JHK’s Three-Act Play
Mark these words: within about three hours, the “Birther” faction around America will be asking for Osama Bin Laden’s driver’s license. What I’d like to know is how come he was “buried at sea,” when the operation took place at least a thousand miles from the sea. Did the US Navy Seals transfer his remains from a helicopter to a boat? Or to an airplane? And did they just drop him over the night-darkened Indian Ocean like a sack of lentils? By the time you read this, the whole world will be clamoring for photos of the deceased. Maybe our guys will produce some. Quien Sabe?
I didn’t intend to write about Bin Laden this morning, but rather the nutrient medium of untruth that has come to surround all the tissue of everyday life in the USA. Until the Bin Laden operation went down Sunday, the big news of the week was the release of President Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate. A substantial number of Republicans still claim to believe that Obama is not a real American citizen. You may be sure they will persist, no matter what. Goebbels, too, knew the power of sheer repetition. One of the Birther leaders, Orly Taitz, immediately made the claim that the term “African” describing Obama’s father’s nationality on the document must be a latter-day PC dodge because back then the term-du-jour was “Negro.”
When historians gather around their campfires a half century from now, they will marvel at our idiocy. Among the vital matters we failed to reckon was the diminishing returns of technology as applied to news and information. The slicker our electronic media got, the less sense the public could make of the information stream that they drowned in. How many iPhones and Blackberries are jangling this morning, I wonder, with “news” that Bin Laden was buried at sea because he is Obama’s real father? To the Birthers, I’m sure Bin Laden qualified as some sort of “Negro.” The story will be on Fox News by suppertime in Atlanta, just watch.
You had to love the way Donald Trump pretended to be the hero of the Obama birth certificate story. Has anyone asked for a birth certificate for the creature that is living on Donald Trump’s head. I suspect it is a wolverine. Did it come from Michigan or Wisconsin, or possibly Canada? Is it a protected or endangered species? And was it obtained by legal means? (Perhaps he found it in a taxidermy shop.) Is there some way the Navy Seals can drop Donald Trump over the Bermuda Triangle. It would make me proud to be American again.
Against the background of what comes to look like a thirty-three ring circus in America’s affairs is the remarkable stream of lying that emanates even from places previously thought to be mentally normal. I listen to the radio when I linger around the kitchen at suppertime and on Friday evening a NASA official came over the airwaves extolling all the future space exploits of the agency. Mining asteroids for high grade metals! Journeys to Mars and beyond! I thought: is this jaboney out of his skull? We’ll be lucky if anyone can drive a powered vehicle from Hackensack to Paramus in ten years. An aerospace scientist ought to know that. If these guys are clueless about the future of travel, imagine how deranged a Tea Party official from Chugwater, Wyoming, must be.
NPR’s Market Place show, about economic and financial matters, is every bit as dishonest as CNBC or Fox. Every night, Market Place issues cheers for a stock market that is rising strictly on the basis of a concerted, wide-open stock pumping scheme operated by the Federal Reserve in partnership with five Wall Street banks and the US Treasury Department. (Why? To maintain an illusion that the economy is in wonderful condition.) As far as I know, not a single on-air economics reporter understands that we are in a contraction phase of history, not a growth phase. Nor that “growth,” as commonly defined, is impossible given the primary energy resource constrictions now underway. Something has gone terribly wrong in an education system that produces journalists this badly-informed.
Has the USA been hijacked by corporations, as some observers allege? Yes, I begin to believe in a stealth takeover – though I still imagine Mr. Obama is something less than a pure stooge and more of a hostage. But the odor of desperation all through our culture and economy is becoming a necrotic stench as we enter the warm seasons and the roadkill turns. Something tragic is going down in this land of ours and powerful people want to pretend powerfully that everything is okay. The public is not off the hook, either. They desperately wish to be gulled, snookered, distracted, played.
We do not talk, for instance, about the pressing need to discipline the corporations, and the place to start is by re-defining the practical “personhood” of corporations. It was lately expanded by the US Supreme Court to mean that corporations have the right to apply as much money as they like to the election process under the first amendment right to free speech. Interesting proposition they slipped in there: that money is the equivalent of speech. (Well, money does talk.) Of course, it is well-understood that the corporations owe their allegiance not to the country they operate in (you can’t say pay taxes in, of course, because many don’t), but strictly to their boards of directors representing the shareholders. In other words, corporation have no duties, obligations, or responsibilities to society, unlike human citizens. They are, by nature, sociopathic operations. Therefore, the remedy is a constitutional amendment re-defining corporate personhood as something less than, and apart from, citizenship. Who is the elected official out there who might take up this proposal?
Notice, by the way, the interesting and important news put out by the government on Friday (the time most favorable for “burying” news due to the TGIF syndrome), that the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) has de-funded the office that collects data on oil production outside the USA – that is, in places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico, et. al., in short, the places where the USA gets more than two-thirds of the oil we use every single day. And the reason for this would be? (choose one): 1.) We don’t want to know; 2.) We don’t give a shit; 3.) There’s four Saudi Arabia’s worth of oil under Zap, North Dakota; 4.) We’ve “innovated” a new technique for making oil out of lawn clippings.
De-funding the EIA is about the closest thing I’ve heard so far to the US cutting off its nose to spite its face. Meanwhile, every evening during the news hours, US coal companies are running completely dishonest advertisements – skillfully created like Valentines to the American people – to put over the totally false idea that burning coal can be done cleanly. The truth is that we have no idea yet how to successfully sequester carbon dioxide. Likewise, the gas companies are running warm and cuddly ads to reassure the public that we have a hundred years of methane gas to rely on. Both the coal and gas companies are wholesale liars playing a credulous public like a ten-cent kazoo for the sole purpose of pimping their share prices among the desperate retirees who make up the bulk of the TV news show watchers.
This morning, Bloomberg is putting out a story that the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped – from $113 to 112 – because Bin Laden was tossed into the sea. How long will that state of affairs last, I wonder. Through eleven o’clock in the morning, Eastern time? Lying is the new normal. Ignorance is one thing, lying to ourselves all the time, about absolutely everything, is something else. The least you can say about it is that it does not help us prepare for the very different everyday reality that we
are moving into: a world made by hand.
are moving into: a world made by hand.
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
Some suggest that Mr. Kunstler does not offer solutions – I agree. On the other hand I don’t know anyone else who can illuminate the dark side of our world in a way that sometimes sends me into (nervous) laughter.
Nervous because Kunstler’s dark scenarios reminds me of my childhood: I was born into the Great Depression, survived Nazism and World War II, grew up in mindless and murderous communism and following the 1956 uprising I crossed a minefield of the Iron Curtain escaping communist Hungary. When I think about the very high probability of global social-economic-environmental collapse I realize that the hellish experiences of my childhood were merely child’s play in comparison to what may come.
Trying to change the course of our probable dark scenario is why I spent the past 40 years working on solutions. My father started it, before I was born, during the Great Depression. Now my daughter Elisa is joining me in this work and as second and third generation social thinker / innovators, we continue to look for solutions to build peaceful and sustainable quality of life.
Our father-and-daughter team has found something that comes as near to answering that question as I hope to find in my lifetime. We call it the Holigent Solution. If it is less than perfect, it has a capacity to improve itself – like natural evolution, a mechanism of continuous systemic self-improvement is built into our proposal and that perhaps is a better answer than a “perfect” solution.
If answers are what you’re looking for, take a look at http://www.holigent.org and we would like to hear your thoughts.
It was wise to bury Osama at sea, because otherwise we’d have a shrine, somewhere, over his bones. Of course, I want to imagine that we have him in custody, but he’d be more dangerous alive than dead.
Good riddance. I’m glad he didn’t live to stir up trouble as the Final Oil Crisis deepens. We don’t want a Mahdi out there when the shite goes down.
RE: The Royal Wedding
“To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity.” (Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”, p. 14).
“Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”, p. 20).
No words of wisdom or of un-wisdom to add about Osama Bin. However I do want to report that our wolverine, the one that was occasionally sighted roaming about Michigan’s “thumb” region, was found dead about a year ago, apparently without ever having found another wolverine to mate with. So its carcass could possibly have found its way to Trump’s head.
James – Well folks, they say we killed Osama bin Laden this week. This country’s obsession with him and terrorism is just another example of the distractions thrown out to hide and distort the obvious facts surrounding global collapse. Just more professional shuck and jive!
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/in-the-territory-of-the-pleistocene-an-etiology-of-collapse/
A shot to the Head heard around the world
Recently I read somewhere on the web that Bin Laden had died years ago and we knew it, but….
I love a good surprise. After a weekend of non-news, the Royal wedding and the Beatification of Pope John Paul II, the yearly roast; the Correspondents Dinner, I was beginning to feel that the media forgot there was anything else going on in the world. About the only good news programming this weekend was Fareed Zacharia on Sunday which at least tried to address some important issues of the day.
Then when we all least expected, as I was winding down for the night, the news of our Navy Seals in conjunction with our intelligence came through and Bin Laden was dead with a shot to the head, heard around the world.
Every New Yorker has a story
On 9/11 I had just come back from a vacation the night before. We had enjoyed several days in the woods kayaking and walking woodsy trails, so nothing could have been further from our minds than the tensions of the world. We woke up to a magnificent day as the sun and blue sky broke through our blinds I couldn’t wait to get up. I drank my coffee while watching the news, when suddenly I heard a low-flying plane. So loud, that I had to run out onto my terrace to see what was going on. I looked north to the Empire State building and was relieved to see it was not harmed, but at that moment before I could even look downtown, I heard a sound of what sounded like thunder on such a day as that.
Moments later I could see what happened and we all know the rest. The smoke, the slow destruction of the World Trade Center as it fell, the stench when the winds shifted. Even in the middle of the night for the next few weeks we were shutting our windows against that smell. NYC was in lock-down mode, at least in the downtown area. In the first day, the only traffic in my area was an occasional military jeep.
A client of mine outside the city insisted that Thursday that I go to their studio to work directly with the art directors, so I had to commute outside the city only to hear that Grand Central Station was closed for a few hours while they looked into a possible terror threat. Luckily I could travel by train back in at the end of the day, but while I was in a cab going downtown, Clinton was there and all traffic stopped while people cheered him on. I got out of the cab to walk the rest of the way. I would have to show my license to State Troopers to get below 14th st. to my apartment.
All this against the image of Bin Laden congratulating himself ran on TV . So imagine how furious I was with Bush when he failed to stop Bin Laden from leaving Tora Bora. Wanted dead or Alive, huh. Our troops were being diverted to Iraq at that moment and there weren’t enough troops to back our special ops people who had their hands tied when Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan.
Now Pakistan was a conundrum, as it is a nuclear nation, in conflict with India. We’ve been walking a tightrope with them. Given that there were so many sympathaizers with the Taliban and Al Queda going all the way up the poser structure in Pakistan, we really had no ability to go in there and get our quarry. Imagine how ingrained terror sympathizers in Pakistan was that the compound that Bin Laden lived in was under a mile away from Pakistan’s elite military training center. We were smart not to let anyone in Pakistan know our intention.
This was a moment when we can consider the measured process of getting our ducks in a row as the quality of cool-headed patience exemplified by President Obama. Let’s give credit where it’s due.
It took a change in government and the stupidity of the terrorists to change the game. In the last few years Al Queda carried out attacks against it’s host, and we managed to get our foothold into the country which acquiesced to our drone attacks in the mountainous region of the country.
This chapter has finally come to an end through tenacity of purpose, but there will be plenty of issues for us to address. The reassignment of both Panetta and Petraeus falls into place and the way Intelligence and the military work together really makes more sense than dealing with military issues with a broad brush, leveling countries.
The distractions are monumental, folks; and they just keep on coming. We had the Obama birth certificate, the Osama death notice, and in between the royal wedding and the murder of Gaddaffi’s young clan members. Well, now, there are some free throw points for the home team, huh? Continuous distractions are what we get; thrown out to hide and help us ignore the obvious facts surrounding global collapse. Just more professional shuck and jive!
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/in-the-territory-of-the-pleistocene-an-etiology-of-collapse/
Whatever invasive species is inhabiting the penthouse suite at “the Donald”, it most certainly did NOT originate in Canada. I don’t even think it’s terestrial – perhaps one of those parasite Ga’ould creatures from Stargate SG-1.
JHK wrote: “The truth is that we have no idea yet how to successfully sequester carbon dioxide.”
I never fail to be shocked at the gross lack of knowledge of basic science (esp. chemistry) among the otherwise “well-schooled.”
James, Here’s a 10th grade science lesson: The Calvin Cycle that occurs with all photosynthetic organisms sequesters carbon dioxide (that’s CO2 for the unwashed) and converts it into sugars and Oxygen (the latter is part of the stuff we breathe, BTW). THus CO2 sequestration occurs everywhere you have PLANTS !!!!!
FYI
BIN LADEN IS DEAD — Woo Hoo — finally some justice — Thank you, God, thank you, US Military and thank you, President Obama!
Okay, there are still a lot of problems in the US and a lot of problems around the world yet to be solved, but this morning, I think we should just bask in the feeling of happiness. Cheers!
JHK,
I think we’ve made a breakthrough, that you see there’s a method to this madness and there is indeed an economic fundamentalist ideology of free trade with no regulation and a corportocracy that has grown around that.
I have no doubt that the Chicago School of business where Milton Friedman taught, was in fact a big influence on Obama. He wouldn’t be where he is today if this were not the case.
Bin Laden’s body is on its way to Area 51 to be placed in the deep freeze storage next to the Aliens and Bigfoot. There is no way he was dumped at sea.
He should have been tossed into the fukushima daiichi plant to get him nice and radioactive and then sent back to Afghanistan for public display amongst his followers. A modern day twist on the smallpox blanket concept.
As for lying… I assume everyone is lying to me. I am pleasantly surprised when I find out otherwise and not disappointed when I find out they are.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
“Has anyone asked for a birth certificate for the creature that is living on Donald Trump’s head. I suspect it is a wolverine. Did it come from Michigan or Wisconsin, or possibly Canada? Is it a protected or endangered species? And was it obtained by legal means? (Perhaps he found it in a taxidermy shop.) Is there some way the Navy Seals can drop Donald Trump over the Bermuda Triangle. It would make me proud to be American again.”
Love it JHK–very funny–thanks for the laugh!
Cynic that I am, I wonder if this was a bit of kabuki theater to help Obama!
It’s too strange for someone to carry on like Trump did.
Nobody thinks Trump will remain in the race and his approach reminds me of Steven Cobert, somehow. Just a theory, but on the one hand he is attacking globalism as in the unbalanced trade with China. That will not go over well with the transnationals.
100 years of methane to burn? I doubt we’ll be around Jim to continue throwing more CO2 in the atmosphere. You have to listen to Bill McKibben’s latest update on global changes for 2010. Ecoshock.org has it from the April 22nd podcast. Just listening to some of the data from 2010 is enough to scare the beejeebees out of you and this was before the worst set of tornadoes ever ripped through the mid U.S. last week. Only a fool can ignore the data coming in now on climate change and we’re only 1 degree C warmer. And regarding WARDOC’s comment that photosynthesis is carbon sequestration…thanks for the science lesson you retard. We’re talking about the carbon that’s being released after millions of years in the ground.
good riddance to the three stooges
Thanks JHK, for banning LarryMoeCurly. Who needs more ignorant comments? We already have “The Donald”.
I totally agree with your examples of MARKET PLACE, the NASA guy, “clean coal”, EIA funding and future growth in economy of which there was a great article at… Energy bulletin.net …. These past few days with good charts and analysis on the impossibility of growth. how about a general strike to protest supreme court and corporate personhood?
JHK sez:
“Against the background of what comes to look like a thirty-three ring circus in America’s affairs is the remarkable stream of lying that emanates even from places previously thought to be mentally normal.”
Spot on.
The corn-fed ‘Murkin publick wishes to continue guzzling down the high-fructose corn syrup and corny cheeze doodle snackies. What’s in that shit anyway?? Some kind of gullibility-inducing, Monsanto-created, “naturally occurring”, lab-rat drug?
No wonder I’m paranoid! Even in my sleep I’m trying to process all the lies and dumbfuckery I hear and witness every day. (The dreams just keep getting wackier and wackier.)
Guess I’m about primed for the NEXT great conspiracy…
Buried at sea, eh? I wanna see how Johnny Jingo and the Puppetmasters spin this little 2 trillion dollar [continuing, and counting] escapade! (Let’s not even get into the cost in human life, Gads.)
I’m liking that band name, however.
“He should have been tossed into the fukushima daiichi plant to get him nice and radioactive”
Naw, you are too kind. Bacon underwear, topped by bacon bib-overalls. Sewn inside of a pig intestine. This of course after his dick was coated with glue and dipped in a crushed bag of Grippos’ pork rinds. Just sayin’
For the Corporate Media’s and the general public’s
cluelessness about what is actually going on there were 2 Op-Ed stories in the NY Times about gas prices.
Indicative of the cast of mind was yesterday’s in which a creative writer recounted her days working as a cashier at gas station during 1979’s oil shortage crisis after Iran’s revolution.
As she recounted, her ex-husband said in those days they “knew” the cause of higher gas prices and shortages with Iran’s turmoil. But now, as her
300 lb ex-husband cannot afford to drive his 10 mile per gallon truck and is forced to ride a bike
“They just raise prices because they can…”
Why did he buy a 10 MPG truck?
Apparently like Nicole Sandler, “progressive” replacement for Randy Rhodes, it is all due to
“speculators”.
Weren’t we all taught in elementary school science that there is only so much oil on the Earth?
Why should it be a surprise when it actually begins to run out and become more and more expensive?
Like James Kunstler the great huzzahs for killing
Bin Laden will wear off by tomorrow’s oil trading
and 2 months from now when the economy double dibs after gas prices hit $4.50 per gallon
all the celebrations will be forgotten in
the “United States of Amnesia”
“…historians gathered around their campfires…”
Jim, you never miss a trick. Good writing!
“No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t keep up”
Lily Tomlin.
My husband woke me up this morning with the news that the US announced that it killed BinLaden, took his DNA and then dumped his body at sea.
I said “Who would be stupid enough to believe that story?”
Then I got online.
Wow.
Thank you JHK, I have rather come to depend on your Monday morning distillations to realign my sense of just what the heck going on. I have to say I sometimes marvel at your ability to stay focused and clear amid the cacophony of distractions from the media and political misdirection. Kudos there.
You touch on a thing that has puzzled me: corporations are an entity allowed the right of free speech, such as a person might have, yet retain limited liability because one cannot sue a corporation only individuals. Isn’t that the best of both worlds?
Pud-Pud gone agin? Nice to have a relaxing moment.
We’ll all be like Carol-Ann sitting in front of a glowing, static-y boob tube; waiting to utter the fateful words: “They’re baaa-ack”, when that detestable ogre pokes his face out of his cave under a new moniker. …It’ll be like X-mas morning! Hurrah!
Hey Ozone, let me get this straight, Osama lives in a large mansion built in 2005 with a multi-million dollar bounty on his head in a neighborhood surrounded by peasants. It takes the USA and Pakistan intelligence agencies 10 years and billions of dollars to find him. When we rub his ass out we disappear the body within hours so there can be no follow-up. Sounds plausible to me. Shit in the old days he would have been propped up on a plank surrounded by smilin’ Navy Seals. Either way nothings changed, some one has already filled his shoes. Probably hand-picked by the NSA/CIA.
Actually, lbendet, BinLaden was NOT congratulating himself on TV on 9-11. He denied responsibility for 9-11.
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-09-16/us/inv.binladen.denial_1_bin-laden-taliban-supreme-leader-mullah-mohammed-omar?_s=PM:US
It IS true that he was accused very early on US TV, but that is a different thing.
Maybe you conflated the accusations with a non-existent confession in the years of propaganda that have followed.
It makes little difference which actor is currently hosting the Demopublican show, the small differences are mostly style choice. Whoever Central Casting hires next (Palin, Romney, Trump, Huckelberry etc) will get pretty much the same scipt to read.
Likewise, no doubt, a decision has been reached in the more hidden competition for the next bogeyman. The burial of Bin Ladin (real or otherwise) probably means that a new show is about ready for viewers in TWOT theatre.
Ummm. Parents sold the McMansion and today is moving day. Bittersweet.
Electric Bikes were a bigger hit than Solar Panels at Earthday/Community day on Saturday.
I feel like I’m leading the charge for sustainable change more than 99% of the peeps around here, and that feels fuckin good. Highschool and college kids get it way more than their parents.
Any body pay attention to Ted Turner I just saw him spit some we gotta do shit now or we die interviews that were pretty cool.
When is the end of the world again?
Started reading “Off the Grid” last night it is really good book so far.
Saw the magic of seeds into seedlings take place the last few days. And that feels good.
JHK keep up the great HTML! Maybe the internet and twitter will save us?
PUSH ON. DO GOOD. KEEP SMILING.
And don’t forget that he was on dialysis, Ripped.
How many dialysis patients have you transported that could live for 10 years without it?
The above mentioned article is by Jeremy Granthan and was originally published at… Theoildrum.com… If any interest
Ha!
Yep, I think you’ve got the pertinent “facts” just about right.
…and the Old West posse-photo is a great call. SOMEBODY must have brought a digital camera to the party, eh? Show me the killin’-porn. ;o)
YOU FUCKING TIT !!!!!!!!!
Hey Wage, I have a good source that tells me Osama and Cheney were sharing kidneys and hearts removed from the bodies of drone attack victims.
It is a time to rejoice. OBL’s death preempted the Celebrity Apprentice. Trump sucker punched twice in one weekend. Yeh!!
Correct Jim – the elite (corporate or political) of this country, whose etiology can be traced to the first urban centers, creates its own unique form of sociopathy, attracting those ‘infected’ into its ascendent ranks and affording them a lofty plateau from which to survey and manipulate the subjugated masses. It provides those elevated elites with an illusion of separation, heightening their sense of self-worth and personal superiority. It is this self-induced fantasy that enables them to create laws, pass judgments, and execute decisions that apply to all but themselves. Just look at the actions of those in our Congress and in our courts, not to mention the sociopath-in-chief and his chorus-line of cohorts sitting just down the road from that august body of jurists and lobbyists.
See my morning post!!
http://wp.me/P1lJ1g-9x
Very well said ……
JHK wrote: “And the reason for this would be? (choose one): 1.) We don’t want to know; 2.) We don’t give a shit; 3.) There’s four Saudi Arabia’s worth of oil under Zap, North Dakota; 4.) We’ve “innovated” a new technique for making oil out of lawn clippings.”
#5.) They can now just make up shit.
I think the “news” regarding Bin Laden will quickly fade away (at least on Main Street) unless his “death” somehow translates into more jobs and lower gasoline prices. At the end of the day, that’s what people are most concerned about.
Holding my breath now, waiting for those troops to come home…………
Solar Guy,
Are your parents downsizing?
Also, would you happen to have a link to ol’ Ted’s interviews or a clue where I could look?
Thanks!
“It IS true that he was accused very early on US TV, but that is a different thing.”
Damn, maybe we got the wrong guy. (Fool)
My first reaction was… body buried at sea? No proof? I’m not sure, but these past ten years have left me too cynical to believe this rot. They took him to Afghanistan – since that is one large US sand box for us to play in – then to the ocean – after taking DNA samples to show as proof….. In the olden days, the enemy’s head would be up on a pig pole for all to see. Harsh and gross, but would put the matter to rest. I wonder who will be elected the next bug bear to frighten us. We can’t afford to allow the terror industry to collapse, it’s the only thing holding our economy together.
This from the Guardian today, at least they will examine the issues:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/02/economics-economicgrowth
These times feel like the Reagan years to me, but with no reason to think things will get better.
Who would be stupid enough to believe that the USA dumped Osama Bin Ladin’s body in the sea “in accordance with Islamic tradition” as one official at the Defense(sic) Department stated?
(Since when does the US military show any respect for Islamic tradition?)
You would be surprised. Or maybe not. The comments were running unanimously positive over at Yahoo News when I checked in there. Nobody was questioning the official story line (not in the first page or two of comments).
I liked the line in today’s Clusterfuck about the EIA being defunded. Isn’t that like disconnecting you smoke alarm because the noise bothers your sleep?
We sink deeper and deeper into denial in this country. As evidence, I see that Detroit has brought back “Muscle Cars” with big engines — to celebrate our economic recovery perhaps.
I’ll stick to commenting on what I know and what people want to hear: How to stay healthy and fit in the face of a collapsing medical system:
http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com
Fox News congratulates Bush for bin Laden
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/02/fox_reaction
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have both congratulated President Obama on hearing the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. But Fox News seems unwilling to let the glory linger on the president for even a moment. The cable network’s website homepage chose to feature former president Bush predominantly, with the only mentions of Obama in small type under a large picture and headline devoted to his predecessor.
Osama is dead ?? Yeah, right, and dumped in the ocean?? Yeah right.Just like JFK’s son was. (Military funeral and all that. I still think he was shot down. How come, after the initial newscast, there was no mention or retraction of the instructor in the plane) Back to the big “O”, what did they do with his dialysis machine,? hope they donated it to some worthy cause. And yes, where are the pics of Osama tied to a tree with the unit all around?? Who in the military would ever miss that foto op? Does this mean we have won the war in Ganistan and now we can leave and stop wasting a billion a day? Or was this meant to bolster Obama’s ratings which seem to plummet daily? Great column today, as usual,one thing wonderful if Trump gets the prez, imagine all the fun SNL will have with the wolverine, or whatever that non-growth is. In the meantime, the fed’s sting on the Amish dairy farmer is over, he’s locked up, the cows are sucked dry with the vacuum from Washington. The Amish are not just traffic stoppers anymore. And some jerk from the CDC says that raw milk has nothing that pasturized milk does, what the hell planet is that talking moron from?? I don’t write often, so had to cover a few topics. Cheers.
Ah, that explains a lot!
Wow, I hadn’t heard that one!
So a desert people invent a religion that involves burying their dead at sea. That must keep them busy.
Well, I guess I have to believe that, if corporate media tells me so.
On Friday, I went to have dinner with some people on a coal tour of Southern Illinois.
Most of them were Sierra Club types. But one was a man who was quite sure that clean coal was possible, and “we have to do something!”, and, if the government is going to put billions of dollars into something, why not clean coal?
Why not? Because anything the government put billions of dollars into creates a constituency for further subsidies. Witness the war machine, now a trillion-dollar business with millions of hanger-ons. Or the construction of highways, leading to the sprawl we exist in today.
Coincidentally, I then went to work, and a co-worker told me a horrible story about her coal miner husband and his narrow escape from death 2,000 feet underground and 2 miles (!) from the mine shaft opening.
If the government put billions into energy conservation, house refitting, renewable and locally generated energy, there would be a constituency for that.
I appreciate the mention of NPR’s “Market Place” radio program. Their simple-minded playing of musical pieces to announce the day’s stock market moves (“We’re in the Money” or “It Don’t Mean a Thing, if it Ain’t Got That Swing,” etc.) insults everyone’s intelligence.
Great post Jim!
The Bin Laden thing seems to be nothing more than election scam thing. It’s a non-issue, and always was. But the sheep will think it’s a big deal.
You’re right about NPR’s Market Place – total crap. Of course GE is one of their sponsors, which says it all. I use to like NPR, but it’s become so mainstream now.
It’s a very bad thing about the EIA, first heard about this on Gregor’s site: http://gregor.us/
This was done on purpose, to keep us in the dark.
