JHK’s Three-Act Play
Note of apology. My iMac turned up dead this morning and I got a late start by other means.
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There was Japan, standing quietly offstage all these years, minding its own business, more or less – though unwinding financially and socially at some very deep level for two decades, debt rising around everybody’s ankles like a silent, insidious tsunami, population dying back, young people demoralized by the “salary-man” culture with its meager consolation of nightly drinking sprees ending in micro-hotels with rooms like funerary vaults – Japan, who had been horrifically chastened after its mad military-industrial outburst of the last century, who shook all that off to become the world’s most dependably, civilized nation.
And now, the sorrows of Job.
The world was very busy watching the ME/NA countries go batshit in history’s center ring, but the spectacle of wreckage in Japan, unfolds now like the slow-motion blossoming of some gigantic evil chrysanthemum and you get the ominous idea that this is only the start of a story that will grind on and on as more bodies are discovered and the nuclear fiasco burns deeper and Japan’s finances enter a death spiral. How could you watch those videos of the sickening wall of black water that slammed through Sendai without wondering how many doomed people it carried unseen beneath the rafts of cars, and the sideways ships, and the eerily floating houses?
I tried to follow the story on American cable TV Sunday night but with the exception of stolid, dogged CNN, all the other news channels were playing one sordid and titanically stupid program after another: meth freaks, show-biz narcissists, and sex chatter without sex. What a nation of morons we are. Over six hundred cable TV stations and only one that even tries to tell you what is going on in the world. How many citizens of this republic were watching a dessert chef undergo staged humiliation for the failure of a cupcake batch while two nuclear reactors melted down across the Pacific? We deserve what just happened to Japan three times over. And we might just get the equivalent at least in social and political trouble as our money follies unwind and normal living here becomes untenable on the old terms.
So many things are shaking loose now in this world-wrapped-too-tight that it is hard to track where they all overlap, but I will try today.
ME/NA has gone critical overnight. Saudi Arabia wants to occupy tiny-but-strategic Bahrain, and Bahrain says that would be an act of war – though it’s hard to conceive how they would wage one against KSA, which is up to its eyeballs in US supplied state-of-the art aircraft and all sorts of other dangerous swag. The Shia population wants to blow the little Kingdom wide open; they’ll be lucky if the Saudis don’t inadvertently turn it into an ashtray, just to see if their equipment works-as-advertised. That might be exactly what Iran wants – poised, as it is across the Persian Gulf and wishing deeply to evict the US Navy from its deep-water port in Bahrain. It would be unlikely if Iran was not helping to provoke the Shia uprising that is ongoing in many of the states on the west side of the Gulf. I only wonder why Iran has not given a green light to Nasrullah of Hezbollah in Lebanon to start a rumble there with Israel. It can’t be anything akin to a sense of political responsibility. More likely just fear of how the Israeli air force might answer this time, with events moving so quickly and the world’s head spinning so fast, it can barely focus on one particular place. Anyway, stay tuned in the Persian Gulf.
Meanwhile, the dithering Euro-American alliance finally takes its green light from the Saudi-dominated Arab League for a NATO no-fly zone in Libya – or the eastern provinces of Libya for now – in hope of putting the schnitz on Mr. Gadhafi’s shenanigans. I don’t know what the political idea is behind this – perhaps little more than the notion that there must be some other colonel in the Libyan military who is less mad and more tractable than proven maniac Gadhafi. It would be nice for Euro-America (and China, too, actually) if the Libyan oil industry could survive all this intact but as Michael Klare pointed out on the Web last week, it is generally the case that oil production goes way down permanently in all nations that endure political uproars. Anyway, a no-fly zone involves a lot more than just shooting down Gadhafi’s aircraft when it dares to take off. It starts with destroying the planes and helicopters on the ground, and moves forward quickly to the question of boots-on-the-ground.
At the moment, the oil markets don’t know what to do. Some loose talk says that Japan will not need oil for a while, due to a wrecked economy. I dunno about that, with the reactors melting and twelve million people without electric power there. Let’s remember, they are not the only people in the world who buy oil. In fact, everybody but a few savages in some tiny backwaters of the rain forest use oil – and even the savages do indirectly since they trade for things that come up the Amazon (and the rivers of Borneo) in boats with motors. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)
Most interesting to me this morning are the financial implications of all these things and let’s start with Japan. Monumental doesn’t seem to describe the unholy mess there, just the sheer awfulness of all that mud, twisted steel, radioactive trash, and decomposing human bodies scattered amongst and within it. The cost of it seems beyond calculation, but the first questions might be how does a deeply-in-debt Japan raise some cash to begin digging out and (possibly) rebuilding (and I add that qualification because I don’t know that a lot of this lost stuff will be rebuilt at all). But it will be cleaned up and sorted out. The obvious answer to the funding question is that Japan sells foreign bonds, namely US and European.
That will not be a good thing for Euro-America. Japan was the quiet benefactor last time the European sick countries had to roll over their debt payments, and nobody wanted to buy their paper. Japan went in and hosed up their debt, allowing them to enjoy one last Christmas of seeming political normality. Now it’s rollover time again in the Euro-Zone and not only will kindly Uncle Japan not be present for the bond sales, they will be selling off the stuff they already hold, and it is hard to see how the European banks digest that ugly bolus of reality.
Similarly, in the US. Japan has accumulated about 800-billion in US debt paper. They have more-than-generously propped up our operations here for years by buying the stuff. Now they would seem to have little choice but to liquidate a bunch of it and cancel their seats at the upcoming auctions of new paper issues. That leaves Ben Bernanke alone in his office with a shit sandwich for lunch. What to do now, Ben? Who on this planet is going to buy more debt of a people who spend their lives in zombie-like thrall to the Kardashian sisters? No, Ben’s going to have to eat the sandwich himself, a least until the end of QE-2. Or watch interest go way way up to the point where the risks are acceptable to outside parties – but that would only destroy the US Economy and American government at all levels, since we can’t meet our obligations even at ZIRP levels – and, anyway, who would step forward now to buy this crap under any circumstances? (Echo answers….)
The most beguiling financial idea of the week comes from Jim Rickards of Omnis on Eric King’s interview website who says that the sheer
load of stuff in the Fed’s vaults is now so enormous that further QE is quite unnecessary to continue monetizing America’s debt. All they have to do over at the Fed is roll over the maturing securities they hold and take the money and buy more securities! In other words we now have at our disposal a perpetual motion money-generating engine. And, by the way, if I do sound a tad facetious its not because I disbelieve what Mr. Rickards is telling us. I do, however demur when it comes to the question of consequences. Despite the elegance of that operation, it still remains a fixed law of the universe that you can’t get something for nothing. What Mr. Rickards describes is a trick for buying just a little more time using the residues of wealth that already exists. But then the time comes when you have even burned through the residues of your wealth, and then what?
load of stuff in the Fed’s vaults is now so enormous that further QE is quite unnecessary to continue monetizing America’s debt. All they have to do over at the Fed is roll over the maturing securities they hold and take the money and buy more securities! In other words we now have at our disposal a perpetual motion money-generating engine. And, by the way, if I do sound a tad facetious its not because I disbelieve what Mr. Rickards is telling us. I do, however demur when it comes to the question of consequences. Despite the elegance of that operation, it still remains a fixed law of the universe that you can’t get something for nothing. What Mr. Rickards describes is a trick for buying just a little more time using the residues of wealth that already exists. But then the time comes when you have even burned through the residues of your wealth, and then what?
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Under the theory that life goes on until it doesn’t:
I’ve recently finished writing a screenplay about the downfall of a too-big-to-fail bankster (and the redemption of three teen-agers). As they say in Hollywood: think American Beauty meets Wall Street. Accepting inquiries, which I will sort out and forward to my agent. Serious professionals only need apply. Email me at jhkunstler@mac.com.
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Great read!
Japan’s woes are likely going to be another triggering factor in the collapse of modern civilization, if we’re not lucky. There is a cluster of events which is shaping up to be a perfect storm (rising oil prices due to the mideast, the looming collapse of the dollar, etc) which will likely shake the foundations of America and the rest of the world to the core.
Visit http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com for commentary and planning on where we’re at and how we can work to save our knowledge and keep the coming crash from being quite so hard for humanity.
THIRD!! What a f’n stupid comment this is!
Life Goes On Until It Doesn’t
Mother Earth seems really pissed lately.
TWO DAYS LEFT!!!
PLEASE HELP!!!
AAAAHHH>>>SOLAR GUY HERE TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD BUT IT IS TOO LAAATE
DRIVE OFF THE SUN!
https://www.drivenissanleaf.com/Win/Vote.aspx?b=Y272Y85WBYZG
GOP = Sky People
http://www.gwabert.com/
When the tsunami recedes into memory we will find that Japan has moved closer into the sphere of China and correspondingly farther from the dying American empire.
~Ruff
Jim: God bless CNN, which is my default channel, the first one that I turn on in the morning, and the last one that I turn off at night. I’m not sure that I could even name all the Kardashians, though I wish them well.
Perfect tone here:
“Who on this planet is going to buy more debt of a people who spend their lives in zombie-like thrall to the Kardashian sisters?”
Answer: there are not enough fools left in the world to prop us up.
Expect trouble.
Suitably somber entry.
Two questions. Why is it bad for the people of the small islands of Japan to have cut back on their population?
What (or who) is it that certifies a leader as a maniac?
Awesome, as usual, JHK. I’m the “typical” soccer mom, watching the world unravel from the sidelines. My “friends” and acquaintances are oblivious to all around them (except those cupcake competitions and American Idol…) I visit your site for balance and to feel, at least once per week, that I am not the crazy one. Happy Monday
It is becoming all too clear that the time for preparation is quickly evaporating. We need to be ready now.
Get you body healthy, get your mind clear…
There is no other way forward.
http>//wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
The bottleneck has begun (all due to the overpopulation of Earth by an ignorant, excessive, uncooperative humanity). In this mass die-off of our own doing, one cannot feel sorry for anyone else – since we’re all in the same boat. There are already tent-cities in America and the numbers of jobless, homeless, and poverty-stricken rises every day both here and abroad. The people at the top think they are immune to this suffering, but once this thing reaches critical mass (probably by next year the way things are progressing) – all bets are off, especially since the perfect storm referred to above didn’t include the biggest problem facing us – the environment is becoming unstable, chaotic and harsh. In a short time we won’t be able to grow the food required to feed our own people (due to climate-change unpredictability and the fact that the largest aquifer that the bread basket of our country relies on is rapidly drying up), let alone export excess crop yields to needy countries.
This won’t be fun and it will effect everyone. The fact that we have no leadership in Washington is not surprising but will become a problem when the chaos hits the streets.
Jim, you need to read something about the mechanisms of how the Fed and the US treasury work. Don’t just accept the facile explanation of Rickard’s. The roll over of maturing US government bonds can always be financed by a new issue of government bonds, i.e. transactions exclusively between the FED and the Treasury. (Which is not quite true because a few outsider still do own some bonds.)But that doesn’t provide any QE effects on the economy. Whatever those effects might be, and there is still much doubt about the value of them, resulted from the original purchase of the bonds by the FED. Not on the subsequent and obviously required rollovers.
In ten months the US West Coast will be bathed in Japanese nuclear waste,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/currents.jpg
The USS Ronald Reagan (the entire carrier group) inhaled a radioactive jetsam cloud while their sailor pants were around their ankles. The US West Coast and associated fisheries will go the flotsam route – and nobody can predict it!
Amazon.com sells the Ukranian personal radiation dosimeter Terra-P(MKS-05), produced in record large numbers re Chernobl. It is an acceptable price for the functionality and proven performance. There is already a three-month wait to ship. One presumes at least one factory on this sorry planet is hiring.
Fixed link
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
It is becoming all too clear that the time for preparation is quickly evaporating. We need to be ready now.
Get you body healthy, get your mind clear…
There is no other way forward.
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
Great post, Jim. Thanks for trying to tie so many disparate things together. I enjoy your broad vision commentaries. Usually, the best we get from the established commentators is tunnel vision.
I, too, was glad for CNN over the weekend. I gather it was the international CNN feed we Americans were watching, something we don’t usually see on a prolonged basis (at least not through my satellite provider). I was impressed by the dignity of both the coverage and of the broadcasters. I got slapped back to reality this morning, though, when the breathless, emotional U.S. broadcasters were back. Let’s have more of international CNN in the States.
I don’t normally comment on your posts, but I need to this time. What the f is “ME/NA” supposed to be? Jim, you’re a talented writer, and part of that should be knowing that acronyms have to be used sparingly. “ME” must be “Middle East,” a term of two short words that is always spelled out, but what is NA? The reader must step outside of the flow of your writing to try and puzzle it out. Annoying as all hell, and unnecessary to boot–if you’d only avoid random acronyms.
I don’t normally comment on your posts, but I need to this time. What the f is “ME/NA” supposed to be? Jim, you’re a talented writer, and part of that should be knowing that acronyms have to be used sparingly. “ME” must be “Middle East,” a term of two short words that is always spelled out, but what is NA? The reader must step outside of the flow of your writing to try and puzzle it out. Annoying as all hell, and unnecessary to boot–if you’d only avoid random acronyms.
Another Black Swan straw on the proverbial camel’s back…
The irony that the US may be the recipient of a giant plume of Japanese radioactive dust is not lost on me.
I wonder how a manufacturing powerhouse could be in such dire financial shape. A nation of savers who own 95% of their own Japanese gov’t debt can’t dig themselves out of a 20 year deep hole?
Amazing how in the blink of an eye everything is different.
There is clearly no hope for the US, other than money magic.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
north africa
what the heck is a kardashian ?
I don’t normally comment on your posts, but I need to this time. What the f is “ME/NA” supposed to be? Jim, you’re a talented writer, and part of that should be knowing that acronyms have to be used sparingly. “ME” must be “Middle East,” a term of two short words that is always spelled out, but what is NA? The reader must step outside of the flow of your writing to try and puzzle it out. And what is QE2 but the Queen of England? Which in this context makes you sound LaRoucheian.
Annoying as all hell, and unnecessary to boot–if you’d only avoid random acronyms.
The supposition that Japan won’t be buying as much oil as a result of the current disaster may not be on target. In fact, Japan manufactures millions of small and medium sized diesel and gasoline powered electric generators – you may have one in your garage. These will be used in an enormous noisy patchwork in the affected areas to replace much of the power lost by the nuke plants now off-line. It seems unlikely that the damaged reactors will be repaired any time soon, or that large-scale fossil fuel systems will take their place. An endless roar of petroleum powered motors will fill some of the gap. (This has already be happening in China in areas where coal shortages have hampered manufacturing – it will be even more in evidence in Japan in the coming months and years)
Hi Jim and all
So the situation goes from grim to grave overnight, not just for Japan but all of the world’s population. These events should make it clear that nuclear power is a proven menace to life on the planet. I mean really, 3 strikes and you’re out- Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Let’s hope and pray for the best for everyone.
So did I mention I already have bought seeds for a garden and am making plans to have more than one garden in a couple different locations. People may want to go out and grab some seeds as soon as possible or face the possibility of being caught in a Black Friday-like frenzy at the local Tractor supply store complete with stampedes and loss of life.
Of course if worst comes to worst no one will need seeds.
loveday
When the accounting has become sooooo hopelessly irrepairable, like here in the US and in Japan as well, there is no other solution than to remove the numbers and consider the rescources. Human capital and natural. Japan will clear the debris, just like after the last nuclear clusterfuck it experianced, but there will be no way to settle the costs with money. Many people will do more than their share getting paid little, and many people will do very little, sitting on the sidelines pulling tricks and levers and getting paid royally. It is time to run the counters back to 0. Nothing in nature survives on arbitrary accounting and neither will we. As long as we allow the unseen fiction of accounting to rule the world, we will forever be the social products of that system. I am just grateful that Charlie Sheen has made social crack use respectful again! Now lets all go out and bang some porn stars!
JHK, great column this week.
Speaking of Japan selling off bonds, had just read this earlier today:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-markets-weekahead-idUSTRE72A31H20110313
(Reuters) – Shaken by the prospect of nuclear meltdown after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Japanese investors will dump overseas assets on Monday and bring their money home to help finance reconstruction.
Positioning for this could send the dollar plummeting versus the yen on Monday and lead to a sharp slide in Treasuries since U.S. government bonds are a favorite asset of Japanese investors, market analysts said.
Stocks also are likely to come under pressure.
Japanese insurers will probably sell some of their most liquid foreign assets such as U.S. Treasuries so they can respond to the worst disaster since World War Two.
I am lately struck by one question in my head: Are we better off knowing or not knowing of the reality that surrounds us?
Our numbers are small, the ones living in awareness and busy stockpiling seeds and using extra plots to plant and driving tiny cars or biking and walking when/if we can.
Meanwhile what passes for living proceeds as it always has in Charlie Sheehan/Kardashian land, every media outlet busy flogging Big Whacks and Malwarts as if life itself is NOT poised on the thinnest or razor edges waiting for the perfect storm which is looming so rapidly on the horizon.
Maybe Nero was right.
“Life Goes On Until It Doesn’t”. Along the same theme, Nuclear Plants are safe until they aren’t. The biggest threat hanging over Japan right now is the possibility of a 500 year exclusion zone of the Chernobyl style – I think it would pretty well engulf the whole of Japan. Hope they get those nukes under control soon. They are NOT under control now…
Nothing wrong with CNN unless you don’t care enough about yourself to watch unattractive people deliver the news.
I know it is against the rules in your little liberal lives to watch FOX news but I can say this…
If the coverage and images/videos are as good on CNN as they have been on FOX then they are simply stunning. Then CNN is doing a remarkable job. I have watched nothing else for 3 days now. Those that have not watched it missed an amazing opportunity
I do think this event is a game changer on many levels. Much more important than some “Day Of Rage’ in some third world cesspool.
CNN isn’t the only choice.
We listen to Al Jazeera on KPFK, our local Pacifica radio station, 94.1 in the Bay Area. We used to mock it, and still do, for the pro-illegal, pro homosexual marriage wailing–but in spite of that, it’s a great station. Certainly better than National Petroleum Radio and their ADM, Monsanto, Pew Charitable Trust (read coal mines and mountaintop removal money).
One hour of solid commercial free news in the morning. In addition, A.J. has a TV feed online.
QE2 = Quantative Easing II
ME: Middle East.
NA: North Africa.
Mention of the “plume of radioactive dust” got my attention because I have been searching online for some analysis/predicted path/mapping of such a plume. I can’t find a thing. Am I missing something somewhere? Anyone have any links to info?
JHK…what a writer:
“…That leaves Ben Bernanke alone in his office with a shit sandwich for lunch. What to do now, Ben? Who on this planet is going to buy more debt of a people who spend their lives in zombie-like thrall to the Kardashian sisters?…”
“Shear load?” That’s a big pile of scissors.
“Sheer load” would be more like it.
Wise web woman,
I used to feel that I would rather not know either, however then it dawned on me that if need arises it is much better to try to avoid hunger than otherwise, starvation is quite painful. I am too much of a pansy to take the chance on roughing it. Besides I have to think of the kids.
loveday
My MAC using friends tell me that Macs “never” fail.
Of course, they seem to buy new ones every 2-3 years…
WestCoast, I’ve got a feeling that in the days to come we are going to have far more important things to worry about than whether two people of the same sex love each other and want to get married.
Both Fox and MSNBC carried continuing earthquake and tsunami coverage over the weekend and Sunday night, even though the programs retained the old titles, such as “Lockout,” on the program guide. I was switching between those, CNN, and local channels (as well as checking online) to try and get a handle on what was happening with the reactors, having been against the development of nuclear reactors and centralized power sources in general for years. Obviously, we need to develop distributed grids based on as many forms of safe energy (solar, tidal, wind, waste) as possible, and all of this under the auspices of a public utility. This is our ONLY sane option. The nuclear plants are Frankensteins.
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhxvdya8Ld1qz5ew6o1_500.jpg
How many U.S. Treasuries and Euro bonds will Japan have to sell? This from Business Insurance:
“Global insurers’ exposure to Japanese disaster appears limited.
“While it is still too early to be certain of the extent of economic losses caused by the disaster, initial estimates are about $150 billion, London-based Jeffries International Ltd. said in a research note Monday. And international insurers likely will face losses of about $10 billion to $20 billion, Jeffries said.
“While large infrastructure losses likely will be paid by the state, about 30% of the expected $60 billion of losses on commercial and specialist risk lines will have earthquake coverage, according to the note.”
As you can tell, there is an implicit satisfaction that world insurers won’t be paying for much of this disaster–so, as JHK makes clear, the Japanese government is going to have to fund this themselves via Treasury/Bond sales.
More from the article about what the Japanese government will have to fund:
“International insurers will face very little exposure to personal lines losses as most of these will be covered locally.
“All Japanese homeowners’ earthquake coverage is (covered by) a state-backed Japanese earthquake insurer in which losses are shared between private insurers and the government, it noted.”
What a bunch of horse-jizz.
Jim, the only moron is you, apparently. The rest of have figured out how to use our cable remotes and which channels carry news and at what time on Sunday.
Nice “the iMac ate my homework” line. Too bad you’ve already used it like 6 times. Oh My Goodness!
“Anyway, a no-fly zone involves a lot more than just shooting down Gadhafi’s aircraft when it dares to take off.”
Umm… no it doesn’t. That’s why it’s called a no-fly zone, asshole. The shooting stuff on the ground and boots on the ground is just stuff you are adding so you can say “I told you so” if intervention eventually goes wrong like in Somalia.
We shouldn’t be involved at all. Period. Except to airlift out American citizens. Let the Arab League implement its own no-fly zone. We should implement a NO-CARE zone. But reality – as in the Sendai Tsunami – is taking care of that perty good already.
Michael Klare is an idiot who’s written a bunch of unbearable books that happen to involve oil and doom-and-glo0m politics. Big fucking deal. All countries’ oil production goes way down permanently. Some countries experience political turmoil. It’s not too hard to make up some chimichanga correlation between the two.
But it takes a real fool like yourself to place such faith in it. This is the same type of garbage Tom Friedman spews – but because it is bad news about oil, you eat it right up. Typical.
And the markets know exactly what to do. It’s YOU that doesn’t know what is going on. You wonder about Iran and Hezbollah for a reason. You still don’t understand Middle East politics. It’s the same reason you didn’t predict the situation there in the first place.
And CNN is fucking horrible. Do yourself a favor and watch ABC or CBS evening news for your daily 6 minutes of international news.
I don’t remember a period of history in my 35 years that has seen such an accumulation of shitty news! Good Greif: tsunamis, nuclear alterts, days of rage, peak oil, debt bombs, inflation, food crises, EURO crisis, chinese bubbles the list goes on and on.
Alot of hope had been invested in nuclear power to run all the very hypothetical clean-tech cars and what not – I think that is going to be put on hold or at least drastically slowed down to increase safty. And that reduces a lot of alternatives for what is going to happen over the next 10-15 years.
This is going to be a massive wakeup call for all those who think we can contimue as today, but with green colours. There are going to be fewer and fewer degrees of freedom as we go through the bottle neck!
Wow. Thanks, I think.
JHK;
Another great essay, right on target. This is what keeps me here.
But Japan ain’t finished yet, not by a longshot. They are a disciplined and hard working people, maybe the most disciplined and hardworking on earth. Don’ forget, in ’44 & ’45, 23 out of their largest 25 cities were leveled and incinerated with high explosives and napalm, courtesy of General LeMay. The other 2 were nuked. They came back from that.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
A good blog today. I’m impressed by the intelligence. Not having cable TV, I missed the sisters K (whoever they are) as well as CNN, but I couldn’t tear myself away from news of Japan on my computer. Most frustrating was the apparent lack of knowledge on the part of most reporters regarding nuclear reactors. I don’t think most of them could distinguish between a containment structure and a reactor vessel. At Fukushima One it would appear that all three of the reactors that were in operation at the time of the quake are in serious trouble. (The three that are not in trouble were out of service for refueling and maintenance.) That’s a pretty poor record. Three for three at that plant. About 6 months ago I rented the original “Godzilla” flick. That’s what the scene on the Japan coast reminds me of now.
Why are you bothering with cable tv at all. There’s been nothing to watch for a decade, including dumbfounded network news.
New York is still rebuilding its downtown nearly 10 years after 9/11, Japan will still be cleaning up this mess in 2021!
Here are links to the best web news sites out there, many with streaming video:
http://www.zerohedge.com/
http://ca.reuters.com/
http://peakoil.com/
Also look up Aljazerra.net for non-american centric news focus.
Link to nuclear fallout map: http://peakoil.com/forums/possible-nuclear-plant-melt-down-imminent-japan-t61098-105.html
Excellent comments as usual; however, somewhat taken aback by your references to ‘savages’. In ‘The Long Emergency’ you seem to suggest our way of life may resemble that of these ‘savages’.
It’s sad that old CNN is considered the last bastion of “real” news, and even then only in spurts. The imperative of driving “visits” or “hits” on the Intar-Webs has led to a real dumbing down in what used to be news reporting. Now it’s all “The Ten Reasons Why blah blah blah” or Headlines that are clearly designed just to titillate or anger the browser to click. It’s really quite awful. Despite their recent cuts, I find that the BBC still sets the standard for sane, rational news coverage. Even NPR kinda sucks, if you ask this author. Smarmy is a word that comes to mind.
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Network) does a good job, despite the excesses of the popular culture that surrounds it. That is the home of Rupert Murdoch, after all.
JHK gave NASCAR a break this week. I happened to notice their “Ten Most Incredible Crashes” and “Ten Most Exciting Finishes” little features over the weekend. That, unfortunately, is what drives a lot of viewers, just as the same dumb bullet list headlines drive the Intar-Webs “news.”
“What a nation of morons we are.”
Agreed.
I generally refrain from commenting on web sites (paranoia due to experience) yet out of respect for you and those who comment here I must add one more potential near term threat (2011-2013)…
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10mar_stormwarning/
Recently a large solar event occurred surprising many.
Wall Street propaganda would have it that money matters are sooooo complicated. They’re not, money is dog simple, accounting at its heart is too. It’s just a system of score keeping.
IMO the real question isn’t the system of accounting but rather the system that determines who gets paid what. I think we all have in our heads at least some notion of what compensation is “fair”.
Should the surgeon that saved my wife get paid more than a bus driver? Yes, no question. More than an airline pilot? Probably but I’m not sure. More than a Wall Street bankster? The answer is self evident.
Moncrief: ME/NA is “Middle East/North Africa.” “QE” is quantitative easing.” “QE2” is, I believe, “quantitative easing, phase two.” I had to look it up myself. QE2 sounds like an ocean liner.
I don’t get all of this financial stuff. I just want to know: What do we owe? Whom do we owe it to? How do we pay them back? What do we give up to pay them? I keep hearing on how much we spend, but who actually gets the money?
oh no Helen, The idea that “god is punishing us because we let gay’s in the military” is not going to be lost on the Tootsies and Westboro Baptist Churches of this world….
….. I agree with Jim in “the Long Emergency”…. I start disagreeing with him in “World made by hand”, reason being is that it assumes that the gubament is blowed up by towelheads, and just goes away. Somehow I doubt that the United State Gubment is just going to dissolve like koolaid in water, I think that they are going to spend the first half of the long emergency stealing the oil and instigating trouble all over the place to destroy demand. I think they are going to spend the second half of the long emergency turning in on us… finding someone to blame for our situation and making them pay for it.
Kim Jong Il has proven that a total police state can be run on very little oil… PRIVATE Bradly Manning (Private in big letters because I want you to think about the idea that the lowest form of life in the Army was “leaking top secret memos from the highest levels of government”… a PRIVATE FIRST CLASS… two rungs above “maggot” in Army/Marine speak) is proof that our government is working very hard to silence any possible “journalist” before they ever think about getting a “scoop” that doesn’t come from a press release, this is among the fist signs that you live in a fascist state… one of the others is an endless war against terrifying “terrorists”… along with opening secret prisons beyond the rule of law… oh we’re well on our way at this point.
When things go wrong for a fascist country they look for scapegoats… usually Jews and Homosexuals are the first to to… in America they will try for the Mormons too, unless the Mormons show suitable anti homosexual credentials early on (something the church is working at right now)…. oh yes, things are about to so seriously strange here at home.
It would seem that a seismic shift is working it’s way around the Pacific Plate, in a few weeks Alaska, Washington, and California may look like Japan and New Zeland (assuming the energy is traveling in a circle around that plate)
Once that happens all bets are off.
And Thank you Jim… for not saying anything about President Bartlett’s son this week… I get plenty of that EVERYWHERE else!
“And CNN is fucking horrible. Do yourself a favor and watch ABC or CBS evening news for your daily 6 minutes of international news.”
Seriously GroB…. ABC and CBS??? Like OMG.. like, you are like, soooo right fer sher… like Katie Couric told me about like…. Lindsey is like SHOPLIFTING again… and like, SARAH is like sooooo mad at Michelle B and her homey….
Yea…. ABC and CBS are like, QUALITY “news” fer sher….
Anyone interested in what the next California Earthquake may look like should take a look at this book: “A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906” by S. Winchester.
In 1906 CA moved 23ft. Note that Japan moved only 8ft.
“Who on this planet is going to buy more debt of a people who spend their lives in zombie-like thrall to the Kardashian sisters?”
Don’t knock the Kardashian sisters! At least they will be floating on their backs – post tsunami..!
Great googly-moogly!
