JHK’s Three-Act Play
Even if the so-called economy were “recovering,” the people of the USA would be stuck in a physical setting for daily life that has no future – the nightmare infrastructure of subdivision houses, strip malls, and WalMarts, all rigged up for incessant motoring. Of course, the so-called economy is not recovering because there is no more cheap oil. If oil ever gets cheap again, it will be because nobody has enough money to pay for it and surely you can connect the dots to what that hamster wheel of futility means.
In fact, the heart of our economic predicament is that the American economy came to be based on the construction of ever more suburban stuff, the financing of which, especially the houses, became the fodder for an episode of epic swindles that has left our banking system a hollowed out shell of accounting fraud. In short, we built even more stuff with no future, and ruined our society in the process. How tragic is that?
The behavioral habits, practices, and consequences of being stuck in that living arrangement may end up being at least as problematic as the physical residue of it. It has left the people in a network of alienation, anxiety, and misery that defeats exactly the mentality needed to break free of it. For the truth is we’re faced with a massive necessary re-ordering of daily life in this country, and there is no vision or will to get on with the job.
Among the tribulations of this living arrangement is the utter loss of connection between place and purpose often expressed in the phrase “loss of community,” which is a little too abstract to me and fails to convey the tragedy of individuals living with no sense of purpose — and by that I mean duties, obligations, and responsibilities to other human beings.
Obviously, the whole idea of a single-family house by definition dictates a certain disposition of things. It will lack the dimension and social relations of a household composed of multiple generations plus non-family members, helpers, employees, servants. And it should also be obvious that the single-generation, single-family house is a product of mid-20th century industrial dynamism that made even factory worker wage slaves rich by historical standards – Tom Wolfe pointed out years ago that the average GM assembly line drone enjoyed more sheer physical luxury at home than Louis XIV.
Put the single-family house in the context of a suburban monoculture organized to conform relentlessly to the dictates of single use zoning, and you get a recipe for instant (and permanent) social dysfunction. Then, fill that house with electronic diversion devices and a microwave oven and you end up with a very few disconnected humans who rarely share a meal and exist, while “at home,” in a narcissistic vapor-realm of canned entertainment, pornography, texting (i.e. melodrama created to fill a void of purposelessness), and the sado-masochistic combats of video games (a substitute for purposeful, virile endeavor), all floating on a virtual river of relentless advertising.
It always interests me to see the emergent purposelessness of the American Dream expressed so vividly in the television sitcoms of that mid-20th century day – the very moment of its emergence. Ozzie Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet seemed to have absolutely nothing to do except sit around the kitchen waiting for somebody else to come in for a cup of coffee. He clearly had nowhere else to go. The ennui of Ozzie Nelson was a source of mirth to busy hipsters who savored the ironies of behavioral kitsch – loving what’s horrible for the horror it induces. But it really isn’t so funny since it is a portrait of an un-manned man trapped in utter purposeless and reduced to the pathetic existential status of somebody endlessly waiting for nothing. (Cue Samuel Beckett….)
Anyway, that was then and it’s all crashing down now in a great galumphing debris-field of bankruptcy, psychosis, regret, obesity, and foreclosure. So what comes next? They say that the millennial generation is the most group-oriented, cooperative bunch to come along in the march of Boomers, Xs, and Ys. How much of this is an hallucination of transient computer connectivity, I don’t know. The fact that it is so difficult for them financially to even hope to form a household will surely be a defining factor in the choices they make ahead about how exactly to inhabit the landscape. I think they will make out better in this project than their Boomer forerunners, who started out in communes sharing toothbrushes and graduated to dismal McMansions in a geography of nowhere, while dedicating their careers to the looting of posterity.
I’m quite sure that many will rediscover a sense of purpose in the re-ordering of social life that lies ahead, which includes a return to different household arrangements and probably much more hierarchical social relations. Implicit in the latter is the now-utterly-incorrect-and-taboo notion of someone knowing their place. The catch is: you need to have a place in order to know your place, and therefore know who you are – and in a society full of people for whom place means nothing, there is little chance of acquiring a real identity, other than the sham raiment of the app-supported avatar life that has taken the place of being human.
I had a fugitive thought the other evening walking through my beaten-down small town in the late fall chill. I imagined that instead of the blue tomb-like glow of television emanating from house to house that I could hear the sequential music of parlor pianos, and voices singing to them, and of healthy people coming and going from warm kitchens to fetch firewood, and of groups of people gathered around tables for a meal, and generally of buildings that were truly inhabited, not just storage containers for lives unspent. I grant you it was a fleeting nostalgic fantasy. But isn’t nostalgia just a state of being homesick?
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This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
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First!
What can I say, James. Nothing’s perfect, except for my next post: Perfection!
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/perfection/
Best to you, kulturCritic
We serfs know our place. Keep on working so others can keep on collecting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRTBq5FIm0
What you say about the American Dream is true JHK, only thing is, that’s the model the rest of world’s inhabitants also aspire to. 7 billion people want personal ownership of an automobile, a refrigerator, flat screen, etc……oh, and running water too.
http://alttransbikes.blogspot.com/
I feel sorry for James and a lot of other bloggers. I haven’t read anything that hasn’t been covered already in awhile, I only read half of this weeks blog….blah …blah ..blah. Not that I don’t look forward to and appreciate Jim’s work…it’s just that this is a slow crash and we all know whats wrong, what’s probably going to happen and what we need to do to prepare. After 15 years of waiting for collapse I’m officially burned out. It’s like a song or movie you used to love but after awhile you get sick of it. [sigh]:(
I agree with many of your observations but must disagree that returning to a society such as pre WWI Britain’ hierarchial society is truly desirable. I do grasp and agree however with your connected points regarding having something of value to do and people who rely upon you to do said same, bound together in a functional system.
Wow, yet again you return to the roots of what upsets you about suburbia and modern consumer culture in grand fashion, along with what makes it possible, cheap fossil fuel, especially cheap oil. I could tell my students to read this essay along with last week’s if they have any doubt about what you were saying in “The End of Suburbia.”
I blogged about the hold that the economy of happy motoring still has on the culture (or is that the culture of happy motoring has on the economy? Whatever) yesterday. The green energy manufacturing that was supposed to fill an old Ford plant fell through. Instead, about a third of it will become the first Menards, a big box store, in metro Detroit. There isn’t money for the energy of the future, but there is money for more shopping. This when there is already a Home Depot on the other side of the freeway and a Lowes one exit away. As long as business as usual can go it, that’s what we’ll see.
Other signs that business as usual is doing its best to return in my blog include a post about the stink of retail desperation with holiday advertising starting earlier and earlier, the Detroit Science Center reopening as the Michigan Science Center, the American Association for the Advancement of Science inducting more fellows, and bidders lined up around the block to buy the rights to bake Twinkies and other Hostess products. And then there’s the techno-narcissism of the people who think that social media will save their businesses, including the news business. Yes, I posted about that, too.
I still haven’t given up on politics, especially that of the corn pone fascists. I noted all the Soviet analogies in an article about the hopefulness of reform in the GOP. Those had an ironic effect. I also pointed out that the Libertarians might be on their way to becoming the opposition party in Louisiana instead of the Democrats. Finally, the pattern of Democratic majority counties in the South follows a shoreline from the end of the age of the dinosaurs. When Faulkner wrote that the past is never dead, it’s not even past, he had no idea how right he was!
As for what’s coming up, how about the future of mass transit in Detroit and the unintended effects of redistricting?
Happy Motoring–for now–from Detroit!
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
“Storage containers for lives unspent.” Poetry.
Hey James, what about that idea of a café: a PLACE where people can meet (maybe for the first time), have something to eat and drink, enjoy or participate in music-making (bring your fiddle!) or storytelling? In other words, a public house.
Re: your last paragraph, I had a similar experience a couple winters ago, walking back home, fiddle slung over my shoulder, aglow with the pleasure of attending a party a few blocks away. Then it occurred to me: oh yeah, despite a lot of outreach, I don’t really know more than a couple of people in between.
All too true Jim. But maybe we need to focus more on what we can do to fix some of the mess we’ve got ourselves in. If you think it’s not fixable, then it’s not worth pointing out the problems. But if there is opportunity to make some solid chamges for the better, let’s get on with it.
As for me, what I’d propose is that we recognize that we are not realistically going to save all of the country; there are just entire areas that are beyond saving by any realistic measure. But there are indeed cities, towns and even suburbs that with some effort could be made much more functional and liveable on many levels than its present state.
I personally would treat this as the sort of “urban triage” as described by Jeff Speck in “Walkkable Cities”. We need to devote some resources to looking at how we can improve those areas that are most worth improving, street by street. And, most important, quit devoting any more resources to areas that are hopeless; far out ring-suburbs, areas with minimal water supplies, those horrid stretches of asphalt with endless strip mall development, etc.
There are many others out there as you well know, who are saying many of the same things you are saying; you do a better job of bringing your message to “the masses” and non-planners, but you have company as you well know. So how about proposing a way that we can start working on this; involve the just plain folks too to get ivolved.
You know a watched pot never boils, right?
Just when you let down your guard the swhtf.
There still are some meaningful choices out there that allow living in a community and having purpose. Moving off the grid into the woods near a small town worked for us! We finally wrote about it so you can avoid the pitfalls that come with moving from suburbia to self-reliance. http://www.cammather.com
Jim. Long time reader, first time poster. I really enjoyed this weeks post. Please continue to be a voice ofI am part of the “millennial” generation that you mention and I am having a difficult time in this depressing society. I live in Massachusetts, both my wife and I are college-educated and come from blue-collar families. As you can imagine there was no help from our families for college except for verbal encouragement. The crushing weight of our student loans has forced us to postpone homeownership and having children because financially the money just isn’t there. I say that in amazement as combined we make $110k/year. We’re not frivolous with our money and we try to save whenever possible in a modest bank account that hasn’t seen much growth in 24 months.
I wanted to describe to you my segment of society in Clinton, MA, a manufacturing town from the 1860’s that was home to the invention of the carpet-loom. The building we inhabit is a mill on the water that has around 150 units. Surprisingly the majority of these are filled with men and women from my same generation, all having similar struggles. We’ve come to rely on each other much for assistance with day and evening dog walks, weekly socialization over dinners beer and wine, homework, childcare, wedding planning, a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen.
We all feel completely disconnected from the bullet-points on the evening news. We all drive mostly foreign-made cars (because they’re cheap), we want nothing to do with cul-de-sac living (prefer social interaction) and for the most part we’re not falling in line with the other lemmings into the electronic stores to purchase redundant gadgets. We want things of value that will out-last our own lives. I prefer this arrangement to any of the nauseating suburban arrangements and will continue striving for a better, more human existence.
Fortunately for me I live in a 19th Century transit oriented Victorian community showing the way to the 21st Century. As I got on the totally packed train with a bunch of private school students who were left stranded by another abrupt change in NJ Transit schedules necessitated by the disaster that NJ Transit parked a bunch of their trains in Hoboken by the Hudson River or the Meadowlands, which is the Joisey polite way of saying “swamp”, a woman remarked that “Oh you live in fairy land!”
Our town was regaled by over 70 girl scout carolers who went from door to door in our fairy land before the community Christmas tree lighting.
Unfortunately the “Happy Motorers” who run New Jersey seem oblivious to the centrality of our Green Transit auto alternatives. With Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath and the flooding of 20% of our Rail equipment, commuting to workplaces either in New Jersey or New York has become a disaster.
With 30% of our Transit which had been cut by 21 trains in 2008 already out of commission, people are packed like sardines in what remains. That New Jersey is more densely populated than China and already runs 1,000 miles of Rail within walking distance of 33% of our population seems lost on Gov Christie and his minions. They propose to waste $384 Million on a new Autos only bridge to devastated Long Beach Island….
But at least I live in fairy land and know many of my 1200 neighbors as we share tips on energy efficient living for the age of Peak Oil and Climate Change.
Peak Oil just represents the point in time when roughly half of the ultimate available oil has already been used. Even if we are there, or soon will be, don’t we have decades on the down side of the curve when we can voluntarily leave oil before oil leaves us?
When do you expect the following to happen due to fossil fuel depletion? Feel free to provide dates.
END OF INTERNET (no electricity for servers)
END OF COMBUSTION ENGINES (no fuel for jets, cars, etc.)
END OF USA MILITARY (no fuel for logistics, training, fighting, etc.)
I make this an open challenge to anyone on CFN. Provide a date (year, decade, century) and a rationale for the date, for each of the above.
I don’t think any of you really, deep down in your heart of hearts, believes in peak oil. You cannot imagine really living without the above things.
If you believe it, then you must have a rationale, AND A DATE. Otherwise you are just propagating fear and doomster mythology.
About Millennials and community: it’s real. They would do what they do without the constant and addictive allure of texting and social media. They’ve been raised to collaborate in a doomed meritocracy.
That would, ironically, be a great bonus in a new world made by hand, to employ JHK’s favored metaphor. Problem is, they don’t know how to make anything with their hands, and they have no memory of facts or the ability to employ facts in the service to knowledge.
They say, “Don’t know the answer? Google it!” That’s great until the batteries die on the phone.
On the positive side, Millennials learn quickly and get together to figure out solutions. They lack physical stamina. I see this when I work alongside kids half my age who “play out” when I’m still warming up. But they are young and can “toughen up.”
Their youth and ability to learn fast give me hope. A fool’s hope? Better than none at all.
To my mind, it is still about the lack of leadership. You can talk all you want about what pattern languages we should speak and what community patterns we should build but without leadership, nothing will change….nothing. We don’t have leaders in this country right now, we have politicians and politicians are not leaders….they are politicians. Who will step up to lead us out of this socio-ecomomic quagmire? And when? We have two pathetic political parties and a completely clueless president. You might argue that Obama is a consummate politician but that’s my point….he is not a leader….leaders bring people together to solve problems, not to separate them and make them more divisive…. and he has no urban plan of any kind that I can find. Obama has no vision for helping us out of our current mess. He is part of the mess.
Perhaps the hope for leadership is still at the local level but, unfortunately, most people have no idea how their local governments work. Two things, though, are apparentat the moment…an unsatiable “edifice complex”…let’s just keep building and building and, an incredibly comprehensive case of “cultural amnesia”….most potential voters couldn’t tell you very much about where they live and who runs their lives in the current moment let alone a decade ago. It’s a sad and trying time.
Jim, kinda repititive this week, but hey, things are busy this Holiday season… At least here in the Appalachian hinterlands, I’ve not quite seen it this jumping in a while. Certainly not seeing the gloom and doom so much, folks are even building houses again.
Anyway, as to that parlor piano nostalgia fantasy, I kind of agree with you when you say we aren’t going to replay the 20th Century, and surely that applies to the 19th as well?
Interesting post Jeff, glad you jumped in with your pov.
Fellow Bay Stater here, from the Pioneer Valley.
Jim, I was fine with this until the part about fetching firewood. First of all, if everyone was fetching firewood, we would be ‘Easter Island’ in short order. Secondly, wouldn’t we be releasing the last of the locked up CO2 (presuming that it will be when oil, gas and coal are no longer feasible that we turn to firewood)?
But, of course, when our overpopulation is reduced to sustainable levels, this vision will come true. The difficulty being individual survival.
Craig
The behavioral habits, practices, and consequences of being stuck in that living arrangement may end up being at least as problematic as the physical residue of it. It has left the people in a network of alienation, anxiety, and misery that defeats exactly the mentality needed to break free of it. For the truth is we’re faced with a massive necessary re-ordering of daily life in this country, and there is no vision or will to get on with job.
Word. I have lived this vacuous purposelessness every day of my Gen-Xer life since turning 19 back during the spring season of 1986. 26 years later, every day I literally pray to my Creator that my lifespan be cut short in the relatively near future.
Meestair Jeem,
You sez:
“The behavioral habits, practices, and consequences of being stuck in that living arrangement may end up being at least as problematic as the physical residue of it. It has left the people in a network of alienation, anxiety, and misery that defeats exactly the mentality needed to break free of it.”
To me, this strikes at very crux of the matter, as my major malfunction is a fixation on communal trust (and the lack thereof). The gargantuan efforts that are needed just to deal with the outcomes of our various predicaments will need some serious cooperation. (Working well with others. ;o)
Yes, it also seems, despite the strange sterility of tweets and texts, that the newly-forming “adults” have an organic network of community-building as an implicit driving force, and are [perhaps unconsciously] actively seeking another way to “inhabit the landscape” and regain communal trust[worthiness]. Having very little to lose has a lot to do with this, I’m guessing.
That is my small kernel of hope, but Johnnie “Carpetbagger” Corzine is still at large, and “wealth” is mostly denominated in stacks of paper promises, accounting scams and I.O.U.’s, a large proportion of which will never be collected (for more piles of same).
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER –
You have proven, time and again, that you read some of the early posts to this thread.
Regular commenters refer to this borse2st-type nonsense as “chinese spam.”
It is destroying any purpose that your writings and this comment thread might have.
Figure out a way to get rid of it.
Without banning other posters.
Please.
JHK is entertaining and his shtick probably sells enough books to keep himself motoring happily. Not sure why he longs for a simpler, world-made-by-hand existence?
airlines are on the downhill slide, Autos are also as well as global shipping but there is no reason in theory that the Internet cannot survive without fossil fuels. Unlike material goods which require real physical transport the Internet is just the transfer of abstract bits of information, 1’s and 0’s which in theory could be infinitely small. Moreover the beauty of the Internet is that it could run on anything – that was the whole point. You could run it on Ham radios if their frequencies were made to support TCP/IP Internet protocols.
It takes very little energy to run radios. During the Hurricane Sandy power outage we would get news updates with one of those hand-cranked solar panel radios. A minute of cranking keeps the radio going for a half hour.
There is the Green Touch initiative spearheaded by what is left of Bell Labs with others in Telecomm and computing which is trying to cut Internet energy usage by 1,000 times.
Assuming the investments are made to actually do this it should allow the Internet to continue powered by solar, wind, hydro and alternative renewable forms of energy.
Speaking of the Millenials and their ability I thought it was quite impressive in that regard how the Occupy Wall Street organizers got the help of MIT via the Internet to make bicycle powered generators to keep their servers up without an fossil fuel polluting generators.
I believe that this generation will prove a lot more inventive than many imagine…
Kudos on your take on hierarchy. It has been popular among certain social critics (Orlov, KultureKritic, et al)to slam hierarchy as an oppressive contrivance of civilization, soon to be shed (as civilization disintegrates) in favor of some amorphous form of egalitarianism or ‘constructive anarchy’. I’ve taken my share of drubbings for asserting that hierarchal social structures are natural not only to humans (regardless of cultural specifics) but to virtually all social primates, and, in fact, most social species in general.
Also, I’ve always considered Ozzie Nelson to be one of the great unsung artists of the twentieth century. His brilliant understatement is, I believe, unmatched….Hell of a musician too!
Superb post!
29th!!
I think that by 2043 things will be very different than they are today. Fewer cars on the road (1/2 as many or fewer), but thousands of scooters and bicycles will be clogging city streets (like they do now in most Asian cities). Suburbia will still exist because even small cities (
I think that by 2043 things will be very different than they are today. Fewer cars on the road (1/2 as many or fewer), but thousands of scooters and bicycles will be clogging city streets (like they do now in most Asian cities). Suburbia will still exist because even small cities (
I think Jim has talked about tbis before; all our technology goes to produce devices to fuel the communication and entertainment industry so we can have the next Ipod dejur or new ap for our phones, none of which is going to anything to help us solve the muriad of problems…REAL problems that face. Green energy will NEVER work because there is no such thing. EVERYTHING we do and make invades the earth and digs a deeper environmental hole for ourselves. AN example: my Dad was showing me an article touting some huge mirror display out west that focuses sunlight on a tower in the middle to heat water for steam to generated electricity. Anyway the article was proudly saying how the facility has a zero carbon foot print which really pleased my Dad. Hmmm….I said, Pop, do you know how much carbon based energy it took to melt glass (or plastic) to make all those mirrors? The carbon foot print break even point would be hundreds of years. That’s why there can be no green energy other than just lying in the sun to get warm.
I think that by 2043 things will be very different than they are today. Fewer cars on the road (1/2 as many or fewer), but thousands of scooters and bicycles will be clogging city streets (like they do now in most Asian cities). Suburbia will still exist because even small cities (
Sorry I could not get my entire post to publish for some unknown reason.
“If you think it’s not fixable, then it’s not worth pointing out the problems. But if there is opportunity to make some solid chamges for the better, let’s get on with it.”
There is a helplessness and hopelessness when it comes to facing the problems and predicaments at hand. There is, also, the further problem of dealing with your fellows who “choose” not to face but ignore it all by sinking into the meaningless addictions JHK speaks of in this weeks contribution.
Everyone has the inherent capacity to contribute toward solutions, practical attitude adjustments and lay the groundwork for needed, creative changes. This can be set in motion NOW by going to the root causes of our predicaments which are our human weaknesses that have perversely become our conventional cultural values and norms. A vigorous, honest, and sincere questioning of conventionality in all spheres will prepare us, each one, to take conscious part as we observe things move into place in the grand, gradual process of setting aside delusional playthings and taking up living in reality.
We are not going to make much progress nor find self-fulfillment without coming to an understanding, individually and collectively, of WHO we are. Consciousness-altering answers will only come with undaunted questioning. The answers each one discovers for himself will be the foundation for an (the) Grand Experiment–a New Humanity, perhaps.
Hi Jeff
Sounds like you’ve got a start actually, in terms of the concentration of other millenials where you live. Add to that living in an old mill town, which is on a river, and it doubtless has the remnants at least of a real downtown, with stores, grid streets and the like(I don’t know that town in particular, so I’m making some assumptions given similar towns). So, how about working to improve where you live in the downtown; a cafe, loft/artist/performance space, do something to attract other creative class sorts, start a Farmers’ Market if there is none, community garden, small businesses etc. Be the change you wish to see……
“…that I could hear the sequential music of parlor pianos, and voices singing to them, and of healthy people coming and going from warm kitchens to fetch firewood, and of groups of people gathered around tables for a meal, and generally of buildings that were truly inhabited, not just storage containers for lives unspent.”
Sounds like the Waltons. “Good night, Howie.”
JHK is always evoking these alleged “better” times and denigrating the present. One could walk down the same nostalgic street hear the constant hacking and coughing of people with TB, or the wheezing of people with influenza, or the groan of a man with an aching back after chopping wood to heat a house up to 45 degrees. Then the damn steam train comes through belching nasty black coal smoke.
Moreover, he denigrates and judges people without really knowing them, declaring so earnestly that they wear “the sham raiment of the app-supported avatar life that has taken the place of being human.” Why not denigrate the people that run blogs on the Intar-Webs instead of using hand-written letters or talking to people face to face? Now THAT”S a sham!
JK – ranting with so much emotion detracts from your message. If you want to pretend to have credibility as visionary – then you need to keep up pretenses – none of this “stream of crap” off-the-cuff crap – or at least not without qualification.
Anyway we already know – “reality is being managed” – and so the party goes on – at least while the lights stay on…….
You know my schtick – I’m all about watching how “discretionary consumption” of petroleum is routed to those with the buck….. And how everyone – even those without ownership of a personal passenger vehicle are paying so those big boys with their big toys can keep on truckin’ – err fuckin’ everyone over…..
We already have history as a guide — the rich man’s horses live better than the villagers.
When that reality is no longer manageable – well then maybe, you can wax on about the pitch forks and torches at Lloyd’s and Jamie’s joints…..
Oh yeah – and merry fuckin’ christmas too……
Jimmy [don’t drink the water],
Didn’t know you were from ’round these parts.
WSP and RT are from down the valley, and I’m just over the next ridge to the west. Bill is in the Beantown, and his progeny and friends will once more become the trans-atlantic traders and merchants, while we wander the encroaching woods and pick ticks. ;o)
Just being in these environs gives a view into the past and how the locals had the vision to harness the powerful forces of rivers and streams (of which we’re fortunate to have an abundance). Depending on the squirreliness of the indigenous climate, we’ll see what mutations evolve. I, for one, am looking forward to some strange, crossbred mechanical innovation that stresses SIMPLICITY and longevity. (This is magical to a person of limited mechanical capability, such as myself.)
Amen to that. I’m exhausted from living in this state of mind.
Dooms dayers are getting boring. While the lack of awareness
To alternate solutions seems to bypass the masses they will become front and center just like an iPad or big screen. I just installed on my three story townhouse one 750 vertical wind generator along with 6 280 watt solar panels using 6 Lear jet batteries and 2 two thousand watt inverters I have enough power for tv,microwave,plenty of lights,refrigerator and Internet. cost was about. 7,500 did some work myself.
All green no carbon. As a side note 1969 had a Dodge charger
10 miles to the gallon. Just bought a 2013 Dodge Charger
31 MPH highway yes improvements are out there
Gary
Good place for me to jump in.
And I am addressing the choir here, and a million times elsewhere. Me included.
It should be pretty clear by now that this “choir”, in one way or another, gets it. And the question eventually gets to, “What should/could I be doing about this?” (Beyond clever, erudite, elegant analysis and discussion, necessary as it is). And so here’s my pitch for an answer to that:
With apologies to Wendell Berry whom I now crudely, but with deep respect, paraphrase —
“If you really want to shut down the fossil fuel juggernaut,(which must happen if we are to survive), if we are to even approach the relative sanguinity of Jim’s world made by hand, then do whatever you can to provide for your own food. If you have access to any patch of land at all, figure out how to get it to shout ‘BEANS!’ as if your life and the lives of your family depended on it because THEY DO!” And, Wendell Berry again, Growing a garden to provision oneself, if only partially, is the “most revolutionary” act that is within reach of nearly every common citizen.
There’s really only a couple of dots to connect.
Shut down fossil fuel and you simultaneously shut down the nation’s food supply. As cheap energy declines, a tipping point is reached where the industrial “food” system, dependent as it is on cheap energy, will no longer be able to feed the three day supply of 75% crap on our grocery shelves. Jim has said this so many times I imagine it’s in his dreams! That’s a situation that turns mothers with hungry babies into killers. And you as well.
Harshly put, I know, but dammit, our family has worked hard, but most pleasurably, for the past
35 odd years to provision ourselves so that we could feed ourselves for at least a year with the food we’ve put up – two if pushed.
On the other hand, we are surrounded by neighbors who, for want of explanation, have “other priorities”. And as much as we are willing to share, it runs out. So my suggestion is as much defensive as it is anything else.
So put off stuffing life with expensive distractions and “vacations” and cruises (and by the way, what the hell is that annual cruise that The Nation sponsors so that we of the choir can hobnob with some really-really clever, erudite, elegant analysisers and discussers. That’s a sour note from the choir leaders if ever there was one!) and learn to grow food, flowers and stuff. And buy a guitar. That’s what I did six years ago when I turned 70. One of my better decisions.
If one is not serious about securing a truly local food supply, then it’s hard to imagine one is serious about one’s survival, period.
Yes you can.
Why are you even here then? I have a hard time understanding why someone would read this blog every week if they detest it so.
Perhaps it’s because you don’t have your own blog nor readers but if you did (cough)you’d like them to know how smart you are.
“7 billion people want personal ownership of an automobile, a refrigerator, flat screen, etc……oh, and running water too.”
7 billion people want what? Sounds like a great business opportunity! Ah, just kidding!
“If oil ever gets cheap again, its because nobody has any money to pay for it …” — JHK
Good point, Jim. In fact, I was wondering, in light of all the recent BS about US oil production exceeding SArabia, the US becoming petroleum independent, the US becoming a net oil exporter, etc., why is the price of oil still hovering close to $90 per barrel. After all, if the future was rosy would not the price be coming down? In 1970, the last year we produced enough domestically to meet our needs, oil was less than $2 per barrel.
–WSP7
I suddenly recall the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile” silence on my radio, sleeping under strange skies.
By the way, I don’t have anything against ethnic diversity, but what does it matter if there’s no geographical diversity – suburban sprawl on the outside of cities with cookie-cutter aquariums and science museums (if they’re lucky), naming rights-scarred sports venues, and the worst part of each city anchored by a street named for Martin Luther King?
Hey Jim. I love your posts and look forward to reading them every Monday. You and some of your readers have probably heard of Open Source Ecology , but if not, here’s the link.
http://opensourceecology.org/
Marcin and his team are building a “Civilization Starter Kit”. It’s thrilling to watch and for someone like me, a hopelessly spoiled urban dweller, this is a viable alternative to living off the grid.
Keep shouting the truth to power Jim.
Kudos for pointing out the disconnected ennui portrayed in most of the situation comedies, melodramas and game shows that so many Americans have used to entertain themselves in all their spare time. Who has time to spend those average 8 hours a day living vicariously in the hypnotic glow of the flat screen? People with no jobs, hobbies, books or social life perhaps, TV has prepared us well for the new reality.
Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, devoted his life to applying psychology towards controlling and regimenting the masses without their knowing it, AKA propaganda. Which, due to the unfortunate connection to Fascism, was renamed public relations and advertising.
Bernays designed campaigns for the American Tobacco Company to make smoking by women acceptable, complete with models holding their “torches of freedom”. He helped the Dixie Cup Company plant the idea that the only sanitary cup was a disposable one. And much more.
His key insight was to show Industry that what was on the “Nightly News” was more convincing than the advertising that sponsored it. Thus we ended up with Corporate controlled media and finally the Corporation as Person.
So the isolation of the Consumer gradually became the new normal and a never ending supply of gadgets and cheap laughs served to pacify and distract the masses, as was intended. Now they can assasinate a President and build the largest military machine the world has ever seen while reducing jobs and wages in a steady polarization of the wealthy 1%. Yet there is no rebellion, so yeah, it works.
END OF INTERNET – 3.15 am March 22nd 2029
END OF COMBUSTION ENGINES – 7.56 am February 3rd 2021)
END OF USA MILITARY – 12.15pm September 3rd 2030
Is that clear enough for you?
