiation and believes it’s possible that space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang but that our universe in fact continually cycles through a series of ‘aeons.’ He believes that he has found evidence supporting his theory that the universe infinitely cycles.”
    http://bit.ly/eDXnY7

  418. wagelaborer November 25, 2010 at 2:56 pm #

    None of the above, Vlad, as you know.

  419. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 3:25 pm #

    Q
    I must reduce my spouting even as my vegie garden continues its sprouting.
    I must reduce my spouting even as my vegie garden continues its sprouting.
    I must reduce my spouting even as my vegie garden continues its sprouting.
    I must …….
    ;):)
    FD

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  420. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 3:33 pm #

    Vlad
    Bilderberger, Rothschild Bank, Rockefeller, Iluminati, One World Government,Vatican Bank, Communists, Liberals, Obama supporters, Aliens from outer space blah blah blah bl…..

  421. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 3:43 pm #

    D is thankful that despite the problems in this world, there are enough sane, intelligent and compassionate people to ensure that progress is made however slowly.
    FD

  422. seb November 25, 2010 at 4:07 pm #

    Mexico!

  423. treebeardsuncle November 25, 2010 at 4:20 pm #

    He is up there with Hawking. Am wondering if there is a way for a society to escape the viccisitudes of expansion and contraction and avoid the attendant coldness and emptiness of the former and fantastic heat and density of the latter.

  424. LewisLucanBooks November 25, 2010 at 4:31 pm #

    Country or town? I think it was Greer who mentioned when Roman Britain unraveled. Treasure hoards found near burnt out Roman country villas. It’s pretty easy to put together the scenario. It probably didn’t happen over a week-end. Just long slow attrition, one villa farmstead at a time.
    I also agonize over the same country or town question. I’m getting pretty old, am single and really don’t have the skills to strike out into the wilderness. When I set the romanticism aside.
    I think a smallish plot on the outskirts of town (just over the “line” to avoid some taxes and pray I don’t get annexed) would suit me fine. But to stay in this small town, or move to some other is the question. Never mind not having any money 😀

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  425. LewisLucanBooks November 25, 2010 at 4:35 pm #

    Usually, I use what I call the “shit eating grin.” 😀 But this blog doesn’t convert it to the actual pictorial emoticon. As other blogs I post on. 🙂 is pretty universally recognized. 😀 might not be.
    So, when LLB uses 😀 he is teasing, poking fun, making a joke, or just trying (and sometimes failing) to be funny. 😀

  426. asoka November 25, 2010 at 4:39 pm #

    Mexico is not Country X. Mexico does not have over 2 million internally displaced people as a result of civil conflict.
    The USA has given Country X BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF MILITARY AID, in spite of continued reports of Country X’s army regularly cooperating with paramilitary groups and regular reports of human rights violations.

  427. Vlad Krandz November 25, 2010 at 5:17 pm #

    I know nothing of the kind. You are a Communist and they are great Communist Theorists. If you disagree with them, tell me why. And if so, which theorists do you draw inspiration from?

  428. Frank B November 25, 2010 at 5:25 pm #

    My guess is that ALL fiat currencies (paper money not backed by anything other than FAITH in the country that issues it) will fail in the near future. This will cause financial chaos and huge middle class wealth destruction. Barter will emerge for a while on a local basis. But I think the most likely currency system to emerge out of this mess is a CASHLESS society with individual accounts in a computer. We are nearly there anyway with Electronic Fund Transfer, automatic bill pay, and credit card shopping. And the sales pitch will be, “See the greedy Wall Street bankers and paper money caused this mess. We can fix it with NO PAPER money and your own individual account in a computer system for the new One World Banking System!” I hope some amount of gold and silver trade-in will initialize your account, but the financial elites hate gold and silver because it means they can’t manipulate the value of our money whenever they feel the need. So don’t be surprised if they make it illegal ” in order to save us in the crisis” to hold or use gold and silver for buying and selling. FDR declared holding gold illegal in 1933 with the end result that the dollar was inflated or devalued by 59%

  429. John Thomas November 25, 2010 at 5:35 pm #

    Why do I always feel depressed after reading one of your weekly posts Jim? I tend to agree with many of your predictions, but why are they so often cast in the light of gloom and doom?
    The future you paint is really a step forward for mankind, and is the only truly sustainable one. We should welcome it and hope for its early arrival.

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  430. Vlad Krandz November 25, 2010 at 5:37 pm #

    Just “a tiny sliver of desert”? Oh Turkey, Turkey, Turkey…what can be done with you? The Jews are a major part of that Anglo-American establishment through marriage and even more importantly – by dominance of banking and media. It is their organizational genius that is the mad genius that animates this commercial nightmare. More evidence: no gentile belongs to Bnai Brith – Sons of the Covenant, but Jews now belong to Skull and Bones as well as the other big groups. They have their own exclusive secret societies and belong to Gentile ones as well. That’s an indication of dominance in my book. Some say that the balance of power is more even on the Continent. It may well be true, I don’t know. But in the Anglo-American sphere, the Jews have triumphed.

  431. Vlad Krandz November 25, 2010 at 5:59 pm #

    I am also thankful to you Mr President: you have awakened countless Whites to the peril that awaits them. Like King Edward known as the “Hammer of the Celts”- he has hammered us together. You are an expansion of Obama as Visnu is expansion of Krishna (the orthodox say the opposite), or his Avatar in the cyber sense.
    Check out the real story of Thanksgiving in a brief form: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112107/content/01125113.guest.html
    How different from your version where the Pilgrims give thanks to the Indians for teaching them socialism.

  432. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 6:39 pm #

    Vladdy/Mika
    No doubt you are thankful for Rush Limbaugh and the other shock jock cretins who inform your historical, political and social outlook.
    I reckon its your small brain that’s hammered rather than whites.
    Once again Vlad/Mika the Obama/Builderberger et al bogeyman is coming to get you, so you better lock the doors of your trailer.
    FD

  433. The Mook November 25, 2010 at 7:06 pm #

    I didn’t know #will have” was present tense. DUH to you. My teen-aged girls used to say that when they had no clue. Don’t worry, you’ll get better with age.

  434. Vlad Krandz November 25, 2010 at 7:37 pm #

    Check this out Cash: http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=9524
    At last the log jam is breaking. The European Union is finished and Europe is finally starting to march again. I can only pray that they march right and throw the Muslims out. And since Russia and China just dumped the dollar, the United States cannot be bar behind. I thank God that I lived to see these days of the Comet.

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  435. The Mook November 25, 2010 at 7:58 pm #

    Sarah Palin’s grandson’s name is Tripp? Anybody wanna fessup? I confess that I watched her “show” the other night.

  436. Vlad Krandz November 25, 2010 at 9:00 pm #

    I knew that name would set you to slavering in good Pavlovian fashion. You are a true wretch; a junk yard dog that can only eat garbage after having lost all taste for wholesome fare. Thus poison foams from your gaping jaws – drink it yourself.

  437. mika. November 25, 2010 at 11:37 pm #

    Pavlovian stimuli. True. But each of us has blindspots created by implanted biases and emotional programming. The key to eliminating the blindspots is to know and detect the biases.

  438. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 11:48 pm #

    Nothing Pavlovian about it.
    Ignorance, bigotry and lies such as most (not all but most) of what you spout (Q note I sued spout and not sprout) must be constantly challenged, hardly Pavlovian rather the duty of all free thinkers.

  439. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 11:51 pm #

    Vlad Mika
    here we go again that pretend dialogue between your two sign in names.

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  440. Dostoyevsky November 25, 2010 at 11:58 pm #

    Night night CFN’rs hope you had a great thanksgiving and I look forward to reading JHK’s next missive, and of course poking holes in the cretinous arguments put forward by internet Nazis like Vlad/Mika.

  441. mika. November 26, 2010 at 12:00 am #

    The country that you care about most. That is the answer. The country that you care about least, that’s the question.

  442. asoka November 26, 2010 at 12:23 am #

    No, Mika. Country X has a name and millions of people have been displaced by a corrupt military supported by the USA. Country X is a “democracy” and is not Muslim, but it has received BILLIONS of dollars in military aid to fund warfare that has resulted in over two million internally displaced persons.

  443. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 12:35 am #

    Country X has a name … etc
    ========
    Give us a hint … does it begin with a vowel? Don’t keep us on pins and needles.

  444. BeantownBill November 26, 2010 at 12:39 am #

    Must be Israel.

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  445. BeantownBill November 26, 2010 at 1:00 am #

    I read about that. It was just a matter of time before cosmologists began theorizing what happened before the big bang. Prior to this Penrose news release, scientists seem to have some sort of handle back to an instant before the BB.
    The same thing is happening with string theory. At first, physicists said there was no way to verify it, but now they’re saying if certain particles appear in collisions in the big CERN collider, these particles could be a step in the right direction toward proof of the existence of strings.

  446. SoylentGreenAU November 26, 2010 at 8:57 am #

    Isn’t the disease in “The Stand” by S-King called “Captain Trip”? The centre must hold.
    America has been a great land, make it so again.
    One person at a time.
    The same goes for Australians, Europeans and everyone else. Toss out the wankers.
    E.G. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyq7WRr_GPg&feature=player_embedded

  447. mika. November 26, 2010 at 10:59 am #

    I don’t trust or believe any of them, or their priesthood. Neither should you.

  448. mika. November 26, 2010 at 11:05 am #

    Obviously. How could it not be.

  449. seb November 26, 2010 at 11:16 am #

    Why do people fail to see that “the modern era” is always a point along a curve and not a perpetual “now” where anything goes? I’m saying this wrong, but this is surely an age, and like them all, it has its illusions. You can accept the name “Clusterfuck Nation”, but you don’t like, “Marlboro Country”, now do you? Is this still Marlboro Country?
    Roger Penrose is an ass, but just say he is running Oxford, or he’s “up there with Hawking”, and you all eat it up with a spoon. He knows he is an ass, he has never defended earlier boners he has pulled, and he just goes blindly forward for those who still follow the party line. He said microtubules in the brain lead to quantum access such that consciousness is attached to other universes. This is science? It’s nonsense. BTW before it was built, CERN’s latest collider was stepped down from the size it would have to be to reach the energies necessary to reveal string theory, becuase that was, “as big as a galaxy.”
    The main problem is coercion, imprisonment, torture, invasion, stuff like that. Notice that pathologists (the most scientific doctors), don’t come back with a cause of death of “schizophrenia”, nor can any lesion in the brain be found for that. They look at the foundation of disease as of organic cause, and exclude psychiatry as having a scientific basis. Meanwhile, psychiatrists say pathologists aren’t physicians, becuase you have to be treating living patients to be a physician.
    Notice on here, psychologically, the draw of a blog like this is no longer what we will do as a people, but what will “Happen” to us, due to that which we deserve from our inhumanity to man.
    And you guys, with your “scroll past” “list”, are just powerless dweebs begging for JHK to ban me, isn’t that right? I have something for you.
    That’s okay. And realize, blackness justified slavery. Blackness was a hematological (read “scientific”) determinable measure for who should be judged a slave, since the “master race” won’t pass laws against itself. Today, our version of it is the drug laws, the choice of people to use and possess certain chemicals, persecution of, that’s as reprehensible an excuse to murder and torture as slavery was.
    By and by you will realize Kunstler’s predictions don’t come true. Science predicts the future; that’s what it does, via the scintific method. It’s observation, not logic.
    It’s no surprise to find nonscientists rushing in where wise men fear to tread. This is a delusional blog, one of thousands, and your participation is a cult, that’s all.
    I’ll quote Szasz, another New York Jew with an agenda, like Kunstler, from the dust jacket of his 1987 book, “Insanity: the idea and its consequences,” which is based on critcism of the renaming of the soul as today’s “the mind”. Maybe you don’t understand the word, “the”. I’m using, “with some other”, now. “The mind”, is thus, “A mind with some other mind”, and I don’t have to hit you with a mysterious word like “the”. I may change t,h,e to w,s,o. Here goes:
    “The problem with psychiatry, it is sometimes said, especially by those critical of it, is that psychiatrists have too much power. True enough. But where does this power come from? It does not come from the barrel of a gun held by an oppressor. Instead, it comes from the beliefs of human beings who prefer to rely on mystifying symbols and paternalistic authorities rather than on themselves. Tus, only when people withdraw their blind faith in mental health and mental illness will they see fit to curb the power of psychiatry….”

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  450. Cash November 26, 2010 at 11:48 am #

    I don’t want to jump to conclusions but is that website a forum for, um, let’s say some pretty racially intolerant points of view?
    But anyway Nigel’s speech was interesting. He’s a good speaker. Fire in the belly.
    Personally I thought that the Euro was a really dumb idea. I could never fathom the logic of German workers and pensioners giving up being paid in the mighty Deutschmark to share a currency with messed up places like Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. And Ireland. Maybe Germans are still paying the price for WW1 and WW2.
    It never made sense to me to have a system where countries that are very different linguistically and culturally sharing a currency. To me it only makes sense to do so where labour is mobile ie someone in Germany can move to Italy or France or somewhere else that shares the Euro. Or vice versa. But that isn’t possible because of the language problem.
    And I don’t think that a place as big and linguistically and culturally diverse as Europe should be shoehorned into a common political space. As Nigel might say it’s undemocratic. People in different countries have different outlooks and preferences.
    Why shouldn’t they foot their own bills and have things their own way? If the Irish want to blow their brains out in a real estate frenzy, let them. And let them sort themselves out WITHOUT a Euro bailout, meaning a bailout backed by the financial might and credibility of other countries. The Irish made the mess. Let the Irish clean it up.
    It may make sense for big countries like the US or Canada to exist that have some cultural and linguistic commonality.
    But from my perch up here it seems that you guys are re-fighting the Civil War. You’re tearing yourselves apart. Even in boring old Canada we have real regional strains beyond English versus French. I won’t go into the dreary details.
    Europeans were/are convulsed by the world wars and, it seems to me, after the wars collectively decided on societal annihilation. Same thing in Canada. Native Germans, French, Italians etc are not procreating. It seems Europeans despise their own heritage. Muslims do not. Muslims carry with them the idea of their own religious and civilizational worthiness. And Muslims are procreating. Demography is destiny.
    Europeans will not throw the Muslims out. Angela Merkel can say all she wants that multi-culturalism is a failure. So what. It really doesn’t matter. These are eggs that can’t and won’t be unscrambled.
    IMO the key isn’t to throw Muslims out. The key to survival is European collective self confidence, belief in themselves and their own civilization. Because without these Europe will still expire demographically, civilizationally, socially and politically even if they do expel Muslims. Other people from outside Europe, tougher and more aggressive than Europeans, without the crippling ideological impediments that Europeans impose on themselves, will eventually encroach on Europe and dominate Europe whether it’s Muslims or not. But Muslims are geographically the closest.
    The times they are a changin’.