Fine piece of work and wondering this day, Mr. Kunstler. The rubber is indeed beginning to hit the road (i.e., runway) as we come in for a panicked emergency landing of the Concorde that is the overblown expectations of technological control over damn-near-everything. Glaring demonstration of Nature “batting last”. (Hate those sports analogies; they’re just so trite. But they certainly express the deepest thoughts of our finest political minds, eh? Jesus wept.)
As regards to this:
“It would be unlikely if Iran was not helping to provoke the Shia uprising that is ongoing in many of the states on the west side of the Gulf. I only wonder why Iran has not given a green light to Nasrullah of Hezbollah in Lebanon to start a rumble there with Israel. It can’t be anything akin to a sense of political responsibility. More likely just fear of how the Israeli air force might answer this time, with events moving so quickly and the world’s head spinning so fast, it can barely focus on one particular place. Anyway, stay tuned in the Persian Gulf.”
Now that’s an interesting aside. My guess would be that the Iranians are in “head down; powder dry” mode, and will only provoke/nudge things in a most covert manner. They’re [quite literally] surrounded, and as you say, would LOVE to see that Bahraini sanctuary of the [not-so-]Fleet to go away (in the political sense).
I have no doubt some damn-fools will start some real non-covert inter-country military “shenanigans” soon, as ‘Murka needs it some black goo to keep the Ponzi scheme going, and hang the cost in swarthy-peoples’ blood. Some damn-fools will take the ultimate gamble and start it; the Persians will then be forced to finish it. These are not folks to be fucked with OPENLY… which is exactly why they haven’t been, so far. (And why they’ve been carefully surrounded.)
The geo-political “experts”, coupled with the fine minds in our “military arts” arena (all neo-cons that everybody thought had “gone away”) really think that they can emerge with a WIN in this energy-supply “game”. It’s all a world-destroying madness, and [as per usual] will end in the empty horror of Nothing Learned.
Ps. I LOVE the word “shenanigans”. My dad used it all the time when we were young’uns in an angry-but-tickled kinda way. There’s a good bar in Bangkok with that title, run by an Irish guy who has a wonderful obsession with Hammond organs. It IS a funny ol’ world, ain’t it?
that was Gays and Jews are the first to GO…. not to to
And for anyone that is pretending to not know what a Kardashian is…
…. it one (or all) of any number of step daughters of Olympian BRUCE JENNER also of the Wheaties box in the mid seventies…
….Their real dad (and namesake) is an entertainment lawyer in LA
Google Bruce Jenner
Hey Jim, how about cooling it with the acronyms? ME/NA, KSA, ZIRP – it is a bit annoying at best. You know how to write without relying on this dipshit corporate style of ‘communication’
Yeah. Seriously, douchebag. Anybody that actually watches these channels knows that ABC and CBS Nightly News gives very little coverage to celebrity news and CNN spends the good part of most days on that bullshit. CNN actually hires helicopters to stake out the LA courthouse when there is nothing going on in Egypt. I’m surprised Wolf Blitzer can actually find North Africa on a map.
Katie Couric moonlights on 60 Minutes and isn’t a Valley Girl, you fucking retard.
Maybe JHK uses those acronyms to make him “look” smart? That is said to be the reason why SP wears glasses even though she had Lasik surgery.
Isn’t that funny/ironic? SP wears glasses to make her “look” smart. Makes sense to me.
this is among the fist signs that you live in a fascist state – Sub
I think there are a lot of people still alive that have direct experience with fascism in Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain that would differ with your assessment. My parents grew up in a fascist state. That was a really nasty place. The US (and Canada also) is getting shittier and shittier but I don’t think you’re anywhere close to “fascism”.
What’s with all these newbies bitchin about acronyms. Our secret code is in serious danger of being compromised if this keeps up.
ROFLMFAO
Not enough fools? Surely, this is our one completely renewable resource?
We’re all Haiti, Now
Thanks for the great post today JHK, an sorry for your Imac.–hope it will rise from the dead..
Speaking to your comment about the media, I am constantly saying that real journalism is to be supported and appreciated, as there is so little of it. There really are people on the ground putting themselves at great risk to report the real situation, no spin, no branding–just the truth, M’am. CNN is the station in this country that still puts resources into world events.
I’ve been watching this like a hawk the last few days and some very interesting points have been made.
One is that Japan is so very sophisticated and the 2nd largest economy of the world, they will be able to raise the money to turn this situation around. Well that goes against the reality they have been propping up zombie banks for the last 10 years and their economy has been moribund. They have been playing their part in the global monetarism game that has led them and us into huge deficits.—Deficits don’t matter, Mr. Cheney.
Let’s see what China thinks about that! She’s about to go sailing past Japan in a heart-beat! And what that means militarily in asia will be played out in very interesting ways. As I said yesterday, Its all about economic determinism and China will move in as the new super-power of the region.
Now Japan’s industries are down for the count and even Apple, as well as all the other techno-manufacturing will come to a halt. Hope you’re not all waiting for ipads!
The point that goes to my title, is that they are having an impossible time trying to recover bodies and clean up the dissarray left by the tsunami. The rubble is all that’s left of what once had value that have no value anymore. With one rush of water everything went from assets to garbage–like our economy…hm
—Why?——Because they need energy (oil) to clean this rubble up! There is no way to run machinery —goes to the heart of what JHK has been saying. With all the sophistication that Japan represents, without an energy source they are no better than Haiti. That will be true for us as well, when the time comes.
They put much of their eggs in the atomic energy basket and now the hens have come home to roost. The whole issue of nuclear power will have to be reconsidered, as the dangers posed may be too great to deal with.
Here’s the deal. Republicans are complaining that Obama isn’t drill-baby drilling fast enough. Question I keep asking is why the interviewers don’t ask them where the oil will be sold when we get it out of the ground. They never tell the truth that in a corporate global economy it all goes into the international oil bourse. They lvoe to pretend that there’s a national consideration in all this.
Today they were saying that, even with environmental hazards natural gas will be our salvation.–We keep grasping at straws as we recognize our own demise…Good luck with that.
Great piece today Jim. The fact is that the industrialized (civilized) world has made its own bed. There is virtually no safe places left to hide. Well except maybe here in Siberia!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365
This won’t be fun and it will effect everyone.
===============
I estimate that the words affect and effect are misused more frequently than they are correctly used. The “usage note” I pulled from Dictionary.com (see below), frankly, I don’t believe would prove particularly helpful to the average person, even if they were so inclined as to look it up, since both words may be used either as verbs or nouns, and therein lies the greatest problem.
I propose, therefore, that when affect or effect are typed on any electronic device world-wide (PC, Blackberry, I-phone, etc) into any sentence it causes that sentence to be automatically transmitted by email, text message or twitter (those details can be worked out by tech types) to a team of top linguists who would judge whether the usage is correct. If this system proves effective the English speaking world could move on to other problematic word pairs such as who and whom, jive and jibe, to and too, there and their, then and than, etc.
I see no other way around this horrendous problem.
😉
—Usage note
Affect 1 and effect, each both noun and verb, share the sense of “influence,” and because of their similarity in pronunciation are sometimes confused in writing. As a verb affect 1 means “to act on” or “to move” ( His words affected the crowd so deeply that many wept ); affect 2 means “to pretend” or “to assume” ( new students affecting a nonchalance they didn’t feel ). The verb effect means “to bring about, accomplish”: Her administration effected radical changes. The noun effect means “result, consequence”: the serious effects of the oil spill. The noun affect 1 pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, is a technical term in psychology and psychiatry. Affect 2 is not used as a noun.
Even in the poster child of fascism, Cash, it wasn’t a overnight imposition.
From “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer
“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
Another excerpt-
“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”
That ship has sailed. Bahrain’s Sunni leaders invited 1,000 Saudi soldiers over early this morning. To the Shia population they are as welcome as skunks at a lawn party.
“We’re all Haiti now” Oh boy, Vlad is not going to happy about that.
While similarly outraged by our hapless leadership, the triumph of the shills who’re continually rewarded for grifting our economy as well as the escapist behaviors of our fellow countrymen, I found your comment, “We deserve what just happened to Japan three times over” overly punitive. Perhaps an expression of frustration, your comment deems that suffering ought to be borne by the many as the result of the acts of the few.
Try to tender that tendency the next time, Jim. We’ve already got too much misdirected anger manifested on the Web.
But the Jews and homosexuals weren’t the first to go, Sub.
It was the communists, the socialists and the trade unionists.
Here it was the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the private sector workers.
Now, they’re after the public sector workers and the nurses.
While I discuss “The Change” and muse on “bug out or dig in” that disaster strikes and actual people do real suffering and the world tilts into economic trouble does not make me smug that I was amongst a small community who care to see the world with open eyes.
I am saddened to hear that the Japanese are caught up in their own reliance on technology to save the day, or that teenagers in Libya think the USA will fight for their freedom, or that these far off events won’t be coming home in some form or another. I still hope that my EOTWAWKI preaching is just craxy little blogging me, and not the state of our current world shifting to a point of diminished quality of life for all (except for the rich or course).
We must keep discussing collapse, but keep up hope that some of us can think up responses that help the world when disasters expand.
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/
“Today they were saying that, even with environmental hazards natural gas will be our salvation.”
Fracking – yeah, water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Gasland is required viewing for all POs don’t you know.
JK,
In regard to Japan, I postulated this aspect of the “slow motion train wreck” beck when we were waxing on about Bus the feds and Katrina.
Nature is going to chip away at civilization incrementally. In each catastrophe, just a little less “comeback” from ever ebbing resources.
I can see “a couple of hurricanes” hitting the US in a decade, with the official response to the “second event” – little or nil, as we all cry, “we’re broke.!”
And so it goes.
“We deserve what just happened to Japan three times over” Max – enlightenment waxes and wanes in us all.
I was going to suggest the live feed of Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/) as a good news source (but, of course, not a source of the “Good News”) as it seems to be fairly unbiased. I’m surpised that so many people still have televisions that receive network programming. Haven’t had if for a year and haven’t missed it at all.
Now, my real question. What happens when Charlie Sheen marries a Kardashian? Since I gave up Huffpo I’m out of that loop, too.
i throve during the seventies
Maybe North America ?
Great piece. One must remember, Japan will undergo a massive rebuilding and clean up that will put people to work, put spending back into their economy, and increase their GDP. There actually might be large amounts of foreign cash coming into Japan to buy into their growth machine.
They might be selling off US Treasuries, and Bernanke will have to mop them up with his QE2 cash sponges, but because hot monies might be flowing into Japan and away from US Treasuries and money markets, Bada Bing Bernanke might have to raise interest rates in response.
The unfolding will be interesting.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Ah, enjoying a beautiful sunset at the moment. Pink and bluish clouds.
Free, low-energy entertainment for a simple mind, I suppose.
Cheers
Does this mean the Japanese baseball league won’t play this year because of radioactive rain ?
Don’t forget the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) for quality international reporting.
If you want to truly have a comprehensive understanding of how the world perceives you, try watching what your closest neighbour has to say.
Speaking of Germany, someone was on here in the not too distant past talking about a diary or something by a German who was killed by the Gestapo in 1945… Anybody remember the title/author? Thanks.
The human toll aside. Perhaps the Japanese can help with our unemployment problem. They need a lot of homes rebuilt.
Can you imagine the sound of Mariachi Music shouting out from radios tuned to Spanish language radio stations as hammers rap and tap across the Japanese countryside.
Of course getting across the Mexican/Japanese border might be a bit difficult, it would make long walks across the desert look like a piece of cake.
Hey Wagelaborer, I bought a copy of Ted Ralls ‘Anti-American Manifesto’ this morning … will begin reading it tonite to get a handle on the political CFN-speak I encounter so often on this site.
So I think you owe me a big Emma Goldman/Rosa Luxemborg kiss, right on the lips.
Allegorically speaking, of course
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
BBC isn’t bad for news, but their British roots sometime show badly in reporting about the EU.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/ is the German Spiegel magazine in English — good for some German perspectives on world events.
http://www.france24.com/en/ is a French perspective in English.
Cheers
“It would seem that a seismic shift is working it’s way around the Pacific Plate, in a few weeks Alaska, Washington, and California may look like Japan and New Zeland (assuming the energy is traveling in a circle around that plate)
Once that happens all bets are off.”
I suppose I better head for the hills. I am 1 block from that thar ocean. on a maybe 30ft. hill.
not good enough.
One more quake and I take the money and run. and the Cat.
There is no security in this world. No one said their would or should be. Just the way it is.
Jim, Another good one. Regarding acronyms, abbreviations, jargon: They should be defined at first use.
You’re right, it wasn’t an overnight imposition.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this guy. It just seems to me that he’s trying to make a case that Germans were duped, that everything the Nazis did happened slow and on the sly and all of a sudden, holy smokes, here we are in Poland. And maybe there was an element of that.
He gives the impression that the process went at a snail’s pace. To me it just doesn’t seem that the process in Germany was that gradual. My understanding is that Hitler took power over the span of a couple of years between 1932 and 1934 and then quickly upended opposition by means of judicial tribunals, violence and concentration camps.
Seems to me things moved along pretty quick with the rebuilding of Germany’s military, the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936 and Germany’s participation in the Spanish Civil War in that same year. Then in 1938 there was the takeover of Czechoslovakia and Austria. Hitler was a happenin’ kinda guy in other words.
Right now we have the benefit of hindsight. But it seems to me, even if you were in Germany at the time and had your own problems to deal with, that the writing was on the wall, that what the Nazis were about was pretty clear.
I’ve done reading on Germany and Hitler over the decades but over those same decades I had other worries. So maybe my understanding is wobbly.
Montsegur lives in Germany and might have a different take on things. Mont how about it? How do you see it?
“Mussolini was among the founders of Italian Fascism, which included ultraconservative elements of nationalism, corporatism, national syndicalism, expansionism, social progress and anti-socialism in combination with censorship of subversives and state propaganda. In the years following his creation of the Fascist ideology, Mussolini influenced, or achieved admiration from, a wide variety of political figures.”
Fascism is the logical extension of corporatism… does it matter if the state took over the corporations…. or if the corporations take over the state? The result is the same.
The law expressly forbids the state from searching you without a warrant describing the place to be searched and Items to be seized… that all changes when you go to “work” for some reason…
Then there is this…. lifted from the Huffington Post’s comment’s guidelines:
“We also do not allow the promotion and propagation of conspiracy theories, including those about 9/11.”
So much for free speech… Jim banned people for saying WTF to WTC7… because he is “allergic” to “conspiracies”… That’s fine, it’s his blog… but AOL is a publicly traded company… what’s their excuse?? (so much for free speech)
The Westboro Baptist Church can say all kinds of vile things…. and the police protect them…. just try holding a sign outside the Republican/Democrat Conventions.. you get gassed and arrested. (so much for free speech)
Fascism is a process… and if you don’t believe it is happening just get on a plane.
There is a government employee there to search you without cause… and if you gripe you get arrested.
We hold a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation on earth.. including North Korea.
Big and little brother are always listening in… and using things like phone calls and texts as evidence….
A 14 year old girl text-ed her boyfriend a picture of herself Au natural… and is now in prison for “distribution of child pornography” and must be a registered sex offender the rest of her life….
Oh we’re well on our way to being fascist state alright, you just haven’t figured it out yet because you are a good german.
Moi,
The quote is actually self-effacing, Dietrich was all about speaking out. Hitler personally ordered Bonhoeffer’s execution. Dietrich did not piss him off that much for being quiet.
The debacles at the nuke plants offer the same proof as did Three Mile Island that a disaster inside a plant is a serious monetary loss, but not a public danger. But, it’s all very exciting and the media-doomers love the advertising revenue from blathering about it.
Events like this will show the intrinsic quality of a people. Port Au Prince will not be rebuilt – they didn’t build it, couldn’t have built it, and therefore wont rebuild it. The same goes for “chocolate” New Orleans – didn’t, couldn’t, and wont. The Japanese on the other hand, are one of the most organized and industrious peoples in the world. They will come back strong. Yes the Long Emergency will change them – but not destroy them. Their population is already dropping and they have not given way to immigration. They have some foreign workers, but true to type, they are in complete control of the process. Foreigners can’t “disappear” in Japan and then study to become pilots like they do here in America.
“Douchbag” and “Fucking Retard”
What thought provoking and quippy insults you hurl sir…. did you learn those from your mother? Or the marine platoon that had their way with her?
Ah yes, the glorious freedom of America where illegal aliens take millions of jobs and unemployed Americans lose their homes. Little bambino “Americans” earn their Mexican Moms the right to free housing and food – while homeless Americans have to go to soup kitchens.
Yes, let’s pray that a Strong Man arises and puts an end to all this. To such a one we will owe our devotion and allegiance. Our current “Leaders” aren’t going to save us – they are tied in to special interests and only care about lining their pockets and getting re-elected.
Comcast in Santa Rosa also gives us RT (Russia Today) on channel 103. It’s not as good as CNN but it is an alternative. I never watch Fox News, but they don’t have field reporters, do they?
Cash, my read of the situation is about the same as yours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung discusses an important concept in this regard. The Wiki article does not really translate the term very well; I think its literal translation hits harder: “immediate switch(ing)” (of one’s political / ideological viewpoint)
Well, according to the article, “immediate” was from ’33 to ’37, but the Gleichschaltung was pretty much the agenda and acts designed to get everyone on the same sheet of music.
As to how obvious it was. I believe in towns of any size and larger, it would have been hard to miss the pace of change, violence by the SA, the Hitler Youth with their whistles they used to summon other HY to street rumbles, and so forth.
Perhaps in the rural areas and villages it was possible to remain more disconnected and simply continue doing what one’s family had always done, but even so, rural Franconia was one of the strongest areas of early Nazi support in Germany.
The same region turned into an area of significant resistance in 1945; Fritz’s “Endkampf” is a pretty hair-raising read about what the U.S. soldiers faced there and how the German villagers were trapped between wanting to surrender their towns (and keep the place intact) and the “fight to the last man” mentality of SS soldiers, flying courts-martials, and Nazi bureaucrats who feared what might happen to them in an Allied-occupied Germany.
Cheers
What a concept. Does this mean that Mexican home-builders are SHOL and the Japanese people will use their own unemployed and disadvantaged to rebuild?
S Empire, some pretty thoughtful and insightful posts today, ‘specially about free speech and nature of fascism!
Carry on, Sir!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
When I say “go” I mean in the ovens… the Nazis went after the trade unions, and commies first, true enough…. but they saved their worst for who they most wanted to blame….
Our nation is getting around to granting gay rights a little late in the oil game…
So when things fall apart there will be someone like Fred Phelps there to say “hey, we were doing just fine BEFORE Vermont gave gays the right to marry, and BEFORE we let them into the military… maybe the oil is too pricy because we made the mistake of the Romans and Greeks (tolerating homosexuality) and god has forsaken us… Let’s get back on god’s good side”
That’s how it starts… that and a little test run on oppression laws in Uganda… The “Christian right” in this country is made up of very scary people… who are going to be more than happy to blame anyone but themselves for the worlds prediciment.
Each new catastrophe seems to give some people giant doom-boners: “Ah, proof that I was right! The world IS going to hell in a handbasket!” Look, I can understand why Jim can hardly contain his glee when disaster strikes – he staked out this turf a long time ago and book sales only go up as his cynicism becomes the conventional wisdom.
But this Chicken Little rush to pile on as prophets of the apocalypse by every other blogging Cassandra on the web is unseemly. Americans are a can-do people. We are going to survive whatever’s thrown at us. You can take away our cars, our flat-screen tv’s, even our beloved Cheez Doodles – and guess what? We’re gonna make it.
Doomers: Yay! You’re right! The world is ending! Now grab a shovel and start lending a hand. Nobody wants to lick your doom-boner.
I would suggest that you have so many people in prison because you have mayhem, your youth are totally out of control, your families are destroyed, you have an absolutely gigantic level of drug use, violence and gun ownership.
I’m not condemning, many of the ills the US suffers we suffer in Canada also. There are parts of town here where you dodge bullets at night.
You’re right, fascism is a process but it isn’t a slow motion process either. There’s human nature to account for. The perps would have an end in mind that they would want to achieve in their lifetime. And Americans are nothing if not oriented to the very short term. Fascist leaders included.
I’m not belittling your concerns. You should be on the lookout. But there’s fascism and there’s a sloppy, corrupt, crony-istic kleptocracy which is what the US looks like to me.
Fascists are highly nationalist. I look at the corporate leaders from the US. And to me it seems that they look at one thing and that’s their own personal wealth. They carry around politicians and judges in their pockets like so many nickles and dimes (to use Godfather-speak). I don’t think they give the slightest shit about the USA. They will wreck it and bankrupt it if they think they can make money off of it. It’s the free market. Didn’t you know?
Cash stated: “I don’t think they give the slightest shit about the USA. They will wreck it and bankrupt it if they think they can make money off of it. It’s the free market.”
=========================
The ironic thing is how many people think we have to give the corporations breaks of one kind or another.
Cheers
My husband, whose last name is “Lopez” did two tours in Iraq to protect your right to drive an SUV…
Maybe the Navajo need to deport your raciest ass back to marry old England, or Poland, or Spain or wherever the fuck you came from…. how about that?
Too late, Marlin, you’ve already outed yourself. You’ve heard left wing ideas before.
And Ted Rall is too right wing for me.
And I don’t kiss John Birchers.
Ah yes, the glorious freedom of America where illegal aliens take millions of jobs and unemployed Americans lose their homes. Little bambino “Americans” earn their Mexican Moms the right to free housing and food – while homeless Americans have to go to soup kitchens.
Millions of jobs? Free housing and food? And have you seen the folks that use soup kitchens?
All I know is that all the Hispanic folks that live near me work hard, pay rent, and hardly ever go to soup kitchens. I used to work in Section 8; believe me, Hispanics are not the huge problem you imply. And what do you mean by “their” homes. Those people never owned those homes, so they never were “their” homes in the first place. Home “ownership” today is just a racket, that takes advantage of the ignorant and gullible…kinda like the lottery here in Georgia.
Why do we like the confirmation that ShitsHTF? For me I think that a very basic part of me has a problem with the ever increasing complexity that day to day life requires. Hobos and others that choose radical simplification do so out of bravery of the consequences, but most others are not willing to take the risks even though the “grass is greener” longing of human nature tells us that simpler is good. If Rome burns, it’s not our fault- we did what we were supposed to with the mortgage and insurance but now we get relieved of that. Of course, we will be saddled with more different burdens and hazards, but the ever valiant subconcious mind scoffs at adversity and risk.
I did some work at the local jail a while back, and I’m pretty sure I got a glimpse of “peak imprisonment” or “the peak of humane imprisonment”
In the span of a month, food was cut back about 30% (to $1.75/meal) Shavers were to be used 5 times before replacement, art paper was discontinued, only one guard on staff where 2 used to be standard, temperatures were dropped 3 degrees, haircuts were only 2x per month. May seem like they got it pretty good there, but those were standard conditions for decades. Budget shortfalls meet ever widening nets of law enforcement.
Comrade Wagelaborer;
I get the impression that even Chairman Mao is to right wing for you!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
just an acronym
find one for the savage man
time to use your pen
I would suggest that we have an intentional high level of drug use… one that has only gotten worse with the “war on drugs”… which, like Vietnam is designed purposely to be FOUGHT.. not to be WON… a proper “war on drugs” would never be called a “war” at all….
… it would be dealt with by providing opportunities that don’t involve selling crack to acquire “bling”…. by providing treatment over incarceration… it would involve not sending mixed messages..
ie: “Just say no” followed by “Ask your doctor if Levitra, Boniva, Lattice, Yaz, Caduet, and a thousand other drugs are right for you”
A non Fascist country would put it’s prison system to use when Goldman Sachs wrecked the economy (instead we focused on Martha Stewart, and Bernie Madoff, who while criminal, were very very small, but high profile, fish in the pond of financial malthusians (sp? my spell check can even correct the prescription misspellings, but cannot make up for my lack of vocabulary).
A non-Fascist socitey would do things a lot differently than we do…. go five miles over the speed limit in New York State sometime… it gets your car searched for drugs for some reason!
As Justice Holmes once said, a Nation is not a suicide pact. Just like the body has white blood cells as a defense mechanism, a Nation has the right to defend itself against all things which threaten the social body. If your revolution happened, it would be no different. The new body would develop an even more virulent immune system to purge the detrius of the old order. The Bolsheviks purged the Menshaviks. Which are you btw?
It boggles my mind too. Corporate arrogance blows my mind.
Just a short anecdote. Back in the late 1990s two huge banks, Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal wanted to merge. It needed federal govt approval and the two main guys at the time – Prime Miniter Jean Chretien and Finance Minister Paul Martin – said forget it. One problem was the CEOs were so in love with themselves they forgot to tell Jean and Paul about the merger before they made a public announcement – an end run so to speak.
Fast forward to 2002. Bank of Montreal and Bank of Nova Scotia want to merge. Guess what they did? They tried to do an end run around – you guessed it – Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. Jean and Paul got pissed again and put a knife in that merger too.
I do not understand these CEOs. Two huge banks. If they didn’t have the political moxie in their boardrooms you’d think they’d be able to afford the legal advice that would tell them to be very careful around Paul and Jean seeing as this was tried a few years before and failed spectularly and embarrassingly. But no.
JHK’s weekly essay struck me as remarkably restrained.
Here we have an event for which the mainstream view is that it is apocalyptic.
What really scares me the most is that the whole developed world has shot its wad during relatively prosperous times, and is now feverishly digging itself into a deeper fiscal hole in order to prop up the remnants of prosperity.
It would seem that even in the ABSENCE of any big manmade or natural disasters around the world that countries like the US are facing a major decline.
Throw in any major disasters and the situation gets even more dire.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see within the next couple decades some major disasters in the developed world where the nations experiencing those disasters find themselves UNABLE TO RECOVER.
For example a hurricane in Florida where major cities like Miami are simply evacuated and never rebuilt. I guess that happened to some degree in New Orleans, but I think we are going to see that to a much greater degree.
Of course, we will then have millions of refugees from depopulated parts of the US moving to the areas that remain relatively intact, which is liable to jack the unemployment rate from the current 15 or so percent to 30-40%.
Probably time to dredge up some of the classic eco apocalypse movies of the 70s.
We are headed to a world where we have some incredibly advanced personal gizmos, while living in slums drinking contaminated water and eating manure sandwiches.
Ha, Ha, H., Let them try. They lost and lost badly. Btw, the Indians are terrified of the Reconquista. The Mexicans treated them worse than we did. Some of the Minutemen are full blooded Indians. I mean why don’t you take a breath and actually think. Their treaties are with us and not Mexico. There is no reason to imagine the Mexicans will honor them.
Oh I agree Goldman Sachs should be history and their execs and traders would be festering in prisons and taking dancing lessons in the showers with 300 lb bikers and tattooed white supremacists. And their many alumni that infest the corridors of power including our central bank here in Canada would be told to hit the road if I had my way.
SHOL? Shit Out of Luck? Why would Mexicans need to build homes when we just give them homes? It’s true that two weeks after Katrina thousands of Mexicans converged on New Orleans – and all the White and Black guys who had begun the cleanup where promptly fired in their favor. No checking of green cards or citizenship whatsoever. Absolutely amazing. Until we start discriminating in favor of our own, we cannot have any prospect of happiness and prosperity as a Nation.
You sure have a lot of time on your hands as you elaborated on my post from a few days ago. It’s humorous, though.
If the life of an accountant is said to be boring, what does that make the life of a retired accountant?
You are missing the Glenn Beck show dude.
You better be careful, the A-rabs, and the Mexicans are planning to come take away your guns and they are going to use the United Nations to lock you in a FEMA camp… better go out and buy some more guns buddy…. you gotta lot of fighting to do (better go through the Krispy Kreeme drive through and stock up while you are at it)
I hope you can strap a rocket launcher on your Hoveround… the Mexicans are coming…it’s doom I tells ya… DOOOOOM!
All the Mexicans and Blacks gettin rich off the Welfare!!!! But your gonna show them aren’t you Randy Weaver? How DARE they need assistance from time to time… and not just a few who need it neither…NOOOOO ALL OF THEM are stealing your tax dollars…. OHHH NOOOOOOO!
Let me know when you go off the boil so that I can tune into CBS to see if you cook up the same way David Koresh did.
Montsegur said: “Ah, enjoying a beautiful sunset at the moment. Pink and bluish clouds. Free,low-energy entertainment for a simple mind, I suppose. Cheers”
==============
I think you have, perhaps inadvertently, answered WiseWebWoman’s question: “Are we better off knowing or not knowing of the reality that surrounds us?”
Montsegur, you have made the most refreshing post of the day.
Is what we think we know really “reality”? Is the nightmare worth worrying about once you wake up?
A different perspective:
http://www.kktanhp.com/advaita.htm
Advaita provides a bigger picture… and a lot more peace and joy.
Thank you, Montsegur, for sharing that free, low-energy sunset. May you have many more.
Jim,
Thank for your on-going commentary as we experience and continue to watch The Long Emergency unfold. How many authors get to see their screen-play adaption play out in real life?
I don’t know how long the movie lasts, but I do know how it ends….
Burning concepts from yesterday’s column:
Vlad said, on Panspermia theory: “Scientifically, perhaps they are assuming that conditions elsewhere in the Cosmos are more favorable for the creation of life. But on what grounds do they make this assumption?”