Plus your gonna die but not sure when.
Not that yours is not a good post because it is, particularly the last paragraph, but consider it on the basis of an age old riddle:
How does the king and a hundred guards keep a thousand peasants toiling in the fields?
JHK is entertaining and has valid points. But just like all other individuals who are claiming to know the end of the world. We must REPENT… boring, if you say something long enough, it will come true or at least you will interpret it as it coming true. We can’t keep using oil the way we do or consuming the energy we do but it will take a huge catastrophe to make anyone change. We can see mini catastrophes happening all the time but corporate profits rule (the stock market is a pyramid scheme and last person holding the bag is screwed!) and change won’t happen until corporations rule nothing. Look up “ALEC”, our government is bought and paid for by corporations. Happy motoring,soda drinking, tv watching. I enjoy books, words wrote on paper!
IMO, we can’t blame suburbia for the lack of meaning or purpose in American society. I would place much of the blame on television and the internet.
Purpose comes from making a difference in the lives of others. Watching TV and logging onto the internet are both easy entertainment options which does not provide face to face interaction and the opportunity to build real relationships with others. And whether you live rurally, in the suburbs or in a city, if you spend most of your spare time watching TV or on the internet, you are not making any real difference and can lack purpose.
First TV and now the internet are far more significant factors in the alienation of American society than housing.
“people coming and going from warm kitchens to fetch firewood”
When 300 million Americans burn wood for heat the apocalypse will not be far off. Greeks can no longer afford to burn oil for heat and are switching to firewood en masse. The forests of the world will be wiped out later this century.
Honestly the Sulzbergers should hire you to write for their paper before it ends its run. As of now they hire lunks like this Finkleman character who is running on early 20th century critiques of running down his betters in order to make the lumpen accept and perhaps even desire the latest craze of scientific materialism.
I’m pretty sure bashing Tom Jefferson has little value these days. The irony being that what might have had some use in moderating some of the worst impulses of the WASP establishment is now empowering characters one step removed from the savages like Islamic Jihad.
BTW, the technical term used was “the engineerng of consent”.
About that plumbed water…it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
http://collapsewatchblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/love-that-dirty-water/
Great. Thanks for coming out to play today…
JHK should be thinking aboutt the 2013 Forecast. I just reread the 2012 Forecast. JHK was wrong about a third party challenge in the election. I supported the Green Party, but it was never a serious threat to the duopoly. JHK was wrong about Europe collapsing, wrong about standard of living falling, wrong about a banking collapse, wrong about the 4,000 Dow, etc.
INCREDIBLY JHK WAS WRONG ABOUT OUR OIL SUPPLY.
2012 was our big chance for doom. We had Nostrdamos, the psychics, the astrologers, the Mayans, the New Agers, and JHK all predicting doom.
MAYBE IT IS “JUST AROUND THE CORNER” IN 2013? (wink wink)
Nonetheless I am looking forward to reading the 2013 Forecast to know what will NOT happen in 2013.
“It’s all good!!!”
Asoka – The idea of ‘peak oil’ many times gets used as a kind of code for the end of fossil fuels in a finite time-frame. Of course, it is much more complicated than that. The best source for ‘peak oil’ science, though is Kenneth Deffeyes, Ph.D. Go here. http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html
Think of oil as an energy source that is available on a continuum of cost for recovery, from very cheap, to very expensive. For example, the oil in Saudi Arabia has been around $2.00 per barrel to get out of the ground (known as the lifting cost), while the Alberta tar sands cost about $80.00 per barrel to get out of the ground. What ‘peak oil’ proposes is that the cheapest oil to get out of the ground (conventional oil) has all been discovered and is in decline, while more expensive oil like shale oil and tar sands is available, but far more expensive. So, it’s the end of ‘cheap’ oil, and the end of the bell curve for $2.00 oil has probably already occurred. When you build an economy on $2.00 oil, you get ‘happy motoring’. $85.00 oil brings you less happy motoring, and at $150.00, the developed world’s economy went to hell in a handbasket. So, think of ‘peak oil’ as a series of bell curves, with each one-dollar increase in lifting costs a different curve, shifted to the right of the previous curve, with the x-axis as time. There is no more ‘cheap oil’ to be found, but there is lots of expensive oil left, if only we could afford to get it out of the ground. And, I am not ignoring the potential for continued negative effects of burning more carbon-dioxide – it just wasn’t a part of this discussion.
I don’t “detest” CFN. I don’t “detest” JHK. I just like to call him out for his most frustrating habit of going back in time to find some kind of fairy tale culture that was really no better or worse than our own. And I like to point to the irony of a man who longs for “A World Made by Hand” though posts on the Intar-Net-Webs.
I read CFN because, generally speaking, there are some smart folks here (including JHK), but sometimes they say things that seem knee-jerk and arrogant. JHK noted the un-reality of Ozzie and Harriet but then evoked more of the same with his little reverie about people “who knew their place.” You know, like the way slaves or sharecroppers or women once did.
Also, I find JHK’s apparent Luddite tendencies to be overly reactionary. Not everyone with an i-phone or who uses apps is cultural cipher that does not lead an “authentic” life. The old land-line telephone was once seen as a malevolent force in society, and many saw it as the beginning of the downfall of American culture, mostly because women started using it to “gossip” and discuss frivolous events in their lives.
But there is one burning question I have for you stalwart CFNers: Is it OK for me to put out my little plastic Frosty Snow Man illuminated from within with a blue light bulb?
I also believe that “many will rediscover a sense of purpose in the re-ordering of social life that lies ahead, which includes a return to different household arrangements,” described by Jim. We are headed for many changes and they do not need to be worse than what we are experiencing today.
I strongly believe that we MUST articulate clear and plausible visions of the kind of future we want and then work towards that goal. There are far too few example out their of the kind of world we can create that is both positive and realistic.
One vision I offer to all is my recently published novel “From Here to There: A Story of America’s Future.” This inspiring novel offers a tantalizing mystery while showing us how the future can be better. Read more at http://www.fromhere-tothere.org
What you’re saying, Jim, is that we’re all pretty happy…until we get what we want.
That should be the ‘release’ of more carbon-dioxide, not burning.
They say that the millennial generation is the most group-oriented, cooperative bunch to come along in the march of Boomers, Xs, and Ys.
Jim, there are exquisite turns of phrase above that illuminate the lose/lose dilemmas we face. To those commenters above who grumble when you attack the same intractable problems with new words and from a new angle but don’t amuse them as much as they demand, I say ‘go elsewhere’, and have a shot at living in Jim’s final Dickensian paragraph where people make their own entertainment.
The price you ask for communal trust is too high: complete intellectual conformity with your Anarchism/Communism. Anyone who disagrees with you automaticaly becomes the The Corporate Enemy.
“that was really no better or worse than our own.”
Things get exaggerated yes, but to say “no better or worse than our own.” is more deluded than the nostalgic dream you criticize. We are a society drowning in isolation. Connected physically to each other like no peoples in history. Communication is at our fingertips but never has a society been more fragmented and isolated. Irony a foot thick.
Coffee anyone?
Living off the grid in the woods works for some folks. Another alternative for urban dwellers (and those in the woods) can be found in the tiny house movement. It’s a step up from a trailer, either on wheels or permanent. Talk about anti-consumerism. Hard to be materialistic with 500 square feet. Makes you think about what is truly important. Low energy usage and often built by the owner on the cheap, re-purposing materials. Plus they get around a lot of codes being under a certain square footage and portable.
Perhaps in this period of permanent decline, since suburbs are the root of the problem, an involuntary migration will be implemented from the suburbs and countryside to the cities into projects and ghettos. If so, and speaking of sitcoms, the following may be an appropriate tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFKHg5CP7pk
Who said poverty couldn’t be entertaining?
So our JHK comes down on the side of the New Feudalism. I am metaphorically kicking myself for not seeing that one coming. Translation of his remarks abouit “heirarchy” would go something like “OMG, with collapse having now begun, my uncles, aunts and cousins whom I number in the dozens are (gasp) LOOSING MONEY.” Well h**ll, Jimbo, what did you think was going to happen? You seriously thought that all your friends and connections in insurance, retail grocery, banking were going to be able to go right on extracting their private taxes from people busy “reorganising daily life”, which has, BTW, already begun to happen in a lot of places.
JHK’s analysis is spot on as far as it goes, but there important factors he overlooks, or chooses to leave out.
1. Our virtually open door immigration policy since 1965 has fueled the growth of suburbia. Any new party which wants to be taken seriously and which wants to engage the energy and votes of alienated moderate and independent citizens must call for a minimum 5 year moratorium on immigration. I am convinced that the main reason our corporate elites want a generous immigration policy, besides that they are a pack of useless parasites who can’t pick up after themselves, is to prop up land and housing prices.
2. JHK completely overlooks the emotional and phychological battering inflicted on good people by the modern workplace, wherein mediocrity is promoted, merit is resented, and slavish deference to one’s “superior’s”; you should excuse the expression, required. Anyone who emerges from more than 10 years of such abuse, will at the very least have developed an abiding hatred of the promoters of “heirarchy”..
If you want community, you have to have something deep that provides the glue. And your Communism just isn’t worth the conformity. In other words, it can’t take the place of Christianity or Islam or whatever.
Restricting the physical size and frequency of posts for all users would be democratic and fair.
But after the holidays. I may need to buy a few polo shirts for gifts first.
When did you start respecting Islam?
You would be eliminated in short order in the tribal setting of your dreams. Take your skin-headed little poodle clan away, and you’d be disposed of in short order…with no weapons, just bare hands and your broken neck, you piece of garbage.
Yes, women never had it so good as when they were Queens in their own Homes and didn’t have to go to work outside the home. But the Price of that is to have a King, a Husband, a MAN for God’s sake.
A woman’s place is in the home. So is a man’s. Tyranny is having to work for others. A household that is mostly self sufficient provides the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But to go back to this, real estate taxes will have to be abolished as they are the Goverment’s attempt to destroy families and make renters or serfs out of everyone.
Hierarchy is inevitable. Tearing it down just produces and has produced just a new hierarchy, an unatural one of Bureacrats, Feminists, Gays, Minorities, etc.
Do you really think it’s that bad? I always have said to myself “Things are never as good, or bad, as they seem.” I think that came from some philosopher named La Roquefort or sumthin’ like that.
How about: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
A weed is any plant where it shouldn’t be. Mexicans are fine – in Mexico. Muslims are fine – but not in the West. What is so hard to understand about any of this? If you could overcome your obsession with creating a Global Village – if only you could kill those Fascists (anyone who opposes you) – you might see the Truth.
Needless to say, African or Central American Cannibals were/are evil but that’s their business as long as they aren’t here. There is a Universal Morality but there is no legitimate Crusade to make everyone the same.
OK, I mispelled ‘psychological’, and ‘hierarchical’. So, sue me.
Just whom does JHK want to nominate for the role of new hegemons at the top of the hierarchy? Beins as he hates us boring unfashionable and uncharismatic WASPs, I have to suppose he means the same old same old MittelEuropean diaspora. That would be the Kissingers, Albrights and Brezinskies. No wonder he expects large areas of the USA to seceed.
Not so sure about the upcoming generation(s) based on a report I listened to this morning on NPR. Thousands of kids graduating HS that go onto college only to take remedial classes because they are not prepared for college. NPR played audio of a woman teaching a class. In the audio clip she is discussing the word “reek” and its definition as well as the conotations of the word. She sounded as though she was speaking to grade schoolers but no, she was in fact speaking to HS grads in a remedial college course. A young college student said that she went through a year-and-a-half of remedial courses in college before taking one college-level course. According to her she made A’s and B’s in HS.
Our education system’s slide has corresponded with society’s and has left us with generations of ignorant fools who can barely utter a complete, coherent sentence much less write one and who would have trouble performing the most basic of math problems in their heads. I don’t think the NPR story is anecdotal (huh?, what does that mean?) but just a snapshot of the time and place in which we find ourselves. In addition to being stupid, by and large these kids are fat lazy. All of this adds up to failure in TLE.
When the conversation gets you down, there’s nothing like the news of a couple expecting a baby to cheer you up. Doesn’t this just lift your spirits amidst a post about Homelessness?
http://news.yahoo.com/uks-prince-william-catherine-expecting-baby-161223071.html
If we could just get rid of those separate Nations, disarm Americans, emasculate men, put women over them, dark skinned people over Whites -it’s the Universal Republic! A giant Amoeba!
And the little men behind the curtain rub their hands together with glee that people actually take all this seriously. Utopia means nowhere. And the quest for it is Endless War. And with every War the Nations become weaker and the Merchants of Death become stronger. This is what Ront teaches though he doesn’t know it. He serves the little men behind the curtain though he thinks he serves God.
I get it about growing food, although in reality that is an option that is only open to those with some land to grow on. Yes, one can grow a tomato plant or two in a bucket and other creative endeavors, and it’s good to do those things, but it won’t get the family fed for long if it came down to that. So, yes, growing food locally is important. But we need to go beyond the “I’ve got mine” mentality here and look at what needs to happen outside of our own household. And I’d venture to say that you are only as safe and prepared as all of your neighbors are if things get weird out there.
Naming streets after Martin Luther King is valuable since it warns the pale canny traveler not to go anywhere near. But you don’t mind diversity so you go right ahead where angels fear to tread.
Thank you for showing the true face of the young American Communism. Or old for that matter but they will let you youngins do the wet work.
When I read JHK’s mention of “blue tomb-like glow of television,” it reminded me of something Jack Kerouac write in his novel,Dharma Bums, “But there was a wisdom in it all, as you’ll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You’ll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way…”
wrote
Yes I do. A nihilistic attitude of nothing matters and that all is the same permeates our culture. Being connected to each other is the natural state and the isolation we face daily is unnatural. JHK’s putative past is fundamentally different from our modern society and much more people friendly.
But don’t take my word for it. Surly cats here can’t be herded anyway. Check out why Danish people are the happiest in the world and you’ll find today’s post to be spot on.
Happy
“Things are never as good, or bad, as they seem.”
True enough, being tuned into actual reality is something that almost never happens.
But this generation doesn’t need to actually learn how to speak and write. They can cut and paste from The Wiki and calculators can solve the math. As for speech, they just need to interject a few key phrases into what they say, like “moving forward” and “outside the box,” or to use some nouns as verbs like “impactful.” To be honest, so much of what goes for “work” these days does not require college, let alone a bunch of useless humanities courses. Other than not having good cocktail party conversations, what is the problem with this alleged “stupidity?”
Charity begins at home and for most will end there – as it should. Big Charity has become big business and fraud. The Three Cups of Tea fraudster just killed himself. He wasn’t a bad guy he just got greedy for fame and money. Charity shouldn’t be about fame and money but about charity.
Good column, today, Jimmie. I dig it.
“In short, we built even more stuff with no future, and ruined our society in the process. How tragic is that?
-JHK-
It’s going to go beyond tragic and into disaster, although the speed of this change has yet to be completely determined.
But global climate change is already affecting food production and living patterns. Meanwhile we in the United States inexplicably continue to allow 1,000,000 LEGAL immigrants (many in their prime child-bearing years) into the country with each passing year.
Why?
Either from a vague sense that, “It’s the right thing to do.”
Or – more likely – from that unique American perspective that BIGGER IS ALWAYS BETTER!
In either case, it is time to begin to politely take steps to bend the “growth curve” of US population down – at least slightly.
This group is a top-ranked nonprofit.
And even the SPLC gives them high marks for their even-handed approach.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about-us/no-immigrant-bashing/no-immigrant-bashing.html
They have over a million US members already.
Join! Send Money!!
====================
And, BTW to JHK – thanks for not deleting my post about the “chinese spammer.” And thanks for deleting the sob’s post. Every little bit helps.
That has to be the best comment all day.
“really no better or worse than our own”
Well, how do you know that? You weren’t there!
People are actually measurably happier with strong social connections present in their lifes. And before the advent of mass home entertainment, that’s what people did to fill their time. They spent time with each other in various settings. So, in that sense, the past was, in a lot of ways, “better.” But, of course, it depends what you’re measuring.
This is why people in African villages generally report being happier than than suburbanites (true, look it up), because they have a tight community including many family members. It turns out, when you have this, you don’t need much stuff to make you happy.
Humans are just sort of wired that way. Most of what we do on the internet is some kind of poor substitute for the real thing, that being real and meaningful social interaction.
I think this column hits the nail on the head. A big house, lots of stuff, and a couple of cars really isn’t going to make you happy, and it isn’t the path to a meaningful life.
The secret to such communal happiness? Yes, Homogeneity of Culture, Religion (or lack of it) and of course, RACE.
The smallness of Denmark, it’s long history, and the quality of the Race are also factors. I don’t think you’d get the same thing with Salvadorans or Nigerians, frankly.
Denmark can do without Religion per se, without bloodshed and social chaos. As can much of Northern Germanic Europe. But White America? We didn’t have that kind of Tradition, sense of place, and the experience of the gradual withering away of Religion for almost everyone. I think we need it far more than they do. And agnostics will have to tolerate this. Vicious hatred wont help anything.
“Provide a date (year, decade, century) and a rationale for the date, for each of the above.”
asoka, please provide me the exact year when you will kick the bucket, of natural causes (naturally).
Thanks.
“Humans are just sort of wired that way. Most of what we do on the internet is some kind of poor substitute for the real thing, that being real and meaningful social interaction.”
Emotional Porn !!
“every day I literally pray to my Creator that my lifespan be cut short in the relatively near future.”
Wow, that’s sad, and I don’t mean in a derogatory way. Get some help, okay? (seriously)
Does the new Charger have a 426 Hemi or a 440 with a six pack? I didn’t think so.
That’s a perfect analogy.
You watched the documentary already so you can comment on it already? That was fast.
The movie talks about living arrangements, not European history.
Generally I link and discuss movies I have actually seen. I saw this one two weeks ago.
“Anyone who disagrees with you automaticaly becomes the The Corporate Enemy.”
Kinda like how anyone who argues with you on the internet must be a Red Commie, right Vladdie?
Because this one has no future.
“I think we need it far more than they do.”
I agree. Religion is good for keeping the morons happy. I just wish they’d keep their Bronze Age mythology to themselves and rely on it for personal sustenance, rather than foisting it on the rest of us.
Connect the dots from ‘Student Loan forgiveness’ to
the Banksters to utter depair.
[Is the USA to be like Utter Pradesh?]
Was the Acropolis sold?
How can gov forgive debt? They forgive it by a bailout. In other words they tell the students you do not owe anything from now on. Your debt is wiped from the slate.
At the same time they have the Federal Reserve print up 1 trillion to pay off the student debt. So what it is is a transfer of debt from the students to the American tax payer. The exact same as the bailout to the banks. The banks got a trillion with that first bailout. At the same time it raised our debt another trillion. Doing that caused this fiscal cliff where our debt is so high they are going to raise the debt ceiling once again.
Of course they won’t pay it down or spend less. No no no, they lie about that. Its all about spending because they want to wipe out the middle class. As more and more taxes come to the middle class more and more of the middle class will throw in the towel, give up on paying their mortage, go bankrupt.. etd. So the middle class shrinks.
The goal is to make America dependant on government. Wiping out the middle class is the nail in the coffin for individual liberties. When the middle class is on food stamps, no jobs and needy then full tyranny can be brought forth.
The leaders talk about doing the right thing. Like Obama he talks like he wants a strong America.
But their actions show what they really want. Listen to Tim Geither.. he is selling the idea ” there is no reason to have a debt ceiling limit”. Why would he say that? Because he really works for Goldman Sachs. He does what the offshore bankers want.
The offshore bankers want America bankrupt. They want it bankrupt and needy so they can swoop in and buy it up for pennies on the dollar.
Is there an ‘alec’ to Agenda 21 connection?
I avoid most TV, Print. BUT I CANNOT ESCAPE YAHOO.
Yahoo is as bad or worse.
Kim K, and all things celeb.
Fine post today, Jim, enjoyed it like I enjoy all of them. I see that the weirdos are coming out to post now so figured I’d better get my comment in here now before it degenerates too far.
I do have to wonder about one thing, and that’s the aging affect. I was born about six months after Jim was, so we are from the same generation, if from different countries. I live on the north side of Lake Ontario where we still sing God Save the Queen occasionally. But we are contemporaries and have passed the same milestones at the same time.
My curiosity is around the issue of how our advancing age affects our outlook on life. Despite always pledging not to start thinking like an old person, full of nostalgia for the past, I find myself doing that just. Have not yet descended into believing the kids are all bad and things were better when I was kid, but I’m headed in that direction and wonder if JHK isn’t too.
Even progressives dislike change when it threatens our long established views of the world and I’m no different. I see my 13 year old granddaughter glued to her computer screen for hours on end and think she’d be better off riding her bike to the park to play with her friends like I did back in the day. Biking or rding everywhere because our parents hadn’t been conned into thinking we had to be driven instead, and supervised in every waking moment.
But, we must have faith that these kids, even when the sham of consumer society implodes, will somehow manage to adapt and rise to the challenges they’ll face. Faith is all we’ve got and we boomers won’t be here to face it with them. They will be on their own, like every new generation since we first emerged from the trees to stand upright. One can only hope.
Actually, I’m going to change my mind on this one. Religion, especially Christianity, has a number of harmful effects that defend the status quo in negative ways.
1) It tends to make people think in magical terms, e.g. instead of actually doing anything about their or the country’s problems, they can simply pray. Then God or Jesus or whatever will save them. This behavior tends to induce passivity.
2) Christianity is focused on an afterlife, thus the life that is being lived takes a back seat. It is like a safety valve so that if people’s lives are crappy now, they can depend on this supposed utopia in the future.
3) It instills a harmful, a priori intellectual obedience to authority figures, who are believed at their word, without reason. Most of religious “knowledge” derives simply from the power of authority, not the information’s inherent truthfulness or lack thereof.
4) Biblical thinking on man’s place in the world (be fruitful and multiply) papers over the very real environmental problems that this attitude engenders in our high entropy, high energy society. This might have worked when their were millions of humans, but not billions.
5) Religion tends to foster discord by identifying out groups who can be blamed for society’s problems. For instance, with Christians, it is the non-believers and “atheists” who are responsible for all evil in the world, not them, of course.
6) Socially, it supports archaic and out-moded social attitudes. For instance, the Catholic Church is against both birth control and abortion, both of which are useful tools for humanity to throttle its population growth, which is a source of current and future environmental stress on the planet.
7) Religion tends to overlap and conflict with what should be necessary functions of a modern government. For example, religion is relied upon too heavily for charity to the poor, when this is more properly the function of a centralized government that can tailor the level of these services to the needs of the population.
8) Negotiating the confusing and contradictory rules and regulations in the New and Old Testaments instills a cynical attitude in the participants, wherein people pay lip service to beliefs that they don’t even follow. The Bible is chock full of strange and archaic pronouncements that are followed by only a tiny minority of religious zealots, and we consider those people freakish. For instance, did you know that the Bible states that wearing garments made from multiple fibers is frowned upon by Yahweh? So yeah, you’re probably wearing sinful clothes right now.
On the plus side, religion does foster a sense of community and connectedness amongst its members, however artificial. It can make people think less selfishly. The charitable works of Christian churches in the US are non-negligible. They are the primary providers of such. I believe religion also tends have a passifying and soothing effect on people who might otherwise go “off the rails” or become dangerously isolated socially. There’s probably more positive effects I’m missing. There’s a reason Christianity has been kicking around so long. Even though the belief system is dead wrong (most people not even following the rules of the Bible), the effects of religion are not always overall negative.
Yeah, I am starting this up again. Deal with it.
he is selling the idea ” there is no reason to have a debt ceiling limit”
—
Yes, and then he says that tax rates should not go up. We have essentially already bought the services and goods through our debts. Yet he’s saying that we cannot do what is necessary to pay for it. It is madness. I agree, he’s probably a Goldman Sachs mole.
“Faith is all we’ve got”
If that’s all we’ve got, then truly we’re well and truly F’d.
“When the middle class is on food stamps, no jobs and needy then full tyranny can be brought forth.”
—
This is a somewhat non-sensical statement. In these circustance, the people mentioned would no longer be considered middle class.
It is blowback. Western bankers have already performed this “Disaster Capitalism” operation on many of the so-called Third World countries all throughout the 20th century. This was a form of neo-colonialism. Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
News from NASA concerning life on Mars will not be that originally planned. Curiosity, it will be announced, has discovered evidence of ancient life on Mars. Over and out.
What they will not tell you: Curiosity has found evidence of an ancient, technologically advanced, life verified as human living on Mars about 500 million years ago. A monument prepared prior to exodus identified the third planet from the sun as their destination. Extreme climate change coupled with a draining of aquifers for large scale industrial use determined that the planet could no longer support life.
Garden of Eden: check
Noah’s Ark: check
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond:
‘French Mother Faces Charges After Sending Son Named ‘Jihad’ to School Wearing ‘I Am a Bomb’ T-Shirt
France appears[!!!] to be transforming into a hotbed of radical Islam and antisemitism, with a reported 45% increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the first 8 months of 2012 than over the same time period in 2011. Thankfully the most recent reported incident resulted in no fatalities, but it’s certainly an unusual occurrence.
French woman is slated to face charges of “apologie de crime,” which can be translated as advocating violence, after sending her 3-year-old son, Jihad, to kindergarten dressed in a T-shirt bearing the inscriptions “I am a bomb” on the front and “Jihad. Born September 11? on the back’.
What many people seem to want out of religion is some sort of purpose imposed on their lives. And religion does this effectively. While the universe itself does not tend to imply much by way of implicit goals, aside from simple survival and procreation, religion provides rather elaborate and meaningful fictions about the place of humanity in the cosmos. As science has filled in the blanks about our place in the world, it has tended to deemphasize our importance. The earliest philosophers and the subseuqnet pseudo-scientists they engendered place the earth at the center of the entire universe. When that turned out to be obviously wrong, the helio-centric universe was proposed, so that at least our own Sun was the center of everything. Well, it turned out that our Sun was only one of billions of stars in our galaxy. But at least our galaxy was special, right? Not really. It turned out to be one of billions of galaxies. At least our universe must be special then. Well, not so fast. Now many modern theoretical physicists are seriously proposing that their are many universes, much as there are stars and galaxies.
So the trend in our knowledge is towards a diminuation of our place in the overall grand scheme. We are bugs, actually proportionally something almost infintesimally smaller than this. Compared to the vast scale of what’s out there, our existences really are small and rather inconsequential.
And most people just cannot deal with it. They want at least humanity to have some kind of special importance, if not their own lives. Yet the universe does not conform to our petty and arrogant wishes to be at the center of all things.
Intellectually adjusting to this paradigm is simply too much for people, who are terrified of the (nearly?) infinite scales represented by empty space and the rather cold and mostly inhospitable void. It turns out this was not all fashioned out of nothing by Yahweh to provide a human habitat.
Yes, but its not the 99% fault.
You make it sound like we deserve the blowback.
‘What many people seem to want out of religion is some sort of purpose imposed on their lives’
And you do not have beliefs?
I think you’ve been watching too much of that Ancient Aliens crap on the History Channel.
BTW, I saw live presentations on both Mars rover missions (one recently, the other several years back) and the actual discoveries they’ve made using their scientific instruments. All of this information is peer-reviewed and in the open scientific literature. And there is nary a mention of little green men and Martian pyramids.
But, of course, there must be some kind of vast conspiracy preventing the truth from coming out, right? That must be a hell of a thing, keeping quiet hundreds of NASA scientists, not to mention their gabby spouses.
Here is another take on religion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TxW1yKoDM
Jim, you are slowly but surely turning into everyone’s cranky old uncle.
We’re all complicit, in some sense, whether by active participation or complicity. The multi-national corporations and bankers who perform these looting jobs depend on the obedience and the acquiescence of most people. They are supported by our stock purchases and patronage. That’s how their power is derived.
To blame some small segment of the population for how the overall system works seems pretty naive to me. If the vast majority didn’t at least go along, then it wouldn’t work.
It is like saying that our energy predicament is the “fault” of the international oil companies. Well, what about all the people driving around? They play a part, too.
Fact of the matter is that the looting of the “third world” has been beneficial to many Americans not in the so-called 1%, because it makes their stocks appreciate, for instance.
And, yes, I do think, in some sense at least, we as a society deserve the blowback, by the very fact that we have let this behavior go unchecked for so many years.
He’s already there, but that’s fine. Jim has a way of getting to the heart of things, that, to me, seems to provide a pretty accurate assessment of the zeitgeist. Or at least he’s got his finger on the pulse of Upstate New York, which is kind of a dreary, depressive place in a lot of ways, having much to do with many of the topics mentioned in this week’s post. The people up there, especially, seem pretty beaten down and discouraged. It could be the weather, too. It is usually horrid!
Is that story from the Onion? Seems rather unbelievable, but, hey, this is France we’re talking about.
I’m not sure what my statement and your question have to do with one another or what you’re trying to imply. Of course, I have beliefs. This just means that I hold some proposition to be true. That’s the basic definition of belief. There’s nothing wrong with this.
I strive not to have anything like faith, which is belief without evidence. That’s the path to madness.
I guess the question is whether or not you want your beliefs to accord with what actually exists out there. We have a pretty good set of tools for making these determinations, and I’d rather be more in line with the truth than some mythological, out-moded belief system. It turns out that ancient holy books written in pre-scientific times are dead wrong in nearly all their assertions about how it all works.
What about you?