  451. ero November 26, 2010 at 12:13 pm #

    Hey Tripp, my parents live in Bibb Co. Where are you. Would like to connect offline?

  452. budizwiser November 26, 2010 at 12:28 pm #

    Just off hand – how many of you have known about national “buy nothing day?”
    Space, huh? Cosmo-crap -bullshit to keep some math gurus working. Let’s face it – it’s all sort of three-dimensional – so quit trying to be the bug that crawls off the Mobis strip.
    In other knews, people like me are deciding to give a shit about methane seeping from former perma-frost bogs. I’m going to arrange some camping trips to “light up” the tundra for fun and profit.
    If you take a couple of post hole diggers, get there near the solstice, find a low spot -you can get an acre burning no sweat! Well maybe a little.
    Canpn’ Jack – over n out…..

  453. asoka November 26, 2010 at 12:33 pm #

    Country X has had over two million people forced off their land and into the cities. The army of Country X has violated human rights of the citizens of Country X. The United States has military personnel in Country X training and advising the military of Country X, and continues to do so in spite of massacres, torture, “disappearances” and killings of non-combatants; and in spite of collusion between the armed forces and paramilitary groups which continues to this day. The United States has given billions of dollars to Country X.
    I have given a lot of hints.
    Obviously Country X receives little press (as opposed to say, Israel), if no one knows the name of Country X.

  454. mika. November 26, 2010 at 12:51 pm #

    Asoka,
    That template fits EVERY country receiving CIA/US gov mafia aid, muslim or non-muslim. That’s what the CIA does. It deliberately creates havoc. The anglo-american imperialists are not there to solve problems, they’re there to create problems.
    So, as per my original guess: India/Pakistan, since you’re from that region.

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  455. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 1:07 pm #

    Whatever.

  456. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 1:14 pm #

    There are over 2,000,000 displaced people in Pakistan, since Obama took power and started attacking them.
    Is that who you mean, Asoka?

  457. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 1:19 pm #

    Today’s Democracy Now has an interview with an economist who addresses your question.
    He’s not from here, of course.
    http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/26/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_on
    I recommend the second interview, also. He’s talking about things that most of us here can relate to.
    http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/26/author_and_activist_derrick_jensen_the

  458. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 1:23 pm #

    India or Columbia also fit.
    But there are many countries in which the poor have been forced off their lands, in order that the rich can build dams or golf courses or level forests to plant tree plantations or to grow foods or flowers for export.
    So many countries fit. Which particular one are you thinking of?

  459. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 1:48 pm #

    Indonesia?
    Phillipines?
    Burkina Faso?

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  460. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 1:50 pm #

    I do, I do!
    I will buy nothing today!
    Half my Facebook friends are buying nothing – the other half camped out at Best Buy last night.

  461. asia November 26, 2010 at 1:52 pm #

    far as pine needles go..if my memory serves me..
    they are very acidic and i dont know if/how to best compost.

  462. asia November 26, 2010 at 1:55 pm #

    in the white house..
    2 jews. i mean israelis! dual citizen zionists.
    la times: ‘rambo gets a farwell hug from obama’
    apparently the times readers are a bit dumbed down.someone must have informed them about those ‘wacko cospiracy theorys’

  463. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 2:02 pm #

    Nigeria.

  464. The Mook November 26, 2010 at 2:04 pm #

    AAAAHHHH! That’s even worse.

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  465. Loveandlight November 26, 2010 at 2:16 pm #

    The more I learn about America, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be.
    Yes, I know. And I’m sorry. 🙁

  466. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 2:26 pm #

    How did this start?
    http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/65569

  467. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 2:30 pm #

    lol

  468. mika. November 26, 2010 at 3:01 pm #

    The system perpetuates itself because people are conditioned into thinking and acting within a false dialectic deliberately set up for them. With that simple awareness, the dark lords lose their power of deception and their power in general. Feodor will laugh and deny reality all he wants, it’s over.

  469. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 3:13 pm #

    The more I learn about America, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be.
    Yes, I know. And I’m sorry. 🙁
    ==========
    I suggest the two of ya go fuck yourselves.

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  470. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 3:56 pm #

    Challenged? Is that what you call your school yard mockery and slander? You have not made any rational criticisms at all this week or for many weeks. Nor have you made any positive or declaritive statements to anyone on anything.
    Face the Truth about yourself: you like slandering others – in fact you love it. It’s what you are – a junkyard dog.
    Turkey is not as bad – just a typical liberal. He hits and then runs. He knows that if he really engaged with me he would be defeated. And that’s why he hates conservatives. You on the other hand like to hate – quite a difference.

  471. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 4:11 pm #

    Your last paragraph answered your own question: White People need to love themselves and this site is for that purpose. The hatred is secondary to the primary directive of self love and preservaton. But it is not alien to it – it follows naturally that one should defend one’s people against enemies. Just so, once Europeans love themselves they will throw the Muslims out. Remember your hero Eisenhower threw out a million Mexicans who were no longer needed here. It was an orderly, mostly peaceful process. So there’s nothing weird, impossible, or even violent about ethnic cleansing per se. Sometimes it’s inevitable. The Blacks threw the Whites out of Haiti – the ones who didn’t get out were murdered. Another violent cleansing: the Baltic Germans had to leave after the war – millions died from disease and ethnic violence by the Slaves. As an advanced race – we can do it peacefully. And only overwhelming force make such a peaceful transition possible.
    How about that Rumphole – what a horses’s rump, eh? What part of Canada do the people say “eh” every second?

  472. turkle November 26, 2010 at 4:42 pm #

    Vlad the Craptastic,
    I don’t “engage” with you or your ideas, because your Nazi shtick has gotten old. I tire of being called a “liberal” simply for disagreeing with your vile opinions.
    But just for the sake of closure and maybe to shine a little light on your dark world, here goes.
    Apparently (and correct me if I’m wrong), you believe there is a vast Jewish conspiracy to dominate planet earth, that Jews are especially evil and diabolical compared with other groups, and that the “liberals” are causing great harm to society, among other “conservative” chestnuts. You think multi-culturalism and race mixing are causing the downfall of Western civilization. You believe certain peoples are innately superior to others (presumably your white brothers). And you believe that there will be a great cleansing of society when all the liberals and Jews will be put up against the wall by white knights such as yourself. You take as gospel such fine texts as “Mein Kampf” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
    Go ahead and clarify your viewpoint for me if I got any of that wrong. I don’t think I’m far from the mark.
    Now why do you think that me or anyone else with half a brain would want to have an extended dialog based on such half-baked, irrational drivel? Ultimately, you’re not worth engaging, because your viewpoint is poisonous, extreme, and illogical, and there is no argument I could make to you that you would accept. Because you have the blind faith and ignorance of a religious cultist. You are not willing to examine contrary evidence, and you offer nothing by way of digestible facts to support your position, which others have asked for again and again.
    I now recognize that I shouldn’t have responded to any of your nonsense in the first place, because this is your “war” that you get off on, trying to push your hateful views upon others using internet message boards. This is how you feel good about yourself and establish your identity, pointing the finger at groups that you believe are responsible for all the “evil” in the world, engaged in their worldwide conspiracies. This is a typical psychological response of someone who is insecure with their own identity and feels powerless in their life. Instead of examining yourself and your own actions and viewpoints, you point the finger at everyone else.
    If you think you are “defeating” me or anyone by posting walls of neo-Nazi spew on an internet message board, well, that’s a pretty fucking sad existence you live. You just continue to defeat yourself over and over again. You’re never going to get anywhere in life with the dead-end train of thought you’ve apparently been following for quite some time now.
    How’s that for engagement?
    Now I’m going to leave you to marinate in your own hate and ignorance. Don’t expect another response, because I’m done wasting my time with your dumb ass.

  473. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 4:59 pm #

    Now why do you think that me or anyone else with half a brain …
    ========
    … that I or anyone else …

  474. turkle November 26, 2010 at 5:00 pm #

    Thanks for the grammatical correction.
    Anything else to add besides your usual irrelevant pedantry?

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  475. turkle November 26, 2010 at 5:08 pm #

    Liberal Tim-Berners Lee created the WWW that you are using right now while he was working at the CERN laboratory, which is commonly funded by European nations under a treaty based on socialistic principles.
    So kindly get the fuck off the liberal internet you “conservative” neanderthals.
    Pardon my French.

  476. mika. November 26, 2010 at 5:41 pm #

    Vlad, you seem to be stuck, emotionally. Let me see if I can help you. You’re obviously following an agenda, a well subsidized agenda. It’s also obvious that you’re emotionally blind to that agenda. So let me ask you this:
    Do you think Hitler loved the white race?
    Do you think Churchill loved the white race?
    Do you think Stalin loved the white race?
    Do you think Roosevelt loved the white race?
    Do you think Pius XII loved the white race?
    Do you think George VI loved the white race?
    And on and on.
    Be honest with yourself.

  477. asoka November 26, 2010 at 6:10 pm #

    Hi Wage! No, not Nigeria. Country X is not an African country, not a Muslim country.
    Here is another hint. An ex-president, the one who for eight years presided over receiving BILLIONS of dollars of USA aid, the one who presided over the creation of two million internally displaced persons, the one who supported para-militarism and atrocious violations of human rights through assassinations, the ex-president of Country X was given a teaching position in a prestigious USA university and the students there (God bless them!) are trying to have the ex-president of Country X arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against humanity, instead of being rewarded with a teaching chair and a good salary for his collaboration with Bush.

  478. asoka November 26, 2010 at 6:26 pm #

    Right on, Turkle!
    Liberal Tim-Berners Lee created the WWW in 1990s.
    Liberal Al Gore (of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act commonly referred to as “The Gore Bill”) funded the development of the Internet, an evolution of ARPANET.
    Most people don’t know the difference between the Web and the Internet or that both were the result of liberals AND BIG GOVERNMENT EFFORTS LIKE THE DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION.

  479. asoka November 26, 2010 at 6:36 pm #

    Country X is not African, is not Muslim, is not Jewish.
    An ex-president of Country X who worked closely with George W. Bush to receive BILLIONS of dollars of USA aid, an ex-president of Country X who presided over the creation of two million internally displaced persons and a military that collaborated with paramilitary groups who practiced systematic assassinations of 3,000 persons in an opposition political party, that ex-president of Country X was awarded with a teaching position in a prestigious USA university.
    I have given so many clues that it is proof that Country X is not on anybody’s mind and doesn’t make the news like the Middle Eastern and African countries do.

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  480. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 6:46 pm #

    OK, Asoka, I googled it, and I think you’re talking about Uribe, from Columbia, but, click on the button, I already guessed Columbia, along with India.

  481. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 6:50 pm #

    The UK?
    Canada?
    Iceland?

  482. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 6:54 pm #

    Anything else to add besides your usual irrelevant pedantry?
    ==========
    The purpose is to remove wind from over-filled sails.

  483. mika. November 26, 2010 at 6:55 pm #

    Probably Columbia. I don’t follow that part of the globe, but as I said earlier, the template is pretty much universal. See:
    Lithuania
    Latvia
    Estonia
    Ukraine
    Georgia
    Croatia
    Macedonia
    Cypress
    And on and on

  484. trippticket November 26, 2010 at 7:13 pm #

    Vladik, just got back from turkey with genetic relations. Email me off-list to talk about fertility issues in the inland northwest if you want to. You can make it work long-term I think, but it sounds like you could use some details. Maybe I can help.
    trippticket@gmail.com

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  485. turkle November 26, 2010 at 7:13 pm #

    Thank you for your public service, Qshtik.
    “The purpose is to remove wind from over-filled sails.”
    Speaking of which, how would you characterize someone whose only contribution to an extended discussion is the correction of a minor grammatical error?
    If my sails are filled, you’re floating above everyone in a hot air balloon.

  486. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 7:20 pm #

    how would you characterize someone whose only contribution to an extended discussion is the correction of a minor grammatical error?
    =======
    Um, perceptive?

  487. mika. November 26, 2010 at 7:21 pm #

    Nudnik.

  488. LewisLucanBooks November 26, 2010 at 7:37 pm #

    Turkeys… In Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” I think there’s a whole chapter on trying to breed and raise turkeys. Our standard “turkey-bird” has been so genetically altered and over bred that the poor things can’t even reproduce.
    Kingsolver had a terrible time finding material on breeding turkeys. Finally, in some really old books, she figured out the key to the whole thing.
    But, that being said, wild turkeys have been introduced into this area and have done so well that there is now a limited season to hunt them.

  489. turkle November 26, 2010 at 7:40 pm #

    Qdick, howz aboot yu corect dis hear poste?!!! Since yu aparintly r a memburr of the innernet grammer poleese.

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  490. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 7:43 pm #

    Turkey, I was talking to the Dostoyevsky – but thanks for playing. Note: I gave up talking to you months ago when you didn’t even respond after I copied out a number of quotes of prominent Americans that America was created by Whites for Whites. I only respond now when you attack me. Leave me alone – which means not mentioning my name – and I will leave you alone.