Finally, someone above suggested you don’t offer solutions. Not sure I agree with that. I think anyone who follows you, via talks, interviews, your podcast, etc., has a pretty good idea of what to expect, and how we will be living. Of course those who have never heard of Peak Oil, will probably not make the transition to a post-Peak Oil world.
James Kunstler DOES offer solutions but as he
has stated before nobody wants to hear them.
The highest priority solution is to abstain from our
auto addiction and run the trains, light rail, shuttles and pedestrian bike friendly transit.
Lawrence Livermore Labs of all places just had
an energy input/output study which confirms the obvious when our cars and trucks take 70% of our oil usage – the biggest way to save energy, oil
and land usage is transit which amounts to 46%
of wasted energy.
We have 233,000 miles of Rail still left in the USA – when do we start using it?
Of course along with running trains we should go back to Main Streets transit oriented development.
In most cases that means running trains on tracks
which used to go to old Main Streets and getting back to mixed development.
Along with that you will frequently find Main Streets are close to water, and even falling water – i.e. marine transit but also possible electricity generation with small hydro projects.
An encouraging sign of success for the New Urbanism is River Ranch in Lafayette, Louisiana
which I just stumbled across last week:
http://www.riverranchdevelopment.com/
After driving for miles across oppressive suburban sprawl “Geography of Nowhere” around Lafayette, our hostess took us to a concert at
River Ranch on the Vermilion River as the place to go for Thursday night music.
Even though it was built in the last 10-15 years the place was hopping with people listening to music in the “Town Square”, crowded into outdoors cafes outside the restaurants, and packed with SUV’s driven from the surrounding sprawl to come to this beacon of New Urbanism.
Amazingly enough as we toured the mixed income
streets with small yards, sidewalks, walking access to stores and restaurants and the Town Square there were even gangs of kids out and about. Untethered from their chauffeuring parents
SUV’s able to walk around and have fun outside of a Mall!
Actually, Kunstler DOES offer “solutions”, or plausible ways of adapting to a situation that will have no solution.
There is no “solution” to peak oil because it is not a “problem”. As Kunster himself has stated in other words, it is a CONDITION and we are stuck with it, and have to find a way to work around it and maintain our civilization in a world of less for everyone, while minimizing death and suffering as much as possible. He has offered the only “solution” that will avail, which is downscaling, doing with less, and reviving lost arts and techniques that make it possible to do things without copious amounts of fuel.
The only “solution” is recognizing we will have to live differently and preparing for lives with much less amenity and ease, and starting NOW to revamp our lives for much lower energy usage.
This guy surely reads CFN:
“The perfect storm of Obama’s stonewalling and an establishment willing to cover up and lie for him, means that people legitimately distrust anything that comes out of his mouth or the media. In such an environment, a culture of conspiracy theories may be wrong, but not irrational. And it also means that there’s no real way to prove or disprove anything anymore.
Is it irrational to believe that the media would lie to us about major documents that are a factor in a presidential race? It should be. But in the 2004 election, the highest profile news program around presented a document indicting Bush for draft dodging that turned out to have been written in Microsoft Word.
Media talking heads complain that the internet has proliferated conspiracy theories so that there is no longer a consensus on what’s true and what isn’t. But who do you blame for that, except a media which has been willing to sell lies in order to achieve political victories. This is no longer just about the big lies, like Walter Duranty insisting that Soviet Russia was a happy worker’s utopia, it’s even about the most ordinary things. Like a birth certificate. The liberal establishment has completely discredited itself. And with liberal ideologues controlling most of the media, a rational consensus can no longer hold up.
A consensus only works if we agree on some things. We can disagree on taxes and stop signs. But we don’t disagree that blatant lies are wrong and that politicians from all parties should be equally subject to scrutiny. Except we don’t agree on that anymore. Instead we agree that you’ll lie like crazy and we won’t believe a word that comes out of your mouths. What’s truth? Nobody knows anymore.
What is really disturbing about the birth certificate issue is that Obama never took it seriously as an obligation. Instead he threw it out to counter an opposing candidate who was rising in the polls. And the media narrative is that this is a shameful\triumphant event that humiliates\uplifts Obama. No it doesn’t make any sense. But when you lie all the time, you stop noticing when your news reports follow contradictory, but useful narratives.
Obama has become an event horizon beyond which truth no longer seems to exist anymore. The birth certificate release no longer has any real meaning. It’s always possible to find more ‘questions’ to ask about it. There’s no objective way to finalize the issue, because the consensus has broken down.
The left’s unprecedented corruption of government and the media which could have played a watchdog role, means that those institutions can no longer serve as watchdogs, only propagandists.
When you can no longer trust institutions, then you either drink the kool aid or refuse to drink anything at all. The question isn’t are they lying, it’s how much are they lying. And when you’re dealing with that kind of framework, to ‘trust’ you have to argue that they would lie X amount, but not Y amount. Because lying Y amount would be just crazy. Right?
The left is free to believe that asking for Obama’s birth certificate is racist. And plenty on the right will believe that the birth certificate is fake. The Racists vs Liars debate of narratives has been going on for a while now and it transcends the birth certificate. It’s the larger story here. The zero sum struggle. And it’s only going to get uglier.
Are we in a recovery or an economic disaster? If you believe the liars, we’re in a recovery. And the only people denying it hate socialism, which as we all know is code, for race. Is Global Warming a serious problem? The liars say yes and that anyone who disagree is a racist who hates the Third World countries that are suffering from GW. Is ObamaCare… well you get the drill. Ground Zero Mosque, yep. Big government. You know it.
If you agree with Obama, you’re a liar. And if you disagree with him, you’re a racist. It’s useless to conduct a political debate under these conditions.
This level of divisiveness is less about Obama, and more about the way the left has used institutions under its control to promote him and silence his critics. And there’s a price to pay for that. Constant propaganda works. And it doesn’t. You end up with two types of people. One type who believes everything the authorities say. The other who wouldn’t believe them if they said the sun was shining.
The media was meant to be a forum, instead it’s become a propaganda megaphone. And the alternative is a crowdsourced media. Which is exactly what we have on the internet. Crowdsourced media means more mistakes, but it still beats a one note media apparatus which spends all day blaring OBAMA IS GREAT LOOK HOW GREAT OBAMA IS ISN’T HE GREAT THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE HIM ARE RACISTS. Of course conspiracy theories flourish in such an environment. How could they not. And how do you disprove them when there is no longer a consensus on much of anything anymore.
The media talking heads like to solemnly blame the internet for this chain of events, but the internet is an outlet. It’s their lies that have gotten us here.”
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011043013400/editorial/rsn-pick-of-the-day/friday-afternoon-roundup-liars-vs-racists.html
You’re calling me a fool for not automatically accepting all that the talking heads on TV tell me?
And I suppose you are showing the epitome of wisdom by swallowing it all whole?
Not choking at all on the sliminess of cheering on vigilantes or the chunks of indigestible nonsense?
Lying is the new normal, and you are one of the reasons they get away with it.
All due respect, Wage, I have worked for government for 15 years and I can tell you that conspiracies of that size have little hope of actually working…
“Sigh…”
What’s so sad–but predictable and not at all surprising–is the idea that anyone should be “happy” about the murder of Osama Bin Laden.
First, his overwhelming, undeniable and irrefutable success lives on (he and others have succeeded in greatly accelerating the self-evisceration of the Amerikan empire via the imperially-overstretched “war on terror”);
Second, Osama Bin Laden and others could and can only dream of committing the kind of crimes and carnage that are Amerika’s stock and trade; and
Third (and last but by no means least), I can’t imagine any universe in which the death, disfiguration and disenfranchisement of tens-upon-tens-upon-tens of thousands (of “non-combatants” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere) was (and is, as our Murder Incorporated way-of-life continues unabated let alone questioned) worth it (is it remotely “moral” to be “happy” that one man’s death is considered worth brand-Amerika’s sociopathic, violent indifference?).
This is all so very profoundly ignorant, pathetic and offensive and equally typically Amerikan.
And it all flows from the same kind of mythology which informs JHK that “capital-ism” is akin to the laws of physics (talk about lying!).
It’s charmingly reminiscent of kindergarten-level miseducation but Amerika-and-capitalism are imperialism-and-parasitism writ large.
Amerika is not the product of “democracy and free markets” but of hegemony and imperial economic-and-military violence (the “iron fist” beyond the “invisible hand”).
“As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.”
– Noam Chomsky, Is the World Too Big Too Fail
Which is to say, contrary to grossly political sites-and-pundits like The Automatic Earth, there isn’t anything “automatic” about any of this.
It’s up to us, We The People: do we continue to let these crimes and this carnage go on in our name? With our tax dollars? Or do we do something about it (which would require, by definition, moving far beyond voting and permitted “protests” in “free speech zones”)?
As the late Chalmers Johnson noted in, The Sorrows of Empire, it would take nothing short of a Revolution.
Did anyone note that Obama released his official birth certificate in 2008. The only official Hawaiian certificate is the short-form version – which he released 3 years ago. The long form version is not the official version and is not even legally available for copy or distribution. Obama had to bring legal action against the State of Hawaii to get the long form. And against the backdrop of this silliness, the USA has killed the-mastermind-of-all-evil-plots-and-degeneracy, and the reason for the war in Afghanistan. So the war is now over? And the troops will come home? Stay tuned pictures and breaking news at 11.
It’s entirely possible since the Muslims developed an extensive maritime trading empire. And one of the cargoes was slaves. The people on the West Coast of Ireland used to hear them sometimes chanting their prayers off in the fog. The whole village of Baltimore, Ireland was taken in one raid.
And a couple of the biggest and most vicious of these acts of the annointed are the foreign aid scam and affirmative action – both totally unconstitutional, one being theft from the public and the other gross injustice, a denial of the equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares
keep mowing the lawn
it’s just another toupee
believe till we’re gone
You just went on my “too stupid to respond to” list.
“The left is free to believe that asking for Obama’s birth certificate is racist.”
Oddly enough, they are not. They don’t believe the charge for a minute. They just make the charge to shut up anyone that requests a little documentation. I mean for fuck’s sake, they want to make someone a racist for requesting in the future that voters show some type of ID at the poles prior to voting. This in the face of mounds of evidence that elections have been rigged for years. I mean for cryin’ out loud, you gotta show an ID anymore to buy a six-pack but vote? Somehow that is racist.
Why haven’t we demanded the birth certificates of other candidates? Well Obama had a globetrotting mother who hooked up with a foreign national. I mean it was at least reasonable to pose the question, “Is this guy an actual citizen?” But that may have gotten in the way of the anointed ones plans. And of course he could have released his birth cert. way back in 08 when it first came up but he chose not too. Why is that? Well, my guess is so he could milk the “racist card” charge as long as humanly possible. Even though there are legitimate, non-racist reasons that questioned his national origin.
This President has been anything but open in his dealings with Congress, the press, and the American people. To play games, like he has with his birth certificate, just so he can “punk” Donald-the douchebag-Trump, is somehow distinguished or dignified or Presidential? I think not.
In our troubling times, we deserve much, much better from our President. Obama punking Trump is a chump punking a chump. There is no dignity in that.
Killing Bin Laden at this point will have the same effect on terrorism that eliminating Ronald McDonald would have on the McDonalds franchise.
Mow said:
“Good riddance to the three stooges.”
I agree on many levels one of which is that LarryMoeCurley’s remarks put a dark mark on this otherwise superb group and the expression of its members.
Kay
Well, on Facebook, I just saw a post by a Muslim that said that there is NO requirement for burial at sea in Muslim custom.
But, go ahead, speculate freely. If you become able to make up shit and say it with a straight face, you may have a career in the “news” media.
Has anyone seen the George Carlin spiel on bullshit? It’s brilliant.
Larrymoecurley was banned?
Well, I guess that explains “baglady”.
Couple thoughts. Of course corporations own this country lock stock and barrel. Have for a long time. The only thing of value left for the people is determined solely by the amount of greed felt by the energy related company ceo of the moment. The game is rigged, if you have a portfolio or carry a mortgage, you are no longer in control of your own destiny, so suck it up and bow down and kiss the boots of those on the top of the hierarchal corporate ladder.
Now that the US gov has proved it has the ability, how about putting the ceo of bayer on the list – for spreading the system toxic clothianidin across our land. Or the ceo of transocean – for killing more life than ever, not to mention moving its headquarters to avoid US tax. I need not go on to make my point?
And lawn clippings to fuel? No, far more valuable to the american people if we could put it in a pipe and get a high.
Look up the Catholic ethics concept of “vincible ignorance”. That is what ails this nation. As such, we deserve what we get. Here we sit, with our leadership, by the decisions they make, selling the citizenry out wholesale. It’s a matter of personal convenience for individual serfs to fixate on the birth certificate issue. To do so allows many to proceed with the wicked case of cognitive dissonance they’ve been painstakingly conditioned to harbor. Where you embrace the notion that a grasping-at-straws documentation loophole is the issue of the day, if only because you are not comfortable with coming to grips with the sorry fact that the Ghost Dance like fascination with this trifling invented matter covers for the cowardice of large swathes of the citizenry. People who would rather believe that a magic loophole in the law can save us from the class warfare based turmoil to come. If only because they lack the courage, direction and/or motivation to come to grips with the real economic and political sea change that this nation is about to experience.
Also from Facebook-
?”I killed bigfoot last week. But according to bigfoot tradition I buried him at sea. Sorry guys” — some dude on reddit, via FB friend
Jim, for the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with you. My theory this week is that you are just not that intelligent, but that you think you are extremely intelligent.
As one who pays extremely close attention to global oil production on a daily basis, I would say the EIA move is a good one. The data the EIA provides is looked at by very few people and is available from multiple other sources. This saves the taxpayer money and the EIA resources by eliminating unnecessary redundancy. Did you consider that possibility along with your grocery list of conspiracy theories?
The joke about Donald Trump’s hair was actually told by Obama Saturday night. So that’s just cheap plagiarism on your part. Donald Trump is irrelevant. So stop talking about him. Otherwise, you are dropping lame pop-culture references and are no better than the NASCAR fans you rag on every week.
Islamabad is 700 miles from the Arabian Sea which is much closer than the Indian Ocean. You can tell this from a map. Try looking at one.
Matt Taibbi is a much better writer on national financial matters. You know this since you give us a paragraph synopsis of his work every other week.
Your plagiarism of Taibbi aside, you are often one of those “badly-informed” journalists.
At least throw in a salad-shooter reference for asoka now and again.
Hey JK,
yeah, the normal is whatever amount of truth coincides with your scheme. News is more akin to advertising than knowledge or information. Well done on putting some loquacious frosting on the rotten cakes the American public eat every evening.
A couple of notes: Bin Laden’s death is a great reminder of the fact that he continues to be the most significant human being of the 21st century.
Worth discussing: underfunding the EIA closely resembles the processes used by the federal reserve in refusing to publicize various aspects of the money-supply statistics.
One could postulate that there will be ongoing campaign of dismantling all government agencies that “accidentally” disseminate information that can be used to demonstrate the malfeasance and criminality of the elite-power class.
This is pretty much why few of us know what we are talking about.
I can see a “NASA-less” future where global warming doesn’t exist. An NOAA-less future where storm damage records and deaths don’t exist.
An EPA-less future where the “water is cleaner than its ever been” and the “air is purer than its ever been.”
Yeah -the EIA thing is a big deal, but its lost in the mountain of garbage news.
Good piece James!! I hate to say it but I do not believe Americans will be any smarter in the next 50 years than they are today, since education and those choosing to be educated will not improve much as the regressives gain more power as a result of the corporate elite buy more and more legislation and political power.
You wrote about Market Place. I have not listened to that crappy show since the Bush years. When the idiot guy on the show brought in a Swift Boater during the Kerry vs. Bush campaign, I decided to no longer listen to that misinformational financial program on public radio.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
http://moontownshippa.blogspot.com
We want to see the Death Certificate. We are Deathers. We name ourselves – thus denying you the power.
Osama and Cheney were sharing internal organs harvested from subjects stunned by the latest active denial prototypes. GW Bush came and visited them at Osama’s rented cabin in the mountains and became jealous when Osama took possession of some of GW’s favorite dancing boys. Cheney, in order to keep the peace between his compatriot repeated his tendency to shoot people in the face. The credit was sold to Obama in the form of allowing Donald Trump to rally teapartiers on stories of Obama’s father with impunity for the period of 30 days.
(inspired by ripped thunder)
No requirement? What does that mean? That it’s banned? Obviously they wouldn’t bury at sea if they’re on land – but what if they’re at sea? As usual, your half truths are designed to obfuscate. Everything is tactics with Communists.
just heard that the whole Osama compound was burned to the ground after the attack. You woulda thunk it would of been fully loaded with all sorts of useful intell, right? I guess ya gotta do watcha gotta do to cover your tracks.
You’ve never even see Bigfeet and don’t believe in them. I feel sorry for you.
I live in Michigan, so I can tell you the last known real wolverine here died a year or two ago. The only Wolverines left are University of Michigan students and alumni, like me. Most of us wouldn’t be caught dead on Trump’s head, although a few of the more avaricious women might be caught live on it.
Besides, that creature is more likely to have been a fox. Imagine, a fox on Trump on Fox!
I know of several organizations, Move to Amend, U.S. Uncut, and Coffee Party USA (full disclosure, I’m one of the officers of the Coffee Party), who are working on the problem you outline in this paragraph. You might consider joining one of them. Of course, if you joined the Coffee Party, you’d have to sign a civility pledge. That might be difficult for you.
As for an elected official who might make a constitutional amendment his or her cause, how about Bernie Sanders? He is, after all, a Socialist.
Reuters did, too. I blogged about it in Crazy Eddie’s Motie News as We interrupt your regularly scheduled program. As for the “regularly scheduled program” that was interrupted, on the west coast, it was Celebrity Apprentice. How fitting!
Absolutely. Destroying evidence is necessary to get away with it.
I don’t understand why the defunding of the EIA is being lauded by some of you. They are a source of much useful data. If some of the information comes from sources who are known stretchers of the truth, that doesn’t invalidate the whole agency or its mission. I feel like we’re flying blind now when independent energy analysis is exactly what we could really use. Oh, well.
Er wait though…I just read a story that says the EIA’s budget is being cut 14%, not totally eliminated.
@Jimmy Drinkwater:
regarding your statement that corporations “retain limited liability because one cannot sue a corporation only individuals,” you’re laboring under a misunderstanding which is easily set straight.
It’s plainly false that corporations can’t be sued. One of the very attributes of personhood/citizenship granted to corporations is the capacity to sue and be sued in courts of law. And corporations are in fact sued (and sue others) constantly.
What their limitation of liability refers to is a shareholder’s financial exposure being limited to the value of their equity investment.
It’s been such a commonplace in this country for so long, that it may seem almost beneath notice, but there are other ways to organize a business firm. In Britain, for example, Lloyds of London has groups of individuals (“names” as they’re called) organized together as insurers. The individual “names” have traditionally been required to expose their full net worth as a condition of participation.
Here’s a link to a good article about Osama bin Laden by Michel Chosudovsky – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3194
If Obama was found to be a foreign born would his fanatical left wing supporter care? Or the Blacks? Of course not. We only have the Constitution on our side – just a piece of paper. They have lots of green pieces of paper a la Soros and Goldman Sachs. And yet they feel they are morally superior – such are the illusions of the billionaire socialists and their impoverished Black and White clients.
“This morning, Bloomberg is putting out a story that the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped – from $113 to 112 – because Bin Laden was tossed into the sea. How long will that state of affairs last, I wonder. Through eleven o’clock in the morning, Eastern time?” – JHK
Good call. It’s already back up past $114 at 1 pm EST.
“Oil fell below $111 a barrel early Monday morning shortly after President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death. By midmorning it was on the rise again.” – Associated Press
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/oil-falls-near-us-112-europe-osama-bin-114959422.html
===
The Osama Bin Laden stories are comforting to the legions of spoon-fed American morons who want to believe that they are the good guys who are fighting the forces of ultimate evil. Our country is GI Joe and Al Qaeda is Cobra. It is all a big dog and pony show to placate the rubes. Life is less complicated when one thinks of everything in such black and white terms.
It’s astounding how many of you believe the tripe about Osama bin Laden being found, killed and dumped in the sea. Your government has lied to you about everything else, why would you believe them about this? More wishful thinking?
Just remember kids, when we blow an Afghani wedding party into smithereens, it is an unfortunate mistake. And if America invades another country, it is only to bring them freedom and democracy.
But when a Muslim blows something up in the context of a civil war in his own country, it is globo-islamo-terrorism.
Have a CF’n Monday.
So Osama bin Laden’s been killed? If so, it’s so long to the Phantom Menace and more importantly, so long to the Phantom Menace Narrative. Let’s face it, Osama bin Laden’s alleged involvement in the terrorism of 911 and death, whether factual or not, are not as important as the narrative, cleverly concocted to distract us from one fundamental fact: a growing wealth disparity that’s destroying our republic more assuredly than any terroristic act.
http://www.gwabert.com/
People believe what makes them feel good. This is a nice opportunity to pat ourselves on the back, because we got the “bad guy.”
The bad guys who pulled off the Twin Towers and Pentagon died in a conflagration of jet fuel on the day of the aforementioned incidents.
Thank you.
Sure, just get me some tweezers and a magnifying glass, and I’d be happy to oblige.
That was a spicy typo. Good thing for me you have nothing better to do on a Monday morning than make funnies based on grammatical boo boos in my internet posts. Thanks again.
Conventional Thinkers, both Republican and Democrat, have no problem killing vast numbers of Muslims while at the same time bringing in vast numbers of them into our Country. All the while making noises to the effect that we are not at war with Islam. Do the Muslim Immigrants believe this? Did anyone think to ask them?
I’d rather not kill vast numbers of Muslims – many of them non-combatants and also not bring in vast numbers of them to dilute our Culture, take our jobs, and create future mayhem. Yet this is a minority position – very unusual! Common Sense isn’t common.
This incarnation is destined to be a short one eh, baggy?
Heck, we killed 3000 Iraqis in the first 30 minutes of our lil war. I don’t hear anyone crying for them, presumably because all those children were future terrorists in the making and the women birther vessels for the same. And Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but it sure as heck made us feel good to drop some Bunker Busters on a few water treatment plants and grammar schools. That’ll show them for having the temerity to be born in the wrong part of the world.
Quite right Helen. And therefore there’s nothing stupid about believing that Obama is not American born.
Good morning larrymoecurly, I see you got a new handle. Doesn’t it get tedious having to change it every couple of weeks?
” We do not talk, for instance, about the pressing need to discipline the corporations, and the place to start is by re-defining the practical “personhood” of corporations.” These corporations are nothing but corporate crime syndicates set up and by the investor class. As far as Osama bin Laden it is a day of celebration and it is a day of mourning. Yes we got him but we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people doing it. These people need to be remembered plus we broke every international law on the books doing it. Rendition is just another word for torture. Pathetic behavior from a once really great country.
Oh, lookie, CFN Troll’s spicy little posts are going down the memory hole. What fun. Someone must have a problem with her, uh, colorful language.
Oh, by the way kids, if you send an email to JHK (listed on the main page of this site) saying something like “The troll is back and posting under name X.” then it will be banned quit promptly.
Just a lil tip. Carry on.
Lying is the new normal, along with the other new normal, stealing. I think they were the old normal too Jim, but the difference now is there is far less if any pretence to honesty when compared to the past. To be fair, in an evolutionary sense we are or were all thieves and liars to some degree, It’s just that now, thanks to lots of “innovations” we’ve let things get away from us to allow the more “effective” thieves and liars – ie the corporations among others, to lie and steal on a massive scale – the new normal. The only real solution to those of us who only wish to lie and steal enough to eek out a modest living is to turn the tables on such entities and lie to them steal from them. Before things are so out of balance we enter the new feudalism foretold of by some. Now for a plan…
The mafia disposes of people the same way, Helen.
For the record, I don’t believe it. I think that BinLaden died a long time ago.
Why the dog and pony show now?
Could it be that the war which I’ve long predicted the US will start to escape its massive debts needs a pretext?
And the way this is being played is NOT that the US can now declare victory in Afghanistan and get the hell out.
Nope. It’s being played that there will be revenge attacks on US soil!
So that’s my take on why this sudden announcement of the death of someone who has been used for almost a decade to kill people in other countries and to attack our civil liberties at home.
“Oh, lookie, CFN Troll’s spicy little posts are going down the memory hole.”
Must be a relief. Seeing how you offered to blow him and all. What a maroon.
That would be the only action it has seen since the Carter administration.
But I’ve decided not to oblige, as I don’t think I could handle its stench in person without losing my lunch.
And who might you be? Do I know you?
The World Trade Center disintegrated into dust at FREE FALL SPEED!! Three high rise buildings collapsed at free fall speed on 9-11-2001,breaking the laws of physics.
These three building had massive core columns with colossal steel making up the bottom floors tapering off to lighter steel on the upper floors. Yet we are suppose to believe that these buildings collapsed without any resistance while falling at same speed as a bowling ball would fall through thin air.
It just shows you that most Americans are innumerate,including Mr. Knustler.
There is a long list of incontrovertable facts that prove 9-11 was an inside job.
A quick viewing of the Video and photographic evidence at the Pentagon before the facade collapsed make the claim that flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon laughable. Hey the windows are intact where the engines would of struck and (a real big clue) NO FUCKING WRECKAGE!
Well since Osama is “sleeping with the fishes” as my relatives call it, perhaps the algae will process his body into some sort of useful fuel for my “Happy Motoring” existance.Probably some sort of Exxon conspiracy!
“But I’ve decided not to oblige, as I don’t think I could handle its stench in person without losing my lunch.”
So, you are saying if he cleaned things up (used a little cologne) you’d still get biddy wif it? You really aren’t very bright. Of you really are very gay. I’m guessing both.
Good article this morning about Osama by Chris Hedges…
http://www.truthout.org/chris-hedges-speaks-osama-bin-laden%E2%80%99s-death/1304343151
If the link doesn’t work, will somebody please tell me how to put in a link so it works? Thanks.
Hold on here a minute Boosh said Saddam was behind 911. At least after he blew off Osama.
You seem desperate. I was only jesting. You really shouldn’t depend on an anonymous internet personage to fulfill those kinds of needs. I’d suggest taking a break from this website for awhile and meeting up with some chicks who would accept you, maybe at like a Jenny Craig center or a homeless shelter.
The steel columns melted and deformed due to the intense heat from the fires, which caused them to pull away from the floors. The floors then sequentially pancaked at high speed, and the structure went into total failure mode as the above floors slammed into the ones below them. Computer models showed that this could happen at near free fall speed.
Or such is my understanding. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Jesus H. Christ. Thank you Monkeymuffins. I’ve been scrolling down through these comments looking for someone to say something similar to what you have written, that is (if I read you correctly), the idea of taking pleasure in anyone’s DEATH is barbaric. I suppose one could feel a sense of relief, if that one death actually would change anything for the better. But please. As though Bin Laden’s death (if indeed he is dead) will change the course of terrorism in this world. OMG, the terrorists are all running and squealing in fear now, yeah. They’ll back down for sure now, yeah.
I apologize. I should have known that you’d be so desperate for physical contact with another human being that you’d misconstrue an obvious jest as a legitimate proposition. But, alas, you’ve been had. There’s always craigslist I guess.
“Happy Motoring”
I’ve always wondered about this term. I guess Jimmy feels obligated to drive around with a big frown on his face so he wouldn’t qualify.