Not from the Onion, mon ami.
http://www.menly.fr/buzz/news/antiseche-actu/147244-jihad-bombe-sorgues-djihad-tribunal-avignon/
L’affaire relatée par Le Figaro date du 25 septembre dernier. Un petit garçon de 3 ans s’est présenté à l’école maternelle de Sorgues, dans le Vaucluse, vêtu d’un t-shirt sur lequel on pouvait lire l’inscription : « Je suis une bombe », complété, au dos, par : « Jihad, né le 11 septembre
translation – –
The case reported by Le Figaro on 25 September. A little boy of 3 years is presented in kindergarten Sorgues in Vaucluse, wearing a t-shirt on which was the inscription: “I am a bomb,” completed, back, by: “Jihad, born September 11.”
BTW, turk, it’s good of you to finally mention something POSITIVE about the Christian religion. Thank you.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. – ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ – Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
— Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
Jim
I kind of feel sorry for you. If you would have had children and a together family that all respected and loved one another, I am sure your ability to reach toward the good life has to offer rather than the flip side of life and see only the darkness would be tempered with hope instead of complaints.
Hence my point is that darkness has always existed in this world but love transforms the darkness into light because it gives hope and motivation to BRING light to the darkness. That is the responsibility of humans. It is to rise above the level of animals that just do their job and die, to human that ables us to strive to work toward the purpose of changing darkness into light through love. We have the capacity to dream build and bring joy to those that can’t or don’t know how. The little memory of times gone by sounds wonderful but it does still exist in this lifetime too. I know. It exists in mine.:)
“I strive not to have anything like faith, which is belief without evidence. That’s the path to madness.”
Turk, you have limited the definition of faith–see what you think.
“One of the most important qualifications for the aspirant is faith. There are three kinds of faith: (i) faith in oneself, (ii) faith in the Master and (iii) faith in life. Faith is so indispensable to life that unless it is present in some degree, life itself would be impossible. It is because of faith that cooperative and social life becomes possible. It is faith in each other that facilitates a free give and take of love, a free sharing of work and its results. When life is burdened with unjustified fear of one another it becomes cramped and restricted.” from Discourses, Meher Baba
I just finished taking a short course of Chantix to quit smoking cigarettes… The drug is pretty intense, sort of what acid was purported to be… only Chantix does the enlightenment thing without visual hallucinations.
One of the ways it seems to work is it cuts off dopamine… a result of this is not needing to “scratch itches”… smoke itches, money itches, and car itches.
I quit smoking cigarettes of course, but I also quit using cars for local transportation, suddenly I could smell the exhaust and it made me gag… how do nonsmokers stand to drive?
I also quit eating meat…it just grosses me out now.
I quit signing random forms drawn up by lawyers….
Now that I walk everwhere I am going to give up driving for long distance transport as well… gonna sell the car and get some decent shoes.
The people around me think I went batshit… I keep saying that sooner or later you are going to have to join me walking for transportation.
The other things that happened on Chantix? I learned how to write the Hebrew Consonants, and started feeling guilty about my parents situation….and quit drinking milk…
Other than not having good cocktail party conversations, what is the problem with this alleged “stupidity?”
If the counter to this alleged stupidity is non-stupidity, defined as having some degree of knowledge, intelligence, thought, reason, etc., then there’s a lot of fucking problems.
You remind me of Mickey, the King of Venus. I saw him on a Naked City rerun last night.
Are you kidding “the millennial generation is the most group-oriented, cooperative bunch to come along”
The millennials grew up in one, or on that rare case two child households, have spent their whole live getting awards and ribbons for just showing up getting good grades all through because it would be unfair to stigmatize any one for poor performance. They would be lost without the internet Face Book, their X Boxes and the RX pharmaceuticals many of them seem to be on.
They do not even share college dorm rooms any more, and talk about cooperative, when they do communicate it is not even with people in the same room but some one on the other side of a pointless text message. When was the last time you sat down at a restaurant that had these award winning wunderkind? look at them some time they are not even talking to their dining companions, they are all texting
The millennials will not adjust very well in a world where their helicopter parents and their coaches and teachers are not standing by them telling them that they are all special and exceptional. Do you really think that as the power finally dies on their PSPs, that they will pick up an axe and maul and go out to chop and cut wood for the fire place? Heck no they will wait for the Boomers to do so and if and when they lend a hand in stacking a few logs they will expect to be congratulated and awarded for their exceptional wood stacking abilities.
And as for living in crowded houses of multi-generational groupings, some will be OK but the Gen Xers, and the younger boomers, those who are healthy enough in the new post modern medicine era, will have a better shot.
Exactly. You misunderstand me always. If it were not so, I would not be great. Or you would have become so. Only then could we be brothers and fight as such. Until then, you champion human beings being absorbed into a giant Amoeba called the New World Order. Very sad.
Jim, I enjoyed the post because it reflected many of my feelings. Living in a small rural town, there is definitely a feeling of community among the people here especially the young families. I do feel that the younger generation is coming together and understand the situation we are in. Although, I will continue to make my preparations for a difficult future, I have a good feeling about the young generation. I don’t expect the Prez to save us but taxing the top 2% is a step in the right direction.
Well all Traditions teach that Man is nothing before the Glory of God so that part of your schtick don’t work.
It’s true that Scandanavia’s lack of religion but still happy is a challenge to my world view. I can only question how deep their happiness is seeing as how they are headed towards extinction both thru lack of having children and Islamic invasion. In other words, they had the chance to fufull the rational, liberal dream of the Welfare State, high education, gender equality, high tech, and a steady population. But they failed. The taxes were too high for people to have children and they started bringing in really really alien people to work. I mean Somalis for God’s sake? It was obviously more than just needing workers – it was a strategy of ethnic replacement based on some kind of inferiority
complex – a silent unacknowledged new religion.
Could it have worked? Maybe if they had valued themselves more and promoted childbirth at replacement levels. But my point is that there are obviously hidden barriers towards secualar liberal happiness. Iceland is following the same tack – still bringing in Muslims despite the economic collapse. So if they’re going back to basics, why the Muslims or any foreign workers at all? Something is wrong here, Turk. Maybe a real spiritual religion is needed or Man will unconsciously create something monstrous to replace it like the worship of Nature – as epitomized in dark primitive peoples.
Living in intentional communities (communes) might work out better when it’s done out of necessity rather than being voluntary. It was too easy to walk away when the going got tough, and go back to the “real world”. I lived in a large intentional community where we pooled all our money. One family left because they couldn’t have orange juice for their children. Oranges weren’t a crop we could grow, and we didn’t have enough money to buy them for 1500 people.
There’s still some good ones left but to make them you have to spend a lot of time parenting and gobs of cash sending them to the right private schools. The texting is a problem though. I can’t even watch a movie with them because their heads are buried in the cell phone realm sending messages at the rate of over 10K / month.
“all Traditions teach that Man is nothing before the Glory of God”
Perhaps so.
But, for starters, mankind believing that it can somehow know the mind of an omnipotent being and its plans is the height of arrogance and presumption. Even our best scientific minds admit their ignorance when the boundaries of their knowledge are reached.
And the religions sure are human-centric for being supposedly so focused on the divine being. The Bible reads like an ancient soap opera. Man is fashioned by God in his image. That belies a distinct lack of humility on our part, to think that we were fashioned whole clothe from thin air by a divine presence.
So, essentially, what I’m saying is that the religious person’s humility is a false variety. In one breathe they will tell you that they are nothing before the glory of God, and in the next they’ll say that he will abrogate the laws of the universe on their behalf.
That’s another thing about the religious minded. They think that the basic laws of the universe in our little corner can be waved away at will for the believers. This is yet another ridiculous presumption.
James,
Good one today.
Yet, all symptoms… of a primary problem…
What ‘problem’? Mystery James.
We are the product of a civilization based in mystery, and the mystery of hope has now become the mystery of despair. The spirit is fading as the darkness approaches, and the “love of many shall was cold”. You see it in everything you write, everywhere you go, almost everyone you meet.
We abandoned spiritual for material pleasures because our churches said it was ok to sin boldly yet trust in Christ. Our churches sewed mystery and we are reaping the rewards. There is no Vision, no soul, no spirit or life left in the culture or the civilization because the life force is waning as the dark energy increases, and we have no anchor of light to carry us through, no knowledge of such things because science too was set back a thousand years by the murderers and book burners of the Mother Church. Now science itself is a godless useless nothing.
We are still in the dark ages in our thinking, and I blame the Priests and the Preachers… the politicians and bankers are side effects of this spirit of immorality and materialism James.
You know the people will not, cannot, move forward into viable cultures or communities without a common vision James. That’s what made us great, and its perversion is what destroyed us. Self interest is good James, but greed is bad, and like coveting that turns to envy, are both destructive to the very culture that underlies the civilization.
You have a wonderful vision of the proper reaction to our problems, but no Vision for Soul James. Your world made by hand, is nothing but a return to lives that were “nasty, brutish and short”, in the old days, and now our dear leader pushes us with both hands off the cliff into some dystopic wonderland of windmills and solar panels that can never be… no it can never be because of EROEI, the same as Peak oil. You are correct.
Thus the need James, the absolute requirement of a New Song, The Revelation, that destroys the MYSTERY of the Religions and Godless Science, because the people have no where to turn. It is thus revealed in the new God Science… so that the Mystery of God is finished… and the people may drop the divisions that are destroying them, and unify under the banner of pounding our swords into plowshares… (something old becomes something new.)
http://pipermichael.wordpress.com
I call that trust, ront, not faith. Faith is commonly defined as belief without evidence. Redefining terms is another popular tactic of those who wish to defend religion. This is the old bait and switch.
I can just see it coming. Someone on this thread will say that science is just another kind of religion, and around and round we go.
Social structures were originally based upon reciprocity, not blind acceptance. This is represented by the saying, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” In mammals, this is represented by mutual grooming activities. I guess this is probably getting too much into evolutionary psychology for someone with your mindset, but organized religion is probably a relatively recent addition to the human psychology, at least given our millions of years of hunter-gatherer activities, the tribes of which are based on more fundamental and biological reasons than religious. Or at least primitive religion was probably much different than the theistic emphasis to which we are accustomed.
Seriously?
Vlad, my boy, the Middle East is crawling in old time religion these days. Do those people seem happy to you? They seem rather distinctly unhappy and discontent to me.
Does the American religious right seem like a happy group of people to you? The vibe I get is anger, jealousy, and ignorance, not any kind of self-contentedness.
Religion is NOT the key to a happy or fulfilling life. This is much more tied to social connectedness and also certain behavioral practices like meditation and exercise.
As for your analysis of Scandanavian politics and demographics, you’re simply shooting from the hip. The situation is much more complex than you describe. It turns out that most women want fewer children when they become more affluent, that being more of a burden than you recognize. Some choose not to have any. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize this, given your lack of sensitivity to the other gender. Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen turns out to be a miserable state of affairs for them, and most intelligent females would not go through this.
But you’re right, lack of replacement birth rate has become a problem for them. The population is rapidly aging, so they bring in workers from outside to fill service jobs.
“Maybe a real spiritual religion is needed or Man will unconsciously create something monstrous to replace it like the worship of Nature – as epitomized in dark primitive peoples.”
It is funny you say this. I was just thinking that Nature worship is a far more natural and benign type of religion than our dictatorial monotheism. It admits a variety, perhaps an infinity, of different modes and forms.
If any of the monotheistic religions were actually true, it would be a truly hideous and nightmarish reality. Christopher Hitchens called this the “celestial dictatorship.” Toe the line or you’ll burn in hell forever after. Now that is a truly monstrous thing to believe about your life here on earth.
“Now science itself is a godless useless nothing.”
Right, and you’re probably alive at all because of a vaccination against some disease, developed by a fairly benevolent scientist.
You’re writing this message on a machine developed from decades of research (by scientists) into electromagnetism, electronics, and computer networks. This allows you to easily send your message to thousands of people by clicking a button.
By contrast, what has religion done for you lately, bubba?
Science is certainly godless, but it isn’t useless. And it isn’t nothing.
Promises of future happiness in some celestial utopia, now that’s life’s true vaporware.
The best thing about the “Ozzie and Harriet Show” was when Ricky Nelson sang. What a voice!
“Poor Little Fool”
I used to play around with hearts that hastened at my call But when I met that little girl, I knew that I would fall
Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh, poor little fool, I was a fool, oh yeah)
She’d play around and teased me with her carefree Devil eyes She’d hold me close and kiss me but her heart was full of lies
Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh poor little fool, I was the fool, oh yeah)
She told me how she cared for me, and that we’d never part And so for the very first time, I gave away my heart Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh, poor little fool I was a fool, oh yeah)
Then the next day she was gone and I knew she lied to me She left me with a broken heart and won her victory
Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh, poor little fool, I was a fool, oh yeah)
Well I’d played this game with other hearts, but I never thought I’d see The day that someone else would play love’s foolish game with me
Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh, poor little fool, I was a fool, oh yeah) Poor little fool, oh yeah, I was a fool, uh huh (Uh huh, poor little fool, little fool)
“It’s All VERY Good!”
Obama’s getting ready to f..ck the poor….
“In exchange, the president suggests $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and other programs. House Republicans say that is not enough, but they have not publicly listed what they would cut.”
“if and when they lend a hand in stacking a few logs they will expect to be congratulated and awarded for their exceptional wood stacking abilities.”
Funny stuff!
Keep your self alive there Mr. Kunstler, what you have described will be reality soon enough for you to revisit!
Oh, I read Geography to NoWhere last weekend. Man, you did a great job, and so many nine years ago noless.
“the internet Face Book”
Is there another type of Facebook of which I should be aware, other than the internet one?
Yes, prog, you know Christ’s religion has gone through its phases, and we’re in a relatively mellow one right now. It used to be just a few hundred years back that if one questioned the veracity of the Bible, a nasty death by burning was in store. Now, it just means that you might not get elected in the South or be able to get a job in Alabama.
And now for Islam, which is, give or take, about six to seven hundred years behind the times.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/12/03/syria-jihadists/1742759/
—
Abu Ghureir al-Traboulsi spent three months in Syria fighting what he calls the “holy war.”
“The afterlife is the only thing that matters to me, and I can only reach it by waging jihad,” he said during a recent interview.
—
Yeesh, this guy thinks he can only get into the afterlife/utopia by waging war (in someone else’s country at that)?! And there are millions like him out there.
Houston, we have a problem!
But, hey, go back about 600 or 700 years, and Christianity was basically just the same. Glass houses, stones, all that jazz.
Your last comment on “Homeless” reminds me of the Ray Bradbury story “The Pedestrian” where a man’s only crime is taking a walk in his neighborhood and not doing what everyone expects: Staying hold up in your post war ranch house with the blue light of television on.
“…our existences really are small and rather inconsequential.”
Ah, your existence is inconsequential. You time spent posting here is proof.
I had it pointed out to me recently how rude it is to check a phone repeatedly in a social setting. It is basically sending the message that a hunk of plastic matters more than the actual people around you. I used to do this more but have since tried to be conscious of it and leave this for when I’m alone and idle.
I once went on a date arranged by internet where this chick had TWO cell phones and was checking both constantly during the entire time. I’m like, really? I probably could have gotten up and walked away, and she wouldn’t have noticed for about 15 minutes.
Just saw a pretty brilliant classical music performance where the guy next to me brought his phone and was checking it constantly the whole time.
One of the side effects of all this technology seems to be that we have trouble existing in the present, both temporally and geographically. When you check a device like this constantly, in a sense you’re not present in the here and now. You’re someplace else.
But surely there is a happy medium as far as kids go? Surely you recognize the terrible danger a Nation faces if it imports people from Islam in instead of having their own kids? I mean c’mon!
Religons vary. Obviously the human sacrafice cult of old Central America (a professor told me that the Aztec and Maya religions were basically the same though the Aztec practice bloodier) isn’t conducive to human happiness. On the other hand, Ladakh is a Theocratic Monarchy and is one of the happiest places on Earth. Buddhist Countries are often happy if the people live up to their beautiful faith. The same is true of Christianity.
Now you admit we seek meaning. So what happens to that need once religion is debunked? Does it go away? Of course not – it seeks meaning in Science, political and social idealism, Atheism, etc. Any of these can and do become religion substitutes for some people. And many have turned towards helping Blacks as a way of repentance for their sins – and almost worshiping them at the same time. Thus Obama as saviour.
It’s gotten so bad, people will now fake it to avoid IRL social contact and interaction. Truly screwed up.
13% of People Pretend to Use Cell Phones to Avoid Other People
Jim,
I think the warm cozy hearth of fun drink and family is rarely obtained. The world has always been kind of fucked up, we’re just a little more grandiose about it in this era.
Yes, knock yourself out … But use LED bulbs.
This is my First post today. All the others were Asoka,,
I am asoka..
Religion seems to me not such a great source of meaning, or at least to me it falls way short of providing anything that I find even remotely interesting about the world. But it can be effective social glue, and this is probably why it has stuck around so long. It provides an arbitrary set of reasons that we should all not be at war with each other all the time, or the Hobbesian state of “Bellum omnium contra omnes.” Primitive societies had nothing like our overarching social justice and investigative policing services. So there had to be established reasons for not simply being brutish and nasty to those in the tribe, even though it might not be probable that such behavior would be caught and punished. Hence, the religious assertions are deployed, that those who murder and kill will be punished in the afterlife, or that we are all God’s children and so shouldn’t simply exterminate each other. People had to be scared into obeying the rules that held society together, and religion became the most effective way to do it.
Or one could look at the supposed divine right of kings, where the monarch was either spawned directly from a diety (think ancient Egypt) or where he supposedly either colluded with or took his order from Yahweh (Medieval Europe).
Both of these political modes are sorely outdated these days. Do you really want to base social structures on such patently false scientific assertions? If so, what happens when people inevitably reject them?
But I guess my question would be, why does human life need to have some overarching, inherent meaning at all? Why do people think that this is some absolute requirement to exist? Or why does life need to have the same purpose and meaning for everyone?
I’d say it is better to have no imposed meaning at all than a completely wrong one, even if it makes you feel good about yourself and averts despair. Most people (in America at least) would do better to simply watch less tv, exercise more, talk to their neighbors, and eat better. Religion isn’t going to help them deal with any of their real physical/behavioral problems. In some ways, religious has outlived its real usefulness in our time, though people cling to it because that’s what they know.
I dunno what the comments at the end have to do with it. Are you saying that Civil Rights are a substitute for religion? Many Christians in the US were front and center in this, like, you know, Martin Luther King. We are all God’s children, you know. Somehow I don’t think Christianity, or at least the nice parts of the New Testament, support anything like a racist view of the world, but everyone reads that book differently, I guess.
Staying hold up in your post war ranch house
==============
holed up
I heard on the radio today that the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.
“The same is true of Christianity.”
Christianity has never been one of the happy religions, nor has Islam, at least in their traditional interpretations. The emphasis on strict rules, punishment, groveling, and guilt is not generally a mode that encourages personal psychological well-being, though it can been effective at keeping people “in line” with their rulers and priests.
Buddhism engenders psychological well being not because of any dogmatic belief system but because the practice of meditation is beneficial to the brain. You can fully jettison the Buddhist religion and still retain the meditation practice without losing any of the benefits.
“Now you admit we seek meaning. So what happens to that need once religion is debunked?”
You can still seek meaning. Why not? You’ll just (hopefully) be more grounded in what actually exists rather than what you wish was out there.
Richard Dawkins has a lot to say about this. Life is rich with subtleties and meaning. You just have to jettison the simplistic thinking that some divine being put us here to fulfill some ulterior motive.
10 years and angry already? Try several hundred years in real slavery.
Oh no. The grammar police are back!
Sorry, murder and kill is obviously redundant. I meant murder and steal.
In the Soviet Union of the 1940’s, Mendelian Genetics were labeled as “Nazi”. True Biology was all environmental and in line with Marxism. Thus Lysenkoism which almost caused a famine. The Soviets overcame this but Leftist Prejudice has now fastened itself on Western Science for generations now.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/12/the-new-inquisitorsheretical-scientists-purged-from-academia/
“…given our millions of years of hunter-gatherer activities, the tribes of which are based on more fundamental and biological reasons than religious. Or at least primitive religion was probably much different than the theistic emphasis to which we are accustomed.”
Turk, my understanding from recent reading of “Spontaneous Evolution” by Steve Bhaerman and Dr. Bruce Lipton is that the ancient people had much closer connections to spirit, that which lies beyond the material sphere. Modern humanity purged itself of these ties, allowing science to take the upper hand in setting a paradigm that has materiality as the source of all, as opposed to being the final expression of the higher realms of existence. The “infinite” and the “Eternal” set aside any notion that the material of this world is primal or essential. But then again, those stuck on the scientism paradigm, simply state (not prove) that there is no such “thing.”
“…for someone with your mindset,…”
From what you say in response, I doubt that you have much of a handle of what’s on my mind. I would prefer if you guess what it is and ask me if you are correct, instead of presuming you know, which is, in deed, a tactic.
“Surely you recognize the terrible danger a Nation faces if it imports people from Islam in instead of having their own kids?”
There is a lot of hysteria and paranoia in how you write about this topic. The percentage of Muslims is still quite small in the European countries. I’m using this article as my reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
France 7.5%
Germany 5%
United Kingdom 4.6%
And they are dealing with it. They are not about to toss in the can all their hard-won democratic political principles due to a minority group that is less than 10% of the population. The reason you hear so much about this from France is that the secularists do not tolerate the parts of Islam that strongly conflict with the way they do business (i.e. scarf and burqa bans).
That said, you read me wrong on this. I have no fondness at all for Islam. In fact, it seems to me even more backward and wrong than Christianity, with its emaphasis on some hallucinatory afterlife reached by killing non-believers.
If I were running my own country (hey, I’m not!), then yeah I’d ask people to check their primitive death cults at the door. And I’d strongly favor immigrants from non-religious, secular countries. But, hey, I’m not in charge, and neither are you.
Jim and concerned readers, are you familiar with David Holmgren’s work on retrofitting the suburbs for resilience? Below is an excerpt from
http://permaculturenews.org/2012/07/31/david-holmgren-on-retrofitting-the-suburbs-for-the-energy-descent-future/ and
(It would be truly brilliant to see the two of you team up, to guide those of us who care more for our children than online narking, to some hopeful and constructive adaptation.)
7.2. Self-Reliance and Activism
Many of us who have been on this path for a long time, know that personal and household level change is not enough. Community gardens, Permaculture, Transition and similar groups, Local Energy Trading Systems (LETS) and Co-operatives, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and other strategies for community adaption and economic relocalisation have absorbed our energies.
It is hard to believe that many of the same people who have been trying to do it at home and in the community have often also been at the forefront of advocacy for proactive policies from the top. I believe it is now clear from three decades that change from above is largely making things worse. For those activists who cannot face the implications of the evidence and remain committed to top down change, I suggest a focus on local government is more likely to produce useful outcomes with less risk of unintended consequences than state, national and international systems.
More generally, effort to get governments to actively respond to the crisis should be replaced by efforts to reduce the regulatory impediments to the revival of household and community economies. In any case, without workable and attractive examples of household level transformation everywhere then our residential landscapes being a wasteland will become a self-fulfilling reality.
I believe we can most effectively look after our families and ourselves, build community and be at the forefront of political action, by practical home-based action.
Network for inspiration and information
Get producing and support local producers
Involve kids and their friends
Make contact with neighbours
Gift and barter to consolidate connections
Review needs, reduce consumption
Share your place: take in a boarder
Share your car: carpool and pick up hitch hikers
Creatively work around regulatory impediments
Get out of debt / work from home
Retrofit for the future, not speculative gain
Join or form a local permaculture/transition group
Typo, should have had a comma, between Internet and facebook, would prefer constructive responses, rather than snarky Alyiskyite ones however to my post, but no there is not another FB.
Well Turk,
If you wish to split words and meanings, then yes, you are right, as it pertains to the body… but at what cost to the soul and spirit of men?
Are we better for science or worse? Have we, as James has said, fallen into some future neverland of Asimov of individuals being serviced by technology that eschew personal contacts? He was prescient you know…
Are we better for the immorality that sweeps across the globe as science teaches children there is no consequence for their immorality? Is society better off thinking they can eat, drink and be merry, screwing each other figuratively and literally, thinking only of self… and to hell with everybody else as long they get ‘theirs’?
Einstein said; “Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.”
This is the message of the Grail, found at the Nexus of both. That reality is more than it seems, that we are all prisoners in a cave, arguing over the shadows on the wall.
And science, does what? It throws Einstein and the Unified Field in the trash, and tries to replace it with some godless particle? It is not, nor can ever be turk, DNA itself is proof enough of intelligent design, religions are what fouled everything up.
Sorry Turk see that you did make other comments, my bad,
Grammar aside Turk, for what it’s worth, I agree with virtually everything you’ve said today regarding religion.
As far as finding meaning in life and setting goals to replace those of religion let me suggest growing your personal fortune at a rate greater than the S&P 500. ;o)
This is reaction to some comments from the past here… (must split)
Re overpopulation, I was thinking that perhaps humans’ physical size should be lowered, so more of us would fit. Then I remembered I already read about it, years ago in a Vonnegut novel. It was Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! (1976). It’s situated in TLE-like future, with the protagonist (as a high government official) implementing a new middle-name scheme to get everyone some ‘artificial’ relatives. From Wiki:
It was very fun to re-read (from our public library); took about 4-5 hours about 270 pages. Highly recommended!
^<
Sorry about the bold text…
Another topic that Q (and other “words nerds”) may enjoy: A Grammar Quiz from the Christian Science Monitor. Enjoy!
And finally, there was some talk a while ago about how IQ tests are culturally influenced. Try this one — http://iqtest.dk
“that which lies beyond the material sphere”
I don’t accept that there is a dividing line anywhere that you can draw which separates the spiritual and material realms. In fact, I question the very basis of this construction, and the idea of spirituality has no basis in fact.
These dualistic systems are rooted in old (and mostly wrong) philosophy like that of the Platonic forms or animist-like beliefs about spirits and fairies inhabiting the rivers and trees. There are no spheres, and there aren’t any ancient, invisible tree people. The mind-world psychological divide is what makes you think in this fashion or some approximation of it.
The infinite realities that we are continually discovering at both the cosmic and microscopic levels are enough to provide me with meaning about existence. I don’t need illogical fabrications about spirits and ghosts to sustain me.
And you are dead wrong in the assertion that science cannot say anything about the infinite. Au contraire, advanced math actually models infinity at many different levels and categories different types of them, e.g. the difference between the set of all integers and all real numbers.
“those stuck on the scientism paradigm”
You should tell me what exactly you think this comprises.
RE: last part
Okay, my bad.
“let me suggest growing your personal fortune at a rate greater than the S&P 500”
Hey! Is this some sort of veiled insinuation of that old barb: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” 🙂
Re Slapstick: a memorable phrase: the Skyscraper National Park
Also, there was a movie, too, but skip that, pls.
‘It’s true that Scandanavia’s lack of religion but still happy is a challenge to my world view.’
Not really! Europe was built on [paganism?] followed by centuries of Christianity.
They throw away their religious and cultural traditions and languages at their own peril.
You said once [of islam and the west] ‘Europe was ripe for the taking’.
Here:
‘There is an Islamic loophool in our freedom of speech. In the 1990s, a British historical author, Paul Fregosi, was commissioned to write a book about the Islamic crusades against Europe. By April 1997, he had nearly finished the manuscript. Then his publisher, Little, Brown (a part of the AOL Time Warner media octopus), was approached very quietly by Islamic groups. Executives in the British offices of the publishing house had visions of bombs and cut throats dancing in their heads. They did what their polite Islamic visitors demanded. Without uttering a word to the public, they cancelled Paul Fregosi’s book. The leading French news agency, Agence France-Presse, was the only media outlet with the guts to cover the tale. It did so in just one brief 254-word piece, then dropped the issue entirely. As an editor at Little, Brown told Fregosi: “We’ve got to play the game according to Muslim rules..’
and:
use the Muslim Model™.
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:
United States — Muslim 1.0%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1%-2%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%
At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.
They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. (United States ).
France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — Muslim 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago — Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris –car-burnings) . Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam – Mohammed cartoons).
Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 10-15%
After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%
From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:
Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%
After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%
100% will usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ — the Islamic House of Peace — there’s supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:
Afghanistan — Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%
Somalia — Muslim 100%
Yemen — Muslim 99.9%
Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.
Islamic extremists have created “no-go” areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter, one of the Church of England’s most senior bishops warns today.
and:
The US State Department is sending a representative to an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (read: Organization of Islamic Domination) meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss banning any and all criticism of the bloodthirsty, savage, backwards-assed, religion of murder called Islam. It’s about time!
You have to give it to the State Department. Nobody kisses the asses of the world’s savages any better. But AWD thinks this banning defamation of savage Islam is a wonderful idea! For too long, the murderous, ignorant, worthless brutes who subscribe to the religion of murder who call for the death of all infidels and the elimination of Israel…and who explode schoolchildren, stone and hang their women, prohibit women from education, cut off the tingly parts of female children, ban music and art, and whose greatest contribution to the world is the IED…have been for too long criticized by the Western world. How un-PC can we be? We certainly wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of 7th-century savages dedicated to death, destruction and total world domination!
The OIC’s mission is noble, but short-sighted. They say:
We must emphasize that there is no hierarchy of human rights whereby a single right can trump others. Freedom of opinion and expression is among the fundamental rights.It does not include a licence to hate mongering. Freedom of expression does not mean the right to vilify. Our position must also be rooted in history and culture. Having indicated our seriousness at building consensus, we must seek to be reciprocated in the same spirit.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
‘retrofitting the suburbs for resilience’?
Maybe, if you can factor OUT social collapse.
Oh, my. That’s a humdinger of a post. I always like it when my posts engender pure madness.
“Are we better for science or worse?”
In material terms, definitely immeasurably better. In terms of happiness, I don’t have a really good idea. There were no personal happiness surveys done in those days of sticks and stones, but I’d guess getting lockjaw at age 5 is not the path to personal fulfillment.