  491. dgmoocher November 26, 2010 at 8:35 pm #

    Forthcoming changes to our existence, whatever those may be must now be hidden in plain sight. The greater the numbers the easier to manipulate IMHO. Our country of fat tattooed entitled cry babies aren’t going to do anything about increases in taxes, stage a protest, start a civil war or even defend themselves. They are lulled inch by inch into complacency, sleepfullness and hyper-busyness of staying alive as the new normal. “what.ever” is the theme of today. So for anyone out there hoping for sudden violent change, revolution or innovation it’s not likely to happen. I should think that only extreme physical hunger will repatriate our nation (if I said that right?). on a different note…For anyone out there thinking that some idiotic group of illuminati are controlling us over many generations….go get a job and find out how to get TWO (2) people to agree on something. That’s hysterical. Thanks for letting me vent! We are such an infuriating nation. We will make nice servants for some first world country out there.

  492. turkle November 26, 2010 at 8:43 pm #

    By your lack of any response or rebuttal to my previous assessment of your viewpoint and psychology, I’ll assume that my post pretty much hit the mark. If you have any corrections or additions, please post them.
    “I copied out a number of quotes of prominent Americans that America was created by Whites for Whites”
    Pardon me, but so fucking what? Your outmoded 18th century morality has been kicked to the curb. We don’t have slavery anymore. We don’t have legal pistol duels to the death. Similarly, why should I care what some dead asshole had to say about white supremacy? This is not the morality that society follows anymore, and I suggest you GTF over it for your own mental health.
    Now, I REALLY promise to leave you and your fragile white ego alone…for awhile at least.

  493. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 8:47 pm #

    Qdick, howz aboot yu corect dis hear poste?!!! Since yu aparintly r a memburr of the innernet grammer poleese.
    ========
    Purfekt as rittin.

  494. turkle November 26, 2010 at 8:53 pm #

    Vent away. We can take it.
    That Americans don’t resort to mass violence for political change is a GOOD THING. That’s why we have the democratic process, flawed and corrupt as it may be. You seem to be enamored of revolution and civil war as some kind of positive force. Well, due to vast increases in available firepower since 1776, nowadays that looks like Rwanda, Yugoslavia, or Iraq. In other words, fuck that shit. I’ll take right-wing Republicans and Tea Parties over that any day.
    Though individual violent episodes seem quite a popular way to go out in style for a certain disaffected segment of the population.
    And protests are the new black (Tea Party anyone?).

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  495. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 9:02 pm #

    I think I’m going to take your earlier advice and settle west of the Cascades. The weather here has been horrific and since I think things are going to get really bad…I think my chances would be better farther west. Your post really made some basic points that made me think: plants like warmth and water; in a very real sense the forces of life are stronger in some places than others – certainly the forces that can nurture Humans who are after all refugees from the tropics. And your other point – how to keep warm if the Boreal Forest can’t grow back fast enough to keep everyone warm. The Pacific influence is very strong even here. Even before the cold and storm there had been no sun for three weeks. So Spokane/Coeur d’Alene get the clouds but not the mild temperatures afforded by living near the ocean. The worst of both worlds. I’d rather live near the Pacific and get the benefits or away from its influence a bit – maybe near Boise.
    I have my own vision about Race and Nationhood – but I recognize that any Nation from here on in is going to have to cooperate with Nature. And beyond that, I have to survive in the meantime. My vison might not come true, but your’s is coming true already. So maybe I’ll take you up on the detailed consult in the future. Right now I have a small plot which I might cultivate in the Spring. Pine needles are everywhere and I suddenly got curious about what they do for soil. Anyway, thanks again.

  496. BeantownBill November 26, 2010 at 9:06 pm #

    Q, strict rules of grammar are important for accurate communication of ideas and feelings. Love of any particular language is really love of man, for language (and hence grammar) is about the most significant of human characteristics.
    So, as far as you correcting grammar on this site – I appreciate it; please continue to do so.

  497. BeantownBill November 26, 2010 at 9:11 pm #

    If humanity not only survives, but thrives, the concept of “Country” will pass by the wayside.

  498. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 9:13 pm #

    I read part of Collapse and was very impressed by – especially the part about the small Pacific island. I have to get another copy and finish it. I really want to read the chapter about Montana which he said was beautiful but very fragile.

  499. Vlad Krandz November 26, 2010 at 9:22 pm #

    So our FOUNDING FATHERS are just a bunch of dead white assholes? You make my point Turkey. A people without a viable past have no future or present for that matter. Weren’t you supposed to stop talking to me? You are such a hopeless college educated Turkey. Questions? Ok you answer me: do Black Africans have the right to have their own nations? If you anwer yes, you are a hypocrite. If you answer no, you are a racist. Choose.

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  500. turkle November 26, 2010 at 9:44 pm #

    Oh, the FOUNDING FATHERS said something, so it must be true. I can’t possibly argue with that impeccable logic.
    The important point (which you apparently missed) was that society no longer follows much of their 18th century morality, including slavery and dueling, as well as the death penalty for stealing or punishment for not going to church on Sunday. White supremacy went the same way. Too bad for you, I guess.
    “A people without a viable past have no future or present for that matter.”
    What the fuck is that mumbo-jumbo supposed to mean? Over-attachment to the past and its perceived grievances is far worse. Just look at the current situation(s) in the Middle East.
    “college educated”
    That I’m educated at a university is supposed to be some kind of insult? Again, I’ll take that as a compliment coming from a pompous (not to mention racist) rube such as yourself.
    “do Black Africans have the right to have their own nations? If you anwer yes, you are a hypocrite. If you answer no, you are a racist.”
    Oh, a Catch-22.
    Um, if that’s my two choices, then I plead the fifth.
    “Weren’t you supposed to stop talking to me?”
    I lied.

  501. Qshtik November 26, 2010 at 10:02 pm #

    Q, strict rules of grammar are important for accurate communication of ideas and feelings.
    ==========
    Wow, somebody gets it! Thanks Bean.

  502. trippticket November 26, 2010 at 10:35 pm #

    Two points really quick:
    1) The Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascades, supported chiefdom level populations of hunter/gatherers, one of the highest concentrations of latent food around. You may have known that already from reading Diamond. The salmon are mostly gone, but they might come back. Still lots of crabs and halibut. Better eats are hard to find.
    For the last couple of years I’ve been seeing Nature burst out of her 10,000 year torture session of human oppression in some pretty hopeful ways, so I’m not swayed by arguments that we can somehow magically step up our assault on Nature with decreasing energy supplies. What have we been doing with all that energy up to peak? Trying to help Mother Nature understand that we know better than she does? Nah, Gaia’s in recovery from here on in my version of the story.
    2) The winter you’re only ankle deep in at this point is the worst I’ve ever heard of up there. Personally, I’ve never seen anything south of about -2, and most often closer to freezing. We had 6 inch high garlic before we left for Georgia in March. Although that was also an anomaly. My wife the Spokane native is looking over my shoulder saying to hang in there, and give it another chance.
    I’m not so sure I would. Although really I think it just comes down to being stronger and more adaptable than enough people in your bioregion to reach equilibrium alive, and hopefully well. I like that “remnant” term MD uses, and I think there will be one in most inhabited places. We’re going to try to get out of here and move a little farther south, to the same small town half of my family lives in. You may know it takes ~350,000 people in a region to perpetuate the Eurasian crowd diseases, so pick a less populated spot. Not that they’re likely to be any trouble to you, just think it best to play that one safe.
    Your racism doesn’t bother me anymore, because I feel fairly confident that we’re going to steadily balkanize from here on, so pick your peeps and hang tight. You’re entitled to your own people, your own laws, and your own customs, and nothing the people in Boston, Sacremento, or Macon do means dick in your world. And vice versa. But we all have a ton of work to do in our respective ‘hoods, don’t we?

  503. mika. November 26, 2010 at 11:06 pm #

    Wow, somebody gets it! Thanks Bean.
    ==
    Hehe. I wish Shakespeare was alive to witness this divine comedy.

  504. budizwiser November 26, 2010 at 11:17 pm #

    Yeah, sure I get the whole WTF I knoe history crap.
    You geyes is good at tit-talk about races and farting.
    But again, WTF – we here is to describe cars and gas and how things change when there are a lot of one and not much of the other.
    I’m so p-oooed at all this semantic euro-ethic crash course in smack talk – it’sworse then too much gravy on fatty roast beef.
    My angle – fuck you! Either talk about cars and gas or go away.

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  505. budizwiser November 26, 2010 at 11:19 pm #

    Probly worth repeatin’

    But again, WTF – we here is to describe cars and gas and how things change when there are a lot of one and not much of the other.

  506. wagelaborer November 26, 2010 at 11:32 pm #

    I’d like to talk about economics as if people mattered.
    Tripp, asoka, that guy whose name starts with a B, and anyone else – a blast from the past-
    http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html

  507. Phaedrus November 27, 2010 at 12:40 am #

    I have always contended (and still do) that we are failing to see the dualistic nature of things. It is a common problem in Western culture because the idea is contradiction to our belief system. Oddly, it is probably one of the contributing factors to this dilemma we are currently facing. For some people things will carry on the same. They will still drive to work, eat out, go shopping on the weekends, take the kids to soccer practice. Yet, there will be large numbers of people who will be unable to continue this life. Of course, they will be treated as failures, weaklings, or ingrates. Many will shrink out of society in shame. The “Uppers” (upper-class) will say they were Godless people who deserved it anyway. Of course, many of these people will learn that they just worked (slaved) at job they hated for things they didn’t need. Perhaps a few skirmishes will arise, but will be quashed by our powerful “police-state” or “military” system that is growing more and more paranoid by the minute. “Homeland Security” is front to “preserve freedom” when it really is a means of more Government control. It will be a great Awakening. I hope this epiphany does come sooner rather than later. Our cities are rotting from the inside out and the ‘burbs will be soon to follow. One thing Kunstler is very right about…we have squandered away massive and unimaginable resources (that we can never have back) to promote an unsustainable way of life reminiscent of childhood dreams and Jetson cartoons. I think it is also in our nature to want answers or solutions, but there may be none. WE could try and remove the power of the Big Banks within our Government (very unlikely), but in the end the outcome may still be the same. I don’t think there is enough people who believe (or care) that our political system is as broken as it is. The politically connected elites will continue to bleed the system until there is nothing left to take – they better do it now before someone else does, right?

  508. asoka November 27, 2010 at 1:16 am #

    Colombia is Country X and Alvaro Uribe is the new professor the students are trying to have arrested for crimes against humanity.
    All this happening in the Western Hemisphere with USA troops stationed on seven Colombian military bases, even though the Colombian Constitutional Supreme Court has ruled the presence of USA troops on Colombian military bases to be illegal.
    http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_60946.shtml
    Like the USA gives a damn about what host countries consider constitutional.

  509. asoka November 27, 2010 at 1:30 am #

    Wage, sorry I missed this. Yes, it is Colombia.
    (which most Americans spell as Columbia)
    Thanks for pointing out that you had already said Colombia.

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  510. LewisLucanBooks November 27, 2010 at 1:31 am #

    Re: The Pacific Northwest; west of the mountains. Sometimes called “the wet side of the mountains.” If it’s not raining, it’s misting. And if nothing is falling out of the sky, there’s this solid cap of gray clouds for about 7 or 8 months out of the year.
    It doesn’t bother me, being a native. Ya know, webbed feet and moss in my armpits. 😀 The Washington State motto is “Won’t Rust.” You can always tell the Outlanders, the people from “away.” They are the one’s with umbrellas.
    Depression can be a big problem. Some friends of mine moved over here from “the dry side” about three years ago. The Mister had a terrible time with depression until he started taking massive amounts of vitamin D. Some people use light boxes in the winter.
    Due to global warming (warm air holds more moisture) our 100 year floods have become an every 5 year event. Lots of talk and studies about dams and levees. But all the government bodies are running out of money.
    Part of the problem (besides just a lot of water falling out of the sky) is that there’s many rivers, streams and creeks. Each time there’s an “event” the heavy rain falls in a different place and the tributaries act differently.
    Arctic warming is screwing up the polar vortex. So, we’re seeing
    more spills of arctic air. Last monday night it was 11 here. A couple of years ago we had a cold snap where the temperature did not go above 20 for about 2 1/2 weeks. Spent the time sleeping in the day and stoking the fire at night.
    Then there was the summer day about three years back when the temperature hit 109. A day to remember.

  511. asoka November 27, 2010 at 1:45 am #

    Budizwiser said: “My angle – fuck you! Either talk about cars and gas or go away.”
    General Motors is having quite a success story and Obama gets credit for keeping ONE MILLION AMERICANS WORKING and rescuing General Motors. I’ll spare you all the statistics about American manufacturing by Americans in America, consecutive months of USA economic growth, etc. that can be credited to Obama’s stimulus and Obama’s economic decisions.
    What was the saying? Do you remember it?
    You may not be old enough to remember, but back in the day when Eisenhower was president, the saying was “As goes General Motors, so goes the Nation.”
    Good news for the Nation in November 2010.

  512. asoka November 27, 2010 at 1:51 am #

    LLB, I heard a joke about a tourist visiting Seattle. After five days of continuous rain the tourist asked a local if the sun ever came out in Seattle. The local said, “Of course it does. Last year the sun came out on July 17”

  513. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 1:55 am #

    If you had one iota of intellectual integrity, JUST ONE – you would stay up all night trying to figure out the problem I gave you. You see that’s what real intellectuals do. It’s not a trick – there is a real answer but not inside the liberal paradigm. But let’s face it – you’re not really interested in the Truth, but only what the crowd is doing and what the TV tells you to believe. University was wasted on you – that they all teach false doctrines is of no moment. A good University would have been wasted on you too. All you got from your degree is a license to hate.

  514. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 2:11 am #

    A fine and generous attitude Tripp – you have truly transcended modern liberalism.
    Ankle deep? More than that and by this time tomorrow it will be closer to knee deep. I just ordered snow shoes. The other night it was ten below zero. I love the elements but deep cold sets off my alarm system. I know that that kind of cold can snuff a man out like a candle. I am in awe that humans were ever braved these lattitudes at all.
    Beautiful right now though. I just took a walk. It’s one of those strange nights that are uncannily bright or “lit up”. It must be the full moon shining behind the clouds. Incredibly still with the snow on the Pines – magnificient.
    A cougar was seen chasing a deer inside Spokane city limits.