Nicholas,
By coincidence I read “A year in Treblinka” last night. I recommend it to those who can stomach being reminded of what humans are capable of.
It was nothing if not efficient. A small operation, no pretense of a “work camp”. A fake railway station. Cattle cars unloaded 20 at a time. Herds of people forced to strip then driven directly into the “showers” with whips and rifle butts. A diesel engine from a captured soviet tank supplied the carbon monoxide dispensed from the shower heads. Large garage-style doors opened out onto the pits where bodies piled by the hundreds burned on pyres fashioned from steel rails. So efficient towards the end that they could dispatch a transport of 6,000 – 7,000 souls in a few short hours.
Estimates of 800,000 to 900,000 met their end in just such a way at that camp alone.
While I applaud your “Holigent Solution”, I fear all such happy talk of an engineered solution to our predicament must eventually wither in the harsh light of human fear, ignorance, and intolerance.
After all, the war machines both then and now are just as self-organized as any other complex system. Are they not?
Cheers,
Jerry
Let me give an example of something concrete an American did that helped save my wife:
http://www.emrf.org/EMRF%20Subpages/EMRF%20Obituary%20Lauterbur.htm
Lauterbur, according to wikipedia, was the father of magnetic resonance imaging.
Here’s something else. Both my father and I worked for American firms up here in Canada and both of us made a good living. Both of us are comfortably retired because of those parasitic, imperialistic Americans.
Yes, yes, yes rapacious Amerians own our asses. But wait, (and I hate to bore you with numbers)here’s something from our statistical agency: Canadian direct investment abroad in 2010 totalled C$617 billion. Foreign direct investment in Canada totalled C$562 billion and of this C$306 billion was from the parasitic, imperialistic US.
And ZOUNDS we have C$250 billion invested in the US. So what’s this? Profits flowing both ways across the border? Can it possibly be?
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110415/dq110415a-eng.htm
Lying isn’t the new normal. Bullshit has been the stock in trade of politics, business, etc for a long time.
As far as scurrilous nonsense like Monkeynuts’ post, it’s been the stock in trade of anti-Americans for as long as I can remember. Mostly, I think, with well educated, well off Americans living in nice leafy neighbourhoods who think it’s hip to post know nothing drivel like this about their own country. Is this you Monkeynuts?
You think you can afford to take sides against your own country Monkeynuts? Is this because you think you’re safe no matter what? Easy to talk shit like this protected by your free speech rights and especially when you think 2 million of your fellow citizens signed up to defend you isn’t it? Do you think the US can be scratched and dented but never taken down? Wakey, Wakey Monkeynuts. There’s 7 billion aggressive, resource hungry people out there and there’s only 300 million of you. And you have a lot those 7 billion want, wide open spaces, fertile land, fresh water. Those wide oceans were no defence for New World aboriginals and they’ll be no defence now.
“Or do we do something about it” Shut it, Monkeynuts, you’re too comfy, you’ll do shit.
Monkeynuts says: “This is all so very profoundly ignorant, pathetic and offensive and equally typically Amerikan” Look in the mirror Monkeynuts. This is YOU.
“…though I still imagine Mr. Obama is something less than a pure stooge and more of a hostage….
How about a valuable member of the team, whose specialty is public relations?
Yep, you know him. The baglady name didn’t last long.
You’re parroting the first theory, Turkle. They’ve changed it since then.
I’m not sure if someone here posted this, or on Facebook, so I’m reposting FYI.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15892
Seen on a sing being held by a grown up at the post-UBL killing “Get Stoked and Jagerbombed rally”: USA 1 Bin Laden 0
Are you fucking kidding me? He pretty much won that one overall I’d say, remember the first round don’t you? When we were left bloodied and holding our stumps?
Corn fed and brain dead the vast swaths are just plumb dumb in this country.
Yeah, but it only works on some.
Lincoln pointed out that you can fool some of the people most of the time.
What they’ve learned since then is that it’s different people.
First they put in Bush, which made the liberals froth at the mouth, but the right-wingers were sublimely happy.
Now they’ve got a Black guy in there, which makes the right-wingers froth, but the liberals are happy.
While the shills of both wings of the corporate party perform, the marks have their pockets picked.
Actually … they caught Osama alive. Then they dropped him over the ocean … from about the height of the World Trade Center.
Very difficult to find anyone in the Tea Party rail savvy or even willing to discuss railway logistics as part of Peaking Oil Plan B…
Coffee Party is/is not following Chinese preparation for Peaking Oil: Massive oil storage in-country; Massive manufacturing capacity upgrades courtesy of GM & Nissan; Massive generic railway engineering projects beyond the High Speed Rail headlines; massive production of renewable energy hardware -and- reading Sun Tzu for comprehension and practical application.
Coffee Party and Tea together on likely motor fuel rationing and call-up of Gold/Silver in lieu of railway rebuild in USA? Try Martin D. Weiss’ blog today (tahoevalleylines).
Cash, I don’t see how anything that you wrote refutes the post to which you replied. All you did was question the speaker’s motives a priori, rather than respond to any of his points.
That the US is basically a corporate-military state is well-established. That doesn’t preclude Americans from investing gobs of Cash (hi there) in Canada. As you state, Canada is more or less a satellite of the US. An empire doesn’t need to invade and occupy every piece of territory under its control. There is a good discussion of various tactics in Bzigniew’s “Grand Chessboard” book. America takes different approaches with different countries.
Of course, dominant political powers on this planet have always had a wiff of hypocrisy about them. They claim to represent civilization and the higher virtues but achieve their status mostly by barbaric force of arms.
You seem to want to root for your own country like its a football team. I don’t see the need. Nothing is black and white.
A good article about bin Laden from David Swanson at Truthout…
http://www.truthout.org/killing-resolves-nothing/1304358911
If a bunch of pixels on a screen constitute a threat to the standing and power of the US, then the country is in pretty bad shape.
What is this, your third typepad account in one day? Take a break already.
“NPR’s Market Place show, about economic and financial matters, is every bit as dishonest as CNBC or Fox. Every night, Market Place issues cheers for a stock market that is rising strictly on the basis of a concerted, wide-open stock pumping scheme operated by the Federal Reserve in partnership with five Wall Street banks and the US Treasury Department. (Why? To maintain an illusion that the economy is in wonderful condition.) As far as I know, not a single on-air economics reporter understands that we are in a contraction phase of history, not a growth phase. Nor that “growth,” as commonly defined, is impossible given the primary energy resource constrictions now underway. Something has gone terribly wrong in an education system that produces journalists this badly-informed.”
Jim,
I think this is much better way to frame your vision of our economic future than to make specific economic predictions.
The problem is that the people are still clinging to the official media – which is owned lock, stock and barrel by the class tyrants of the New World Order. When this happened, we were dealt a knock out blow. It’s as if our whole sensory nervous system had been taken over by an alien. Ray Bradbury wrote a great short story to this effect. The organism slowly took over a boy piece by piece until he was locked inside his own mind totally blind and helpless. We still have our muscles but what good is that without proper perception? And our brain is our’s yet totally discombabulated by incorrect information and faulty reasoning – both our own and that which is provided.
And the Tyrants still hold fast: two decades ago or so Ted Turner was about to buy a network. Not that he’s incredibly conservative or anything, but the big money Jews considered him a loose cannon and not a reliable goy like Murdoch. They all got together and out bid him. So it goes. The NWO itself is both Jewish and European of course. But the Jews tend to handle the media.
The Internet itself devoloped so quickly that it got by them. Thus it is the last remnant of our free speech. They are working on remedying that via the hate laws, bullying laws, and possibly pornography altho that’s awkward since it’s largely a Jewish Industry.
Your points are well taken. My intent was to suggest that Obama need not be construed as “stooge” or “hostage” but rather a willing member of the team His effectiveness is manifested in the shutting down of the anti-war left, who will not criticize their “historic” president regardless of what he does and the partial negation of the right who must face allegations of racism when they offer criticism.
2 People here this a.m. have mentioned NPR..
It really got to me how they covered ‘The Wedding’
Guess people dont know the UK/House of [Windsor?]
genocides against the Irish, etc etc.
NPR did so much coverage and ‘oh so pretty’..
Alex Jones was on C2C and told a less pretty and far more believable story!!!
The Independent UK has reprinted an article from October 2001 about the Taliban being willing to hand over Osama bin Laden if the US would stop bombing Afghanistan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bush-rejects-taliban-offer-to-surrender-bin-laden-631436.html
an excerpt..
After a week of debilitating strikes at targets across Afghanistan, the Taliban repeated an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden, only to be rejected by President Bush.
The offer yesterday from Haji Abdul Kabir, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, to surrender Mr bin Laden if America would halt its bombing and provide evidence against the Saudi-born dissident was not new but it suggested the Taliban are increasingly weary of the air strikes, which have crippled much of their military and communications assets.
The move came as the Taliban granted foreign journalists unprecedented access to the interior for the first time. Reporters were escorted to the village of Karam in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban said up to 200 civilians were killed in an American bombardment last Wednesday.
The reporters saw clear evidence that many civilians had been killed in the attack, though they could not confirm the number of deaths. “I ask America not to kill us,” pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children in the raid. In the rubble of one house, the remains of an arm stuck out from beneath a pile of bricks. A leg had been uncovered near by.
Another old man said: “We are poor people, don’t hit us. We have nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. We are innocent people.” Washington has not commented on the bombardment.
Washington’s blog writes “Why didn’t we kill him ten years ago” at
http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/
Minds are like parachutes – they only function when open.
I laugh at black muslims…..they dont know Islam got to Africa as part of the slave trade.
Islam is the religion of their oppressors!!
same in Kashmir, Pakistan etc.
I totally agree with you. Obama is a very willing member of Team Imperialism.
When he calls for Americans to be competitive with the Chinese, his supporters don’t realize what that means. That the goal is to pay Americans $1/day, destroy all labor and environmental laws, and sell off all public lands, resources and infrastructure.
MAY DAY!!!!
infiltrators!!!!
Yes, and the U.N. as your government.
+1
First of all, it’s about bloody time you ran down Bin Laden.
And you should take your own advice. Nothing is black and white. Yet that’s what I see.
There’s nothing much to refute with Monkeynuts with all that tiresome drivel about empire and Murder Inc and such.
You missed the part where I said that Canada invested gobs of cash in the US. We have nearly as much invested in the US as you have in us. In 2008 it was virtually tied. Nowhere did I state that Canada is a satellite. Quite the opposite.
Would it occur to you that we aren’t a satellite country, that we enter into arrangements, trade, defence etc because it’s in OUR OWN interest to do so and not because we’re coerced.
Would it occur to you that sometimes we do things in concert with the US because we have interests in common? And sometimes we don’t because it’s not in our interest. Did you know that NATO was in large part a Canadian idea, that we entered into it becasue it was in OUR interest?
I’ll give the example again: Canada has bitter experience of Empire ie the British Empire. We sent 1.6 million troops to fight in 2 world wars in defence of Britain. That cost us 110 thousand dead and hundreds of thousands of wounded. When the UK went to war Canada went to war, there was no sitting it out for 2 or 3 years as the US did.
Being a part of the Empire was a very expensive proposition for Canada. I see all the time this term “American Empire” carelessly and cluelessly bandied about by people of a country that has no recent experience of “empire”, that has no imperial possessions. Who do you rule? The Virgin Islands? Puerto Rico? Guam? Is this what you call an Empire? Please. You (and we for that matter) are getting your ass kicked in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some Empire.
What I see all the time is a twisted Americentric view from Americans. Which is fine but America is neither as powerful nor as evil as it looks to you. Your view IMO is coming from simple American chauvisnism. A chest thumping “we’re the best” and conversely and comically “we’re the worst”. You’re in many respects the best. In some ways you guys stink. But you’re in no way, shape or form as bad as you think.
And trust me I can understand the chauvinism. You have some magnificent accomplishments and after all you live in country sized states in a continent sized country.
Canucks up here love to kick the US in the slats whenever they can. It’s a fashionable pose and it’s lazy and I’m sick to death of it. And I’m sick to death of the kind of post from Monkeynuts. It’s puerile, conventional, unoriginal, unenlightening, shallow, it’s the same old shit I’ve been hearing for decades, it’s tiresome, it gives no indication of any knowledge of truly shitty powers outside the US both now and in the past. There is no apparent idea that the world we live in was shaped by powers far older than the US and that the US is a relative newcomer on the world stage.
The USA is a relatively recent product of a much older society and an offshoot of the Empire which was a force that shaped much of the world. The United States is in large measure as our original founding document describes us. This doc was called The British North America Act. You are in many ways British North America. Yet there is this apparent idea that the US stands alone ie US exceptionalism. This is faulty, you do not, you have one thousand years of Anglo Saxon history, language, literature, law and custom behind you. Just like us.
“Who do you rule?”
Um, Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind…
I dont watch TV except at the gym….
Glen Beck Show..banner appears…’BUY AMERICAN’!!
BUY AMERICAN WHAT? AND AT WHAT PRICE?
Cash, that is a very interesting post you wrote, and I’ve not the time to respond in full (maybe later). But one fallacy to which you subscribe is that the nature of empire and global dominance has remained static since the hey day of the British Empire. It has not. Today hegemony is much more about corporate/financial/economic/cultural dominance rather than the occupation or direct control of a particular piece of territory. Due to the proliferation of small arms and explosives, native insurgents, or whatever you call them, can wage indefinitely long guerilla campaigns that are quite costly to the occupiers. The US discovered this in Vietnam, then forgot, and rediscovered it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the time, it isn’t worth taking over a country and completely dominating it militarily. So the US doesn’t oten do it. But that does not mean there aren’t other forms of empire that are alive and well.
Thanks for the discussion. Appreciate your thoughts. Turk out.
Oh, and btw Cash, there are still US military bases in Japan and Germany, more than 60 years after WWII. There are US forces between North and South Korea.
Puerto Rico? Puh-lease.
“Who do you rule?”
Um, Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind… – Turk
Come off it Turk. You don’t even believe that. This is no slur on the American servicemen and women thrown into those two holes but you DO NOT rule there. Both are an endless hall of mirrors your guys and gals are staggering around in. You and I both know the sooner you get out the better. You guys are throwing away lives for nothing. So are we.
Our own govt saw the light, our own forces are pulling out of the fighting in Afghanistan this year so hopeless is the place.
+1 for the Chomsky article. He seems to have a grasp on reality and knows the source material, going back to pre-WWII government documents outlining the post-war system of control.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Question from Answers.com:
“If you were born out of country to am American mother and foreign dad, can you be president?”
Answer:
“Yes, all babies born to American women who are traveling or working outside of America are still automatically American citizens….”
It’s puerile, conventional, unoriginal, unenlightening, shallow, it’s the same old shit I’ve been hearing for decades, it’s tiresome, it gives no indication of any knowledge of truly shitty powers outside the US both now and in the past. There is no apparent idea that the world we live in was shaped by powers far older than the US and that the US is a relative newcomer on the world stage.
==
Cash,
You fail to understand the basic psychology employed by the anglo-american imperialists. It’s a very simple psychological technique employed, but very effective. Basically, it’s a simple dialectic – that of the “good guys” and “bad guys”.
What you need to know and appreciate is that ALL the “bad guys” were created and financed by the “good guys”. This way, no matter what and who anyone may choose, they’re always locked into predictable and managed outcomes. You don’t believe me? Find out who financed the nazis. Find out who financed the soviet commies. Find out who financed the chinese commies. Find out who finances the islamo-nazis, be they of the Saudi or Iranian variety. And on and on.
mika.
Cash, I need to have my bookshelf in front of me next I reply. There are several books I have outlining exactly what the US has done internationally since WWII to maintain its global dominance, and the picture isn’t too pretty. Actions range from direct military intervention to the replacement of governments via coups and everything in between. I will give you a few titles, and hopefully you’ll read with an open mind. I don’t think it is legitimate to sit from your perch in Canadia and say that Americans are a-okay because they haven’t invaded (yet).
The US occupies both Iraq and Afghanistan, and their governments are US-controlled puppet regimes. So regardless of the quagmire-like nature of the conflicts, this is about the clearest manifestation of imperialism I can imagine, e.g. pretty much on the level of old school colonialism. In Iraq, the US wants to control the oil, and Afghanistan is a key piece of real estate for future pipelines. I mean, does it get any clearer than that?
What about the USSR? The Cold War and the threat that global communism posed was no laughing matter. Montsegur posted some enlightening stuff on this not long ago.
And just to re-iterate what I’ve been posting, those bases are overdue for closing. The USSR is gone and not coming back at least in our lifetime.
Wrong, “stupid as”. See below:
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in the gaps left by the Constitution. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are “citizens of the United States at birth:” (AKA naturalized citizens)
Anyone born inside the United States *
Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe
Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
“I need to have my bookshelf in front of me next I reply.’
Try the entire library. And have some staff on hand as well.
Another tactic is financing regimes like the one in Egypt that just fell. Egypt receives about $6 billion in foreign aid from the United States, much of it military aid. Then there is Israel, which also receives billions in aid, including all the latest and greatest war-making gadgets.
I mean, seriously, the US doesn’t have an empire?! The American flag doesn’t have to fly over a country’s capital building for it to be a puppet or client state.
Okay, here’s one on US foreign policy that is a must read (just remembered the title).
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-C-I-Interventions-II–Updated/dp/1567512526/ref=sr_1_3
“Killing Hope” by William Blum.
Take the author’s axe grinding with a grain of salt, but his documentation and presentation of the facts is really not up for debate.
“I mean, seriously, the US doesn’t have an empire?! ”
It doesn’t. Seriously.
I must have been hallucinating when I read about those hundreds of US military bases throughout the globe. Carry on then.
“The writer esteems Lenin and Bolshevik Revolution as the beginnings of something wonderful. He wrongly opines U.S. intervention and aid to the White Army when none existed.
He again states that the KGB and CIA was some sort of men’s racquet club that spent evenings having drinks and playing cards. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This book is certainly worthy of reading, but understand it is openly critical of American policy while neglecting the aggressive policies of both the Soviet Union and China.”
That is all.
“I must have been hallucinating when I read about those hundreds of US military bases throughout the globe.”
Like the one in Cuba? Yeah, we OWN Cuba.
Perhaps the most towering exemplar of the triumph of idiocy and insularity running rampant in our nation, my hometown newspaper did a “man in the street” piece on local reaction to Bin Laden’s demise. One person quoted was deeply disappointed that the President’s announcement on Sunday evening preempted the broadcast of “Celebrity Apprentice” and strongly felt the story should have been instead held for the regular 11PM news broadcast.
I suppose this same individual won’t want to be interrupted with the news that the power to operate their 57 inch plasma screen won’t be forthcoming.
“CNN Anchor Don Lemon: “We bring up that issue of the birth certificate, Mr. Trump, because people want to know why you care so much? You realize this, that this whole issue of what exactly is a natural-born citizen is has never been challenged in court. So we don’t even know if it would imply to President Obama if he wasn’t born here?”
This guy “doesn’t even know if it would imply (think he meant “apply”. Wow he really is stupid!) to President Obama if he wasn’t born here.” Guess he, along with JOHNATHONSS doesn’t have google access. (Its tough being a reporter!)
Mika, wonderful to lock horns with you again,
Actually no I don’t fail to understand it. What you fail to understand is evil in this world. Are American hands clean? No. But as far as evil goes Americans do not come ankle high to others. Fer instance? Nazi Germany, USSR/Russia, China. How do I know? I know people that were eye witness to the depravities committed by these powers.
What you also fail to understand is this: businessmen are whores. They will sell their grandmothers. They have no loyalty to anything but their own bank accounts never mind something like “empire”. How do I know? I’ve spent my life in the corporate world. Finance the bad guys? So what. Given what Wall Street has been up to lately to are you surprised? Have you heard the account of German and British businessmen conspiring in neutral Stockholm during WW2 to get rid of both Hitler and Churchill? And why? Because they were bad for business.
And this stuff about bad guys being created by the good guys: You are attributing too much to the “good guys”. The “bad guys” were products of their own societies, their own upbringing and their own inborn nature.
Managed outcomes? Come off it. Do you seriously think that Hitler and Stalin were taking orders from New York or London bankers? Hitler and Stalin had agendas of their own, they weren’t puppets. They had the resources of entire countries at their disposal, their own militaries, their own political bases of power, the loyalty of tens of millions.
Have it your way, I agree, the Brits were imperialists. But there is “empire” and there is not. What the US does in the world does not qualify.
So, you think the Celebrity Apprentice timing was accidental? I mean after Obama spent an entire evening “punking” donald-the-pinhead-trump? OK, whatever.
You see bases and you see “empire”. As you said things are not so black and white.
“What the US does in the world does not qualify.”
You got that one right. Have you seen ONE US company that walked away with an Iraqi oil development contract? Everybody BUT the US is making money in Iraq. Empire indeed.
I’m sorry, Cash, but if you don’t believe that America knowingly rules a world empire of sorts, you haven’t been paying attention. The game plan was laid out in PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” and other think tank reports that were at the heart of Bush’s foreign policy apparatus. And there is plenty of precedent in policy going back to pre-WWII State Department planning.
Does it look like the British Empire? No, it doesn’t, and I never stated that it did.
The number of US military bases in other countries is actually much higher than I wrote. It was 737 in 2005 according to Chomsky, with about 2.5 million US personnel deployed.
So if that isn’t a global military empire…WTF do you call it then?
“So if that isn’t a global military empire…WTF do you call it then?”
I call it Billie. I’m not certain why, Billie just seemed like a good name.
Yes, I have seen one, namely Halliburton.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9MHHPBO0.htm
You aren’t too bright.
Now we could put this up for a vote. And if people come up with a better name than Billie I guess we could talk about it. What say you turk? Be fair now.
What kind of dumbfuck empire is it that GIVES money to its subject peoples? Failure of imagination on my part. An empire that GIVES MONEY? If we’re part of this empire where’s OUR cut? I mean Jaysus we’re your closest neighbour, we have family and business associations and you go giving money to freaking Egypt and not us? And when has Israel ever done what the US wanted it to? How much time has your foreign policy apparatus pissed away on this for no gain? Again, some “Empire”.
And for that matter Canada pissed away billions in foreign aid. What about our empire?
ExxonMobil, incorporated in New Jersey, was just awarded a contract to develop oil fields in southern Iraq.
Need I go on or have you been thrashed sufficiently for today, Ban Boy?
I call it a gigantic pissaway of money which you guys cannot afford. And I live a hundred miles from your border, I’ve spent most of my life working either with or for Americans, I have family living in the US. So yes, I’ve been paying attention.
“You aren’t too bright.”
Yiiiikes. How many times in one day can someone get punked and very late in the day throw the “You aren’t too bright” card?
Wow, you really got me this time turkey. Wasn’t aware of the 4/11 Halliburton signing. Boy do I feel silly. So, all this “empire” consists of an April signing for Hallliburton? After all the trillions we spent?
Snd how the hell have the Dems not pitched a shit fit and allowed the evil Halliburton to cinch a deal? On Obama’s watch? Oh the fucking shame.
“Need I go on or have you been thrashed sufficiently for today, Ban Boy?”
This coming from blow-job boy? Oh, I feel so thrashed. (And blown)
This is what you stated…
“Have you seen ONE US company that walked away with an Iraqi oil development contract?”
I named two, ExxonMobil and Halliburton.
Technically, Halliburton is no longer based in the states. But it was a US company until recently, so I assume its interests are primarily American.
Thus, you are wrong by simple examination of the facts, regardless of subsequent smarmy remarks in which you change the subject.
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears….” Alias
Lying is a word used in a moral universe. We don’t live there anymore–if we ever did. We live in a world that is saturated with advertising and business “ethics.” Where wars are waged for “humanitarian” purposes. Accusing Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Glen Beck, Blakefin, Lush Bimbaugh of lying–or murder–is like pouring water on a duck’s back.
Moira Gunn was interviewing one of our new physicist superstars on “Tech Nation” about what’s coming next century. Flying cars. Any day now. Not that far away. Even Chris Martensen is talking about the problems with liquid fuels and souding like what’s coming is just an investment glich.
We need to recognize that what we’re facing is not just a minor problem in legalisms failing to keep corporations under control. We’ve been running amok over the world the last 500 years. We’ve moved massive populations of people around as we pleased, reshaped the earth, created and filled chasms as we desired.
500 years ago, as Europe was breaking out of its boundaries, the world lay before like a virgin prize. Virtually none of the earth’s mineral resources had been tapped, fossil fuels especially; their potential was unrecognized. Only a tiny portion of the earth had ever been cultivated. A whole new world of foods and tropical products was unknown to most Europeans.
It is that vision of a limitless world which has formed the Western imagination, our sciences and economics. While we started that period of our history without labor-saving hydraulic, steam powered or fossil-fueled machines, we reinstituted chattel slavery. Unlimited, stolen labor has been key to the prosperity of the modern period from its beginning.
A 500 year vision of Eden. We’re having a little trouble turning loose of that.
Cash, save your breath. You out USA’d turkey-lurkey months ago. He’s a pants-wetting redistributive sort who hates his country because it isn’t providing him with enough gummy-bears and freebies. He’ll never take enough nor contribute a farthing.
Apparently I can’t post my blog link no matter how I word it. And here I thought Jim was so confident of his penis size. So if you feel like reading this week’s post – part ecology lesson, part top shelf doomsterism – check out my blog Small Batch Garden (just google it).
Cheers!
Tripp
That’s no surprise you’re feeling thrashed, given that you’re on your fourth or fifth typepad account TODAY. (Must be some kind of record.)
Gentiles businessmen are every bit as corrupt as you describe – but can you not imagine a few who have loyalty to each other – their “thing”? Bush the First mentions his “group” in one of his writings meaning Skull and Bones. Do they cease to be selfish? No, but it’s enlightened self interest as baboons uniting against the leopard.
And as for the Jewish Contingent – totally different story. Even Jewish Criminals used to donate to the Zionist Associations and then Israel. They really are non-selfish when it comes to their Nation – which is nothing else but the Jewish People as a whole. Needless to say, this altruism does not extend to other peoples or to America as far as I can tell.
These different groups of powerful Jews and Gentiles have united in their attempt to establish a World Goverment – which will be an absolute Tyranny if it ever comes into full existence.
“Technically, Halliburton is no longer based in the states.”
Well then 50% of your examples are NOT examples. Technically, you are an imbecile.
I know people that were eye witness to the depravities committed by these powers.
==
Cash, I have family members that have gone through that hell. I’ve seen evil up-close and personal in the form of the islamo-nazis wagging their genocidal war on Israel by way of US sponsorship.
Furthermore, the US not only financed Hitler/Stalin/Mao/your various Islamo dictators and Latin American drug mafiosies, the US transferred crucial technology and material to allow them to proceed with their mischief. The US also gave these genocidal maniacs political cover. Heck, Hitler was Time Magazine’s ‘man of the year’. Twice! They allowed him to host the Olympics. And they covered for Stalin and Mao in their time.
As far as I’m concerned the US is just as guilty as those genocidal maniacs they sponsored and raised to prominence. You want to draw a distinction between the different players and their culpability, I don’t. And if we were in a court of law and justice, you know I would prevail.
mika.
” Actually … they caught Osama alive. Then they dropped him over the ocean … from about the height of the World Trade Center. ”
Yes, but then Keanu Reeves jumped out of the same airplane to put a free fall bullet through Bin Laden’s brain!
Oh yeah, the title of this week’s post is:
“Who Will Eat All the Soylent Green?”