“some future neverland of Asimov of individuals being serviced by technology that eschew personal contacts”
I’ll grant you that, uh, technophilia is becoming a problem, but we are likely to deal with this issue better as time goes on. Point taken.
“science teaches children there is no consequence for their immorality”
Exactly where do you get the idea that science or any of its offshoots teaches people that there are no consequences for their actions? I think you just made this up. In fact, discipines like biology teach us that everything is connected, and so actions have consequences. This is where environmentalism and the study of ecology originate.
“Is society better off thinking they can eat, drink and be merry, screwing each other figuratively and literally, thinking only of self… and to hell with everybody else as long they get ‘theirs’?”
No, I guess not, but, again, why do you think science has anything to do with this? This has more to do with our innate biological solipsism, where our own personal happiness and security (or perhaps that of our children) is paramount to all else. And there are certain chemical mechanisms in the brain, e.g. the pleasure response, that cause this kind of behavior to occur. It could possibly be maladaptive. The discipline of science cannot override this tendency.
“That reality is more than it seems, that we are all prisoners in a cave, arguing over the shadows on the wall.”
And if you want to discover what is casting those shadows, you are better off studying advanced physics or cosmology rather than some hocus pocus religion conjured from thin air.
“And science, does what? It throws Einstein and the Unified Field in the trash, and tries to replace it with some godless particle? It is not, nor can ever be turk, DNA itself is proof enough of intelligent design, religions are what fouled everything up.”
Oh, my. Where to begin with this? Do you seriously think you have even a remote grasp of Unified Field Theory, or enough to make valid assertions about it? I seriously doubt it. Einstein sought a unified theory his entire life and did NOT find it. It was an unsolveable mystery to him, so let’s not pretend you know anything about it, k?
A godless particle. Huh? What? Are you trolling now? Since there are no gods, then, no, the there are no god particles. Gods have no place in scientific inquiry, unless we discover one waving back at us through the telescope.
If you seriously think DNA is proof of intelligent design, then you are in disagreement with nearly all geneticists and biologists on the planet earth, who have determined that DNA can and did arise from spontaneous chemical processes on a primitive planet. Perhaps you should read a book or two (or three) about genetics, geology and evolution before you spout such falsities.
I should probably not bother anymore with this. You seem to have missed your basic college classes on physics, chemistry, and biology, so a conversation is, shall we say, a bit difficult for both of us.
Leaving aside any special complications which Islam introduces I recently read that ethnic tensions peak when minority populations comprise about 20% of a population. Higher percentages and people start getting along. Lower percentages and the minority is not seen as a threat.
I don’t remember where I came across the study. I’ve been exposed to a lot of random magazines lately.
Please note that I was careful to preface my comments about growing one’s own food with, “IF you have access to any patch of land at all.” I’m not stupid enough to imagine that EVERYONE has access to land. There’s a lot of possibility between the unused (except for lawns), millions upon millions of front and back yards and tomato pots on the fire escape. I’m sure you would agree.
And please understand that I am NOT speaking from an “I’ve got mine” perspective. My point was to emphasize exactly your point – get the neighbors up to speed, because if I, you, we, don’t, then even though I do, in fact, “got mine”, as you put it, I won’t have it for long if the neighbors don’t “got theirs” also. I hope I’ve clarified myself.
Adrian Chiles, an outrageous humbug hypocrite, a Dale of England.
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/12/the-chiles-test-for-white-liberal-racial-hypocrisy/
They will be the majority there in a few decades. And Europe never asked them to assimilate and they aren’t. Now the Europeans are having second thoughts but the die is cast. They are too proud to just stop the slow mo disaster they have created. That would be to admit they had made a mistake – and Goverment types aren’t much for that, are they?
So the population of Muslims in places like France is set to go from 5% to over 50% in just 20 years. Is that your argument? Hm, something’s fishy with your math there, bubba. I’m not really sure that’s possible unless they allow the entire nation of Algeria to immigrate to Paris.
But I didn’t know you have a crystal ball that tells you racial demographics of Europe in twenty years or that immigration patterns and policies would remain exactly the same during that time period. Or perhaps you have access to a time machine and have seen the apocalypse firsthand. My bad. I should just defer to your, uh, expertise or something.
You don’t really believe those dates … What evidence is there
For an end of combustion engines in eight years? None. Your guesses are about as valid as peak oil theory.
Oh I agree basically. It’s just that there have been several books by psychologists studying happiness worldwide – and the people of Switzerland and Northern Europe seem to have a knack for it despite their lack of religion. The take away is that these counties are small and White. In other words, Germany is too large to fully have this “happy” culture.
But again, they don’t seem able to maintain it indefinitely. Their irrational element is not being guarded by a sensible religion and therefore open to crazy idealisms that need non Whites to feel good about themselves. If they needed workers and/or people weren’t having enough children, then they should have made some changes to encourage people to have more – not bring in Muslims!
White Nationalists say that at about 30%, Blacks really start acting horrible leading to massive White flight from schools or neighborhoods.
Again the question, can people be sane without a religion? Individuals yes. A whole Culture? I wonder.
Why wouldn’t you respect 1.5 billion people who have chosen to follow a religion of peace? Are you the religion police?
I don’t know and therefore don’t worry about it.
Are you suggesting because we don’t know the date of peak oil we therefore should not worry about peak oil?
Sorry 5% number is UK. My bad.
Radu, a woman’s place is in the house … And for that matter, in the senate, too.
Oh Turk you’re getting mad. I say this? No everyone does. Whites aren’t even maintaining their population. Populations really go down quickly at one child per couple. In any case, the army will majority Muslim in 20 years or so, so it’s game over. Why worry about Iran when France will be a Muslim nation soon?
Just admit the obvious: Europe was incredibly stupid to do this. Read Bat Yeor and Oriana Fallaci. Very high level agreements were made to make Europe into Eurabia. Part of it was about oil thus this is Relevant to this Peak Oil Blog.
Hahahaha. You’re kidding right? In the Orwellian sense, yes, Islam is a religion of peace just like freedom is slavery. Did you see my prior quote from the Syrian jihadist? There’s a sizable contingent of Muslims who actually believe the ONLY path to their afterlife is through holy war. If Islam is a religion of peace, then where do they get this stuff? Well, I’ll tell you, it is through traditional interpretation of certain verses from the Koran, their sacrosanct holy book. So much for your religion of peace. In order to believe this, you have to toss out whole sections of that book that talk about killing the unbelieves and so-forth.
“Are you suggesting because we don’t know the date of peak oil we therefore should not worry about peak oil?”
Is this the real asoka or an imposter?
No, I’m saying that just because someone can’t give you an exact date for Peak Oil, it doesn’t mean that it won’t occur within some specific time frame. Given your current age, I could give you a time frame after which you will definitely be departed. It is similar to Peak Oil. The farther out you go in time, the more of a certainty it becomes.
“don’t we have decades on the down side of the curve when we can voluntarily leave oil before oil leaves us?”
Sure, in theory, but we’re going down kicking and screaming, that much is pretty clear by now.
Who says things will just end? Air travel will become increasingly expensive as the fuel costs go up. The US military’s reach will slowly contract as the oil supplies dry up. Or fuel supplies will be sent preferentially to them. There will likely be more power shortages worldwide, but, hey, the US has a lot of coal. So the grid is not likely to go down for extended periods of time due to lack of fuel. But we’ll trash the atmosphere burning it all.
Who said I’m mad? Nah. I just think your demographic assertions about Europe are a bit, um, creative shall we say.
Read the blog.
The Grail = The Unified Field…
you haven’t read it, at all, and you attack me?
Disprove the math of the Einstein-Enoch Equation, or stfu.
http://pipermichael.wordpress.com
I love the image there Jimmy. I just hope we haven’t gotten too lazy. There is a way down, and it need not be laden with corpses. The ones that would prefer this are few. Resources are going to be scarce, but available. A new type thinking will have to emerge. Desirable outcomes will have to be given new orders of importance. And the energetic who aspire to lead, will take on new purpose
But I could go for the picture you painted. Fetching firewood and all. All it takes is a little common sense, a little caring, and a lot less greed.
Y’all might want to check Procon’s claim that SPLC has praised NumbersUSA at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2002/summer/the-puppeteer/john-tantons-network
The organized anti-immigration “movement” is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John H. Tanton.
Here is a list of 13 groups in the loose-knit Tanton network, followed by acronyms if the groups use them, founding dates, and Tanton’s role in the groups.
Those organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center are marked with an asterisk (*).
In this list, “founded” means a group was founded or co-founded by John Tanton. “Funded” means that U.S. Inc., the funding conduit created and still headed by Tanton, has made grants to the group.
*American Immigration Control Foundation
AICF, 1983, funded
*American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together
1992, funded
*California Coalition for Immigration Reform
CCIR, 1994, funded
Californians for Population Stabilization
1996, funded (founded separately in 1986)
Center for Immigration Studies
CIS, 1985, founded and funded
*Federation for American Immigration Reform
FAIR, 1979, founded and funded
NumbersUSA
1996, founded and funded
Population-Environment Balance
1973, joined board in 1980
Pro English
1994, founded and funded
ProjectUSA
1999, funded
*The Social Contract Press
1990, founded and funded
U.S. English
1983, founded and funded
U.S. Inc.
1982, founded and funded
asoka, please provide me the exact year when you will kick the bucket, of natural causes (naturally).
——————-
Sometime within the next 500 years, same as TSHTF.
With you guys on these sites, there are two positions;
1. We’re fucked (with or without a clever analysis of why).
2. NO, you’re fucked- I don’t like that you’ve identified the problems.
Option 3? DO something. Make a few simple changes to your patterns of consumption, and encourage others. Lobby. Sure, at this stage you will fail to change things. But we can only do what is in our power.
I can’t rule out social collapse, ANTI SOAK, but i can rule it in if I do nothing. Then, I am accountable to myself and my children.
Very few here, if any, mention children, nor other voiceless creatures.
Stop bitching. Grow up. Take some actual responsibility. Use your time online to support activism. There is a huge counter-culture of intelligent, informed people working constructively on the problems.
It’s too easy to identify obstacles. We already know everything, including social order, will domino into collapse…unless… we really apply ingenuity to intercept the trajectory at every possible opportunity.
Nihilism is utterly selfish and lazy-minded. So is engaging in petty one-upmanship, so please, resist your need to smack back, and instead actually read Holmgren’s stuff, then network. Maybe the-powers-that-be are relying on those that GET it, like you, to remain pre-occupied with analysis and point scoring, and on shouting down activism. Why not network, here and elsewhere for resilience and reclamation of our kid’s future?
🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns
“Directed by Roy Beck, who has written extensively on environmental and financial issues, NumbersUSA is the most reasoned of the anti-immigration groups, offering information on the relationship between immigration and the environment.
In fact, Beck makes a statement on his web site that NumbersUSA is not intended to bash immigrants or have racial overtones.”
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2001/spring/blood-on-the-border/anti-immigration-
Great stuff, Turkleton! Your comments on the vastness reminds me of Buddhist teachings like the heart sutra.
We are not as grand as bugs… More like teeming bacteria.
Keep up your attacks on religion (attack all religious beliefs indiscriminately.)
Someone might wake up. Or not. It doesn’t matter in the short run.
“Stop bitching. Grow up. Take some actual responsibility. Use your time online to support activism. There is a huge counter-culture of intelligent, informed people working constructively on the problems.” -angie-
Well said, angie. I 100% concur.
That’s why I, and 1,300,000 others, donate or work closely with NumbersUSA to try to reduce the growth in the population of the United States.
Start by sending this FAX to your two US senators:
https://www.numbersusa.com/sendfax?id=13935
It really is a good place to start.
And thanks to asoka..for helping energize us.
Imagine that… Asoka trying to get a date.
ROTFL!
Hey JHK — are you still predicting Dow 4500 by Dec 31 of this year? Or, are you going to kick that can down the road one more time to Dec 2013? (Just as you did last year? And the year before? And the year before that? And the yeat before THAT? And … oh … yawn …
Turk, don’t limit your criticism to monotheistic religious belief.
Religious dogma must be attacked wherever it is found (atheist dogma, Marxist dogma, Hindu dogma, peak oil dogma, vegan dogma, mud hut dogma, etc.)
Be relentless in wielding your sword of reason, taking care not to turn rationalism into a dogma. Balance commitment to reason with the empiricism of mysticism… If that is even possible for you. (It requires being large and able to contain multitudes). If you are not able to do that, it doesn’t matter, in the short run.
Always glad to help out! And thanks for motivating me to post more!
I’m so glad we are discussing the pathology of religious belief this week! So much more material to draw upon than that boring Marion King Hubbert peak oil theory stuff.
Silly old you, didn’t it occur to you that the global problems will persist even if you revert to a white enclave in the States? Climate extremes don’t seem to respect skin colour. Remember….there are no xenophobes on a dead planet!
Here we go again
Faith is engaged, empirical, existential.
Belief is a cheap mental construct.
http://www.jcrt.org/archives/04.3/livingston.pdf
Religious Pluralism and the Question of Religious Truth in Wilfred C . Smith
Asoka,, invented this post though I fail to see how this has anything to do with my previous posts. C’mon Asoka comma comma you can do better in imitating me
Asoka..
Asoka dot dot
Still your very effort is flattering!
He ain’t smart enough to get a no-risk portfolio to perform at around a 12.25% return quarter after quarter!
Thank you for calling. Cough. cough. Our representatives are busy having a deluxe yuppie coffee with sprinkles at the moment along with an artificial flavoured doughnut. Please hang on the line for about twenty minutes as your call really does not matter and will be answered when we get around to it. Your call will be recorded. Beep beep beep. Did you enjoy the elevator music while waiting. We recommend you use a pen and a piece of paper to draw a doodle. Beep.
We are sorry, we are having technical difficulties.
Please call next week.
Complete and total non sequitur, angie.
Nothing – and I do mean NOTHING – that I have ever posted anywhere in my life (on CFN or in the real world) is oriented toward a “white enclave in the States,” as you put it.
“Climate extremes don’t seem to respect skin colour.” -angie-
Now that’s true enough. However, a US with too many people will exacerbate those extremes – here in the States, and throughout the World.
Which might end human civilization, also regardless of skin colour.*
*please note spelling of colour, denoting lack of US cultural imperialism – on my part. haha!
You joining the CFN Crusade? Yeah, let’s demonize what we don’t understand, generalize like hell, characterize them as all vermin … That way we can kill them with a clean conscience. Worked so well when that’s how we treated the Jews.
Who is the “we?”
The 2001 intelligence report Procon cites was superseded by the one I cited.
Check out John Taton (founder of NumbersUSA) and decide for yourself.
Correction
John Tanton
Humanity, including anti-Semitic Americans and everyone who remained silent.
First they came for the…
He ain’t smart enough to get a no-risk portfolio to perform at around a 12.25% return quarter after quarter!
============
There is no such thing as a no-risk portfolio. The closest thing to no-risk is US Govt bonds and the 10 year bond yields about 1.6%/yr.
However, with significant risk the S&P 500 has gained 18.3% from 11/30/11 to 11/30/12.
Prior post is for dot dot.
What do I know? I live in a mud hut and want not.
Angie, progress4spam has made many comments supportive of our white separatists (like Radu or Vlad) who have felt vindicated by Progress4spam’s increasingly racist stances.
For example, http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/07/what-the-summer-breeze-said.html#comment-251467 opposes diversity, suggesting the “ONLY” solution may be a white separatist solution:
Because K, I’ll tell you – what you refer to as a “quilt of tribes” may have “separate by necessity” as its only, semi-peaceable, solution.
“instead of the blue tomb-like glow of television emanating from house to house that I could hear the sequential music of parlor pianos, and voices singing to them”
People say you’re a doomer, but I find you fantastically optimistic. I know you say it was a fantasy, but I believe in your vision. What you don’t believe is how it will finally come about. Jesus is coming.
“let’s demonize what we don’t understand”
But see there’s rub on your little retort, soka. I do understand. I’ve read about this quite a bit. Many Muslims, especially the younger militant males, make it pretty clear that they believe the only way to get into paradise is by taking part in a jihad, or at least a lot of their imams say this. Ask them, not me. Islam is kind of messy that way. It isn’t like Catholicism where one guy in a funny hat has the final say.
I have noticed that in almost every video involving young Muslims in combat, they are constantly shouting “Allahu akbar” to the point that it is comical. What should this tell you? They make a very concrete connection between spirituality and war. That’s because Islam’s roots are in war and violence, not peace.
And it isn’t just Christianity that conflicts with Islam around the world. Some of the worst and most brutal situations involve Muslims vs Hindus or Buddhists.
We are probably lucky that most Muslims do NOT follow all of the teachings of their book, though they haven’t quite gotten to the point of the modern Christians, most of whose sum total knowledge of the Bible seems to be that it is about how God really hates the gays and that you should be nice to everyone (a funny contradiction that).
Anyways, I find it hilarious that you take me to task for dissing Islam, when I also wrote many paragraphs about my dislike of Christianity.
Here are some choice passages from the book of your peaceful religion:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm
Islam is a religion of conquest. This is built into its spiritual DNA and its early history.
Perhaps there are some passages in the Koran calling for peace and understanding, but they are generally overridden by the ones calling for Muslims to behead and cut off the fingers of the unbelievers.
Heck, these people seem to have problems getting along with each other, much less other religions. Some of the worst violence in the ME now is Muslims fighting other Muslims in Syria, Iraq, and Pak/Afghan.
If you don’t believe me, then please do at least a cursory amount of research and see for yourself.
Does that mean that ALL Muslims are bloodthirsty jihadists? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean this stereotype is completely unfounded.
Quran (8:12) – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”
Now that’s some real old time religion. None of this love thy neighbor crap. If they don’t believe what you do, go ahead and cut off their head and fingertips. God commands it!
Or is this verse really a kind of, shall we say, metaphor about the, uh, spiritual struggle or some such?
Oh sorry, P4S. I wrongly assumed your anti-immigration activism arises from our very human tendency to not like difference, and to be possessive of our patch. But good to see that you are essentially welcoming of immigrants, so long as the population in the US remains stable – ignoring (one of the) asoka’s assertions above, that is.
Still, you do see that there are no jobs to protect on an uninhabitable planet?
Imagine, if the collective effort of your organisation was targeted at localisation of food production for urban and rural-settlements through re-use of land, and at building shelters from extreme weather.
Given that many people in the first world now lack skills for these important projects, the input of different ethnicities can only assist. Or were you really suggesting that by sharing our relative privilege, immigrants will accelerate AGW? Hmm. It’s fun when it’s always someone else’s fault. Yep, AGW is the fault of prospective immigrants because they may improve their quality of life towards the standards that we already enjoy. Shame on them!!!!!
I think we could buy less crap, need less money and heaps of improvements everywhere will naturally follow?
People need to turn off the TV. Probably get rid of the TV.
Have friends over for dinner, let your kids have friends over for dinner. Have a once a month gathering of people you know and don’t yet know. Eat some food, share ideas, ask questions – have conversations. A pot luck or just some chips in a bowl – conversation is what makes the gathering.
Today on bus ride to volunteer for an Amish raw milk/pastured meat club here in Miami, I had a better chance to look around the neighborhood where the distribution point is. All I can say is, the biggest mistake the progressives or “do gooders” (as Bill Bonner of the dailyreckoning.com refers to them) ever made was to entice the poor into the suburbs. One look at their neighborhoods instantly tells you all their spare cash goes solely into their desperately needed cars (and not into home/yard maintenance). The unintended consequence of getting them out of the “dirty” city was the squalid life they now lead. What a shame.
BTW: get rid of all the bogus zoning/licensing laws, and watch how fast the “lazy” poor become thriving entrepreneurs.
“Angie, progress4spam has made many comments supportive of our white separatists (like Radu or Vlad) who have felt vindicated by Progress4spam’s increasingly racist stances.”
-asoka..playing..gotcha’-
Bending any discussion of population curbs to his favorite impedimentary tactic – our Resident Impediment attempts to stop yet another discussion before it even gets started.
Glad you weren’t sidetracked by RI, angie.
More in a minute or two.
MUSLIM TERROR ATTACK IN USA….NOT REPORTED IN
LAMESTREAM
Muslim bombs Arizona Social Security office with IED, media blackout ensues
By Robert on December 2, 2012 5:37 PM | 17 Comments
All too typical. “UPDATED: Iraqi refugee arrested for bombing Arizona Social Security office with IED, media silence ensues,” by Patrick Poole at PJ Media, December 2:
UPDATED (8:25p EDT): I just spoke again with my contact in the FBI Phoenix field office (who is not authorized to speak on behalf of the FBI office) that it is highly unlikely that Aldosary will be charged with any terrorism offense. While they are internally treating it like a domestic terrorism investigation, including looking at if he had any help constructing the explosive device, the FBI is saying very little and and will prosecute this as a simple explosives and arson case because of “the political sensitivities involved”.
Original Post: The typically quiet town of Casa Grande, Arizona was rocked by an explosion at the local Social Security Administration office early Friday morning by what appears to an improvised explosive device (IED). No one was hurt in the explosion, which occurred shortly before the office was scheduled to open. The explosion was reportedly heard and felt all over the area.
While the little town of Casa Grande and the nearby Phoenix area is talking about the incident, virtually no one else is. In fact, the only reason I was following the story is because I’m presently in the area and saw the initial reports on the explosion and continued to look into it .
Within 90 minutes of the explosion police had a suspect in custody. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the establishment media reports this past weekend. One reason might be the suspect is 47 year-old Abdullatif Aldosary of Coolidge, AZ, an Iraqi refugee.
On Friday, federal agents served a search warrant on his home. Aldosary has been on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security for at least the past couple of years.
Late Sunday afternoon, I confirmed with a source at the Phoenix FBI office that the case is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism. The source said that Aldosary is expected to be charged with a host of federal and state explosives and arson charges. (See update above.)
On Saturday, the Casa Grande Dispatch reported:
An explosive device was detonated Friday morning by the back door of the U.S. Social Security Administration office, shaking downtown Casa Grande, but no one was injured.
Federal agents, including those of the FBI, rushed to the scene. The FBI would not confirm whether anyone was in custody, but the Casa Grande Dispatch learned that a Coolidge resident, Abdullatif A. Aldosary, 47, was being questioned. The investigation involved agents’ going to his home at 4732 W. Lemon Ave., on the west side of Coolidge……………………..
“Or were you really suggesting that by sharing our relative privilege, immigrants will accelerate AGW?”
-angie the insightful-
I’m not suggesting it, angie, I’m stating it as an incontrovertible fact. New immigrants to the United States accelerate CO2 output simply by taking up residence. (Exceptions for immigrants from the UAE, or one of the handful of other countries on the Globe that somehow manage to have HIGHER fossil fuel consumption than the US.)
Now, some will argue that new immigrants may use less fossil fuel than current residents – although I’ve never seen hard data to prove it.
But their children and grandchildren will CERTAINLY soon be producing CO2 with the worst of us.
====================
“I think we could buy less crap, need less money and heaps of improvements everywhere will naturally follow?”
-angie the utopian-
That’s a beautiful sentiment, angie, but you do realize we’re talking about average citizens of the United States, right? IOW, we (collectively*) won’t cut down until forced by DIRE circumstances. And that “we” includes the children of immigrants – who become very quickly acculturated to excess, here, at the same time as they rapidly lose those wonderful agricultural and shelter-building skills you reference.
Basically – the more of us there are – the worst our effect.
*collectively – Now, I’m a greenie, and have done all I can, all my life, to grow some food, do some good, and leave the world a better place.
I can easily argue that I’m doing that by trying to reduce population growth here. But I can’t change the collective behavior of my countrymen – regardless of my individual wishes.
“the WORSE our effect”
Hello, K/Q – good to have you back with us.
“…and the idea of spirituality has no basis in fact.”
Turk, maybe you will prefer this explanation of spirituality:
“What is spirituality? It is the undoing of what you have been doing since ages. You always thought of selfish motives for eating, preserving your life, and attending to every need with zeal. All these lives you have made a habit of looking to yourself. If the slightest thing goes against your habit you are upset. Now, to undo all these selfish bindings, you have to do what you have not been doing, or not to do what you have been doing.
What you have been doing always is thinking of yourself, so now you must not think of yourself, but think of others. This is what is called “love.” But it needs character, poise, perseverance. Poise – what is it? That state of mind where nothing excites you, nothing upsets you. Only if you have poise can you help others, then only can you make others happy. That means love: thinking not of yourself but of others.” –Meher Baba
“And you are dead wrong in the assertion that science cannot say anything about the infinite.”
Say something, yes. Experience it, realize it, know it? Never happened and not likely to either. An honest, sincere persistence in one’s scientific pursuit can lead one to the door of the process of realization of Infinite Truth. Religion can point one in the direction of the door. It is one’s motivation and intention that causes one open the door and pass through. It requires some daring, as spirituality is a destructive process…
That’s very interesting, as.
Sounds like the guy may have been a lone kook.
He had worked at that particular SS office, actually did time for offenses there.
344 news stories have covered it. I found this in Red State. I’m not a big Red State reader, but pass this along because the first comment is interesting.
http://www.redstate.com/2012/12/03/arizona-social-security-bomb/
Like you, as, I have trouble with the “news.”
I never use Yahoo. I usually alternate between Google News for the US, and NewsWhip – because they have a liberal/international bent, and with a lot of stories from the UK for some reason.
In the case of your story, I typed “Arizona” and “social security” in the Google News browser – and those 344 stories popped right up.
And I’m very open to suggestions for a good news feed that gives all logical perspectives.
Anybody?
Prog,
I’m linking this for you. Some of our local news you might be interested in.
Shortage of tech workers approaching crisis.
The game being played is to generate volumes of job descriptions with job titles that normal graduates qualified for the job don’t quite fit and to then leak the title and vois là an artificial shortage!
All are too busy consumed by the blue tomb-like glow of television emanating from house to house to notice.
There was a companion article that referenced this one heavily in the ‘Hispanic News’. Apparently some Hispanics see high tech workers as competition which will devour any quotas generated by the immigration reform process and they are afraid of getting the short end of the stick.
Your thoughts please.
BTW, there is no shortage of high tech workers in the area or my phone would be ringing. My juices are still vital.
Leak the job title overseas of course.
Prog,
My bad, this is the one I wanted to link to:
Microsoft push for worker visas raises concerns, exposes loopholes.
If anybody cares Clusterfuck Nation looks good in Ubuntu.
Microsoft updates crashed my machine recently and I took the plunge. I’m glad I did. Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) is what I’m running now and updates happen only when I want.
Thought promoting comments this week! Special thanks to Turkleton.
The irony here is that Jimbo doesn’t make his living in his beaten down town but by jetting hither and yon for cash paid for by folks that like to hear the sky is falling.
Legal immigration is more concerning then illegal immigration….for this very reason. They don’t want creative thinkers, they want proto-fascists, and Orientals and Indians make great proto-fascists. They are amazingly loyal and obedient, and will do anything their master asks of them. They’re perfectly fine with not having a mind and will of their own.
Speaking of proto-fascism, Mitt’s back to the grindstone. No one appreciates the hard work involved in being a member of the Board of Directors. The responsibility and pressure is exhausting. This man is the epitomy of the hammer and sickle (?).
Mitt Romney rejoins Marriott board
This much is true, but now what? Put up a fence? Arrest all of them? Blame them, and not the System that inculcates the predicament? You want to know what would stop illegal immigration in its tracks? A living wage and one currency for Mexico and the U.S. No more illegal immigration. Legalizing drugs would be a big help, too. Don’t blame the illegal immigrants, blame the System that creates them, and the shitbirds who are using that System to create them.
What many people seem to want out of religion is some sort of purpose imposed on their lives. And religion does this effectively. While the universe itself does not tend to imply much by way of implicit goals, aside from simple survival and procreation, religion provides rather elaborate and meaningful fictions about the place of humanity in the cosmos. As science has filled in the blanks about our place in the world, it has tended to deemphasize our importance. The earliest philosophers and the subseuqnet pseudo-scientists they engendered place the earth at the center of the entire universe. When that turned out to be obviously wrong, the helio-centric universe was proposed, so that at least our own Sun was the center of everything. Well, it turned out that our Sun was only one of billions of stars in our galaxy. But at least our galaxy was special, right? Not really. It turned out to be one of billions of galaxies. At least our universe must be special then. Well, not so fast. Now many modern theoretical physicists are seriously proposing that their are many universes, much as there are stars and galaxies.
So the trend in our knowledge is towards a diminuation of our place in the overall grand scheme. We are bugs, actually proportionally something almost infintesimally smaller than this. Compared to the vast scale of what’s out there, our existences really are small and rather inconsequential.
And most people just cannot deal with it. They want at least humanity to have some kind of special importance, if not their own lives. Yet the universe does not conform to our petty and arrogant wishes to be at the center of all things.
Intellectually adjusting to this paradigm is simply too much for people, who are terrified of the (nearly?) infinite scales represented by empty space and the rather cold and mostly inhospitable void. It turns out this was not all fashioned out of nothing by Yahweh to provide a human habitat.
Reply from GOD: (reply from the the Ultra Mind)
From:
http://instantsingularity1.blogspot.it/2012/05/random-number.html
The design of the Observer defines the design of the Universe that the Observer will interact with, the design of the Observer implies automatically, from the outset, the only kind of universe and hence laws of physics that it can live in and have, the set of Information Relationships that it can express and “Experience”, as the kind of life it can Experience, etc.