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  515. treebeardsuncle November 27, 2010 at 2:30 am #

    Ok.
    Have decided to buy a place outright in Wisconsin, probably Wisconsin Rapids.
    Well, I got the results for my mitochondrial dna lineage (inherited through the mother’s mother’s line)back from http://www.nationalgeographic/genographic and am a member of haplogroup k.
    Ancestral line: “Eve” > L1/L0 > L2 > L3 > N > R > K
    We finally arrive at your own clan, a group of individuals who descend from a woman in the R branch of the family tree. Because of the great genetic diversity found in haplogroup K, it is likely she lived around 50,000 years ago.
    Interestingly, her descendents give rise to several different subgroups, some of which exhibit very specific geographic homelands. The very old age of these subgroups has given rise to a wide distribution; today they harbor specific European, North African, and Indian components; and are found in Arabia, the northern Caucasus mountains, and throughout the Near East.
    While some members of your haplogroup headed north into Scandinavia, or south into North Africa, most members of your haplogroup K stem from a group who moved northward out of the Near East. These women crossed the rugged Caucasus mountains in southern Russia and moved on to the steppes of the Black Sea.
    Interestingly, your haplogroup is also very significant because some specific lineages within the group constitute three of the four major Ashkanazi Jewish founding lineages. In fact, around one third of all Ashkanazi Jews trace their mitochondrial lineage back to one of four women, three of which lie within haplogroup K. Haplogroup K is found in 30 percent of Ashkanazi samples and in 6 to 7 percent of non-Jewish Europeans. While this lineage, is found at a smaller frequency in non-Ashkanazi Jews, the specific three K lineages that helped found the Ashkanazi population are seldom found in other populations. It is therefore likely the case that individuals bearing one of these three lineages are Ashkanazi. However, individuals within haplogroup K that do not bear one of these three lineages are unlikely to have an Ashkanazi background. To learn more about your specific lineage with haplogroup K, you can opt-in with Family Tree DNA at the bottom of your results page where it reads, Learn More.
    The term “Ashkanazi” refers to Jews of mainly central and eastern European ancestry. Most historical records indicate that the founding of Ashkanazi Jewry took place within the Rhine Basin where it subsequently underwent vast population expansions. In more recent times, the Ashkanazi population was estimated at approximately 25,000 individuals around 1300 A.D., whereas that number had increased to about 8,500,000 individuals by the turn of the twentieth century.
    Around half of all Ashkanazi Jews trace their mitochondrial lineage back to one of four women, and your haplogroup K represents a lineage that gave rise to three of them. While this lineage is found at a smaller percentage in non-Ashkanazi Jews, the three K lineages that helped found the Ashkanazi population are seldom found in other populations. While virtually absent in Europeans, they appear at frequencies of three percent or higher in groups from the Levant, Arabia, and Egypt. This indicates a strong genetic role in the Ashkanazi founder event, which likely occured in the Near East.
    Today, K has given rise to three of the four most common halogroups in Ashkanazi Jews and is currently shared by over 3,000,000 people.

  516. Dostoyevsky November 27, 2010 at 4:04 am #

    Vlad Mika
    Turkle gave you a truly magnificent serve over his/her last couple of posts but I’d like to comment on this particular reply of yours.
    “If you had one iota of intellectual integrity, JUST ONE – you would stay up all night trying to figure out the problem I gave you”
    So who appointed you arbiter of what constitutes intellectual integrity? Rantings from a white supremacist are intellectual(and I use that term sparingly) spew not worthy of analysis for 5 minutes let alone staying up all night
    “You see that’s what real intellectuals do.”
    The Oxford Dictionary defines intellectual as
    “possessing a highly developed faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, especially with regard to abstract matters”
    So Vlad/Mika you know objectively that intellectuals stay up all night! Well perhaps on important matters but not trivial racist irrelevant rantings.
    “It’s not a trick – there is a real answer but not inside the liberal paradigm.”
    As opposed to your racist/conservative paradigm!
    “But let’s face it – you’re not really interested in the Truth, but only what the crowd is doing and what the TV tells you to believe.”
    Oh puleeez an easy throwaway comment that means nothing but attempts to rubbish the argument against you.Your racist narrow minded bigoted viewpoints are however thankfully on the decline worldwide. (relatively few people admire Hitler’s viewpoints anymore)
    “University was wasted on you”
    The retort of a someone who has lost the argument.
    “- that they all teach false doctrines is of no moment.” (of no moment !!what does that mean?)
    So they all teach false doctrines. Oh fuck off you intellectual pygmy. If it was not for universities and their promotion of free thought and intellectual curiosity, you would be dead by now either from drinking water that you had recently crapped in or you would died at birth along with your mother.
    ” A good University would have been wasted on you too.” How could any university have been good? I thought ” they all teach false doctrines”
    “All you got from your degree is a license to hate.”
    No Vlad/Mika you moron, Turkle gained the knowledge to out argue you and the ability to pick apart your rantings and drivel in a rather eloquent way.
    And “Hate” puleeez, destroying your arguments has nothing to do with hate, or are your feelings that easily hurt?
    You are the Hate filled imbecile that clings to racist ideology and who believes in a white supremacist final solution. Not going to happen Vladdy, one day a some mixed race teenager ios going to piss on your grave. Enjoy!
    Get over yourself you pathetic little internet troll.

  517. Eleuthero November 27, 2010 at 5:12 am #

    SEB said:
    “By and by you will realize Kunstler’s predictions don’t come true. Science predicts the future; that’s what it does, via the scintific method. It’s observation, not logic.
    It’s no surprise to find nonscientists rushing in where wise men fear to tread. This is a delusional blog, one of thousands, and your participation is a cult, that’s all.”
    ***************************************************
    If anyone’s “delusional”, it’s writers like you.
    Your screed was an incoherent pasting-together
    of topics that don’t even belong together like
    the nuttiness of a certain kind of Physics,
    how JHK is another of those bad Joooooz, and
    how nothing he says ever comes true. What a
    lousy piece of writing.
    In fact, the IEA itself said that 2006 was the
    year of peak oil production which many naysayers,
    even in the petroleum industry, have been denying
    right up until today but JHK and Matt Simmons
    said it BEFORE 2003 and now the IEA verifies it.
    You’re another one of these “Jiminy Cricket”
    thinkers … you just have to believe in
    science and think upon a star and we’re all
    saved. How about the Bloomberg ticker from
    Wednesday: ONE OF SIX AMERICANS LIVES IN HUNGER.
    Is that real enough for you?
    E.

  518. Eleuthero November 27, 2010 at 5:23 am #

    SEB said:
    “I thought of Appalachia, I thought of Kunstler, I typed in Kuntler, I got him anyway.”
    This kind of fifth-grade potty-mouth humor is
    precisely what a spiritual INFANT would find
    funny but not a sentient being. So you don’t
    like JHK or his writing, eh? Then go troll
    another site. Get LOST or STOLEN.
    You’ve got spiritual brethren on this site who,
    like you, brand the site as full of “morons”
    who “know nothing” while a shithead like you
    truly thinks that the “Kunt” in “Kuntler” was
    really a sophisticated larf riot.
    Take your meandering puffery and take a long
    walk off a short plank.
    E.

  519. Cash November 27, 2010 at 10:36 am #

    Well maybe it can be done peacefully but I doubt it would be.
    To me, if you let someone in either legally and properly as in the case of bona fide immigrants and if they’ve abided by the laws of the land then there’s nothing to do or say about it. They’re legal residents and citizens and that’s it. Anyone else you have the right to deport.
    And if they’re preaching murder and mayhem you can do what you want as far as I’m concerned. They’ve effectively declared war and, after all, you are not a punching bag. You have the right to self defence.
    In the case of the Mexican migration into the US I think you guys are stuck. Blame your own sloth and indifference towards your southern border, your inaction and your acquiesecence towards Mexicans being in your country illegally for the fix you’re in. As far as I’m concerned you’ve defacto given them the right to be among you.
    So do the practical thing. Declare them to be citizens and then seal off the southern border. There’s is no chance in hell you’ll be able to expel millions of people without inflicting a catastrophe.
    Just think of how monumentally incompetent your governments are. Do you seriously think they’ll be able to mount a logistical operation of that magnitude? No way. And don’t feel bad, your governments aren’t unique in their ineptitude. There’s hardly anything our own governments have touched without fubaring things totally.

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  520. Cash November 27, 2010 at 11:05 am #

    TB,
    Are you Jewish? Doesn’t matter, I was just curious. Seems a lot of the analysis was about Jewish lineage.
    I read an interesting thing about European ancestry. Some academic did an analysis of European Y chromosomes and concluded that most European men’s Y chromosomes derive from middle eastern farmers that migrated to Europe in prehistory rather than male European ice age hunters.
    Must have been an interesting time. Maybe girls in hunting bands looked at the farmers and thought that living in a farmer’s thatched hut in a farming village with a reasonably steady food supply of grain and livestock was a better deal than living in a tent with a hunting band in chilly post ice age Europe and depending on an iffy food supply that had horns and hooves, weighed a thousand lbs and fought. Maybe a farmer and his plough made the hunting girls swoon.
    Or maybe the farmers banded together to roust out the pesky hunting bands that were always stealing their livestock and crops. So with better organization and technology and greater numbers they killed and drove off hunters but stole their wives and daughters. I think maybe the process looked something like the European colonization of the US and Canada with the year by year outmuscling of Indian tribes.
    So maybe there wasn’t a semi peaceful transfer of farming know-how to hunters. Maybe it was a year by year, decade by decade colonization and substantial replacement and repopulation of Europe by outsiders.
    Who knows. Every time someone comes up with a study that says one thing someone else comes up with a study that says something different.

  521. ozone November 27, 2010 at 12:26 pm #

    “Emoticons are mainly a feminine (mamby pamby) thing.” -Q.
    Damnit, Q.! Turn off the sound when the commercials are running! ;o)

  522. asia November 27, 2010 at 1:25 pm #

    Turkey,
    how wrong you are:
    ‘We don’t have slavery anymore’…..I just heard the woman from ‘ erath wind and fire’ on the radio promoting ‘free the slaves’ and even the LA Times writes about slaves in america today.
    if you dont know who to blame, its the liberals.
    due to open borders the middle eastern, asians moving to usa see nothing wrong with having slaves.
    estimates range from 10,000 to 200,000 slaves in the usa.
    do you really thjink all thjose teens being ‘adopted’ from haiti are ‘ loved and treated as family’?
    do a websearch and stop whining you fool.

  523. asia November 27, 2010 at 1:28 pm #

    ‘ to one of four women’
    i call it centuries of inbreeding.

  524. asia November 27, 2010 at 1:32 pm #

    Sacremento
    what about macon..what do you think itll be like in the die off

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  525. asia November 27, 2010 at 1:38 pm #

    ‘The more I learn about America, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be’
    The more Ilearn about israel, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be.
    The more I learn about mexico, the more disgusting she reveals herself to be.
    etcetcetc

  526. progressorconserve November 27, 2010 at 1:38 pm #

    Cash, you hit the crux of a big problem with this:
    “Every time someone comes up with a study that says one thing someone else comes up with a study that says something different.”
    And when you add in the concept that Exxon and the gang are deliberately funding studies to “cloud” some issues – no wonder we have problems with voters understanding logic and science.
    Interesting observations on genetics; for you and Tree both. Intuitively, it would seem that Y chromosomes would leave a strong record of their “penetration” into a new population.
    I remember the words of a military science professor from years ago. “When they travel, armies tend to leave their genes behind.”
    Logically, that must have operated just as well in pre-history.

  527. progressorconserve November 27, 2010 at 1:59 pm #

    Wage,
    That’s an excellent look into economics from a Buddhist perspective. I especially like this quote:
    “It is a question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist heedlessness and traditionalist immobility…”
    And it’s hard to argue that we in the West do not represent “materialist heedlessness.”
    Here may be part of the reason why:
    http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/11/26/consumerism_movie_slide_show/index.html
    “….on Black Friday, a modern celebration of the hunter-gatherer instinct that substitutes mass-produced goods for food.”
    Some people have more vociferously expressed “hunter gatherer” genes than others. But we all have them lurking there – somewhere far above the level of our reptilian brain. All the mass-marketers have to do is trigger expression of these genes in consumer type behaviors.
    And that is surely happening as a conspiracy of advertisers and corporations – though no deep evil force drives it, IMO. 😉
    Someone should paraphrase “Shakespeare on Science.”
    “The fault, Dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in our genes.”

  528. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 2:26 pm #

    Hazel Henderson! Also, “Orthodox Economics is a brain disease”. See how much we have in common? I like sex too.

  529. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 2:44 pm #

    What do you think of the Solutrean Hypothesis that the earliest Americans were White? Besides the fact that the oldest bodies found have been White, that the spearpoints of the Eastern Clovis culture are identical to the Cro-Magnon Solutrean Culture (very finely crafted bi-facial flints – unique, totally different than Asian or Amerindian), also there is compelling genetic evidence: Indians have a widepread chromosone on the femine side that Asians simply don’t have. It could only be gotten from White women. And since virtually all the blending in modern times was White Males and Indian Females it had to have happened in ancient times. The Indian migration across the Bering Strait or Beringa happened five thousand years after Whites had come across the ice. But when their migration began it was stronger and more continuous. Whites were slowly exterminated – the females sometimes taken as wives or sex slaves. Their oral histories back this up. The Paiutes tell of exterminating a red haired people. The Incas talk about the beauty of the blonde women they took after a fierce war. Kennewick man had an Indian spearpoint in his pelvis. We are the Native Americans.
    Why Wisconsin? And btw, thank you for your kind words a few weeks ago. I didn’t have a computer and was using one at the library and didn’t have time to respond.