TT
www(dot)smallbatchgarden(dot)blogspot(dot)com
“That’s no surprise you’re feeling thrashed, given that you’re on your fourth or fifth typepad account TODAY.”
Possibly but I think you may be feeling a bit thrashier. And most likely trashier as well. I mean after what you promised? Yick.
http://www.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-will-eat-all-soylent-green.html
There, does that about cover it?!
“”Who Will Eat All the Soylent Green?””
Ummmm, turkle. Probably. Ask him.
I was mostly right. Halliburton is a US interest and was until recently incorporated here. And it received many Iraqi oil redevelopment contracts when it was a US corporation.
On the other hand, your initial assertion that no US companies have received Iraqi oil contracts was all wrong.
But he’ll need tweezers and a magnifying glass to do so.
You’re looking for love in all the wrong places, Ban Boy. 😉
Wrong my question to Cash was: “Have you seen ONE US company that walked away with an Iraqi oil development contract?”
Even when you are convinced you are right you are wrong. Self delusional? Check.
I’m just wondering how you expect to be taken at all seriously when you post under five different accounts in one day. I’d say you jumped the shark awhile ago.
That, or you’re having some kind of nervous breakdown.
What kind of dumbfuck empire is it that GIVES money to its subject peoples?
==
Cash, you really don’t understand how empires work. The first tenet of the Central Bank Warfare/Welfare Model is to have people use your currency. The same currency that you pay your army to establish your supremacy, and the same currency that you can create at will, thus control every facet of economic and political life and expropriate everything you want.
mika.
The answer to your question is “Yes,” as ExxonMobil just walked away with an Iraqi oil development contract.
Thanks for playing.
Once again I’ve been thrown for a loop by world events. I was anxiously anticipating Howard Dean’s announcement on Tuesday that he’d finally heard enough fairy-tales from the Dumbocrat leadership and would be running for president in 2012 as a third-party candidate. However, will all the adulation that’s being poured on Obama now that bin-Laden has finally gone to his eternal reward, I am thinking Howard will continue to bide his time until the hubub has died down. TV host Tavis Smiley was on the nightly news last night calling the 2012 election the most racist in American history even though the GOP has yet to nominate a candidate. Note to Tavis: turn off the race filters on your mind long enough to see what’s really happening. One year from now, most Americans will be too busy worrying how they’re going to survive without any heat, light or gas for thier cars to care about the issue of race. Bloody Democrat pundits! They’re every bit as stuck on stupidity as the Revoloticans.
“I’m just wondering how you expect to be taken at all seriously…”
You mean as you wish to be taken? Consistently getting the facts wrong? That kind of “seriously”? I’m not interested in that kind of “seriously”. That is only pleasing to the seriously deranged.
‘However, will all the adulation that’s being poured on Obama…”
Never fear George. With all that is going on Obama has plenty of time to continue fucking things up. A seriously well trained group of heroes got some (finally) good intel and did what they were trained to do. Bammy may have said, “go” but the significance of that will be fairly short lived.
I like people to correct me when I’m wrong, and I acknowledge the corrections.
You, on the other hand, like to change the subject when someone points out your mistakes…like just now.
If you could go back over all my posts here and from JHK’s last 20 stories and verify the information contained therein, I would really appreciate it. I like to get my facts straight, so you’d be doing something valuable and helpful (for a change). I thought we had an agreement that you’d be my internet fact checker, so get checking.
Now I’m off to eat some crumb cake in mom’s basement or something like that (you do have a colorful imagination).
I’ll TTYL, or, uh, I’ll reply to whatever your new user name is once you get banned again.
“The answer to your question is “Yes,” as ExxonMobil just walked away with an Iraqi oil development contract.”
Well I didn’t know your name was cash, missy. And my asking him if he knew of any companies is not the same as my saying there are no companies. Thank you for playing…sorry for your loss.
Credit where credit is due: Obama didn’t wimp out and change Bush’s policy. Thus he scores heavily now that Bin Ladin has been killed during his watch. A big feather in his cap for the coming election.
And Bin Ladin died as he had wished – on his feet as a Martyr.
“Now I’m off to eat some crumb cake in mom’s basement…”
Well no shit. And you better clean the crumbs that miss your pole hole. Got it?
Ahahahahaha. You’re really squirming today, aren’t you, Ban Boy? Funny stuff.
“I’ll reply to whatever your new user name is once you get banned again.”
Uh, maybe if you’d quit running to Jimmy I wouldn’t have to change names. I mean we all know you are the reason due to your earlier posting, missy.
Oh, I get it now. King Troll implies that I shouldn’t comment on any of his stupid posts, unless they are directed at me. Because he has never butted his smelly head into other people’s discussions.
Okay, I agree. How about you don’t reply to my posts then? Do we have a deal?
” Funny stuff.”
Its particularly funny because YOU are the one that first says it. You are that stupid.
Maybe if you quit acting like a mentally challenged 14 year-old trolling youtube, you wouldn’t get banned so much. (Just trying to help.)
“Because he has never butted his smelly head”
It was something else that was smelly earlier.
“Okay, I agree. How about you don’t reply to my posts then? Do we have a deal?”
No, you fucking simpleton. It is like shooting fish in a barrel and far too much fun. Although, god may some issues with me later, messing with a fucktard and all, Oh well, I’m rolling the dice on that one.
“Just trying to help.’
Well thanks for the tip, Heloise! You are so very helpful. And special too.
It is entertaining watching the Righties go into contortions praising the killing of Bin Laden while denying any credit to the Obama administration. You know if this had happened under Bush, he would have been annoited the Second Coming of Christ.
Why don’t you try reading it rather than cutting and pasting some silly critique you found on the interwebs, Ban Boy?
This may be the turn of the tide for Obama.
I heard that the White House was watching it all go down live, audio and video. Hopefully techies here will comment on that.
Talk about reality TV. Watching your own re-election way before it happens! Or is that unreality TV?
Thanks …I was wondering what had happened to our irate Zionist!
I was at the Chugwater Auditorium when Jimbo delivered one of his Peak Oil speeches in 2009.
Believe it or not, Howard Hughes was there, he was real old, but still pretty sharp.
Here we disagree.
I think the cold war was drummed up by the weapons makers.
And the USSR would have crumbled alot quicker had it not been for …Oh…
the UN,
giving them 1/2 of euroland,
the 1970s grain deal
etc.
Widow said with two vocal cords with worn edges~
“Never fear George. With all that is going on Obama has plenty of time to continue fucking things up.”
Frankly, I think you are the widdowedBLUNDER.
Kay
Turk~
I think widdowedBLUNDER is our LarryMoeCurley rat. I can tell because the flies are swarming around my monitor right on his/her comments.
Kay
Oh, I know. I’m not even sure why I engaged. I do know better.
I wonder how he actually went out.
Early news, but I just heard he held no weapon, and was corner cowering in a bedroom. Jeez.
Can you imagine if they got that on video?
I wonder what’s the standard of comparison when people say Obama is a terrible president. I’m assuming it isn’t the last disaster who held the same title.
To Vlad,
Bin Laden may have “died on his feet,” but please remember that he used one of his wives as a shield, and she died with him.
There’s nothing “heroic” about using someone smaller, weaker, and who can neither legally nor physically defy you, as a human shield in a shootout. This scumbag’s death was no more a hero’s death than that of some Chicago gangbanger who goes down while using his baby as a shield. I place leaders like Bin Laden in pretty much the same territory.
Kudos to Obama for his determination to bag this psychopathic piece of excrement.
Many folks may wonder why so many people worshipped this maniac as a God, but then, if you read our own Judeo-Christian Bible, its god is described as an “angry God.. a jealous God”; in other words, a spoiled, arrogant, destructive, out-of-control psychopathic lune, sort of like Bin Laden or some Mafia Don.
Check this out, I can’t remember if I told you guys about the soapstone woodstove we picked up a few weeks ago, but the thought of never having another heating bill is probably worth mentioning again! Already got enough wood for next winter laid down too. There is so little really cold weather in south Georgia, and the forests regenerate so quickly, that I don’t see deforestation as much of an issue ’round here, even when the power goes out for good.
Just so happens my wife and daughter were in Atlanta for a funeral today and, after hearing about what we’re up to, some distant cousins offered us a wood-burning cookstove! Just the thing we’ve been oggling online lately that typically run upwards of 5 large. And it was my great great grandmother’s! More exciting than money if you ask me.
Heating stove – check.
Wood cook stove – check (free and awesome).
Serious f’ing garden/orchard – check.
Small livestock – check.
Dairy cow – check.
Horse – check.
Composting toilet – within the quarter.
Solar batch water heater – within next 6 months.
Chest refrigerator & freezer – within next year.
Summer kitchen – within next year or so.
Passive water collection and distribution – in the works with NRCS grant money for next season.
Somebody say they wanted to talk about preparations for TLE more on this site?
Big day. $5000 kind of day.
Hi laura,
I heard about the corner cowering, but not about the wife being used as a shield. If that’s true you are absolutely right on. And then some.
“One year from now, most Americans will be too busy worrying how they’re going to survive without any heat, light or gas for their cars to care about the issue of race.”
I’d change that last word to ‘elections’.
On another note, we made our entire bill load (now less than 200 bucks) for the month on Saturday at our first farmers market down here. I sold several pounds of wild blackberries I picked in about an hour’s time, at 5 bucks a pound. Talk about easy money. And I got my first job doing a small sustainable farm consultation this week! Not quite the $40/hr I was billing back when I had a real job, but not too shabby either.
Keep engaging energy descent and good things seem to happen. (Thanks for letting me brag real quick.)
Tripp out.
Vladdy my lad, how’s tricks?
“These different groups of powerful Jews and Gentiles have united in their attempt to establish a World Goverment”
Still ranting on about the old ‘World Government’ chestnut. I have’nt been back to CFN for 5 months and when I read my first CFN, you are still there banging on about this. Don’t you get exhausted doing the same thing week after week?
How are things at the weekly Klan meetings? Made any decisions regarding the word ‘African’rather than ‘Negro’ referencing Obama’s father on his birth certificate? Now that Donald Trump has been made to look like the chump that he is, who will champion your birther cause now?
Let me know what the good ole boys decide at your next meeting, it should be fascinating!
Fyodor
Hey Tripp
this webiste might interest you
http://opensourceecology.org/
“Lying is a word used in a moral universe. We don’t live there anymore–if we ever did. We live in a world that is saturated with advertising and business “ethics.””
The world system is an aberation. Unsustainable, because it IS built on lies. And the lies are crumbling. The rebels will be caught in their own trap, built of fantasies. Come out from among them, and be ye separate.
The sanctions imposed on Iraq after Gulf War I lead to the death of over a half million people in that country. The US specifically targeted installations like water treatment facilities.
So I ask you, what makes Bin Laden a psychopath and our leaders something else? In his prouncements about 9-11, Bin Laden stated that the sanctions on Iraq were one of the reasons for the terrorist attack. So, in his mind, he was responding to US mass murder.
Compared to us, Bin Laden and his ilk are pikers. His operation caused 3000 deaths, but America destroys entire countries.
Laura, people in the Middle East don’t like us. Opinion polls show that in some MEern countries 90% of the people think we are their greatest threat. So you don’t have to get too philosophically deep to understand why Arabs might view someone like Bin Laden as a Robin Hood figure. We are the enemy to them, and he was fighting against us. It is pretty simple if you ask me.
Yes, Lying is the new norm, and the PTB chose well in putting “progressivist” Obama in to make it a tradition.
With thick-headed “progressives” like Kunstler continually believing that Corporations are holding Obama hostage, who naturally wants to go prancing around throwing daddodils of “Peace, Love and Light” to fellow acid-freak holdovers from the 60’s, the PTB can act right out in the open, implementing exactly what they need to put in place to extract the last of the wealth from the ordinary people and lock in a police state.
Meanwhile, the holier and hipper-than-thou “progressivists” look down their narrow noses at their presumed lessers, as they uneasily defend their paragon of Political Correctness, explaining that “Yeah, but we now have a PROGRESSIVIST police state and banking system, all for the Collective Good, and these new wars are like…well…Well, Bush fought wars there too! So there!”
Pathetic. Kunstler aptly empitomizes what the Left has come to. A confused mess of excusist hypocrisy coupled with a hyperdelusional vision of a Utopian PC world on bicycles and roller blades. Call it a “World Conjured by Sleight of Hand”.
I have a hard time believing that OBL, who helped kick the Russian’s ass right out of Afghanistan, would be hiding in corners or behind women. His role there is well documented, compared to his possible involvement in 9/11.
As far as I know, Bin Laden claimed responsibility, didn’t he?
Nice weeks work, JHK. Lying has always been normal for politicians and corporate types, though.
It only seems to be the “new” normal because of the magnificent mouthpieces that modern media has given them.
That, plus the fact that the more advantage people are given – the greater their ability to screw it up.
Well, my preparations are in place. Thanks in large part to this website, I’ve discovered permaculture, mushroom farming, the idea of sustainable local networks, and on and on. All I can do now is to continue to perfect the preparations, as years go by.
That – – and burn some damn oil. That’s what my wife and I and 2400 hoped-for friends were working on last week, with rather wild abandon; we stepped out on a Banana Peel and enjoyed a brisk downhill slide. I’ve decided conservation is futile, even counterproductive – because of population increases inside the US. So, screw it if you can, while there is still time.
Oh, and join FAIR, to try to do what we can to produce some sane immigration policies.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
That’s kind of an over-simplification. The Left, or whatever you want to call it, is a big mixed bag. That’s sort of what typifies it. Nothing really holds it together, and that’s why the Right usually gets their way. The Left is divided and fractious and allows far more diversity in its ranks than the Right. You say that Progressives are behind Obama’s wars, but that is a vast simplification of the various viewpoints people hold. Many progressives are against the wars no matter who the president.
And the Right hijacked “holier than thou” several decades ago with their shotgun marriage of Bible Belt conservative Christianity and conservative politics. People tend to get smarmy and self-righteous no matter their political persuasion, but it really takes the cake in terms of self-righteousness to claim that God is on your side and whispering sweet nothings into your ear.
MD, I borrowed your line about there always being a remnant for this week’s blog post. Hope you don’t mind.
For you to be as Christian as you are yet interested in my blog, which is very non-Christian, sometimes even anti-Christian, I can’t help but wonder if you believe that “god’s chosen people” will be the remnant following the collapse. Is it the suite of virtues required to navigate energy descent successfully that make a person “chosen?”
If so, that’s a rare and intriguing take on faith.
Bin Laden also stated that 9-11 was retaliation for US support for Israel, a state that has killed about 20k Palestinians over the years. Now denigrate his politics and religion all you like, but the idea that Bin Laden was some deranged psychopath is far from the truth. He was far more calculating and shrewd than some raving madman. The 9-11 attack was a message to the US that its politics in the ME constituted an attack on Arab civilization, which would be answered in kind. Because those people look at themselves as one body, like we associate ourselves with the West. Their association is far more tight because of a shared culture and religion. So they view an attack on one country as an attack against all. It would be like if Canada was attacked by some foreign power. The US would probably feel the need to jump to their aid. (Sorry, Cash. First example that comes to mind.)
I can picture Bin Ladin hiding in a corner.
I can picture him trying to fight.
If he was hiding in a corner without resisting, that means that he was assassinated by a bullet to the head, delivered by a SEAL who was following “precisely written” orders from very high up in the chain of command. I doubt these orders were issued – but who knows.
I suspect the US would have preferred to have captured Usama alive if they could have – for intelligence value, PR value, etc.
====================
And wow, you conspiracy types are living large on CFN today!
I have been to many websites over the years and the issue is not settled as far as I know. Some say he was paid by the CIA to take the blame, some say there are tapes of OSB denying any responsibility. After we killed a million Iraqis because of the lies put out buy the Office OF Special Plans, I am a confirmed sceptic.
Skeptic, hey where is Q?
Check of Empire of Bases 2.0 by Nick Turse…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/10/opinion/main7229341.shtml
James, I’m fairly well convinced by various video and audio statements that OBL was behind 9-11. He laid out his justifications quite deliberately and carefully and mentioned specifically attacks against the Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi people by the US or its allies. In his mind, 9-11 was a response in kind to attacks already perpetrated by the US.
This case is laid out convincingly in the book “Imperial Hubris” by an anonymous author, who examines in detail OBL’s various statements and proclamations. You can find it on Amazon.
There is a big shroud of mystery and uncertainty surrounding 9-11, though once you start following the trail of evidence, the case against Al Qaeda is pretty convincing. At least, the money trail and other evidence certainly indicates they masterminded it.
Q’s been MIA the last few weeks.
I doubt he is the only one who is fed up with your filthy mouth and disrespect for the other posters here.
Tripp,
Do you own anything or are you share cropping?
What are the property taxes on 300 acres and your built structures?
How do you get cash to pay taxes? Or do you not pay any taxes?
“Some say he was paid by the CIA to take the blame”
I have never heard this, and I think it is pretty far-fetched, if you ask me.
I’ll take responsibility for the last two bannings, but the first three today were before I emailed Jimbo.
You think the US owns Cuba but you won’t even let your own citizens go there or sell stuff to the Cubans? C’mon, get real. Cuba is a sovereign nation. The US pays Cuba for a lease on the Guantanamo Bay area. If the US owned it they wouldn’t be paying rent on it.
No, bin Laden denied responsibility for 9/11 and nobody has offered any real proof that he had anything to do with it except being an inspiration for the Saudi bombers who carried out the act. That’s why the US was always afraid to bring him to trial, and had to assassinate him instead. But he was used very successfully as a boogeyman for 10 years to get everybody so scared that now they will even allow themselves and their children to be groped in airports.
Troll Boy was being sarcastic, suggesting that since the US has a military base in Cuba but does not control that country, the US has no global empire, a position with which I strongly disagree.
Turkle said: “The 9-11 attack was a message…”
======
Yes, it was that … but it was much more than that. It was a way to sucker Bush into spending the USA into bankruptcy. In 1998 (the year Bin Laden declared war on the USA), the country was running a surplus budget. In just ten years Bin Laden, with the help of Bush and now Obama, managed to destroy the USA — from a budget surplus to 14 Trillion in debt.
At least that is what I read on CFN week after week: the USA is toast, stick a fork in it, not the same country it used to be, blah, blah, blah, on the brink of economic collapse, etc. etc. etc.
And now, thanks to Obama’s stupid assassination scheme, Bin Laden is entertaining 72 virgins while at the same time continuing to inspire suicide bombers everywhere… because Obama converted Bin Laden into a martyr.
Killing people is just plain stupid. Arresting them and imprisoning them makes more sense.
Killing Hitler did not result in a peachy world. Killing Bin Laden (who we supported in the anti-Soviet phase of the war in Afghanistan) will not make the world one whit better. It may even provoke some kind of blowback against the USA.
Obama should be impeached and tried for violations of international law in an international criminal court. Sending a team of killers into other countries to engage in assassination is illegal.
USA 0 Bin Laden 1
(see my previous post for an explanation of the score)
helen, where’s the documentation for this? I would be willing to read it if you provide me some links.
asoka, I’m pretty sure OBL wasn’t willing to be taken alive (just a guess but most likely a pretty good one knowing his religious views).
Does anyone know how it went down? If OBL used a woman as a shield … and if the USA Navy SEALS took out the woman … what does that say about the moral values of the USA, to shoot a woman being used as a shield?
OBL 72 USA 0
When Clinton left office, the national debt was 5.7 trillion, the surplus was several hundred billion only for the last year he was in office. Other than that, a great post.
Last night the partisan Asoka was singing the –“Obama Obama Obama!” song. Today, world citizen Asoka hums a very different tune.
Multitudes?
asoka said last week that he’s a fan of Obama’s domestic policy but a critic of his foreign policy, so take that as you will.
We don’t actually own anything here. We own the old house in Macon which is being rented from us, including the taxes there, so there is always a fall-back if needed. The farm owners are fairly well-to-do, and I imagine that they think of us as sort of a portfolio diversification for TLE. Which, considering the license we’ve been given over the place, I’m fine with. We will be taking control of 25 acres of crop land after this year’s harvest, which we will most likely let go fallow and sow with cover crops for at least the following year. As soon as possible we’ll take over about 50 acres of pasture land for beef cattle, but the rent on pasture is paying most of the farm’s bills, including taxes, for the moment so we’ll have to be turning a decent profit on other endeavors before that. Don’t know any actual figures, but agricultural zoning is pretty cheap as far as taxes go.
I was just talking about how we make money, and that’s before we are even really going. 40-50 head of grass-fed beef will help a lot. Within a season or two we’ll have more excess produce than we know what to do with. And I have no doubt the local markets will be increasing from here on out.
I’ve got a lecture and workshop schedule that’s getting busier by the week, requests for farm tours piling up, and my wife’s soap and magic comfrey cream are starting to fly off the shelf. I believe the future will require innovation in every facet of life; land arrangements are probably at the top of that list. It’s a little scary not having actual ownership of the land we’re homesteading on, but times are changing and we should all be more flexible. Land ownership is an agrarian ideal, and agriculture, by definition, is dying. Who knows what’s next.
Last night I was acknowledging Obama’s certain re-election, contrasting Obama’s performance to Bush’s on issues of national security, immigration, etc.
I am capable of nuance and do not engage in knee-jerk defense of everything Obama does.
Today I am calling for Obama to be arrested and tried for crimes in violation of international law. Same thing I called for in the case of OBL’s crimes in attacking the Twin Towers, embassies, etc.
Since most people don’t give a shit about international law, I don’t expect Obama to be arrested.
I do think it was a mistake to turn OBL into a martyr. I don’t think the last towers in the USA have fallen yet. Violence begets violence.
“Is it the suite of virtues required to navigate energy descent successfully that make a person “chosen?””
Thanks for the kind words. The remnant hear God’s voice. The Truth is where you find it, or you could say where it finds you. God is speaking to us all the time, we are not listening.
Laura has a problem with God getting angry or being jealous. If you are not getting angry now-a-days there is damn well something wrong with you. The trick, of course, is to be angry about the same things {which is impossible if you believe lies [iow] that are told about Him}. God is jealous because He loves us, and doesn’t want us to be led into wickedness by pretenders, liars, users, thieves and our own propensity for silliness.
You are called {chosen} to a holy work of teaching us to be good stewards of God’s creation. Rejoice; our redemption is drawing near.
Rejoice; our redemption is drawing near.
Amen, brother MD.
We are all going to die within a hundred years time.
I am ready to meet my maker … or become compost … as the case may be.
Please come back Q, I miss you.
Jen
Please come back Q, I miss you.
==========
Please come back, Q. I miss you.
Here are some quotes from Imperial Hubris that are relevant to the above discussion of OBL and related topics.
“Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”
OBL: “I call on you to understand the lesson of the NY and Washington raids, which came in response to some of your previous crimes. The aggressor deserves punishment.”
OBL: “By electing [their] leaders, the American people have given their consent to the incarceration of the Palestinian people, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the slaughter of the children of Iraq. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government, yet time and again, polls show the American people support the policies of the elected Government…This is why the American people are not innocent. The American people are active members in all these crimes.”
“[T]he six U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim.
-U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall.
-U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
-U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
-U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
-U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
-U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.”
“Bin Laden is leading and inspiring a worldwide anti-U.S. insurgency; he is waging war while we fight him with counterterrorism policies dominated by law-enforcement tactics and procedures. It has not and will not work.”
“The war is being waged against [the United States] for specific, quantifiable reasons […] and not as our leaders claim because a few Muslim fanatics hate democracy and freedom. This claim belittles the Muslims opposing us – reducing them to madmen throwing bombs at liberty – and thereby weakens America’s ability to resist by underestimating the brains, patience, and religion-based fortitude of our foes.”
“War is being waged against us because of what we, as a nation, are doing in the Islamic world. Bin Laden’s September 1996 declaration of war specifies U.S. actions causing him to incite war.”
The book mentions OBL’s statements on anti-Muslim actions in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, and the Phillipines.
The U.S. media’s picture of OBL as some kind of deranged, hand-wringing madman is just about the opposite of the reality. He was more like the top general in the army of the force that has declared war on us. His religion justifies that war as defensive, or jihad in Arabic. Claims that Bin Laden was out to destroy the West writ large have no basis in reality.
Any thoughts/responses welcome.
When Q. first arrived and started posting on CFN, he stated that he needed to correct “Asoka’s bullshit” and that as long as Asoka posted bullshit, he would be here to respond.
I think I wore him out. My bullshit seems to have been more than Q. could bear.
For that I apologize, Jen.
But I do not miss his anti-women comments, his derision of his sister-in-law (who works at a credit union), his insistence on keeping his money in the corrupt Bank of America, and his defense of fortress America and its militarism.
Religion is organized insanity, and for exhibit A, I give you a sample of messianicdruid’s usual whacked out nonsense.
“God is jealous because He loves us, and doesn’t want us to be led into wickedness by pretenders, liars, users, thieves and our own propensity for silliness.”
Pardon my French, but that’s a complete crock of shit, not to mention downright silly. No one is watching you from above the clouds. There is no all powerful being who loves you or cares what happens to you or gets jealous.
The personification of God is irrational and dangerous and leads people to atrocious conclusions about the world. An elderly person who is close to me actually told me he thought AIDS was punishment for the gays and that, additionally, the Japanese were being punished by God for putting their reactors too close to the ocean. The organized insanity of religion causes people to display blinding ignorance and hatred towards their fellow humans out of one side of their mouth, while talking about peace and love out of the other.
Frankly, you can have the whole stinking, Bronze Age mess. It has far outlived its usefulness.
Now, druid will tell me I have gone astray, and that I just need to let God into my heart, e.g. the usual cultist clap trap masquerading as wisdom.
Any thoughts/responses welcome.
==========
OBL = Martyrdom & 72 virgins
USA = $14 Trillion deficit & brink of bankruptcy
I would say Osama Bin Laden won the first ten-year battle.
The second ten years is just beginning.
Al Qaeda has spread from Afghanistan to more than 60 countries.
And the USA is broke. Good luck with that.
The claim that OBL was “hiding” behind one of his wives sounds like propaganda designed to make him appear like a coward (which he really wasn’t).
If I told you guys that there is a man in the sky who is watching me and gets jealous when I lie and cheat and will damn me to an eternity of burning flesh if I don’t follow him, but he still loves me, you’d probably think I was insane and back away slowly.
Yet if I told you I was a Catholic, this is somehow different?
“OBL = Martyrdom & 72 virgins”
No, that’s just a bunch of Islamic religious malarky.
OBL = worm food!
I don’t countenance that culture’s attitude and treatment of women at all. As for Bin Ladin’s last moments – how do we know that’s what happened? Or that he’s even dead at all? Hard core Conspiracy Theorists say he’s been dead for a decade. But based on everything that I’ve ever heard about the guy – he was a very brave man. Can you imagine any of the well to do people you know giving it all up to fight and live in caves? He did. Most impressive conviction don’t you think? No I don’t want the Jihadists to win but surely some of their brutality was engendered by our own? Terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong. And all our support of Israeli brutality brought this down on us.
You are getting caught up in the tribal hysteria. That’s what they want so they can keep the Crusade going. Don’t give it to them.
Yes, what’s up wit dat? Can’t Asoka stop flip-flopping on our leader?
When you die, you’re going to get a certain bag lady!
So you’re saying I’m going to hell, Vladdie?
Wow, Vlad, I find myself mostly agreeing with you on this topic. Must be a cold day here in hell.
BTW, you’d enjoy “Imperial Hubris” immensely if that’s your take on things.