Interesting to see how Man has gone from being the center of all in old religions and even Science, to being an ever more relative item compared to the rest of the Universe, and then at the End of Science, he becomes once again the center of all, as the design of Man defines the universe he can interact and live in, but at the same time, automatically makes the design of man the utmost arbitrary and random choice, just a fluke choice amongst many trillions of possible Observer designs, of possible Processor designs and formats, and each Processor design can interact with a completely different Universe and set of laws of Physics. And hence even Man’s universe is just one of many possible Universes and Laws of Physics, his very Science and Logic becomes Arbitrary and Relative, the last substance of any ground and reference system evaporates forever. Bye, bye any Absolutes…
We are just a number written on a wall, with other numbers looking at us…
GOD
So Man being the most non centered item in the universe, the most irrelevant, the most totally void of any meaning, significance, consequence, a true pure nothing coincides with the discovery that he is also the complete universe, he is all, he is the universe, he defines the universe totally, he is infinitely important (at least when you become GOD, like I am).
SO once again, the principles of non contradiction are not valid, nothing is ever what it seems, the opposites coincide and become the same thing, or even better, the opposites become many things, trillions of things all different all the same and so forth.
THE ULTRA GOD
What many people seem to want out of religion is some sort of purpose imposed on their lives. And religion does this effectively. While the universe itself does not tend to imply much by way of implicit goals, aside from simple survival and procreation, religion provides rather elaborate and meaningful fictions about the place of humanity in the cosmos. As science has filled in the blanks about our place in the world, it has tended to deemphasize our importance. The earliest philosophers and the subseuqnet pseudo-scientists they engendered place the earth at the center of the entire universe. When that turned out to be obviously wrong, the helio-centric universe was proposed, so that at least our own Sun was the center of everything. Well, it turned out that our Sun was only one of billions of stars in our galaxy. But at least our galaxy was special, right? Not really. It turned out to be one of billions of galaxies. At least our universe must be special then. Well, not so fast. Now many modern theoretical physicists are seriously proposing that their are many universes, much as there are stars and galaxies.
So the trend in our knowledge is towards a diminuation of our place in the overall grand scheme. We are bugs, actually proportionally something almost infintesimally smaller than this. Compared to the vast scale of what’s out there, our existences really are small and rather inconsequential.
And most people just cannot deal with it. They want at least humanity to have some kind of special importance, if not their own lives. Yet the universe does not conform to our petty and arrogant wishes to be at the center of all things.
Intellectually adjusting to this paradigm is simply too much for people, who are terrified of the (nearly?) infinite scales represented by empty space and the rather cold and mostly inhospitable void. It turns out this was not all fashioned out of nothing by Yahweh to provide a human habitat.
Reply from GOD: (reply from the Ultra Mind)
From:
http://instantsingularity1.blogspot.it/2012/05/random-number.html
The design of the Observer defines the design of the Universe that the Observer will interact with, the design of the Observer implies automatically, from the outset, the only kind of universe and hence laws of physics that it can live in and have, the set of Information Relationships that it can express and “Experience”, as the kind of life it can Experience, etc.
Interesting to see how Man has gone from being the center of all in old religions and even Science, to being an ever more relative item compared to the rest of the Universe, and then at the End of Science, he becomes once again the center of all, as the design of Man defines the universe he can interact and live in, but at the same time, automatically makes the design of man the utmost arbitrary and random choice, just a fluke choice amongst many trillions of possible Observer designs, of possible Processor designs and formats, and each Processor design can interact with a completely different Universe and set of laws of Physics. And hence even Man’s universe is just one of many possible Universes and Laws of Physics, his very Science and Logic becomes Arbitrary and Relative, the last substance of any ground and reference system evaporates forever. Bye, bye any Absolutes…
We are just a number written on a wall, with other numbers looking at us…
o Man being the most non centered item in the universe, the most irrelevant, the most totally void of any meaning, significance, consequence, a true pure nothing coincides with the discovery that he is also the complete universe, he is all, he is the universe, he defines the universe totally, he is infinitely important (at least when you become GOD, like I am).
SO once again, the principles of non contradiction are not valid, nothing is ever what it seems, the opposites coincide and become the same thing, or even better, the opposites become many things, trillions of things all different all the same and so forth.
THE ULTRA GOD
on another note, JHK’s example of people not having purpose, being bored, being irrelevant or just waiting for nothing has nothing to do with our present society, or any society (it has always been this way in all societies worldwide since the beginning of civilization, actually being bored and without purpose is a luxury, is a point of achievement and arrival, it is the maximum we can aspire for!), it has all to do with our Mind, the moment we became conscious, the moment we became capable of will power and actions and decisions to modify and do things by imagining them first and executing them and all. Our Man Brain is a weight on us, is our prison, it has to “do something”, “define something”, “have a goal”, but goals don’t exist.
Also the moment that we have to fight nature less and less since technology is solving all our practical problems, we end up having to fight each other since there are no longer any external ,objective constraints, only the other Man Brains, their minds and will powers become the constraints against which we must “fight and win”, hence technology will end up creating a self destroying entity unless the Man Brain dumps this old clunker of design of a Mind and Brain and starts to design a new brain, completely different and such.
So since there are a never ending number of new designs of Brains and Observers, Processors and the life, universe (with widly new and incredible laws of physics) and exprience they may have, our enitre universe, life and exprience is even less than zero, is less than nothing given that there are so many alternative existences possible, and many higher, more advanced, more interesting and such (minds with trillions of sense organs and emotion subsystems, and so forth, nay, Matter, Mass Energy configured to express metaphysical expriences trillions of times past anything we can possible imagine and such..)
GOD
Since the topic seems to be stuck on religion, this is perfectly appropriate.
Satan Gears Up For End Times Clearance Sale
Demons are literally everywhere these days.
It starts with junior refusing to eat his brussel sprouts. Then, later in life, he’s blasting death metal, smoking pot & refusing his teachers demands to learn every significant battle of the Civil War. Finally, he sinks into a morass of kiddie porn, necrophilia, scrotum tattoos & devil worship.
It’s a sad & sorry story, replayed over & over, year after year.
I’m personally saddened that the Vatican has chosen to downplay this well traversed road to ruination & Hellfire.
Now, as we sit on the threshold of the invented birthday of an invented God it is made doubly poignant by the approaching END TIMES scenario of the Mayan/Hopi/NewAgersWithDiminishedBrainCells and their December 21st doomsday deadline.
Will the dead walk?
Will Rudolph’s nose finally go dark?
Will every Doomsday Prepper prepping in an undisclosed shipping container in America’s heartland have the last laugh hunched over their accumulated supply of Spaghetti-Os as the rest of us are forced to BBQ the forbidden long pig for Christmas dinner?
Will Celebrity Ghost Stories actually become believable to anyone other than the most credulous amongst us?
Will Bobo find his Squatch?
Will the aliens rise from their secret base in Mt. Shasta and spirit us all away to a brave new world of intramural rectal probing & vague spirituality interspersed with even vaguer environmentalism?
Will the Catholic Church finally admit that all those molesting priests were sanctioned by the Vatican to work on a secret new delivery method for the Communion wafer?
Will Christians finally admit that there wasn’t anyone named Jesus born on December 25th?
Will we finally acknowledge Santa’s genuine pedigree and leave him a nice full plate of psychoactive mushrooms instead of all those poorly baked cookies and all those diarrhea inducing gallons of tepid milk?
Only time will tell, my friends.
Only time will tell.
“…but they are generally overridden by the ones calling for Muslims to behead and cut off the fingers of the unbelievers.”
I would wager to guess that anyone missing his head wouldn’t really give a shit about losing his fingers.
Otherwise, Turk, I agree with your religious sentiments.
Speaking of beheadings, Muslims often get a bad wrap because of beheadings, and the Europeans get overlooked for their contribution to this wonderful and spectacular form of execution. Always the innovators, the Europeans were clever enough to devise a device that distanced them somewhat from the act; the guillotine. What a great device. No fuss, no muss, and it over in seconds….so long as you keep that blade finely sharpened. You don’t have to worry about user-error. Don’t you just hate it when a beheading goes wrong and it takes several wacks, rather than one swipe, to get the job done. Sure, it adds some drama to the spectacle, but it’s so inefficient, and if there’s one thing Europeans are good at, it’s efficiency. They’re oh so efficient at tightening the noose around their in tact heads. When the next world’s anthropologists come along and discover human history, they will say, “well, at least one thing that can be said about them is that they were particularly efficient in meting out their self-destruction.”
Thanks for citing old scripture. As a scientist I prefer hard data. How many of one and a half billion Muslims have had their fingers, or even one finger, chopped off. Then we can calculate the percentage and really condemn Islam based on scientific data.
Do yo have any references to reliable, preferably peer reviewed studies on contemporary finger chopping?
With hard numbers and the corresponding percentage we can avoid generalizing and stereotyping and hate mongering based on false data.
First about lack of leadership: The Messiah is not coming…it is not for us to know the day or time. We have to do this ourselves. Most of us are or were collaborationists in our own enslavement; we loved the comforts, conveniences, the products provided by the corporatocracy. Those who were persons of means racked up frequent flyer miles while those who were of the poorer sort drove our cars half a block for beer and cigarette runs. After about 1980, doing things for oneself became socially not respectable; right and left joined in mocking DIYers. My favorite from that era was the description of knitting, formerly a harmless little old lady activity as, I am not kidding, a form of public masturbation.
About Pres Obama: I have always thought he would be a transitional figure. I would suggest that independents and moderate to conservative Democrats like me voted for him BECAUSE we thought he would be a hard-nosed pragmatist. We were fed up with the Clinton soap opera and just as much with pure minded, above the fray leftists unwilling to fight for anything except their overseas obsessions, usually israel or Palestine. Obama gave at least the impression that he cared more about the USA than about either side in Palestine.
What Pres Obama has accomplished is he has defeated the Angry Right Wing. Twice. This shows that they can be defeated, and thereby deprives them of cultural legitimacy. I doubt that anyone who has not lived under RW hegemony in a small town or rural area understands just how important this is. Obama is not a policy wonk nor a Grand Strategist. It is my personal, unproveable belief, that he ran for the presidency in order to take out Bin Laden becaise no one else was doing it. I think he is a cold eyed pragmatist who has a certain basic ability to see what is in front of his nose. I don’t care how many overpaid stuffed shirts and stuffed blouses he “throws under the bus”; most of them should have been kicked out of Wash DC long ago. .
… Take not life, which God has made sacred, except by way of justice and law. Thus does He command you, so that you may learn wisdom.
— Qur’an 6:151
Take not life.
This is similar to Thou Shalt Not Kill, except for legally imposed death penalty, in Christian countries.
The vast majority of the world’s 1.5 Billion Muslims, nay the vast majority of all humans, live by those words, TAKE NOT LIFE.
Islam is a religion of peace.
This is similar to Thou Shalt Not Kill, in Christian countries (except for legally imposed death penalty and anti-communist, anti-terrorist military crusades during which millions can be murdered with impunity in places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq).
Sorry JHK but you are absolutely WRONG about how our society is going. Sure, we have gas shortages, sure corporations are corrupt, sure we don’t have cheap technology to fix things but what we do have is WILLPOWER. And willpower will take you a long way in solving problems. Gas running out is a common concern. Soon we will have enough solar panels and wind turbines and mass transportation is replace the single user model. We will work to get these things because we have no choice in the matter. Corporations are corrupt but people are catching on. Mitt Romney told us “Corporations are people” and a vast majority of people recognized he was lying and voted for the other guy. And most of all what I’ve noticed is that people can pull together and fight for the common good when they are motivated.
The biggest motivation we have had here at the Jersey Shore is Superstorm Sandy. Nothing like seeing boats smashed up, houses pushed off their foundations, trees crashing into utilities to make us sit up, organize and get things going again. And make no mistake, New Jersey will survive this mess and we are on a straight up learning curve. Stronger, smarter rebuilds, being more prepared for the next event (and make no mistake, ANOTHER STORM IS COMING) and organizing ourselves to get things done. Yes, there will be a lot of arguing and fighting about how to get things done but it means we are thinking, we are examining the solutions, testing things out and looking at what works for other states who experienced things like this before. So some may cry that life is not like it was before. Its not like 1950 or 1850 and it never will be. A lot of us are moving forward and you can go with us or you can be left behind. Onward & upward we go!!!!
we are examining the solutions, testing things out and looking at what works for other states who experienced things like this before. So some may cry that life is not like it was before. Its not like 1950 or 1850 and it never will be. A lot of us are moving forward and you can go with us or you can be left behind. Onward & upward we go!!!!
Wow! A real life reporting based on real life disaster that disproves the doomster theory that when TSHTF social chaos will reign.
Thanks! A most refreshing reality-based post!
You do know you are inviting charges of “cornucopian” on this non-reality-based blog?
I think Geography of Nowhere is JHK’s best book. He is excellent discissing matters where he has done intensive research, as for instance, architecture and land use.
I am reluctantly wondering if Kunstler has not more recently joined the ranks of writers and pundits who can no longer be trusted.
Don’t waste your tears. They, the whole pack of serially-sort-of-monogamous
boomer males brought their present circumstances on themselves. It was their own fault, no one elses, that they couldn’t manage to build lasting marriages or partnerships with good women (or other men), there might be a perfect #10 just around the next corner!
And the other guy also says “Corporations are people” and serves them better than Mitt ever could have, and he’s got the Blacks fooled into thinking he’s one of them. The vast majority of people don’t believe the other guy either when you consider all those who didn’t vote for Obama who voted, and all those who didn’t vote at all because they either don’t care, or because they didn’t like either choice and didn’t believe either liar.
“We are bugs, actually proportionally something almost infintesimally smaller than this. Compared to the vast scale of what’s out there, our existences really are small and rather inconsequential.
“And most people just cannot deal with it. They want at least humanity to have some kind of special importance, if not their own lives. Yet the universe does not conform to our petty and arrogant wishes to be at the center of all things.”
As Humankind continues to look “out there” for answers, for knowledge, it keeps coming up with something else that makes the previous answer held less meaningful. For some individuals, this experience motivates them to take their search inward moving beyond time and space. One discovery is the the present moment, NOW, stretches far beyond the limits of the past and the future, which only ever have existence NOW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TxW1yKoDM
VIOLENT DEATH RATES PER 100,000
6.1 .. USA
1.0 .. Kuwait
1.0 .. Saudi Arabia
1.5 .. Egypt
1.7 .. Indonesia
1.0 .. UAE
Looks like some Muslim nations are a bit more peaceful than the judeo-christian USA. Strange, since Islam is considered by some to be violent.
Some will say: but they have small populations or they are wealthy. (Good on Islam!) Population and wealth should not have any bearing since these people are Muslims (eeeeek!) and are obviously under control of Islam (eeeek!), and we know the Qu’ran says to chop off fingers and heads (eeeeek!). Turkleton told us so.
Still waiting for hard data from Turkleton so we can calculate percentages and know just exactly how violent Islam is.
Apparently not as violent as the USA in the case of some Muslim countries. But Muslim is Muslim. Shouldn’t they all be chopping off heads? Shouldn’t we hate them all and call them names and disparage their religious practice?
Well, we finally got rid of Cable TV. I felt like a goddam fool paying for something we got for free all those years. I remember one of the early draws of cable was that it was practically commercial free. Not any more. So I hooked up a small antenna, get about 15 channels over air. Good enough!
So I’ve been reading extensively about the WAR of 1812 this being the 200th anniversary and all. Odd, many of the political arguments of that era are still heard today, ‘specially when it come to war and peace, and America’s role in the world. President Madison was hammered by the Libs of the day (in New England, where else?) for bringing the United States into an unnecessary and costly war, same as what was said about President Bush. Matters weren’t helped when the British showed up in Washington DC and burned the place down, including the new Capitol and all the other Public Buildings. People were appalled, kind of like when the Twin Towers came down.
Hey Jim, this suburban sprawl you write about is all people know. Its what they feel comfortable in. It defines normality. When it begins to erode — and it already is — its going to come as a shock to everybody.
–WSP7
CORRECTION
Population and wealth should not have any bearing since WE ARE COMPARING RATES PER 100,000.
These people are Muslims (eeeeek!) and are obviously under control of Islam (eeeek!), and we know the Qu’ran says to chop off fingers and heads (eeeeek!). Turkleton told us so.
[sarcasm on]
Let’s continue to spread hate and stereotypes about Muslims that are not based on hard data. Ignore the Violent Death Rates Per 100,000 data. [sarcasm off]
Congratulations!
I did this years ago.
Out in the middle of nowhere I only get four channels. And guess what? Four is plenty.
I hardly watch TV anymore anyway since I spend every waking moment on CFN trying to share peer-reviewed data against the rising tide of anecdotes, stereotypes, and hatred against Muslims.
The USA was built by the descendents of European peasantry, along with, to be sure, working people from every corner of the globe,
the point being, that, contrary to popular fantasy, the USA was not built by the highly educated and credentialed. Men like Jefferson created a system in which farmers and workers could flourish.
As the working class philosopher Eric Hoffer said, America represented an opportunity for working men a nd women to show what they could do unencumbered by feudal restrictions. The relative egalitarianism of American life, outside the Confederacy, is what made American prosperity possible. This a historical truth which well educated foreigners, like yourself, simply do not want to understand.
I grew up in the Far West, and I can tell you that we did not have any good opinion of southerners. Not at all. I remember my mother’s sneers, usually while she was in the middle of sewing, cooking from scratch, gardening and canning, about “Southern ladies”. We saw white southerners as lazy parasites, living off the labor of others. That sort of society is what “hierarchy” gets you.
The area which was the old Confederacy was blessed with a warm climate, no winter to speak of, long seacoast with many sheltered harbors, fertile soil and abundant natural resources, such as timber and no shortage of water, How a region so blessed managed to have for decades the lowest per capita income in all the then 48 states, not excluding landlocked Wyoming with its 4-5 month growing season, is beyond me.
Still waiting for hard data from Turkleton on contemporary finger chopping, so we can calculate percentages and know just exactly how violent Islam is.
There are 1.5 Billion Muslims. That’s a lot of fingers to chop! In fact, I imagine the streets are littered with bloodly fingers.
Turkleton, I trust you knew what you were talking about and we can finally nail these violent Muslims with scientifically-based finger chopping data.
I know you don’t want to be spreading false information about Muslims.
Would you read ‘The Dark Side of Man’?
It will illumine the connection from DNA to ‘religion’ [in ”, no Cap].
And:
‘I have noticed that in almost every video involving young Muslims in combat, they are constantly shouting “Allahu akbar” to the point that it is comical.’
And when males in USA shoot / kill and shout
‘Allahu Akbar’, the news scrubs it!!!!
Mike, Section 8, etc did not happen by accident!
Giving Illegals low interest home loans is intentional.
There is a bigger agenda at work.
Dear Angie, I understand you mean well and are on the right side, but my first reaction to your post and quote was…always it has to be about joining. People who have been abused, humiliated and insulted for 40-50 years in the modern workplace, school system, and for some, legal system, want TO BE LEFT ALONE.
Using myself as an example, I already do things like have a big garden and share both plants and produce with others, but I am not coming to your meetings and risk further hurt and humiliation, not to mention being yet again the round peg pounded into a square hole by some overbearing person.
‘Community’ and ‘connection’ are wonderful buzzwords, but in practice they have to include respect for the privacy and feelings of others, including their emotional privacy. Furthermore, as a retired person keeping mostly to myself, I get to live the way I want. I don’t have to risk having, eg, gardening, taken away from me “for the greater good’, because some higher status person wants to have that role.
To Ripped Thunder
re your post last week
Exaggerated height or weight would be useful in a law enforcement function where “command presence” can defuse barrooms full of liquid courage. And size and raw strength are also helpful because a cop is supposed to make arrests without having to hurt the suspect all that much.
Different countries likely have different ideas as to what constitutes an ideal candidate for special forces. Maybe, as per Radu, the Russkis figure that middling height and weight correlate better with the ability to endure all the shitty things a special forces soldier has to go through.
Maybe in the US there are different views on this ie want to bet that the Spetnaz would be regarded as runts? Wouldn’t be all that surprised to find differing views also between different branches of the service ie seals vs rangers vs green berets etc.
I’ve heard that in this neck of the woods the special services are full of “difficult” men. I guess the idea being that “difficult” men have a greater chance of success and then getting back in one piece. Mind you this personality trait has its drawbacks.
Probably widely differing cultures too. I heard one account of a Brit SAS soldier on leave and on holiday in Brazil where he was set upon by three knife wielding assailants who were going to rob him and who knows what else. We’ll never know what else because he killed two of them. The third one got away. The local cops got on the scene, the Brit was taken into custody and after the usual investigative procedures that established he was acting in self defence (and no doubt after some jawboning by the UK foreign service) he was freed. Upon returning to jolly old he was treated to a wall-shaking dressing down by his commanding officer not because he killed two men but because he didn’t kill all three. Maybe there are commenters that know different but I somehow doubt that this would be the approach in any US elite unit.
Despite “the overposter’s” preening, pathetic (and frankly, irritating) attempts to become the commenter of last resort…
I applaud your gumption and sense of community in this regard!
(I’ll believe your fellow citizens have received the wake-up call and have actually learned something when they stop building status symbols to waste and foolishness on the edge of the ocean. I s’pose we could call it “Future McRubble”. Easy prohibition for that stupidity? Denial of insurance. All done, and we’ll no longer feel we have to “be sorry” for those who engage in blatantly idiotic behavior.)
Most excellent and funny post!
Thanks for the guffaws. :o)
Only one question remains (you’ve answered all the others): Are curses real?
;o)
Good questions.
Part of this 90 buck a barrel oil reflects of all this money printing by the Fed. But them Ay-rabs ain’t dumb, they know Ben is running the printing presses so they want more USD to compensate for USD debasement. Same with other countries producing oil.
A quick example that I promise won’t give a headache:
On Dec 3, 2002 the exchange rate USD to Swiss Franc was 1.473.
As of today it is .925.
What does this mean?
I figure it means that in 2002 when the price of a barrel of oil was 23 USD it would have cost the Swiss about 34 Swiss Francs to get a barrel.
What it also means is that today when the price of a barrel is 90 USD it costs the Swiss about 83 Swiss Francs to get a barrel.
So the price of oil in Swiss Francs would have gone up about 2.4 times since 2002.
To murkins paying in USD it has gone up almost 4 times.
Would you rather be paying 2.5 times what you paid in 2002 ie 58 USD?
Or 4 times what you paid in 2002 ie 90 USD like you are now?
This disparity is the reason that other countries that managed their central banks better and their govt finances better are having an easier go wrt the increase in the price of oil.
The point is that national monetary policies matter. So do fiscal policies. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. But most govts are seriously fucking up their finances and most central banks are wedded to the idea of money creation as the solution to economic woes.
And so the countries that have central banks that are perceived as not as heinous will have currencies that retain more of their purchasing power.
The other point is that there was an increase in the world price of oil regardless of the currency you use ie whether you suffer a 2.5 times increase or a 4 times increase.
Whether you are talking 2.5 or 4 times, these are not small price increases, these are bloody huge increases.
On the one hand offshoring to China drained purchasing power from the US economy and on the other you suffered a whacking huge increase in the cost of a major input into the economy. So the American economy got sandbagged? Big surprise.
So this business about depleting supplies of cheap, easy to get at oil cannot be all smoke and mirrors especially since the Chinese stuck their straws into the ground and started sucking up oil too.
New Jersey will survive this mess and we are on a straight up learning curve.
===============
I have explained about learning curves numerous times but apparently neither you nor one in a hundred has yet to grasp the concept. I will not bother the readership here with yet another explanation but I do request that YOU explain in prose exactly what you mean by the words “straight up learning curve.” Feel free to include discussion of graph plot points, x axis and y axis, etc. I will guarantee that your concept of a learning curve is precisely ass-backwards. If you cannot be bothered with this assignment I’ve given you at least in the future refrain from using any reference to learning curves in your writings.
P.S. As a resident of New Jersey, I welcome your optimism about the post-Sandy rebuilding process.
I certainly empathize with your viewpoint.
Regarding hierarchies (and they always appear, in one form or another):
They must remain flexible and ebb and flow, according to circumstance and immediate need. If they become rigid and entrenched, the scum always rise to the top. We’ve seen this film many times, but tend to think if we just tweak the script a bit that the outcome will be wonderfully different. Organically arranged and adaptively executed, or doomed to fail, is my simplistic, dualist, off-the-top-o’-the-noggin take on the very basics.
He is excellent discissing matters where he has done intensive research,
===============
A far better adjective here would be extensive.
Note, I’m letting you slide on the typo, discissing.
Kyoo,
Perhaps he/she is implying that the learning is (and is going to be) very fast and insightful, rather than long-term and a hard slog. In such case, the image would be apt.
I get your objection to the “usual” concept of a steep learning curve indicating “difficulty”.
Maybe an example of its’ opposite would better explain it.
Timeline juxtaposed with knowledge absorption. The longer it takes and the less knowledge absorbed, the flatter the curve.
(That should muddy things up perfectly! ;o)
Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) is what I’m running now and updates happen only when I want.
Kewl! Thanks for the suggestion, and yes, I DO retain a few Quetzals from years back, as I’ve always brought back currencies-du-jour as keepsakes. (A bunch of them have gone extinct, unfortunately; some beautiful artwork and renderings.) Colorful name for a version of an O.S.
Ubuntu, eh? The littlest of laddies in the very tightest of lederhosen will object to it just because of the sound of the name! ;o)
How many of one and a half billion Muslims have had their fingers, or even one finger, chopped off.
===============
Based on stastistical sampling, The Center for Islamic Digit Studies estimates the average Muslim above the age of 11 possesses 9.3 fingers. When carpenters are removed from the data the average number of fingers improves to 9.4. Of the average .6 missing digits 98.7% are said to be the result of Quran (8:12) punishment and 1.3% miscellaneous.
Ubuntu, eh?
============
I believe this word came up on this blog a couple of years ago and I said at the time that it sounded like a particularly nasty STD as in “Wow, I picked up a dose of Ubuntu from a chick down in the projects that damn near killed me.”
And now for another edition of Things That Make You Want To Barf.
Socio-media-ology
You have found a soul mate “liberal” hater.
Just heard the other day that Southern New Jersey was for the Confederacy. Do you have more information?
Perhaps this is where the legend of the Jersey Devil stems from. Nasta is putting on her hunting gear and waders.
White Nationalism is a persistent “problem” in the Special Forces. Difficult personalities translates to Free Thinkers. Warriors are their own men after all, as opposed to grunts and the typical career soldier even if a general.
Smaller men are stronger per pound. And the little yellow man can do an amazing amount of work on a bowl of rice and tofu. Read Emerson’s essay “Compensation”.
” in a narcissistic vapor-realm of canned entertainment, pornography, texting (i.e. melodrama created to fill a void of purposelessness), and the sado-masochistic combats of video games (a substitute for purposeful, virile endeavor)”
Jim, you nailed it here. Pure gold.
Also, what do we expect when we have 33 energy slaves working for us?
The reality is that more of those 33 energy slaves are working for themselves, just to keep fed (lower EROEI energy resources coming on-line while the almost free resources going off-line).
If you travel to undeveloped and developing countries you will see that a purposeful life still is the norm. They live on the edge of existence, not on how many TVs they should buy.
It is strange that I find this much more interesting and the way life should be. I get so bored hearing about petty conversations on what luxury shoe labels are more in fashion.
Humans of the future, that are in balance with nature and have figured out just how important it is to be good stewards of Earth, will be quite lucky indeed.
Indeed, and ass sniffing, the predecessor to the handshake, will be back en vogue.
Now you sound like Kunstler with your hatred of the South. What ugly people you people are!
America was founded by Whites for Whites. We needed to conquer the Indians and we did. Anyone who has a problem with that should leave otherwise they’re in the state of hypocrisy or bad faith. How can one enjoy the fruits of the conquest and be against the conquest? Bad faith.
There has been a war in America since the begining between the Elites – some favoring Plutocracy and accord with England and others wanting an “Aristocracy of Merit” as Jefferson put it. Generally speaking, Jefferson and the South were on the side of Freedom. Believe it or not, Robert E Lee was for freeing the slaves as were many others.
President Andrew Jackson pushed the Plutocrats back but at the cost of empowering the Mob. That’s no answer since the Plutocrats can easily control the Mob. The real answer was an Agricultural Elite as the Old South proposed. Machinery would have also speeded up the end of slavery and the departure of the Negro away from America.
Think of Whites as an endangered species if you need a REASON to save ourselves. But healthy organisms naturaly love themselves and their own kind and don’t need reasons….
When President Clinton announced at Portland State that Whites would be a minority by 2050, the White Crowd roared with joy. Don’t you find that a bit strange to say the least? Can you imagine a Chinese, Black, or South Asian crowd joyously celebrating their own demise?
America is a changing country? No, it’s been changed on purpose. And we demand to know why. And not only America, but every White Nation is being “changed”. It’s madness and evil.
The large majority of divorces are brought by women. They love the idea of “cashing out” and taking all they can get. Divorce should be possible but it shouldn’t involve money except for child support from either partner. The partner who divorces should not get the children in general since they broke the contract.
The answer to yr first question is ‘NO’! [with !]
Factor in indoctrination.
Who but the Smart [De-programmed] would have booed the Bastard?
She doesn’t even want us to have an enclave much less a State or Nation. Amazing the extent of White self hatred, eh?
You have to be willing to look at and discuss the Old South, Prog. Their ideas are key to our survival now.
Right. This from the guy who wants more Hispanic gangbangers in America. As Lenin said, worse is better. The Communist wants collapse to bring on the Revolution.
asoka, you said Islam is a religion of peace, and all I’m arguing is that if you go by their holy book, this definitely comes into question. When there are explicit, unqualified passages about mutilating unbelievers in terrible ways, these claims start to appear somewhat ludicrous.
Now how this translates into crime rates by country is a different matter. The Koran, in any case, calls for jihad against unbelievers, not generally against other Muslims. This book is quite explicit in stating that Muslims should not kill other Muslims, so perhaps this translates into low murder rates between them in their own countries. The violence tends to be externalized against other groups, i.e. Pakistan vs India, etc. This is the type of violence that the Koran advocates for, after all.