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  530. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 2:48 pm #

    So do Blacks have the right to have their own Countries?

  531. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 3:12 pm #

    A counsel of defeat Cash reminsicent of the tragedy of South Africa. They chose the path of appeasment choosing wealth over freedom. Needless to say they got neither. Freedom leads to wealth but wealth cannot take the place of freedom. In fact it often degrades character – the mainspring of freedom.
    Where do I start? The more amnesty is given the more will swarm in. Block the border? They’ll just come in by boat and plane. As long as they know that they’re home free once they get here, they’ll come by hook or by crook. But institute e-verify and block social services and they will repratriate themselves. Many, many have already fled Arizona – to other states mostly. Imagine if all the states moved in concert. Consider Missouri: no one hears about them because they have no illegal problems at all. They never gave in and gave them social services. And police are given the broad powers necessary to deal with them. An act of preservation on their part since they are overwhelmed by the other group of aliens, Blacks. Saint Louis has been declared the most dangerous city in America -but you probably think that’s from Appalacian Whites.
    You think we’ll fall apart without them? Why? After a brief period of disruption, there would be lines of Whites applying for the jobs they used to have – lines stretching for a quarter of mile. It would solve the unemployment problem with one stoke. And think of the money saved in social services. Think of the money – billions – that would be then spent in America instead of being wired to Mexico.
    Cash, we have to think big. The patient is dying from cancer. A little herbal remedy and aspirin isn’t going to make it. Nor is Bernake’s chemo of quantitative easing. We have to operate to save the patient. A little blood now will save alot later on. As Enoch Powell said, there will be blood in the streets. He was mocked to scorn and now there is blood in the steets over there – and they aint seen nothing yet. In the 70’s David Duke told Californians that they would be a minority in a few years. They laughed and mocked him and now they are a minority. When are “you people” going to wake up?

  532. progressorconserve November 27, 2010 at 3:52 pm #

    Vlad, it’s interesting how you express good ideas, but then keep going to extremes until you lose any possibility of implementation.
    Secure borders – good idea!
    E-verify – why not!
    Social services for legal residents only – excellent!
    Deport 12 million illegals – never happening for the reasons Cash, I, and other posters have listed.
    ===================
    And in response to a much earlier post from this week:
    Vlad, you do the same with a separate country/Nation for blacks.
    Racial differences – no doubt!
    Expressed as culture – absolutely
    Would races separate in times of social stress – certainly! (re-segregation is common already)
    Carve out a separate Nation for blacks, in the south end of the country formerly known as the United States – never happening for reasons I and others have repeatedly listed.

  533. treebeardsuncle November 27, 2010 at 4:07 pm #

    Well here is some more:
    YOUR GENETIC HISTORY
    Your Branch on the Family Tree
    Your DNA results identify you as belonging to a specific branch of the human family called Haplogroup K. Some in this lineage are also part of the following subgroups:
    K1a, K1a4a1, K1a9.
    This map also shows the direction your maternal ancestors took as they set out from their original homeland in East Africa. While humans did travel many different paths during a journey that took tens of thousands of years, the lines above represent the dominant trends in this migration.
    Over time, the descendents of your ancestors ultimately made it into eastern and central Europe, where most members of your haplogroup are found today. But before we can take you back in time and tell their stories, we must first understand how modern science makes this analysis possible.
    PS
    Looks like there is some ***ish on my mom’s side.

  534. treebeardsuncle November 27, 2010 at 4:38 pm #

    Was just talking to my dad. Kennewick man who was found in the Columbia River Gorge area and dated to about 9000 years ago, had a long narrow scull and was obviously not mongoloid. Spencer Wells Journey of Man demonstrates how 2 disctinct strains contributed to the American Indian populations: one from northeast Asia (that was more caucasoid) and from southeast Asia (more mongoloid, australoid and primitive). I am not familiar with the Solutrean Hypothesis per say. However, I have noticed that the Cro Magnon Europeans were much like the early holocene inhabitants of Siberia and the Americas.
    I have a new baby in Sparta Wisconsin, a little girl named April Tara. I like the cheap prices and climate there. Figure they get about 30 inches of rain a year. The weather is cold enough — down around 0 F in January — to keep out blacks and Mexicans but warm enough not to be a problem for me.

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  535. treebeardsuncle November 27, 2010 at 5:33 pm #

    I am all for a separate nation for different people’s. Ideally I would like to have the blacks sent back to West Africa. In the mean-time, they can have a territory down in Mississipi and Alabama.
    g

  536. ozone November 27, 2010 at 5:58 pm #

    “I am all for a separate nation for different people’s.” -TBU
    Me too! For you to continue living in your own rectum saves others of us from having to share our better-smelling places with your particular tribe. I see now how it all works out so well…

  537. BeantownBill November 27, 2010 at 6:23 pm #

    All this racial talk is really stupid, but I will contribute, once, my $.02.
    We pretty much can trace our species’ (homo sapiens sapiens) lineage back, what, 7 or 8 million years ago? Several different primate species may have co-existed alongside our ancestors. Who knows, but we may have some of their genetic material. If this is true, technically speaking we are all impure – whatever that means.
    Significant portions of our DNA are from bacteria, and in fact, we are made up of many species’ genetic material.
    Almost all the blacks in America have varying degrees of white blood. Many South American blacks interbred with native Indians, so they have attenuated mongoloid blood. We are all mongrels, even the Aryans (BTW, Aryans are defined as those people who spoke Proto-Indo-European or speak any Indo-European language; and the Nazi definition distorted the meaning to be Caucasion gentiles).
    Race is only relevant in biology, not in human societies. The whole concept of “purity” is ridiculous to start with.

  538. BeantownBill November 27, 2010 at 6:28 pm #

    It’s so easy to be angry when some people pick on others. But, I’m with you, brother.

  539. wagelaborer November 27, 2010 at 6:45 pm #

    That could be how it happened, Cash.
    Women still go for farmers.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWu4aynBK7E

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  540. wagelaborer November 27, 2010 at 6:47 pm #

    I remember hearing one time how many descendants Ghengis Khan has.
    A lot.
    I could google it, or make up a number, but I’m just too lazy today.

  541. wagelaborer November 27, 2010 at 6:49 pm #

    I thought you were carefully guarding your vital fluids!

  542. BeantownBill November 27, 2010 at 6:51 pm #

    There are 112 million Mexicans. The place is a wreck; people are poor, and their government is even more corrupt and incompetent than ours. Violence and lawlessness abound. No wonder people want to leave and head north.
    But America bears a lot of responsibility for this. We took hundreds of thousands of square miles from them – just took it. Texas had lots of oil; California had vast potential wealth. We encouraged their leaders to enrich themselves at their citizens’ expense and we are responsible for the current violence problem. Want to eliminate the lawlessness? Legalize all drugs. Poof – problem gone. Finis.
    Realistically, this tide of illegal immigration can’t be stopped until there is a militarized zone around our southern border constantly manned by US troops – which means we’d have to pull our forces out of the Middle East. Yeah, right, that’ll happen.

  543. ozone November 27, 2010 at 7:02 pm #

    Wage,
    Just play “Fox News Pretend” for the day!
    (In other words: Just make it up; no one will check or quibble.)
    ;o)

  544. SNAFU November 27, 2010 at 7:08 pm #

    “I’d like to talk about economics as if people mattered.”
    Howdy Wage, Read the article you linked to; said to myself Burma, Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, short democratic rule (1948-1962), murderous and power crazed military junta ruling the country.
    No wish to throw cold water on the piece but, it does not appear that this philosophy has worked out very well for the Burmese/Myanmar.
    I noticed at the bottom of the article “The essay “Buddhist Economics” was first published in Asia: A Handbook, edited by Guy Wint, published by Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1966″. This statement would appear to lead one to posit that the “Buddhist Economics” essay was possibly/probably written during the brief period of democratic rule.
    SNAFU

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  545. SNAFU November 27, 2010 at 7:26 pm #

    Do mine eyes deceive me or did Valad the prevaricator actually let fly with a stream of zeros and ones with which I can agree? To wit, “Incredibly still with the snow on the Pines – magnificent”; WOW!
    SNAFU

  546. Pucker November 27, 2010 at 8:01 pm #

    “Posted from the departure lounge, Sydney airport, en route to Perth….”
    Remember the scene from the movie “Road Warrior” set in post-collapse Australia where the survivors fight it out on the highways of the Outback and scavenge for gasoline? I like the scene at the opening of the film where Max (played by Mel “Anti-Semetic” Gibson) has the petal-to-the-metal and is eating out of a can of dog food while his mongrel dog looks on licking his chops. The Thanksgiving Dinner of the future.
    “From: info@barackobama.com
    Subject: Thankful
    When Michelle and I sit down with our family to give thanks today, I want you to know that we’ll be especially grateful for folks like you.
    Everything we have been able to accomplish in the last two years was possible because you have been willing to work for it and organize for it.
    And every time we face a setback, or when progress doesn’t happen as quickly as we would like, we know that you’ll be right there with us, ready to fight another day.
    So I want to thank you — for everything.
    I also hope you’ll join me in taking a moment to remember that the freedoms and security we enjoy as Americans are protected by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. These patriots are willing to lay down their lives in our defense, and each of us owes them and their families a debt of gratitude.
    Have a wonderful day, and God bless.
    Barack”

  547. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 8:33 pm #

    “Race is only relevant in biology not human societies” – but Sir, the brain is biological too not just the “body”. Obviously our behavior is going to be to a greater or lesser extent biologically mandated. Wolves are the same general species as dogs since they can produce viable offspring together. But their behavior is very different. So a very small or subtle difference in genotype can cause a major difference in the phenotype or expression. And this includes behavior. An analogy: if you were setting a course for a ship and you made a half a degree mistake in your calculation – do you think you would get where you where going? No because over time the small mistake would have major consequences. Wolves have different hormone levels than dogs – that’s one small but important differnce that leads to different behavior. Just so, Blacks have more testosterone. If you started getting a Testosterone shot everyday, you would begin to feel different, look different, and act different – more sexual desire, less patience, higher tendency to violence. How well you controlled these changes would depend on your IQ and the general maturity of your personality. Blacks have smaller brains and a low IQ in general. Their level of control is notoriously low.

  548. Qshtik November 27, 2010 at 8:41 pm #

    “Anti-Semetic” Gibson) has the petal-to-the-metal
    ========
    Semitic
    pedal

  549. treebeardsuncle November 27, 2010 at 9:15 pm #

    This is for the libtards out there.
    How do you folks reconcile the idea that people are homosexual not by choice but due to inherited tendencies and that they cannot help the way they look, talk, think, feel, behave etc, but that
    population genetics as regards groups with radically different complexions, body shapes, and not so sexually oriented behavior pattens is insigificant and socially constructed?
    If genetics are responsible in one case, then they are responsible in both cases.
    When one sets aside dogma, the facts of the matter are obvious.

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  550. turkle November 27, 2010 at 10:41 pm #

    Who cares you fucking loser?

  551. turkle November 27, 2010 at 10:42 pm #

    “Blacks have smaller brains and a low IQ in general.”
    You have a small penis and also a low IQ, because your mom drank too much before she shat you out.

  552. turkle November 27, 2010 at 11:06 pm #

    You weirdos need to stop obsessing about other people who are different than you and get a new hobby other than online race baiting, if only for your own mental health.
    Vlad, we should give you a separate nation, say a little uninhabited territory carved out of Manitoba. That way you can be confident in the racial purity of the population of 1.
    Now I’m out to go hang out with real people, of a variety of different colors and sexual orientations. That’s the real America, where different people get along just fine the vast majority of the time.
    But you wouldn’t know it from reading this shit fest.

  553. Vlad Krandz November 27, 2010 at 11:07 pm #

    Do you have an answer yet – Do Blacks have the right to have their own countries?

  554. ctemple November 28, 2010 at 1:19 am #

    I have heard that about a quarter of these hybrid cars are being bought by the federal government.

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  555. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 1:30 am #

    You should preface your statements with “in my opinion”. And using clever analogies does not make them correct. Wolves and humans are 2 very different species, and using wolves as an example is irrelevant. A more appropriate analogy would be other primates vs. humans.
    A debate on nature vs. nurture has raged in the scientific community for a very long time. Just within the last month or 2 it was announced that environment is even more of a major factor in human behavior than previously thought. Therefore my own statements, as per my earlier posts, are at a minimum, equally valid.
    BTW, please inform me which peer-reviewed, published studies, generally accepted as accurate in the appropriate scientific community, has shown that Blacks have lower IQs and also smaller brains (which erroneously implies a direct correlation with human intelligence and brain size. It is the number of synaptic connections that determines intelligence).

  556. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 1:36 am #

    I would ask you the question, “did the southern states have the right to succeed from the Union and form their own country?”

  557. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 2:09 am #

    Of course. The word Union implies a voluntary coming together. From another angle – the States came before the Union of States. Why should they not be able to leave? How can we keep the balance between the States and Feds that the Constitution advocates if the States don’t have this ultimat option? Obviously it’s not something that should be entered into lightly anymore than the Revolution against England was. More and more scholars are begining to revisit the issue and many now recognize the justice of the Confederate Cause.

  558. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 2:21 am #

    I’m not saying that wolves are people. But do I believe that fundamental principles are consistent across nature? Yes, that is one of basics of science. In biology we see that animals reproduce and exhange chromosomes which carry genes. There may be big differences if you are talking about worms or amoebas, but wolves are very close to us compared to that. So – reasoning using them to illustrate genetic principles is valid.
    Actually there is a robust relationship between brain size and IQ. Head size too. The best introduction to this subject is the famous book “The Bell Curve”. But check out these articles which are mostly accessible to a layman. They are by a very famous Canadian Professor who has been persecuted for his studies – having his classes disrupted, physically attacked, investigated by the Canadian Police etc.
    http://www.vdare.com/rushton/index.htm

  559. rocco November 28, 2010 at 4:15 am #

    http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/Shoppers-Trampled-at-Local-Target-110855469.html
    The above video says it all, prepare yourself folks, the common man is dangerous. BTW after 4 years of various cans of deep freezed beans sitting in my basement, we cooked them up this week. WOW, excellent, but extra water is needed.
    Its all good from Western New York state.