I don’t know. Perhaps they were smoking last decade’s stash and it was such good shit they concluded Panspermia was possible. I think that there are many theories, and thus many cans being kicked down many divergent roads. Currently, the the road has run out for the majority of theories. Only one can is really getting kicked down the road, and that is the RNA world theory. Panspermia will put points on the board if and when we find some evidence of extraterrestrial RNA, alien endospores, and some plausible delivery system. In which case there may be a merging of RNA world and Panspermia. Scientists certainly expect, if life is ever found in the universe, a similarly-constructed molecular basis, since the dynamics of atomic nuclei are the same from one end of the universe to the other.
JackieBlu said “That is what our schools do, dumb down the kids.”
But how! See trailer for The Race To Nowhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYwjgfcq_iY&feature=player_embedded
I agree with Derrick Jensen that in order to damage their own children, parents must be damaged. Our society is sick.
I am not impressed with most of the parents I meet. For one thing, most are single mothers. None of these pregnancies were planned. The fathers are completely disposable. The family unit, replaced by a pastiche of social services and other women who fulfill the desire to associate with children. There is no savings account for the kid’s college tuition. There are no rich experiences, threads of knowledge passed on between the young adult with no life experience or wisdom, and the child.
The latest research shows marriage strong only in college graduates. Outside that, the stats are descending. The lower class no longer stays together. This is having a terrible effect on the kids and the parents. But this is not new news.
No doubt you’re right, hispanics work hard, pay their bills etc. No doubt also that if I was Mexican I’d take a shot at making a run across the border. It’s like that Roman Catholic Cardinal from South America said, when Americans talk about poverty it’s in a different language than in South America ie the level of misery in the US is nothing like that in S. America (or Mexico for that matter).
So once I saw a group of Canucks talking about the vile attitude of many Americans towards Mexican illegals. So one guy said something to the effect that the US has 10 to 20 million illegals that came over the Mexican border, so what if 1 to 2 million came across into Canada (we have 10% the US population), what would we be facing. It was enlightening to see the looks on the faces of the oh so liberal American hating Canucks.
Whoa there, SEmpire. Let’s not be talking ’bout people getting cooked up ‘like David Koresh’. Don’t forget, alot of little kids got ‘cooked up’ in that fire, too. I know you didn’t mean it.
Here it is only Mon. afternoon and, in CFN land, everybody is already pissed at everybody else. Truth is, this petty internecine squabbling doesn’t get us anywhere.
What we sorely lack here is a sense of humor. We need too laugh a little bit as the world boils up around us. Example: I asked Comrade Wagelaborer for a big kiss (Metaphorically speaking). She wasn’t amused at all and slapped me down heartily. Not at all.
Are there any professional comedy writers out there in CFN land? If so we could use your services pronto.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
Yeah, need a sense of humor. Keep on laughing.
“Yes, let’s pray that a Strong Man arises and puts an end to all this. To such a one we will owe our devotion and allegiance.”
A) Prayer doesn’t work.
B) What an idiotic prayer. Does the name Hitler mean anything? Mussolini? Papa Doc? Stalin? Mao? Etc?
C) It’s good to see the real colors of some people are surfacing.
If that’s what you want, you might try by not calling Wage, who is a progressive “comrade”. That’s a good start, I think.
“no fly zone”
The US general have been going out of their way to remind the public of US military doctrine for “no fly zones”. To them it means all planes are destroyed. All air fields are destroyed. All anti aircraft weapons and sensors are destroyed. They are destroyed by the best means available including aerial bombardment, naval bombardment, and special operations land based forces. Since Libya naval vessels have anti aircraft weapons they will all be destroyed many of their sailors will die in the process. The professors at various schools (Princeton included) remind us this is an act of war and a violation of international law without UN sanction. Let us remember the military kills people and destroys things it is NOT a police force with bigger guns. They are professional killers.
I watched a lot of CNN for the 1st time in a long time. I was watching to find out about the nuclear plants. There’s no way to react to the scale of the human tragedy. That’s what apocolypse looks like, like the gods have scraped the earth and tossed it into a shredder.
Interesting watching the tension between the grab for ratings–nuclear disaster!! meltdown!!–and the desire to downplay the danger so we don’t deflate the coming round of new plants before it gets started. US Rep Ed Markey (?) called for moritorium on building. Soledad O’Brien interviewed him and basically gave him heck. There’s problems with all forms of energy, mine cave-ins, natgas fracking making faucets burn, &c.
I saw a commercial for petroleum and natural gas for heaven’s sake! Wow. And one just for natural gas.
The light is dawning. People, a few, are slowly beginning to admit to themselves what’s going on.
As of this moment Japan has flooded with seawater–that is, completely destroyed for future use–2–or is it 3–reactors.
And probably one hundred thousand souls have been snuffed out.
Those reactors were built in the 1970s and were nearing the end of their 40 year design-life anyway. Even if they were brand new, their loss would be the least of the tragedy there. Probably one hundred thousand snuffed out, as you say.
Have you read “Civil War 2” by Tom Chittum, Ex-Marine? He says America and perhaps Canada are slated to break up into different Nations. You folks in Western Ma and Connecticut will probably be part of New Jerusalem which will strech down the Coast from Boston to Georgia or so. Northern New England may go with the Maritimes of Cananda and do their own thing – or perhaps join with Upstate New York and part of the Midwest.
That’s right, we don’t want you anymore than you want us. There’s no reason we should be living in the same country. You can live in Aztlan with your hubby. Don’t bother trying to immigrate back into the new America. By that point, Whites will finally have learned.
That’s right. White and Proud, yo. White and Proud.
is Japan still considered an occupied nation ?
Pretty weird eh, APG?
My vision of a hell on earth would be someplace that self-impressed pricks like venereal kondition and his butt-buddies had ultimate kontrol. We’ve seen his version of utopia/suicide already; it didn’t work out too well did it? (Perhaps it wasn’t done with enough idealogical “purity”? Yeah, that’s it.)
“It’s ugly and it’s clear; a mind’s a nasty thing to lose…”
{What (or who) is it that certifies a leader as a maniac?}
——-
the same question occurs to me — after all, for a maniac he’s not doing so badly for himself. kind of makes me wonder if charlie sheen similarly won’t come out ahead in his contract negotiations…
Didn’t say there weren’t kids involved in Waco… and that is very tragic.
And I am sure that by stockpiling guns in amounts that made the ATF nervous David Koresh thought he was keeping his kids safe…. but here’s the thing, at the end of the day they ended up being so much fodder for government cannons…. because their daddy was going to keep them “safe” from the government by stockpiling guns…. it didn’t work out that way.
The American government is hyper violent… they consistently overreact and over reach…. when they think you are doing something wrong, they don’t knock and serve a warrant… they bust down the door and point guns at any human or canine in the room… and shoot those that move.
When you watch the show “Cops” and it is filmed with ANY American police department, the cops they ride with constantly talk about “getting the bad guys”…. they are the “good” guys, and everybody else might be a “bad guy”….
When the same show is filmed in ANY city in Canada… the cops talk about “good people who made bad choices”…. or just “people who made bad choices”…. Not “BAD PEOPLE”….but rather, “BAD CHOICES”…. it shows an incredible difference in how more civilised countries conduct police work…
I feel sorry for all the kids caught up in Waco… but their parents acted in a way that allowed the police to label them as “bad guys”… and the rest is history.
and as for Vald
“That’s right. White and Proud, yo. White and Proud.”
YO? YO? You be talkin like Micheal Steele Bibble shinnible homie!!!
You don’t sound very proud to be white to me… sound like you proud to be black “yo”…. what’s the matter? Is “neat-o” and “gee willikers” not thugie enough for you homie?
—–Events like this will show the intrinsic quality of a people. Port Au Prince will not be rebuilt – they didn’t build it, couldn’t have built it, and therefore wont rebuild it. The same goes for “chocolate” New Orleans – didn’t, couldn’t, and wont. —–
If you have money, you rebuild. If you don’t have money, you don’t rebuild. Reminds me of that old rationation, “The Israelis made the desert bloom when the Palestinians did nothing with it”, so the Israelis deserve the desert. Well yes, the Israelis had money to convert the desert and the Palestinians did not. Same thing in New Orleans. Those with money or insurance rebuilt and those without did not.
So if you measure the quality of people by money, you will fit in well with racist economists. If you don’t, you are a human being.
I don’t know why you call me comrade.
Comrade is a gender neutral term of respect and solidarity with another person who shares your beliefs and activities.
I am not your comrade, nor are you mine.
Yours would be the “in-arms” type, the ones with which you killed children and livestock and burned down huts and crops.
Kindly refrain from addressing me as comrade anymore.
A few thoughts come to mind:
—there goes the first island chain; Japan is not going to contest China’s expansion as it seemed disposed;
—given the energy issue and Japan’s debt which is 200% of GDP, a lot isn’t going to be rebuilt;
—which means China is poised to advance it’s economic interests;
—Chinese have more money, at least some of which winds up proping up US debt;
—Nuke plants actually work fairly well; these are 40 years old, went through both hell and highwater and the containment vessels probably hold; and
—we will need to actually start building more state-of -the art Nuke Plants.
Hey Jerry, you told us you were shutting down your blog but it’s still there. We are soooo disappointed.
“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.”
Mark Twain
If I had a million liquid I would be out of here in a shot… and not to some mythical place in Iran either… try the Netherlands… but because I am an American and don’t have a million euros (liquid) and don’t have an advanced degree, and don’t speak write or read Dutch.. my chances of going “as is” is slim to none… they won’t take me as a “refugee” because running away from stupid douchebags doesn’t count for some reason…
And you know what? YOU…sit there and want me to leave in one hand.. and shit in the other…. see which one fills up faster
Besides that if I wait long enough Janet Nepolitano or Tom Ridge or Janet Reno will come along and strap you down to a gurney for killing a armored guard while trying to finance your revolution…. and I won’t have a Monday morning hobby of whipping you and Tootsie into a foaming “fucktard” frenzy anymore…
Thanks. That brings up other questions. If the reactors were brand-new, would Japan have done differently to try to salvage them? What the heck do you do with the pieces of a decommissioned reactor? Are there reactors that have already been through this process?
I’m betting the PTB find reasons for tut-tutting the problems.
Please Vlad,
Give us a break on the white race stuff.
SJmom
Somebody calls me ‘comrade’ I’ll be taking it as a compliment. Not disagreeing with your point of view, just sayin.
Shwhatever, Dude. If your response to being caught spewing a bunch of BS is to crack a rather lame mother insult at a screenname on the internet, then you probably have too much time on your hands and you don’t realize you need to study up somewhere else. Because your line of thinking is not getting you anywhere.
He doesn’t mean it as an expression of solidarity, he means it as an insult.
Jim, I have been following your blog for a while and it’s the first site I check out every Monday. Having read many of your books, I guess you could say I’m a fan.
I absolutely agree with you that there are “57 channels and nothin’ on” (thanks, Bruce) as far as U.S. cable is concerned. Here in Canada, I’ve been glued to BBC World News, both for news of the ME and NA and now the catastrophe in Japan. The breadth and depth of their coverage is unsurpassed. Is it not available on U.S. cable? They put CNN to shame, so I feel for you when you say it’s the only intelligent source in America. I also followed the ME/NA situation on Al Jazera by internet and must say, when viewed with an open mind, their coverage was excellent. Since we at least have the option of subscribing to it on our cable (unlike most of the U.S.)I am considering adding it to my channel selection…..
water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.
=============
water water everywhere nor any drop to drink. — The Rhyme (or Rime) of the Ancient Mariner
We should watch the Japanese people’s response to this catastrophe very closely. As one of the most highly civilized nations on Earth, we should have much to learn from them.
Nice weeks work, JHK. I admire the way you manage, every week, to find at least one or two things that could lead to environmental disaster, or economic disaster, or societal disaster – or some combination or permutation of a subset of other disasters.
You certainly have not been lacking for topics for the past few weeks, have you!
Here’s one that everyone seems to have missed, in Japan. Apparently the Germans decided to seal their nuclear waste in solid impervious casks decades ago.
The Japanese, however, – following the American model – have stored their high-level nuclear waste in water filled “containment ponds.” Well, these “ponds” need protection and a flow of cooling water for DECADES.
What bureaucrat, politician, or engineer could have EVER signed off on this as a good idea?
There are up to 100 of these cooling ponds in the US – just waiting for the electrical grid to fail and the supply of diesel for the back up generators to go missing.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-14/japan-nuclear-meltdown-fears-spent-fuel-could-pose-new-danger/
“A bunch of BS”
What BS do you refer to sir? All American television news networks are worthless… ALL OF THEM…. I watch AJE or CBC when I need real news… if I want fake boobs and spinning “alert” logos in the corner with full on Republican bullshit… Fox “news” will do… If I want some fake “liberal” who is embedded with the troops as they march for war I will watch MSNBC… If I want the “USA today version” of the “news” (think weekly reader for adults) I will either open the hotel door and grab the USA Today in the hall… or watch the CBS, NBC OR ABC evening news…it is all very selectively edited to elicit a precise response… most often by which stories are covered, as well as how.
The CBS Evening News has wasted plenty of time on OJ, Jonbenet Ramsey, Martha Stewart, Bristol Palin, Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, Natalee Holloway… PLEANTY OF TIME!!!!!
If your response to being caught defending the indefensible is to call someone a “douche-bag” expect that they might drag your mother into it… especially since you are not sitting here in front of me… and maybe even if you were.
PoC said, “In my area, the truth of Evolution doesn’t even achieve parity with the doctrine of Creation.
I still have to coexist with all those people and their Judeochristian Faith. I have to do politics with them and work with them. If push ever comes to shove – I will rely on them, and they on me.”
I understand that. That is everyone’s unfortunate reality. Why unfortunate?
Faith is something that must be mightily maintained. Daily, weekly, forever. In the coming era of privations and tribulations, individuals’ faith being tested will mean that people tending toward the supernatural and illogical will be put under increasing emotional and psychic stress.
Consider the atheist in the foxhole next to you. In his world, things happen for concrete reasons. He does not need to continually support a “faith”. Thus, when shit hits the fan, a normal depression ensues. Causality is not thrown into question. When shit hits the god-believer, a META-normal depression ensues. Faith is shaken, world-view is shaken, and frankly, depending on the mental infrastructure involved, may or may not be able to climb out of this hole. After all, if God exists, angels, devils, the whole crew of beings causing things to happen could certainly exist.
Dmitry Orlov talks about the Russian’s experience with collapse and refers to their capacity to deal with reality that he doesn’t see in America. It could be precisely because we have a 90% expression of religious belief in the general population. JHK frequently bangs on about how we seem unable to comprehend reality or deal with it.
Fantastical thinking, ignorance of causation, delusion, etc. are all on a continuum with religious thought! There is a spectrum to this: two people stand side by side in a congregation, and talk about faith and spirit. For one, it is gilt on life’s profane exterior. For the other, it is a total proscription of perceptional reality. Each speak in terms the other understands, but because of the subjective nature of the subject, they inherently mean different things.
It really is impossible to know which way the cookie crumbles when the religious mind is stressed. Which is why I don’t associate closely with, or trust, anyone with religious convictions. Religious people are as crazy and unpredictably treacherous as any inmate of the asylum. “God” could appear at any time, snap his fingers, and cause Little Bo Peep to put their baby in the oven, just because He was in an Old Testament mood.
Reviewing the vile comments spewn out over Youtube of late on the Japanese Tsunami I find, over and over again, this concept that God punishes people through the workings of natural disasters. This is an entirely reasonable conclusion if god-belief is the premise. It is infectious across the belief spectrum.
I pick up a New Age screed from the health food store. In it they claim that Cancer sufferers need to buck up and think positive. A new-age twist. Same reasoning, different fantastical premise.
Likewise, find yourself on the wrong side of Karma by some normal “Shit happens” pathway: most people agree with this logic. People everywhere are inflicted with a disgust and abhorrence of sickness, illness, misfortune, bad luck, and so on. Expect supernatural doses of suspicion when you reach out to your religious allies in dire times.
“First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unions, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And then they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
That is a serious misattribution. That statement is attributed to Martin Niemöller.
Pick your answer:
1) Shapely female celebs famous for being famous (ain’t that the def. of “celeb”?)
2) Misspelling of “The Cardassians”: predatory race from Star Trek famous for bone-ridges on their heads and their diet of hot fish-juice for breakfast.
Either way, who cares?
iMac, iPhone, iPad……
everyone needs to be thinking about getting an iWoodstove.
Some of the people in American prisons need to be incarcerated because they’re truly violent or dangerous, but a great many have been swept up in the war on drugs and other pet projects of authoritarian sociopaths. That’s why we have one of the world’s highest incarceration rates. It’s not that we’re so much more violent than other nations. It’s that our criminal justice apparatus and its abettors in the mass media are evil.
The furor over sex offenders is the latest unwelcome eruption of Puritanism. The first sex offender registries were started in response to a few high-profile, one-off murders of young girls by ex-cons. These cases were certainly tragic for the girls and their families, but the response was hysterical because the girls were white, photogenic and from sheltered suburban neighborhoods. Violent crime rates were dropping when most of these registries were implemented, but you wouldn’t know it to listen to the grandstanding from activists, politicians, and their stooges in the media. The result in some states has been that a tool explicitly designed to prevent recidivism by murderous pedophiles is now ensnaring people who urinated in public and horny teens who privately sent nude pictures of themselves to their peers.
It’s The Scarlet Letter all over again, but without the public confession of Rev. Dimmesdale. The people leading us on these social wedge issues are really sick puppies. I, for one, will give thanks if the creep Chris Hansen ever walks into one of his own stings. Bastards like him need to lose credibility so that the rest of us are less liable to malicious prosecution for victimless crimes.
iHavetwo.
For a little perspective besides the hype on TV:
Read the whole thing from MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering:
http://mitnse.com/
“Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors.”
by Dr Josef Oehmen, MIT
“(If you read this)…you will know more about nuclear power plants after reading it than all journalists on this planet put together.
There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity.”
By “significant” I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on – say – a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.”
I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single (!) report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.”
Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan’s Disastrous Nuclear Operators
http://bit.ly/gYj2Ht
Why are you so ashamed? They aren’t ashamed to be what they are. If your Christianity or Buddhism can’t help you in this, then they have failed you. This person hates Whites even though she is White, but you criticize me and not her. What is wrong with you? Btw, you are well behind enemy lines – perhaps that explains it – DENIAL.
Wow, Bustin – you type with great rapidity.
I post at 6:54 and you have your massive missive posted for me at 7:10.
Methinks, you were perhaps waiting for my moniker to appear, for you to post something you had prepared ahead of time related to last weeks brawl – Atheism vs Religion.
No matter – just take it as a compliment, guy.
Let the record show that I am not posting about religion or race as of yet this week. There’s enough mayhem in the world that those topics should be able to wait ’till at least mid-week on CFN.
I’ll try to hit you with something Wednesday – “Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” as my religious forebears always taught me to acknowledge – in other words, they also acknowledged – “sh*t happens,” in everyone’s world.
So – maybe I’ve already answered your question.
—Nuke plants actually work fairly well; these are 40 years old, went through both hell and highwater and the containment vessels probably hold; and
—we will need to actually start building more state-of -the art Nuke Plants. -J.M.
——————————————–
Okay then, John, but you might want to take a short peek at this first (if you care whether your kids live or die, that is). If no one is around to plug in their i-pod…. (etc.)
http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/#more-4497
You want to run to a white country with a muslim minority that wants to destroy it and replace it with what they fled from. Nothing more confused than a white liberal with issues of racial hatred of themself.
Just move to Canada, but be forewarned on the downslope of the LE half of the Democratic coalition will be “Wanting what them crackas in Canada have.”
I guess nobody ever taught you the concept of respect for other people. Too bad.
Picky little grammar and spelling issues will be another one of those things that we really aren’t going to care much about during the trials to come.
There are occasionally bright spots on “Cops,” but you’re right about the usual worldview on that show. It’s a disgrace. A lot of the officers shadowed are openly contemptuous of due process and basic procedure, and some of them are openly violent. Internal affairs officers should be all over “Cops” footage shot in their departments, but as far as I know they aren’t.
One problem is that many agencies do not enforce basic standards of conduct for their officers. They give the paramilitary culture of police agencies a bad name by using it as a license for criminal rampages. They ignore the positive aspects of paramilitary culture: the discipline, accountability, uniform standards, and so forth. Commanders in a functioning paramilitary apparatus are not afraid to tell their subordinates, “You are officers of the law and are expected to act accordingly. If you make honest mistakes but work with us to correct them, we’ll work with you. If you are contemptuous of your duties, we’ll kick your ass to the curb where it belongs.”
That was the culture I found when I applied to the San Diego Police Department, although he recruiters had more polished but equally scary ways of telling us that they would gladly kick our asses to the curb if the need arose. It was heavier shit than I was really able to handle, so it’s just as well that I was rejected. My point is that there’s a huge difference between that sort of paramilitary culture and jackbooted thuggery. The former makes sure that successful recruits are disciplined, competent and generally mature. As far as the latter is concerned, I’ll paraphrase Sgt. Van Abel: “Frankly, that’s disgraceful.”
[QUOTE] All they have to do over at the Fed is roll over the maturing securities they hold and take the money and buy more securities! In other words we now have at our disposal a perpetual motion money-generating engine[/QUOTE]
“They” would have “us” believe the world is powered by money rather than energy and it’s hard to argue with the past 150 years of persistent economic growth. “They” would also have “us” believe the past 150 years of persistent economic growth which is an anomoly in contrast to the rest of human civilization is entirely attributable to our greater understanding of economics. Nevermind the correlation between the past 150 years of persistent economic growth and the coincidental appearance of abundant, high energy dense supplies of crude oil, natural gas and coal.
We will be terraforming planets and mining the moon once it’s, “economical” to do so according to those smart enough to understand economics–it’s just a matter of the crude oil price getting high enough to make it “profitable”.
Bankers have always lent out more than what was in their vaults, it’s the nature of the beast. Having the past 150 years of confidence behind them doesn’t hurt their cause. When this batch of moneymakers eventually lose the worlds confidence just like bankers always have in the past, it will be awhile before anyone trusts “money” again.
Oops! Sorry; didn’t see your link before I posted same. (I suppose it does bear repeating though. ;o)
Very, very sad situation in Japan. They are going make it through it. New and improved. I remember listening to your podcasts in Tokyo. They were pretty doomer, but I got the humor. When I returned to the States, I saw how backwards we are for the first time. It looked the same as 1995- at least 15 years behind in other words, a generation, maybe much, much more. If you take away the cell phones, personal electronics, the web that make us feel like tiny aristocrats, you don’t see much innovation at the pedestrian level. And it mostly isn’t a nice place to look at. I loved riding a bike or walking as most do in Tokyo. They really are far, far ahead of us as far as trains, architecture and urban design. Yes, it’s crowded, they have problems, but for a city with that many people it’s amazingly clean, quiet and very organized. Also a visual stunning place, and the only city I’d ever consider settling in permanently. I miss it a lot and plan to be an ex-pat there again soon. It feels like there are too many propagandist here, a disgusting wealth disparity, and it’s just not sugoi. My heart is there with you Japan. I hope to make a home there again. Ganbatte. Peace and love to everyone touched by these recent events.
Glad to see you are aware of the real reason your husband was in Iraq.
I am damn close to Canada… my attempt to move there found me just four points short of the required number for entery…. I need to become fluent in French, and get a college degree, or have about $750,000 liquid to enter…. doesn’t seem likely either way.
But Vermont works just fine for now… if I make a fortune I will be off to Europe..
Scott,
Nice summation of the illusory vs. reality!
(…and a carefully manufactured illusion at that.)
Ya s’pose there’s a reason “they” want us to believe in money rather than energy/labor? I’m thinking it’s a pretty god-damn easy way to make a luxurious living out of [what turns out to be] NOTHING. (The backlash is a bitch, however.)
You wouldn’t believe the amount of Bacardi Rum, nightmares, lost jobs, and guilt involved when he started to see it.
You have added nothing new to this site in months. You are wasting your time trying to convince any independent thinker of your views. Try a blog in which people are ruled more by emotion rather than intellect.
You are the weakest link! Goodbye.
Jon: “You sure have a lot of time on your hands as you elaborated on my post from a few days ago. It’s humorous, though.”
============
Q: I forget what I wrote. If you have the date and time, let me know. I’d like to re-read it.
============
Jon: “If the life of an accountant is said to be boring, what does that make the life of a retired accountant?”
============
Q: I don’t know, incredibly boring?
Well said.
“iMac, iPhone, iPad……
everyone needs to be thinking about getting an iWoodstove.”
Thanks for the laugh.
My wife was just checking out an iPressureCanner the other day…
Last weeks “Reality Optional Nation”. Posted March 13th @ 10:23AM. Hope you like the note. It was meant as a compliment that you are keeping me honest.
Can we please get along in here folks? The name calling, arguing, and total disrespect for others is very disparaging. Let’s share our knowledge and try to improve this world which we all live in.
Because they can? I like to think they know better themselves but they probably believe their own BS. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what Bernanke thinks as long as Snookie is on Raw. Wonder if she likes granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?
“B) What an idiotic prayer. Does the name Hitler mean anything? Mussolini? Papa Doc? Stalin? Mao? Etc?”
I’ve always thought that Etc was the biggest asshole ever.
The perfect site for you:
minutemanproject.com/
Why don’t you head to the border and do something useful instead of ranting on the web?
They become nuclear waste. A number of plants in the US have been decommissioned and there will be more to follow as our aging reactor fleet is taken out of service. The current trend is to re-license 40 year old reactors for an additional 20 years.
Scott,
I’ve become vaguely acquainted with what a Snookie is, but am unfamiliar with Raw. Would that be an acronym for “Repugnant Am’ur’can Wankers”?
“There are no rich experiences, threads of knowledge passed on between the young adult with no life experience or wisdom, and the child.”
Today I was trying to teach my 2 year old daughter the name of one of the herbs in the garden, and I said “yarrow” to which she mimicked “yay-yo”.
Damn, not exactly the rich experience I was aimin’ for…
Vlad,
You have a screw loose. I’m not a bit ashamed of my Swedish heritage. Yeah Swedes, yeah Cubans, yeah whatever. I have a completely different worldview that you can’t begin to understand because at some basic, pre-verbal level YOU VLAD feel inferior. This shapes your whole way of looking at the world. Get some therapy for Arjuna’s sake.
SJmom
“good people who made bad choices”
==================
Bad choices my ass. What a bunch of politically correct crap. Like calling drunks and drug addicts substance abusers and the retarded, “developmentally delayed.” I am majorly turned off by people’s fear of calling a spade a spade. Snowflake is a prime example.
“yay-yo”
LOL Close enough for “mediocre experience”, I reckon!
(Now that’s funny; I don’t care who ya are.) -Larry
“You want to run to a white country with a Muslim minority that wants to destroy it and replace it with what they fled from. Nothing more confused than a white liberal with issues of racial hatred of them-self.”
Maybe I just want to live someplace were the bread doesn’t suck and I can smoke a joint without risking prison! Ever think of that? No, Thinking doesn’t seem to be something you are able to do…. nothing more confused than an old racist who skirts personal responsibility for his failings in life by blaming people who look different….
“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.”
=================
I came to to this same conclusion long ago without ever having read Twain’s words. After all, it only makes sense.
If I were to change one thing in the Twain quote above it would be to put quotes around the word rightful.
“For example a hurricane in Florida where major cities like Miami are simply evacuated and never rebuilt. I guess that happened to some degree in New Orleans, but I think we are going to see that to a much greater degree.”
I have some great ideas for a far more energy efficient dwelling than the old farmhouse we live in. Twould be smaller, for sure, and under a thick soil mantle, relying on annualized thermal inertia, orientation to prevailing winds and sun patterns, and a vegetated cooling wind tunnel, to maintain a decent temperature inside. More like Bag End I suppose, but NOT underground.
Since we live under a mature pecan canopy (very heavy and brittle trees, as you may know), and are in the strike zone for TS-Cat 2 hurricane activity, I figger it’s only a matter of time until we get to put those ideas into play. Me, or my children, or their children, someone. But in full-on energy descent I wonder about our ability to “leave” any given area in critical mass. Miami’s high-energy infrastructure might be devastated, but the citizens of Miami might be forced to live in lean-tos on the edge of town. Long-range travel is definitely a high-energy phenomenon, and surrounding people aren’t going to welcome a lot of new mouths to feed I imagine.
All the more reason to diversify our food production methods – mushrooms, perennial veggies, wildcraft, milk, a range of livestock. Just thinking out loud.
He doesn’t mean it as an expression of solidarity, he means it as an insult.
==============
No, ya think?
“I am majorly turned off by people’s fear of calling a spade a spade. Snowflake is a prime example.”
-Q-
Q, read that over a few times – silently – to yourself. Just think about how it sounds to a newcomer to the CFN thread. Then read it again.
Then, read RT’s post where he says, “Can we please get along in here folks?”
Then write back and try to explain what you would, yet, like to accomplish in the autumn of your life.
God I’m itchin’ for a post about how splitting the sun, pissing on Time, and taking a shit down Mother Nature’s throat will carry us into a brave new world.
“iMac, iPhone, iPad……
everyone needs to be thinking about getting an iWoodstove.”
iThinkiloveyou!
Very funny. As well as sad but true.
“Long-range travel is definitely a high-energy phenomenon, and surrounding people aren’t going to welcome a lot of new mouths to feed I imagine”
-tripp-
Yeah, no joke about that one, Tripp.