I notice that you didn’t include the murder rates for Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, three nearly 100% Muslim countries. Hmmm, methinks that might be interesting…
Furthermore, was I defending the US or its high murder rates? Nope.
Vlad Kraps in his new incarnation as marriage counselor.
“with your hatred of the South”
Do you REALLY want to get into a discussion about the hatred of certain groups? Cuz I can see right into your glass house.
Vlad, why does being a minority constitute demise? That’s a strange, binary way to look at things. We’re not talking about extermination here, just not being > 50% of the population, k?
I like your humors, sir. Well played.
If you’re curious…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28philosophy%29
You also failed to mention the murder rate in Syria, another high majority Muslim country. Lies by omission, I tell you whut.
Prior to Fort Sumter, there were individual secession movements in what were called the “middle states”, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. New Jersey had the largest secession movement of this group.
Just heard the other day that Southern New Jersey was for the Confederacy.
=============
I was born in Camden, NJ and raised in the adjacent town of Collingswood, NJ. In my day there was zero sign that south Jersey’s sentiments supported the Confederacy but as I have absorbed more history and looked more carefully at the map I conclude that what you heard may have indeed been possible.
First of all there were a number of “border states” that tried to stay above the fray. Sentiments in these states were decidedly mixed. One such was Delaware. Wilmington, Del, to name a prominent city in that state, is a mere 30 miles as the crow flies from where I lived. There are parts of south Jersey less than 5 miles from Wilmington.
There were 36 states at the time the 13th Amendment was ratified. Passage required 75% or 27 states. NJ and Del initially rejected the Amendment. Much later they passed it. NJ was the 32 state to agree and Del was 34th. So, yeah, a case could be made that NJ was dragged kicking and screaming into support of the 13th Amendment.
,i>Ubuntu, eh? The littlest of laddies in the very tightest of lederhosen will object to it just because of the sound of the name!
I found a video clip of Nelson Mandela pronouncing it. It was most informative and quite clear.
oo-boon-too
It is not pronounced exactly as written.
This duplicates previous post with correction. Sorry
Your schtick is transparently obvious. Not even a nice try. Not too difficult to figure out. SPLC handling both sides of the coin. How Machiavellian.
So how long have you been a member of the Communist Party, Collapse Watch? /sarcasm
LOL! Although, a strong argument can be made that Corporations are very much like the Communist Party. A small elite at the top living the high-life whilst the sycophantic technocrats and peasants do their bidding. In that sense, many more are members and don’t even realize it. It appears Radu Voda wants the same thing, just all white. Why not all nude? Why all white?
I would love to see some of my favorite CFN writers return to the comments section:
Bubbleheadmark
Bustin J
Orionoir
LewisLucanBooks
And I’d like to hear more from some others who for what ever reason are posting very infrequently if at all:
SJMom
JackieBlue
AMR (I’ve been reading your blog…terrific stuff)
XXX5
Buck Stud
Dale
and, hell, even those radical lefties:
Hancock
WageLaborer
And whatever happened to SEB..I hope he didn’t croak. Now there was a mind worthy of the psychiatric text books.
I grew up in the National Park Service, which at that time (50s through 70s) was a community of interlinked families, most of which had direct experience with World War II. By the 1980s, if ever I returned to that venue, talk of families and past and tradition was totally lost, for which reason I find the continual indictment of Marxists to be a touch vacuous. Something important has been lost in America, and the theft was not finessed by Marxists — they just drove the getaway car. To quote Eric Hoffer in First Things, Last Things: “Affluence is a greater threat to social stability than poverty.”
If there is to be a conservatism of any kind — or, at last, a counterbalance to Marxism and the like — tradition must be discovered, and practiced.
I suppose that means turning off the tv and bringing back conversation?
I dunno. Thanks for the great post.
Israel doesn’t allow itself to be kidded by the lush idealism that hatched within the affluence of late 20th Century, Western “developed” nations. Reckoning more realistically against such self aggrandized and upbeat bourgeois assurances, Israel’s policies are acknowledgements of the looming catastrophe of global overpopulation. Acceptance of that certainty is the basis for Israel’s build up of nukes and delivery means for reaching targets anywhere in the world.
Israel aims go beyond simple survival on marginal terms, and why not? Adhering to the grim calculus Israel recognizes that no self abnegation, no matter how grandiose as gesture, will significantly affect overall outcome. To the contrary, such gestures might only postpone — thus make worse — the inevitable.
Guided by that recognition Israel will continue with the nuclear option leverage to sustain share of global resources proportionate enough to maintain its population’s current, First World standard of living. That is to say, it will not forfeit its privileged position on behalf of the Palestinians or anyone else.
Unfortunately for us citizens of these not-so-United States, we’ve allowed our destiny in face of this disaster to be guided by idealistic optimisms held as fervently and as intractably as any religious dogma, and just as obtuse to reality.
Contrasting the US’s situation to that of Israel, we can still feasibly be self sustaining. Israel though couldn’t support even 5% of its current population on native resources. All the US needs do is isolate itself by closing its borders and stabilize its population. Israel must continue to leverage outside resources,….and will! The US though will probably continue on as it has; a state of idealistic stupor causing it to behave as though American exceptionalism was a natural fact outweighing the global population/resource ratio. Accordingly, it staggers into the future drunk on idealistic belief that by unrestricted immigration, free market economics and foreign aid it can not just accommodate eight billion people, but all enjoying 1970s American middle class standards and with harmony among all groups (all, of course, retaining their celebrated diversity).
This so, so PC vision reminds me of those Sunday school pamphlets that pictured Jesus surrounded by lambs and lions at peace with one another and rosy cheeked children beaming up at the Lord’s gentle face.
A small elite at the top living the high-life whilst sycophantic technocrats do their bidding and kiss the asses. So long as sycophants snap to without question good standing is retained. But question authority or even be a little odd and one joins the ranks of the dispossessed. One phone call is all it takes.
You watch well Collapse Watch.
And the dead eyes of the machine makes the players dance.
Hell yeah, let’s bring back some of that tradition. How about this one?
Hi Nasturana
Like you, I’m not into community activity – much preferring to go about building what family resilience I can at home. But, if we accept that the impending collapses of economy and environment are going to leave us vulnerable to shortages in even basic provisions, and that there are critical limits to self sufficiency, we need to organise localised provision.
Ironically, as being discussed at Leaving Babylon presently, introverts have the mental space to identify problems and solutions, but probably need extroverts to co-ordinate action, if we can get them to listen! (All simplified generalizations acknowledged here, of course).
Leavergirl attributes our present circumstances to the historical hegemony of extroverts, so we face a dilemma indeed.
I’m sorry that you’ve been bullied. Console yourself with the knowledge that it indicates you probably have a big heart and personal integrity. And please join the conversation over at LB. Vera is onto something fundamental!
http://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/introvert-liberation/
Introvert/Extrovert is just another way of saying Male/Female, Black/White, Conservative/Liberal, Adult/Child. It’s too simplistic and binary. Psychopaths are neither and both, whatever combination the situation requires.
A few things from the net copied to express the primacy question of material versus mental:
Materialism is the idea that everything is either made only of matter or is ultimately dependent upon matter for its existence and nature.
The Dhammapada, the Buddha declares that “All phenomena are preceded by mind, made by mind, and ruled by mind”.
Such a view, though widespread in many metaphysical systems, is completely foreign to the current scientific worldview. The world we see is so obviously material in nature; any suggestion that it might have more in common with mind is quickly rejected as having “no basis in reality”.
–Peter Russel, Spirit of Now website
This aspect of consciousness can be likened to the light from a film projector. The projector shines light onto a screen, modifying the light so as to produce one of an infinity of possible images. These images are like the perceptions, sensations, dreams, memories, thoughts, and feelings that we experience—the forms arising in consciousness. The light itself, without which no images would be possible, corresponds to this ability of consciousness to take on form.
We know all the images on a movie screen are composed of light, but we are not usually aware of the light itself; our attention is caught up in the images that appear and the stories they tell. In much the same way, we know we are conscious, but we are usually aware only of the many different perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that appear in the mind. We are seldom aware of consciousness itself.
–Peter Russel, Spirit of Now website
That is good stuff there Angie.
‘The heavy hooves of the extrovert herd’
I like it.
Here’s one for the blasphemers and infidels from Fred:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33211.htm
I would not recommend this one to those of a Christo-fascist bent. (And I know of one who at least pretends to be just that.)
Ewwwww! Unclean!
Maybe are worries are for naught, as do what we may, Mother Nature, Herself “rules the day.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zMIynyRPnM&list=HL1354601717&feature=mh_lolz
‘Nother one:
When the grizzly bear attacks the campsite, you need not be the fastest camper to escape, you just need to be faster than the slowest camper.
(And thanks for the lederhosen link. I’m a bit crestfallen that they don’t stock knee-socks imprinted with swastikas, or even a little totenkopf pin for your Oktoberfest hat! :o( Oh well, whoever said life was fair and everybody gets a pony, eh?)
Fred at home.
I saw a Rick Steves segment in which he had a pair of lederhosen made for him in Bavaria. Real lederhosen are handmade and lined with deerskin. They are always worn commando. One owner per pair.
When the bear is in the camp I shall be running dog.
“About sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of the unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. About seventy-five percent of Muhammad’s biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers.”
Dr. Moorthy Muthuswamy
From the Hadith
Bukhari (52:177) – Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”
Bukhari (52:256) – The Prophet… was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, “They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans).” In this command, Muhammad establishes that it is permissible to kill non-combatants in the process of killing a perceived enemy. This provides justification for the many Islamic terror bombings.
Bukhari (52:220) – Allah’s Apostle said… ‘I have been made victorious with terror’
Abu Dawud (14:2526) – The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Three things are the roots of faith: to refrain from (killing) a person who utters, “There is no god but Allah” and not to declare him unbeliever whatever sin he commits, and not to excommunicate him from Islam for his any action; and jihad will be performed continuously since the day Allah sent me as a prophet until the day the last member of my community will fight with the Dajjal (Antichrist)
Abu Dawud (14:2527) – The Prophet said: Striving in the path of Allah (jihad) is incumbent on you along with every ruler, whether he is pious or impious
Muslim (1:33) – the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah
Bukhari (8:387) – Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’. And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally.”
Muslim (1:30) – “The Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah.”
Bukhari (11:626) – [Muhammad said:] “I decided to order a man to lead the prayer and then take a flame to burn all those, who had not left their houses for the prayer, burning them alive inside their homes.”
Muslim (1:149) – “Abu Dharr reported: I said: Messenger of Allah, which of the deeds is the best? He (the Holy Prophet) replied: Belief in Allah and Jihad in His cause…”
Muslim (20:4645) – “…He (the Messenger of Allah) did that and said: There is another act which elevates the position of a man in Paradise to a grade one hundred (higher), and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth. He (Abu Sa’id) said: What is that act? He replied: Jihad in the way of Allah! Jihad in the way of Allah!”
Ah the religion of peace!
Since 9/11 there have been over 20,000 recorded acts of Islamic terrorism.
Of course that does not include the delights of : honour killings, acid attacks on women, the …… Well you get the idea. If I listed them all we would be here for a month.
There are peaceful Muslims but Islam is not a religion of peace.
Of course when beating your wife or children to death is considered acceptable if done according to Islamic principles, it will skew the statistics by quite a bit. Because Asoka believes that such societies are as good as or better than the west, then such inconsistencies can be safely ignored or better still encouraged. It does make me fear for the safety of mrs Asoka.
Why… that reminds me of a song (surprisingly enough).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA
BTW, just watched a pretty good NOVA on Sandy, and I have to ask: “What the hell happened to people’s common sense fer goo’ness sakes??” (Wait til you get a load of the testimony of Shiteequa, or whatever her made-up name is… And the lady who tried to drive out when the water was halfway up the damn car… And the two that “sheltered” in the cellar with a storm surge coming in! Head-shaking but sad.)
http://video.pbs.org/video/2305482040
You weren’t monitoring. Don’t you know I drove the Dale Beast off this site? He contacted the SPLC once I proved to him that Mr Kunstler thought that Blacks were causing alot of problems.
Can’t you see the incredible hatred being unleashed against Whites – and the pressure to miscegnenate? And again, why all countries – incuding those with high unemployment and those with no colonial history? No, it’s more than any rational reason. It’s a deep war being waged by exploiting White Guilt – and creating and sustaining it where there is no reason for it.
Sweden? What do they have to be guilty for? Yet they are the front of the White Guilt movement.
So yeah –
We’ve got another Resident Impediment who has a bug-out ranch in South America. (Argentina, in this case.)
And this RI moves on a national level.
And speaks of Moral Platitudes and
growth, Growth, GROWTH – in a single sentence.
“Not only do immigrants help build our economy, they help invigorate our soul,”
-bush, the lessor-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/george-w-bush-immigration_n_2237513.html
Comments on HuffPost are interesting, and –
Hugely in favor of reduction of immigration.
LaRaza and ACLU trolls are slow on HuffPost tonight for some reason. Give ’em time.
That’s not good, K-dog.
Here’s one sentence I extracted that summarizes the situation for me:
“Peter Cappelli, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, contends a labor shortage is a self-created problem by employers who won’t make the investment needed to attract talent.
“What companies like Microsoft seem to want is employees with quite specific skills who don’t need any training and ramp-up time,” Cappelli said. “If you scour the world, you can find enough without having to train here” and paying higher wages.”
-k-dog’s link-
Capitalism (Microsoft, in this case) is all about maximizing capital and profit. They don’t get paid to care for the “Nation,” and they actively seek to diminish their workers.
LaRaza, the ACLU and the rest also speak for the immigrants – legal AND illegal.
Who speaks for the best interests of the Native Born citizens of the United States – be they red/yellow/black/white?????
Small organizations, reviled by extremists as Racist Hate Groups – like NumbersUSA.
Join NumbersUSA folks –
We can do the right thing.
The introvert/extrovert thing is pretty interesting.
And yeah, introverts always held the extroverts somewhat in check – in ancient societies, and right up until the invention of the printing press/radio/TV/whatever.
NOW, before God (god?) with the widespread adaptation of the internet, in might be that the introverts might be able to get back some of the initiative for the fate of humanity. Maybe?
So, Angie, shouldn’t introverts logically be in favor of a lower growth rate for the United State’s population – due to reduced immigration?
Seems logical to me. 😉
You weren’t monitoring.
=============
Yeah, I was monitoring but I figured it would all blow over.
OK – Just to drive you a little crazy(er?), Vlad.
“Perhaps not so coincidentally, over the course of Obama’s first term, what started as a fringe dude subculture has flourished into a thriving online community—the self-described “Manosphere,” a safe haven/echo chamber for men who feel discriminated against, ignored, and blamed. Potentially false rape charges and “unfair” child support payments deserve equal* or greater outrage, they say, alongside actual rapes and centuries of systemic, enforced poverty.”
http://jezebel.com/5965429/oh-god-please-dont-let-white-male-victimhood-be-the-next-big-social-movement
And to drive K/Q crazy(er) with the idea that a middle age male reads Jezebel. ;0) hahohe!
===============
*equal? This emphasis is mine. A false rape charge is a hideous life changer and career ender for a male. This author is wrong – to the point of evil – to suggest that it is not.
But, then, charges of racism can be hideous career enders – and they happen quite routinely in today’s America, and on today’s CFN.
You would know. You answered the phone.
Here’s one of the best introverts of all time. What’s not to like about Carl and his Sling/Kaiser Blade? I wonder if Carl is Muslim?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL6QJSdqlt0
INtensive is what I intended to write, as in, getting INside a subject. I think JHK did a lot more than simply read EXtensively about architecture, land use and town planning.
INtensive is what I intended to write
==========
OK, if you say so.
I intentionally left out countries where Western Christians had armed insurgencies, like the Mujahedin, trained armies, covertly provided arms to foment violence, invaded, bombed, tortured to death, etc.
I did not think it fair to attribute such Christian violence to Muslims. Omission, yes. Lies, no.
Too many Christians skewing the violence statistics through their meddling in some Muslim countries. That you do not understand that, does not speak highly of your scientific mind.
You are too eager to call Muslims violent and cite ancient scriptures. But you provide no scientifically gathered data to substantiate your bias.
that s rich indeed, you bloviating jackass! you talk about skewing statistics…! just because christians have caused a ruckus or six doesn t mean muslims are peaceful…i mean, i dunno if you ve noticed, but they think they ve been instructed to kill everyone who doesn t proclaim themselves to be muslim- quite a recruiting ploy, btw, huh? Last I checked, the teachings of christ pretty much boil down to ‘take care of each other’ NOT ‘boil the other’!!! fuck OFF with your alahu akbar buddy- i might not agree with religion, but i know who i want for a neighbor if he just has to have one!
…sort of on topic: i ve been dragged (figuratively, shaddap) to a whalemart recently and it was deader than i ve ever seen one…and worked a couple of days at a Goodwill outlet; they were rockin’ all day…apparently folks still feel a need to shop, but the paradigm has shifted ever so slightly south, as it were…i can tell you from the ground that things is gettin’ desperate out here amongst the natives…whoo boy, i wouldn t want to be a percenter when this pressure cooker blows!
i mean, i dunno if you ve noticed, but they think they ve been instructed to kill everyone who doesn t proclaim themselves to be muslim…
Who instructed them? Where do you get this kind of ignorant stuff?
There are 1.5 BILLION Muslims. If they were out to kill everyone, the world’s population would be reduced to under 1 BILLION.
You are just spreading uninformed hate.
Oh, never mind, I think I found the source of your ideas, because I don’t think you have any actual Muslim friends.
They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs.
You, and Turk, and the Christian Right make a good team for hate mongering and spreading stereotypes.
So, Treeman, you are concerned about violence against women? Are you concerned about violence against women in the good ‘ole “Christian” USA?
Fact #1: 18.3 % of women in the United States have survived a completed or attempted rape. Of these, 12.3% were younger than age 12 when they were first raped, and 29.9% were between the ages of 11 and 17. (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010)
Fact #2: 22 million women in the United States have been raped in their lifetime. 63.84% of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date. (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010)
Fact #3: Less than half of domestic violence incidents are reported to police. African-American women are more likely than others to report their victimization to police Lawrence A. Greenfeld et al. (1998). (Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends. Bureau of Justice Statistics Factbook. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice. NCJ #167237. Available from National Criminal Justice Reference Service.)
Fact #4: The FBI estimates that only 37% of all rapes are reported to the police. U.S. Justice Department statistics are even lower, with only 26% of all rapes or attempted rapes being reported to law enforcement officials.
Fact #5: Almost one-third of female homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner. (FBI, Uniform Crime Reports 2001)
Fact #6: The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study estimated that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 college women experience completed or attempted rape during their college years (Fisher 2000).
Fact #7: Men perpetrate the majority of violent acts against women (DeLahunta 1997).
Fact #8: Every two minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) calculation based on 2000 National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice)
Fact #9: One out of every five American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010)
Fact #10: Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. 15 out of 16 will walk free. (Probability statistics based on US Department of Justice Statistics)
Fact #11: Almost 10% of high school students are victims of dating violence each year. (Youth Risk Behavior Survellience 2009).
Fact #12: Sexual violence and gender based violence is associated with a host of short- and long-term problems, including physical injury and illness, psychological symptoms, economic costs, and death (Lifetime Prevalence of Gender-Based Violence in Women and the Relationship with Mental Disorders and Psychosocial Function, Journal of American Medical Association 2011).
Fact #13: Rape victims often experience anxiety, guilt, nervousness, phobias, substance abuse, sleep disturbances, depression, alienation, sexual dysfunction, and aggression. They often distrust others and replay the assault in their minds, and they are at increased risk of future victimization (DeLahunta 1997).
Fact #14: According to the 2010 National Crime Victimization Survey, more than 20,000 rapes or sexual assaults occurred in 2010; 169,370 of them occurred among females and 15,020, among males (Department of Justice 2010).
Fact #15: Sexual violence victims exhibit a variety of psychological symptoms that are similar to those of victims of other types of trauma, such as war and natural disaster (National Research Council 1996). A number of long-lasting symptoms and illnesses have been associated with sexual victimization including chronic pelvic pain; premenstrual syndrome; gastrointestinal disorders; and a variety of chronic pain disorders, including headache, back pain, and facial pain (Koss 1992).Between 4% and 30% of rape victims contract sexually transmitted diseases as a result of the victimization (Resnick 1997).
Fact #16: Most female victims are raped before the age of 25, and almost half of female victims are under the age of 18. (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010).
Fact #17: In 2006, 78,000 children were sexually abused. (Child Maltreatment 2006.) Because majority of cases are not reported, it is estimated that the real number could be anywhere from 260,000-650,000 a year. (Finklehor 2008).
Fact #18: About 67.9% of rape victims are white; 11.9% are black; 14% are hispanic and 6% are of other races. (National Crime Victimization Survey, Department of Justice 2010).
Fact #19: About half of all rape victims are in the lowest third of income distribution; half are in the upper two-thirds. (Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994.)
Fact #20: According to the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBSS), a national survey of high school students, 7.4% of students had been forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to. Female students (10.5%) were significantly more likely than male students (4.5%) to have been forced to have sexual intercourse. Overall, black students (12%) were significantly more likely than white students (10%) to have been forced to have sexual intercourse (CDC 2010).
Fact #21: Females ages 12 to 24 are at the greatest risk for experiencing a rape or sexual assault (DOJ 2001).
Fact #22: Almost two-thirds of all rapes are committed by someone who is known to the victim. 73% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger (— 48% of perpetrators were a friend or acquaintance of the victim, 17% were an intimate and 8% were another relative.) (National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010)
Fact #23: The costs of intimate partner violence against women exceed an estimated $5.8 billion. These costs include nearly $4.1 billion in the direct costs of medical care and mental health care and nearly $1.8 billion in the indirect costs of lost productivity and present value of lifetime earnings. (Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2003).
Fact #24: It is estimated that domestic violence occurs in approximately 25-33% of same-sex relationships. (NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, October 1996.) However, other studies have indicated that anywhere between 17% and 52% of same-sex relationships are abusive. (Relationship Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Communities 2005).
Fact #25: Boys who witness their fathers’ violence are 10 times more likely to engage in spouse abuse in later adulthood than boys from non-violent homes. (Family Violence Interventions for the Justice System, 1993)
Fact #26: An estimated 17,500 women and children are trafficked into the United States annually for sexual exploitation or forced labor. (U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2006).
Fact #27: Somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds. (UN Study On The Status of Women, Year 2000)
Fact #28: A University of Pennsylvania research study found that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to low-income, inner-city Philadelphia women between the ages of 15 to 44 – more common than automobile accidents, mugging and rapes combined. In this study domestic violence included injuries caused by street crime.
Fact #29: A study reported in the New York Times suggests that one in five adolescent girls become the victims of physical or sexual violence, or both, in a dating relationship. (New York Times, 8/01/01)
Stress on the first syllable. She is Voman, hear her roar.
Yes and what is the sentence of the false accusers? None. Zero. Nothing. The empty set.
They should have the same sentence as rapists. Woman are external, shame based – not guilt. They will not control themselves if no control is exerted. Are they all without real morality? No, not all. But most are definitely morally undeveloped but have a very keen sense of group approval and disapproval – and they greatly fear the latter.
I do feel Clusterfuck is a Mental Institution and I am the head Psychiatrist. Anti is also a doctor on staff. You are a recovering patient who has the run of the house. But you are deceptive, not nearly as well as you seem. You still have manic episodes where you will at the drop of pin, become a White Rodney King, raving “Can’t we all get along”. Or your other rant about being polite to the people who want to genocide us. I do appreciate the help you give around the hospital, but your release date is still not in the near future – but you have made great progress under my care. In fact, your playful attempt at role reversal here might be a sign of inreased identification with me. The next step is for you to unlock your past and tell us your feeling about the Old South. You have studiously ignored all attempts to go there heretofore.
Ozone is criminally insane, foaming at the mouth, screaming obscentities, and biting the bars – Miggs in other words. Asoka is Hannibal the Cannibal, a monster of evil.
The problem is that Christians often don’t live up to Christ’s teachings – and that Muslims often do live down to Mohammad’s social teachings.
He said many beautiful things too. There was a great rift in his Consciousness – and that became reflected in Islam Law and practice. Tragic since Sufism can’t be separated from its ugly family relations….
False accusation is common – as are false or feminst statistics. For Feminists are liars, as are Muslims and Marxists too.
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A man’s life often moves a different rate than external events. Thank the Gods that it wasn’t the other wasy – too fast for you to keep up with. It’s always like this: hurry up and wait. When it comes it will be like the bottom falling out of a full pail. But was it sudden? Every drop of water lead to it.
Exactly my point. Asoka will never understand because he does not want to understand.
The violence in Muslim countries is not only justified but mandated by their own prophet. It sanctions repression against minorities both by religion and by sex. Though in Sudan skin colour also plays a significant role as well.
Now can Asoka give examples of one western leading cleric or leader who advocates the use of violence against Muslims, women or gays. Because for every one I can give ten recognised Muslim leaders and mainstream clerics or imams that advocate violence against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddists, Women(of pretty much any religion) and gays.
We are not talking about random lunatics but mainstream figures. Islam is full of them.
We know we have violent wife beaters and rapists here, but we lock them up. We do not give them justification via the bible or any other book. Nor do we condone their actions.
We do not insist that a rape victim must have male witnesses for a prosecution to take place( as does at least one Muslim country) and we recognise that there can be rape within marriage. Under Islamic law once married consent is a given.
Asoka, we seem to have an anomaly here in UK. Your religion of peace would certainly not condone sexual abuse of children would it?
I mean the fact that 25% of pedophile sex rings are Muslims where they make up less than 4% of the population is surely not correct. As is the fact that ALL their victims are non Muslims and the majority of the victims White. Again pure fluke surely. More than 10% of the abusers are Imams who ,even to the police, have used the Koran in their defence. Again more coincidence.
Still considering the prophet took a six year old bride and consummated the marriage when she was nine, they do have a poor example to follow. Passages in the Koran that justify the rape of non believers don’t help either I suppose. But you know it is a religion of peace. Isn’t it?
Not exactly. The Beatitudes, for example, are platitudes that enshrine disempowerment and perpetuate victimhood. One’s reward for not resisting is deferred to the hereafter just like all those pensions and social security that will never be paid out.
The Failure of Christianity
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there. How can anything creative, anything vital, useful and beautiful come from the poor in spirit? The idea con- veyed in the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest indict- ment against the teachings of Christ, because it sees in the poverty of mind and body a virtue, and because it seeks to maintain this virtue by reward and punishment. Every intelligent being realizes that our worst curse is the poverty of the spirit; that it is productive of all evil and misery, of all the injustice and crimes in the world. Every one knows that nothing good ever came or can come of the poor in spirit; surely never liberty, justice, or equality.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
What a preposterous notion! What incentive to slavery, inactivity, and parasitism! Besides, it is not true that the meek can inherit anything. Just because humanity has been meek, the earth has been stolen from it.
Meekness has been the whip, which capitalism and gov- ernments have used to force man into dependency, into his slave position. The most faithful servants of the State, of wealth, of special privilege, could not preach a more con- venient gospel than did Christ, the “redeemer” of the people.
“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteous- ness, for they shall be filled.”
But did not Christ exclude the possibility of righteous- ness when he said, “The poor ye have always with you”? But, then, Christ was great on dicta, no matter if they were utterly opposed to each other. This is nowhere demon- strated so strikingly as in his command, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
The interpreters claim that Christ had to make these concessions to the powers of his time. If that be true, this single compromise was sufficient to prove, down to this very day, a most ruthless weapon in the hands of the oppressor, a fearful lash and relentless tax-gatherer, to the impoverish- ment, the enslavement, and degradation of the very people for whom Christ is supposed to have died. And when we are assured that “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled,” are we told the how? How? Christ never takes the trouble to explain that. Right- eousness does not come from the stars, nor because Christ willed it so. Righteousness grows out of liberty, of social and economic opportunity and equality. But how can the meek, the poor in spirit, ever establish such a state of affairs?
“Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”
The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder.
Good and bad, punishment and reward, sin and penance, heaven and hell, as the moving spirit of the Christ-gospel have been the stumbling-block in the world’s work. It con- tains everything in the way of orders and commands, but entirely lacks the very things we need most.
The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and indus- trial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity; certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.
How much more ennobling, how much more beneficial is the extreme individualism of Stirner and Nietzsche than the sick-room atmosphere of the Christian faith. If they repudi- ate altruism as an evil, it is because of the example con- tained in Christianity, which set a premium on parasitism and inertia, gave birth to all manner of social disorders that are to be cured with the preachment of love and sympathy.
Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.
“Think not that I come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”
Precisely. Christ was a reformer, ever ready to patch up, to fulfill, to carry on the old order of things; never to destroy and rebuild. That may account for the fellow- feeling all reformers have for him.
Indeed, the whole history of the State, Capitalism, and the Church proves that they have perpetuated themselves because of the idea “I come not to destroy the law.” This is the key to authority and oppression. Naturally so, for did not Christ praise poverty as a virtue; did he not propagate non-resistance to evil? Why should not poverty and evil continue to rule the world?
Much as I am opposed to every religion, much as I think them an imposition upon, and crime against, reason and progress, I yet feel that no other religion has done so much harm or has helped so much in the enslavement of man as the religion of Christ.
Not kill everyone….but surely convert everyone. It’s not tolerant. Religions, by their very nature, are not about tolerance. They’re about containing and controlling human behavior. Buddhism is no different. Of course, the Buddhists like to claim they’re not a religion. Bullshit! They don’t get off the hook that easily. They must own up to their sordid history as much as any other religious philosophy.