You can’t be so stupid as to actually believe that birth certificate is real? It’s not a clean scan but just layer upon layer of additions. They didn’t even do a good job with letters of different sizes, some done by pen and some by computer. But alas, you are that stupid. The Underground Man wouldn’t believe it. Nor would Father Zossima.
I’m sorry to be a contrarian, but you’ve got it all wrong. Due to a translation error, it’s not 72 virgins:
It’s really one, 72 year-old virgin.
What Americans told me in the post 9-11 period was that they have NO CLUE about what their government does internationally and how the country is perceived. They saw themselves as innocent victims being attacked out of the blue for their values by a bunch of madmen.
The reality of the situation was that OBL had very specific and arguably justifiable reasons for attacking us. He declared war on the U.S. years before 9-11, but Americans didn’t recognize it until the towers came down.
Get over it. He’s the President.
It’s time for you to move on. For example, how were Barack’s grades & how did he get into and pay for Harvard?
Also, believe it or not, the lazy bones Obama is sometimes having sex with his wife instead of responding to more important matters, like running the country.
Are you a forgery expert now?
His HOT wife.
Agreed. Except, I sure haven’t seen Japan or Germany trying to attack another country in the last 65 years.
Yeah, Vlad, Obama’s birth certificate was forged. And the moon landings were faked. And Soylent Green is made of people.
It’s going to be you and zsa zsa for ever and ever. Lovers. If that’s not hell then I don’t know what is.
Really great post. I don’t want you to think I’m always trying to bust your chops.
Yes, we must invade Pakistan now. They lied to us. They must be taken over and showed the true way, the way of Democracy. The proud Pakistani Peole deserve nothing less. Letting them take over Britain just isn’t enough.
Carlin was a filthy liberal, you know. 😉
Is this sarcasm?
The world is not just stranger than you imagine, it’s stranger than you can imagine as you currently are. You have to grow bigger before you’ll be strong enough to accept how bad things really are. You must drink the water of life or the wine of immortality. Or drink the blood of one who has drunk of these. Suffering agony for years might help or ten years in seclusion in study and prayer.
Pakistan has more than several atomic weapons. Are you saying we should initiate WWIII because someone fibbed? That’s no reason to start a nuclear winter.
Okay, I’ll take the bait.
…”what does that say about the moral values of the USA, to shoot a woman being used as a shield?”
If that did happen, think about it:
They’re in Pakistan. Descending ropes. From helicopters, easy targets. Adrenaline pumping. The king of terror and his cohorts waiting below in a formidable fortress. Possibility of immediate death. All hell breaks loose. Gunfire. Who knows what the woman or Osama would do?
In addition, it’s a stretch to go from some individuals or individual doing the shooting, to the moral values of the entire country.
Furthermore, effusively singing Obama’s praises and speaking of his certain reelection because of his abundant accomplishments, and then calling for his arrest is not, I repeat not, “nuanced.”
And I thought I was flippant. OBL 72 USA 0? That’s more than flippant. It’s an insult to those
men involved.
Uh, I’m fine, Vlad. How you doin?
No, I was just parodying the maniacal attitude of our Leaders. The nuclear weapons ARE the problem though. If it wasn’t for them, I’d say leave Pakistan to its own destiny. But can we afford to let Pakistan fall to the local version of Al Quaeda with those laying around? A damnable problem.
What’s wrong with you? Here we are having a nice conversation for a change and then you start getting weird.
As the Book of the Law says, “As Brothers Fight Ye.”
Vlad, only a completely crazy and/or suicidal person would use a nuclear weapon against the U.S., because it would mean their demise and the utter annihilation of their country. Hence, even if the craziest of the crazies take over Pakistan, it is not likely they would use a nuke. Because it would cause their own complete destruction. And even the most irrational people are still generally concerned with their own self preservation and that of their country.
The same goes for Iran. They might talk big, but they would never dare use nukes against the US or its allies, unless it were some situation in which they could claim plausible deniability. And even then…
Perhaps if Americans stopped acting like they own the world and started treating other people as if they are more than just obstacles in the way of resource extraction, the U.S. would not have so much to fear. But, as it stands, we reap what we sow. They don’t hate us because of our freedoms but because of the fucked up shit we do to them. (That’s my sophisticated take on international relations.)
I’ll take the wine of immortality; ” How can I describe it? The pathetic fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language has been strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceits or the stock epithets of the trade.” I tried it again recently. ” It had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime and, that day, it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase,the same words of hope.”
Time will tell!!
Who says terorists [muslims] have ‘a country’?
asia, if you didn’t notice, the U.S. is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on the “battlefield.” So wouldn’t you say that the “Muslim terrorists” have more to fear from us than vice versa?
You people drove him to an early grave. Bastards!
A premise of a popular end of the world novel: a couple of warheads fired from a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded a couple of miles up creating EMP’s sufficient to put the United State out of commission. We have suspects but no proof. And no one claims responsibility so we strike out blindly. We wreak havoc and the respond but we never find out who destoyed the United States as we knew it. The Chinese come in and help along the Western Seaboard. We don’t like it but can do nothing about it. They will never leave.
Is this an entirely implausable scenario? There are others – such as suitcase nukes, etc.
We’re not part of the Tea Party movement. We’re The Other Guys(TM). We believe in reality-based, not ideology-based solutions. As for rail, one would think that the Tea Partiers who claim to follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand would like rail, since so much of “Atlas Shrugged” revolves around trains, but no.
Not following any of that in China except for the projection that China’s GDP may pass the U.S.’s as early as 2016. The movement is focused on domestic U.S. political issues. As for reading Sun Tzu, I’ll have to find my copy of “The Art of War.” It’s lying around here somewhere.
The Tea Party has the goldbugs, not us. As for the blog, post a link and I’ll click on it.
“It’s an insult to those men involved.”
=========
“Those men” were carrying out an illegal (not to mention immoral) act upon the orders of Obama, who also was committing an illegal act. Going into another country as part of an assassination team and killing nationals of that country during the course of a “mission” is illegal, on several counts, contrary to several treaties we have signed, treaties which have the same force as constitutional law. Where are all you constitutionalists?
You can feel all warm and fuzzy inside because a Hollywood-style “mission” was carried out successfully, and they got “Geronimo” (another insult, if you think about it) … but that doesn’t make it any less illegal or any less unconstitutional. Where are all you constitutionalists? Celebrating a murder?
Lying has always been normal, ever since the priests got people to believe all that religious mumbo jumbo. Rationality and truth are a candle in the dark, in the demon haunted world (good book, BTW).
Precisely – they don’t believe in countries but only the Caliphate. They are the Ummah, the People, the Super-Tribe. And instead of raiding other Arab Tribes, now they raid the world. Join or be destroyed – or enslaved.
Here’s my take on how the OBL thing went down…
*ring ring ring*
OBL: Someone at the door…hm, who could it be at this hour.
[walks over to door]
OBL: Hello, how are you this evening? No, I didn’t order a pizza.
*blam blam blam*
“Precisely – they don’t believe in countries but only the Caliphate.”
How do you know? Did you poll them all?
“And instead of raiding other Arab Tribes, now they raid the world.”
No, OBL hit America on 9-11, because we fucked with Muslims. See my above post with posts from “Imperial Hubris.”
“Join or be destroyed – or enslaved.”
Again, you’re getting all paranoid Vladdie. They just want us to GTF out of their countries. Pretty reasonable, wouldn’t you say?
The new Atlas Shrugged movie actually briefly references Peak Oil as a reason for the resurgence of the railroads.
I think that it depends on your “real world view.”
Do you strictly adhere to the constitution and perhaps allow a known mass murderer to “suitcase-nuke” some US city in the future, or do you just kill him and prevent it?
Interesting that Obama was a constitutional scholar.
I have a picture of Geronimo on my nightstand.
I didn’t like it either.
No I’ve studied the doctrine of Sayaed Qutub – their chief political philosopher. Cash is right -a resurgence of the Jihad was inevitable sooner or later as Islam waxed strong. We made it sooner by supporting the Zionists in particular. Now you might say they were already mad at us for colonialism – sure, but that doesn’t explain their previous attacks on Europe which predated both Colonialism and Israel. These might be catalysts, but not the primary cause which is simply their world view.
They once attacked China too back when China was very strong. The Emperor gave them an audience and asked them what they wanted. They told him they intended to convert China to Islam. There you have it. And remember, all of North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Coast of the Middle East were once Christian – the Muslims took it all. And PC, NPR types rave endless about the Crusades! They were a COUNTER ATTACK!
Wasn’t Baba against it? Thich Nhat Hanh is but he knows how deeply Wine is embedded in the Western Psyche.
My Father used to call water Adam’s Ale. I haven’t thought of that in a long time.
Naaaw. Qs out bopping around the Continuum, screwing around with Captain Picard’s head. Correcting his spelling and grammar.
I miss K-Dawg. As a fellow Western Cascadian.
I follow you. Historically, Islam has expanded quite aggressively. But the focus of OBL from the 90’s onward, taken from his own statements, was attacking the U.S. for our actions against Muslims, not installing a worldwide Caliphate. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there are armies of militants who are against our presence and so attack us and our allies and institutions there. But they haven’t done attacks overseas (recently). And, if you’ve noticed, Muslim terrorists do not hit other countries randomly. The bombings in Spain and Britain were both aimed at allies in our coalition of the willing. To them, our involvement in the ME, especially with Israel, looks like invasion and aggression.
That’s not to say I love Islam and think its a religion of peace and all that jazz. But if you take a step back and look at relatively recent U.S./Western involvement in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, etc. the pieces fit together pretty clearly, and it doesn’t look so great for us. For years, we have been the ones on the war path, hunting for that oil, installing Arab dictators left and right, etc. Now when the inevitable blowback hits, we cry foul, as if we’re the innocent party being attack simply for our values, which is rubbish.
And, Myrtle May. Her close to the Beltway perspective was welcome and interesting. Her choice in music, sublime. On general principle, I like cranky ol’ broads. 🙂 . Aspiring to be a cranky ol’ bastard, myself.
No, Turkle. Maybe you missed my link earlier.
Binladen denied responsibility for 9-11.
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-09-16/us/inv.binladen.denial_1_bin-laden-taliban-supreme-leader-mullah-mohammed-omar?_s=PM:US
Later, after the US invaded Afghanistan, they “found” a video tape in a house in Kabul. What luck!
They popped it into a VCR and there was fat Binladen, cheerfully claiming responsibility for the whole thing.
Most serious observers dismiss the fat Binladen tape, since pictures of Binladen one month earlier showed him gaunt and ill-looking, as befits a renal failure patient.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15892
So, no, Binladen did not claim responsibility for 9-11.
In pre-modern times war and violence were the primary way problems were solved, and Muslims during that time period were not much different than any other war-like group. The Roman Empire was invaded by a number of barbarian tribes in different waves, and Rome itself was maintained by ruthless suppression and violence.
These people settled around Europe and fought for territory for centuries. Charles Martel, who defeated a huge Muslim army and arguably saved the entirety of Europe, was himself a ruthless proponent of conquest.
So I don’t buy this whole Peace, Love and Understanding angle you’re trying to put on Europeans. They were as barbaric as the rest of them.
I guess your main beef is that the Muslims are not your team and that they have a convert or be killed philosophy. Well, that’s exactly how Christianity rolled right through the 1500 and 1600’s. If you want to say that Islam is a little stuck in the past in that regard, I’d agree with you there, but historically Christians were no better.
Inter-European rivalries were at least as bad as anything the Muslims had to offer. Remember the war between France and Britain that lasted 100 years? The 30 Years War? Napoleon’s various wars? WWI? WWII?
Those were among the bloodiest conflicts in European history and had fuck-all to do with any Muslims.
So I don’t buy the Muslim boogie man theory. Historically, they are no more warlike than any other people in that general vicinity of the globe.
“They told him they intended to convert China to Islam. There you have it.”
=========
I choose not to convert to Islam, Christianity, or Judaism, but I respect the believers of all three of those faiths. None of them is interested in conversion by force. As the Qu’ran states: “There is no compulsion in religion”
If the conversion is forced, then by definition it is invalid and not a real conversion.
Those three Abrahamic monotheistic religions of the Book … share the same God. The grouchy one.
Anyway, I have no fear of any “Caliphate” …
Fear, like that asia and Vlad are promoting, is being stirred up to manipulate people.
Be not afraid.
And where are Orionor and Diogen?
Personally, I don’t miss Q at all.
But Myrtlemay has a way with words.
“I respect the believers of all three of those faiths”
I don’t. They are all completely (and about equally) full of shit, and I resent the intrusion of their primitive, superstitious, and barbaric Bronze Age belief systems into modern politics and decision making, where they have no proper place.
Plus, they are mostly a bunch of hypocrites who pick and choose the parts of their holy books to follow based on convenience and narcissism and then chastise others who don’t toe their party line, which they don’t even follow. At least the Islamo-crazies are consistent in following all the weird little rules in their holy book, unlike the Sunday warrior Christians.
Seriously, FUCK RELIGION and all the assholes who think that we need to believe that an eternal eye in the sky is watching in order for us to be good people and do good things.
And take notice that the realm of God and religion is always shrinking. The ancient Greeks thought Apollo pulled the Sun across the sky, but now we know that this apparent motion is caused by the rotation of the earth. In every field and endeavor, anything that was once thought to be a mysterious dynamo with God on the inside has been explained quite adequately by modern science. Or if it hasn’t been explained, we have gone pretty deep and haven’t found any God lurking in the dark.
Well, let me say something good about the Birthers.
In a world where everything is a lie, who was it who sat on a $14 long form for 3 years, and let a divisive issue fester and grow???
In a world everything is a lie, who told you it was just impossible to even get a long form anymore???
In a world where everything is a lie, who was it who acted like even asking questions about the birth certificate was some kind of sign of mental insanity???
In a world where everything is a lie, who were the ones who had the courage to doubt Obama’s place of birth??? Birthers.
Say what you will about the Birthers, but at least we had the courage and brains to know we live in a world where no lie is to big to be told.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
You mean you chose not to join the cult. Good for you.
Obama was just holding out until the moment where he could make you all look like complete idiots. Mission accomplished. Now crawl back under your rock.
It wasn’t courage. The birther “issue” was a carnival sideshow concocted by the usual right wing nutters. Now you’ve got 40% of Republicans who believe Obama was born outside the United States. This is probably the same group who believe the Earth is 5000 years old and that Global Warming is a hoax perpetuated by the Liberal Elite. Moral of the story is that there are a lot of stupid, gullible people out there just waiting to be fooled.
And WTF is with the three question marks? Don’t you think a single question mark would suffice to mark the end of your sentences? Or do you think additional ones somehow aid your flimsy arguments?
And what’s with the “who” this and “who” that, like I’m supposed to guess at whatever lousy point you’re trying to make. What are you? Some kind of owl?
BTW, my questions were all meant as rhetorical, so you don’t have to strain your brain answering them.
Nighty night!
You just shifted your ground to demolish a straw man. We weren’t talking history but the current situation. Where did I extol Rome or Europe in my post? Also where is your sense of self preservation? I know you well enough not to ask about any loyalty…
Yes we are hypocrites and prima donnas. And yes Islam prioritizes its targets according to strategy. None of these two cancels out the Jihad which BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION aims at World Domination. You have to study a bit – but not much. It’s clear.
Exactly Squeaks. The Powers gave our Money System over to Rothschilds in 1913 – this basically ended our Sovereignty and created a secret goverment that ruled via credit. The Birth Certificate scam is small compared to That.
I talked about the current situation in about a half dozen posts above, where I stated that OBL was primarily concerned with answering American violence in kind rather than establishing a grand Muslim Caliphate. And then I brought in historical facts because you started mentioning pre-colonialist times, where, apparently, according to you, everything was butterflies and daises aside from the bloodthirsty Muslims.
“Where did I extol Rome or Europe in my post?”
Oh come on now, Vlad. If Islamic civilization is supposedly more violent and enamored of conquest than others, to which other civilizations are you comparing it? If not Europe, then what? And don’t say America, because we’re a bunch of violent, Manifest Destiny-loving bastards.
“Also where is your sense of self preservation? I know you well enough not to ask about any loyalty…”
I am a scientific rationalist and a skeptic, so I’m opposed to all religion, whether Islamic, Christian, or JuJu. I disregard all of it as superstitious hogwash.
What is my missing sense of self preservation supposed to be telling me, Vlad? Please spell it out for me.
And to whom or what am I supposed to be loyal? And how is it pertinent to this discussion?
Country? Treaty? Aren’t these just unrealities? If you view the Earth from Space you don’t see any borders Asoka. Since the West belongs to Pakistan, it only stands to reason that Pakistan belongs to the West too. Our Peace Officers merely performed their duty in their own global country.
I guess what my sense of self-preservation is telling me is that America should be pouring effort and money into drastically reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Then we wouldn’t be making so many enemies by trampling over people who live over the gas patches.
We could also remove military aid to Israel, which is largely counter-productive to us and our goals in the ME. If they want to pursue a policy of aggressive expansion, that’s fine, but maybe it doesn’t need to be done with U.S. tax dollars. Because it makes Muslims hate us when they see U.S. weapons being used on their fellows.
What does yours tell you, Vladdie?
“If you view the Earth from Space you don’t see any borders Asoka.”
Touche, Mon Vlad.
More tomorrow.
Off to bed now. Don’t let the Muslims bite!
This is good.
You are 100% right.
The big multinational corporations use the American army, the American secret services, the American people´s money to build an empire whose profit goes ONLY to them.
I guess it is time the average American people begin to see that US is a capitalistic country for the million of citizens and a “socialist” country when it comes to the 1%.
The first pays and the few enjoy.
Excellent CFN Chronicle this week, James.
Yes, indeed, our public, which is as
woefully ignorant of history as it is of
mathematics and English grammar, doesn’t
seem to remember that corporations in
the US were created as PUBLIC TRUSTS.
In other words, the letter AND spirit of
the laws governing corporations in the
US was that THEY are OUR bitch. We are
not theirs.
Once the 1980s hit and everybody and their
brother discovered mutual funds, suddenly
everybody became a corporate ass-kisser
because the opulence of their retirement
depended on the share prices of the stocks
in their Fidelity/Vanguard/T. Rowe Price
stock funds.
Don’t you just love these AARP issues and
the commercials on these execreble biz
channels that make it seem as though
everyone should be able to retire to a
permanent room in the Ritz Carlton …
with room service of course.
Another fine feature of this week’s CFN
Chronicle is James’ correct insistence
that the Dow Jones could not be a worse
indicator of the underlying health of
the US economy than if Goebbels himself
designed the disinformation campaign.
Our “high flying” tech sector, for example,
is full of web start-ups hiring kids at
$10/hour which should enable them to repay
their Sallie Mae college loans sometime
between their 110th and 120th birthdays.
What a pathetic banana republic we have
become with a bunch of lying liars in the
media who make Pravda, circa 1964, look
truer than George Washington after he
cut down the Cherry Tree. Of course,
the poor media saps are ORDERED by their
sponsors to blow smoke up our ass lest
the station and its puppets be fired.
E.
I just finished reading Bing West’s “The Wrong War” about the war in Afghanistan (Kunar and Helmund Provinces).
Bing West is a combat Marine veteran. He lauds the bravery, tenacity, and valor of our troops in Afghanistan, and excoriates the generals’ flawed counterinsurgency program, and an overall failure of leadership at the highest levels of U.S. civilian and military circles administering the war in Afghanistan. Basically, the Obama administration and the generals have let down our brave men and women on the ground in Afghanistan.
Turkle, I know all this, you needn’t address me as a simple-minded high school girl who can’t understand these things.
Of course, they “don’t like us”. I wouldn’t expect that people immersed in the medieval, woman-hating, modernity-hating, and MIND-hating culture of Islam would like us, and that in itself does not trouble me.
Bin Laden’s status as a God of sorts before his minions means that they will be a lot more demoralized by his death than if he were someone like Gaddafi, who is just another strong-man dictator and there are many more of his ilk waiting to step into his slot. Bin Laden was something else, someone who was regarded as a stand in for Allah, and had personal charisma combined with a strong sense of mission of the kind that inspires loyalty unto death. Even his striking appearance worked in his favor- this man so much taller than others in that part of the world, with a handsome face and intense, luminous eyes. Other aspirants will surely vie to fill his spot, but they won’t be able to really replace him, and there might not be anyone who can for a long time. The guy was like Genghis Khan or Napoleon.
All of which does not matter to us. This man and what he represented- a particularly radical strain of Islamism and the desire of its followers to destroy the West- are our enemies. I can sympathize with individual citizens of the ME, but they are not on my side, sorry, and if someone must die, I’d prefer it would be them, and not me or my people, thank you.
Given the events of the past couple of days, you’d have to believe Khadafi is shitting in his pants right now. At least he’s a little nervous, ‘specially when he hears helicopters.
-Marlin
Turkle, you are the way you are because of {man-made} religion not in spite of it. The “burn in hell” for eternity idea was brought into the church around 400AD by religious people, borrowed from paganism. Another lie, which illustrates your ignorance, and {you believe} justifies your hatred of the Almighty.
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/books/creations/Chapter13.cfm
Trippticket;
Those talks that you give … do you ever come up north here, to New England?
-Marlin
“I’ll take responsibility for the last two bannings, but the first three today were before I emailed Jimbo.”
Go figure. What a fucking pussy.
Turkle, I guess you’re not a big fan of the film, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon, about St. Francis of Assissi, or the books of GK Chesterson. That’s pretty clear.
-Marlin
“Off to bed now.”
Riiiight. With your Rock Hudson calendar and your Michael
Jackson glove.
“Turkle, I know all this, you needn’t address me as a simple-minded high school girl who can’t understand these things.”
Oh please. It takes one to know one.
“…we have gone pretty deep and haven’t found any God lurking in the dark.”
You cannot find Light by exploring darkness. Constant blindered movement is what keeps you lost. Be still and listen, Light will find you.
http://www.whatabeginning.com/Misc/Wonders/P.htm
Howdy Cash, Do the headlines from nord of the border “Canadian Conservatives Win Majority in Parliamentary Elections” have you hoarse from cheering?
SNAFU
The power of no-bed contracts–So don’t tell me Bush was tricked into war—Think again
Ah, how soon we forget the Bush years and their promise to no-bid contractors for a giant tax-payer give-away in the old crony capitalist scheme, using war as subterfuge to funnel money to those who elected them. Some politicians even went to jail as a result of gifts from these contractors.
There was a post yesterday about Bush being pushed to war by Bin Laden. But you need to understand the system that this country has become. Neoliberalism as it is deployed here is a crony capitalist financial and militarist hegemon-creating system. Bush was already there years before 9/11.
Once you understand that the US is the financial and military hegemon and we use disaster capitalism to destroy first and then create the new society for the benefit of corporations, you will understand why we are fighting these wars. Not because we got attacked and are falling for the bait. How dumb do you thin we are? This is a system!
It’s no accident that Bush created huge deficits while borrowing from China. He wanted to destroy the commons here. The idea is to rapidly privatize all government services to he people. Remeber how he wanted to privatize Social Security?
A book called The Bu$h Agenda by Antonia Juhasz (Powell Books) covered as follows:
[The Bu$h Agenda exposes the Bush Administration’s use of corporate globalization policy as a weapon of war. Juhasz uncovers the history and key role of U.S. corporations in the creation of the Bush agenda, focusing on Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and Halliburton. Presenting the Iraq War as the most brutal application of the Bush agenda, Juhasz reveals the “oil time-line” driving the war, and how the administration has fundamentally transformed Iraq’s economy, locking in sweeping advantages to its corporate allies
– including increased access to Iraq’s oil. The administration has expanded its target to the whole Middle East through the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area. Juhasz brings to sharp focus the dangerous fallacy that the United States can combat terrorism and spread democracy through its so-called “free trade” policies.
Extensively researched and highly engaging, The Bu$h Agenda provides informative analysis revealing the hard truths about where the Bush administration and its corporate allies are leading the modern world—AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.]
Before Bush became president he was interviewed by biographer —
Mickey Herskowitz in which he declared that he wanted to be a war president because that would make his presidency more “Sucessful” –well he sure did that in spades.
[Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” ]
Also as the 2000 elections were underway certain firms were told they all had to vote for Bush for their business. They had already been promised contracts if Bush got in. Mitchell Wade,a homeland security and counterintelligence company that has received federal contracts for work in Iraq. was one that furnished Cheney’s office for a small sum and then was given huge contracts afterwords.
In those heady days of wholesale robbery of the American taxpayer there was Duke (Randy) Cunningham who was indicted for taking gifts from the no-bid war contractors, namely Mitchel Wade!
” Bush agenda, Juhasz reveals the “oil time-line” driving the war, and how the administration has fundamentally transformed Iraq’s economy, locking in sweeping advantages to its corporate allies
– including increased access to Iraq’s oil. ”
Sure Bush did. I think in order to change Iraq’s economy Iraq would first have to HAVE an economy. And that Iraqi oil that we are so awash with? (Sound of chirping crickets….)
widdowedwonder,
You do understand that my comment was in relation to the post that claimed that Bush fell for Bin Laden in getting into two wars. The point of my post is that Bush had every intention to get involved with wars way ahead of time. That the agenda was neoliberal in theory–meaning rampant privitization for the sake of transfering tax-payer money to war contractors and transnationals(not just oil)
Several days ago, someone was telling a story of when Bush was in office. They were ina discussion that some statement made wasn’t the truth. The answer he got was that we are an empire and in an empire truth is not important, We create the narrative.
Marlin, I have never been to NE, but would love to see it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I could justify the energy expense in doing so. There are plenty of good permaculturalists in NE that wouldn’t cost the planet nearly as much to hear. I’ll see what I can track down in the way of talks and workshops for you from respectable, insightful people.
Conversely, if you’re ever in the deep south, you are most welcome to come by and see what we’re up to. You can count on good food and drink to help knock the road dust off your boots.
Keep up the good work, sir.
Just as an aside, don’t ever put geese in your corn patch until it is good and tall. Sheesh.
“geese in the corn patch”
-tripp-
Yeah, the learning curve is amazingly steep for hands-on farm management, isn’t it.
You ever hear that cows will eat recently cut wild cherry leaves and that they contain a fatal toxin?
I’ve never read that anywhere – but everyone I know up this way with cows has great respect for keeping the cherry leaves and the cows separated.
We were gone last week as one of those N. Georgia tornadoes passed right over our house. (We’ve got pictures of the thing, taken by a family friend, from the vantage point of the fire station in town.) Coincident to that, we got 3.5 inches of rain in about 30 minutes or so, looks like.
Despite raised beds, decent landscaping, and lots of mulch – a fair amount of important topsoil decided to leave us that night – to seek a resting place far lower down the mountain.
Oh well – Life is a journey, right?
Congratulations on the $5000 day and the way your farm is coming along, Tripp!
“…[OBL] was used very successfully as a boogeyman for 10 years to get everybody so scared that now they will even allow themselves and their children to be groped in airports.” -Helen
That DID work like a hyper-powered charm, didn’t it?
Some asshat by name of “Dr. Steven Liebo” (sp) was just on the Albany radio station (WAMC). His very certain prediction is that the assassination of OBL makes it easier for Obama to imminently proceed with the AfPak pull-out. Wholly Shite, another dupe and fool for the corporatists, and I don’t even think he’s getting properly paid to spew this spew over the airwaves!