We drove the I-75 corridor from Atlanta to Jacksonville, FL two weekends ago. Then we drove it, thank God, back the other way to the north Georgia mountains on Sunday.
You are correct that there are lots of large, expensive billboards south of Macon that have an abandoned look. Then just south of Tifton there is a series of – new, large, and expensive looking – billboard road signs advertising survival gear and food. There was no physical address that I could see at 70 mph, just a web address – survivalfood.com – or whatever. Don’t know what’s going on about that – a set of Interstate billboards seems a strange place to advertise preparations for Armageddon.
I though about you and your place while driving back north. I’m hoping you are not too close to US 41, and especially not too close to I-75. If you are, try to look nondescript. And be ready to armor up – with little warning, if need be.
Your website looks great, BTW. I’m enjoying following your exploits down there.
Keep up the good work.
Now, this is weird. I just wrote a nice little post back to Tripp.
I got “Thank you for commenting” your post has been held – TWICE.
Weird – am I a CFN nonperson, now?
My husband calls extremely fat people, “horizontally challenged.” 🙂
He also says, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Jen
I was sent to the blog bardo last week. Don’t take it personally, it appears to be completely random.
The ME/NA reference is to the Middle East and North Africa region. QE2 is a reference to the second so-called “Quantative Easing” regime initiated by the Fed to “stimulate” the economy – which is an injection of money into treasuries, essentially “printing more money” (this devalues the currency as well as having other barely mentioned effects such as increasing interest on long and short-term bond sales, which is not a good thing. I can’t remember how much the first lot was but the second one is supposed to be more than half a trillion U.S. dollars worth. (which is probably why our Aussie dollar is now worth more than the U.S. buck).
This is insane – I’ve been seeing that JHK’s webmaster? has been running an algorithm to block posts that contain too much text that is pasted in – but now the damn thing has blocked a completely original typed post of mine – and I can’t copy/past it back in to make it stick.
Here’s paragraph one:
“Long-range travel is definitely a high-energy phenomenon, and surrounding people aren’t going to welcome a lot of new mouths to feed I imagine”
-tripp-
Yeah, no joke about that one, Tripp.
We drove the I-75 corridor from Atlanta to Jacksonville, FL two weekends ago. Then we drove it, thank God, back the other way to the north Georgia mountains on Sunday.
You are correct that there are lots of large, expensive billboards south of Macon that have an abandoned look. Then just south of Tifton there is a series of – new, large, and expensive looking – billboard road signs advertising survival gear and food.
Second installment to Tripp, continued:
There was no physical address that I could see at 70 mph, just a web address – survivalfood.com – or whatever. Don’t know what’s going on about that – a set of Interstate billboards seems a strange place to advertise preparations for Armageddon.
I though about you and your place while driving back north. I’m hoping you are not too close to US 41, and especially not too close to I-75. If you are, try to look nondescript. And be ready to armor up – with little warning, if need be.
Your website looks great, BTW. I’m enjoying following your exploits down there.
Keep up the good work.
Yeah, I get quarantined for the most random things. I used to think there was a key word, like “archipelago” or “fuck trophy,” don’t want to be talking about island chains on a peak oil blog, but I can’t correlate anything significant.
If it’s a post of any length, or serious thought process (which isn’t usually a problem), I copy it before I hit submit.
“Fuck trophy” is what I call a child. The administrator doesn’t seem to mind that one.
Can we please get along in here folks? The name calling, arguing, and total disrespect for others is very disparaging.
===========
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!! ……….just kidding.
The only safe haven is Siberia!!!
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/
I am fairly close to US41, and only a few blocks farther to 75. I guess our position is to openly teach self-reliance, slowly build a tribe, and keep the 12 guage shells at the ready.
Understand about your location, Tripp. As long as you are not right out on a major corridor and exposed – you should be fine. I really feel for those folks who have houses visible from I-75.
They won’t last long in a genuine SHTF migration.
I had a uncle who lived out on US 441 in south Georgia. People were forever walking up to his house – out in the middle of damn nowhere – and asking for gas or something, back in the 40’s thru 70’s. He was pretty scary looking, too – and with a yard full of meanass dogs to boot. Nobody ever sneaked up on him, either.
Then he planted a grove of pine trees in the 100 acre corn/cotton field that had formerly been his front yard. Once you could not see the house from the road – people stopped finding him.
============
Wrote this earlier, too:
This is only the second time I’ve run afoul of the “blogeditor?” function. First time was over a finely sculpted *hand shooting bird* in the classic manner. So that was a large edit/paste – that got flagged.
I’ve had some stuff eaten by my login, MovableType, before. But this was the first time that an innocent block of original typed text had ever been held on me –
I try to remember to copy stuff to the clipboard before posting – but that gets into the algorithm catching large “pasted” files, again.
Just weird. I get the feeling that JHK probably gets some ideas from this discussion thread, and he may follow it when he has time.
It would be fun for him to f*ck with some of the posters on the ClusterFuckNation. Which, btw, is one well conceived appellation – for this comment thread.
CF on you all!
come on Qshitk, how can we help these poor people in Japan, in 2004 I gave a ton to the Red Cross for Indonesia, I am not so sure of the Red Cross now, Who can I trust? I have the funds but am unsure as to the management of some charities. Who can I trust
So, at first I said:
CF on you all! (and now I see that looks insulting)
How about: CF on, you all!!
Or, better: CF on – you all!!
Trivial grammar and punctuation criticism does have a purpose, perhaps?
Anyway, enjoy your clustering and fscking.
Whatever happened to Mika, btw?
you guys confuse me. Death and destruction and you talk of IPods, and whatever, kardshians? what the f*** is that. I know Japan surprised us on 12/7/41 but we paid them back in spades on 8/6/45 . I sure hope these plants don’t melt down. It is a VERY small world! We all have to pull together!
I can’t do much about earthquakes, but I’m starting up a carbon sink on our farm. Straight up accounting, state-of-the-art sequestration methodologies, change in organic matter reporting, absolute transparency, cradle-to-grave. You guys know me.
I was going to offer it first to my travelling relatives as a carbon offset alternative, but you guys are getting it hot off the presses. You buy credits, I’ll send you a receipt and pictures. The government’s “efficiency” will never approach this. Together we’ll start moving carbon back into the topsoil where it belongs.
May not have an impact on the ring of fire, but as a model, it could have a measurable impact on climate-related natural disasters in my expected 50-60 years of managing the sink. I’ll start working a portal into my blogsite.
And POC, I’ll catch up with your comments later. Time for bed.
Diary of a Man in Despair
by Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen
I just read it. Good book.
Hey ksmias. haha. get it KISS MY ASS !
Especially you Q ! been wanting to say that for a long time. just kidding.
not very lady like.
actually a friend of mine wanted that for a personalized license plate, don’t think it would go thru tho. well my friend thought of it and I wanted to use it.
JHK is on the money, again! (can I adopt him?)Oil will NOT go down. Japan will need more oil than usual sooner rather than later, and even though a couple of refineries are out of action they will go to extremes to supply the diesel needed to not just clean up the mess but to supply extra electricity to the grid.
During the 70’s oil crisis we, in Australia, found ourselves short of generating capacity and imported at great expense a large number of deisel-powered generators to fill the gap in supply. I worked for a French construction company at the time (Citra Engineering) and had the task of hooking up ten of these deisel-sucking monsters to the grid. Electricity prices soared but the economy chugged along until further coal-fired capacity was added and we discontinued using the deisel generatotrs. Japan will do the same thing and will likely hook up a bunch of portable gas generators as well, the industrial show must go on. (expect prices for natural gas to increase along with oil)
During the recent nuclear crisis I’ve seen untold numbers of scenarios trotted out to warn of the use of nuclear power but haven’t yet seen the scenario that worries me the most.
I’ve also seen a lot of deniers who say that even if a complete meltdown occurs it’d not be as bad as Chernobyl, however, its not just the one power plant that’s in trouble, there are four more with coolant issues spread further afield that combined would cover an area as great as, if not greater than, the Chernobyl disaster. If you were to overlay the exclusion zone of Chernobyl over the small island nation that is Japan you will find there’s not a lot of area that isn’t uncovered. This is very worrying for me and my family as my inlaws are in Tokyo and Osaka, I hold grave fears and my wife, who has many friends also in the tsunami-effected area, is very upset (she just came in to tell me that the number four (Daiyon) reactor has just caught fire, the one that was offline when the quake and tsunami hit, which means the inner container is ruptured).
My worry for some time now has been what happens to nuclear power plants when they are abandoned at the end-collapse-stage of modern industrial society. They can’t be decommissioned overnight and even the military can’t do the job if it can’t even feed its conscripts. The happy devolution to a medieval social structure after the fall will be impossible if the entire country is covered in contaminated land and water. The rotting nuclear missiles in silos might be sent into space to be detonated as a last resort, unless some idiot decides to settle old scores before old scores mean nothing anymore, but you can’t shoot a nuclear power plant into space. We only have a couple of small reactors in Australia but I’m pretty sure once every reactor in the world went feral and suffered a meltdown it wouldn’t be long before everyone around these parts was glowing in the dark too, so the concern isn’t related to some kind of solidarity with foreign brethren (no offense).
I hope it all works out for Japan but the story unfolding should be a wake-up call to those who consider nuclear power to be one of the answers to our greatest challenge – peak-oil – nuclear just isn’t worth the risk!
Hey Tripp, It sounds good. I will go with it, but me thinks the IRS will try to get their hooks in it. I think it would be cool if we could get a network of CO2 sinks up and running around the country. I looked at a 1/3 acre prop. in the center of town that could grow a sh*****ad of vegetables along with a duplex homestead. sweet dreams.
Yup, that’s the way it is every day.
So why do they keep beating that broken drum?
All it does is coddle a tiny percentage of the population that promotes that kind of thing and more importantly, alienate a large segment of the population that therefore ignores every other message in that media.
My sentiments exactly.
The one written in ballpoint pen that wasn’t marketed until years after the events portrayed?
The one where the father of the alleged author was sued by the ghostwriter he hired in federal court and who lost?
That diary?
explain what you would, yet, like to accomplish in the autumn of your life.
=============
I would like to have a one-night stand with a top Victoria’s Secret catalogue model.
“Too cheap to meter!…”
The fourth reactor has just melted down.
The PM has warned people to stay inside. BTW the radiation has reached Tokyo.
See Zero Hedge.com
Looks like the Japanese Interlude is over…
“All hell is currently breaking loose following an explosion at reactor #2 and a another hydrogen explosion at reactor #4 per Kyodo, leading to a 16% drop in Nikkei futures as blind panic grips Japan. Kyodo essentially confirms there was a reactor meltdown as radiation levels at Fukushima 3 are now 400 times legal levels. And topping it all Japan’s warning that all people within 30 kilometers from Fukushima should stay indoors and that the radioactive winds may reach Tokyo in as little as 8-10 hours. The BOJ has just intervened to prevent the yen from surging, as the following chart shows. Our prayers are with the people of Japan. ”
Hey Leibowitz type people, long time no talk. This is logic11 from Wayofthepreserver. Similar goals, and similar points of view on the collapse. I see it as being what JMG talks about, a catabolic collapse. Each disaster strains the whole system a bit more, and each time we adjust to what has become the new normal. After a bit it would look like the world had collapsed to someone from a couple of decades earlier (and I think we are there, I think people from the eighties and nineties who predicted this world were labeled as paranoid whack jobs).
i tend to agree with you , as much as hate to, that we live in a random universe. but the Christians i know in my backwater southern town tend to be pleasant and honest people. many are in fact quite happy and do not bend toward neurosis or intolerance any more than you apparently do. i suspect in a pinch many ignorant Christians would make more reliable and empathetic friends in thl than hip intellectual atheist.
My elderly mother-in-law has relatives in Tokyo. She spoke to them on the phone and they said that shops in Tokyo were running short on food because of stockpiling. My relatives here in San Andreas/ San Onofre nuclear power plant country figure there will be time enough to get ready after the big one hits.
interesting canada has strict immigration requirements. if we did that we would be racist. maybe it only difficult for whites to move to canada. it seems many nonwhites are going there. probably without 750k.
Canada has a point system,
you need 72 points to get in
You get 72 points if you are a member of an officially recognised persecuted group fleeing your homeland… like anyone who escapes North Korea and makes it to Canada… or someone from Dar fur….
you get 72 points if you have $750,000ca liquid.
Other than that you get points for graduating high school, college, post graduate work…. knowing English, knowing french, having a job offer from a Canadian firm (that firm must prove that they tried to hire a Canadian first, and none could be found)… you get points if your spouse is a citizen…you get points if you are elderly, or very young… all totaled I come up to 68 points… and cannot immigrate to Canada unless I do something to get four points… a college degree would work… fluent French would work…. $750k would work…
What’s with all the Koup Klucks Klam freaks in here anyway???? Don’t you guys have a white sale on sheets at JCPenny to get to or something????
Canada even banns people from entry for having a DUI conviction… they don’t apply it fairly… because George W. Bush should have been turned away at the border based on their criteria…. I guess Stephen Harper made an exception for his neocon buddy.
Tripp said: “All the more reason to diversify our food production methods – mushrooms, perennial veggies, wildcraft, milk, a range of livestock. Just thinking out loud. ”
=============
Every time you “think out loud,” I learn something new. Feel free to do it more often.
JHK said, “Japan…shook all that off to become the world’s most dependably, civilized nation. And now, the sorrows of Job.”
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said, “The identity of the Japanese people is selfishness. The Japanese people must take advantage of this tsunami as means of washing away their selfish greed. I really do think this is divine punishment.”
If you believe in happy endings Job ends by saying, “the LORD restored Job’s fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.”
Maybe next year Japan will discover the key to room-temperature superconductivity.
In addition to the DUI, there was also the cocaine use, and the mass murder…
Try separating your post into two parts… that sometimes works for me. You are taking it personally… which means you are definitely a person.
After extensive surfing I’m tending to disregard what I was taught when I was 12 years old and go with the almighty internet, Niemoller . There does appear to be some controversy about the precise origin. I’ll go with Niemoller but I’m not willing to say definitively I’m wrong and that he is the absolute origin.
I base my identity on what I do and noton what I believe. It matters little to me who actually said the quote first. A quote worth remembering has a timeless quality and life beyond the mortal lump of flesh and bones that gave it birth.
Having Niemoller as the author does make a lot more sense. But that, like the relative frequency of internet citations, is not absolute proof.
Since the Internet is full of misinformation, I often go to the library reference section and look at a real reference book when there is a doubt about who said something:
SOURCE: “Humankind – Wisdom, Philosophy & Other Musings.” (1988). In Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations.
Puzzler, it is now 3/15 EST and nine reactors are in crisis and four are in flames.
I’m not sure the MIT information you link to holds anymore. We are in uncharted territory here.
I’m going with Martin Niemoller with a better than 95% confidence rating. He gets my vote. Apparently the quote had a life before it had an author. There was also dispute about the exact wording of the original. Niemoller was said to have made it for the first time in 1946 in a sermon.
I heard it attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in or around 1962. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong but my 5% of doubt comes from having an open mind. I wonder if there was a letter by Bonhoeffer that Niemoller read before he delivered his sermon. Letters and notes were used extensively for communication back then and we are talking about a very tight knit group of men.
My ‘surfing’ of course did not include Wikipeadia which I have permanently blocked.
I suspect neither of these men would care who the credit goes to.
“The identity of the Japanese people is selfishness….”
They are also very proud.
What will win?
Is the Tsunami enough?
I do not think so, they will deny the evidence, against any law of smartness.
If you are in need, and they are, you´d better play the humble part.
Nobody likes to help a proud, self sufficient liar.
Nevertheless I whatch TV and I can just see desperate people, humans like me who in a few minutes lost all what they had, including dear ones.
My heart is with them, because I strongly believe that behind any facade of greed or selfishness or proudness, there is a frighthened human beeing, who asks himself: is it worth to be a survivor?
Well, I guess the “smoking gun” really is in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Great work again, JHK! Right up there with “Wake ME, Shake Me”!
You said it before, “something’s in the air.” Now it’s radiation along with everything else.
My thanks to the racial reality posters. The Department of Justice has just decided that since too many minorities are still failing the exams, the city of Dayton must revise its grading system. That’s how an F becomes a D.
Yes Vlad, I too would like to see that Strong Man. It may not be entirely appropriate in this context, but it was said of Lincoln …” And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down as when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, goes down with a great shout upon the hills, and leaves a lonesome place against the sky.”
We haven’t had a leader in my lifetime who could inspire that kind of sentiment.
Obama? Oh, yo, you betta call me mista
cuz I be dat Harvard slicksta
cuz I be dat Hillary tripsta
cuz I be dat hip-hop hipsta …
It goes on and on but I don’t have the music yet.
Gonna put on some black face and jug ears, do a numba, man! Gotta go viral!
Yo, word up, I’m out!
SubEmpire;
You state … “if I get some money together I’ll leave for Europe”.
Why would you leave Vermont, SEmpire? Except for the rather harsh climate it seems like a pretty cool place, tolerant and open to any new Ideas that might come down the pike. ‘Specially Burlington.
Coupla of years ago the VT Secession movement, led by a Middlebury College Prof., was gathering some strength. They even had their own flag made up. I had alot of fun with that whole thing on my frequent visits up there, in a good natured way of course.
Your posts on the modern applications of LE are spot on.
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I have to concur with some of the earlier posters here; BBC is the best place by far to get international news.
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Vlad, I’m not familiar with the book you mentioned, but I have read many of Harry Turtledoves revisionist novels. They border on science fiction but they are also effective social commentary.
WageL, point taken about the word ‘Comrade”. However, I will stick to my main point that you, as I’ve noticed with many Libs, seem to lack any sense of humor. For Christ sake lighten up. There’s mush happening but the world is not ending any time soon.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
John Birch Unit
New England Chapter
Al Jazeera English has a full, live video feed on their website 24×7. It’s useful.
wow, the world’s ending again? pretty good livin’ in lots of places still tho’, wake me when jeezis lands.
shalom to my jap friends, any help i can offer them i’m there
Incredible and disgusting perfectly describes the TV program, “Cops.” I recently spoke with an ex-reserve sheriff’s deputy who told me that most of these men choose this occupation out of a desire to inflict pain and control over others. And our society which glamorizes these thugs has given them permission to bring down their version of justice on anybody they so choose. If you are ever unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of these skin-heads with a badge you will understand perfectly. Many cops are looking for any reason possible to knock the crap out of you. Submit or you will be tazered or beaten to a pulp with a black jack.
{This is insane – I’ve been seeing that JHK’s webmaster? has been running an algorithm to block posts that contain too much text that is pasted in – but now the damn thing has blocked a completely original typed post of mine – and I can’t copy/past it back in to make it stick.}
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prog, methinks the algorithm fairly simple… it looks for a list of “suspicious” words such as brand names, web site names, dirty words, etc. as far as i can tell, it’s trying to block spam and juvenile sexual-scatological rants (all the while allowing the sterling wit & repartee for which cfn is known…)
sometimes i cannot understand why i am blocked — perhaps the “blog owner” screen is also used as an all-purpose placebo which comes up when the server chokes or its power blinks, whatever. anyone who’s ever designed a user app knows that it’s always easier to act like it’s the user’s fault.
for goog1e’s “chrome” browser, at least, the back button will take you back to the text you just typed. however, that handy “return to what you were doing” button on the err-screen blows your work into the great beyond. (movable type [malevolent twirp] has a sense of humor.)
Wagelaborer;
I’ll be dropping the ‘John Birch’ appellation I’ve been signing my posts with since a few days ago when you said I was a member. I checked out their web site, yes, they are still active, a relic from by-gone cold war days. From what they say on their site, and what others write about them, they would probably admit me but kick me out after a short time, probably even before my probationary period ended. Reason being, they’re big into conspiracies, and I think any conspiracy theory is a lot of bullshit. Life is too chaotic and dynamic, the world too complex, for conspirators to effect events either large or small. Added to that if two people conspire for some nefarious deed, after a day or two, one of them, maybe both, will talk and spill the beans. End of conspiracy.
Its kind of like when I was a local steward in my union (for about 5 years) The union glad too have me on the job, but didn’t appreciate me down at union hall when I’d complain about having to defend people who were fired, saying , after looking into the matter, they deserved to be fired, it was a waste of union resources. But I’d do my best for them anyway. Many time they were just f–kups who would get into trouble again a few months later.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England chapter
Thanks, much appreciated.
{My heart is with them, because I strongly believe that behind any facade of greed or selfishness or proudness, there is a frightened human being, who asks himself: is it worth to be a survivor?}
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as always i’m immersed in the news of the world, vicariously horrified by what’s happening in japan. from time to time i make an effort to remind myself that this world is not merely all about me, that is to say, that what i think & how i feel is of no real importance to anyone but myself. it’s not as there are a bunch of people around a huge table shouting, we must find out what orionoir thinks about this!
and so my thoughts turn to cormac mccarthy’s “the road,” how his slow careful prose caught for me the spirit of people who do not give up, even when giving up’s the last sensible thing to do.
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in my humble opinion, jhk’s understanding of international finance seems clouded by the same morality that makes his sociological analysis so clear. he believes that nations, economies, banks and other abstract entities “deserve” this or that fate. in this way he is heir to the religious conviction that colonized this land, the idea that, because there is no such thing as a free lunch, bad things will happen to those who get their lunches for free; and if they have yet tb punished, that only means their eventual comeuppance will be all the more severe.
with lunchtime morality it’s easy to see calamity as its own reward, eg, to look at the devastation of japan and say, hey, they had it coming. to look at the world’s devastation in this same way, hanging an analysis of cause and effect upon a scaffolding of the way things are ‘sposed to be, is as invalid as the science of biblical literalists, who stretch biology across the frame of ancient texts.
unlike the united states, which was able to shop its way out of 911’s crater, japan will have to ask for help. the human consequences of the escaping radiation are likely tb tragic & insidious. and as if the human and environmental catastrophes are not enough, a long-deferred financial catastrophe now approaches.
to me it doesn’t seem a good time to be long the us dollar. still, i keep returning to an old idea… on a global scale, credits and debits sum to zero. that is to say, in some fundamental sense, japan’s debt (and america’s, and europe’s, etc) is mirrored by other nations’ (eg, china’s) surpluses. nations rise and nations fall, of course; but in a global world, huge reserves of other nation’s currencies and assets aren’t worth a damn if those nations don’t survive & thrive.
the marshall plan saved post-war america as much as it did europe. china’s leadership probably understands this.
Coming to Canada is no bed of roses. For one thing we have a lot of Canadian born unemployed with established Canadian employment histories, Canadian educational and professional and trade credentials. An employer would look at them before he would look at an immigrant who may not speak good English, may have foreign credentials that are difficult to verify. Typically an immigrant will work in low paying temp contracts at first that are below his level of experience and education.
An example: I used to know an immigrant from India that came to Canada in 1990 just at the start of a brutal recession. The guy was an eastern European educated engineer. For years he worked in crap jobs and couldn’t afford to bring his wife and son from India. Finally in 1996 he got a decent paying job as an engineer at a large downtown hotel and convention centre complex and was able to bring his family over.
If you live in a country that has comparable standards of living it isn’t worth coming here and starting over.
Japan can dig themselves out of this, the Japanese make Japan, they have good DNA.
In contrast America is now Obama, and what is that you ask? The last public debate for Chicago’s mayorship was a couple of hours of boredom where the biggest issue was that all the candidates HAD to agree to slavery reparations.
Movie recomendation, “The Island of Dr. Moreu.”
Tusconspur;
Seen on CSpan book TV this weekend, a new biography on Obama by an author from Great Britain, a BBC reporter.
Although sympathetic to Obama, he does point out that Obama’s dad, also named Barack, was an alcoholic who had 6 wives (at the same time) . A third world Marxist from Kenya, he liked to dress up in leopard skins and wear beads. He died in a car wreck while drunk in Kenya.
His grandfather was a Mau Mau witchdoctor, active in the brutal 1960 Mau Mau war against Great Britain.
His mom was also a confirmed Marxist whose main goal in life was to bed down with men from the 3rd world.
Quite a heritage for the President of the United States. It’s almost unbelievable.
This is probably one biography I won’t buy. And I buy a lot of Biographies.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Tusconspur;
Seen on CSpan book TV this weekend, a new biography on Obama by an author from Great Britain, a BBC reporter.
Although sympathetic to Obama, he does point out that Obama’s dad, also named Barack, was an alcoholic who had 6 wives (at the same time) . A third world Marxist from Kenya, he liked to dress up in leopard skins and wear beads. He died in a car wreck while drunk in Kenya.
His grandfather was a Mau Mau witchdoctor, active in the brutal 1960 Mau Mau war against Great Britain.
His mom was also a confirmed Marxist whose main goal in life was to bed down with men from the 3rd world.
Quite a heritage for the President of the United States. It’s almost unbelievable.
This is probably one biography I won’t buy. And I buy a lot of Biographies.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
A kid I heard of was sent to Europe for a college graduation present.
While there, he got drunk and mooned the Acropolis.
And was arrested by the Greek police.
He comes home, applies for a job as a teacher and finds out that he is on a sex offender registry and can’t be around children.
I think that things have gone too far. But I think that about a lot of things!
We are in uncharted territory here.
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Thank you for NOT calling it unchartered territory … another common cause of teeth grinding.
But, returning to a previous topic, you asked me a question about the government “renting” soldiers and I responded but you never replied back. Armies have used mercenaries throughout history. KuhDaffy is using mercenaries. Why should the US be any different?
Cops is something (like the charlie sheen show and some show where a guy stuffs himself with obscene amounts of food) that I only see at work, when someone else has the TV on.
The other day I walked in while they were beating some perp (“bad guy”) and I commented on how degenerate our country is. Why is police abuse and public humiliation (i.e. Jerry Springer) presented as entertainment?
My co-worker pointed out that the last time things were this bad the Colosseum was full of Romans cheering as the lions ate the Christians.
You sound as if you want to be left alone and live in peace which is absolutely fine. I’m with that and I’m also with being able to smoke a joint and maybe being able to chew some khat with a Somali immigrant buddy of mine without worrying who’s looking.
But. There’s always a but. The times, they are a changin’ Suburban and we need to be mindful of what’s coming. Most of the world doesn’t share our values and we have to face that and discuss it without worrying about being smeared as racist when the issue is culture and not race.
In Ontario a few years back we were near to instituting Sharia family law for Muslims. There was a shitstorm of protest from Muslim women here and others who knew full well what Sharia law meant for Muslim women and girls. In the end our Premier saw the politics correctly and canned the idea and not only Sharia law but any religiously based family tribunals. One system of law for everyone in other words.
But the Sharia law issue will for sure re-surface as more and more Muslims pour into Canada from around the world. For now Muslims are a minority but demographics are ever changing. Muslims don’t generally suffer from notions of cultural and religious inferiority, they are believers and we are not. Religious and cultural separatism is an idea that will not go away.
I’m not picking on Muslims. A lot of people from India are coming here also (Hindus) whose record of peaceful co-existence with Muslims in India and Pakistan is not that great. They also live with a caste system that’s illegal in India (or so I’ve heard) but which exists nonetheless. So does a caste system have any place in Canada? To bring up the issue is not a question of being racist. It’s a question of human rights.
You probably noticed that India is a nuclear armed power and so is Pakistan and they are usually at daggers drawn. So will Muslims and Hindus be able to peacefully co-exist here in Canada? Or are we going to be faced with a lot of sectarian violence? I don’t have a crystal ball but generally I would say that past behaviour is a pretty good predictor of future behaviour.
My parents’ own ethnic group isn’t exactly as pure as the driven snow. The Mafia is a Sicilian thing but there is worse than the Mafia from mainland Italy. Societies of absolute zeros called the Camorra and N’drangheta have sunk roots here and are creating mayhem. There is also another gang of cut-throats called the Sacra Corona (Sacred Crown). I don’t know if they’re active here but I wouldn’t be surprised. These are not the colourful people people you see in Hollywood movies. They leave a trail of dead bodies and destroyed lives everywhere they go.
Let’s not be sissies about these issues. Immigrants can bring good things here. But the opposite is also true.
Liberals have been pushing the the idea of a multicultural paradise for 40 odd years. As long as culture is just colourful costumes and quaint folk dances. But culture goes a lot deeper than that. IMO multiculturalism is a fool’s errand and people that push the idea have given no thought as to what it means in practice and/or its effects on social cohesion and national unity.
You may want to live in peace. So would I. But whether we’ll be able to is another question.
So a nun went out to talk to the foreman of some construction workers building near the convent.
“Can you get your men to clean up their language, please?”, she said.
“Well, ma’m, my men are real men and they call a spade a spade” the foreman answered.
“No, they don’t” said the nun. “They call it a fucking shovel”.
I agree with your post. And what I find so ironic is that you never see those jackboots taking down white collar criminals. Thus, reinforcing the societal dogma that it is “them” or “they” that are the root of all crime. Poverty in and of itself does not breed crime, it is the consetration of poverty that does so.
I don’t trust the Red Cross either. They were caught after 9-11 AND Katrina, withholding funds.
I think that you can trust Oxfam though.
A “bad choice” is buying a FIAT.
Let the Arab League implement its own no-fly zone. We should implement a NO-CARE zone. – Grossdeutschland
Let’s also implement a no care zone around another gigantic bore and waste of time: Israel and Palestine.
How long as this been going on now? 100 years plus? The sooner they realize everyone is ignoring them the sooner they’ll settle their squabble.
“Armies have used mercenaries throughout history. KuhDaffy is using mercenaries. Why should the US be any different?” -Q.