Tree man, I appreciate that you want to give top honors to Islam on pedofilia, but Muslims fall way behind Christianity, the Catholic Church and the efforts of individual Christians like that Penn State football coach when it comes to pedophilia and pornography.
No, not convert everyone either. The Quran specifically says there is no compulsion in religion. Funny how you all like to selectively quote the Quran.
Islam is a religion of peace. The Quran forbids compulsion in matters of religion. Christians go door to door trying to convert people. Have you ever been visited by Muslim missionaries? Did they threaten to chop your fingers off? Your head? LOL?
The level of ignorance and prejudice on CFN is off the charts.
Yeah! Especially Zen Buddhism! Saying things like “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”
How dogmatic! And those koans! The Buddhists intentionally try to drive you crazy. They are evil. /sarcasm off
On ClusterFuckNation as a Mental Institution –
That’s a very interesting analogy, Vlad.
I’ll try to elaborate on in tonight if I have time.
But, let me begin by saying that you are a patient, too. One of your kinks is that you like to play doctor, though. Some of your brothers used to be doctors, even.
Except most of your tools, techniques, and practices were declared invalid in the 1950’s.
And your license was revoked in 1964.
Sorry, man. Those are the blunt facts.
And now you are a patient here, too.
Trying to learn some new techniques and practices for a new age. It’s not an age you wanted to live in – yet here you are with the rest of us.
==================================
Meanwhile, JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER –
THE CHINESE SPAMMER IS AT IT AGAIN!!
HE IS BREAKING WINDOWS ALL OVER THE CFN MENTAL INSTITUTE!!
AND SETTING FIRES IN THE EMPTY ROOMS.
IT’S BAD FOR BUSINESS, MAN!!!
SOMEBODY CONTACT MANAGEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SOMEBODY EMAIL JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER AND TELL HIM TO GET RID OF THESE STUPID POSTS, AT MINIMUM!!!
ASOKA..THE PAROT
CHRISTIANS ARE WORSE!
BWAAACK!!
CHRISTIANS ARE WORSE!
GET A NEW STHICK (SP?)
YOUR OLD ONE IS WORN OUT, HERE!!
I CAN’T QUIT SHOUTING, EITHER.
but I feel a little better, now.
Nice Jack Kerouac quote, Whitehunter. ‘Dharma Bums’ is not one of my favorites, but it certainly gives a nice portrait of Gary Snyder in the 1950s. Not long ago I was reading up on Cattle Drives thru Kansas in the 1870’s, and there was a sentence describing Ellsworth, saying it “smelled like cattle”. In Christopher Brinkleys compilation of Kerouac letters from the 1940s and 50s, called ‘Windblown World’, there is a letter from 1949 where Kerouac writes Ellsworth, KS, “smells like gasoline”.
I read thru Chris Hedges recent book, ‘Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt’, and now have a better understanding of the POV of BuckStud, Ibendet, BustinJ, Collapse Watch et al. Also Ian Bremmer’s ‘Every Nation For Itself’, Winners and Losers in the G-Zero World’, about the new, New World Order, which seems like disorder.
–WSP7
Christianity teaches patience and love.
Q, please inform this raving madman (Baptist who shouts) that he has misspelled parrot. Awwwwwk! Polly want an anti-Muslim crusade?
We had a Bosnian Muslim move up here from NYC and built a Mansion down the street. He didn’t seem like too bad of a guy but one day his wife showed up at our door all bloody because he beat the sh*t out of her. Another neighbor, a doctor, came over and was able to stop the bleeding and treat her. Needless to say the Police and Emergency Services were called. That’s the last we saw of our Muslim neighbors; the new house, 10,000 sq. ft., was abandoned. That first winter the pipes froze and burst inside the place, pretty much ruining it. Since then the house has been auctioned off and restored.
I realize not all Muslims beat the crap out of their wives. But the only one that I’ve known did.
–WSP7
So nice to not be discussing peak oil, which is not important.
Instead we dedicate ourselves to maligning Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, citing their ancient texts.
I can’t think of a better way to marginalize CFN and make it irrelevant to the challenges humanity faces:
1) nuclear proliferation
2) global overpopulation
3) environmental degradation
In the past seven years I have posted so much on these topics that now CFN wants to discuss stupid things like religious beliefs and dusty old sacred books, with desire to relive the Crusades.
Holy Shitskis, CW, that was quite the screed!
‘Bout says it for me, thanks.
To quote an obscure character: “Ah lahk’a’way yew tawk, too.”
Islam is a ruse every bit as much as Buddhism is, Christianity is, Hinduism is, and Judaism is. Muhammad and his converted hordes laid waste to the enlightened culture that preceded the era of darkness that fell upon Arabia by Muhammad’s hand.
http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/htemples2/ch10.htm
If a society and culture is to be judged by the status of its women, the pre-Islamic Arabs come out with flying colours. The very fact that they had many Goddesses in their pantheon, made them give a place of pride to their women. “Institutions of paganism,” observes Margoliouth, “were not unfavourable to the prominence of those women who had the requisite gifts of courage or insight. And the ensuing narrative will show examples of women acting with originality and resolution, when there was room for the display of these qualities.”17 Muhammad’s first wife, Khadîjah, provides an excellent example of the independence which women enjoyed, and the enterprise they could display in the pre-Islamic Arab society. She was not only a wealthy merchant who managed her own business; she was also in a position to turn down proposals from powerful suitors and marry the man of her own choice. Hind, the wife of Muhammad’s chief adversary, Abû Sufyãn, was herself a firebrand who opposed Muhammad, tooth and nail. She followed her husband to the battlefield and sustained his morale in peace. When Abû Sufyãn surrendered Mecca to Muhammad without a fight, she caught hold of him in the market-place and cried, “Kill this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a rotten protector of the people!”18 She was at her best when circumstances forced her to embrace Islam. The Prophet who baptised her asked her not to commit adultery. “Does a free woman commit adultery, O apostle of God?” she asked. Next, the Prophet advised her not to “kill your children.” She said, “I brought them up when they were little and you killed them on the day of Badr when they were grown up, so you are the one to know about them.”19 It was Islam which robbed women of their high station in society and put them behind the veil or buried them in the harem. Ever since, the language of Islam has bracketed women (zan) with personal property (zar and zamîn) of the male. Chapters on marriage (nikãh) and divorce (talãq) in orthodox collections of Hadîs, and other standard works such as the Hidãya and the Fatwa-i-‘Ãlamgîrî, tell the true story of what Islam has done to women.
But the one great virtue for which the pre-Islamic Arabs put the Prophet and his companions to shame, was their catholicity in matters of religious belief and practice. The respect they showed towards other people’s persuasions was fully in keeping with their pagan spiritual tradition. Ibn Ishãq testifies, “When the apostle openly displayed Islam as God ordered him, his people did not withdraw or turn against him, so far as I have heard, until he spoke disparagingly of their gods.”20 The Meccans made a very reasonable offer when Abû Tãlib, Muhammad’s uncle and protector, was on his death-bed. “You know,” they said, “the trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and let us make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours.” It was Muhammad who remained adamant. “You must say,” he demanded, “There is no God but Allãh and you must repudiate what you worship beside him.”21 It cannot be held against the Meccans that they refused to be bullied. Abû Tãlib himself stands out as an embodiment of the pagan virtue in this respect. He protected Muhammad to the end, without himself agreeing to renounce the religion of his forefathers. His only fault-and that has been the fault of all pagans-was his failure to understand that what his nephew was selling was not religion but something else.
To be fair, the rights women enjoyed with Islam did eventually come to Christian women… several hundred years later.
In the West, Islam is believed to be the symbol of the subordination of women par excellence. In order to understand how firm this belief is, it is enough to mention that the Minister of Education in France, the land of Voltaire, has recently ordered the expulsion of all young Muslim women wearing the veil from French schools!
A young Muslim student wearing a headscarf is denied her right of education in France, while a Catholic student wearing a cross or a Jewish student wearing a skullcap is not. The scene of French policemen preventing young Muslim women wearing headscarves from entering their high school is unforgettable.
Prog,
You say to the littlest laddie in lace-lined lederhosen:
“And now you are a patient here, too.
Trying to learn some new techniques and practices for a new age. It’s not an age you wanted to live in – yet here you are with the rest of us.”
Please do not advise him to busily construct even MORE of a false front by removing his bicorne; it’s not helpful to himself or others of us who haunt the gloomy halls of CFN’s Greystone Asylum.
We may be barking mad, but we still value the authenticity of our madness. If the laddie contained a whit of the genuine in thought, word or deed, I’d be very surprised; and I don’t surprise easily. (That goes for Piss-soak-cchio too; but then again, I AM quite mad, am I not?)
It doesn’t get any more peaceful than this. This guy has nice form, does he not, even if he does spatter a little too much blood. Peace be with you.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e17_1340660132
Alekium Salam.
How does one “practice up” for the office of Designated Decapitator?
We just luvs us some Sharia (peace-be-upon-that-shit)!
**Somebody tell anti-soak to change his small-clothes; and he’ll have to learn to soak the loaded ones (regardless of his stance on that), because that stain isn’t coming out easily.
-Another Helpful Household Hint from Heloise
“Islam is a religion of peace. The Quran forbids compulsion in matters of religion. Christians go door to door trying to convert people. Have you ever been visited by Muslim missionaries? Did they threaten to chop your fingers off? Your head? LOL?
The level of ignorance and prejudice on CFN is off the charts.”
Ever been to Luton or Tower Hamlets? Since 2010 3 people have been jailed for the forced conversion to Islam of wives. In Egypt you can find case after case of forced conversion , ditto Pakistan. Saudi, try taking a bible in to the country with you. Christians knock on your door and ask. Muslims knock the door down.
HM inspector of prisons released a report on muslim inmates converting other inmates by force, beating those who refuse until they do.
But you know Asoka these must all be misunderstanders of religion.
Qur’an (2:193) – “And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion be only for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers.” The key phrase is to fight until “religion be only for Allah.”
From the Hadith
Bukhari (8:387) – “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah.'”
Bukhari (53:392) – “While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, “Let us go to the Jews” We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, “If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle.”
Can’t you just feel the love there? Submit or die. Yes that’s real peaceful.
If you want to see ignorance Asoka go look in mirror.
…And don’t forget, most of us here committed ourselves voluntarily (yes, we’re committed folk), while little laddie was “assigned” to this place. (Talk about a dangerously disgruntled employee in the making!)
The Quran, contrary to the Bible, places equal blame on both Adam and Eve for their mistake. Nowhere in the Quran can one find even the slightest hint that Eve tempted Adam to eat from the tree or even that she had eaten before him.
Eve in the Quran is no temptress, no seducer, and no deceiver. Moreover, Eve is not to be blamed for the pains of childbearing. God, according to the Quran, punishes no one for another’s faults. Both Adam and Eve committed a sin and then asked God for forgiveness and He forgave them both.
let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers.”
========
Have you done something wrong?
I ask specific questions, like how many fingers are being chopped off today? Or how many Muslim missionaries have shown up at your door?
Instead of answers, all we get is more hatred, more prejudice, more quoting of ancient scriptures, more ignorance, more fear of the Other.
“Tree man, I appreciate that you want to give top honors to Islam on pedofilia, but Muslims fall way behind Christianity, the Catholic Church and the efforts of individual Christians like that Penn State football coach when it comes to pedophilia and pornography.”
Sorry Asoka are you saying that Penn state sanctioned it or that the catholic priests were required to do so by the pope. If so please provide proof. With muslims their action are deemed acceptable, sorry correct by no less than Allah himself. Please demonstrate where in the bible it instructs Christians to forcibly sleep with nonchristian children.
You cannot as it does not exist.
If you cannot see the difference you are quite blind.
“The level of ignorance and prejudice on CFN is off the charts.”
I think you have amply demonstrated your ignorance of religion and your prejudice against White people repeatedly on this blog. People in glass houses and all that.
I see you want to stay on topic, presumably as you are being given such a thrashing and having your shortcomings exposed.
“…then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them EXCEPT LEGALLY and their reckoning will be with Allah.'”
(Appears to me that there’s going to be quite a bit of “interfering” in the offing, by this careful wording.)
Well now, you no longer need wonder why a newly-ensconced tyranny’s first order of business is to stack the courts with their very own lickspittle toadies. It makes everything nice and legal-like and comfy when in the business of oppression and theft.
In case you missed it, that’s just what happened [by the back door] under Bush the lesser’s watch. Very, very cagey/sneaky. They stacked the Fed Court of APPEALS, and that my friends, is where the rubber really meets the road when it comes time for the big, bad deals. Have some more tort reform; it’s good for you!
I do not find the precepts offered in Christ’s message to be at fault. It is that so few are adequately motivated to whole-heartedly liveup to them. Instead, they seek out dogma and perversions with which to attack and exploit their fellow beings.
This is a link to an excellent article by a scientist who recognizes that, in my words in making religious beliefs and dogma an enemy, it has become its enemy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Thankfully Ozone, I don’t live in the USA. For a number of years I have watched various measures passed into law in the USA that would not appear out of place in the former USSR. I could be lazy and blame GWB or Obama but both seem equally culpable in my opinion.
Apparently indefinite detention without trial is now legal. A measure that not even our parliament would pass!
Couple that with the financial incompetence of pretty much every administration in my lifetime, I am not sure the USA can continue in its original format. I saw a recent article on the net outlining the USAs unfunded liabilities as being some $80 trillion. Even our incompetent bozos have only managed £5.5 trillion( not that it puts us in any better a position!).
Peak oil! When the bills for all the above start rolling in peak oil will be the last of our concerns.
Our government has decided that the way forward is to build gas powered power stations. Banking on cracking to provide the gas! Of course if it doesn’t our only chance of supply is Russia where we are the last in line of a very long pipeline. That is despite having about 200 years of coal beneath our feet!
We could go nuclear but we sold the company to the French!!!
“I do not find the precepts offered in Christ’s message to be at fault. It is that so few are adequately motivated to whole-heartedly liveup to them. Instead, they seek out dogma and perversions with which to attack and exploit their fellow beings.”
Quite so. This is exactly my point. If people actually followed Christ’s teachings the world would be at peace. The fact that they do not and that they pervert it to allow allsorts evil acts is not the fault of the message.
With Islam however the reverse is true. If you follow allah’s word to the letter( as a ‘good’ Muslim is required to do) you would soon be drenched in blood. Thankfully there are a good number of bad Muslims keeping the carnage down.
This is evident to me and I am not even religious!
Lets not conflate porn and pedophiles.
How much porn did Osama Bin Laden have or hide?
Is-slime is some stone age culture thats being exported worldwide.
Ever been to Luton or Tower Hamlets?
Thanks for yr reports from UK!
Post to Asoka at yr own risk!
And Ozone, what did I post that offended yr ‘little boy’ sensibilities?
Oops sorry fracking not cracking lol.
“I had a fugitive thought the other evening walking through my beaten-down small town in the late fall chill. I imagined that instead of the blue tomb-like glow of television emanating from house to house that I could hear the sequential music of parlor pianos, and voices singing to them, and of healthy people coming and going from warm kitchens to fetch firewood, and of groups of people gathered around tables for a meal, and generally of buildings that were truly inhabited, not just storage containers for lives unspent. I grant you it was a fleeting nostalgic fantasy. But isn’t nostalgia just a state of being homesick?”
Wonderful image, and good piece this week, Jim.
I can report, as some of the others here no doubt can as well, that the mere act of living a simpler life – fetching firewood and water, growing food, living with increasingly less EM interruption, sitting in the woods watching the full moon come up – tends to produce these desirable things of which you speak. Ozone gets it, Mean Dovey Cooledge gets it, Treeman gets it, POC gets it – surely plenty of others, too.
It’s the result of a positive feedback loop that spirals itself away from the pudgy, pasty, and neurotic and toward the self-aware, responsible, and pro-creative. And it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever been a part of. Learning to read your land, having a feeling for what goes where and why, understanding that you plant this or that not for yourself, but for your grandchildren’s edification, is a very fulfilling occupation. Building a house to last and to shelter and nurture your unknown progeny instead of maximize market returns upon its sale is a whole different ballgame.
One that fosters a healthy physique, a healthy sense of place, and surely an unspoken peace of mind that very few today really know. I grow increasingly convinced that energy descent will, in many ways, be the best thing that has ever happened to us.
“The mainstream is so polluted with lies, once you get wet it’s hard to get dry.”
Great new website I discovered today, thanks to a fellow poster at the Archdruid Report:
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/
This guy walks around what appears to be his incredibly lush tropical food forest filming himself as he discusses various topics of current interest. Each video is fairly short…and fairly astute.
Enjoy.
Islam is a religion of peace. – Assoka dot dot
OK dot dot the alleged non assoka everyone knows except maybe you that the problem is seldom the religion. The problem, most often, is the damned followers.
The level of idiocy radiating off your posts is off the charts.
…I appreciate that you want to give top honors to Islam on pedofilia, but Muslims fall way behind Christianity, the Catholic Church and the efforts of individual Christians … Assoka Dot Dot
Really? And you know this how?
I would submit that you don’t know shit.
I strongly suspect, judging by the generally laughable content of your posts, your bigotry towards and hatred of working class Americans and Americans in general, your ludicrous depiction of people in Latin America, your cringe inducing comments about living, laughing, loving, dancing and crying with the poor, your imbecilic assertions about living sumptuously on 12 thousand bucks a year, your strident advocacy of government policies that benefit the rich, that you have zero knowledge of life outside the confines of a comfy, cosy, prosperous neighborhood and schools for privileged white kids.
Am I right College Boy?
And I would also submit that you have exactly zero knowledge of Islam and Muslims outside what anybody can lift out of wikipedia and outside a possible “hello, how are you” to the odd Muslim acquaintance.
So tell us College Boy how many Muslims do you really know? None? How many Muslim countries have you been to and how many have you lived in? None?
I have several hundred Muslim friends. A small percentage of the 1.5 Billion Muslims.
Therefore, I conclude you are right when you say I don’t know shit.
Watch out for those Earth colored people from that “proud” and “vibrant” nation called Mexico – they now lay claims to all of North America. I hear the Southeast is now full of them.
The Arch Druid is an extraordinary traitor. It’s his ilk that empowers the invaders. Originaly they just wanted a warm dinner. Then full rights. Then the Southwest. Then they told us to go back to the 13 colonies. And now they say go back to Europe. Why not? Our weakness is their strength.
By extraordinary I don’t mean rare btw. They West is full of such. I don’t see how anyone reading that piece could see him as objective – he loves the fact that they are taking over. He’s no better than Asoka as far as that goes.
And putting up a wall is a sign of weakness?! So much for the castles and walled towns and cities that have been a staple of our history. What an ignorant clown.
So you admit then that the Talmud and the Koran/Hadith fall far short then? As Mohammad said, the Jews betrayed their own Prophets and slandered Christ and his holy Mother.
Miggs, we’re taking out your toilet since you refuse to use it. Please dispose of your own excrement orally from now on.
You’re not even trying to answer the charges or refute the citations from the Koran and Hadith. You are defeated. Your little “Let there be no compulsion in religion” is said to be superseded by later revelations. That’s how Koranic scholars handle that. So you don’t have a leg to stand on.
By friends I mean we are on a first name basis, we have shared meals together, danced, prayed, and shared zikr together for more than a decade. You probably won’t believe that either. But I suspect you agree with me when I say you are right that I don’t know shit. Knowledge from Wikipedia is cheap. Eating together and sharing zikr together over the years gives one a different kind of certainty tha Islam is a religion of peace.
I agree. I am defeated. I know Muslims and I know Islam from the inside. That is more than enough. Anyone committing acts of violence violates the spirit of Islam: peace.
Thanks Tripp, I’m enjoying.
Bonus points for me.
“The mainstream is so polluted with lies, once you get wet it’s hard to get dry.”
Well done. Now study the Talmud and find out about an evil that is as great or greater, though much more subtle in execution. But, but, but – which side should we be on you ask. Why not our own side for a change? Why do we have to choose between these two – neither of which will stand up to a close moral examination?
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/talmudtruth.html
You have several hundred friends you can actually remember the first names of…. Of course you do!
Asoka’s defence of Islam is laid bare. He is a Muslim. To practice Zikr( I should have a capital letter ) one must totally submit to Allah, to fashion their lives to his divine will. No Christian ,Hindu ,Jew or Buddhist could do so as you would have to admit without reservation Allah supremacy.
Hence his hatred for the west and the USA in particular. He cannot admit to fault with Islam to do so would have to admit fault with Allah. Asoka is practicing Taqiyya. Deceiving the unbelievers. In a position of weakness, as Islam is in the west, it is permissible to lie and deceive your enemies. This is what Asoka does. He is well aware of position that free western countries, or any non Muslim country, will find themselves in should his religion of oppression gain the upper hand.
The primary Quranic verse sanctioning deception with respect to non-Muslims states: “Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah – unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.” (Quran 3:28; see also 2:173; 2:185; 4:29; 22:78; 40:28.)
Al-Tabari’s (838-923 AD) Tafsir, or Quranic exegeses, is essentially a standard reference in the entire Muslim world. Regarding 3:28, he wrote: “If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harbouring inner animosity for them… Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels in place of believers – except when infidels are above them [in authority]. In such a scenario, let them act friendly towards them.”
Beyond 150, they are not friends. Can’t be according to Dunbar.
Beyond 150, they are not friends. Can’t be according to Dunbar.
Radu Voda’s tribal recruitman video. Think of the agrarian paradise you can create with these fine people as your rock solid base.
http://www.bigfootwitness.com/
Be all that you can be.
“I agree. I am defeated. I know Muslims and I know Islam from the inside. That is more than enough. Anyone committing acts of violence violates the spirit of Islam: peace.”
So you are admitting that Mohammed himself repeatedly and without remorse violated Islam. That he and his followers, as they murdered, raped and pillaged their way across the middle east, violated all Islam stands for. By spreading Islam by the sword, which is repeatedly mentioned in the Koran, he violated Islam.
But wait was it not he and his followers who compiled the Koran? Did he not utter those words directly from Allah himself? Is not Mohammed’s conduct, his words and deeds held most holy in Islam.
Or do you not know your own religion? Or is it just deception, taqiyya on your part?
“Fact #1: 18.3 % of women …
Fact #29: A study …”
Hey, AssHolio, you could have simply poasted the link, rather than a wall of poast that everyone has to scroll past. Fucking douche.
http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
Eating together and sharing zikr together over the years
==============
Since I don’t know the language I assume from the context that:
zikr = a joint
Right?
63.84% of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date.
===============
Conclusions:
Women are terrible judges of the character of the men they befriend, date, become intimate with and/or marry.
As to the large majority of rapes being perpetrated by men known to the victims (boyfriends, husbands, etc.) the takeaway for women is either (a) totally avoid associating with men or (b) only associate with men who are total strangers. (By definition there would never be a second date.)
Sorry, but it seems by your postings that you’re unreasonably a’skeert of the MOOzlum horde. Just take it a little easy until you see those assholes flogging their wimmenz in the streets of your locale for being “uncovered”. Then you’ll be justified in taking some action, if’n you know what I mean. (I’ll jine in.) Because, if that should happen and be turned aside from, you’ll know that the ol’ law ‘n’ order [as we like to think we’ve known it] is good and gone, and it’s every man’s “moral code” for itself. THAT’S something to be a’skeert of.
Kee-wrecked.
Do not think for a moment that I haven’t noticed the present frontman for the Empire has continued [and forwarded] the Neocon agenda. Hell, I think Cornell West just called him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”. Whoa, dude, accurate but baldly-stated!
LOL!
Perrrrfect. The guy in the “Betty Ford Clinic” teeshirt with his deddy, th’ sherruff, talkin’ ’bout “weed-sniffers”, trackin’ down Bigfoot and brown fellers.
little laddie’s fake persona fellow-travelers. Who wouldn’t want them’un’s on their team, I ask you??
Bound to be a runaway hit though…
Snap out of it Mary – our race is in danger. Time to put aside our differences until the crisis is past and we have secured our Existence.
Thanks for the link!
Look for small packets of miraculous, self-replicating and DNA-packed, edible goodness within the week…
No, no.
A Grand Vizier (yes, I know several) once whispered that it’s a rampant and engorged “holy pole, possessed only by males”; how that is shared is still a mystery to the uninitiated.
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Jim: Here is something you might be interested in:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-05/bombshell-deutsche-bank-hid-12-billion-losses-avoid-government-bail-out
I am sure this won’t surprise you.
We need a fiscal cliff clock.
Jim, I’m a little suspicious of your interest in people knowing their place. It’s usually the ones calling the shots who are the big supporters of that. Maybe you are just weary of lack of manners or society’s make-believe that everyone can do everything. I get tired of that, especially when I see false dreams foisted on the young.
Speaking of which: Look up the student loan default chart on Zero Hedge. Some bubbles will pop in the new year, and they won’t be from champagne.
I become nostalgic for the walkable community of my youth, where people actually walked places for a reason (not just for recreation) and took public transit more than they rode in cars. I loved how we all sat out summer nights on the patios and steps — all ages — and how the adults watched whatever kids were around and how we kids ran onto (almost) everyone’s patios and nobody cared.
I’m lost now in a busy mix of work, household duties, child care, so I don’t have time either to think about that past or, unfortunately, to build community where I live. I do reach out to neighbors, but I also see that divorce and moving have caused a transience here that my old neighborhood never had. All this shuffling and reshuffling. I’ve made friends just to lose them to whatever dreams they’re trying to catch. I guess when the dreams start dying we’ll have time for those around us again.
I have the parlor piano and dinner on the table most nights for my family. We listen to jazz piano and show tunes with our 18 year old who loves to sing. Music is the answer to happiness. That and a home cooked healthy meal. I use the silver palate cookbook from the 1980’s. I am a gen X and my older husband is a boomer.
This link is to a discourse that Meher Baba sent to Mahatma Gandhi as Gandhi was stuck on the non-violence attitude for one and all, perhaps. The explains various levels of maturity that call for violence or non-violence from a spiritual point of view.
http://discoursesbymeherbaba.org/v1-107.php
Check out the comments to this story. Stone-cold executioners. I’m thinking a certain percentage are Christians. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
http://news.yahoo.com/450-pounds-ohio-killer-fights-execution-222057704.html
He is a Muslim. Asoka is practicing Taqiyya.
=============
Since you are convinced of this, why do you continue to waste your time replying to me?
We are all Muslims. Some just have not realized it yet and due to prideful ego have not voluntarily submitted to Allah. According to Islam we are all born Muslims (ones who submit to the ‘oneness of God’ (tawhid) and are led astray by the previous revelations which, according to the Qur’an, have been altered from the true word of God throughout history by human beings and their quarrels.
But there is no compulsion in religion. One of the fundamental truths established by the sacred texts is that no one can be compelled to accept Islam. Whoever wishes to accept Islam may do so and whoever wishes to continue upon unbelief may do so. No one should be threatened or harmed in any way if he does not wish to accept Islam.
Among the many decisive pieces of evidence in this regard are the following:
“Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks.” (Quran 2:256)
Homeless?
“Somebody cry, “Why, why – why?!?””
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT6mlW8NlCU
Or do you not know your own religion? Or is it just deception, taqiyya on your part?
===========
Tree Man, I admit it looks like taqiyya. I have explained in detail in the past about my multitudes. I am large. I am a Muslim atheist. Most people think “Muslim atheist” is a logical impossibility. That is their problem. I know what I am. I cannot explain it to you, but just as it’s possible to be a Christian atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Buddhist atheist, I have found it possible to be a Muslim atheist. And my Muslim friends are OK with it. They don’t just “tolerate” me, they accept me as I am without accusing me of taqiyya … which actually makes them more tolerant than you, Tree Man.
LOL!
You funny, Ixnei.
I do whatever I want. It’s called freedom. Deal with it.
Geithner was asked if the White House was willing to dive off the cliff if Republicans don’t accept a deal that raise tax rates for those making more than $250,000. “Oh, absolutely,” he responded. “Again, there’s no prospect in an agreement that doesn’t involve the rates going up on the top 2 percent of the wealthiest.”
===========
If taxes do not go up on the rich, they will go up on the middle class through the automatic spending cuts and tax rate increases that kick in if an agreement is not reached before the Dec. 31 deadline.
You either support Obama’s plan to tax earnings over $250,000, or you will be paying them instead of the rich, as the automatic tax rate increases kick in. (everyone, including the rich, get the tax break on the first $250,000)
If you don’t want to support Obama’s plan, you will be paying thousands of dollars more in taxes that those over $250,000 would have paid.
Post to Asoka at yr own risk!
=========
Thank you for warning them, anti soak. I appreciate it. But they seem to never learn that responding directly, or responding indirectly as Ozone does, only encourages me to post more. And they are wasting their time and CFN bandwidth talking about me, talking about race, talking about Muslims, instead of the real issues we face:
nuclear proliferation, global overpopulation, and environmental degradation.
C’est la vie. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose … on CFN.
Remember how you interpreted shaktipat? You’re doing the same thing here.
But a zek is a prisoner. Can a Zek do Zikr is the question.
What are you talking about? K/Q made it clear from his comments on shaktipat that he has no idea what shaktipat is. Nor does he have personal experience of zikr, but that doesn’t mean he should not comment. It is good that he does because then he removes all doubt. K/Q and I share one thing: we do not know it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. Of course, I think being a fool is cool. Big difference.
“LOL!
You funny, Ixnei.”
I just *knew* you’d enjoy that Paul Simon tune…
Remember how you interpreted shaktipat? You’re doing the same thing here.
==========
Of course I remember…and forever shall shaktipat be a shit and Zikr a joint.
Have you ever gone to the john and done Zikr while taking shaktipat?
“Keep a headstrong daughter under firm control, or she will abuse any indulgence she receives. Keep a strict watch on her shameless eye, do not be surprised if she disgraces you” (Ecclesiasticus 26:10-11).