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  560. budizwiser November 28, 2010 at 10:44 am #

    Asoka, the guy who thinks getting hit by a car is the best way to deal with poor foot wear, says:

    General Motors is having quite a success story and Obama gets credit for keeping ONE MILLION AMERICANS WORKING and rescuing General Motors. I’ll spare you all the statistics about American manufacturing by Americans in America, consecutive months of USA economic growth, etc. that can be credited to Obama’s stimulus and Obama’s economic decisions.

    For whatever “good” you can cherry pick out of news during these dismal times – it can not diminish the ever loss of life and leisure and the lessening quality of experience being waged against the last vestiges of America’s working class.
    Worth discussing, is just “how many” of the population will have to be supported by the rich to keep the ever increasing underclasses from showing up on the radar.
    It is my estimation that those living below the poverty line (in real inflation adjusted dollars) will triple with in ten years.
    But you provide good fodder how reasonable people can be selective in caring what those without a voice have known for years. “Things are getting fucking worse.”

  561. budizwiser November 28, 2010 at 10:45 am #

    Asoka, the guy who thinks getting hit by a car is the best way to deal with poor foot wear, says:

    General Motors is having quite a success story and Obama gets credit for keeping ONE MILLION AMERICANS WORKING and rescuing General Motors. I’ll spare you all the statistics about American manufacturing by Americans in America, consecutive months of USA economic growth, etc. that can be credited to Obama’s stimulus and Obama’s economic decisions.

    For whatever “good” you can cherry pick out of news during these dismal times – it can not diminish the ever loss of life and leisure and the lessening quality of experience being waged against the last vestiges of America’s working class.
    Worth discussing, is just “how many” of the population will have to be supported by the rich to keep the ever increasing underclasses from showing up on the radar.
    It is my estimation that those living below the poverty line (in real inflation adjusted dollars) will triple with in ten years.
    But you provide good fodder how reasonable people can be selective in caring what those without a voice have known for years. “Things are getting fucking worse.”

  562. trippticket November 28, 2010 at 10:45 am #

    November 25, 2010 12:14 post by Cash
    Sometimes I just happen across something really good that I missed or didn’t have time to read. This was one of those.
    Thanks, Cash! And you’re absolutely right, I’m a red pill guy all the way…

  563. budizwiser November 28, 2010 at 10:46 am #

    Asoka, the guy who thinks getting hit by a car is the best way to deal with poor foot wear, says:

    General Motors is having quite a success story and Obama gets credit for keeping ONE MILLION AMERICANS WORKING and rescuing General Motors. I’ll spare you all the statistics about American manufacturing by Americans in America, consecutive months of USA economic growth, etc. that can be credited to Obama’s stimulus and Obama’s economic decisions.

    For whatever “good” you can cherry pick out of news during these dismal times – it can not diminish the ever loss of life and leisure and the lessening quality of experience being waged against the last vestiges of America’s working class.
    Worth discussing, is just “how many” of the population will have to be supported by the rich to keep the ever increasing underclasses from showing up on the radar.
    It is my estimation that those living below the poverty line (in real inflation adjusted dollars) will triple with in ten years.
    But you provide good fodder how reasonable people can be selective in caring what those without a voice have known for years. “Things are getting fucking worse.”

  564. budizwiser November 28, 2010 at 10:47 am #

    Asoka, the guy who thinks getting hit by a car is the best way to deal with poor foot wear, says:

    General Motors is having quite a success story and Obama gets credit for keeping ONE MILLION AMERICANS WORKING and rescuing General Motors. I’ll spare you all the statistics about American manufacturing by Americans in America, consecutive months of USA economic growth, etc. that can be credited to Obama’s stimulus and Obama’s economic decisions.

    For whatever “good” you can cherry pick out of news during these dismal times – it can not diminish the ever loss of life and leisure and the lessening quality of experience being waged against the last vestiges of America’s working class.
    Worth discussing, is just “how many” of the population will have to be supported by the rich to keep the ever increasing underclasses from showing up on the radar.
    It is my estimation that those living below the poverty line (in real inflation adjusted dollars) will triple with in ten years.
    But you provide good fodder how reasonable people can be selective in caring what those without a voice have known for years. “Things are getting fucking worse.”

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  565. mika. November 28, 2010 at 11:47 am #

    Just the tip of the iceberg:
    (Rotten Tomatoes film review)
    THE INTERNATIONAL was inspired by the BCCI, or Bank of Credit & Commerce International, banking scandal — which took place throughout the 80s and into the early 90s.
    The BCCI was the largest criminal corporate enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation in history, the only bank—so far as anyone knows—that ran a brisk sideline business in both conventional and nuclear weapons, gold, drugs, turnkey mercenary armies, intelligence and counter intelligence, shipping, and commodities from cement in the Middle East to Honduran coffee to Vietnamese beans.
    Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched. Taken collectively, it was more of an armed Renaissance city-state of Machiavelli’s era than a modern corporation. This “bank” possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies.
    The organization was designed to mimic the way the world’s largest corporations and banks move and hide their money. It was no accident that BCCI was incorporated in Luxembourg, one of the least regulated nations on earth and a favorite haven of the money-men at the Fortune 500. It was no accident that it ran its wildest manipulations through what amounted to a branch in the Cayman Islands — a place long favored by major banks to hold offshore money away from the ken of the IRS and banking authorities.
    The BCCI scandal affords a rare and representative glimpse at the trillion-dollar-plus underground market of secret money that moves at will in and out of the world’s most sophisticated and highly regulated economies. For all of these reasons, no authorities were in a hurry to shut down BCCI: the bank was as useful to governments as it was to crooks, and indeed, governments became active participants in the fraud. In the United States BCCI became the subject of a massive and decade long cover-up.
    This criminal rampage lasted for nearly two decades. Rarely was BCCI hindered by bank regulators, law enforcement authorities, or politicians, in part because it had bought off many of the people who should have been policing it. Its political reach was awesome: the BCCI network was connected to some of the most powerful people in the world, including Middle Eastern potentates, Asian strong men, and political leaders in Europe and the United States. No matter what the method, the purpose was always to “buy influence.” BCCI used this influence to protect itself from its enemies; equally important, the bank was actively involved in promoting the political agendas of its backers, especially the rulers of Arab nations in the Persian Gulf.
    Because the bank was a privately held institution (its shares could not be bought on any stock market), it was not obliged to provide detailed information to the public and it was not scrutinized by stock market analysts. Anyone who did try to figure out BCCI by studying its annual reports would be stymied by its complicated structure: a maze of subsidiaries and affiliates incorporated in several different countries.
    The bank had its own intelligence and counter-intelligence apparatus — much like its own CIA. Many of the people involved in this network were ex-KGB and Stasi members looking to cash in on their highly-specialized skillsets. They used these skills and their contacts for activities such as surveillance, extortion, kidnapping, and murder — anything to further the banks interest.
    This was literally a “full service bank,” and bank employees referred to it as such. If you wanted to buy advanced military weaponry for whatever reason, you had only to let the BCCI know and they were capable of doing the rest — identifying a seller, paying off customs officials to allow smooth, uninhibited transport, utilizing their own shipping companies to move the goods, their own manpower to protect the goods, and their own bank accounts to store all of the money associated with the entire transaction.
    The bank worked with not only with intelligence services (such as Mossad, CIA, etc.) but also with terrorists, drug dealers, organized crime kingpins, and third-world despots who looted their countries. It was the largest financial supermarket ever created for the likes of Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein and the Colombian drug barons amongst others.
    The characters in THE INTERNATIONAL are loosely based on the real investigators who helped bring down the BCCI. John Moscow — the assistant D.A. who directed the BCCI Investigation for Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau. Against all odds, Moscow and Morgenthau were two of the only people in the world willing to go after the bank despite the fact that the Justice Department, FBI, CIA and White House were trying to undermine their investigation, and their investigators were receiving death threats and intimidation. Nonetheless, Moscow and Morgenthau relentlessly pursued the bank and were the key figures responsible for breaking the scandal wide open and finally bringing the bank down.
    No one ever went to jail for this $30 billion fraud. And many of those prominently involved in the fraud or associated with the bank have key posts in the Bush Administration — in fact, President Bush had direct dealings with BCCI.
    Although the Manhattan D.A.’s office succeeded in shutting the bank down, they were not successful in curtailing or preventing this type of institutionalized crime from flourishing.
    The BCCI’s of today are much more sophisticated and therefore destructive. They have learned from the mistakes of the past and have created organizations whose structure is so complicated and Byzantine that it’s almost impossible for authorities to track and successfully prosecute them for their illegal activities.
    The BCCI didn’t invent the idea of promoting conflict in order to profit from the debt that it creates, but what they did is streamline the process. You have companies like the Carlyle Group and Bechtel that have taken the BCCI model to the next level.
    Today you have China using the Swiss banks/offshore banks as proxies to sell small arms to Sudan as a way of avoiding UN sanctions. China is fueling the conflict in Darfur in order to run up Sudanese debt and control their tremendous oil resources.
    The same old game, just a new playing field. And this is happening all over Africa.
    ODIOUS DEBT: Odious debt is a huge problem in the Third World right now. Odious debt is debt a country incurs that is not beneficial to the inhabitants of the country. An example of how banks profit from odious debt is the following:
    A first world bank makes a massive loan to the corrupt leader of a poverty-stricken third world country, ostensibly for some improvement or infrastructure that the country does not need — like a NASCAR racing track. The leader then pillages this new influx of capital, taking it for himself — and transfers it into a secret offshore account of the very bank that loaned him the money in the first place. The bank never really loses the money in this debt/capital flight cycle, it still has the capital to make other investments… but in addition, it now controls the debt for its loan in the first place — a debt that will be eventually repaid not by the country’s leader but by its taxpaying citizens who of course cannot pay it. So in exchange for forgiving the debt, these banks take control of the only assets these countries have — their natural resources.
    Some of the most established banks in the world engage in this dirty little game. And although the BCCI did not invent the game, they revolutionized it.
    Illicit arms dealing, money laundering, predatory lending, odious debt, third-world conflict — the consequences of what corrupt financial institutions are doing have a profound effect in the world we live in..

  566. mika. November 28, 2010 at 11:54 am #

    The BCCI was modeled on the US gov mafia. The US gov mafia is the biggest and most sophisticated criminal organization on the planet. The US gov mafia is modeled after the Roman Imperialist (Catholic) Church.

  567. lbendet November 28, 2010 at 12:03 pm #

    I always said that the BCCI was the dry run for the 2008 redistribution of wealth.

  568. progressorconserve November 28, 2010 at 12:32 pm #

    Wow, Tree – we’ve been wondering where you were posting for the last couple of weeks. And now we know that you’ve been working on your creative insults at Fox website pages.
    “This is for the libtards out there.”
    Seriously, though, your question concerning genetics of homosexuality vs genetics of race shows you have a basic misunderstanding.
    There is no consistency in extreme liberal thoughts on these issues – because political thought will never be consistent or logical – when taken near the extreme of any position.
    Logic and good governance used to be in the middle – insults like “libtard” demonstrate why and how the middle has lost its voice.

  569. mika. November 28, 2010 at 12:46 pm #

    Bill, what must be understood with Vlad is that he’s driven by a political agenda (to which I believe he’s largely ignorant and emotionally blind). A political agenda that espouses murder, genocide, slavery, imperialism, centralization, top down control, propaganda, ignorance, etc. But these are all extensions originating from the Central Banking Warfare/Welfare model, which itself has its roots in the old aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church. The 30 year war never ended. We are now going on 400 years.

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  570. progressorconserve November 28, 2010 at 12:47 pm #

    BTBill,
    You’re correct when you say:
    “There are 112 million Mexicans. The place is a wreck”
    Loss of California by war and treaty may be part of the reason. So is US drug policy. And you failed to mention that US dams on the Rio Grande River siphon off water that the Mexican govt. might use to improve things.
    However, you seem to have bought into the “The US is so helpless” indefensible border chimera.
    2000 miles of mostly desert or river bed is a defensible border. That’s part of the reason for the wars and treaty with Mexico in the first place.
    The only reason we didn’t secure the border and implement E-Verify under 6 endless years of Bush and the Repub’s was pandering to big corporate agricultural interests. “Growth at any Cost.”
    That pandering continues, but now add in Obama and his Dem’s pandering to the extreme free border social liberal crowd. “Stay Elected at any Cost.”
    And reference my post to Tree – we sure could use some logical good governance in this Country.

  571. Qshtik November 28, 2010 at 1:07 pm #

    the right to succeed from the Union
    =========
    secede

  572. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 1:25 pm #

    I noticed that you never responded to my post to you about how Jews feel about Whites. No surprise. I mean what could you say – it’s just the Truth. You yourself share these atttitudes. And then you speak about my agenda. My agenda is the same as your’s: to protect my Culture, People, and Nation. The Church is part of that but only part – as a Universal Religion like Buddhism, Christianity cannot defend us from alien incursion. Christ did say GO OUT and teach all men not bring them in and swamp your own country. But clergymen have gotten lazy and liberal and who cares what Christ said. The Goverment wants it done this way. So by and large, this corrupted Christianity has become the enemy within. And of course Christian Zionists are traitors of a whole other magnitude.
    Would you like your sister to marry an Ethiope?

  573. Cash November 28, 2010 at 1:56 pm #

    Damn, that was sure one pretty lady.
    Wage, I’m gittin’ me a tractor.

  574. mika. November 28, 2010 at 1:56 pm #

    I noticed that you never responded to my post to you about how Jews feel about Whites.
    ==
    I already made my view the topic very clear, and on numerous posts. But since you seem to be somewhat slow, I’ll repeat it again. I see you as little more than murderous lying thieving callous blue-eyed reptiles. That’s the truth that I arrive at, and I call it as I see it. It is a truth based on personal and historical observation. As for what others think, you’ll have to ask them.