Boy, seems like you’ve got a lot of faith in the moral rectitude of the USofA. Were you joking, or do you really feel that employing merc’s (as is current here and abroad) is “acceptable”?
This just in: in Canada’s study guide for would be citizens it says that certain “barbaric” practices like honour killings and female genital mutilation are unacceptable.
Well. Apparently the term “barbaric” is too strong meat for Liberals. Too judgemental. Justin Trudeau (son of Pierre Trudeau) wants it removed.
Most of the country is small L liberal and no doubt would agree.
We’re doomed.
Bassy22 said, “the Christians i know in my backwater southern town tend to be pleasant and honest people… many are in fact quite happy… ignorant Christians would make more reliable and empathetic friends in thl than hip intellectual atheist.”
And when the happy pills run out?
And how many athiests do you know personally?
Ah, yes, the eternal cry of the bully-
“I was only kidding! Wassa matter? Can’t you take a joke?”
Don’t threaten people. And tell your fellow liberals to stop with this crazy pattern of anti-white hysteria which makes you as guilty as any 1930s’ Nazi of inciting racial hatreds.
Interesting I assume by “strapping” you mean gun ownership, then why do you tolerate the gun-control cult that infests the left?
Speaking of gun control the ever cynical left is trotting that out today. For some background gun control as an issue is what struggling Illinois Democratic pols first reach for in times of political need.
So what the Obama admin is doing is riling up the white conservative base till they overreact and scare the moderate white soccer mom types back to the Ds. Is this responsible leadership? No, but the goal is political power so this race baiting excercise is as important as any nuke disaster in Japan.
So Ozone head back to Kos for the lastest soundbite aimed at “white racist teabagging gun nuts.” And stop threatening me, my wife and my children just because we are white and conservative.
Maybe you can find out how the Japanese rescue teams get their funding. (The guys we see helping at natural disaster sites world-wide?) Or some resources that they always have need of?
Whoops, sorry.
Obviously, that wasn’t for Orionor.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it so far today but babies are being tossed out with the bath water in markets around the world.
I monitor a slew of stock screens (gold, silver uranium, banks, coal, high dividend payers, infrastructure, etc) and the ONLY thing up is solar.
JHK’s contention re US treasuries: “and, anyway, who would step forward now to buy this crap under any circumstances? (Echo answers….)” is, thus far, proving wrong. In fact, those treasuries are being bought big-time as a “flight to safety.” In the longer term, though, I believe Jim will be right.
Or maybe Doctors without Borders?
Qshtik,
Read and weep. Or laugh. Not sure which.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/14/adrian-macnair-im-not-drunk-officer-its-a-medical-condition/
Since Obama’s issue of the day beyond golf, parties and the all important basketball tournament is gun control let me give you non-Illinoisans some background into Chicago Democratic politicians MO.
Day after day in the Chicago area there are henious crimes committed that guns are involved in, and these are nearly all committed by minorities. The politicians have no answers, NONE, all of liberalism has failed, hideously failed, and because of PC nothing can be said without upsetting some of the various cults. This leaves gun control as the talisman that is waved over the heads of population. (Jesse Jackson is on record calling the gun industry a white supremacist plot)
So the politicians flail away at some gun owning Bubbas hoping for a miracle. BTW Rudolph Guliani practiced the only gun control that worked, his police officers stopped and frisked minorities in NYC for guns, but I would guess we cannot go back to that pratical measure, can we?
Your reply is exactly what I was referring to.
No threat; solid warning.
I hate your “ideas”, not your color or self-ascribed “label”. You’re not seeing anything close to the big picture here. You have waaaaay too much faith in authority figures, and that’s going to buy you a lot of unnecessary trouble.
Ps. I’ll have to see what a “Daily Kos” is. I don’t cotton to talking points or “memos for followers” from any compass-point. What website or radio/teevee “source” do you get YOURS from?
The Christians I know may very well be pleasant people personally, but they’re quite hateful on a societal level.
They think that the “bad guys” on Cops deserve their beatings, that people in prison should be killed to save the taxpayers money, that people in other countries can be killed by the millions if the President says so, that women should be forced to carry fertilized eggs to term, but that the resulting children should not get welfare money or health care.
And they salivate over the “Left Behind” series, in which non-Christians are tortured and killed.
But, yeah, they’ll smile and say “Hi” quite pleasantly when they greet you.
Wagelaborer stated: “My co-worker pointed out that the last time things were this bad the Colosseum was full of Romans cheering as the lions ate the Christians.”
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While I appreciate the sentiment, I think it understates the mentality of the witch trials.
Cheers
trip said, “There are no rich experiences, threads of knowledge passed on between the young adult with no life experience or wisdom, and the child.”
Today I was trying to teach my 2 year old daughter the name of one of the herbs in the garden, and I said “yarrow” to which she mimicked “yay-yo”.
Damn, not exactly the rich experience I was aimin’ for…”
I don’t understand. You’re apparently unaware of two things. One, the uncommon experience of a parent/child interaction involving botanical knowlege, a rarity in modern America. That is commendable. Two, you’re apparently unaware of the thick southern accent you’ve acquired. Ya’ll sound like a northerner with muscle relaxers injected directly into both jaw bones. “Yay-yo” sounds about right…
I agree, there have been multiple other instances of murders enthusiastically attended by cheering crowds.
I’ve read that whole villages in Germany had their female populations killed as witches.
Doesn’t our good ally, Saudi Arabia, hold public beheadings on Fridays?
Did you see the cheering Americans when Baghdad was destroyed in “shock and awe”?
I agree. For now it’s a flight to safety. But in time it will be a flight from loss.
There are only two useful ideas from that most rotten with ideology and corrupted by moneyed interests and wretchedly discredited realm of academic endeavor: economics. 1) There is no such thing as a free lunch. 2) If something can’t go on forever it won’t.
Both ideas apply here.
Hot off the press:
I am seeing a two-headed Janus Obama/Biden on one side, and a Wal*Mart on the other.
I wonder how this cost analysis will be revised when inflation requires striking a new batch with seven zeroes after the one…
What do you think of the gun controllers on the Left? Are they not an authority figure? To be respected?
What ideas? The only “idea” I have ever espoused here is that the blank slate theory is bunk. The BST is god to authority today, wealth is stripped from people in a quiotic effort to create the new man.
In PO news on the radio today the oil sands have a PR campaign claiming that in a few years they will supply 25% of America’s demand.
Wagelaborer stated: “I agree, there have been multiple other instances of murders enthusiastically attended by cheering crowds.”
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Wagelaborer, no doubt in my mind as to the rampant insanity of this world.
Yes, Germany had quite a history during the witch trials.
Cheers
Were you joking……….
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Oz, you would need to trace back through the thread of my conversation with Asoka to understand my comment re mercenaries. I am not into doing that leg-work for you today. Basically, I’m talking dollars and cents, not morals.
*on the dollar coin*
“I am seeing a two-headed Janus Obama/Biden on one side, and a Wal*Mart on the other.
I wonder how this cost analysis will be revised when inflation requires striking a new batch with seven zeroes after the one…” BustinJ
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LOL Priceless!
…and just how has smelting, layering, and striking metals become “cheaper” than pressing ink to paper?
“BTW Rudolph Guliani practiced the only gun control that worked, his police officers stopped and frisked minorities in NYC for guns, but I would guess we cannot go back to that pratical measure, can we?”
Oh, and they want to flaunt the Constitution by illegally stopping and searching and illegally confiscating private property – from brown or black people, as long as Bubba can be spared.
Nice people!
Even worse than ‘Cops’ are all the prison shows on MSNBC; Lockdown, Lockdown Raw, Lockdown Extended stay, and others on networks like National Geographic, presenting imprisoned, sometimes brutalized people, men and women, for our entertainment and enjoyment. These shows end up, without exception, in the ‘SHU’, Special Housing Unit, where human beings are locked up in windowless underground cells for weeks and months at a time. The guards are presented as heroes, the prisoners getting what they deserve. Look, I realize that prison is full of bad people, but doesn’t the administration, as well as the state, bear some responsibility for the inmate on inmate violence that occurs so frequently there? And why put this shit on TV?
I’m convinced that the reason behind shows like Lockdown Raw is to scare the shit out of people, saying to them, “Look here, you can end up in a place like this, too. Do you think you could survive it? Better walk the straight and narrow and do what we say”.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Alrighty.
I don’t remember that dust-up. That’s likely a “good” thing? ;o)
MarlinFive54 asked: “Do you think you could survive it? ”
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Not sure, but from what I’ve heard about what goes on in prison in terms of prisoners brutalizing one another, I think I’d rather have the solitary confinement if I had to make a choice.
I’ve also read that a lot of the brutality is winked at by guards who use the biggest thugs among the prison population to be their enforcers, saving them extra and potentially hazardous effort as well as keeping the “big thugs” more docile since they’re getting what they want. I have no idea of how generally true that assertion might be, but I’d guess it is almost certainly happening in some prisons.
Cheers
You want to hear about failure?
In this country we have a problem with gun violence in large urban areas mostly involving hand guns. It’s not as bad as in the US but it’s still a fairly large problem.
So what did our Liberal govt cook up? A gun registry for long guns.
You might ask, as I did, if the problem is hand guns what the fuck are you doing forcing registration of long guns?
Not only that, but it cost more than 1 billion Canadian dollars (currently trading at just above parity with the US$). Yes, you read that right, one BILLION dollars.
You might also ask, as I did, how the fuck do you manage to piss away a BILLION on a fucking database? Databases are a dime a dozen, they already exist for vehicle registries etc. Old technology, no big deal. Right? Wrong. This is our federal govt which cannot touch anything without fubaring it totally.
I personally have no problem with gun control. But if the problem is handguns, many smuggled from the US, what on earth are we doing pissing away dough on registering hunting rifles?
Oh, Canuck liberals say, our Police Chiefs all say the long gun registry is a good thing. Yes, but the cops on the beat say it’s useless.
So you see newworld, stupidness and it’s attendant handmaidens, conformity to rock-rigid ideological agendas and blind partisanship, isn’t a uniquely American phenom.
Oh, and did I mention after throwing away a BILLION dollars on a useless measure we ended up not enforcing registration of hunting rifles anyway. One BILLION pissed away for absolutely nothing.
Bienvenue au Canada.
Wage, I’ll contend their is a difference between those who claim to be Christians and those who actually are.
Ask those ‘Christians’ who advocate that bad guys on Cops deserve beatings, or those who think people in prison or anyone else should be killed or those ‘Christians’ who think poor children should not get welfare or health care to explain the Sermon on The Mount to you.
They won’t be able to.
Christ be he as real as the blue sky or as phony as a three dollar bill had teachings and like a good quote these teachings have a life of their own, beyond the author.
Which leads me to a question for all:
If an Atheist accepts Christs teachings as found in the Sermon on The Mount what are they?
Cash asks: “You might ask, as I did, if the problem is hand guns what the fuck are you doing forcing registration of long guns? ”
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I wonder if they’re more worried about facing irate citizens in open country than they are about acts by criminals?
Cheers
More fine ideas and assumptions.
These will do nothing for you and yours.
They’re not useful or productive, but I’m positive you will clutch them close.
…nor are they worth the engagement, IMHO.
“I wonder if they’re more worried about facing irate citizens in open country than they are about acts by criminals?” -M
Absolutely.
Interesting little story about the kid mooning the Acropolis? Wagelaborer, then not being able to get a teaching job. With everything you’ve ever done inscribed in some data base now, in this computer age NOTHING IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS FORGIVEN. This point should be driven home to all kids in grade school thru high school. ‘Be cautious in what you do at all times. Any transgression now will be with you forever’.
It’s a hell of a way to live, but that’s the reality of it.
-MARLIN
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
You got that right, montsegur!
“Which leads me to a question for all:
If an Atheist accepts Christs teachings as found in the Sermon on The Mount what are they?”
An atheist.
Yeah, the nuns used to threaten the kids that things were going into their permanent record.
Now it’s true.
And the US is working on collecting DNA from everyone.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Also, I was complaining on a radio show about the fingerprint and DNA collection and a guy called in to tell me his story.
As a grade school student in Florida, they had collected his fingerprints. They did it in a innocuous, Sgt. Friendly kind of way.
Hah!
Then, a couple of years, he was driving in another state. He had been working on a shed, and his fingers were torn up. He got stopped for a traffic violation, and taken in. Then they checked his prints and, guess what? His fingerprints were on file and they accused him of trying to alter them, and kept him for a few days, until he could someone to bail him out.
Qshtik said: “But, returning to a previous topic, you asked me a question about the government “renting” soldiers and I responded but you never replied back. Armies have used mercenaries throughout history. KuhDaffy is using mercenaries. Why should the US be any different?”
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Q., I am involved in an adobe project right now and don’t have a lot of time. My only point is that duties (like providing security) that used to be done by soldiers were suddenly contracted out to private companies like Xe (formerly Blackwater) and the soldiers I have talked to were resentful that Xe employees were receiving twice the pay or more for doing the same duties that government-paid volunteer army grunts could do just as well.
The private company could not do the job as cheaply as the government GIs could.
Of course, government enterprises do not have CEO compensation schedules in the millions of dollars, or multi-million dollar golden parachutes, or million dollar year-end “incentive” bonuses, or any of the other expensive and wasteful perks granted by the private sector which makes the private sector not competitive with the government. See VA versus private health for other examples.
Germany is temporarily shutting seven older nuke reactors in wake of the catastrophe in Japan:
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110315-33727.html
I wonder how the French are reacting. A large part of their electricity is provided by nuke power.
Cheers
Found it: “The French government said Tuesday that it had ordered safety checks at the country’s 58 nuclear plants, in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis. Roughly 75 percent of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power – the world’s highest proportion. ”
from http://www.france24.com/en/20110315-france-orders-safety-checks-nuclear-reactors-energy-japan
I must have missed a page or two, but what is the “blank slate theory”? Thanks.
Panic is setting in
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110315p2a00m0na018000c.html
LaughingasRomeWasBurningDown asked:”but what is the “blank slate theory”?
=========================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
Cheers
Thanks much!
But who knows what the hell newworld thinks it means, is the question.
It clearly is a right wing thing he’s spouting, but I’ve never been exposed to that particular right wing meme.
Perhaps he’ll elaborate.
“Which leads me to a question for all:
If an Atheist accepts Christs teachings as found in the Sermon on The Mount what are they?”
I would say the atheist is significantly closer to God, whom he denies, than is the hypocritical zealot who who defies the God he claims to be devoted to by consistently ignoring the teachings in his own day to day life.
Hey, Tripp, have you posted this? One of my Facebook friends did, and I thought that others might want to see it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html
Oh, wait. I think that Vlad uses that phrase, and he means that black people are genetically stupid and violent. That the slate is all full up before the baby is born.
Perhaps newworld belongs to the same sect as Vlad.
“I’m convinced that the reason behind shows like Lockdown Raw is to scare the shit out of people,”
-marlin-
Marlin – you are indeed an optimist to be thinking that there is a “reason” behind any TV show – for some greater good besides selling stuff.
I don’t watch much TV – but it used to be that either Discovery, Nat. Geo, or the History Channel – during prime time would have at least ONE show, out of the three channels, worth watching.
Now it’s prison shows, alien abduction shows, American Pickers, and that infernal Pawn Shop show that never goes off the air – incessant pandering during prime time – on the EDUCATIONAL channels.
In other words, TV is a mirror to the lowest common denominator of America. The reflection is not flattering.
“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste…”
Rahm Emanuel.
Agreed!
Let’s liberate West Florida!
http://republicofwestflorida.org/img/West_Florida_Map_1767.jpg
May I butt in?
I like most of your posts, but wish we could get past this type of thinking. One generation can change the way they act or think. For example, prejudice & bigotry against the LGBT community is far less on the high school campuses I visit than it is for my parents generation. Do you think the German children of parents who were Nazi sympathizers hold onto those values?
Here are some words that come to mind:
*Self-fulfilling prophecy
*Fear
*Preconceived notion
*Stereotyping
Are crime stats ‘racist’?
If not what do they tell?
– on nuclear power –
They keep running a local interview with a Georgia Power spokesperson. Interview addresses the two nuclear reactors at Plant Hatch, Georgia – and the two new mega$$$ nuclear reactors now under construction at the same facility.
This spokesperson keeps repeating that, “the nuclear facilities in Georgia are designed to withstand a seismic event of a type that should only occur every 10,000 years.”
WTF! Seriously, WT Freakin’ F*ck!!
Last spring we had severe flooding. It was said to be the type of flooding that should only be expected every 1000 years – In other words, “A thousand year flood – with the implication that we won’t have another one for 999 years. ? ?
Are decision makers that stupid?
Do the seismologists, hydrologists, and engineers in this country NEVER talk to the PR people about their use of terms?
And what are the odds of a 10,000 year seismic event occurring – say, next month or next year.
Low odds – but catastrophic consequences – that just happened to the Japanese.
Short sighted, bean counting, capitalistic jackassed bastards have taken over everywhere. We’re never going to get rid of them until it is far too late.
===========
Personal notes –
Cash – GOOD STUFF this week. And your ideas about the fubar’ed nature of American and Canadian multiculturalism last week were very good, also.
Wage – nice spade joke!
Once upon a time [2 years ago?] a Brit I was working with said: ‘I cant move to the USA, there are 6 countries that are banned from the lottery’!
I KID YOU NOT!
Hey Prog, regarding the Pawn Stars, I really don’t watch much TV at home. However, it is great time waster whilst hangin’ round the firehouse waitin’ for an emergency. Ya gotta luv Chumley, the village idiot, They make him shoot all the crap which could blow up!
Me, I dont watch TV, except when im on the bike at the gym and cant avoid it.
Since i havent watched much TV in 40 years I AM SCHOCKED AT WHATS ON.
Especially the ‘RUBE GOLDBERG MAZE CONTESTANTS GO THRU TO WIN PRIZES'[cant remember name of show]
Eee gads..like the last days of Rome.
And Wifeswap!!!! yuk.
Where does ‘Tolerance’ lead?
Did Christine Daniels kill Mike Penner?
Google that term!
Let’s play “Who’s Your Favorite Scapegoat”. Insert any of the following:
– That ethnic group
– This skin color
– A certain Religion
– The Gov’t
– Politicians
– Bubba
– Dumbocrats
– Republicults
– Guns or Gun Nuts
– Abortion doctors
– Envirowacks
– Gang Bangers
– Dropouts
– Druggies
– War mongers
– Elitists
– V8 drivers
– Hummers
– Southerners
– Trailer trash
– McMansion, Faux Chateau or Garage Mahal inhabitants
– The rich/poor
– Greedy oil execs
– NASCAR
– Public teachers
– Unions
– Cops
It’s fun for one and all. Add your own.
Chad Mitchell Trio The John Birch Society Lyrics:
[By Michael Brown]
Oh, we’re meetin’ at the courthouse at eight o’clock tonight
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right
We hope you will be careful, we’d hate to be bereft
But we’re taking down the names of everybody turning left
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks
To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks
Now there’s no one that we’re certain the Kremlin doesn’t touch
We think that Westbrook Pegler doth protest a bit too much
We only hail the hero from whom we got our name
We’re not sure what he did but he’s our hero just the same
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Socialism is the ism dismalest of all
Join the John Birch Society, there’s so much to do
Have you heard they’re serving vodka at the WCTU?
Well you’ve heard about the agents that we’ve already named
[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/dlQ ]
Well MPA has agents that are flatly unashamed
We’re after Rosie Clooney, we’ve gotten Pinky Lee
And the day we get Red Skelton won’t that be a victory
Oh we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Norman Vincent Peale may think he’s kidding us along
But the John Birch Society knows he spilled the beans
He keeps on preaching brotherhood, but we know what he means
We’ll teach you how to spot ’em in the cities or the sticks
For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks
The CIA’s subversive and so’s the FCC
there’s no one left but thee and we, and we’re not sure of thee
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society holding off the Reds
We’ll use our hand and hearts and if we must we’ll use our heads
Do you want Justice Warren for your Commissar?
Do you want Mrs. Krushchev in there with the DAR?
You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin
If mommie is a commie then you gotta turn her in
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the Right
Join the John Birch Society as we’re marching on
And we’ll all be glad to see you when we’re meeting in the John
The John, the John Birch So- ci- i- teee.
Lyrics: The John Birch Society, Chad Mitchell Trio
Wipeout
Total Wipeout is a British game show, hosted by Richard Hammond and Amanda Byram that first aired on 3 January 2009. Each week, 20 contestants compete in a series of challenges in an attempt to win £10,000. These challenges are based in large pools of water or mud and generally involve large assault courses that participants must cross.
The show is a licensed version of Wipeout, the Endemol show that originated in the United States in 2008, with the name slightly altered to avoid confusion with the BBC version of the earlier game show of the same name. It has been confirmed by the BBC that the show will return for two more series which are to include celebrity specials.[1]
Do you know what that persons mental state was? Was tolerance the suicides cause?
It is always easy to find stories which support one side of an issue vs. another.
add anti-gun nuts and women drivers! ;o) to the list. sorry girls.
Asoka: “I am involved in an adobe project right now and don’t have a lot of time.”
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Qshtik: Acrobat or bricks?
=============
Asoka: “Xe employees were receiving twice the pay or more”
=============
Qshtik: Why on earth do you suppose the DoD would do such an apparently stupid thing?
=============
Asoka: “bonuses, or any of the other expensive and wasteful perks granted by the private sector which makes the private sector not competitive with the government”
=============
Qshtik’s quiz: Which response below was written by Q and which by Karl Marx:
1. Good point. The Fortune 500 companies would all be more effective and efficient if the government ran them without incentive programs.
2. You’re pulling my leg, right?
It’s my duty to convert the lost White Sheep of Clusterfuck. Now people haven’t transcended the gulf between “us” and “them” – you just created a new identity, a new us and a new them. Conservatives Whites are your “other” – and you hate them. The Minorities are your sacred cows whom you worship, protect, and usually avoid as much as possible! You folks usually know which side your bread is buttered on after all – even though your policies will ruin America in short order. Penny wise and pound foolish.
Hey, it’s so simple! Just when the West intervenes in Libya to protect the rebels, then Iran intervenes in Bahrain to protect the rebels.
Then the price of oil doubles.
Sometimes these things just hit me.
you really make the world an uglier place with talk like this.
Cairo is not the third world.
I believe a kardashian is a type of Persian rug.
Your world view will lead to the end of the West in another generation; it is a delusional view which leaves its adherents defenceless against the barbarians. As a Buddhist, you are dedicated to clear vision yet you are in an obviously altered state of consciousness 24/7. The invaders are amongst you multiplying on your dime, speaking their foregin tongue, and taking power at all levels – yet you think everything is OK – though in other posts you have revealed your anxiety. But now your ego has come to the fore and you will admit nothing. Typical.
Japan, Korea, China shudder at the thought of mass colored immigration. They know that it would end their ancient Culture – and that would be the same as spitting on their ancestors who sacraficed so much for them. How do you reverence your ancestors? By letting them take over America? And Europe? In Sweden you can’t even talk about the Muslim take over – it’s a hate crime. Swedish Culture isn’t too big on free speech is it? In Norway the goverment admits the Muslims are causing huge problems, but they vow to stay the course. What course? Who decided all this? There is no more fundamental question than who will comprise the People – yet you tell me to shut up. Sweedish blood perhaps or just Liberal Totalitarinism?
Sounds like a conspiracy to me – how else was his record sealed so completely? Also who financed his education? I say the Hand was on him from very early on.
Remember, the Founding Fathers believed in Conspiracies: they were very frightened of both the Cental Banking Conspiracy a la Hamilton and the French Illuminati. More to the point, how could they not believe in Conpiraices since they had been Conspirators themselves?
Tell them about Lincoln again – it was too late in the week last time. And then let them try and pretend that our Progenitors weren’t dyed in wool Racist White Men!
to answer your question, both myself and my business partner are closet atheist. not only because it would be bad for business, but also out of respect for our Christian friends. i personally dont feel i have to arrogantly and rudely belittle those with different views than i have. there are nice guys and assholes in every neighborhood, family and ideology. there are many super smart people who are Christians , conservatives, caucasian etc. btw thanks for not ragging my typos. i cant type for shit.
Cairo is not the third world.
===========
MM, the “day of rage,” such as it was, was in Saudi Arabia, not Cairo.
But, anyway … if not third world, in which world would you classify Cairo/Egypt? First, Second or Fourth?
I wonder if Jim has the time (or the inclination) to read all of these comments…
“Under the theory that life goes on until it doesn’t:” Exactly. Because that’s about all there is left at this point, theory. Things being so clearly shot to hell that any butterfly batting it’s wings on some elephants ass in outer nowheresville is all it’s gonna take to finally implode the whole decrepit mess. The whole world’s underpinnings give the appearance of being no more substantial than a sheet of wet Charmin.
Whatever one’s guesses about where things are headed in any of the world’s current hotspots, I gotta say I really resonated with your 4th para. where you recount having tried to follow the story on American cable & basically having your stomach turned more by most of the programming than by the carnage in northern Honshu. The US so clearly does deserve several times over what the Japanese are currently suffering. If there’s any”consolation” here, it’s that when the shit finally does get to America — and who seriously doubts that it will??– it’s gonna be just that much worse…
Saw on some MSM site the other day a comment that the catastrophe in Japan will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Moamarr Gadaffi. Truer words were ne’er spoke. Gives the American paper tiger the perfect cover for neglecting all of its hypocritical puffery about the Col.G. “having to go now”, & the legitimate concerns of the Libyan demonstrators & all the other BS –just long enough for things to get so far along that it can no longer be expected to support a rebellion so clearly doomed to fail. I wonder if Hillary feels any less soiled –than Bill did over Monica– at being the shill for the most duplicitous gov’t. the world has ever seen.
I really resonated with your 4th para
=============
No, Extra, you’ve got the expression all balled up. You did not resonate with the 4th para … the 4th para resonated with you.
Qshtik, a question: Did kids ever walk up to you in grammar school and smack you in the face for no apparent reason?
So very much red meat in Monday’s essay. My thoughts go though to American tv — what a bunch of crap! Only a few sources contain real news, and Clusterfuck Nation is one of them.
RE: Scapegoat List
-BP (Screw the Brits! No more English muffins for me. From now on it’s Freedom muffins only.)
“Things being so clearly shot to hell that any butterfly batting it’s wings on some elephants ass in outer nowheresville is all it’s gonna take to finally implode the whole decrepit mess.”
The central tenet of CFN, this should win a prize.
Bingo. One is reminded of when they told the Shiites to rise against Saddam giving the impression that they would help. They let the Shiites be slaughtered by Chemical Ali. We have no business in these fights at all. If our people are threatened, we have the right to attack – as we did long ago in Tripoli or as we did against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iraq was pure hubris nothing more; an attempt to take over for Zionist and/or Oil reasons.
Days of Rage have been occuring with real regularity throughout 2011 across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. If the Day of Rage on Friday January 28 in Cairo’s Tahrir Square was not the first(it may have been), it was arguably the most significant. Cairo, as the largest city in Africa and one of the major cultural capital’s of the ancient mediterranean world dating back over 5000 years, and being the primary springboard for western civilization and about ten times older than the “new world.”
horse-jizz, i’m guessing, is the male offering in the ancient recipe for making horses, yes? well, heck, who doesn’t like horses. more horses, please.
Cairo, as the largest city in Africa and one of the major cultural capital’s of the ancient mediterranean world dating back over 5000 years, and being the primary springboard for western civilization and about ten times older than the “new world.”
===============
sorry for the lack of proof-reading there… should say this instead.
Cairo, as the largest city in Africa and one of the major cultural capital’s of the ancient mediterranean world dating back over 5000 years, is the primary springboard for western civilization and about ten times older than the “new world.”
Kardashians are exotic blow up dolls – role models for our young women. They look kind of sexy, but there no big deal if you’ve lived in a large coastal city – there’s lots of exotic brown skinned women with voluptuous figures. There was an Armenian girl like this in one of my classes once. She hung out with the Hispanics and I just thought she was one at first. Some of the Armenians look Semitic and others more European. A very mixed people. The IAN ending on the name is usually Armenian.
My ancestors left Sweden because they were bored and cold. (And some of them got disowned by their families because they joined a nutty religion.) I do believe the blacks were in America (the were FORCED) before my adventurous ancestors.
The current bunch of Africans coming to America seem to have a whole different aura around them. They have great manners, perfect posture, and from what my son tells me, they study very hard.
I will tell you that young black men with their pants hanging down and the predator-like posturing scare me and I go out of my way to avoid them–especially if they are in a group.
SJmom
I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to pull your pants down when you’re in Greece.
My favorite scapegoats?
Snit-prone, alpha-moms of queen-bee teens.
Cheerleaders (their whole reason for being is to cheer and fawn over alpha-males)
Jen
Thinking the unthinkable… if the reactors in Japan all melt down and release catastrophic levels of radiation… Japan being a rather small area with 125 million people… and 400,000 already at subsistence level after the tsunami… I wonder if that country could be the first to go into post-industrial apocalypse ? Nuclear power would become unthinkable there, and peak oil is already here, and with such a large population on a small island with no energy resources, the Long Emergency may be accelerated in Japan. Unthinkable perhaps… but… possible.
On a personal note two friends of mine were about to got to Japan for an extended period. One lived there for 20 years and the other was going to join friends for the Cherry Blossom Festival.