It was this very same idea of treating daughters as sources of shame that led the pagan Arabs, before the advent of Islam, to practice female infanticide.
The Quran severely condemned this heinous practice:
“When news is brought to one of them of the birth of a female child, his face darkens and he is filled with inward grief. With shame does he hide himself from his people because of the bad news he has had! Shall he retain her on contempt or bury her in the dust? Ah! what an evil they decide on?” (16:59).
It has to be mentioned that this sinister crime would have never stopped in Arabia were it not for the power of the scathing terms the Quran used to condemn this practice (16:59, 43:17, 81:8-9). The Quran, moreover, makes no distinction between boys and girls. In contrast to the Bible, the Quran considers the birth of a female as a gift and a blessing from God, the same as the birth of a male.
The Quran even mentions the gift of the female birth first:
“To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. He creates what He wills. He bestows female children to whomever He wills and bestows male children to whomever He wills” (42:49).
In order to wipe out all the traces of female infanticide in the nascent Muslim society, Prophet Muhammad promised those who were blessed with daughters of a great reward if they would bring them up kindly:
“He who is involved in bringing up daughters, and accords benevolent treatment towards them, they will be protection for him against Hell-Fire”
Gratz, Mastah Debatah. They will *NEVER* figure out your ability to argue *either* side (with an *encyclopedia* of info)…
CHRISTIAN NEW TESTAMENT ON WOMEN
“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I don’t permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner” (I Timothy 2:11-14 THE WORD OF GOD).
ISLAM RESPECTS WOMEN AS EQUAL TO MEN
For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast, for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in Allah’s praise– For them all has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward (33:35).
Some believe themselves so intelligent that they already have Asoka.. figured out, just by anonymous posts to a chaotic comments section on CFN. They are very intelligent! anti soak is among the most intelligent.
Doing zikr is much more effective than doing a joint.
LA ILAHA ILLALLAH MOHAMMED NABI RASOOL ALLAH
U and Ur sock puppets are hardly sanctioned for IQ assessment (whuz that UR test? Anyone top 133?).
Q dreams of past poasterz – didn’t see Tripp in *the list*. Not too sure wut that meanz – maybe he prefers his portfolio to *wildlife*…
I had a really good joke all lined up, too…
HOLY BIBLE SAYS STONE WOMEN TO DEATH
If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her saying, ‘I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,’ …and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of the town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.” (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
Check Out:
http://instantsingularity.blogspot.it/
ROBOT
Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.
SOURCE:
Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science
Inverted Communism on the state level:
Just thought I’d weigh in today and tell you about an interview I heard yesterday on All Things Considered”.
Louise Story is writing a series for the NYT on corporate welfare for the “JOB-CRE_A_Tors.
At tax payers expense these inverted commies are asking for all kinds of tax breaks and freebies from the states as they threaten they will leave for greener pastures if the govs don’t give in. There’s even a company that gets commissions from the companies who act as a consultant and broker for ever more goodies the companies didn’t even think of.
This is now common practice.:
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/05/166489199/a-thin-line-economic-growth-or-corporate-welfare
Oh, but the Reps think ss and medicare should be privatized so these guys can get even more money..
They don’t let a small thing like losing an election get in the way of the privatized agenda.
This is exactly the plan….and the scam. Repubes and Dims are playing their parts as opposite sides of the same coin, and that coin for the imbecilic plebes is tails you lose, and heads “they” win. Wealth concentration will continue unabated until the Anunnaki have absconded all the gold. Then, they’ll blow the planet up again for Auld Lang Syne. Still, there’s much to be thankful for. “They” did give us Miracle Whip, afterall…..the height of their little genetic experiment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR3BVN8ofk8
This should be catalogued as another Great Penny Drop Moment. But alas, it’s casting pearls before swine and water under the bridge that has long been swept away.
http://magicalmusings.com/2007/10/02/guest-blogger-tracey-ohara-2/
The ones who really matter. The ones for whom the Parties work, never, never, NEVER lose an election. When are people going to wise up to that very basic fact?
Give me some of that ‘ol time religion!! Hell yeah!! Don’t you just love Christianity? All are welcome, especially those who crave the pipe and a sweet virgin ass in the showers.
Are You Laughin, Beeyotch?
Well, we can’t say that corporatist plutocrats and their minions are stupid, they’re just completely lacking in any kind of scruples.
If one really cared about the people and prospects of ones state, would this kind of blackmail be aquiesced to? The states are so desperate for any kind of revenue, they’ll cut each others’ throats to get even a piddling amount from these never-satiated vampires.
He’s absolutely convinced me; I’m in!
;o)
Let’s ponder on the distinct strangeness of his choice of backdrop… Can folks trapped in an urban hell of asphalt and concrete relate?
…And let’s not overlook the fact that these same assholes get to use a much larger share of the public infrastructure and not even cover depreciation costs for this use. It really is a losing proposition in the not-so-long-run, and they’ve already established the precedent of having the community by the short hairs through a revenue blackmail agreement.
“Gotta pull up stakes; cheaper labor and taxrates over the horizon. Profitability — HO-oooh!!”
(That translates into, “Hooray for me and fuck you”, as you might have guessed.)
The long emergency is a bit of a misnomer.
There is nothing to the point of equating the long, long decline of discretionary energy consumption with an emergency.
Doom – yes of course eventually.
But for now – the decline of the global middle class. The reorganization of current global discretionary energy consumption – away from the middle class – and into the last wasted, squandered idiotic behaviors of the upper classes.
In the 2020’s – the new “middle class” will spend 90% of its income of energy for household preservation. (think 19nth century London – when coal was only for the rich)
No great Peak Oil cliff – plenty of discretionary energy left to be routed to top (x amount per cent) The doom comes later – when they no longer manage… and governments fall….
A long time yet to come…
President Karzai blamed the insecurity in Afghanistan on “the way they [the U.S., NATO] behaved with the Afghan people and the anger that that has caused in the Afghan people and the resulting insecurity … “there is a very strong perception that some of that insecurity is intentional.”
Duh! Violent Christians [both soldiers and private contractors] stirring up Muslims, so the Christians can then say Islam is not a peaceful religion.
ASSEMBLED IN THE UNITED STATES
The glass on Apple’s iPhone is made in Kentucky. Apple is doing more and more manufacturing and assembling in the United States. Next year, they will do one of their existing Mac lines in the United States.
It looks like manufacturing is coming back to the USA. There are recent reports that Apple customers have spotted new iMac computers with the words “Assembled in USA”, instead of “Assembled in China,” printed on the devices.
This may be the “tipping point” you’ve been telling us about for so long.
“It’s all good!”
Debt
REPUBLICANS IS DISARRAY
COULTER: “… in the end, at some point, if the Bush tax cuts are repealed and everyone’s taxes go up, I promise you Republicans will get blamed for it.”
HANNITY: “So are you saying that, for PR purposes, that they should give in to Obama on the tax rate?”
COULTER: “Not exactly, I–” “Well, yeah, I guess I am.”
HANNITY: “You’re saying capitulate to Obama? We don’t have a revenue problem, Ann.”
COULTER: “We lost the election, Sean!”
Other right-wing pundits, such as Bill Kristol, have echoed Coulter’s argument. Kristol famously said that it wouldn’t “kill the country” if taxes on millionaires went up.
EITHER SUPPORT OBAMA OR LOSE ELECTIONS
Yes, debt, I think soon more manufacturing of goods sold in the USA will be Made in the USA.
Manufacturing is coming back to the USA from China in a big way. Obama has been pushing for just that for years, and the CEO’s are now ready to say yes.
Yippee!!! This is GREAT NEWS!!
Back In The Saddle Again
Maybe Apple can configure an application for making mud huts, mud cakes and mud pies. We wouldn’t want to have to stoop to ask the Haitians how.
Can’t you just envision it? People squatting in the streets, texting away on their i-phones, to take their dumps because the plumbing doesn’t work. It will come in handy for quickly sharing information on the latest greatest place to dig for grub worms. i-mud. i-shit. i-piss. i-savior. i-collapse. i-NTE.
REPUBLICANS IS DISARRAY
=============
Yeah, dey sho is.
Apple customers have spotted new iMac computers with the words “Assembled in USA”, instead of “Assembled in China,” printed on the devices.
=============
Yes, however, the actual printing of the words
“Assembled in USA” is performed in China. How F’d up is THAT? ;o)
What a mess in Syria, huh? 40,000 dead. 40,000! And now CNN says Hassad’s troops might deploy Chemical Weapons, which means the gloves are off.
This is the fate of the world with no one in charge. This is the world Ian Bremmer talks about in ‘Every Nation for Itself”, and Mark Steyn in “After America. I wonder what kind of Government Syria will have after Hassad is gone. I have a clue it won’t be a Jeffersonian Democracy. Maybe more Islamists like in Egypt, which means Israel will be surrounded on all sides by regimes even more hostile than the ones they replaced.
–WSP7
Is Obama still “leading from behind”?
–WSP7
Kyooshtik, this is seriously good news. Check out in the current issue of The Atlantic. It suggests that moves such as Apple’s are more than just post-crash green shoots, replacing lost jobs with new ones, but a genuine shift back to U.S. manufacturing with concrete – and previously unrecognized – advantages.
FORMATTING CORRECTION
Kyooshtik, this is seriously good news. Check out Charles Fishman’s excellent piece on the insourcing trend in the current issue of The Atlantic. It suggests that moves such as Apple’s are more than just post-crash green shoots, replacing lost jobs with new ones, but a genuine shift back to U.S. manufacturing with concrete – and previously unrecognized – advantages.
Is Obama still “leading from behind”? -WSP7 to CFN
WSP7, if you find yourself on the receiving end of a drone strike, you will never ask that question again.
Thousands have been assassinated by Obama’s “leading from behind” including Osama Bin Laden and those dead pirates.
Assad is probably not sleeping well since Obama was out front with the threat of Assad being held accountable for his actions.
Maybe more Islamists like in Egypt
———–
And that would be fine. Islamists have fine minds.
Hamas was democratically elected. The Muslim Brotherhood was democratically elected. Not that the USA minds supporting monarchies like Saudi Arabia. Curious we don’t insist on democracy in Saudi Arabia.
Obama the Christian about to put the assassination order on Assad the Muslim like he did Kadaffey Duck in Libya and OBL. BHO, the great Christian Warrior sent by God to smote the Muslims. Why do white Christians hate this Black Christian with the vanilla center so much? What more do they want? He’s like the Angel Gabriel dipped in chocolate ganache. I thought white soccer moms loved angel food cake dipped in chocolate ganache?
I often wonder if people get over obsessed with doom and gloom because at a subconscious level they are overly obsessed with their own demise; they feel their own body falling apart and thus by extension the world around them.
Another Great Penny Drop Moment.
…in the end, at some point, if the Bush tax cuts are repealed and everyone’s taxes go up…
==============
OK if you insist, let’s talk about taxes.
The common wisdom is that the rich should pay more. Mixed up in and contributing to this “wisdom” is the common belief that the rich come by their wealth illegally. No doubt some do. (And illegality aside, some simply hate the idea of a pitcher signing a contract for $138,000,000. This is said to be “obscene.”) And no doubt some of the middle and poorer classes come by their income illegally too. Let’s remove illegality from the discussion. It goes without saying that in a perfect world we would put a stop to ill-gotten gains…just as in a perfect world we would prevent the illegal entry into our country of immigrants. What would be the sense of having rules bearing on immigration if it is OK to flout them? Duh.
So now let’s just consider what is an appropriate method for extracting taxes from the populous. First we must determine what the legitimate needs of the government ARE, which is to say, what are the legitimate functions of government? Certain current and former commenters here (in the interest of anonymity we’ll call one WAGEworker and the other PantsSoaker) would effectively take all wealth, put it in a big pile and have it be distributed according to the “wisdom” of elected officials. Generally the distribution is in accordance with someone’s perception of “need.” If needs exceed the pile available the difference is simply printed up. The inevitable negative inflationary effect is borne by the wealthy since thay are the only ones who don’t spend all they have the moment they get it. Idle money sitting in dusty vaults is eaten away at day by day. This is the hidden tax extracted by the poor from the wealthy.
Effectively, the votes required for a politician to win or remain in office are purchased by constituencies with great NEEDS. People who think this is a good system are called left-wingers. Economist Paul Krugman fits nicely in this group, like a round peg in a round hole.
And then there are those like me who are deemed to be right-wingers, or as some say, wing-NUTS. We believe in small government. Better, we say, to err on the side of smallness because we can always grow government if necessary. That is never a problem. But it is near impossible to shrink a too-large government presence in our lives. As proof I offer the looming “fiscal cliff” as Exhibit A.
But the size/functions of legitimate government is a topic too vast for this discussion of taxes. Suffice it to say that if government was significantly smaller our concern with the method (and amount) of taxation would be greatly reduced.
Doesn’t it seem appropriate that there should be a direct correlation between the amount of taxes one pays and the benefits one derives? Shouldn’t it be like seats for a football game where you pay through the nose for the sky boxes vs the endzone nose-bleed seats?
For example, the cost of a justice system surely is of greater value to persons of great wealth than persons with few assets in need of protection. The cost of militarily securing the common property of the nation and the lives of individuals should be born equally since we hold it as self-evident that all men are born equal. Here, I am deliberately removing from the foregoing discussion of military cost any consideration for securing personal property. Obviously, this is where the wealthy should pay more.
The question then becomes what is the best way to determine “fair share” of taxes?
In my humble opinion the use of “income” as a basis is grossly flawed. The opportunities for “gaming” the calculations are vast and the complexity of the system is beyond belief.
The only method I can conceive (and I am certainly not the first to think of this) is a flat rate tax on all expenditures. Over time expenditures will correlate closely with wealth and the wealthy will pay out far more in taxes (as they should) than the poor. Money gotten by illegal means and the obscene salaries of gifted athletes will be taxed when it is spent.
Good point Scott. It does seem many of the CFNers, including myself, are a little ‘long in the tooth’. Author Bernard Malumud said something similar in the 70’s talking about his own aging WW2 generation, and their reaction to the decline and upheavals of that time.
–WSP7
So they were built here and then sent over there to have those words inscribed? A Chink with a Chisel?
I knew an indigent guy once whose girlfriend gave him a subway pass every month. But he would try to use the old subway passes – looking for the tolerant machines. In other words, the crooked need things to be difficult in order to be crooked. If Asoka got the world he wanted, he’d have to start some kind of trouble and/or support someone else doing it.
In any case, Asoka’s world would demand a high degree of abstention and moderation of appetite. Few will go down that road willingly so the crooked will have a field day with Black Markets and such.
The U.S. deficit with China increased to $29.1 billion in September. It is running 6.8 percent ahead of last year’s record pace. America’s deficit with China last year was the highest imbalance ever recorded with a single country. Yeah, it’s all good.
Better, we say, to err on the side of smallness because we can always grow government if necessary. That is never a problem. But it is near impossible to shrink a too-large government presence in our lives.
==========
Pay attention, Q. Our man, Obama, is shrinking government before your very eyes. You blind?
Look at the federal, state, and local government jobs during Obama’s years. Government employment dropped by around 600,000 after Bush left office.
And Kyooshstick says he doesn’t think government ever shrinks! If you believed Kyooshtik, you’d expect government employment to grow with population (remember, the typical government employee is a schoolteacher).
But there are 600,000 fewer government jobs… a lot of shrinking of government under Obama’s leadership!
So they were built here and then sent over there to have those words inscribed? A Chink with a Chisel?
==============
Remember to watch for the winking smiley face on my posts. It means I may be bullshitting or looking for a cheap laugh.
I saw/heard the interview on CNBC this morning with Tim Cook of Apple. He said the glass on one of their phones was made in Kentucky. My reaction was “big whup.” He implied they were looking at other parts that could be brought home for manufacture. He spoke of the “injun” inside. I cringed. The head of one of the world’s largest corporations pronounces engine as injun.
Although I have no personal knowledge where the actual printing of the words “Assembled in America” is being performed I am giving 2 to 1 odds it is NOT in America.
BTW, all or nearly all the parts for these devices are built elsewhere then shipped here for assembly if, indeed, the words Assembled in America are true.
The Chink’s chisel is more likely a high speed laser engraving machine.
FORMATTING CORRECTION
==========
Pay attention, Q. Our man, Obama, is shrinking government before your very eyes. You blind?
Look at the federal, state, and local government jobs during Obama’s years. Government employment dropped by around 600,000 after Bush left office.
And Kyooshstick says he doesn’t think government ever shrinks! If you believed Kyooshtik, you’d expect government employment to grow with population (remember, the typical government employee is a schoolteacher).
But there are 600,000 fewer government jobs… a lot of shrinking of government under Obama’s leadership!
There is no compulsion in Islam. We know this as the great Asoka has told us. The below link takes you to a story where a Muslim gang forcibly converted teenagers.
http://www.thelocal.ch/page/view/muslim-pot-peddlers-arrested-in-neuchatel#.UMD9RazDXyk
But you know it must be a lie cos Asoka tells us so…
Asoka you claim to be a an Atheist Muslim who practices Zikr?
I am beginning to believe you are a spotty teenager posting from mummy’s computer.
An atheist by definition believes in no deities.
A Muslim by definition believes in Allah as the creator of all.
Zikr by definition is ritual prayer to glorify god. The below quote is from Dictionary.com
(Arabic: “reminding oneself,” or “mention”), ritual prayer or litany practiced by Muslim mystics (Sufis) for the purpose of glorifying God and achieving spiritual perfection. Based on the Qur’anic injunctions “Remind thyself [udhkur] of thy Lord when thou forgettest” (18:24) and “O ye who believe! Remember [udhkuru] Allah with much remembrance” (33:41)
Are you so confused or just ignorant?
Your friends are commanded by Allah to shun you for your actions. By not doing so they condemn themselves. In Muslim countries even mentioning atheism can get you killed.
You have not answered my question. If Islam is a peaceful religion then do you admit that Mohammed and his followers, by their actions, were unislamic?
Not sure where you were, BeingThere but you’re mixing communism with fascism.
All those corporations that you’re talking about, at least most of them, were beacon of western pride (and I would say, in fifties, sixties and early seventies, why not ? They offered unprecedented standard of living and explosion of middle class). In process they became bloated powerful behemoths, and other than making the products that we all love, also run the show in DC.
To continue, please read this DISCLAIMER: “I am not in any way defending or promoting communism in any way and god forbid as desirable system to live in.” Now:
Prior in Spain and then in WWII millions of communists died fighting fascists/Nazis. After that war, cold war erupted. All those school drills ducking under the desks, numerous wars and coverts of “fighting the communism” (Samantha Smith’s trip in 80’s showed that they were equally spooked by the west) just to find out that communism crept in via beacon of capitalism – their corporations?
If you think that we live in some sort of communism, where are the impeccable free schools and universities, free medical care.? Communist companies guaranteed shabby but lifelong employment.
Or is it in your way of thinking: “It is bad so it must be communism”?
There was no single warning by “any of you” in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that we are heading straight into “worker’s paradise”. What happened then? It was not enough “communist-ic” for your taste buds?
Not that bloated corporations mercilessly pillaged the planet resources, and still do in pursuit of endless growth, without even remote thought that it will turn in toxic cesspool not livable for even their off springs. They invented global economy and are destroying domestic middle class and infrastructure which made them what they are. “You did not do it all alone” slogan is not entirely untrue. Tinkering with new product or an idea, backbone of former US entrepreneurship, even in the middle of the night and after the day’s work in comfy middle class home garage is actually not that bad, unlike doing it in the slums in San Paolo. Business start ups anywhere in the US had not to worry about anything but their business – no need for armed guard towers, there was no lack of safe roads, or electrical and phone hook-ups or any other infrastructure. Most made available and profitable to implement by the combined economic power of the “rest of us” in addition to skilled labor.
Borderline eerie to say but ordinary folks really have no true say in ANY system in the LONG RUN. Everything that one worked for or freedom that he/she many take for granted can be taken away overnight for the “greater good of society” if powers decide so. Victories by many activists, while I admit are formidable and admirable, are really “allowed” because they were not a major threat to establishment. Many times, as history teaches us, major changes are not possible with outright revolution. Speaking of revolutions, I’ve noticed that Russian revolution was “not good enough” for most Americans even what they did to 1%-ers of their time is exactly the all the wet dreams that some folks have today about some figures from the banking industry. Since communists did it, it does not count?
Most of people from former socialist/communist countries who emigrated to US also did find out that “lot of stuff” in here is also managed in “certain way”. Even if we “made it” in the new society, and most of us do, we have a bit reserved opinion about any system in particular. Jim in his eloquent writings talks about how we may be forced to “live with less” and “turn toward each other”. That is exactly where we came from. While not obvious, we were acutely aware who the politicians were (make no mistake that Clinton or any other clown who elbowed himself into WH would not have been top communist apparatchik if born in those countries), put that crap aside from daily living and truly enjoyed company of each other. So Jim’s musing about “parlor piano” is not strange to us, minus, of course, piano or sometimes any other instrument at all other than our food sharing, singing and great time together
Also we may be better prepared to be “Citizens of the world” if needed, with superb education and extremely humble view on life from the former country and now with access to almost anywhere on the planet thanks to the new one. Speaking accented and not continental US English may also help a lot if you know what I mean.
Meet the future. A Norman Rockwell painting it’s not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAJwINlqvyI
We are all Muslims. Some just have not realized it yet and due to prideful ego have not voluntarily submitted to Allah. According to Islam we are all born Muslims (ones who submit to the ‘oneness of God’ (tawhid) and are led astray by the previous revelations which, according to the Qur’an, have been altered from the true word of God throughout history by human beings and their quarrels.
….But there is no compulsion in religion. One of the fundamental truths established by the sacred texts is that no one can be compelled to accept Islam. Whoever wishes to accept Islam may do so and whoever wishes to continue upon unbelief may do so. No one should be threatened or harmed in any way if he does not wish to accept Islam.
Among the many decisive pieces of evidence in this regard are the following:
“Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks.” (Quran 2:256)……
Above is laid bare the absolute arrogance of Islam. You must submit not follow submit. Suppression and repression, small wonder free people are so wary of the cult. Forced conversion is rife and sanctioned.
Sahih Muslim (1:33) The Messenger of Allah said: “I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer and pay zakat.”
Under the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks forced conversions were carried out enmasse using the koran as justification.
It has carried on right through history until today, through the Armenian genocide, by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists and against the Christians of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands.
Now is this is unislamic you would have thought there would have been outrage in the Muslim world.
Strangely enough there has been not silence but a chorus of approval.
But Asoka, those of us with parents from Muslim countries are aware of the perversion that you call a religion and of the deceit you practice to spread it.
It causes death and destruction where ever it goes not just in conflict with western nations. Islam is an equal opportunity murderer. Its mad adherents kill Buddhists,Christians, Hindus, Animists and Atheists.
But most of all, and in greatest numbers, it kills Muslims.
How much more perverted can you get?
In a ruling from the Iranian Supreme Court Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to execution by hanging for breaking Islamic law by conducting Christian worship and baptizing himself and others.
He is being forced to recant his faith or die.
But of course there is no compulsion in Islam, despite of course it being State policy in several Islamic countries backed up with the power of the Imams.
Maybe we should also mention Abdul Rahman who fled Afghanistan. His crime was to convert from Islam to Christianity.
Afghan prosecutor Abdul Wasi said Rahman had been told repeatedly to repent and come back to Islam, but Rahman refused. Wasi called Rahman a traitor.
“He is known as a microbe in society, and he should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed,” Wasi told the court.
These are but two of thousands. Most do not make it, either they are killed by the state or murdered by a mob of peaceful Muslims.
Can’t you just feel the love and tolerance…..
Are you so confused or just ignorant? How much more perverted can you get?
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Whatever. I’m tired of your Muslim-bashing. Make some Muslim friends and learn a bit more from experience, not from hate websites.
there is no compulsion in Islam, despite of course it being State policy in several Islamic countries backed up with the power of the Imams.
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There is no hate in Christianity either, despite of course it being State policy in ALL Christian countries backed up with the power of the Christian ministers. When it comes time to put the evil ones (terrorists, communists, etc.) to death in war, then the chorus is “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” If you dare speak of Christ’s message of love for enemies, you are “unpatriotic.”
That’s an astute observation, Scott. I am of an age such that I measure my life in the number of years I have left, not by how much I may have yet to accomplish. However, I don’t feel I’m falling apart, just slowing down a little. Old age (I think in today’s world I’m still in late middle age) doesn’t have to be a train wreck.
Of course the koran is so merciful and kind to women.
Quran 4:34, which should be read carefully, says that husbands may hit or beat their wives.
34 Husbands should take full care of their wives, with [the bounties] God has given to some more than others and with what they spend out of their own money. Righteous wives are devout and guard what God would have them guard in the husbands’ absence. If you fear high-handedness from your wives, remind them [of the teaching of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them. God is most high and great.[4] (Quran 4:34)
Even Aisha, the child bride, had this to say
…He [Muhammad] came (to the house) and I [Aisha] also came (to the house). I, however, preceded him and I entered (the house), and as I lay down in the bed, he (the Holy Prophet) entered the (house), and said: Why is it, Aisha, that you are out of breath? I said: There is nothing. He said: Tell me or the Subtle and the Aware would inform me. I said: Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be ransom for you, and then I told him (the whole story). He said: Was it the darkness (of your shadow) that I saw in front of me? I said: Yes. He struck me on the chest which caused me pain.
Of course if the woman happens to be a non muslim then anything goes.
Bukhari (52:256) – The Prophet… was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, “They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans).” In this command, Muhammad establishes that it is permissible to kill non-combatants in the process of killing a perceived enemy. This provides justification for the many Islamic terror bombings.
But Asoka would have us believe all these things are all in the past.
Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”
Of course this could be all a one off, but wait….
“Dubai: More than 5,000 girls below the age of 14 are married off in Saudi Arabia, according to media reports.
There have been 5,622 marriages where the bride is under the age of 14 in Saudi Arabia, said Ali Abdul Rahman Al Roumi, a social services academic at Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University, adding that specifying a legal age would not solve the problem, and may lead to “even bigger problems”.
A number of families from “rural areas” have been marrying their daughters off to older, rich men, according to the Saudi owned Al Hayat newspaper.
“We must solve this, by at least looking at the difference in age in cases where the bride is young, in which case it can be deceptive” he said. He did not specify what period of time that figure represents.”
It must be just these two backward countries right, but wait. From Norway of all places
Four men have been charged with forcibly marrying a 16 year old girl to a 23 year old man. The marriage was carried out March 2009 in the Oslo suburb of Skedsmo. The girl’s family gave their blessings to the marriage.
The case against the men – aged 23, 44, 47 and 49 – is based on the girl’s statement. Dagbladet has learned that the four Iraqi defendants denied the charges.
According to prosecutor Olav Helge Thue the girl was forced to answer questions as part of a Muslim forced marriage ceremony. An imam, who has not been charged, conducted the ceremony.
Still that’s just three countries right….
“Jakarta, 27 Oct. (AKI) – An Islamist party leader has defended child marriages in Indonesia saying it is normal to marry children as young as 11 or 12. Hilman Rosyad Syihab, deputy leader of the Islamic party Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), shared his views with Adnkronos International. The comments came after a Muslim cleric provoked public outrage in Indonesia by marrying a 12-year-old girl, and reportedly has plans to marry another two girls aged nine and seven.”
The evidence is overwhelming. It happens in every Islamic country and many that are not. Quite rightly when it happens in civilized countries the pedophiles get jailed, in islamic countries they get wedding gifts.
The usual excuse is that this is a ‘cultural’ issue but it is plain that it is a Muslim issue. Even UNICEF acknowledge it they have produced no less than three reports in five years about it.
I am sure that Asoka will throw up some smokescreen about the LDS bunch. But we are not discussing or comparing minor cults. This supposedly the religion of peace, respect and love.
The evidence demonstrates all that to be a lie.
OK, Treeman, let’s suppose you have convinced me and I am on your side? What can we do about it? Should we kill all Muslims? Bitching about Islam on CFN, will that change things?
Great post, Treeman. If you’ve ever seen the movie “My Cousin Vinny”, you’ll understand what I’m about to say.
Ed Gwynn
(waiting for a response from the prosecution)
…Mr. Trotter?
But how would such a flat tax enbable the redistribution of wealth Asoka so greatly desires?
These discussions about Muslims, and which religion is more vicious are not necessary.
Treeman, from what I can see, your multiple posts on this topic seem to be more about disproving Asoka wrong, rather than educating CFNers, who probably already know the arguments and have long developed their own opinions.
Asoka, you have made your point. To me, your continuing posts on the subject have more to do with proving you are right, rather than educating the readers, who I’m sure you realize already have made up their own minds. Think about Vlad and my attempts to show what an ass he is. Has it really changed the content of his, or anyone else’s, comments here?
Maybe it’s time to get on with another topic.
via Drudge:
Thatcher advisor Lord Monckton evicted from UN climate summit after challenging global warming — ‘Escorted from the hall and security officers stripped him of his UN credentials’.
The UN is a scam that was designed as such.
Need I hiss, Alger?
‘And write another 500 trillion pages of stuff like this, ever more, ever whackier, the crazier the better’
Yes, its free speech on Jims dime!
I see you stay busy, you rascal you, ole Spidey!
Would you call Bono and tell him 70,000 Whites have been killed in South Africa since Mandela etc took power?
Did you know in the USA its almost100 Black on white rapes a day, every day and 60,000? [reports have varying #] Whites killed per decade, by Blacks, in the USA.
OK, Treeman, let’s pretend Muslims are our enemies. What should we do?
I propose we love our enemies, pray for their well being, allow them free immigration, extend them hospitality, and become friends. I like my many Muslim friends. I love them.
Jesus (may the peace of Allah be upon him) said “even as you have done unto the least of these, ye have done unto me.”