Personally, the klaxons are sounding again. Looks to me like this is developing into the first tentative probings (think “tentacles”) into whether or not it’s possible to engineer a corporate destabilization and takeover of a nuclear-armed sovereign nation. (Note that it hasn’t been tried up ’til now; they’re getting bolder and more convinced of their invincibility. The dodge has always been: “They [country du jour] “intend” to build nuke-yoo-ler weapons, and we MUST stop them; by force of arms, if necessary… and it always IS.” This time, nuclear arms happen to be extant. Very dangerous and “fiddley”.)
Hey! How ’bout them “Conservatives”? Get ready for tax lowering, which will lead to, “we haven’t the reve-nooz to continue your government health program; gonna have to privatize that to make it affordable for average Canadians”. I see it comin’!
You’ll have to take it up with Cash, and it’ll certainly be interesting to see the Ghost of Ronnie Raygun returning to wreak his evil on our neighbors to the north.
Do you yet have the electronic vote[-rigging] machines? If you do, abandon all hope of actual voting results.
BTW, you can try to tell Cash to be very careful what he wishes for; he just might get it. (He impresses me as a [laudable and respectable] true conservative, in which case he’s probably cautious as well.)
I should make it clear that the tornado passed over the house about 1/4 mile up in the air. It stayed at that approximate elevation and hit the next set of mountains up from us – maybe 7 miles away, as the crow flies.
Only lost a few twigs here – despite that huge monster flying by overhead.
Now, I’ve got to go remulch a bunch of stuff, and figure out how to hill potatoes and mulch them, too.
Good day!
You said: “Moral of the story is that there are a lot of stupid, gullible people out there just waiting to be fooled.”
Yes, and that is why there was nothing wrong with asking to see the long form. What, do people with questions have to only ask questions that are acceptable to YOU???
Right now there are gazillions of forged documents floating thru the mortgage system put there by so-called respectable banks, all for the $100,000 or two they can scarf up. And you think it is beyond the pale that somebody could phony up a one-page birth certificate.
Documents by the way which get phonied up all the time.
DHS – Office of Inspector General report
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54392994/Birth-Certificate-Fraud
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“It’s a little scary not having actual ownership of the land we’re homesteading on, but times are changing and we should all be more flexible. Land ownership is an agrarian ideal, and agriculture, by definition, is dying. Who knows what’s next.” -tripp
Good points to remember!
I credit your “landlords” for their prescience. A most commendable and intelligent experiment/endeavor/investment/”hedge”. I believe we’ll be seeing more of this type of arrangement between forward-looking folks who care about future generations (of all beings).
Meanwhile here in Canada we’re waking up this morning to the dark hangover of a “Conservative” Majority government. Looks like our own “Bush years” are only just beginning. Readers of this blog will of course know that “conservative” in relation to western political parties have very little relation to the actual classical meaning of the term. If only they were true conservatives. There’s a general consensus among scientists that if there’s no significant international agreement to lower carbon emissions by 2015 we could go past the point of no return and unstoppable feedback loops. We now elected a majority leader that does not believe in climate change. Or walkable neighborhoods. Or Canada. Energy policy? Burn, baby, burn! Shit.
Gawd yr condescending….
Yes I have noticed and I may be as opposed to Empire as you.
However Muslims terrorists arent rational, their
loyalty isnt to a ‘state’.
I agree with what vlad said…’that things are different from what you can imagine them to be’ or some such.
Is it the need to be “gulled, snookered, distracted or played” that would provide understanding of why Mr. Kunstler persists in believing Barach Obama to be other than what he demonstrates himself to be?
Back with the creation of the “Monkees” we can see evidence that the miracle of American marketing is not to resist change but to simulate and co-opt it.
I suggest that if Mr. Kunstler really wants to understand how the process of deception actually works — that he examine what keeps him believing in the well-meaning intentions of the crafted image of “Barach Obama” or of the national Democratic Party as a legitimate alternative to the Orcs on the Republican side.
Were he to get at the root of how it works with him personally, then extend it outside to all similar variations easily witnessed in the public sphere — he would understand how the system stays in place despite all rational evidence that can be mustered for its speedy displacement.
Great post, E.
I’m finding it very difficult to believe any pronouncements disseminated by ANY of the various propaganda organs [i.e., pretty much all “media”].
Do you think this would be intentional? Dispirited non-believers? Where’s the advantage? Isn’t it remembered that those who have nothing to lose are truly the most dangerous? I think I’m missing some huge “key element” here. (And, paranoiacs like me need our little ducks in a row to justify our pet outrages and identify our favorite oppressors.)
It references Peal Oil? That’s about the smartest thing in the script then. I’ll be sure to bring that up when I run into a Tea Partier, then.
BTW, I panned the movie’s first weekend here on Crazy Eddie’s Motie News.
For our US buds, this word Conservative, as Jack said, is just a word. All our political parties up here are to the left of Hillary Clinton as a multitude of people up here have pointed out.
But for those who are “scared” of these, ahem, Conservatives, there’s hardly a stitch of difference between them and the Liberal Party.
Every so often in this place we carve one of our parties a new one. This time it was the Liberal Party which was reduced in status to third place 34 seats out of 308).
Wage and Hancock,
I have good news for you and I have bad news.
We had a federal election last night. The good news is that the socialist NDP made huge gains and has become Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition up here. These guys are so far to the left in American terms that they’d be a miniscule fringe party on your political landscape. If the NDP can put in a creditable performance these next 4 years we’ll be seeing more of them and their leader Jack Layton who becomes prime minister in waiting.
The bad news is that the Conservative Party won a comfortable majority (167 out of 308 seats in Parliament). But the news, while it sounds “bad” isn’t catastrophic. As Kipling said disaster and triumph are impostors. Our political “centre” is so far to the left of you guys you’d find it somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. And if you want to stay in power in this place you have to occupy the political “centre”.
The Conservatives won it by carving out heavily “ethnic” ridings in and around Toronto. They lavished attention on the south Asian immigrant community to the point where I’m wondering if some of Harper’s cabinet ministers and Harper himself are going to convert to Hinduism or Sikhism. It was an interesting night.
Yeah, that is from MY perspective.
You still believe in borders and the right to enforce them (against Mexicans), but then you want to violate them at will against Pakistan or Yemen or the sovereignty of any other country you want to send assassination teams into.
“we haven’t the reve-nooz to continue your government health program; gonna have to privatize that to make it affordable for average Canadians”. I see it comin’! – Ozone
Ozone, health care is the responsibility of our provinces and not our federal govt. We had a federal election last night and not a provincial one. The feds provide some dough for health care but they have no say in how it’s spent. The provinces have all the ability to tax and finance their expenditures that the feds have.
What we also have is a system of money transfers through the federal treasury to poorer provinces to help them operate.
That said, we have the same demographic problems up here as you do down there. But what we do not have are massive military expenditures so that frees up tax room to finance social programs like health care.
Our politics are nothing much like yours. We have deep regional and linguistic divisions and this is what runs our politics. Despite the fact that our shrieking and hysterical Left Wing Lie Machine tries to portray the Conservatives and Harper as Republicans-lite or Tea Partiers they are nothing of the sort. Our conservatives have different roots and, while ideology plays some role in our politics, mostly it’s rooted in regional economic self interest.
What we had last night was a national reconciliation between Ontario and the West (thank God) as both voted Conservative. But, trust me, I would have been as happy if both sides of the divide had voted NDP. This corrosive divide is over for now.
What is still a bit worrisome is how Quebec voted massively NDP. What alleviates the worry somewhat is that the NDP are are more national party than ever, having seats in all parts of the country. Two parties got creamed last night, the Liberal Party and the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Both richly deserved it.
All in all, something to cheer for.
Vlad,
The big difference for border security and enforcement is length of planned stay.
Those SEALs went into Pakistan, did their jobs, cleaned up their mess, and left. They will be back home in their native land, soon, with any luck.
Border violators come into the US, take the jobs of our poor, make a mess, and never leave. We are out of luck, but organizations are working to change that. One is the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Someone may find a better organization for this purpose and tell us about it on CFN.
And before someone tries to have me banned, remember that JHK wants illegal immigration STOPPED and legal immigration drastically curtailed.
Time is getting short.
You Lecture to the Master? I am Dr Frankenstein – you are just Frankenstein. I created you. I go out for a few minutes and when I come back you are trying on my clothes, ripping them to shreds as you force them on.
I am speaking from “your” (as if you own it) perspective. Our Global Peace Officers performed an Peace action in a different state – no different than New Mexico or Massachusetts. For the life of me I can’t understand your opposition. Maybe you don’t really believe what “you” believe. I’m with Prog: we believe in Peace. And that means a strong Federation and World Federal Goverment.
on election results –
Gawd, CASH! How nice it must be to have politicians try to reach the center, instead of the fringes.
We have the opposite problem in the US, and we are perpetually FUBARed because of it.
==========
And nice defense of Southern Honor last week, Cash, against Surburban Empire, Wage(surprisingly), and a couple of others.
At bottom, regional differences are about “perceived” social class – and the need for ingroups, outgroups, and scapegoats.
And about recognizing that US policy has been changing the globe, destroying lives, and making enemies since 1861 or earlier – and now we are doing it on a global scale.
Even when we lose, we win. Even when we win, we lose.
That’s Manifest Destiny, remade for the modern age.
Tripp;
Have you read Jim’s novel “World Made by Hand”? It’s a pretty good read. Anyway, you’re as close to the character ‘Stephen Bullock’ as one can find right now. In fact Jim must have had someone like you in mind when he created that character.
Well, I brought our Texas friends back to the airport this morning for their flight to Houston. I was thinking, despite our differences; ethnic, regional, religious, even language (they speak Spanish in their home) we still had a lot in common as Americans, which is a great thing. We got along fine despite their prejudices against ‘Yankees’ and New England. That was quickly put aside.
One thing, at the Airport there was heightened security, much more than usual, maybe because of Bin Laden raid.
Looks like Bin Laden had to find out the hard way what Santa Anna, The Kaiser, Tojo and Hitler found out: Don’t f–k with Uncle Sam. That’s the lesson that must be learned.
-Marlin
“Our Global Peace Officers…”
======
Vlad, until a strong World Federal Government exists, and until Navy SEALS are sworn in by that government, they were acting illegally.
I may have misspoke. I don’t think it mentions Peak Oil per se but just out of control prices. That’s not in the book and I think from there my imagination added on Peak Oil.
And, oh yeah, congratulations to President Obama.
Good Work, Sir!
-Marlin
“…you are trying on my clothes, ripping them to shreds as you force them on.”
-vlad-
That’s funny as hell, Vlad! You come up with some good stuff. Lose the hard racist edges and there is no telling what you might accomplish.
More later. Gotta go back to work.
The big difference for border security and enforcement is length of planned stay. Those SEALs went into Pakistan, did their jobs, cleaned up their mess, and left.
========
So, the next group of 19 hijackers comes in, does their job, kill Americans, and don’t stick around, that is OK with you?
It is not OK with me.
The SEALS went in to kill. Immigrants come here to contribute to our economy.
Advocating the right of tactical strikes because they are of short duration is advocating anarchy.
By that twisted logic, the Mexican Undocumented Immigrants are criminals and should be put in chains not just sent back to try again.
Obama does something I don’t agree with, and you are congratulating him! But, then, even Dick Cheney is congratulating Obama. The same Cheney who said Obama was weak and would be tested and found wanting. Cheney was wrong about that… and Obama just guaranteed his re-election.
For reclaiming land taken from them? I don’t think so.
Are your friends against illegal immigration? Stormin’ Bob Dornan use to rave “So what if our descendants have dark eyes, dark skins, speak Spanish – they’ll still be Americans”! (approximate quote) His Dark Skinned Friends voted him out in favor of one of their own at their first opportunity. After all he had done for them, he was dumbfounded. He never asked the simple questions: do these people feel the same way about me that I feel about them? Do they feel that race doesn’t matter?
A fair number of the old Spanish of the Southwest don’t want uncontrolled immigration.
They have changed the story today to say the woman was not his wife and was not being used as a shield and was not killed.
A fair number of the old Spanish of the Southwest don’t want uncontrolled immigration.
========
And a fair number do.
But what this or that group wants does not matter.
La reconquista continues successfully and cannot be stopped.
Asoka;
Give credit where credit is due, that’s my motto.
Obama took a risk. It was a bold decision. A lot could’ve went wrong. Do you remember Jimmy Carter’s raid into Iran in 1980 to save the hostages? It turned out badly and Carter got hammered, politically.
As far as Obama getting reelected … I’m no idealogue. If he makes the right decisions let him get reelected. Hell, I’ll vote for him myself.
-Marlin
Taken from them? By whom? You’re creating duality pilgrim – we’re all ONE as Mr Spock said. It’s people like you, nursing resentments and old grudges that create separate “nations”. Live life, Dance life, Smell the Flowers, Give one to you Lady Love (or Boy Love!) and let go of this kind of collective egotism. As Buddha said in Dhammapada, “Hatred does not end by hatred at any time”.
So Irresistable Force is your criteria of what is moral? The US Military is thus justified. They
Asoka;
Our Texas guests that I mentioned were of Hispanic heritage and have some knowledge of immigration issues in the Southwest.
They say nobody is interested in ‘reconquistada’ or whatever the hell you call it, except for some political cranks at UCLA. Apparently Mexicans are leaving their homes in Mexico because of the atrocious living conditions, and the violence, that exist there.
They are looking for a better, safer life and a way to earn a living, something they cannot have in Mexico right now. That’s all. They aren’t conquistadors.
-Marlin
Laura,
Your idea that Muslims primarily hate and attack us because of cultural differences does not hold water, though I can see how you would believe this, given the presentation of this issue in the media.
OBL said he declared war and attacked us not because of our values but for our concrete actions in the ME, namely our strong (some would say slavish) support of Israel, the intervention in Lebanon in the 80’s, stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the first Gulf War, among other actions of our government.
If what you said was true, all of the countries comprising Western civilization would be under attack all the time, which they are not. The attacks during the 90’s concentrated almost exclusively on America, including the USS Cole attack and the embassy bombings. European values are even more liberal than the U.S. Wouldn’t you think that say Italy or France would be a primary target if it were merely differences in lifestyle and culture that these people were worried about?
Other European countries that were attacked by terrorists, namely Spain and the UK, were part of our Iraq/Afghanistan coalitions.
If you ask the typical ME man on the street about America, the first topic that will come up is Israel, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan, not the fact that we allow our women to go burkaless.
I am not defending Islamic culture, by the way, many aspects of which I find abhorrent and oppressive. But someone has pulled the wool over your eyes regarding the real reasons we are in conflict with people there.
NAFTA opened the door for a flood of cheap American imported crops into the Mexican marketplace. This has largely destroyed the agrarian economy of that country, which is part of the reason so many there turn to the illegal drug trade to make a living. Opening the borders and lifting trade restrictions like this is neo-liberalism 101, and Mexico got it good and hard.
I don’t hate God, because this entity does not exist. So it would be like saying I hate Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
Self-righteous religious people like you, on the other hand, I can’t stand.
You’re just so sure of yourself, aren’t you? But where’s your evidence for the existence of this all powerful being who watches over everyone?
Oh, right, you don’t have any. Carry on then.
Well we’ve had our share of serious misbehaviour with politicians recklessly playing one region against another as the Trudeau Liberals idiotically did a generation ago. That party, after a generation long slide, got carved a new one last night. And they had it coming in spades.
One thing we aren’t afraid to do up here is periodically do a political house cleaning. Last night the separatists also got creamed. In the 1990s the Progressive Conservative Party went from a big governing majority to 2 seats and then to complete extinction. You guys should try that with your Dems and Repubs.
BTW “honor” doesn’t look right. It looks better like this: honour.
Same with “rumor”. Looks better like this: rumour.
Don’t know why, it just does.
Turkle, have you read the Bible? You are very brave to mess with the Christian God … one very bad dude who will send your ass to burn in eternal hell fires and not think twice about it. But I guess you don’t have fear of that outcome. I think MD does have that fear.
“strong (some would say slavish) support of Israel, the intervention in Lebanon in the 80’s, stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the first Gulf War”
==========
So OBL was successful in his stated aims:
— support for Israel is not so slavish anymore
— Marines withdrawn from Lebanon
— U.S. troops withdrawn from Saudi Arabia
— no more sanctions imposed on Iraq
Sounds like most every one of OBL’s demands was met, except support for Israel which, while not slavish, still continues to be strong.
“no more sanctions imposed on Iraq”
Yeah, the U.S. just invaded and occupied the country. No biggee!
Asoka, just curious, did you name yourself for the Japanese city ‘Asoka’ that President Roosevelt ordered liquidated and incinerated with napalm and high explosives, dropped from 1000 bombers, on a fateful night in March, 1945?
Just asking.
-Marlin
“You are very brave to mess with the Christian God”
You might as well say that I’m brave to mess with fire-breathing dragons.
The followers of Christ don’t seem to like my take on things so much though…
Turkle wrote:
You’re just so sure of yourself, aren’t you?
Turkle, I can say the same thing about you.
Fundamentalist Christians, Jews, etc. are just as fundamental as atheists.
The problem is that if you go too far to the left, you see the same idiots coming around from the right.
Don Levit
You guys might like this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/03intel.html
Marlin, my name comes from a Buddhist reformer and ruler in India, King Ashoka. He had been a fierce soldier and fighter, kind of like Delta, SEALs, special ops guys, then he converted to Buddhism and ruled India with a focus on building hospitals and spreading compassion and nonviolence.
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
“Fundamentalist Christians, Jews, etc. are just as fundamental as atheists.”
That’s simply inane. Do you call people who don’t believe in the Easter Bunny fundamentalists?
“The problem is that if you go too far to the left, you see the same idiots coming around from the right.”
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean….
Nobody own the land. The land was here before you and will be here after you are gone. It would make more sense to say the land owns you – especially since your body is made from it! So what if one groups displaces another – we’re all human! All the same! Now it just it waits for US to make what it true in reality true in Law. Thus the New World Ordure. Now obviously the UN is mostly just a front group providing Education and mollifying the French and Third Worlders while the real business of change is done by US and our Corporate Allies. Ditto NATO – about as useful as tits on a bull unless WE come in. As you have said, the Law must be enforced by Force, by Peace Officers and Weapons of Peace. Until then, it is not the Law.
I think I’m a fundamentalist agnostic… but, then again, I’m not really sure of anything.
Nobody own the land.
=======
Nobody owns the land. On that we agree.
Does anybody dispute that Obama’s mother was an American or that she is indeed his mother. If that is not in dispute, was he not born an “American,” regardless of where in the world it happened? Have not other presidential candidates been born overseas? The requirement is that he be a “natural born citizen.” Citizenship was conferred to him at birth by his mother, who was a U.S. citizen. I don’t dispute that Obama is the worst president we’ve had since George W. Bush and that his (all most of the previous) elections were not legit due to the massive amounts of corporate spending. But can we discuss what you birthers think a natural born citizen is? My hometown was full of natural born U.S. citizens born across the border in Canada, all of whom would be eligible for the presidency based on the citizenship of one or both of their parents.
“I don’t dispute that Obama is the worst president we’ve had since George W. Bush”
That’s a meaningless statement, given that there have been no presidents in between.
“Citizenship was conferred to him at birth by his mother, who was a U.S. citizen.”
I agree that it seems like a pretty simple matter, but the Birthers aren’t exactly the most logical people out there.
Does anybody dispute that Obama’s mother was an American or that she is indeed his mother.
=========
I don’t know, John. The woman they say was Obama’s mother was white. Does Obama look white to you?
He’s mixed race. Am I missing something here?
Or I guess it just means you think Obama is a better president than Bush.
You liked your guests and therefore whatever they say is true. And anyone who says differently is not only wrong but bad. With such profundities we go down by the bow. A moments honest googling would disabuse you of all such notions. The same thing happens when a daughter has a mulatto kid. Suddenly Blacks are fine – after all, they’re family now just like we’re all Americans.
I’m thinking about learning Spanish as a possible life boat. Deep in southern South America, people revere their European Heritage and intend to keep it. In fact, even the Elite of Central America, Mexico and Brazil feel the same. God help the dark ones who get out of line in Brazil. Welles doesn’t talk about that too much. Anyway, the South (including White Brazil) will come out of TLE better than us. Much of America is going to descend into a gigantic bongo party complete with strange gods, strange rituals, and strange meat in the pot.
Do you actually believe Asoka made up the use of “Reconquista” for the Mexican takeover of the Southwest? Sir, it’s everywhere. Everywhere. Google for God sake, Google.
Ozone said:
I’m finding it very difficult to believe any pronouncements disseminated by ANY of the various propaganda organs [i.e., pretty much all “media”].
Do you think this would be intentional? Dispirited non-believers? Where’s the advantage? Isn’t it remembered that those who have nothing to lose are truly the most dangerous? I think I’m missing some huge “key element” here. (And, paranoiacs like me need our little ducks in a row to justify our pet outrages and identify our favorite oppressors.)
***************************************************
First … thanks for the kudos, Ozone. Much
appreciated. You’re right … ANY media org
has SPONSORS. Their business, especially on
the biz channels is to make you believe that
you should either turn into a daytrader or,
at least, NOT SAVE. Consume, consume, consume
’cause it’s all “blue sky” in America, baby!!
If reporters refuse to blue sky everything,
the sponsors are likely to “suggest” to station
management that they are “bad for business”.
We are just about wholly-owned by corporations
who now have a Supreme Court mandate to BUY
elections.
I call your “paranoia” the just concern of an
informed and aware being. I also agree with
your concern about the increasing “nothing-to-
lose” faction in the USA. There’s a tipping
point where these people suddenly decide that
violence is better than destitution as far as
the eye can see.
On the ground, the middle class is doing very
badly and, soon, we’ll be asked to bail out
the student loan program and about half of
the states of America. Soon, the answer will
be “no” and that’s why I think 2012 will see
the first up-rampings in violent crime stats
in America in a great many years.
E.
Speaking of Mexico, this is pretty much in raw form, something I probably won’t add to my florilegium. WARNING: SQUEAMISH AND HUMORLESS BEWARE! Sing along!
South of the border-down Mexico way
That’s where I ran away, when the deadly zetas came out to slay
And now as I wander, my thoughts never stray
South of the border, heads rolling away!
She was a picture-in headless disgrace
Just for a tender while, I kissed a smile upon her face
Cause it was fiesta-and a real time to pray
South of the border, heads rolling away
Then she smiled as she whispered manana
Never dreaming that she was departing
Then I lied as I whispered manana
‘Cause our tomorrow never came
South of the border-I crawled back one day
There in a tale of fright, by candlelight, her body lay
The machete blades told me(chop-chop)-that I musn’t stay
South of the border, heads rolling away!
Late night comedians please; attribution tucsonspur!
“So, the next group of 19 hijackers comes in, does their job, kill Americans, and don’t stick around, that is OK with you?”
Nope. We’d have to track them down and kill them.
“The followers of Christ don’t seem to like my take on things so much though…”
Too limiting, missy. No one with a BRAIN likes your take on anything.
Turkle:
Fundementalists of various religions have one thing in comnmon with you: both are certain of their positions.
Don Levit
Everything is a matter of propabilities, but disbelief in the non-existant is a logical position to take, wouldn’t you say?
Hey, Don, how sure are you that Thor and Zeus don’t exist? Are you pretty certain?
Oh, my lord. Here’s proof that out leader borrowed a pair of panties from turkle. How damn creepy:
“The mission looked set to be given the all clear last Thursday when analysts confirmed beyond doubt that Bin Laden was in busy town of Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.
But the president stunned officials when he told a national security meeting that he wanted more time to think – and disappeared out of the room.”
More Humboldt-variety unreality: our latest transportation kerfuffle is over allegedly substandard service at the Arcata Airport. Horizon just withdrew from ACV due to poor revenue and, heaven forbid the thought, we’re now left with no option but to fly United to Sac or SFO.
There’s been a lot of bellyaching about high fares, since United’s typical price-gouging on these routes is now the only commercial air option. If the idiots who are bitching about our backwater having poor air service want to live somewhere with lots of inexpensive, direct air connections all over hell, they can move to the Bay Area.
Commercial aviation isn’t our forte, nor will it ever be. Arcata has always been an expensive market, and with some good reason. It gets fogged in all the time (ILS and a subsequently abandoned fog-burning apparatus were initially tested at ACV). It’s in a rather poor, unpopulated area hundreds of miles from anything else. It’s expensive for airlines to pay ground and maintenance crews in Podunk and to charter vans or compensate or rebook passengers whose flights are routinely canceled.
What the hell do the boosters expect, a 737 to Atlanta twice a day? A lot of people bitched when Delta ended its regional jet flights to Salt Lake, but even with discount fares passenger volumes were light. A lot of the demand is for other West Coast points, and United’s regional hub-and-spoke system works better for that short-haul travel anyway. HSU’s effort to sweeten the deal for Delta failed when it couldn’t convince its faculty to use much of the $500k+ block of seats that it bought out of ACV.
The fucked up thing is that even though our current air service is expensive, it’s about as reliable as it can be given our weather and it’s integrated into an excellent, comprehensive network. Meanwhile, our desultory long-distance bus service doesn’t cross the minds of our political and business leaders.
I assume he meant:
Bushie was the worst, after him Obama is #2.
Mays eyesore..went in a day or 3 late but its worth a look.
‘Hoppy’ Easter their ass.
I don’t know Baba, would he have put me to the sword? Someone told me that Thich used to belt back boilermakers in his dissolute youth.
I hope that memory was a pleasant one.
Hey Jackass Poet..everyone from Janet [our borders czar] to enviornmentalist [and best selling author]John robbins is calling for [basically] open borders.
Wake Up
Well, I think that since Obama has killed Osama, we really should be thinking of ending the wars in the middle east, getting rid of the Patriot Act, the TSA, and getting on with capitalism and making our country produce/invent alternate fuel etc, etc. . But then again, we are being drilled by the dunghead media, into believing that we should be cowering in a hole waiting for the retaliation that the terrorists are going to unleash on us americans, no mattter where we live. They want to continue the fear and cowering, looking to the Govt. to protect us againt evil. WHAT A JOKE…. if we did kill OBL, then why dump him at sea, give the world a jolt and show them not to mess with us, because muslim or not,if you attack us anywhere in the world, we will get you and kill you, burn you and destroy you. BUT OH NO! We will just continue to treat our own citizens like terrorists at airports, and continue to stay at “war” in the middle east all the while, going financially downhill and not making any rational attempt at alternate fuel… WHY.. YOU MIGHT ASK?
I submit its all a load of crap. The entire affair (and I did fall for it at first) was a ruse to make Obama a hero, of the first calliber. WHY? Well we might have to wait for the next act of this play to really find out what’s in store for us. Remember, Obama, the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER…. will continue to fight against the evil people in this world, and save us from the evil muslims, christians, and anything else that offends his sense of right and wrong. And where was he born? I think he is just a citizen of the world…don’t you?
” They have changed the story..”
Revision, revision, revision
Excision, excision, excision
I need precision, precision, precision
To make a decision, decision, decision.
Maybe I just have poor taste in architecture, but that’s the least ugly building I’ve seen in the Eyesore of the Month.
Hoppy Easter indeed. Enjoy your IPA.
Turkle:
Confusion is painful.
Certainty is absurd.
Voltaire
He also said
One religion, tyranny.
Two religions, civil war.
A hundred religions, peace.
Wasn’t he an atheist?