I can’t imagine what that will be like this year as their friends tell them they are living with rolling blackouts and the uncertainty of how they’ll will get by…
Thinking the unthinkable, You are so right about that. They have said that there are radioactive readings now in Tokyo and even though the winds have been blowing in the opposite direction it seems that this is way out of control.
There are now only 50 people working on location and 4 reactors with problems, it’s hard to imagine that they can contain what is clearly out of control.
An article that speaks to your post in on The Oil Drum site:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7661
Hey SJ 51, give me a break! I am an Alpha Male! someone has to be a stand-up guy! I am not a chest beater, just a stand up guy you can count on. kind of like Spartacus! I do have your back! I am trained and willing to protect your butt. Peace.
Most excellent comment.
…and I, too, am a groveling admirer of Hillary and her exponentially expanding ass. ;o)
-“Woe betide thee of an ass measured in multiple axe-handles and thy ill-considered mouthings.” -Book of Tomfoolery and Shenanigans
“ass measured in multiple axe-handles” that is a good quote! I will have to use it with some of the folks at work! classic!
As long as your not beating your chest, I’m fine with Alpha Males. Smart alpha males are great.
Jet pilots who do carrier landings are too hot to handle.
RT,
Friend o’ mine was just by for a beer or 3, and I hear tell a buddy of his (race car builder) has constructed a sap-boiling setup of undeniable sexiosity! I will attempt to get inside dope and secret plans in due time. Last boil tonight; wish I could attend, but you know how difficult driving can be after such festivities. ;o)
RT,
(For all I know, it could be YOU. ;o)
“Thinking the unthinkable… if the reactors in Japan all melt down and release catastrophic levels of radiation…”
-newfie-
I am appalled and heartbroken, as a human being, at the suffering going on in Japan at the present time. The Atheists on CFN would prefer I not send the Japanese prayers, or even positive thoughts – so I will not voice my internal psychic sentiments and behaviors concerning the Japanese, at this time.
I do believe, though, that the Japanese will be OK in the long run. They are a tough, resilient, and intelligent race. I believe that they have made great effort, through the years, to keep their rice farmers and agricultural producers producing – through sensible subsidy. So, at least, their society could feed itself, before the final extremity.
Here’s some pure, bs-type theorizing – – It is possible that the nuclear events in the waning days of WWII may have given the Japanese some extra genetic *resilience* against chromosomal and somatic damage due to nuclear radiation, since only the survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were, themselves, able to reproduce – more viable survivors.
The Japanese will likely come out of this waving a Rising Sun flag and swinging solar panels – if left to their own devices.
I do believe they will likely forswear American- style nuclear safety and management techniques from now on.
Because these techniques seem to have some gaps.
“I am appalled and heartbroken, as a human being, at the suffering going on in Japan at the present time. The Atheists on CFN would prefer I not send the Japanese prayers, or even positive thoughts – so I will not voice my internal psychic sentiments and behaviors concerning the Japanese, at this time.” -PoC
C’mon, what [non-harmful things] you do in your own private space is no concern of mine. Really. Do as you think might be beneficial. Whose permission do you need to try and be helpful anyway? (Strictly a rhetorical question, as you could guess.)
Tripp –
Damn, man – I am so sorry about your turkey. First your goat in Macon is killed by dog(s), and now the turkey in Tifton is killed. Hopefully, you are getting the bad luck out of your system, as regards your livestock.
I don’t want to presume to tell you what to do, here.
============
(OK – you and all of CFN go ahead and laugh at that idea!)
(In fact, I’m pretty sure that digital laughter will be heard out at the DSL connection next to the power transformer as soon as I hit SUBMIT on this post!)
‘Cause I don’t mind admitting that I’m one of those alfalfa males that RT and SJ just referenced. And I do enjoy giving advice – as you, yourself, have noticed, on occasion. haha!
==========
So – – as soon as you stop laughing, Tripp – think about getting a dog for your place. With 300 acres you need a dog, or two, or three – and that much acreage will be able to support a dog or two, no matter what.
You know I like to have a large outside dog, because of where I am, next to National Forest. Mainly I need one with enough body mass to be able to stay outdoors 24/7 year-round to keep the deer and the bears off our place.
Your situation is different. Bobcats, etc. in your area will probably be used to the idea that it is best to stay away from the sounds and smells of a dog, regardless of the size of said canine.
So you might be able to have one or two smaller dogs. Personally, I like one primary dog and one small emergency back-up dog, for where I live. But that does get to personal preference.
Depredations on the broccoli late last summer, by rabbits, also led us to get a cat this winter. But that’s another topic for another post. So far though, Nugget, the cat, is working out OK – no mice on the decks, and no rabbits in the garden, to date.
“I do believe they will likely forswear American- style nuclear safety and management techniques from now on.” -PoC
Now, THAT is one helluva heavyweight topic for the “policy” dudes and dudettes! Many of us reg’lar folk (and Greg Palast, too) would like to listen in on those discussions.
Sorry, PoC; too much beer leaking into the rambling postings…. “Shut up and read”, shall be muh motto.
Hey, O3, I’m just poking at a couple of the CFN folks, and not at you.
“Do as you think might be beneficial. Whose permission do you need to try and be helpful anyway? (Strictly a rhetorical question, as you could guess.)”
-ozone- posted to PoC, regarding my positive thoughts and/or prayers as directed toward the Japanese islands.
So, please understand that I’ll never poke at you, Ozone – over religion. I believe that you and I came to a friendly understanding regarding The Long Emergency and religion months and months ago on this CFN thread.
And I do wish you the absolute best as regards your spouse. Things like that really take it out of you, as I well know.
=========
On another note, for those who keep up – our close family friend who bought the Buddhist good luck charm – at a store in Japan – just a few hours prior to the earthquake – that young man is now back in the States.
Personally, I’ll always get a laugh out of the emphatic energy in his mom’s facebook post – just 2 hours post-quake. “Young man, this is your mother speaking – you get out of Japan right this second – and you come home!”
If Momma ain’t happy – !!
Well done Prog – they are an intelligent race. That’s why they don’t sit around in their own shit waiting for godot (whitey) to come help them. Where is the looting like in New Orleans? Wherea are the rapes? The attacks on vulnerable Whites? The fighting for food? The gangs grabbing it and selling in as in Africa and Haiti? Just not there, a superior race indeed. We were once more like them – and I hope someday can be again once we have purified our Lands and Culture.
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2011/03/japanese_dont_l.php
Check out comment 43 in particular – the poster has an exquisite understanding of real diversity – which inevitably means segregation. The mark of a true lover is to sacrafice on behalf of the beloved. The poster truly loves the Japanese and forgives them for excluding Whites from the deeper parts of their culture. Now compare this to Asoka’s attitude to Whites and Western Culture. If you can grok all this, my case is made and you will be reborn as a White Man, no longer the typical Simpering Clown portrayed in media, but a Terrible Beauty, a White Nationalist.
I know, I know – I hope for too much. But if our reach does not exceed our grasp, than what is a heaven for?
A nifty little piece this week, following up on my dialogue with RippedThunder last night, entitled:
“Turning the T-ides of March”
http://www.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
It’s the expansion of my idea to create a legitimate carbon sink, and an explanation of why contributing to similar ideas in a larger format constitutes participation in a Ponzi scheme, and a waste of your time and money.
Mook, if you still have any interest in some sort of working relationship with Small Batch Garden, my PayPal portal is forthcoming. Should be online by Thursday. Even if it’s just 10 bucks to bribe the tree service to come out to the farm and bring me a load of hardwood chips in which to grow wine caps.
Cheers,
Tripp
MM,
Of the several uprisings in the ME and NA recently, only the one in Saudi Arabia, to my knowledge, pre-planned a specific date to start an uprising and billed it as a “Day of Rage.” If one of the other countries called their uprising a “Day of Rage” then I apologize for questioning what you posted.
As to the term “third world shit hole” used by another commenter, I am fairly certain (s)he was referring to Saudi not Cairo/Egypt. But, regardless, you took it as a slur against Cairo which you said was not “third world.”
Wikipedia defines “third world” (see link below)and provides a map showing the countries that make up the so-called first, second and third world. Despite their ancient and glorious history, Egypt is a third world country according to Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
Did kids ever walk up to you in grammar school and smack you in the face for no apparent reason?
==============
I take it from your response that you would much prefer that I had said nothing so you could continue to go around sounding stupid.
“Day of Rage.”
===========
MM, I did further research regarding the use of the term “Day of Rage” and it turns out I was wrong. That term was used beginning at least Jan 25th to describe the uprisings in a number of countries including Egypt. My apologies.
CFN already has Gregory Peck clearing his throat before every post–now we have Kirk Douglas too? Besides–I’m Sparticus!
POC said: “It is possible that the nuclear events in the waning days of WWII may have given the Japanese some extra genetic *resilience* against chromosomal and somatic damage due to nuclear radiation….”
Wasn’t that how Godzilla got his start?
Q. said: “Acrobat or bricks?”
===========
Bricks. 30 pounds each. Thermal mass that breathes. Thermal mass that both cools and heats… absorbing and protecting from sunlight in the day and then releasing the sun’s energy at night.
As a building material the earth is wonderful! Over 30% of the world’s population live in earthen structures, what you pejoratively call “mud huts,” as if that were an insult, as if there is something wrong with being poor.
Oil Prices Fall to Lowest Level in Weeks
Another JHK prediction falls. JHK always said that unrest in the Middle East or that an event like the disaster in Japan happened, then oil prices would surge to $150 and the DOW would fall to 4,000.
Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain. Iraq and Iran are pissed. Japan is in crisis… And the price of crude oil goes DOWN to below $100!
I always thought the Japanese were different, and they are.
Nevertheless I was born in Europe and I think I wouldn’t like to live anywhere else.
I always wondered how you can live in such a small space, sleep in a coffin-like bed, bowing before talking, smiling when you would like to shout and so on…
I think all this behavior is more a facade than inner feelings.
It is enough to see how easily they lie, even in front of evidence, to understand that their inner nature is but acting.
In front they bow and in the back they stub you.
When you see them, they perform the part of the ultra civilizes people, in the back they show their real nature.
In that article they were not thieves… ever read that ALL the Mediterranean tuna is caught by Japanese and shipped to Japan where it is sold at up to 1000 dollars a kilogram?
And in the 70s, they were thieves of technology, just as the Chinese are now…
I am sorry, I do not believe there is a race better than the other.
After all the psychological studies you find out that, as unpleasant as it can be, behind each of us there is a communal thing that is called human nature.
Maybe the TPTB think everything is under control. Similar thing happens when unemployment goes up, so does the stock market.
This assumes that TPTB influence the markets. Could this be a foolish assumption?
I agree with you. Genocide always happens when a strong man thinks he can pull shit and get by with it.
It’s a disturbing thought but mass murder could be part of the long emergency. Ways must be found to hold those who would instigate genocide accountable.
The problem is how?
On March 11, 2011 the world changed. Nothing is going to be like it was before.
We have entered the post-nuclear era.
A new era without delirium for nuclear energy.
Japan has sacrificed itself for us, certainly not voluntarily, but that’s what’s happened.
If the nuclear nightmare that has been with us since the end of the second world war, from Chernobyl to Three Mile Island, stops (and it will) we owe it to the sacrifice of millions of people escaping the Fukoshima cloud.
A biblical exodus. Not even imaginable.
Japan risks to become the “neverland”, a place you don’t enter and you don’t leave. A nuclear trap.
Which fleet will rush to help the population of the East of Japan?
Contaminated Japanese merchandise will no longer leave the country.
Perhaps the cloudy will reach Europe if the wind blows West.
The feeling of what happened is too big, too deep to stand.
People have immediately understood that the nuclear Era has gone forever.
Man is the most intelligent of all creatures of the Globe, infact he discovered the nuclear power, but no mouse (an inferior creature) will ever build a mouse trap…
Wage,
Ah ha, I’ve been looking around and found this:
Dr M.D. Magee
I’ve answered my own question. It comes from a rather large tome. I’ll be reading it for a while.
That’s for sure. Good to know this mote won’t get smote.
I tuned in BBC shortwave last nite hoping to get some accurate news about the reactors in Japan. There was plenty on that, but the main story involved political events in Bahrain, home of the US Navy’s fifth fleet. Demonstrators were shot down in the streets yesterday, possibly by Saudi troops with American made weapons, and hospitals treating the wounded were actually raided by police, doctors and nurses roughed up, cell phones confiscated etc. BBC hinted at Iranian influence among Bahranian demonstrators. It all spells trouble.
Hardly on the radar screen are the civil wars brewing in the Sudan, which is splitting into 2 countries in July, and the Ivory Coast, which has 2 presidents. These promise to be bloody and long lasting. BBC covered this as well.
I wonder if this a normal course of world events (every year has its own catastrophes), or the entropic disorders that JHK predicts in TLE in an energy starved world? What’s happening in Japan is no surprise to readers of Jim’s books; the diminishing returns of technology to meet everyday human needs in societies over reliant on technological wizardry. The talking heads on the cable news broadcasts seem actually surprised and put off to realize that nuclear power plants are a two edged sword, not to be taken for granted. At least that’s the attitude on CNBC.
I finally got out on my property as the snow is mostly melted and the mud drying up. Everything in pretty bad shape with much soil erosion and damaged fences due to this brutal winter. Also, ice damage on house and outbuildings. Yesterday, while sinking a fencepost, about a dozen deer (a herd?) walked thru passing within 20 ft. of me paying no attention to me whatsoever. Probably looking for something to eat after starving all winter.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Trippticket;
How are you losing your livestock?
Was that your only goat?
What Killed the Turkey?
Maybe time to take some security measures to protect that valuable livestock of yours. Better fences? I’m always working on my fences here. It’s never ending.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Thanks for that report on the ME.
The media always harps on one disaster as if there’s nothing else going on in the world. The result is that unwittingly, the media provides cover for the other political/military horrors going on at the same time.
Too bad they can’t seem to inform us of other important events that will affect us in significant ways.
The situation in Japan remains dire. Each day it seems to grow worse and worse as nuclear reactor cores become more unstable, risking a meltdown. What’s really shocking are some people’s reactions to the disaster. The Japanese are one of the few nations that aren’t trying to steal American jobs and aren’t hoping to mass murder us. I think they deserve our support (financial and otherwise) but some people seems to think the Japanese had this coming. If that’s the case, we’re all doomed.
At the Jersey shore, we’ve got an old, aging nuclear plant called Oyster Creek. That thing ought to have been shut down years ago but its still leaking and running. Gov. Christie is letting them run the plant WITHOUT a cooling tower until 2019. Not good. OK, we are not likely to get an earthquake (or tsunami) but I still got some KI pills (just in case). Last year, the Gulf coast got hit with an oil rig explosion but we can clean up oil, how do you clean up uranium/radiation? Seems like the contaminated area is usually abandoned for a long, long time. Does homeowner’s insurance cover nuclear disasters?
If we run out of oil, we’ve got the technology for wind and solar power. Plus we still have lots of coal and nat gas so industry/transportation, etc. won’t instantly be wiped out, more likely just more expensive and inconvenient. Somehow I’d rather deal with inconvenience rather than radiation sickness.
{he media always harps on one disaster as if there’s nothing else going on in the world. The result is that unwittingly, the media provides cover for the other political/military horrors going on at the same time.}
——
also, policymakers deliberately use disasters as cover for unpopular actions. pakistan’s release of cia-contractor raymond davis after us payment of “blood money” seems incidental when compared to meltdowns in japan, but who knows, years from now we may see this bargain as a critical landmark in what may well turn out to be an even more serious meltdown.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17pakistan.html?hp
Patrizia,
You’re fast revealing yourself as one of the more insightful posters on this message board–IMO. And you sew with a thread just right for the pattern.
“Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain. Iraq and Iran are pissed. Japan is in crisis… And the price of crude oil goes DOWN to below $100!”
Occam’s Razor would suggest that this round of catabolic collapse, or minor embedded wave at least, did not require the same highs as the last one. Demand must be imploding faster than most people counted on. Interesting twist to the plot in my opinion.
Anybody still think China and India are prepared to pick up all the slack that a US demand implosion leaves hanging?
POC, thanks for the good advice. We thought the donkey might take care of the interloper issue, but he can’t be everywhere, especially outside of his pasture. We ran something kind of large off this morning at about 4, sniffing around the rabbit cages. Dog ends up being a pretty good idea probably, but I think I’ll wait until the garden is fully fenced so I can keep said dog outside of the important bits. Dogs and gardens are not the best of friends. A bobcat might stay away from the main unfenced entry that smells so much like human, but a dog won’t think twice about it.
Goat was a learning experience, unfortunately, and his killer is dead. Turkey was a surprise gift and we were unprepared for turkey. The rest are pretty safe now. Thanks for the good advice.
Kurosawa’s Dreams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ZxTB8mqbk
I realize there are more pressing concerns, but when Art brings a tear to your eye, that a reason to celebrate, even if it’s only a nod of the head.
I’ve been listening to Patrick Kavanagh’s “Raglan Road” sung by Luke Kelly…my God, what a masterpiece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19qdV2vgM-o&feature=related
Vlad Krantz;
Lengthy article this morning in front section of Wall Street Journal about the large increase in the use of food stamps among residents of the state of Idaho. Historically, food stamp applications have been lower than average in your state; now, due to a collapsing traditional economy, they are on par with everywhere else, even places like NY.
Some say (in the article) that federal programs like food stamps belie the ‘independent spirit’ of citizens in the Northwest US.
How about it Vlad? Is the economy in Idaho that bad?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
“We ran something kind of large off this morning at about 4, sniffing around the rabbit cages…”
-tripp-
Yah – probably your turkey killer, come back for more. Some one of the good ol’ boys around there will have a game camera you could borrow and set up on your rabbit cages. That might let you get some good pictures of your predator’s behavior. Also – pictures will be time stamped, so you could pattern the thing and set up an ambush. I’m not sure, without checking, whether bobcats are legal to shoot year round in GA (like feral hogs) – probably not.
But on 300 acres when your livelihood is involved – sometimes you have to make your own game law – or else get a nuisance animal permit from the DNR.
We set up a game camera below our garden spot when we first moved up here three years ago. We would have a picture of a deer, then a possum, then a bear, then a coon, then one of the neighbor’s dogs, then another bear – all within 30 minutes of each other on the camera. Our outside dog put a stop to all of that – no ambushes necessary on my part.
And regarding dogs in gardens – people would be surprised how much of a deterrent a tiny strand of aluminum wire – hooked to a fence charger for just one week – is to your basic domestic canine.
We have wire just on two sides of our garden – and it’s been disconnected from the fence charger for over a year. My dogs look at me like I’m magic when I touch that wire. And they never even think about entering the garden.
=========
Good day for burning brush if the wind stays down enough. I’ve got two big piles of limbs left from 15 trees we had topped to get more morning sun on the garden and open up more of a mountain view. When I get rid of those piles – our place will be back to GA Forestry spec for wildland fire safety for the summer.
Better go get to work!
Thank you…
Any religion that advocates large families is a terrorist organization.
I think you have, perhaps inadvertently, answered WiseWebWoman’s question: “Are we better off knowing or not knowing of the reality that surrounds us?”
===========================================
Knowledge is always better than ignorance, of course. The question is, “can you handle the truth”. Most of us walk around believing in our “Security” as if we are guaranteed a full life (or eternal life). Ironically, this is more true for the “doomheads” around here than anyone else. The “doomheads” apparently just woke up recently from their dream of immortality and are shocked by the realization that life is truly vulnerable. Hence, all the flailing about stocking up on weapons and buying seeds. Get real people, if you live in an urban or suburban environment and the time comes that our food supply has degraded enough that you will need a supply of seeds, you’ll starve or die of disease before they produce a single bean. Survival will be more a matter of luck and geography than anything else.
Reality check: Life has always and will always be tenuous at best. A catastrophe that would make everything that has happened in the last few years look like a picnic was just narrowly averted during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Imagine a couple of hundred megatons of nuke explosions on the continental U.S!
As individuals we are all “doomed”, it’s just a matter of time. Get accustomed to not knowing what will happen next. You may not be here tomorrow, so live like you know it.
You’re right, everyone deserves to be judged on their own merits. On the other hand there is such a thing as cultural continuity.
Here’s one example: Recently there was a shitstorm in Manitoba when recently arrived Muslim parents wanted their kids taken out of music class and mixed phys ed classes for religious and cultural reasons (other local Muslims said this is bullshit, such things aren’t forbidden).
Now you can say well, this is just one small dust up. And it is. But they keep piling up. Here in Toronto we started up a school for black kids. Now some people are calling for a school for Portugese kids. Similar things are happening in other cities. We’re not fostering a sense of common citizenship or commonality or social cohesion and solidarity but rather the opposite.
And, again, I’m not picking on Muslims, they are not a monolithic in their views. And I’m not picking on these Muslims in particular. After all, we say over and over and over that we’re a multicultural country. So these Muslim parents took us at our word. And they are taxpayers besides and those are their kids. So they have some say in how their kids are educated. Their motive is to keep their kids on the straight and narrow and good for them.
You have to understand this country, we are self abasing to the point of absurdity. If I had a buck for every time I heard someone say “we have no identity” I’d be a billionaire. And everytime I say in response “this country in Anglo Saxon in identity” I get a bug eyed look of incredulity as if I’d just farted. This is the country that dares not speak its own name.
Look at the facts. We speak English, we read English lit, we elect a Westminster type parliament, we live by English common law etc. It’s like Orwell said, you can spend a lifetime not seeing what’s plainly under your nose. And that’s the case with people here.
So less squeamish people say OK, maybe YOU have no identity but WE have an identity so if you won’t exercise yours then please get the fuck out of the way and let us do it. And justifiably so. I can’t blame such people one damn bit.
We make a virtue of national self abnegation. We proclaimed our multiculturalism 40 years ago without a second’s forethought. It sounded so very hip and progressive. But our Libs being so educated and informed and literate (they tell us this all the time so it must be true) foisted this on us for our own good and didn’t think about what it would mean in practice. The leader of our socialist party, David Lewis, derided it as a sop for the ethnics. Other people like me, less respected than David Lewis, who asked what the fuck this is all about, seeing as it looked like we were fostering tribalism within our own borders, were reviled as weirdo racists and reactionary wackjobs. We’ll see in the end who the wackjobs are.
I keep ranting about this because I can see the US making the same mistake. People are tribal by nature. Encouraging tribalism within your own national borders is lunacy.
The Left is comprised of cults, rigidly segregated. What you describe is the last bit of white supremacy, ironically by white leftists. You will also notice they never ever ask the “minorities” what they think of whites and their liberalism. If they did then the charade built upon the assumptions of the blank slate theory would lie like a Japanese reactor building.
Hard driving rain outside my window, 33d.F. The sky looks like God dredged up the bottom of the North Atlantic and set it above us, filtering out all sunlight and warmth. Connecticut, moribund economy and crappy weather 6 months out of the year. What’s not too like?
Philosophy got a bad rap here mostly due to Old6699s rants, which he claims are philosophical, but are any of you CFNers familiar with Eric Hoffer, philosopher/longshoreman from San Francisco, author of “The True Believer”, and many other essays? He was around in the 50’s, Lyndon Johnson’s favorite writer. (I first heard of him in Johnson’s bio)
If so, what do you think?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
You’re almost home Cash – at the breaking point. “People are tribal by nature. Encouraging tribalism within your own borders in lunacy”. A contradiction? Only if you encourage other tribalisms outside the dominant tribalism. Canada was a triumph of the Anglo-Saxon. Allowing other tribes to come was its downfall. People, being tribal by nature, will fight to maintain their own tribe. After all, people would rather be colonists than immigrants; conquer rather than acculturate.
Yes we all look the same with our clothes off. And all of our blood is red – including rats.
Oh fatuity, why is there no ode to you? I have not the ability to encompass thy glory!
Your post is better than anything I could do. But you are right: the Japanese aren’t perfect. I didn’t say they were technologically better than us – or always more ethical. But any stable ethical structure begins at home. And in this they are supreme. For ourselves, we are always cutting away the branch we are sitting on; always glorifying and supporting the alien and spitting on and undermining our own base. What sane man hates his own feet and drops cinder blocks on them for fun? Everytime we ship jobs overseas and insource aliens we are doing exactly that. Every dollar of goverment aid to Africa is nothing other than that. It’s money taken from the People of the United States. As in your post, Ideology has triumphed over commonsense – which is anything but common.
Sometimes we humans need a good, old fashioned bitch slap to remind us that we’re not immortal. I can’t even begin to imagine the despair the Japanese are feeling after being hit with a triple whammy – earthquake, tsunami, radiation leakage…resulting in food and water scarcity, along with lack of shelter.
Regarding the Missile Crisis, most Americans at the time knew the extreme ramifications of a nuclear attack on our country, and thus took it very seriously. Very few people had bomb shelters in their backyards, so most just sat glued to their televisions watching as events unfolded. A slight idea of what hell on earth looked like after seeing newsreels of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs were dropped were very frightening. Many panicked folks in the big cities fled to the dozen or so air raid shelters in the cities in existence at the time. Not long after Castro backed down, air raid shelters became anachronistic. The stored supplies of soda crackers, containers of water, portable toilets, and canned vegetables steadily gathered dust as the decade blistered on to new horrors, not the least of which was the fiasco that was Vietnam. The human race seems to forever be on a hell-bent mission to destroy both itself and the earth that supports it.
“People are tribal by nature. Encouraging tribalism within your own borders in lunacy”. A contradiction?
==============
I was shocked to go into a grocery store and see multicultural foods in different sections of the store. People are tribal and eat their own culture’s food by nature. Encouraging tribalism in the store is lunacy. A contradiction?
“BBC hinted at Iranian influence among Bahranian demonstrators.”
Sniff Sniff
The panhandle is pretty bad, but not typical of the state as a whole – not much agriculture. There was a huge housing boom here years ago and then the collapse. They really got ahead of themselves up in Sandpoint and Bonner’s Ferry. As far as unemployment, I would guess it’s higher than the national average. I’m not sure about the Boise area. The rest of the State is more agricultural and probably similar to similar areas through out the Country. And that probably means more food stamps too.
More energy news from Germany:
“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to temporarily shut down seven nuclear reactors could cost the industry more than a half-billion euros and result in Germany not meeting its CO2 emission reduction goals. The rest of the world is taking a wait-and-see approach.
First, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a three-month moratorium on her government’s plan to extend the lifespans of German nuclear power plants. Now, the chancellor has elected to shut down seven of the country’s oldest reactors. At least one of them is to remain offline permanently.
“Safety is the priority,” Merkel said in her announcement on Tuesday. “Those are the criteria by which we acted today.”
The move is likely to be an expensive one. According to an estimate produced for SPIEGEL ONLINE by atomic energy expert Wolfgang Pfaffenberger from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany’s energy companies stand to lose up to €575 million ($803 million) as a result of the three-month shutdown. The seven reactors affected — all of which were constructed prior to 1980 — generate revenues estimated at €2.3 billion per year.
What that might mean for energy prices in Germany remains unclear. Manuel Frondel, an energy expert with the Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research, told the mass-circulation tabloid Bild that consumers may be in for a price increase of up to 10 percent or more.”
more at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,751245,00.html
Cheers
Only if you encourage other tribalisms outside the dominant tribalism. – Vlad
I agree. I just didn’t express it well. There can only be one tribe, one citizenship, within your national borders. Your thing is that the tribe is by necessity organized by race. I differ with that view. I don’t care what colour someone is. What’s in his head and heart is what concerns me and where his loyalties are.
After all, people would rather be colonists than immigrants; conquer rather than acculturate. – vlad
Not me. Italy was one fucked up place, Italians made it so. I wanted nothing to do with it. Canada was a better place and Canucks won me over by making me one of them. The local kids accepted me and the schoolteachers and neighbours were nice to me.
I became conscious of it for the first time when I was a kid, a Cub scout, at a Remembrance Day ceremony. It wasn’t lost on me even at that early age, that the people there had suffered fighting fascists as seen by the number of local boys’ names on the memorial monument. Yet, there I was at the ceremony with all the local folks. And I wanted to be one of them. And my own parents were there and they were on the opposite side during WW2. I thought that was big hearted of our neighbours even if I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time to put it into words. Sounds corny and Norman Rockwell-ish but there it is. Couldn’t happen today, people are way, way too hip.
Montsegur;
This guy I work with emigrated here from a village near Miinsk in Russia … told me recently that in the fields and woods around his village there is still a lot of stuff lying around from battles in WW11 … tank tracks, helmets, German vehicles all rusted, and even old rifles. How about in Germany, are there still places like that? In the NYT last summer there was an article about all the WW1 ordinance (unexploded, but liable to explode) still picked up each summer by French farmers on the Western Front.
Good threads today. No hostility, many interesting posts; Ibendet, Cash, Montsegur, Vlad and others.
-Marlin
CFNation Post1
New England Chapter
“As individuals we are all “doomed”, it’s just a matter of time. Get accustomed to not knowing what will happen next. You may not be here tomorrow, so live like you know it.”
The all too common presumption of certainty, upon which the limiting ego thrives, is delusional. Embracing uncertainty is the beginning of wisdom. Is this not at the root of true science and education? This is what drives me crazy about conventional “education”: educators asking questions on tests for parrot-like responses, rather than inviting students to question.
In a similar way, intellectual understanding is not real knowing, which requires actual experience and its gradual integration into every part of one’s attitudes, thoughts and actions.