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  575. mika. November 28, 2010 at 1:59 pm #

    My agenda is the same as your’s: to protect my Culture, People, and Nation.
    ==
    Yeah, by living on your own in the Pacific North West. Good one.

  576. Cash November 28, 2010 at 2:12 pm #

    Vlad, I am not counselling rolling over and dying, I am the counsel for doing things right side up. You guys let this situation go on for decades and now y’all get religion about illegals? A bit late don’t you think? You have an undefended southern border, you have an impoverished, totally corrupt, festering pisshole to the south of you and you wonder why the folks there walk across into your country? Because you let them is why. Maybe I would too if I was them.

  577. Cash November 28, 2010 at 2:26 pm #

    Arsenal 4 Aston Villa 2
    Go Gunners!

  578. Cash November 28, 2010 at 2:34 pm #

    Treebeard
    Stonehenge and the Pyramids were built at roughly the same time.
    I’m not minimizing the difficulty of building Stonehenge but would you put that achievement on a par with building the Pyramids? Or the Sphynx? So who would you say were the superior race, the ones that built the pyramids or the one that built Stonehenge?

  579. mika. November 28, 2010 at 2:47 pm #

    The people whose engineers managed to move stone weighing over 400 tons each. 😀

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  580. Cash November 28, 2010 at 2:48 pm #

    TB, another thing along the same lines.
    Seems to me that white Europeans were really late getting with the idea of civilization compared to non white, non Europeans. I’ve brought up this idea in other posts.
    What do you figure accounts for this lateness?
    While other peoples (like in the Tigris/ Euphrates, the Nile Valley and other places such as in India and China) were farming irrigated fields, living in walled cities with temple complexes, developing writing and mathematics, Europeans were scratching their flea bitten asses around camp fires barely able to do subsistence farming. I’ve read that ten thousand years ago the city of Jericho had stone walls and guard towers and this was not uncommon in that time frame in that area. Europe had nothing remotely like this.
    Do you think it was racial inferiority or genetic inadequacy that held Europeans back?

  581. mika. November 28, 2010 at 2:50 pm #

    “The walls are 5m thick and made up of enormous stones weighing between 2 and 100 tons (there is even one that weighs 400 tons) with an average stone being about 10 tons. There is no mortar between the stones and they sit so closely together that not even a piece of paper can fit between them. Such fine maneuvering of the stones is incomprehensible given that even today’s modern machinery cannot move such heavy stones.”
    http://goo.gl/vSAnE

  582. Cash November 28, 2010 at 2:50 pm #

    “The people whose engineers managed to move stone weighing over 400 tons each. 😀 ” – Mika
    And who were they?

  583. Cash November 28, 2010 at 3:04 pm #

    Mika, there’s something that’s puzzled me. The story of the Exodus makes it pretty clear that the Israelites were in whole or in part descended from refugees from Egypt. So given that fact you’d think there would be at least a mention in the Old Testament about the Pyramids. I’ve read that there’s not a peep about the Pyramids. Is this true? Why do you figure this is?
    Also, about this business over what happened at Mount Sinai: how can it be that the precise location of Mount Sinai isn’t known given the earth shaking importance of what happened there? This, to me, is the most amazing case of collective amnesia among the Israelites/Jews. You’d think there would have been something immediately erected there as a memorial and that would be the central location for Jewish pilgramage. What am I missing here?

  584. mika. November 28, 2010 at 3:25 pm #

    Perhaps the Israelites didn’t work on the pyramids? I don’t know. There are two cities which were built by the Israelites, I don’t remember their names offhand, but if you google it I’m sure you’ll find that info.
    As to the location of Mount Sinai, the coordinates/ triangulation is explicitly given in the TaNaKh. The Exodus Decoded is a 2006 History Channel documentary created by Jewish Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and the producer/director James Cameron, and they show you exactly where it is.
    **A rundown of ancient heavy stone lifting: http://goo.gl/UnIGw

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  585. mika. November 28, 2010 at 3:53 pm #

    The Exodus Decoded
    http://goo.gl/dAENr

  586. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 4:14 pm #

    Cash, the approximate timelines are:
    Cheop’s Great Pyramid around 2,500 B.C., and the others no later than 1800-1900 B.C. The exodus out of Egypt took place around 1200-1300 B.C., and the Hebrews were in Egypt for around 400 years, so they probably weren’t involved in the pyramids’ construction.
    The Old Testament was concerned with the plight of the Hebrews, and Egyptian architecture and other aspects of their culture probably weren’t considered relevant, so weren’t mentioned.

  587. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 4:19 pm #

    Sorry. Isn’t it interesting how the mind works? My mind took the meaning of secede, checked the files and pulled out “succeed” because it sounds almost the same.

  588. myrtlemay November 28, 2010 at 4:32 pm #

    Greetings CFNers! (Personal “Happy 70th to Q – still kickin!)
    Does anyone know any details about the Wikileaks info released? I know their site is “down” wtf…FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, BABY!

  589. asia November 28, 2010 at 4:41 pm #

    Jeremy Rifkin has a new book that actually has some things even for myself [someone whos aware of peak oil and die off].
    he talks about photoynthesis being the #1 ecomony on earth and 7 billion of us are ‘too much’ or something like that.
    he doesnt see oil at 200 or 2000$ a barrel.

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  590. asia November 28, 2010 at 4:44 pm #

    ‘My agenda is the same as your’s:
    to protect my Culture, People, and Nation.’
    us against them.
    but the 2 sides are similar. wired the same.
    read ‘the dark side of man’ and ‘ war is a force that gives us meaning’.
    my advice…ignore the mikas of this blog.

  591. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 4:59 pm #

    Have you ever read the Parables of Nasruddin? He lost a gold coin at night and was looking for it near the street lamp. A friend came by and wanted to help. He asked, “Where exactly did you lose it?” Nasrudding said, “Over there”, pointing into the darkness. The friend asked, “So why are you searching here”? Nasruddin replied, “Because this is where the light is”.
    Get it? We assume that there were no civilizations in places where conditions are not propitious for the preservation of artifacts. So to justify their existence, archeologists go where the light is – deserts and then rave about those civilizations.
    There is preliminary evidence for a super civilization that covered Thrace, Macedonia and much of the Baltics. Another example: Otzi, the iceman found in the Alps was wearing very sophisticated clothing – not evidence of a civilization per se but very far from being a primitive savage.

  592. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 5:11 pm #

    No. No way. Cambreadth does not surrender. We’re the fanatics? They broke the Constitution, the Social Contract and we’re the fanatics? And you actually think it was just sloth on their part – even though we’ve been screaming at them for decades? No again. Get out your existentialism 101: not to choose is to choose. They chose to do nothing – even though it was their duty to protect the border. No it was a conscious choice to enrich themselves by either votes (democrats) or cheap labor (republicans). No Cash. They are going to back down on this one, they are going to appease US. Or else we are going take this Tower down piece by piece, brick by brick, state by state. Read you Jefferson – it is our absolute right to do so.

  593. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 5:15 pm #

    Thank you Mika. It is because the Elite holds the same opinion as you that we have both the need and the right to defend ourselves. And then you have the gall to talk about our Agenda. The Judeo/Masonic/Bolsheviki Agenda is to wipe us out.

  594. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 5:23 pm #

    There were many Whites in both Egypt and the Middle East in ancient times. The Ramseses Pharoahs had red hair. They recently did a DNA test of King Tut’s mummy – same as a modern European.

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  595. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 5:35 pm #

    You guys did it too. The Indians wiped out the Solutrean Cro-Magnons who were here before them. These were White Man btw. Google Solutrean for more information. Or read “My Life Among the Paiutes” – the Paiutes told the author how a Confederaton of Tribes had defeated the tall red haired people. The remnant took refuge in a cave. The Indians then started a fire outside and suffocated them. The People of Easter Island exterminated the Red Haired Elite who were making them build those statues. There are more stories too. I tend to believe now that there was an ancient, advanced race of fair skinned Whites who conquered and/or taught many peoples throughout the world. In other words, they had no more sense than modern White do-gooders. They were either blended out or wiped out in war or rebellion. We’re a broken record never learning from out mistake. One hundred square miles controlled and peopled by Whites is more valuable than thousands of square miles of conquered territory. So what if we did great things – they died with us. The primitives couldn’t understand or maintain them – they wanted to be free; to be themselves – as was their right.

  596. Vlad Krandz November 28, 2010 at 5:41 pm #

    I have nothing agaisnt you southern Italian Neanderthals (your word). Have you ever watched Gerald Celente? He’s a very ethnic Italian guy whose are sharp as a man can be. He’s been predicting the Collapse for years. And he predicted the 2008 stock crash very close to when it happened. He’s very New York and you’ll get a kick out of him. He has videos on the internet you can watch.
    The Northern or Aryan Italians do seem more prosperous however.

  597. Qshtik November 28, 2010 at 5:53 pm #

    A friend came by and wanted to help. He asked, “Where exactly did you lose it?”
    ===========
    Nasruddin said “well now if I knew that it wouldn’t be lost would it?”

  598. mika. November 28, 2010 at 6:14 pm #

    The Judeo/Masonic/Bolsheviki Agenda is to wipe us out.
    ==
    You’re an ignorant idiot.
    The same people that funded Hitler, funded the Bolsheviks. They overthrew the democratic Russian parliament headed by Kerensky and replaced it with the authoritarian communist regime of Lenin/Stalin. Same in Germany. They overthrew the democratic German parliament and replaced it with Hitler and the Nazis. Same in China. They overthrew the democratic Chinese nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and replaced them with Mao Zedong and the CCP.
    The same people that funded Hitler and his extermination machine, closed all the doors of escape to the Jews. The British patrolled the Mediterranean Sea and made sure that no Jews made it to Israel or anywhere else controlled by the anglo-american empire. They closed the door to British Palestine decades before WWII. At the same time they made sure that the Arabs got all the British weapons they needed and opened the doors for them to flood Palestine as they propagandized them to overtake and wipe out the Jewish population of Palestine.
    These are the same people that carry the never ending propaganda against the Jews through their various organs. Dig just a little bit further, and you quickly realize it all originates with the Imperialist Roman (Catholic) Church and their design reestablish the Roman Empire.

  599. mika. November 28, 2010 at 6:25 pm #

    ..their design ^to reestablish the Roman Empire..

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  600. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 7:17 pm #

    “The word Union implies a voluntary coming together. From another angle – the States came before the Union of States. Why should they not be able to leave?”
    Joining the Union, in one way, is similiar to the Mafia – once you get in, you don’t get out. If the states could leave anytime they wanted, the federal government would have no power; and then we would have ended up with the articles of confederation, which didn’t make for an effective government.
    Corruption and greed has undermined what was once a good idea – the US Constitution. Too bad.
    The South’s acceptance and use of slavery made their cause unjust.

  601. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 7:22 pm #

    Rushton’s theses are not accepted by most of the scientific establishment. While unacceptance doesn’t necessarily mean incorrectness, it should give one pause until strong corroborating evidence is recognized by scientists.

  602. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 7:29 pm #

    I am interested in your statements about the Catholic Church’s complicitness in much of what’s happening now. While the Church is no friend of mine and has been responsible for many reprehensible acts, I can’t believe in any conspiracy until I have accepted facts. Do you have any published information which you could refer me to?

  603. BeantownBill November 28, 2010 at 7:31 pm #

    I am aware of how the Vatican and Pope Pius XII aided the Nazis, but I’m more interested in the broader influence and acts of the Church.

  604. mika. November 28, 2010 at 7:41 pm #

    Corruption and greed has undermined what was once a good idea – the US Constitution. Too bad.
    ==
    Corruption and greed is what created the US Constitution.
    Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions by Jerry Fresia – Google Books – http://goo.gl/WSR6r

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  605. mika. November 28, 2010 at 7:42 pm #

    Vatican money was funding the Nazis.

  606. mika. November 28, 2010 at 7:45 pm #

    Google it.

  607. LewisLucanBooks November 28, 2010 at 8:07 pm #

    Here you go Miss MyrtleMay. I can hear a thousand conspiracy theories being spun… Probably, just too many people trying to access the site at the same time. Maybe. Perhaps 😀
    Then again…..
    http://www.alternet.org/world/148999/wikileaks_under_cyber_attack_right_before_release_of_secret_documents/
    This was from http://www.alternet.org if the link doesn’t work.

  608. jackieblue2u November 28, 2010 at 8:34 pm #

    Mika…..where are you from where do you live ?
    protecting your people ? who are your people ?

  609. myrtlemay November 28, 2010 at 8:44 pm #

    Thank you, kind sir! And may I say, as a Southern lady (just barely – on BOTH counts!)…I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers! (Thanks to Miss Vivien Leigh for that little gem. “Streetcar named Desire”, 1951, if anyone freaking cares.)