Don Levit
I have to agree with Turkle regarding religion and deities. If there’s a god, I want him/her/it/? to appear already and tell us whatever he/she/it/? has to say. Since that hasn’t happened and there is such misery in the world – torture, violence, rape, murder, terror, disease, war, starvation and American Idol, then fuck him/her/it/?. You are not the kind of supernatural power I want in my universe. As for organized religion, what a crock of shit. Anybody with even a molecule of brain tissue can see what a fraud it is.
Sorry (actually not) for the rant, but I’m tired of most bad things that occur being connected to religion somewhere down the line.
Some years ago I came up with my own plan to seal the border. It involved relatively small towers and jeeps(or comparable vehicles) stationed I think it was aout a mile and a half apart.
This or the wall, I don’t know which would be least detrimental environmentally, but if my figuring was correct, my plan was less expensive than the wall over a ten year period, maybe longer. I no longer have the numbers, but I remember the cost of the wall being huge, before overruns.
This was considering round the clock manpower, at a not too high wage scale, etc. The wall can be breached, etc.
Maybe I need some more coffee!
Doesn’t anyone see that dialogue about liberals and conservatives, and democrats and republicans and their respective wings is meaningless? Please wake up and see reality: no one in American politics has real power; every politician is controlled by special interests. No matter who you vote for, the end result will always be the same, just the paths to that end will be different.
Who cares if Obama or Trump or Palin or whoever becomes our next president! I wish we all had a mirror into an alternate universe where the losing candidate in ours won. Then we could watch and realize it didn’t matter who won.
For the record, I didn’t vote for Obama; I voted for a 3rd party candidate whose name I can’t remember. I just couldn’t trust Obama’s sincerity. Gee, I must have been wrong because Obama’s done everything he promised he’d do.
“Who cares if Obama or Trump or Palin or whoever becomes our next president!”
Is this like a round of that Sesame Street game, Which One is Not Like the Other?
Karl Denninger over at market-ticker.org has an interesting riff today about immigration.
Hey memory, that’s not my quote, but Mr. Beantown’s. I hear ya, though!
Since we are already connected indirectly by memoryhole, I’ll go a step further.
I pretty much agree on the gods, religion thing.
There’s a connection, other than the usual joke nexus, between casinos and religion. They both take advantage of human weakness, frailty, whatever.
Nobody owns the land – that’s exactly why we need fences, borders, deeds, and Titles – to maintain the fiction that is so necessary at this stage of our evolution. To do away with them now only invites Tyranny.
Really? Then I must have transferred my human frailties and weaknesses to gambling, because I am a big casino freak. Sometimes to my dismay and sometimes to my happiness.
Do you believe in me?
“But I guess you don’t have fear of that outcome. I think messianicdruid does have that fear.”
Do you ever read any of the links I give you? “Perfect {mature} love casts out fear.”
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/COLDFUSION/Chapter.cfm?CID=69
Wage, this one’s for you.
Another great piece by Pepe Escobar on the killing of Bin Laden. His take on it was that Bin Laden had become irrelevant as the Democracy movement is in full force, and we may have just made him more important again.
Obama/Osama rock the casbah
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME04Ak01.html
I must admit that I have been in many a casino and played most of the table games. I’ve slowed down abit though, and now it’s mostly Texas hold-em, some cash, some tournaments.
Just played the deep stack at the Venetian, fizzled out. Another one coming up at the end of May. Life’s a gamble, right?
I think its ugly in intent..usually JHK prides himself on presenting GRANDIOSE themed buildings, large and complex..
Think the Disney Center in LA…Here we have a nice new building but to what purpose?
Hey Ibendet, I was just gonna post that asia-times link. You sniped me! It seems there are some differing stories as to what happened to OBL.armed, unarmed, human shields, no human shields, I do not believe we will ever get the true story. The official story reeks like a burrito fart.
Vladimir there are parts of Brazil where Germans settled and maintained German culture so check it out. I think South America would be much better than Idaho.
Bud i have no idea about the blacks getting out of line down here in brazil. it does seem glaringly obvious that the south of the country, which is hugely european — there are even towns that teach kids in german, for ex — is much better off educationally, economically, [insert good trait X here] than the much poorer black north / northeast.
once you get trapped in a culture of poverty, what the heck, how do you ever break out of it? monkey see monkey do
disclaimer: planting another 1,000 gladiolus bulbs this weekend, will be selling the plants for $1.50 apiece in 3-4 weeks. recommend everyone try some brazilian beef, US meat doesn’t hold a stick to it (not that this country is perfect, all you nitpickers)
btw real estate here going up 30-100% per annum, another US redux
“Karl Denninger over at market-ticker.org has an interesting riff today about immigration.”
-btb-
That was an interesting piece, Bill, and very well thought out. The comments were interesting, too – though some few were less well thought out.
People who argue in favor of open borders and unrestricted immigration have not thought it all the way through. Consider population overshoot and resource depletion; that makes near zero immigration into the US is the only logical response – that it might save the Planet is a side benefit.
================
To disagree with you, though, on a different topic – I don’t get the religion bashing engaged in by you, turkle, bustin, wage, ozone, snafu, and numerous others.
No one is trying to convert you atheists to Christianity/Judaism/Islam/whatever.
Yet I feel the pressure to convert to Atheism every time I read one of you guy’s dialogs on religion.
It’s not the Voices in my head Speaking to me, either.
It sure can’t be the voice of God (god?).
Can it?
“America resembles the land of the munchkins, as it celebrates the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. The joy is understandable, but in some respects, unattractive. It endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”. Amoral diplomats and triumphant politicians join in applauding Bin Laden’s summary execution because they claim real justice – arrest, trial and sentence would have been too difficult in the case of Bin Laden. But in the long-term interests of a better world, should it not at least have been attempted?”
That was from today’s Independent UK. And up here in Canada we have just given a majority to a right-wing Prime Minister who was recently found guilty of Contempt of Parliament. The new Official Opposition is the socialist New Democratic Party. The world gets crazier every day.
Hey, Marlin, yes I’ve read that one – fast, enjoyable read – and I don’t mind being compared to Stephen Bullock, I might add! He was the character I admired in the story – present, aware, and prepared in advance. Maybe that’s where I get the notion of having “50-100 local Tift County residents working for/with us” in 10-20 years. I have no desire to be nobility though, just useful.
How ’bout you? Which character are you?
Ron Paul: More Progressive Than Obama?
“Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.
Can the same be said for Barack Obama?”
depending on your POV, it gets a lot better/worse…
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis04282011.html
We’ve been doing a lot of garden dining lately, Jaime Oliver style. It’s too warm to cook inside without AC so I just light the campfire in the late afternoon, as chores are winding down, grab a cutting board and the good knife, salt, pepper, and olive oil, and see what presents itself. Tonight it was grass-fed burgers, joined by a cast-iron skillet full of waning broccoli and cauliflower, with garlic and spring onions. If it gets fresher than that I’m not sure how. I cooked it within 10 minutes and 30′ of where it was growing, and it never even went inside or got washed.
It’s a damn fine way to live, I must say…
Poker-wise, I was always a 7 card stud player, and a pretty gone one. Then Texas hold-em took over and I didn’t really know the game. I thought about learning it because of the tournaments; then I thought I was getting older and didn’t have the stamina or time to get into it, so I stopped playing poker. The last poker game I ever got into was 10 years ago when I was visiting friends in the Phoenix area, and we drove up to Vegas. I got into an all-night poker game in one of the casinos and won some $$. I haven’t played since.
Now I mostly shoot craps and play blackjack. Those games are up and down. Do you think age is important in learning a new game of poker like Texas hold-em? I’d be playing against these young studs who spend all day playing it.
What people often forget is that the universe is just a probability table. Every thing we do, every breath we take, results in a probability being realized. In that way, casino gambling mirrors life, except the odds aren’t as good.
Jim’s point about the present stock market bubble is so true.
We have a stock market index growing on a foundation of pure fantasy. Fueled by artificially low interest rates, so the accelerator can go right to the floor.
After seeing the documentary “Inside Job”, it is readily apparent that the Obama administration is owned not by the people but by the economic elite, what Gerald Celente calls the “white shoe boys”. That is a sad state, as the elite are being taken care of, while the little people are getting foreclosed. Has there even been such a time in America when the government has done so little for those in need, while tucking in the elite?
Even the actions of the government, apparently caring enough to run up the massive deficits and debt, carries the aura of stimulating jobs, but in the end, the interest payments will be going to the big guys, inside and outside America, not the workers.
As George Carlin once profanely said, “They own the f%&*$ng place, its like a big club, and you’re not in it!”
My intention is not to convert anyone to my way of thinking about religion. I suggest that the pressure you feel about others trying to convert you – at least concerning my postings – is the little voice in your head thinking that maybe I have something there, and you are afraid to have to admit it. I’m not saying this as an insult.
What pains me about religious believers who are obviously intelligent, such as yourself, is that you normally display clear/critical thinking, yet to me, it is noticeably lacking when you consider religion. But, having said this, I understand it is a big leap into the deep end of the pool to begin questioning God’s existence.
I wasn’t born that way. I became an atheist only after a long time, and only years after I developed critical thinking. It can be daunting to make that paradigm shift.
I’ll tell you, if God appeared before me, I’d have a long argument with him about how he’s handled things; I’d just be careful not to get him too mad. But arguing with God is the Jewish way.
This messianicdruid character certainly tries to convert anyone who questions his silliness.
I look at it more like someone being deprogrammed after being in a cult. There’s no conversion, because atheism is not a religion or constructive belief system. It is just the disbelief in a fictitious, all-powerful being who runs the universe like some kind of celestial dictatorship.
This is similar to a child who learns that there is no Santa Claus. They are not converted to the There Is No Santa Claus belief system, but they simply stop believing in make-believe, feelgood fairy tales.
Atheism should be an unspoken given that goes without saying, because we don’t give names to every other system of disbelief, e.g. someone who doesn’t believe in unicorns isn’t a an Anti-Unicorn-ist. They simply don’t believe in irrational nonsense.
But because there are billions of people who believe out-moded, ancient mumbo jumbo, they feel the need to slap labels on those who don’t belong to their cults.
No mention of peak oil? Darn. You just removed any reason I would see it unless it’s nominated for a Razzie or a Smithee.
“But the president stunned officials when he told a national security meeting that he wanted more time to think – and disappeared out of the room.”
========
Then Obama made a decision that got the results he wanted.
I suppose you would prefer someone who says things like: “The people that did this are going to be sorry” … “dead or alive” … “you can run but you can’t hide” … “we’ll smoke him out of his cave” etc. etc. and then attacks the wrong country and gives up altogether on getting OBL, because Bush never thought it through like Obama did. Bush was all hat and no cattle.
Now you want to make it look like a flaw that Obama took more time to think through a decision, even after you have the proof that thinking through a small unit action got more results and didn’t cost the country billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.
Nicely said.
I don’t find age too much of a factor in Texas hold-em, except when it comes to tournament play.
In those deep stack tournaments, if you’re lucky enough to last, the first day is about 14 hours, and you finish, again if you are lucky, the next day, starting around 4pm, thankfully.
Oddly enough, I see the young guys getting the massages more than the older ones! Maybe not so oddly!
What was most disconcerting to me when I first started, only about six years ago, was the all-in move, especially in cash games. It does put you to the test.
Smaller tournaments can be, say, four or five hours, and I’ve won my share of those. So that’s not too bad.
Anyway, I certainly do wish I had discovered the game earlier, to my mind it’s the best card game around.
To sum it up, age, assuming reasonable health, shouldn’t be a factor.
I recently bought some over-priced seed potatoes from a big-box store because they were sprouting so enthusiastically, they diplayed such a will to live, that I had to liberate them and bring them home to grow. I will nurture them to maturity and then ripe them from the earth, hold them underwater,scrub them and incorporate them into a potato dish such as Colcanon. Cubans adapted to life after Soviet Oil by this method and so I too might adapt to the end of Cheap Oil.
Well, as I’ve been predicting for some time, global oil production continues to set new records as the global economy continues to recover — according to the post on todays theoildrum.org.
The lead sentence from that post:
“The US Energy Information Administration’s January oil production figures are out, and they show record oil production.”
Followed by graphs, etc.
I’m not a cornucopian. I know that Peak Oil is coming. And I suspect it is coming in about 5 to 10 years. But it doesn’t look like we’re there yet, regardless of JHK’s insistence to the contrary.
Vladimir? What’s next–Vladimir Cantz and Asoka affectionately rubbing each others belly button?
Agreed.
The USA is currently exporting oil!
I’m an innie and Asoka is an outie. The twain can never meet.
European use about one-half the energy per capita that North Americans use and they have a high standard of living. Of course, they have not dismantled mass transportation and have less sprawl.
Massages? By women with large breasts? During poker tournaments? Oh Baba say on!
I’ve actually been a fan of Carlin for a long,long, time, Cash. What I’d be really interested to know is how many people here are working vigilantly on feeding themselves on the stuff they manage to grow in their back yard. I’ve been hanging with Tripp for a while, and my ‘maters are looking awesome, but something is eating the living shit out of my pepper plants (bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, cayenne peppers). Trying to approach it from the standpoint of “I don’t have a fucking option to run down to Lowe’s and pick up some Sevin dust” this disturbs the shit out of me 🙂 So now, I’m faced with the non-chemical dilemna of what the hell to do about it, if I’d like to have peppers. I made some insectidal soap out of Ivory soap and water, and I’m hoping that works, because if so, I’m going to lay in a large supply of Ivory dish soap.
And to add I’m really, REALLY shocked to see that Kunstler didn’t go after the poor tornado-struck redneck hillbillies in Alabama and parts thereof instead of commenting on Osama Bin Laden this week. I would have guessed that in his extreme poor taste and prejudice against all things Southern, he would have found a way to fuck those folks right in the ass while they were struggling to stand up and right themselves. Go figure . . . perhaps he’s not quite as huge an insensitive prick as he would like us to think.
You’re welcome, Jim 🙂
Technological Economy
1) The present day Technological Economy is hell bent on eliminating as many real productive jobs as possible. This is done in order for the powers that be, the capitalists and others to profit as much as possible from as little labor as possible, for them to be as independent as possible from labor, other people, their will powers. By using as few people as possible, by needing fewer and fewer real, necessary, and productive workers, the capitalists have more freedom to do anything they want, they avoid the possibilities of labor opposing any plans and any decisions the capitalists may want to take.
2) The way that corporations and other entities eliminate work is by optimizing and streamlining all productive endeavors, rendering them as independent as possible from people and needing as few people as possible, by using all the knowledge accumulated in years of research. Computers and Software, Communications, Internet are used to automate as many office type endeavors as possible, robots in factories are used to automate repetitive production rituals. All kinds of chemical and physical technologies are used to get more product out of less input, and also less energy, fewer manipulations, larger economies of scale, etc.
3) No one notices how much labor is really not needed, people are “intellectually lazy” so to say, they “go with the flow”, they accept everything non critically, never really looking into the larger scheme of things. This process of translating labor from the necessary to the optional has been going on for decades. But like a frog boiling in water, no one ever noticed it. The slow substitution of agricultural labor and manufacturing labor into office type jobs, information workers, sales, marketing, relationships based type jobs has been going on since the 1950s on and even before, no one ever questions what the collective result of all of this labor is, what general good is produced, how the society as a whole really benefits. Well, it doesn’t, only the capitalists and fewer and fewer hands hog up all the profits.
4) The serialization of labor, the accumulation of labor processes is one of the things the capitalists are most afraid of: this would create a huge amount of wealth and it would become very difficult to hide how much wealth the system can produce, it would be hard for them to hog it all up for themselves, they would have to distribute it because there would be so much product that it would be impossible to not distribute it. Some examples, millions of homes built in Spain, now standing empty (but the prices don’t go down anyways) or Florida, same story. So many Chinese toys are sequestered by governments in Europe, but they just pop out all over again, as in those factories in China can produce a virtually infinite stream of toys, it doesn’t make a dent to them if they keep on losing huge batches of illegal toys, etc. And there are many other examples. So one important thing the system must impose is the atomization, parallelization of labor processes, each process in contrast to each other, each one destroying the work of the other so as to avoid the possibility that labor may add up, like in Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, or High Speed Trains.
5) The brainwashing of everyone that they need to “compete”, that they are in “competition with” other imaginary fake entities, especially while 80 % of jobs are service and fluff jobs where the principle of competition is totally irrelevant and not applicable. Competition in any endeavor can optimize corporations, but past a certain point, competition also becomes a diminishing return endeavor: there is only so much that can be optimized and competed against, competition can only reach so much in the end: kind of like formula one cars, they are all optimized up to an extreme limit, the differences become really random, causal, microscopic differences of a few seconds faster of one car compared to another. Nothing really big anymore.
6) Labor is no longer necessary in a Technological Economy, more and more labor is destined to disappear no matter what. This would be and should be good news, the scientists and engineers did their jobs very well, they are giving back a lot more than they received, this could improve the lives of billions worldwide in a jiffy, but this also creates a huge psychological and ideological crisis in the present day, still anchored in the 18th century model of 8 hour jobs in plants mentality.
7) In order to hide the fact that labor is not needed anymore, the capitalists invent a huge amount of non necessary, fake, make believe labor and work processes, rituals, that have one very important property: these processes can be eliminated in an eye blink, since they weren’t necessary and needed in the first place. A good example is how fast and how many thousands of people are laid off in a jiffy by corporations in the USA. They are used only as a place holder, as a make believe abstract entity (and probably crushed by a huge amount of fake “work” to do, the more fake it is, the more work they have to do, but it is all make believe fluff, standards, paper work, a never ending array of creative ways of simulating fake necessities, so no one notices just how little real work is needed anymore) that can be hosed in any moment giving the capitalists that huge satisfaction of how much pure power they have on the lives of so many other people.
JHK (http://www.kunstler.com) has a large scale narrative of the world, “Peak Oil”, a large scale organizing principle where all events and all of reality is filtered through. Everything serves as a demonstration and as a confirmation of the principle. If it were true, that oil is really running out, then JHK would be 100 % correct: problem is, it is not true, or it is only very partially true. He confuses the effects of mostly technology plus oil as only oil, he sees oil as a single point of failure of the system whereas, the system is oil plus all of the technologies used to harness the energy, and it is mostly the 80 % technology that creates the “free wealth”, the amplification of labor, the creature comforts the first world has enjoyed for so long, and will continue to enjoy as technology becomes more and more optimized. In fact, one of the things that terrorize JHK, is the threat that technology may contradict his entire edifice.
In any case, whether his large scale organizing principle is correct, or whether it is mine, we may simply end up like the frog slowly boiling: the system will slowly adapt to reality, substitutes for oil will be found, people will organize themselves differently, all very gradually, without any sudden tipping point or phase transition.
And the same with my large scale organizing principle, if work is no longer needed, this truth will emerge one way or another, the capitalists can choke on only so much cash in the end, it could gradually flow back to where it belongs and namely to everybody. Working hours will decrease, Low rent prices will become the norm, subsidized salaries and large scale projects will emerge, Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, etc.
Any target can be reached from any starting point like a frog boiling, if it is gradual enough no one will even barely notice, just like so much real labor got substituted with fluff labor in the 20th century. We may be exactly the “World Made by Hand” of JHK in 50 years without even noticing how we reached it, or we may have trillions of skyscrapers on Mars without even noticing how we reached it. Interesting to see the typical “Standard International” buildings all similar, all over the world, boxy like structures, all kinds of, in Seoul, Tokyo, Paris, New York City, etc. with street view of google or daum, reflecting the same phenomena exactly the same everywhere.
More likely, everyone will fight everyone and create an ever greater hell on earth, as people love to hate and fight more than anything else, therefore we need to engineer the neural network in people’s brains and change them, the direct manipulation of brains and minds, the Instant Singularity.
Tripp;
I’d most likely be one of those people working for Steven Bullock, preferably in the beer-making operation. Maybe in quality control as a taste tester.
——————————-
Portugal accepted a $120 billion bailout from the EU yesterday. That should be big news, but it hardly rates a mention. EU coffers appear to be limitless, like our Federal Reserve. Enough money exists to bail out the whole world. On CNBC yesterday it was reported that despite the high gasoline prices demand is up all across the US. People are driving around more than ever. Actually the price of oil stabilized at about $112 per barrel and is beginning to drop. Crude may have peaked in 2006, but people don’t know it yet, or at least act like they don’t. Or maybe nobody cares.
BTBill; interesting thread about gambling.
Pick up a copy of Dosoyevski’s ‘The Gambler’ about his time at the tables in S. Germany and France in the 1870’s. Best thing ever written on the subject, and very illuminating. Also, a college classmate of mine, Jeff Benedict, has a pretty good book out about the casinos here in Connecticut, ‘Without Reservation’.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
…And yet another corner heard from!
I like this one called: “The nine lives of Osama Bin Laden”. Most of this stuff has disappeared down the ol’ memoryhole. (Sorry, MH, had to borrow that for a sec.)
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/1092.html
What are those reactors doing in Japan?
Is a Civil War still going on in Libya?
Where is Iran’s Nuke program?
Does Spain need to be bailed out, too?
Has the fighting in Ivory Coast and S. Sudan intensified, or has it waned?
How about Syria, are they still gunning down protesters in that country?
What’s happening in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia?
Questions of import a short time ago, already forgotten by American Media now.
What I’ll have to do is bust out my Short Wave and tune into BBC.
Yeah, I know, Google it.
-Marlin
Here’s a nasty concoction that we’ve had good luck with. You can kind of wing it with ingredient amounts (here and there; depending on how much you need), but follow application directions. For now, you’ll probably have to make do with a bottled killer hot sauce, but put in your blazing hot pepper plants for the next time you play alchemist!
Good luck!
Hey, damnit! I forgot the link! lol
Here ya be…
http://my.gardenguides.com/forums/topic/9533
And this is the fluff – optional economy that lets me write, just like JHK, about how much the economy is based on fluff optional endeavors and how the system will eliminate as many real productive jobs as possible structurally, from the outset, as it is defined to begin with: productivity (notice this word, and how often it is used in economics), innovation (you wouldn’t do something in a new way, or introduce an innovation that makes you pay more money for something, hence this always will translate in some job getting cut somewhere in the world), etc.
An interesting corollary of this is that if you have a job that has some real purpose, some usefulness, some kind of (even if indirectly) cause and effect, it is surely going to be a high risk job, one of those that will be axed, one that will surely be optimized or outsourced. If on the other hand, it is a very vague (the more vague the more secure the job is), abstract, fluff, undefined, unmeasurable by any kind of metrics job (or as is more often the case, measured by the wackiest arbitrary opinion the boss at hand invents, and these are becoming the majority) it is probably sure to last and not be axed. Of course, these are the jobs that can easily be axed all together, in a group of thousands, like the great mass layoffs the USA has every now and then, just for the fun of it, but still they are the most secure.
If it is a real job ax it, if it is a fake job save it for some time, the fake ones are way more useful for the capitalists, they are convenient place holders, they can always ax them all of a sudden by the thousands to prop up the apparent bottom line when the time comes.
Haw!
Good questions, all.
But it is now forbidden to think about that shit. We’ve got to focus on… what was it now? The price of a new toaster? ‘Darned if I didn’t forget what it was I’m supposed to buy that will make the country better, stronger… FASTER! (We can rebuild it.)
(Besides, I hate that thinking stuff; it’s too hard! ;o)
Flip on the tube; we’ve got Sony Playstation network to access! Oh… geez… crap…
Tuscon,
Enjoyed that one, also [and especially]!
Cash, thanks for the overview!
Most interesting and enlightening how things are delegated “up yonder”.
(I would still advise to “beware of politicians bearing tax breaks” though. ;o)
RT,
Burrito fart, eh? (Good one, BTW.)
I hope that hasn’t anything to do with your screen name. ;o)
Woo-hoo!
Now, just what do you s’pose our fine “intelligence” operatives will turn up from a perusal of OBL’s hard-drive?
Ah, a “treasure trove” of info.
What a fine opportunity to float another huge raft of lies down the unruffled surface of the river that is the American “consciousness”.
Lying IS the new normal, but it’s all good in Clusterfuck Nation. (tm JHK)
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54151.html
One last thing and I’ll stop wasting your bandwidth.
From Paul Craig Roberts (who doesn’t BELIEVE, and thinks this hyar killin’ might be a tad “convenient”.):
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28016.htm
Buh’bye, and have a laugh or three…
Ozone;
I had loose plans to kick over the Royal Enfield and cruise (more like chug) up to your corner of the world today and have myself a look around Roosterville. But a cold rain is falling once again and temp. headed south into the 40s. So I’m stuck home.
Serves me right for making plans.
-Marlin
Thanks for that link, Ozone
It is hard to say what’s real since OBL is the stuff from which rumors are born.
He’s almost a cultural Rorschach test measuring our own psyche, but it’s been said by so many that there is a CIA involvement since the Russian Afghan war, so anything goes….
But in the face of some failures in Afghanistan I think this is interesting timing, indeed. Just last week we heard that 500 prisoners escaped in Khandahar through a tunnel dug by the Taliban.
We also heard that 5 NATO troops and 4 Afghan soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in April. It sure looked like this was going nowhere, so now we look effective, you know that old American can-do mentality which could be very good for the stock market and the psychology of the people–very important for the economy, you know. (shop shop shop…)
Now we have to figure out what to do about Pakistan, the more important player in the Central Asian theater. Musharaf went on US TV a few years ago, describing his fight against terror with the US. He said Dick Armitage told him if he didn’t cooperate we would bomb him back to the stone-age. So you can imagine the relationship we have with these people.
Musharaf may be gone, but we are bolstering up the new regime (“fledgling democracy”) to the tune of over $18 billion in US aid to the country since 9/11.—yeah don’t tell me about deficits and how we have to give up the social safety net in this country–BS they print whatever amount of money they please–Just more theater for the right/left divide—oh so yesterday, might I add, but privatization is rationalized by this.
I swear we are living on the “Forbidden Planet”
TruthDig has a good article: A Monster of our own Creation.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_monster_of_our_own_creation_20110504/
This is a very interesting analysis of politics
Prisonplanet.tv and Alex Jones interview with G Edward Griffin.mp4
Sorry I put the wrong link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm68dZ8eCSw
I’m looking forward to May’s “Eyesore of the Month.” From the looks of Osama’s million dollar “mansion” in Abbotabad, I realized that Pakistan can do suburbs even WORSE than the U.S.
Jen
You mean June, and Primitive Country, Primitive Design.
What do you expect in a place where most live on a dollar a day and maybe 2 meals?
But where’s your evidence for the existence of this all powerful being who watches over everyone?
– Turk
How do you and I “know” that Columbus came to America? Have we met him? Were we there on one of his ships?
You say there is “evidence”. Yes, there is evidence. What constitutes such evidence? Well, it’s pretty straight forward: written accounts, maybe documentary evidence from other sources that corroborates the story, archeological evidence, the evidence of settlement by Spanish people in the New World. There is much in the way of other present day circumstance be it linguistic or cultural that shiploads of Spanish people came to the New World. It all had to be started by someone. Let’s call that someone “Columbus”.
Does such evidence pass muster with you? Yes? Same with me, I think it’s a good bet that someone named Columbus came to America. Even if we have no direct experience, even we haven’t personally seen such evidence, enough credible sounding people say they’ve personally laid hands on old records and buy into the account so that we feel personally comfortable with the story. Others, however, may say geez that’s a nice tale but it just doesn’t cut it. To them the evidence of “Columbus” may be too old or too fragmentary or too sparse or too inconsistent with other apparent circumstances.