I have heard that the spiritual teacher, Inayat Khan, suggested that one live their worldly life as if they would live for a thousand years, and their spiritual life as if this were their last day.
Adding to the story doesn’t help. This is It. And It is okay.
MarlinFive54 asked “How about in Germany, are there still places like that?”
================================
Yes, I’ve seen artifacts on the ground in the areas where destroyed Westwall bunkers are. Never seen anything larger than old grenades, though.
I’d guess that if one used a metal detector in the areas of Germany east of Berlin where the Germans and Soviets fought major battles, there probably would be a lot of things to be found, and likely some it quite dangerous (65+ year-old gunpowder). Going after battle artifacts is illegal in Germany, btw.
I enjoy walking in the European forests and seeing remains of history along the walks just makes it that much more interesting.
Cheers
Dale, your post more than any others here stuck with me. It’s not easy developing a balanced philosophy. On one hand, it’s important to have a good sense of perspective; on the other, realizing one’s mortality and focusing on day-to-day living. Humans are particularly vulnerable to this dichotomy because they have the knowledge of their future death, while simultaneously knowing of the sweep of history and all the possiibilities life has to offer.
So how should we live our lives? For me, I strive (not always successfully) to be grateful for having gotten out of bed in the morning, knowing full well that that is not a sure thing. And I try to live each day as if I only had 6 months to live. Yet at the same time, plan for the future by hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Life is truly a gift.
“Good day for burning brush if the wind stays down enough.”
We’re doing controlled burns here today.
Any 4-8″ hardwood of a still-slumbering species could be plugged with mushroom spawn rather than burned…
Needs to rest for about 3 weeks anyway before you plug it.
http://www.fieldforest.net
My plants just arrived so I’ll be lost for the next couple days…
Marlin, “Some say (in the article) that federal programs like food stamps belie the ‘independent spirit’ of citizens in the Northwest US.”
Idaho produces around $4,500,000,000 worth of food/yr., the majority of which it exports. Where is all this money going? Into the local economies? Worker’s pockets?
Idaho is a top producer of Rainbow trout. As well as all the diseases and malfeasance of aquaculture. Currently they’re bubbling raw chlorine gas into penstocks to try and keep these sorry fish alive. Antibiotics dumped wholesale into waterways already choked with nitrogenous runoff.
As for the potato fields? The instant the chemical fertilizers stop, the toxic waste that has been spread over millions of acres will rise up and replace Zinc and Phosphorus amendments with cadmium and lead, which will go right into the food supply.
Big Ag is going pedal to the metal on GMOs, the alternative is too heinous to contemplate. Big Ag’s partners, Big Food, needs plants that will resist toxic soils and deal with chronic water shortage. Big Food’s constituents, Big People, and their Big Cars, their Big Government, Big business, Big churches, Big families, fuck. I lost where I was going with this. Big deal.
Read Jim Rogers 2 Travel books..theyre goin cheap on amazon.
He went to Africa and talks about ‘charity’.
folks here bash you so [pity yr not gay]
this is priceless!:
In Sweden you can’t even talk about the Muslim take over – it’s a hate crime.
Swedish Culture isn’t too big on free speech is it?
In Norway the goverment admits the Muslims are causing huge problems, but they vow to stay the course. What course? Who decided all this? There is no more fundamental question than who will comprise the People – yet you tell me to shut up. Sweedish blood perhaps or just Liberal Totalitarinism?
LEMMINGS LEMMINGS LEMMINGS
………………………[ SEB, do you still read CFN?}
thanks!
Jeez’ Prog, all this time I thought you waz’ magic. What a letdown! :o(
Howdy Marlin, not to be a nit-picker, but Minsk is in Belarus, not Russia. I know just because I have had temants from Belarus and Ukraine and they get sort of miffed if you call them Russian.On another note the snow is meltin’ pretty fast here also. My trees, ‘specially the cun-i-fers, took a beatin’.
My sister used to own about 20 acres of land in Swan Valley, ID — the other side of the Tetons, right on the snake river. They bought it on their honeymoon in 1981–a little bit of Valhalla.
But they never developed it because 1. altitude severly limited growing season. 2. There is a massive dam just above their land and a fault not to far away. 3. No jobs.
What job are you doing in Idaho?
Jen
“On one hand, it’s important to have a good sense of perspective; on the other, realizing one’s mortality”
=====================================
That would be the same thing wouldn’t it? They are not opposite ends of a continuum.
So, is the solution to run around filling your life with meaningless “fun” activities, because you want to have accumulated enough “fun” before you die? “Does the one with the most toys” win in the end? I guess so, if this is it.
If consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, as many neuroscientists believe, then we’re all meat on the bone, pointless automata, mearly acting out the commands of a mass of chemicals and tapioca pudding between our ears.
Of course, there is no proof of this materialistic article of faith on their part, or even anyway TO prove it. But no matter.
Most of your either beleive the materialist view, or hold a notion that someone is holding a magic pea in their hand for you that you can’t see, and if you just believe, they will give you the magic pea. I could just never buy into that one. When they open their hand and there is nothing there you’re just…..stupid.
Consider if you will, the weird irony of reincarnation. If it’s true, it’s the worst nightmare that could happen to a “materialist” (living for an eternity with your karma) He can’t just end this shit when its no “fun” anymore. But strangely, it is also better than the best thing that can happen to a Christian (because you can become enlightened in this life, even before death)
Funny damn thing that…no matter what you believe.
*So many things are shaking loose now in this world-wrapped-too-tight that it is hard to track where they all overlap*
Indeed Jim… great line of thought in fact.
As week’s go by, I dare say the last 7 days are starting to look like being some form of LE (Long emergency) record settimg – for all things topped off aka Cluster-fukushima!
With a darkening cloud of nuclear paranoia fast sweeping over the world, but great news for iodine tabs manufacturers everywhere – demand is going through the roof – so to speak…
and tis a joy to see that when the chips come finally tumbling down – primal human nature takes fully over – and panic purchases of everything kicks in…
The final straw now for the Japanese is unseasonal blizzards… but then again we are some years in now to the start of one of the greatest solar minimums ever recorded over the last 100 years or so.
Perhaps we should be currently glad for a wee touch of global warming maybes, though what happens when Ra finally reignites into solar over-abundance? we’ll that’s the problem of running Gaia at clapped-out, standing-room only, totally over committed… speed.
It’s interesting to note too, that here in the UK we have a TV celeb’ naturalist, Sir David Attenborough who’s a key member of the Optimum Population Trust, and for the UK they come up with a number of 20m – which would be wise – as non-conventional ‘natural’ farming could at best support just a few more million than this…
No surplus of course = no room for atypical fluctuations, that’s the curse of being afflicted with a classical INTJ personality – I always see/prepare for the wider picture view.
But I digress, and back to our wise-man Dave… *sniggers* The BBC have issued him with fatwa regarding his bizarre and controversial views about responsible population control… apparently ‘any’ mention of said subject atop our national broadcasters media waves is totally and utterly uber-verboten, so he’s currently silenced and controlled with a muzzling/gagging order… sad eh?
Which takes me back to those surreal images in Japan…
Of official men in plastic disposable, total body covering, chemical hazard safety-suits mega-phone clutching…
(And what are they screaming, I wonder?)
Keep calm, and carry on shopping-n-f#cking – your nations debt fuelled economy goes meltdown critical – yor dare not… tis your civic duty.
FUKUSHIMA – KEEP ON SHOPPING-n-F#CKING – OBEY, OBEY… OBEY!!
Yep, across all the OECDs now we’re on the non-stop accelerating train of terminal destruction, the last station to jump-off, or points changing post long travelled past… buyflation’s running out of control and the elites in charge, watching the inevitable journey unfold give a fig not…
So set the controls for the heart of the sun, shut your eyes tight, breathe out and relax.
Around the corner, Hara-kiri time does fast approach, but I cannot imagine the honourable Obama-man ever going for that one, kneeling-down in one final self-effacing star-spangled banner clad act?
Be seeing you…
Well since Ozone and Mika outed me I might as well admit it: I get paid 2000 a week by the Vatican to preach Radical Conservatism on liberal sites like this. I go on vacations to Rome and get my pick of the Virgins. Loose screws indeed. You know more than you think.
Got the, uh, dog thang taken care of today too…
Cute little guy about 3 months old, mutt, slim, black with white chest blaze, I’d say predominantly bird dog. Name is Nightshade. Slim Shady.
Matter is an emergent property of Consciousness – but that’s not to say we are creating our own world. Capital C – prior to our individual consciousness; we are the Sun as reflected in a pot of water not the Sun qua Sun.
Sylvan Muldoon was a natural astral projector and a proto-Buddhist. He felt that life was suffering and altho he found his projections interesting – he was ultimately appalled at the the realization of endless Life that they fortold. He didn’t know about Liberation.
Buddhist Materialism? A modern heresy. What is the point of denying yourself if you are destined for extinction anyway? You wont be able to.
I believed you up until you wrote, “Pick of Virgins.”
Jen
Nightline last night: Sure enough we do have a Nuclear Power Plant that is both near fault lines, on the coast, and at sea level! South of Los Angeles. It does have thirty foot walls to protect against Tsunamis or Storms – but that would not have been high enough against the wave in Japan. Did everyone hear about the hospital? They evacuated the first two floors but the wave was three stories high. Only the people on the fourth floor survived.
dale said: “…the weird irony of reincarnation. If it’s true, it’s the worst nightmare that could happen to a “materialist” …”
============
I sure hope I get to come back. I have seen eight decades (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, 00s, 10s) and the whole ride has been fun, fun, fun! Still is… more so since I discovered adobe construction.
You are very suggestible – that’s why you believe what the media tells you. Part of the work of Meditation is to break this conditioning and look for yourself. When you do, you will see your people crying out in agony. You will be amazed at how you could have not seen it before. It is they who have first right to your charity (if you have the means) and not Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa etc ad nauseam infinitum.
BustinJ;
That article in the WSJ I referred to didn’t really mention the environmental disaster that you suggest Idaho has become. The people they interviewed were in the Boise area and had lost jobs in various industries and businesses. I couldn’t imagine being broke and jobless in a place like that, where one might have to drive 50 miles to buy a gallon of milk or commute to a job, most likely in a blizzard.
Last year I read (McCullough’s) account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. They passed into where Idaho is now in 1805. That was little more than two centuries ago, not long in historical time. That’s all it took, apparently, to f–k the place up royally.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England chapter
Wow, Japan’s getting it’s ass kicked. Earthquake, tidal wave, nuclear meltdown, all that’s missing is Godzilla.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE JET STREAM AND RADIATION PROBLEMS GO TO YOU TUBE DUTCHSINISE. hE SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO PLOT THE DIRECTION OF TH WIND USING THE VARIOUS WEB SITES. I LIVE IN NEW YORK, HAVE A GEIGER COUNTER, (I GOT AFTER 911) AND ANTI RADIATION PILLS.
RADIATION HAS HIT THE WEST COAST AS OF 4 PM TODAY, WEDNESDAY. IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO TO CANADA AND THEN THE EAST COAST. LOG ONTO THE PERSON ABOVE AND PAY ATTENTION.
GOOD LUCK
ALSO AS AN ASIDE, THE HAARP CIRCLES, HAS PREDICTED ANOTHER MAJOR EARTHQUAKE AROUND THE WASHINGTON STATE COAST WITHIN 24 HOURS.
In the new PC story of the Three Little Pigs, the smart Pig makes his home out of Adobe not recycled materials like the other two. The Big, Bad, Wolf turns out to be a nice guy – just homeless.
Twisting fairytales like this is child abuse. Home School your children if you love them.
Alexandra said:
“…but I cannot imagine the honourable Obama-man ever going for that one, kneeling-down in one final self-effacing star-spangled banner clad act?”
Just an FYI, my dear: when obammy kneels down, it’s usually to fellate some foreign oligarch or corporate big wig. Just look at the swell, well-satisfied grins on his recent appointments to “oversee” amerika’s financial regulatory “system”.
BTW, the other corporate whores worldwide are just as simpering as our leecher in chief.
I like the way you turn a phrase. Being a “yank”, it makes it hard for me to get your point sometimes. Do carry on, Now Voyager!
[Scene from the 1960s classic movie “The Graduate”]
“As a friend of your father, let me give you some kindly advice: ‘Plastics’.”
[Fast forward to Peak-Oil, post financial collapse 2011]
“As a friend of your father, let me give you some kindly advice: ‘Farming’.”
Perhaps one of the most simplistic, adolescent, naive statements I’ve ever read on this blog. Even folks here who are under 50 are clear-eyed enough to see how TS has been hitting the fan for quite some time. Anybody whose lived (outside of a “boy in a plastic bubble”) any experience of modern times can hopefully realize the infantalism of your remarks. Simply unbelievable!
and if you just believe, they will give you the magic pea.
===========
To me the magic pee is when I wake up at 4AM and have to go real bad and I’m able to get some sort of a dribbling flow going in under three minutes.
Myrtlemay, existence is consciousness and cannot be separated from consciousness. My experience is that the experience of living is pure ecstasy, absolute bliss, what the Hindus call ananda.
Nature, in my experience, is a doorway to ananda. It all fits together. Have you investigated permaculture? It provides a framework for learning how to mimic the abundance-building patterns and processes found in nature and through nature you can have the experience of bliss.
Re: Stamets’ Ted talk, I have it posted on the “Videos worth Watching” sidebar on by blog. Top of the list actually.
The title of that sidebar is very appropriate. The other videos there are just as good.
Thanks, Wage.
“Any 4-8″ hardwood of a still-slumbering species could be plugged with mushroom spawn rather than burned..”
-tripp-
Thanks for the advice and the link, Tripp.
http://www.fieldforest.net/store/index
I’ve been meaning to ask you where you get your mushroom spores and plugs.
And good luck with the new dog!
hey Tripped, let me know how the shitake plugs work out. I can’t get them things to grow. It’s cold here. I plugged a bunch of logs. I am hopin’ for a compost patch to come through. I just pick the wild stuff.
not too far from Driggs, I assume. Beautful country.
“RADIATION HAS HIT THE WEST COAST AS OF 4 PM TODAY, WEDNESDAY. IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO TO CANADA AND THEN THE EAST COAST. LOG ONTO THE PERSON ABOVE AND PAY ATTENTION.”
This is silly propaganda, designed to scare people to death. Instead of spreading fear, people should be sending whatever aid they can to Japan and its populace. Whatever radiation that is being emitted from the failed reactors in Japan are being whafted out to the Pacific, where it will dissapate.
As several others have stated before, a good head start for TLE would be to obtain some good, fertle land with some fruit and nut trees, an out building, and some farm equipment, and a fresh stream of water nearby. A few roosters, hens, rabbits, and pigs wouldn’t be out of order either. Corn and wheat seem to grow there pretty well, as well as soybean. I don’t know what land goes for in states like Arkansas, but I’ll bet my two best Sunday-go-go-meeting hats that those rural land parcels go for a song. Bank of America may be able to offer a low mortgage rate. Real estate has never been this affordable, and at such low interest rates. As my realtor friend keeps telling me, “There really never has been a better time to buy. It’s about location, location, location.” My idea is, if you can’t buy your bread at the local Piggly Wiggly, why night take a crack at growing and making your own? Tastes better and is better for you – minus all the additives and perservatives.
True enough about some Muslims not wanting their children to participate in co-ed P.E. offered by the local public schools. Catholics in my day were major pissed off that public schools didn’t honor holy days of obligation. So they did something strange and totally AMERICAN. They built and PAID FOR their OWN SCHOOLS! Wow, what a concept. Quit yer bitchin and start pitchin in for a school that honors the values that each group can revel in. Been a pretty good success here, aside from the occasional molestation cases, I mean. Seriously, schools built around parents’ community/religious values do seem to produce better, more educated students, black, white, Catholic, Jewish, military, etc.
“schools built around parents’ community/religious values do seem to produce better, more educated students, black, white, Catholic, Jewish, military, etc.”
=========
You can do that. But you cannot prevent people of different from going to sporting events together, eating together, fighting alongside each other in wars, working together in factories, going to school together in institutions of higher learning, falling in love with each other, and marrying and having bi-racial/bi-cultural children.
Eventually these stupid segregated schools built around “values” (read racism) will cease to exist.
The demographics are on the side of miscegenation and the elimination of racial “purity” thank God, or Allah or Yahweh or “the laws of physics” … whatever you believe in. Thanks to love it is all happening as it should … and must … inevitably.
I cannot Stand that show COPS. They way they treat people make me SICK. THAT is abuse. I mean seriously these people didn’t kill anyone, hurt anyone, except themselves on drugs etc.
But the COPS ‘have the right’ to treat them like shit, and I actually can’t watch it. It truly is WRONG and sickening. Not funny AT ALL. I hate their fucking Entitlement attiditude.
I actually told a CHP OFF. For being a prick.
long story, too late to relive.
I do like the Sheen show, 2 and a half men, for some reason. Doesn’t bother me.
“But any stable ethical structure begins at home. And in this they are supreme.”
Yes you are right.
There is one thing they invented and it is a great thing, it is called politeness.
Very often helps people not to eat each other and having good relationship.
If you are polite and generous, generally you are successful with people.
As for the aids you send to Africa, if this can in some way make you feeling better, Americans (and Europeans and Chinese etc.) NEVER do anything for nothing.
That is why in Africa they are still fighting and backward.
NOBODY has any interest to teach them to be civilized; more than ever now that they discovered a lot of minerals and oil…
It is much easier to steal from ignorant people.
And if they are so stupid to fight among tribes, the better.
DIVIDE et IMPERA.
Romans invented it and that was the only way to keep such a huge Empire.
But I am still on the idea that globalization is NOT the evil they prospect.
I always say: if we paid the bananas the right price (and no big corporation made millions on them) then the Africans would buy computers, fridges and cars.
Globalization means I sell and buy, you sell and buy, I produce, you produce, we exchange.
Very simple, but lacks one big element that drives today’s economy: where would the Big Corporations profit be?
“schools built around parents’ community/religious values do seem to produce better, more educated students, black, white, Catholic, Jewish, military, etc.”
If you want to build a society that lives in peace, produces, consumes, makes a better living for itself and its children, you have to integrate different people in the same system.
Everybody has to see the other as himself.
Of course there are still differences among individuals, but they all “belong” together.
Build the “humanity group or tribe” and they won´t fight wars anymore.
There will still be fight on jobs, prices, merchandise, but since the other is like me, would I kill him?
If you divide people in groups or tribes they will always fight, because they will always try to prove they are better.
How about that self-congratulatory MIT nuclear engineering professor, claiming all knowledge, and passing on, “Everything is better than *OK*” message. Heard that SH! way too many times before, to believe such bunk within a day of the disaster. Wonder if that moron’s also a global warming denier (once tenured, always…).
“Water, water, everywhere – *but* not a drop to drink (yet)” Willy Wonka, ’71. @ Qshit and his self-stroking corrections – You are the *bad choice*. You show absolutely no compassion, and make it clear you are in the Vlad camp. And your corrections are so Ghad-damned annoying, worthless, and unnecessary, that I wish I had a kill-file here (to say nothing of your “fleeting” Charlie Sheen desires).
@ Asoka and his “library reference” search – I call Bollocks on that BS. That was totally the result of a google book scan. Not to flame this guy, but I find him to be the penultimate master-debater – remember those guys in high school, who’d wheel around crates full of reference material, ready to argue any issue pro or con? It was never about the issue to them, it was about arguing their “assigned” side of the issue and *winning* (WhateverTF that means). Asoka @ Tripp, “Every time you “think out loud,” I learn something new. Feel free to do it more often.” Not sure why you’d say that, other than to be ironic – everything he stated there has been his complete message for months…
@ LogicII, you can be more than sure that those who clamored on about TLE in the 80’s were nothing more than wack-jobs. I mean, really, all that pollution of the land/sea/water/air by carcinogenic organics/heavy metals/radioactive garbage, and the clearcutting/slash-and-burn rapeage of every last remaining forest (mmm, 5-7 years of fast-food beef, before depleted concrete soil). You can bet those “tree huggers” definitely had alterior motives there (WTF sequesters that CO2 [which we boil off the planet into deep space] into solid carbon, again?)!
LOL @ Wagelaborer nun joke – if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that was Janeane Garofalo – but she’s way *beyond* using a computer, posting on the internet, or reading emails/messages there (good ole’ pencil’n’paper suffices, for the “blind mice”). Besides, she’s no nurse, LOL!!! But, I do miss the “Disquisition” on Rollin’s show…
The increasing madness is obvious *everywhere*!!! Must be coming upon a full moon soon…
Food for thought – we were barely above the (ultra) minimum solar irradiance/sunspot cycle in 2010, when the world temperature reached an all-time max (exceeding the prior record in 2005) – feeling lucky?!?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010summer/figure5.gif
Well Africa was still in the Stone Age when we “discovered” them. Tribe fighting Tribe is what Stone Agers do. They have modernized under our influenced, but the advance is merely external – not at the level of consciousness. They are just imitating us. They haven’t changed at all – they are still in the stone age in terms of consciousness. That we made the Countries with warring tribes in the same country didn’t help. The jihad and its war against Christians and Animists isn’t helping either.
As far as ourselves – we didn’t live up to our highest standards in our conduct in Africa. And now we can’t forgive ourselves. This causes weakness which the Blacks are quick to capitalize on. Because we didn’t live up to our highest standards has created a reaction in us: we idealize the Blacks and act like they can do no wrong. This does not help them at all. In any case, we should try to act honorably in the future which means getting our troops out of Asia and North Africa. Allow these people to their own destiny – which in Black Africa will mean massive famine. There is almost a billion Blacks now in Africa – this cannot be maintained even if we had the money which we don’t have. In the Middle East, it will might mean the formation of the Caliphate which will be our mortal enemy for centuries. I really don’t think we should be giving them anymore technology – or accepting anymore immigrants who will form fifth columns. Maybe we can continue to do business with them – and then again maybe not.
Contact between advanced and primitive cultures are fraught with ethical dilemmas. The Old Star Trek series portrayed this well: the Enterprise was forbidden to make contact with primitive cultures because such contact would destabilize them and prevent them from evolving as they were meant to do – exactly what happened in Africa.
I forgot to mention, that guy claiming the BLOG filter was working OK (hahaha!). It sounds to me like a very bad spam filter, with about a 60% success rate – why not simply flip a coin (you’re wasting major CPU resources, with a mere 60% over 50% rate).
Oh, and I’m sure Asoka will be moving on from Buddhism to Falun Gong fairly shortly – given the leverage *that* religion allows against our *primary* slave labor state.
As far as the radioactive wind hitting the West Coast US already – that’d be a miracle. The wind’s been traveling over Japan in a SE direction. So unless the West Coast US is somewhere around, let’s say, *San Antonio, Chile* (8.8 earthquake in 2010, 6.8 earthquake in 2011) – the math is WRONG.
Ozone nails the fed/treasury “perpetual money machine” with cold, hard facts about real, tangible, “actual” *commodities*. Besides, that silver dollar didn’t work in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s – so why would it work now (HINT/HINT eliminate pennies/nickels – totally worthless/worth more than their weight)… Wait, bring back that *colorful* $2 bill – LOL!!!
I was the victim of the “patriot act”, on April Fools day, 2002 (no less). They wasted *NO* time to ensure their illegal search procedures at the “state level”. Needless to say, they found nothing, so they stayed another 2 hours trying to antagonize me into getting arrested, and “finally” succeeding (duh)…
Did I spend $10k on lawyers to esconce myself (fully well knowing *ARRESTS* are what show up for 7 years on job applications, not “convictions”), or did I bite the bullet and pay a $260 fine and 20 hours community service?!… *YOU DECIDE*.
Had they only put a mere *pittance* into Thorium, while bringing up *6* more reactors in Japan (et al) – could you imagine reactors still running completely safely *AND* still generating power, in Japan?!… We are a failed community, the lobbyists/corporatocracy rule. Just frak a few more million acres of arable land, and poison it with boiling fumes of toxins for centuries – call it *DONE* already…
I forgot to mention, that guy claiming the BLOG filter was working OK (disco #1 already, LOL!). It sounds to me like a very bad spam filter, with about a 60% success rate – why not simply flip a coin (you’re wasting major CPU resources, with a mere 60% over 50% rate).
Oh, and I’m sure Asoka will be moving on from Buddhism to Falun Gong fairly shortly – given the leverage *that* religion allows against our *primary* slave labor state.
As far as the radioactive wind hitting the West Coast US already – that’d be a miracle. The wind’s been traveling over Japan in a SE direction. So unless the West Coast US is somewhere around, let’s say, *San Antonio, Chile* (8.8 earthquake in 2010, 6.8 earthquake in 2011) – the math is WRONG.
Ozone nails the fed/treasury “perpetual money machine” with cold, hard facts about real, tangible, “actual” *commodities*. Besides, that silver dollar didn’t work in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s – so why would it work now (HINT/HINT eliminate pennies/nickels – totally worthless/worth more than their weight)… Wait, bring back that *colorful* $2 bill – LOL!!!
I was the victim of the “patriot act”, on April Fools day, 2002 (no less). They wasted *NO* time to ensure their illegal search procedures at the “state level”. Needless to say, they found nothing, so they stayed another 2 hours trying to antagonize me into getting arrested, and “finally” succeeding (duh)…
Did I spend $10k on lawyers to esconce myself (fully well knowing *ARRESTS* are what show up for 7 years on job applications, not “convictions”), or did I bite the bullet and pay a $260 fine and 20 hours community service?!… *YOU DECIDE*.
Had they only put a mere *pittance* into Thorium, while bringing up *6* more reactors in Japan (et al) – could you imagine reactors still running completely safely *AND* still generating power, in Japan?!… We are a failed community, the lobbyists/corporatocracy rule. Just frak a few more million acres of arable land, and poison it with boiling fumes of toxins for centuries…
CFNers;
You will all be reassured to know, as nuclear reactors explode and melt down in Asia, Saudi troops pour into Bahrain in American Humvees carrying Colt M-4 rifles, and Khaddaffi launches airstrikes with jet aircraft and helicopter gunships against civilian targets in Libya, President Obama, leader of the free world, who most of you voted for, was yucking it up on TV with ESPN slicksters, making this years NCAA basketball tournament picks. He also gave some insightful analysis on some of the teams, the players, their strengths, their weaknesses, and their chances.
He picks Kansas to win it all, no question!
Put your money on Kansas, CFNers. You can’t lose.
There are 9000 UN troops in the Ivory Coast, ostensibly to keep the peace, but people are being slaughtered in the streets, and the UN stands by doing nothing. Is there any example of a more useless institution in the whole world than the UN? I suppose we should be grateful that these ‘peacekeeping’ troops are not committing mass rape on the defenseless female population, like they did in the Congo several years ago while conducting similar ‘peacekeeping’ operations there. Maybe they are. We just don’t know about it yet.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Trippticket;
Congrats on the dog.
When my wife brought our dog home he was a ‘cute little guy’, too. A Jack Russell Terrier. Now that he’s 4 he’s not so cute. Now he’s a terror; fearless, obstinate, independent, and thinks he’s much bigger than he actually is. He does a good job of keeping the critters out of the gardens, though. Last summer he chased off a black bear.
————————————————–
Making headway in my Ted Rall’s ‘Anti-American Manifesto”. Nothing really unique or new so far, just post-modern leftism I see in Atlantic, NYT and the New Yorker.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Don’t know whether anyone’s kept up with the magic thinking of the republicans yesterday. Michelle Bachman blames the media for her distorto history the other day. She claims to be a patriot and keeps making up history to suit herself. What do her followers actually think of her when they find out she doesn’t know anything?
Dement says Big government diminishes God! I guess that means he wants no regulations on nuclear power plants!
Inhoff claims that a nuclear accident happens ever 300 years and that the people in Japan are taking all this in their stride and only the US politicians are getting hysterical.
You can’t make this stuff up—only the Republicans can.–One can only wonder whether someone promised these guys a tanker full of gold headed for Panama!
My theory is when they can’t get everyone on board for more plants they’ll go to the third world countries to tell them how good it is. Messenger:
Economic hit man!
Mr. Marlin,
You forgot to regurgitate the FOX fact that he also played golf while the world was unraveling.
And, (thankfully) he is not at the tip of the “no fly zone” spear. This fact seems to have the foxers in a lather as well.
You read like a neocon. If the US did spend $billions (which we don’t have) trying to solve all these problems, would you be happy? Not likely. How would “The Ghost & Mrs. Muir” have handled these events? It’s easy to type away, rant & complain. How many US citizens do you want to sacrifice to solve the above issues?
Have you not been paying attention to JHK’s message that we can’t continue to be involved in foreign affairs to the extent that we have given our deficit? We’ll most likely have to pick and choose what we get involved in.
I can’t comment on the UN situation you cite, as I don’t have enough information. I agree in principle.
OK! I got my third-party functionality button for PayPal donations/carbon offsets up and running at my blog. Read the accompanying article (the current post) to understand how our carbon offset program differs from the usual donation portals. (Hint: it offsets carbon)
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
I take no cash from donations/offsets. It goes dollar-for-dollar (minus only what PayPal charges) into low-tech, thoughtfully-designed carbon sequestration methodologies. And I’ve studied with some of the best in the world. My only gain is the fertility build-up on our farm. Payment enough in my opinion!
Cheers,
Tripp
JonSS;
I got the UN in Ivory Coast intel from BBC radio last night.
It seems like BBC is the only Western news org. with a correspondent in that country.