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  610. mika. November 28, 2010 at 8:50 pm #

    Mika…..where are you from where do you live ?
    protecting your people ? who are your people ?
    ==
    Huh? I was quoting vlad. My comments are below the separation marks. [==]

  611. turkle November 28, 2010 at 9:43 pm #

    “Do you have an answer yet – Do Blacks have the right to have their own countries?”
    This is a false dichotomy.
    I don’t get to decide this, Vlad, and neither do you. There are all kinds of different countries, some racially homogeneous, others more diverse. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all model of nationhood that works in all circumstances. There are a spectrum of different ones, and there is not a country on this planet that fits neatly into your simple-minded one race / one country prescription. The ones that do attempt such distinctions usually have severe problems of governance when minority groups migrate there as they are often prone to do or when these countries expand to encompass areas settled by other races. You seem to think it wrong or evil that people move around the planet en masse and go to places where everyone isn’t like them, yet this has been a natural pattern of human migration for thousands of years.
    The idea behind advanced governmental structures like democracy is that different minority groups can coexist peacefully within the same nation. Countries and empires have always been more diverse than your simple-minded prescription which demands that distinct racial groups must have always their own nations. This has never been the case, nor should it be. Attempts to enforce such rigid and overly idealistic ideals of nationhood, to connect nationalism to racial ideology, have proven utterly disastrous, Nazi Germany being the prime example. The pogroms and ethnic cleansings of Soviet Russia also spring to mind. The Germans caused the destruction of most of Europe in their quest for racial purity. Is this ultimately your position, that extermination and ethnic cleansing of other groups should be practiced in order to satisfy illusory ideals of racial purity? It sure seems like it to me. If this is the case, are you surprised that no one takes you very seriously? I am not, because your position is ludicrous and discredited.
    America is now one of the most racially and culturally diverse nations on the planet. Yet you somehow wish to turn back the clock 200 or more years because of some silly notion of racial purity that infects your pea brain. Not only is this impractical, it is inhumane and would lead to disastrous consequences. If implemented, your extreme idiocy would cause worse violence than which occurred in Yugoslavia or Rwanda. But I guess this doesn’t surprise me. You constantly fetishize violence from behind the safety of your keyboard. Do you have the courage of your convictions to go out and implement your master plan? Fuck no, because you’re a coward.
    Furthermore, your notion of a “white” race is a hopefully flawed one and based more on your egotistical desire to associate yourself with some supposedly superior racial category. If you had told a German of the 16th century that he belonged to the same race as an Englishman or a Frenchman, he would have laughed at you and then smashed your face in.
    You’re putting a lot of hate and fear out there, labeling other races as inferior, calling for racial groups in America to be resettled in their own areas, and claiming that racial differences mean that races should have their own pure nations.
    To put it bluntly, the problem is YOU, sir, not all the other groups that you so loosely and arrogantly label and stereotype. Your ideology is hopelessly flawed, and you have a raging superiority complex masking an inferiority complex, among numerous other psychological issues.
    Why don’t you worry about yourself? You don’t get to decide how countries are put together. You don’t get to say which groups settle where. You are powerless and impotent. And that’s a good thing.
    So kindly fuck off with your Nazi bullshit here. We don’t need it, and we don’t want it.

  612. jackieblue2u November 28, 2010 at 10:19 pm #

    Whatever. Go Away.

  613. mika. November 28, 2010 at 10:50 pm #

    Why? What’s the problem?

  614. Ang November 28, 2010 at 11:35 pm #

    So the debate that is raging in my head these days is this:
    Will it be better to live farther from “town” and store up loads of provisions? Or better to live within easy travel of some sort of commercial center and go to market more often? Like maybe daily?
    —————-
    I have debated this with myself as well.
    Ultimately, I think that closer in town will be better for me. At this point I’m single with kids, and think that I will benefit from having others around me, rather than going solo out in the country. Even if I am not single eventually, there’s still a vulnerability being alone in what might be a more dangerous world.
    That being said, I do have to question your choice of Georgia, Tripp. Are you concerned about global warming? (God, that sounds so cliche!)
    Here in central Ohio, between 1990 and 2006, we went from planting zone 5 to planting zone 6.
    And James Lovelock (of the Gaia theory) predicts that humans will begin to migrate northward in our lifetimes.
    Tripp, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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  615. asoka November 28, 2010 at 11:45 pm #

    Cash said: “You have an undefended southern border”
    Cash, that is a false statement.
    Obama has sent over a thousand troops to the border. The number of “illegal” immigrants crossing the border is at an all time low. The number of arrests has increased. You are engaging in spreading false statements because you think it matters what side of an invisible border human beings live and work.

  616. LewisLucanBooks November 29, 2010 at 12:17 am #

    Anytime. Anything for my secret, long distance, internet sweetheart 😀 . Funny, I’ve often used that line, myself, and I’m not even Southern. It’s just a great line. And, I like your taste in music.
    I watched the “new” version of the movie “The Women” the other day. God bless Netflix :D. Now I want to go back and check out the 1939 version, again. Before our time, but a classic. The powers that be can have Norma Shearer or Joan Crawford. I couldn’t take my eyes off of … Marjorie Main. 😀
    Well, I guess I’ll go iron some shirts and listen to JHK’s weekly podcast. Then onto tomato / mushroom melts for dinner.

  617. asoka November 29, 2010 at 12:23 am #

    Cash said: “You have an undefended southern border”
    Cash, not only is there a giant 700 mile fence on the border, and not only are there over a thousand troops, there are also agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
    No way you can say the southern border is “undefended”!
    Besides all of those agents, the Border Enforcement Security Task Forces (BEST) teams have been doubled this year by Obama and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has created (at Obama’s command) a special south-west intelligence group to co-ordinate all its efforts to tackle Mexican drug-related crime.
    You really undermine all your statements when you make a statement that the southern border is “undefended.” It just ain’t true and the decreased number of illegal crossings is the proof.
    I’m just glad the “secure borders” fanatics are losing the battle and the courts are holding that “illegal” immigrants are entitled to rights, especially children in high school brought here by their parents when they were infants. Why should “illegal” children be deported and made to pay for the actions of their “illegal” parents?
    The word “illegal” is in quotes because in my view no human being is “illegal.” There may be some people, or several million people, who are not properaly documented. But they are net contributors to the economy and I could care less. I welcome them… and could care less about what ID they have or don’t have. Recent court rulings are supporting my position.

  618. Cavepainter November 29, 2010 at 1:13 am #

    The following is a repeat post, prompted by Asoka’s remarks that essentially argues abrogation of national sovereignty — that is, erase distinction between citizen and non citizen — that is, who is referenced in the phrase “of the people, by the people and for the people”.
    Get ready; the pro amnesty faction is trial ballooning a new argument strategy. Realizing that the charge of racism has lost its emotional impact — no longer causing reflexive submission before arguments that front load that indictment – the new emotional arm twist aims to impute an onus of child abuse upon opposition to amnesty.
    Accordingly, denying amnesty would result in deportation of children of illegal aliens, amounting to punishing the innocent.
    There’s a ring of funny/fishy to that argument at the outset: The very introduction of the word innocent automatically references the unnamed guilty – which, we all know, are those who knowingly and deliberately violated our immigration laws.
    But, I digress. If the US citizenry accept this contention by the pro amnesty faction, then subsequently accept amnesty to avoid the imputed guilt, sidestepped all-together is the Constitutional debate about whether or not entitlement of citizenship is owed to children born to illegal aliens. Neat, huh?
    OK, if proponents for amnesty want to dodge (for now) the citizenship entitlement debate, that’s fine with me. That allows to be singled out the issue of whether or not opposing amnesty really does amount to child abuse — punishing the innocent.
    Before our nation pleads mea culpa, I urge pivoting the argument 180 degrees: Doesn’t it seem just as arguable that children of illegal aliens in our country have already garnered benefit of inordinate US generosity? Consider; having had the privilege of a life start in our first world nation haven’t they accrued advantage beyond estimate over children in the countries of their parents’ origin?
    Seems to me, by this accounting, our national generosity should be celebrated rather than impugned.
    Carrying my counter argument further: As a generous nation doesn’t it behoove us to disperse the children of illegal aliens back to those nations of parental origin, so that the advantages they’ve acquired while here can be shared and realized in those otherwise disadvantaged countries as added national treasure?
    After all, proponents for amnesty are quick to claim that these children — as well as their illegal immigrant parents — enrich our nation immeasurably. There again, isn’t it unfair of us, a richer nation already, to be robbing poorer nations by not sending back what should be regarded as theirs,….by legal entitlement?

  619. Vlad Krandz November 29, 2010 at 1:52 am #

    “The Scientific Establishment” has become corrupt. Anyone who has ever tested Blacks has found the same thing: dumb. And Aboriginees are even dumber. Bushmen are neck and neck with the Abos as the dumbest of all.

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  620. Vlad Krandz November 29, 2010 at 2:12 am #

    Yes, when groups move into a new area it means war – unlesss they were invited in. And sometimes even then. There’s been lots of war and there’s going to be lots more. It’s not our fault – people like you keep advocating it even though it doesn’t work. Yugoslavia? A totally unnatural coming together of Serbia, Bosnia, etc. Rwanda – a joke. A textbook case of the Truth of my thesis even as America is destined to become unless we peacefully split up.
    About the Blacks in particular: do you not think them capable of nationhood? You may well be a bit of a racist – many Liberals quietly are. They suffer from Bill Clinton’s “soft fascism of lowered expectation”. They let Blacks get away with murder in the classroom, workplace or courtroom. They don’t hold Blacks to the same standard because they know it’s impossible. We may well be more in agreement than you’re willing to admit.

  621. Vlad Krandz November 29, 2010 at 2:14 am #

    700 miles! And gigantic too! How many miles is the Mexican/US border Soak? 700? Or a wee bit more?

  622. asoka November 29, 2010 at 2:16 am #

    cavepainter said, about children of immigrants: “isn’t it unfair of us, a richer nation already, to be robbing poorer nations by not sending back what should be regarded as theirs”
    We aren’t talking about cattle or property. We are talking about human beings.
    Let them freely decide where they want to live. Stand for freedom of movement and freedom of association.
    Respect the wishes of those human beings involved and let them decide if they do or do not want to go back to a country they may have only known as an infant, or maybe (as a developing fetus) they never knew. Let them decide about going back to a country they perhaps cannot relate to at all.

  623. Vlad Krandz November 29, 2010 at 2:30 am #

    Well there is some evidence that the Nazis were funded by the same Banks as the Allies. The Banking Elite are thus like the Church: they will deal or treat with whoever wins. It would have been a terrible thing for them to have only funded one side and then lost everything. That being said – it doesn’t follow that they didn’t favor one side. Obviously they wanted the Allies to win.
    As for the Church: the slander against Pius the 12th is a decades long outrage – as even many Jews admit. He wrote several encyclicals agaisnt Natural Socialism and saved thousands of Jews from the camps by opening up Vatican City to them. Now the Zionists rave that he didn’t do enough. What more do they want? That he run outside the walls with a pistol? Incite open rebellion against the Fascists – that would have simply meant that Vatican City would have ceased to be respected and would have been invaded. He did what he could – apparently he did much behind the scenes beyond what I mentioned. The Fascists themselves felt the Church to be a formidable enemy. Many priests died in the Camps you know. And also you are forgetting about the attempted assasination of Hitler by the Catholic Officers. But alas, you might have to feel a bit of gratitude – anything but that. Give up your pet hatreds – never.

  624. trippticket November 29, 2010 at 9:11 am #

    “That being said, I do have to question your choice of Georgia, Tripp. Are you concerned about global warming? (God, that sounds so cliche!)”
    Sure I am, and I can see the data that suggest that it is real, anthropogenic or otherwise. (Although I just don’t see a global civilization burning 80 million barrels of oil a day in pursuit of the Cartesian domination of Nature, and it not having a real and deleterious effect. More by the destruction of biological systems – forests, topsoil, and freshwater supplies – than atmospheric perhaps. I’m just sayin’.) It’s a lot of fossil energy being throw back into the mix.
    No doubt the USDA zones are shifting north. So in a situation like south Georgia, I see growing most produce in the shoulder seasons, spring and fall, and laying low during the blazing hot summer, eating things like fish, eggs, and blackberries that can be acquired in the morning and evening at little energetic expense. The other options might be to breed new vegetable varieties that are more heat tolerant, and planting dappled shade in your summer veggie plot. Those trees and shrubs would be food-producing too, obviously. The good part is that I can grow food year round in a place like this, and for industrial humans accustomed to being able to get what they need when they need it, that ain’t a bad trade-off for some sultry summer discomfort. But most of the year is quite pleasant. It’s 48 degrees right now as I type this response first thing in the morning on November 29th, and everything from peppers and pineapple guava to broccoli and carrots is thriving just outside the window.
    Besides, I think that runaway warming is just as likely to trigger the onset of an ice age as it is to, well…runaway. Then who would look like a genius! ;o) But either way, I plant my food system for max resilience. For example, if I want apricots, I plant a variety that does better in warmer seasons, one that thrives in colder, one that blooms early, one late, etc, and I use a multiple planting scheme, putting all 4 of those varieties in the space of one tree, pruning them open in the middle for sunlight, most often with a nitrogen-fixing shrub in the middle. Get one that produces food or fodder for livestock while you’re at it! And I don’t see much of a reason for my fruit trees to be taller than 10′. Anything higher is literally for the birds!
    Does that help?

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  625. Cavepainter November 29, 2010 at 11:36 am #

    Well,….there you’ve done it again; essentially arguing against sovereign jurisdiction, the basis for representational democracy through which the “citizenry” exercise control of national destiny. Instead, you’d prefer we have an immigration policy that defaults to however many foreign nationals choose to ignore it. You must be one of those I’ve described in earlier posts: Believe that the US citizenry should be denied entitlement to national democratic process of self rule on basis of your feelings that our nation has failed in meeting your personal tests of historical purity.

  626. Ang November 29, 2010 at 11:43 pm #

    Thanks for the info, Tripp.
    Have you considered writing a how-to book for the permaculture novice? You have a knack for explaining how it all works…

  627. asoka November 30, 2010 at 1:02 am #

    Cavepainter said: “essentially arguing against sovereign jurisdiction, the basis for representational democracy through which the “citizenry” exercise control of national destiny.”
    No, I am essentially arguing that those who are physically here are inside the “jurisdiction” and should be allowed to vote. Everyone who lives here should be allowed to vote. That is my definition of citizenry: those who show up, those who pay taxes every day they buy food, etc. and they should not be taxed without the right of representation. The USA fought a war over that and the “immigrants” won.

  628. Cavepainter December 1, 2010 at 12:58 am #

    So, according to your argument no advantage to illegal immigrants has been misappropriated by their violation of our immigration laws, that instead they are now worse off than their fellow nationals who didn’t choose to come here in disregard to our immigration laws, hence the US citizenry is in debt to those illegal aliens, owning to them amnesty and full privilege of citizenship. Hmmm,…..interesting. Do you think we can sell such an idea to other nations,….uh, say Mexico? How about Israel?