How about Osama bin Laden? Was he killed a couple days ago? What evidence do we have? Aside from the testimony of your govt officials you and I have absolutely zip. What if they show a photo of Bin Laden’s dead body? What if there’s the personal testimonial of the soldier that shot him? Do we choose to believe it? Some will and some won’t.
So how about this idea of evidence from the accounts of other people? We may accept it in the case of this chap named “Columbus”. We accept such evidence in courts. Someone says they saw so-and-so do such-and-such. Is the witness trusted? The testimony is questioned in court and a judge and jury decide whether it’s any good or not.
How about “evidence” as accepted in such “sciences” as economics or sociology? How about “evidence” such as that acceptable in other sciences like physics? I would submit that evidence acceptable in one academic field would get laughed at in another.
So now how about this evidence of a man in the sky? What do we have? As it turns out there are written accounts of encounters with something unusual such as that of Moses at Mount Horeb and that of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Have you read such accounts? I take it you don’t find them credible.
I would submit that evidence that passes muster with one person may not with another. As you might say, the accounts of Moses and Saul sound entirely fictional, they defy common sense, they do not square with your personal experience of the world. In addition, these writings are very old, maybe three thousand years plus in the case of Moses and two thousand years in the case of Saul. How on earth do you verify them? Yet to another person, these accounts, for whatever reason, may have the ring of truth.
If someone you know really well and trust say they saw or heard something really unusual would you believe them? What if in all other respects their behaviour and cognition appeared entirely normal and rational? Yes? No?
perhaps he’s not quite as huge an insensitive prick as he would like us to think. – TT
Maybe he wouldn’t kick pople when they’re down even lower life forms (according to JHK that is) like redneck hillbillies.
I don’t know about Cash, but I am finding the Conservative win here in Canada extremely disappointing. Turns out they won because they tapped into the immigrant vote – and in Canada the immigrants are mostly wealthy people from countries where democracy is not exactly at the top of the agenda, because the way you get to immigrate to Canada is you buy your way in.
Thankyou for the kind words about being a laudable etc etc conservative. But I’m not so sure I’m cut from that cloth. A conservative is for incremental change, as you might say, “cautious”. But sometimes you have got to move fast and sometimes you have to just say damn the torpedoes because salami slice changes won’t get you from point A to point B fast enough.
Hi trippticket – I always like to hear about what you’re doing. I’m homesteading on six acres of land I rent, where I grow heaps of food, save seeds, etc. I give gardening and Permaculture talks, and just taught two workshops on “Growing for Market”. I’d like to see a market garden in every neighbourhood so people who don’t have gardens of their own can find fresh veggies within talking distance of their homes. This year I’ll be planting a lot of small plots of different kinds of grains so that I can save the seeds for future use. I’d like to own land, but prices here on Vancouver Island are really ridiculous. I’d probably be doing things quite differently if I owned the place, though, as I’m reluctant to spend a lot of money planting perennials when I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Keep up the good work!
Yes, Ozone, corporate tax cuts and all the rest of the big-biz agenda is well under way here in Canada. Lots of new prisons and a whole whack of new fighter jets from Lockheed-Martin. Our Senate is appointed, not elected, and Harper has already stacked it with Conservatives. Next is the Supreme Court, which has a number of judges soon to retire. And our PM is from Alberta, so he just loves the tar sands. Oh, and did I mention he doesn’t believe in climate change? Too bad Canadians didn’t learn anything from the Bush years. I did get to mark a paper ballot, though.
No, that wouldn’t be OK.
But if a group of commandos came in and stormed Crawford, Texas, shot Bush in the head and burned the place down, that would be OK with me, and, clearly, Marlin also, since he is OK with the SEALS going into Pakistan and doing the same thing.
Actually, it would be OK to do the same thing with Obama and the White House, because mass murderers are mass murderers, no matter which party they belong to.
And if the country from which the commandos came erupted into a frenzied celebration of assassination and torture, complete with dancing in the streets, well, I guess that would be OK too.
Unless you’re a hypocrite.
Actually, Turkle, Bin Laden opposed the US for the reasons that you give, but he did not say that he attacked the US on 9-11.
You consistently ignore the CNN link I’ve posted, so here is the relevant denial.
“Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden, the man the United States considers the prime suspect in last week’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, denied any role Sunday in the actions believed to have killed thousands.”
He did accept responsibility for the attack on the Cole and the embassy in Kenya, for the reasons you continually cite.
But not for 9-11. And the FBI has stated that they have no evidence which links Bin Laden to the attacks on 9-11.
” It endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”.”
You are right. Justice would have included Bin Laden being sewn into a bacon cocoon lined with maggots. Then, said cocoon, would have been transported to ground zero where it would serve as a porta-john for several months. All the while, doctors would periodically check in on Osama to make certain that he was kept alive and above all, conscience.
Then a transfer to an echo chamber, where he could listen to Lady Gag-yah, CD’s 24/7. This would continue for a number of years until we could figure out how to administer a proper form of justice. I’m guessing fire ants and genitals would be a part of the discussion.
“And up here in Canada we have just given a majority to a right-wing Prime Minister…”
There may be hope for Canada.
I agree with you.
As someone said, if you read the Book of Job, God doesn’t come out looking too good!
Mucho gracias!
I left out the Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay ,ay ay,ay…
Change it into agonizing screams?
Thanks, lbendet.
I opened it in another window and will read it later.
There are things that you know that I need to know, and there are things that I know that you need to know. If you do not believe this, go to the next post.
It is not a problem if you hate me for what I am. My purpose is to inform, so as to convert from ignorance to knowledge, but you are too self-satisfied to listen. When I correct something you seem to believe {about me} that illustrates your ignorance – silence.
It has been my delusion, for some time, that if only people knew – they would change what they are doing. If only people knew that God is, and is a rewarder of those who seek Him, they would want to learn more and their soul {life} would prosper. Insistence that God’s Law is outdated {antiquated} can only be attributed {by me} to lack of awareness. It is no sin to be unaware, so there is no reason for me to be unhappy with you.
The issue is government, not religion. Who will be g-o-d {rulemaker}.
Good article from Global Research that explains how Osama bin Laden was a creation of the CIA in 1979 entitled “9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001”
full article at
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20958
” Massages. By women with large breasts…”
Oh, you nawtee boy!
“Good article from Global Research…”
Cool. The CIA giveth and the CIA taketh away.
I was mistaken a few weeks back, WLaborer. You DO have a sense of humor!
I like that in a Gal.
-Marlin
The voices in your head are of your own doing, Prog.
No one is trying to proselytize you into atheism.
But to say that other religions don’t proselytize?
Whoo!! That’s stretching it!
…and in Canada the immigrants are mostly wealthy people from countries… – HH
This is what you call BULLSHIT.
Here are some immigration FACTS.
In fact, in 2009 around 10,000 immigrants were “investor” class ie they got in because they sunk some money in this place. And around a thousand were “entrepreneurs”. Another 30,000 were provincial or territorial “nominees” ie they get in under varying provincially determined criteria ie skilled worker, professional, entrepreneur etc. This is out of a total of 252,000 immigrants.
This is a report on classes of immigrants for 2009:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2009/permanent/02.asp
When the Liberal Party tapped into the same immigrant vote it was absolutely fine, it showed what slick, sophisticated, astute politicos they were compared to those knuckle dragging, redneck tools out West that just didn’t get it and couldn’t do it. Now suddenly, that same immigrant vote isn’t legitimate because, by golly, they voted Conservative. And they come from places whose rulers kill the people they govern.
A question: why the fuck do you think those people came here?
Another question: why the fuck do you think my parents came here?
For anyone who might actually give a damn, this is the Govt of Canada website that provides info on immigration to Canada.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp
And according to this article we took in somewhere around 280,000 people last year, a record number and a majority of which were skilled workers:
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Record+number+immigrants+welcomed+Canada+2010/4274845/story.html
We have a population of 34,000,000 in this place, 20 percent of our population is foreign born, Toronto is 50% foreign born. We don’t have to apologize to anyone about our levels of immigration. And fucking excuse us for looking after our national interest. Since when are we Santa Claus?
Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/annual-report2010/section1.asp
You must live pretty far bad in those mountains, that you’ve never had a Mormon or a Jehovah Witness knock on your door.
I’ve read that the Jews used to be big on proselytizing, but the circumcision requirement made prospective Jews reluctant. And, eventually, they quit trying.
So the Christians came up with the meme that Christ died, not just for your sins, but for your circumcision, and they did much better.
I remember years ago, a guy came up to me and asked me “Have you met my friend Jesus?”
Like a good barrio resident, I pronounced it differently, but, whatever.
I turned and put my hand out, and said “Hi, Jesus” to his friend.
That didn’t go over well.
Well, that was interesting.
Like a typical American, my take was Amero-centric.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/
But there are other countries involved here, and he presents an interesting case.
Turkle should read it.
Speaking of our worthless news media, THIS is what NPR.org had on its homepage today:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/04/135410415/zoot-shooters-bring-gangster-style-to-the-gun-range
What a country of clowns. Adults dressing up in costumes and playing with toys. With everything that is happening in the world right now THIS is what NPR chooses to cover.
The role of our news media in our decline should not be underestimated.
Wage,
Thanks for the link to your blogspot. I’ve just added it to my bookmarks. Good for you!
It looks like the airlines are doing their part to keep gasoline demand high. An article in the LA Times a few days ago reported that average fares are rising and capacity is expected to be cut by several percent over last summer.
This means that flying will be both more expensive and more of a pain in the ass, with more crowding and bumped passengers. A lot of people who have enough money (or credit) to travel will drive instead of flying. They’ll bitch about the cost of gas, but that cost will still be less prohibitive than that of tickets and baggage fees for the whole family. It will be less annoying for many people, too, thanks to the usual bullshit from TSA and the airlines stepping up their race to the bottom on customer service.
Incidentally, unless oil prices really go haywire, I expect the airlines to emerge from the summer in hale health. They’ll save a bundle on flight and ground crew costs, and profit margins on their remaining passengers will more than make for the people they alienate or price out of their market. The airlines will probably have a lot of demoralized, pissed off flight attendants, so there may be some strikes or Steven Slater imitations, but those are small, manageable risks given the amount of money that is to be made.
Driving will probably be cheaper and more reliable than Amtrak for many families, too. Amtrak sells out many of its trains at nearly doubled fares during the summer.
The people who make the “driving season” a reality won’t consider Greyhound. I can’t entirely blame them, since over most of its network Greyhound is a customer service nightmare of its own. Amtrak is just about the only public transit service that the summer driving set will usually consider, since it’s usually pretty clean, comfortable, reliable and convenient.
Even so it’s hard to get people to leave their cars at home. Pretty much everyone I know in Philly wouldn’t even consider taking New Jersey Transit or Greyhound to the shore. I’ve done so a number of times, and it’s usually worked pretty well (Atlantic City is one of Greyhound’s few bright spots), but most of the shore crowd has a total mental block on the idea on the idea of not driving down the shore.
Becoming attuned to what I now believe is really going on the world has definitely liberated me. The stresses of my employment (which is entirely based on cheap oil by the way) and the typical everyday stresses of this unhealthy culture now just seem to roll off me. This is due mainly to my new ideology that the society that I am highly pressured to be successful in, is a huge facade of reality and will last only for a blip in human existence.
I want to pull people that I care about out of this toxic bubble of ‘reality’ and show them how things really stand in the world. My dilemma is that when I attempt to do this, they tend to look at me like I have dog shit smeared on my face. Stepping out of this bubble has made me feel quite ostracized!
“Stepping out of this bubble has made me feel quite ostracized!”
I can relate. You have two options there.
You can continue to speak with people close to you about these issues. Point them to books and websites to backup your claims and argue logically, calmly, and clearly. But don’t get too emotional or offended if someone blows you off. It is hard to change someone’s entrenched view of reality.
Or you can simply stop talking to them about it and go about your life, implementing changes as you see fit.
You can also find communities of the like-minded, which are out there in RL and here in cyberspace.
Cash, you Canucks do seem to have a lot of extra, uninhabited land that you’re not using, but unfortunately it is mostly a frozen wasteland. 😉
BTW, on a completely different topic, have you ever watched Ice Road Truckers? I just thought it was interesting to see how much effort (and gas!) it takes to sustain all the mines and such up in the Canadian north, including a 300 mile ice road that has to be reconstructed EVERY YEAR.
Vlad, do you know any Latinos?
You’re right that there are Latinos who believe in the Reconquista. There are others who make idle talk about the Reconquista but who sure as hell don’t want the Southwest to end up under the sovereignty of Mexico at this juncture (if the Mexican government’s capabilities along the border can properly be called “sovereignty”).
There are also untold numbers of Texans who talk about restoring the Texas Republic, Southerners of all stripes who talk of seceding again, Vermonters who talk about setting up an independent republic or joining Canada, Cascadian partisans, and probably some others that I’ve missed.
Do you seriously believe that because any of these factions–Anglo or Latino–make provocative statements about breaking up the United States they have any capacity to actually effect the disintegration of the Union? Do you think very many of these people really want to deal with the consequences of running independent splinter republics? And do you seriously think that Marlin’s friends are Mexican fifth column agents who just pretend to be proud Texans?
Dude, get a grip.
From time to time, people want to hear about stupid, frivolous, feelgood BS instead of all the world’s problems, wars, and evils.
It is understandable, don’t you think? Reality bites.
WageL;
I listened to a few of your broadcasts.
I like that midwestern twang in your voice. Very endearing.
I got to hand it to you. You’re pretty serious about all this stuff and there is alot more to you than just your posts on CFNation. You attend rallies, demonstrate, host a radio show, etc.
Me, I like Jim’s writing, and reading all the comments that ensue from around the US and different places in the world. I just chime in once in awhile. I’ve got my gardens going but the weather isn’t cooperating.
That’s about it for me. Folks like you and Tripp are doing the hard work and the heavy lifting. Compared to you guys I’m a posuer, maybe a slacker.
Tripp, PoC, do you guys listen the Drive by Truckers from Athens Georgia? Pretty good stuff. I think the Old 97’s are from down that way too. ‘I Used to Have a Job’, Drive by Truckers’, music that fits in with the CFNation zeitgeist.
-Marlin
This is Teacher Appreciation Week.
http://www.teacher-appreciation.info/Teacher-Appreciation-Week-2011/
How ’bout some free beer for the Teacher?
Can we get some free beer for the Band, please?!
Unfortunately “from time to time” isn’t the way most of our news media dishes out the meaningless bullshit. Check out the number of search results between these two:
http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=%22peak+oil%22
http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=%22sarah+palin%22&tabId=all&dateId=0&programId=0&topicId=0
Hey Wage,
Really enjoyed the Whirlpool story. Last summer On 7/20/10 I wrote about this on the blog and don’t remember whether you responded. I titled it “Erin Burnett’s sin of Omission. I guess you can check it out in these archives.
Both of you covered really good topics and I wish you had told us about this last summer. I would have followed you each week.
You did good. Hope you find a new venue.
To show or Not to show
So what’s the difference between Obama and Bush?
Looks to me that Obama’s not going to feed the bread and circus it’s Lord of the Flies moment.
The sooner that mass murderer OBL is forgotten, the better.
Parading his body around, or publishing photos, would only prolong the morbidity, inflame emotions, and put more American lives at risk.
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
Since Aimlow has not posted , or maybe he has Here is a link to his blog. I like his take on stuff’ http://aimlow.com/
It sounds like they caught Osama by surprise all right. He still had a half eaten BLT in his mouth when they capped him. By the way, they shot him in the eye, who’da thunk that they’d bring Dick Chaney with them? Surprise surprise.
The capture of bin Laden will provide only a momentary uptick in Obama’s plummeting popularity as many Americans who voted for Dumbocrats in 08 realize they were duped and join forces behind Howard Dean in a brand-new political party to challenge the Revoltingcans in 2012. If the NDP can go from next-to-last place in the polls to finish in second place and decimate the once-mighty Liberals, you just know the winds of change are blowing across the North American political landscape.
Hey Marlin , does this NE weather s*** or what, My peas can’t even take it . no sun and 46 degrees now. Tripp says it is too hot in the house. For Chrissakes my wife made me put the heat on today. I fought back but she always wins out. She believes in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
Well any way the R60/2 ain’t cummin’out o the barn soon!
Oops, sorry, I meant CHENEY.
“Stepping out of this bubble has made me feel quite ostracized!”
You got that right. No one listens at first. But I can tell you, two years down the timeline from where you are now, if you live it they will get it. Siblings who were laughing at me 2 years ago just announced last weekend that “when the shit hits the fan, we’re all meeting at Tripp’s.”
Not full-on vindication just yet, but a far cry from the out-of-hand dismissal of 2009.
Permaculture principle #9: Use small and slow solutions.
It’s the only effective way really.
Thanks, Helen! You too.
“so people who don’t have gardens of their own can find fresh veggies within talking distance of their homes.”
Talking distance. Interesting spin on relocalization, intentional or otherwise!
My land or not I can’t help but plant fruit trees these days. The times, they are begging for it. I think if I stood still long enough my toes would turn into roots! Good days ahead for you I hope.
What does it mean to be a proud Texan if everyone has a name like Carlos or Juan and has dark skin? Does it still mean the same thing?
Egypt still exists. The Sphinx and the Pyramids are still there. But is it still the same culture and people that created them?
Many Mexicans talk about the Reconquista. A few Whites talk breaking away. The Mexicans are well on their way to actually doing it. And even if they don’t achieve actual political succesion, they will achieve demographic and cultural dominance. Why would we want them to stay part of the US once that happens? They will suck us dry with all the welfare, crime, and gang wars just like Puerto Rico has on a small scale. I know it’s hard AMR, but they really are different. They are not the material that higher cultures are made of.
Marlin seems to me to be someone drowning in cognitive dissonance. But rather than conquer it by grappling with the problem he retreats into conventional thinking and the reassurance of appearances. America is dying. Looking into that fact for a Patriot is utter agony. So they don’t. Especially if someone is Military or Ex-Military -it’s almost impossible for them. They would have to acknowledge that we’ve been conquered from within and that generations of Americans have died in unnecessary and Un-American wars. And what if they have lost a buddy, a husband, a son, a brother – can they acknowledge that he died in vain? Almost impossible. You see the problem? Loyalty wars against Truth. Goodness thus becomes divided against itself and becomes impotent allowing Evil to triumph.
POC, sorry about your topsoil. That’s a heavy loss in my book. And probably hard to replace with your clay. Hope things pick up this season, and if you happen to run into ol’ Mr. Rain again, tell him the folks in south Georgia really miss his company.
Taking a friend and her daughter foraging tomorrow evening. Got to appreciate a 13 year old girl whose jaw drops drooling when you talk about collecting free fruit from public land. Maybe the future’s not a total loss.
I liked that article very much. Like Desi said to Lucy “You got some splaining to do” God made us high and low. To some he gave everything and to others very little. He has to make it right. It’s not enough to say “I hate whom I hate and love whom I love.” We’re his. As Rumi said, “You threw me into the Ocean and then asked me not to get wet.” He got us into this now He has to get us out.
Also went to one of the Zionist Chapters – good stuff. Your “Rabbi” is no man’s fool. Reminds me of Ted Pike as far as that issue goes. I particularly appreciate it since I’m going to a Zionist Bible Study. I’m in the Camp of my Enemies but I find much to love. Some of these guys really know their stuff. The other night one of them said although the Law will not save us why wouldn’t we want to know all about it? As David said, “Lord, teach me your statutes. He said that the Kosher Laws for example, were far ahead of their time and kept the Jews healthy when Europeans were dropping from plagues – which lead to some problems. Of course they’re crazy on the subject of Israel but I just keep my mouth shut (I’m capable) and listen. Keep you friends close and your enemies closer.
I think you alluded that your man does not believe in Eternal Hell. Could you post a link about that?
My first visit so I wanted to say, great blog. Big fan of your pod casts too. Thanks for spelling all the crazy out in easily-to-comprehend form–great vocabulary too! Keep up the wonderful work!
First they said Bin Ladin fought back with an automatic rifle. Now they said that he was unarmed but “offered resistance” – so they shot him. His wife or one of the other women say that he was executed but they deny that. Now think: if a man is unarmed and confronted by armed men, what can he do? What, did he put up his dukes? Take a swing or two? They executed him! If it even happened at all that is.
His young wife is very beautiful. The evil holy man had good taste. Despite his moral failures, Bin Ladin has a palpable aura of power. He was not nothing nor was his cause completely unjust. He deserved a hearing from the people of the World. Did he kill innocents – of course, as have we. Obviously there wouldn’t even be any Nuremberg Trials if WW2 happened now. As it was, the transcripts were doctored so in effect, the Nazi testimony was not heard by the World.
Just now on C2C radio;
UPHEAVAL IS THE NEW NORMAL!!!
HAHAHAHA I Heard that and thought of JHK!!!
I live a walk from KCRW…which is housed at Santa Monica College.
Ruth Seymore and her lefties ruined it.
What about their HUGE coverage of the wedding?
KCRW is meant for the students of the college…the lefties pushed them out.
And printed 60,000 ‘free’ newspapers telling us commoners to save trees.
Free means paid 4 with tax dollars.
fool
Well, thanks, lbendet. My enthusiasm comes and goes for the blog. But I appreciate that you read it.
Well, thank you, Marlin. I appreciate the praise.
That’s funny that you think I sound Midwestern, though.
I get hassled a lot by the locals for totally sounding like a California girl. For sure.
Hey Tripp,
Nice post on your small batch garden site! I especially like the paragraph that started “One weed then….”
I just took the first real step towards self-sufficiency and TLE preparation. After a long search we found a lovely house in sub-tropical south east Queensland (Australia) on 2.5 acres of flat sun-drenched land that is just crying out for a good organic permaculture garden. My small family of three will take possession in three weeks and the project will begin!
Excellent find on the wood stove! That’s one of the things I want to ‘discover’ somewhere after I move onto the new property. Like you, we’re located in a region that probably won’t need too much heating, but I’m looking forward to the cozy warmth of a good wood stove in the middle of winter. Enjoy!
Madcat
“My enthusiasm comes and goes for the blog.”
Wage,
I totally understand that. There’s always the issue of time you have to write something really cogent on a regular basis. That said, I think you hit on something that really is important. Your last podcast covers issues of privatization that is not discussed anywhere else on the media.
I was thinking of the idea that JHK brought up last summer, about the decaying manufacturing towns in upstate NY and of course all over this country. We have been told by the neoliberal globalists that they don’t want manufacturing done here. We are supposed to be a “post -industrial” service industry zone.
Well what do think is happening?
I brought up “Griftopia” last week where sovereign wealth funds packaged together by Morgan Stanley are being sold to foreign investors mainly from Abu Dhabi for 75 years to own parking meters in Chicago, thanks to Mayor Daley. (meters went up in price too!)
Yes their revenues are down, but selling the public domain to foreign interests is treasonous and not the answer–and at low prices!
Speaking of liberty as the right wing calls corp communism, they cannot hold street fairs because they would owe the fund too much money-So there’s your liberty, folks. Hope you like it.
So my point is that the decaying towns may be sold in packets around the world for way less than they are worth and at this juncture you don’t hear a word about it on the media.
You and your associate hit on something very important and if more people acted as observers to the crime, we could alert more people that their country is being sold out from under them!
Another point was the reverend who was jailed because he opposed Whirlpool getting public land for free or at a low bargain basement price.
You are witnessing the third phase of Friedmanesque globalism and it is indeed scary and silent.
I applaud you for discussing this on the radio it is a great move that an ordinary citizen can have a radio show and bring up investigative reports.
This is one of the rare occasions I agree with you Vlad – the facts emerging about Operation Geronimo have introduced some serious questions about whether the action on Sunday was little more than a summary execution. We court our own slide into darkness when we become judge, jury and executioner in one and bypass due process because it is inconvenient or politically unpalatable.
Osama’s demise:
I noticed that people brought up the change in story on exactly how OBL died.
Here’s the thing: You really, seriously don’t believe that they hadn’t prepared a narrative of what happened.
I believe that once the Pakistanis got the daughter-witness to the death of her father, all bets were off about Bin Laden firing back.
That’s essentially why you didn’t get a straight story. Meanwhile the apologist media says, Oh, they never get the details straight in the fog of war, it’s to be expected that you get conflicting info at first—yeah right. It either happened a certain way of it didn’t.(it’s been taped ya know)
“So there’s your liberty, folks. Hope you like it.”
“We pay for the water we drink, And our wood comes at a price.” Lamentations 5:4
“That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
“The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their own power; And My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” Jeremiah 5:31
“Antiquated” – like the headlines.
messianicdruid,
Huh?
Not sure what your response has to do with selling the commons at low prices on the international market.
Allowing towns to become fallow so they can be sold at lower prices than their value so someone can make a killing on the differential. And the citizenry getting gouged, having to pay more for services then they were when these services were public.
Sure we pay taxes and then some, but this is going to be far more expensive and the ownership thing by undisclosed international entities should make you queasy.
“Here’s the thing: You really, seriously don’t believe that they hadn’t prepared a narrative of what happened.”
LBend, concerning Obama’s termintion-
I truly do not know, lbend. If they prepared a narrative then it should have included every possible contingency – OBL armed, OBL unarmed, OBL dead and preserved with arsenic like Lenin, OBL with a fighting wife, OBL with a f*cking hot wife, etc, etc, to infinity.
Then they would have picked the appropriate narrative and shoved it through the media until that was the TRUTH, the whole TRUTH, and Nothing but The Truth.
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That this did not happen is the story of BushII and the WMD’s all over again. Why didn’t the US just *make up* a mobile WMD lab, parachute it into Iraq, and invite the media.
I don’t know who’s in charge of PR for US Strategy – but they are slacking at critical points!
LBend,
The sale of the commons will be pushed because someone? (corporate, sovereign) stands to make a lot of bucks on it. There will be many lobbyists and many payoffs to grease the sale.
There will be no lobbyists to stop the sale.
American style Free Market Capitalism – since 1865.
===========
I missed a good argument with Hancock 1863 last week – concerning how the Northern Industrial Model and the huge size of the US made today’s flawed global economy – more or less – inevitable.
There were and are options – but no one to lobby for the good of the commons – and the good of the average citizen.
-on loss of topsoil-
Yeah, Tripp, I concur. Topsoil around these mountains is slow to accumulate and damn easy to lose. Landscape timbers are $2/each at the Homely Depot right now, though – and I’ve got those sum’bitches staked down all over my mountainside, now.
And fortunately, also for now, I can buy good topsoil from a guy in town at $13/bobcat scoop.
That’s $26/ton – and if I get a running start I can get over a ton up the hill with my little 4-banger Mazda.
Digging that stuff into the clay makes it go a long way. And I’ll have good dirt within a year. Now – – if I can just make it stay where it belongs during heavy rains.
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Also – I will tell Mr. Rain to journey south for you, if he will. I know you’ve got a great aquifer under you at Tifton. IMO, low tech access to that water might become very important to you as years go by.
It’s 100 feet straight down a 6″ tube to my water table. I can walk to the creek with much less effort.
Your situation regarding reaching the water table is probably better, however.
Just things to think about.
Regards,
C
Wage, BeanTown, Turkle, Bustin, O3, SNAFU –
and all others –
Wage, we do live a long ways back in the woods now. But if Mormons, JW’s, or any others come back in here in peace – I’ll talk to them as long as I have time.
They can’t convert me, though. All I have to say is, “I grew up Southern Baptist,” and my religious visitors will change the subject to rain, chickens, gardens, or something.
Of course I have to tell t