The ESPN stuff about Obama is from the local newspaper and a neighbor, who is a producer at the network.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I think Marlin is trying to imply that Obama seems to be in “look at all the pretty horsies” mode while the world goes down the gurgler. (In a very colorful manner, with connections that are taboo to name.)
He can speak for himself on that point.
Is Obama as thick-headed and tunnel-visioned as many of his predecessors? Another magical thinker?
Yukking it up about fucking sports instead of soberly looking at how we might start the inevitable contraction is a little insane, but solidifies the appearance that he’s a BAU (business as usual) kinda guy. I guess for the lumpen yeast-people (tm JHK) that would be a comfort, but it’s becoming evident that reality is anything BUT comfortable. He’s the PRESIDENT for fucks’ sake, and [like Marlin] I don’t feel he has the luxury to focus on much but the shitstorm that’s about to envelop Dumbfuckistan.
“To me the magic pee is when I wake up at 4AM and have to go real bad and I’m able to get some sort of a dribbling flow going in under three minutes.”
=========================================
Well if you only get up once a night that’s not too bad. I was getting up two or three times a night until I went on a wide array of natural supplements to lower my “chronic systemic inflammation”, seems to be working, with no crazy side affects. I hear Saw Palmetto helps for that slow starting.
If you divide people in groups or tribes they will always fight, because they will always try to prove they are better. – patrizia
Thankyou Patrizia, you made the argument far better than I could.
It blows my mind that liberals are perplexed when when conservative or religiously minded immigrants take us at our word that this is a multi-cultural country and then decline to give their teenaged daughters condoms and decline to adopt our prevailing topless-let-it-all-hang-out liberalism. What did we expect? We tell people to keep their old national and cultural identities. So they do.
Myrtlemay makes a good point, if you can’t live with the system then cough up and make your own. But I worry where that leads to. I’d rather have a system of public education that takes kids of all ethnic, racial and economic backgrounds and puts them in classes together. I think that helps even the playing field. I don’t want segregation in school or outside of school.
“I sure hope I get to come back. I have seen eight decades (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, 00s, 10s) and the whole ride has been fun, fun, fun! Still is… more so since I discovered adobe construction.”
==========================================
But, what makes you think you’re coming back as a human, or for that matter, to earth?
Sorry, I don’t buy, the “fun, fun, fun,” bullshit Asoka, I don’t even believe you believe it, not at least assuming you have rare moments when you are being honest with yourself. If it is true, it would just suggest you are as deep as litmus paper. Truman Capote put it pretty well when he said “Life is a pretty good play, with a lousy third act”.
“Matter is an emergent property of Consciousness”
=========================================
If that is true I wonder why you are not able to see through the tissue thin veil of your delusive appearances? Based on your posts here, it’s pretty clear that “race” is not an emergent property for you, but absolutely and inherently existent.
I’m sorry you moved to Idaho, the last thing the northern part of our state needs is another deluded racist. Idaho has been trying to purge itself of that cancer for years, and we’ve done a pretty good job overall.
It won’t help you anyway, no matter where you go, your distorted projections will follow, I’m sure.
the fact of life are schools and society self segregate according to the perceived self interest of groups, races etc and individuals. most parents have no interest in leveling the playing field. they only want what is best for their kids. fifty years of forced desegregation have produced only more suburban sprawl which this site rails against. my home town had six high schools in the 60s, 2 were mostly black. after desegregation(2011) , there are 4 public high schools. all are predominately black. they ran out of white kids when most moved to surrounding small towns. what a great result.
Orlov, Clusterfuckers, Orlov.
Go; read; be enlightened and entertained, all in the same instant.
(Bunk and de-bunking… “Everybody Poops” is classic Orlov deep snark.)
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
Sorry I overreacted. Here’s some of the stuff I’ve heard or read reg. the POTUS:
– Obummer
– Obozo
– Has a deep seated hatred of white people (his Mom included?)
– Not born in this country.
– Baby killer (supported family planning)
– Kenyan
– Muslim
– Socialist
– Corporatist moderate (I can agree)
– Not one of us
– Denies “American Exceptionalism”
– Directly causing oil prices to rise (name your reason, such as the deep water ban)
– Has a “fat, bitch wife who is telling me what to feed my children”.
– BAU (You thought “Hope & Change” was more than a campaign slogan? Most Americans can’t “handle the change” to paraphrase Jack to Tom in “A Few Good Men”.
Is this payback for W. being criticized for continued reading to school children after the 1st tower was hit? I never criticized W. for Mt. Biking with Lance Armstrong on his ranch.
Don’t think I’m an Obama apologist. There are many areas I think could be handled better. They have been well written about by others on this blog.
Because of all the POTUS hand wringing, I think Obama should push hard for the metric system. Americans could be up in arms for sending us over the edge into Euro styled socialism.
As a side benefit, I wouldn’t have to be laughed at by my former Canadian coworkers for sticking with that archaic English system.
Could someone please explain to me why the stock market is up 150 points today?
OMG!!! The metric system. For the past 25 years my mother-in-law has been warning me not to put my glass measuring cups in the dishwasher because that makes the measurements (1 cup, etc.) wear off faster. She seems to think we’ll be forced to convert all our recipies to metric because only metric measuring devices will be available in the stores. Only those who have preserved their ancient pyrex will be saved from chaos.
Armaggedon in the kitchen!
Jen
Yep; a lot of really infantile crap is coming out of the blowholes of blowhards, basically just to amuse themselves and feed their pet delusions, IMHO.
Obama as Corporate/WallStreeter/Bankster tool? 99% a “given”, as his campaign chest would indicate. THAT’S the all-important BAU that must be overthown for the race (“human”) to survive.
Is Obama up to throwing off his masters/handlers, and begin to listen to realists? Unlikely. We’ve seen what happens to those that would defy TPTB.
Because markets fluctuate and some peeps are making money or trying to!
Ironically in NJ the Obama elementary school has been shut down for financial mismanagement, the conservative shout section is going to have a field day with this bit of dark humor.
So I think we can agree, blacks should have their own schools without exploiting white taxpayers to pay for them.
From the teddy bear wing of liberalism I now know we need “Liberal Eugenics” which means only white people must assimilate themselves out of existance and drop out of Evolution.
Why don’t these liberal paragons call for African, Asians or the Jewish people assimilate out of existance?
If you go into grocery stores up here you have prices in lbs and ounces as well as in kilos and grams.
There’s one large grocery store up here (not owned by any of the big chains) that prices its produce and meat only in the old system.
People tell you how tall they are in feet and inches. I’ve never once heard anyone say that they’re 1.8 metres tall.
Turtlemay said, “”RADIATION HAS HIT THE WEST COAST AS OF 4 PM TODAY, WEDNESDAY. IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO TO CANADA AND THEN THE EAST COAST. LOG ONTO THE PERSON ABOVE AND PAY ATTENTION.”
This is silly propaganda, designed to scare people to death. Instead of spreading fear, people should be sending whatever aid they can to Japan and its populace.”
I’m afraid the accident is worse than anyone thought.
These reactors are all going to go Chernobyl. If there is an explosion (and there will be) the radiating particles will go into the atmosphere and distribute all over the planet.
People, especially children, will undeniably ingest small particles. They will travel in the bloodstream and lodge in tissues where they will sit, for years, ejecting ionizing radiation that will disrupt the recombination of DNA, over time, leading to cell death, mutations, and cancer. This will also happen to animals and adults. The particles will enter the food chain and concentrate as they move up, ending up in top consumers (us), especially those who eat other top consumers- big fish, land animals.
Some of the nuclear fuel is made from plutonium, which is especially toxic, the kind of material that ends up making a place uninhabitable for hundreds of years.
Over the next few months and years these radioactive particles will be drifting through the air, and officials will be telling us to relax, its the equivalent of a bunch of chest x-rays. Closer to ground zero, people’s hair will fall out and babies will die from leukemia.
As the winds whip the fallout around, it will rain down on agricultural land and end up in the food supply. In ten years they will measure radiation from Fukushima at the tops of remote mountains, trapped in your car’s air filter, in your subway sandwich, in your breast milk, your hair, the lowest parts of Death Valley, Antarctica, and the White House Gift Shop.
Send your money to Japan? Fuck that noise. Take your $25 and invest in renewable energy.
Apparently, I have a warrior or Ksyatria view of reality; my path towards God or the Ultimate Reality is not the path of Renounciation but rather the path of Duty – in my case trying to warn the Volk. All of this is laid out in the Bhagavad Gita – including the danger of Caste Mixture. As a Universal Religion like Christianity, Buddhism cannot give us the guidance we need on these issues at this critical juncture. As a purely Spiritual Path, I certainly admire it though.
It was prophesized that at the End of the Age, evil Brahmins such as yourself would arise and attempt to decieve the people unto their destruction. Remember you admitted that although Tibet was worth saving, the West was not. I didn’t have to rip your mask off – you did it for me. Such “love” will be the end of us.
Blacks can’t keep their own charities going – they depend on Whites for this. Also they typically don’t donate organs or as much blood. Big juju apparently. Yet I suspect that their organs would fit their people much better than our’s. Have you heard about the desperate attempt to get Blacks to integrate the National Parks? With litte success – they aren’t interested in Nature per se. Also many seem to have a genetic fear of snakes hiding in the bushes.
Give me a break, Vlad. Maybe by calling Dale “Evil” you have an unacknowledged dark spot in your own soul. We all have our shadows.
As people meditate and realize that they are more than their physical bodies, they can let go of their fear. You, my friend are full of fear.
Try to relax a bit.
All things work together for good…
Jen
Cash – they can’t assimilate and stay what they are. German Muslims eating sausage and drinking beer at Octoberfests? Absolutely forbidden by the Koran. American Muslims joining the Army – to fight other Muslims? Absolutely forbidden – no Muslim may join the Kafirs to fight other Muslims. They were never supposed to even fight each other, but that they couldn’t keep. They have pretty much kept the dictum not to join unbelievers against other Muslims though. So expect more Muslim soldiers to suddenly “go postal” on their comrades.
So what to do about this untractable problem? Well the powers that be are trying to create a bogus Islam just like they created bogus Christianities. So expect Islamic Unitarianism and Episcopalianism. It’s already started. And behind them will be lurking the real thing. The hardliners are very clever and know all about the West – far more than the West knows about them.
No real Muslim may befriend a kuffar. So your Somali friend was not. He was either just faking friendship with you or he was a fake Muslim and a real friend. Because you are an agnostic, you underestimate the influence of Christianity on you. Because of it and of course, your race, you were assimilable. An Italian raised up as a Muslim would not be.
You can bet those “tree huggers” definitely had alterior motives
==============
It’s Ulterior you dope.
😉
If you aren’t afraid of what’s coming, you’re a fool. Meditation should make us stronger in our duty – not make us into pollyanna care bear/teletubbies. To be sure, none of us are perfect or even close, but your idea that every negative perception is just a projection, is pure pop spirituality – as if you can’t see something without being it. And again, people who want the death of Western Civilization or the White Race are Evil. If you can’t deal with the reality of Evil, how deep can you be as a person? Buddhism in general is not as deep as Christianity in this regard, and pop Buddhism is just atrocious – as is pop Christianity.
For now just to follow-up on something “Ripped Thunder” asserted 3 weeks ago. He snarled the nobody reads what Bustin has to say. I ran across his inane assertion a few minutes ago while back tracking using my search function (command G) to collect (by cutting & pasting) a bouquet of magnificent expositions by the aforementioned Bustin (e.g. Bustin on Agnosticism, Bustin on Evolution, Bustin on Religious faith of world leaders, etc).
Bustin, henceforth, I who avidly look forward to JHK’s weekly Monday rants with now enjoy amplified anticipation of also snipping more of your flowers for my dazzlling bouquet.
Today I came here looking for edification on a particular subject, hence my latest flower and the catalyst that initiated the backtracking endeavor, “Bustin on Japanese Nukes”.
OOOh you are so good, I worry now the Vlads and the PoC’s etc will finally make you grow weary of wrestling in the mud and we will lose you.
Sounds like we’re going in to Libya. Undoubtedly we will be fighting with some of the same people (Al Quaeda) we are fighting against in other part of the Middle East. The disparate groups will unite in their hatred of us for the killing which we perpetrate in our air strikes. Libyans will join Al Quaeda because of it.
Bustin out! Farewell sweet misogyny!
Not again…
The UN Security Council just voted to approve a “No Fly” zone over Libya and the U.S. is going to help support it with our military might.
Do we never learn? I’m sorry Libyians can’t get along, but I don’t think we have any business getting involved in a civil war. Stupid Obama.
Jen
“It’s Ulterior you dope.”
attaboy Qshtik, grind their faces into the dirt.
And mine too when I give you the chance
Sing with me…..
Whatever BP Wants BP Gets…
Our leadership is attracted to war like bees to honey.
It’s a win-win
“Times of turbulence, high volatility and leadership transition typically provide the best environment for opportunistic investors and conditions in the financial markets”
Source:
Advising the exceptionally affluent.
A dated reference I admit, but I think this answers your question Uncle Ned. Italics are mine.
============
A new and strangely sweet voice has arrived on the CFN scene. I will be doing all I can to overlook or to otherwise cut slack, within the narrow bounds of my obsessive compulsive (sarcastic corrections) disorder, in the improbable event future posts from this fresh new flower in our midst contain minor booboos such as the bolded word on the first line of the blockquoted excerpt above.
“Times of turbulence, high volatility and leadership transition typically provide the best environment for opportunistic investors and conditions in the financial markets”
From: Private Wealth: Advising the Exceptionally Affluent
A dated reference I admit, but I think this answers your question Uncle Ned.
My attempt to provide a link to the quote was blocked. Italics are mine.
TPTB did not want to do this as interference from Uncle Sam might aggravate tensions in NA and the ME.
Qaddafi has been kicking butt and his anti-western ass has always had a price tag on it.
Consequently since he could prevail it’s time to compassionately care about innocent civilians implement a no fly zone and install a pro western ass.
Compassion for civilian casualties always appears when it supports western interests. In other situations nobody cares. Compassion from TPTB is an optional sort of thing and depends entirely on the situation.
Tree huggers have Alder-terior motives.
Qschtik not familiar enough with your MO to know what you regard worthwhile to correct but if it is typos of the sort that result from when the fingers do not follow the inner dialogue I’ll have to be especially careful. I’ve typed “you” for “your” at least ten thousand times, for example. Also there is a strange quantum entanglement that attends inattentive use of the words “by” for “but” and as you might have noticed in the recent one you already corrected, “with” for “will”.
In any case, not expecting to provide you with much to sift through. I’m content to mostly watch. But it does grate to see “effect’ and “affect” savaged and that’s why I cheered you on. No mercy for those who abuse “gamut” and “gambit” either.
As an aside, I’m a full time stalker of depictions of chess players using boards with white not right. Most recently a TV clip touting some kid genius. In the background of his bedroom was a chessboard with pieces in place, and, you guessed it, white was not right. But enough about that. I do hope Bustin gets my message that at least one person truly appreciates his contributions here.
“Qshtik”, my apologies. Won’t happen again ~*~
“water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”
by k-dog
Vs:
“water water everywhere nor any drop to drink.”
by Samuel T Coleridge
Corrections are appreciated though they can feel like an albatross about one’s neck.
Welcome to the CFN. Don’t mind Qshtik, he can be quite humorous. Actually, I’ve learned a few things from his corrections.
Jen
MarlinFive54:
Sounds more like the heritage of a Nicky Barnes or Frank Lucas.
Obama is truly a black mark, a dirty spot on American history, no pun intended. Yes, he’s dropped the radical pose, as Van Jones said he must, to achieve the radical ends.
I find the extent of his deception astounding, but then I look at the electorate and find it less so.
“I find the extent of his deception astounding, but then I look at the electorate and find it less so.”
I’ll say NFS (starts with no) to decipher that one) to that; but I’m doing my part.
Today I distributed over 80 copies of Lifting The Veil on the steps of k-dogs state capital; Olympia Washington, at a Fuse Washington rally. I burned DVD playable copies by hand on the same computer I’m using to type this.
Giving DVDs away for free to like minded people for free was surprisingly difficult and required a bit of song and dance. People it seems are naturally suspicious, but apparently at the wrong people and the wrong things.
While doing my song and dance I was asked if I was a musician. When I said no the person who asked said I should be because I was “really good looking”. I must say that comment made my day.
Lifting The Veil relates to the Clusterfuck in an indirect way. It makes clear that the Powers That Be will be, and are supporting a ‘Last Man Standing’ energy policy.
While at the rally I learned a fun fact. In Washington State I can buy a private jet and avoid paying sales tax, not so for a pickup truck.
I’m going to start saving up.
Pardon the glaring errors, thanks.
“they will measure radiation from Fukushima at the tops of remote mountains, trapped in your car’s air filter, in your subway sandwich, in your breast milk, your hair, the lowest parts of Death Valley, Antarctica, and the White House Gift Shop.”
That’s pretty good.
fearless predictions: this week’s comments won’t top 600; next week’s won’t break 500. it’s called march madness.
bonus prediction: lady huskies will bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan.
Well said, Sir, well said.
That 51 Mom you are replying to is yet another teddy bear hugging white woman. I’ve said America is like a giant daycare center run by stressed out middle aged overweight white women who think their “special love” can keep the peace.
Basically been that way since 1992 when Clinton made over emotive white women the swing vote. It makes for an interesting coalition, in Chicago the black race haters have been sidelined by the teddy bear huggers so the Clinton coalition holds, for now.
The Clinton coalition won’t hold for very long, only so much of the terror of the blubbering pathetic white woman that either end of the political spectrum can actually tolerate.
From today’s San Jose Mercury News:
“While public health officials anxiously downplayed fears Thursday that a plume from Japan’s crippled nuclear reactors was descending on California, Scienists aat UC Berkeley declared they were already detecting readioactive particles from 5,000 miles across the ocean….’We see evidence of fission particles–iodine, cesium, barium and krypton, a whole dog’s breakfast of radiation,’ said Ed Morse, professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkely, whose students have set up a monitor on the rooftop of the campus’s Etcheverry Building.”
Jen
It’s better to be helpful and kind than to spend energy picking out people to hate,and deciding who might possibly victimize you when the TSHTF.
I don’t believe that all the world’s problems can be solved by group therapy.
There are lots of women-haters on this site, so your views are not unique. Sadly, this is a result of being under-endowed.
SJmom51
“We see evidence of fission particles–iodine, cesium, barium and krypton, a whole dog’s breakfast of radiation”
Should I be worried?
Oh for fuck’s sake. Do you have any idea how watered down any radiation from Japan would be that hits our western shore? There is so much wind/ rain/ocean between there and here that to fear an increase in radiation on our shores is the height of paranoia.
Now the potential effects on Japan? Different story.
The under-endowment to which you refer. Is that above or below the neck?
Here’s one for those who refuse to cower before the beast that gibbers and slavers in the stygian abyss.
(For those waiting for their Savior in a spiffy uniform, please disregard; wouldn’t want to throw any water on your Jingoistic Witch ‘o the Right.)
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”
Rock on, Phil!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27707.htm
Thanks for the link. Good ‘un!
Why…..above the neck! What were you thinking?
Yes, very good. WageLaborer turned me on to it last week. I carry the torch this week and am hoping somebody else will carry it next week.
Just asking. I have never been called under endowed myself and I was wondering what the term meant? I’ll Google it and find out.
“There are lots of women-haters on this site, so your views are not unique.”
You said it! I daresay most if not ALL posters on this site are women-haters.
I’m excluding women from the above statement, and perhaps a handful of real men. Tripp, my darling, where for art thou?
People don’t want nuke plants (too dangerous), they don’t want coal fired plants (too dirty). So we’re going with wind and solar. Sure we are. Until the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine and you turn on the electric stove and nothing happens.
At least in China they don’t make any pretence of giving a damn about public safety. Reactors with plywood containment vessels? So what, you want electricity or not?
Below the neck.
Got a GREAT book y’day:
‘AMERICA ALONE’ by Steyn.
I cant speak for the other guys here but I dont hate women, not even crazy CFN women.
got this today from a woman in Santa Barbara:
Last month Obama’s Justice Department forced the city of Dayton , Ohio , to lower standards for hiring police and firemen, allegedly because not enough minorities passed.
The Dayton Daily News reports that time is of the essence vital, since recent retirements “have left public safety forces near all-time lows.” Nonetheless, the Obama administration stepped in to keep police off the streets until he could saddle them with unqualified co-workers. Under the deal Dayton cut with Eric Holder’s department, city officials would hire people who scored as low as 58 percent ( F ) on one section and 63 percent ( D ) on another – failing marks on any conventional grade curve. The 748 people who passed the test will soon be joined by 258 new, incompetent public servants. No one will know one group from another except their HR department and the people whose lives they fail to save.
Even the local NAACP – which, as its name implies, can usually be counted on to support any policy that advances the interests of “colored people” – thinks Obama and Holder have gone too far. Dayton chapter President Derrick Forward has said, “The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed…If you lower the score for any group of people, you’re not getting the best qualified people for the job.” (In reality, the NAACP regularly supports these kinds of actions, but at least Forward does not.)
No misogynist here. I do however suffer from misanthropy whenever one of them posts.
Have others ‘distorted projections’ always been your problem?
Maybe go see Kalu, hes touring the Westcoast [or at least LA] this year.
The book I just mentioned has a great insight into the ‘SAVE TIBET’ bumperstickers!
maybe Kdog is a gaydog
[we need more of them here]
DOES THAT INCLLUDE THE FEMALE POSTERS?
[read:idiot]
Standards should be the same for all, equal and fair. Anything else denies the equality of Man and fuels disunity and dissension. Good dogs come in all sizes and endowments, as do bad.
And when I say equality of Man, women are included. It is sad to have to point that out.
no
“The book I just mentioned has a great insight into the ‘SAVE TIBET’ bumperstickers!”
Please elaborate. The tragedy of Tibet is something only those who had or have the bumpersticker seem to have know about.
Same applies to me.
I really don’t see how my comments could be construed as “bashing wimmenz”. (Unless jokey spellings can be seen that way without context. And I would consider that to be a bit on the hypersensitive side.)
My unreserved apologies to all offended female parties.
(I save my invective for those living in fools’ paradises. …Of which there seem to be as many and varied as individuals themselves! Me included! ;o)
Maybe you should consider signing up for an English course. If you were a better reader, you would have read my follow-up post. I can probably get you a good price on a third grade basal and spelling book, just to start you out, I mean. 🙂
Or perhaps “Q”, if needing extra cash, can set up a correspondence course in English for you. Yes, he most probably will start you out in “Grammar 101 for Nincompoomps”, but it is the price you must pay to overcome the incoherent ways you put your thoughts together. I wonder if he’ll charge you extra for being an asshole?
Eleuthero,
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts & have noticed no contributions this week.
Are you still on target to retire from teaching in five days?
Regards,
Jonathan
Just to put things in a little perspective, radiation is cumulative throughout a lifetime. IMO, That means that you can’t underestimate exposure to radiation since it continues to
create free radicals and cause insult to our cells.
Although scientists say that the amount of radiation we would be exposed to from Japan is minuscule, one said last night that we all have carry a part of Chernobyl.
Can we get back to something other than gender or ethnic issues? Maybe some picked up that my “Scapegoat List” was a mocking of excessive hand wringing or doom/gloom. If you think TS will HTF, the nation is in decline, Techno Triumphilism is a joke or we’re “so F’d”, I guess that is the case. We create our own reality.
Let me tell a story and make another list, in which I attempt to put money/mouth, in my next post. I’m going to do it from my perspective as an athlete and engineer. Trippticket does a great job from a sustainable living emphasis.
lbendet mentioned: “we all have carry a part of Chernobyl.”
=====================
So do German pigs. Wild pigs shot by hunters in the Bayerische Wald (a range of high hills along the Czech border) are routinely tested for radioactive contamination. I guess their habit of rooting into the dirt gets them down to the soil layer where residue from Chernobyl is found.
Cheers
Can we get back to something other than gender or ethnic issues?
-jss-
Sure, Jonathan – how about religion?
==============
Thread is quiet this week. Orion says it’s March Madness. I thought it was lack of race/gender/Atheism discussions. Hopefully, it’s not cumulative radiation poisoning. Everyone alive since July 16, 1945 has been soaking up the radioactivity.
A year and a half ago, I had the pleasure of touring the Palo Alto Net Zero home (paloaltonetzero.com). I rode my bike from the hills of East San Jose to his home on University Ave., N. of downtown P.A. The owners goal is to not use any more power than he has generated himself (net zero electric use). He disconnected all natural gas and uses only electrical power. The conversion costs are insane for the avg. American (over $100K), but it opened my eyes to the fact that it is not a big sacrifice to reduce energy use in half and possible to see an 80% reduction with enough care.
Each family’s cost/benefit ratio is unique, but we can move towards the following:
1. Seal the envelope (insulate, caulk etc.)
2. Windows (the owner of PANZ is CEO of Serious Materials, a window that has 3x the insulating factor of any other double pane. I put these in my San Jose home).
3. Solar hot water.
4. Pellet stoves.
5. Super efficient refrigerators (less than half the energy of current, but with much reduced capacity – can’t get something for nothing).
6. Induction cook top.
7. Convection ovens.
8. Portable solar ovens.
9. Heat pumps.
10.LED’s
11.Phantom energy reduction with switchable outlets.
12.Line dry clothes
13.More efficient washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves etc.
14.Conduct a home energy audit.
Some have concerns about fresh water supplies, since we waste so much and do stupid things like corn based ethanol. Look at water capture tanks and gray water.
Eliminate the use of ICE’s. It’s a joke that suburbia still uses lawn mowers. Would you use a gas powered vacuum cleaner indoors?
Bicycle!
I’ve reduced my own energy use in half and my home uses about $500/year in gas/electric. The avg. American spends $2200/yr.
Thanks for your time.
Well, it looks like we got the UN mandate to wage (aggressive) war in Libya. Ya, we’re going in, and soon. UN mandate? That sounds familiar.
Nobody liked the way President Bush and Rumsfeldt made war, now we’ll get to see how the Democrats do it. Wilson, Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson … they have pretty big shoes to fill. Let’s see how it goes.
Here’s Marlins advice:
Hit ’em hard
Hit ’em low
Hit ’em like a buffalo.
They can’t go wrong.
Start my 2nd job tonite so will probably be signing off for awhile.
Carry on, CFNers!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
“Nincompoomps” – Myrtle? You are really teeing up a word for someone, aren’t you?
Try, nincompoops, next time.
Then you ponder, concerning Q as a language teacher, for asia, “I wonder if he’ll charge you extra for being an asshole?”
No, only political leadership and the CEO class are able to charge extra for being assholes. Asshole language instructors are a dime a dozen – no extra charges will be billable for that particular personality characteristic.
Otherwise, some of us would be too busy counting our extra income to ever have time to post on CFN.
I did find “nincompoomps” used in a blog entry – kind of a cool looking word, actually.
http://www.pszulu.blogspot.com/
My long story and list is being held by the moderator. Here’s another one you might enjoy.
I was talking to a fellow at the Palo Alto Net Zero home tour who has an elaborate solar panel array on his home. He said that he was generating a lot of excess capacity back onto the grid and PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) was not compensating him for the excess. So, his “brilliant” move was to use up the excess by running his home AC system when it wasn’t necessary. Gotta love it. Not!
My solution was to buy an electric car or have one of his existing converted to electric.
Warmed my heart to hear we all have something in common with the Wild pigs in the Bayerische Wald.
Jonathan, that entry will be held forever – and never released, based on my experience on CFN. I hope you’ll retype it for us.
And regarding:
“My solution was to buy an electric car or have one of his existing converted to electric.”
-jss-
We looked seriously into buying a Prius, ’cause we need longer range and more payload than a pure electric vehicle can provide. The advantage to an electric would be charging it off solar panels and then using the car battery as power supply for the house when the vehicle was not being charged for a trip.
I decided the risk of voiding the Prius warranty was too great to try something like this. Plus, there’s that battery replacement issue hanging for any electric vehicle.
So we got a 32 MPG crossover. But I’d consider trading based on new information.
This is a long piece, but i thought it might touch some of the participants on this blog. The attribution follows with the article.
Ront
BRAND NEW ARTICLE:
“Earthquakes, Earth and You”
Maureen Moss
Dearest Hearts,
As always I pray you are well.
For the past several days I have been awakened around 4:00AM to just sit and be still (not write) and contemplate where we are as a species and as a planet, and what it means to watch, not just realize, that the world as we have known it is ending with a big bang, just as it began.
I’d thought about writing, many an early morning as so much awareness and feelings were coming up at rapid speed, but realized I needed to feel into all of the feelings before doing so. I have had so many conflicting feelings I wasn’t certain which were mine, which were from the mass consciousness and which were as a result of all of the geophysical activity.
I soon realized they were all mine. There was no separation or parceling it out. I was to be with all of it.
One minute tension, the next tears. Confusion followed by clarity, peace followed by unrest, feeling raw and then feeling like a butterfly must feel when it’s first drying off and begins to realize it is about to begin a brand new existence. Where to fly first?
For me, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, how to be, or what to think. I was all over the boards, and just needed to be, without judgment about myself until I landed somewhere. And then came the monstrous earthquake, and I seemed to land.
When the earthquake in Japan hit with such velocity, the only thing I could think about was how brave my brothers and sisters across the globe were to have complied, at some level, to help the rest of the world wake up (again) more fully to the only thing that matters, love, and to the only expression that will get us from one world to the next, love.