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The race to economic collapse is an international competition sparking threats and tensions summoning the specter of war. The imploding center of this collapse is that of industrial technocracy based on fossil fuels. All the nations will go through it on differing schedules. It has been playing out slowly, painfully, and deceptively — hence, my term for it: the long emergency.

Following a dumbed-down media unable to parse the delusions du jour, one might think, for instance, that the USA and China are engaged in a symbolic battle for the heavyweight championship of the world. Rather, both are freaking out at a prospective decline in activity that will make it impossible to support their current populations at even close to the levels of comfort they had lately achieved.

For China, that means very lately. Up until the turning millennium, most Chinese lived as though the twelfth century had never ended. For but two decades now, a new and quite large Chinese middle class has been driving cars around freeways, eating cheeseburgers, wearing designer blue jeans, shooting selfies at the Eiffel Tower, and even dreaming of trips to the moon. They’ve barely had time to turn decadent.

Getting to that was quite a feat. China compressed its version of the industrial revolution into a few decades, catching up to a weary, jaded West that took two hundred years achieving “modernity,” and now it is seeming to surpass us — which is the reason for so much tension and anxiety in our relations. The real news is: we’re all already in the climax of that movie. Nobody will surpass anyone.

The reason is the decline of affordable energy to run the stupendously complex systems we have come to rely on. China never had very much petroleum. They import over 10 million barrels a day now, and most of that comes from far far away, having to pass through some very hazardous sea lanes like the Straits of Hormuz and Molucca. They run things mostly on coal, and they’re well past peak — and let’s not get into the ecological ramifications of what they’re still burning. Even some intelligent observers in the West think that the Chinese have made gigantic strides in alt-energy, and will soon be free of old limits, but that’s a pipe dream. They have met the same disappointments over wind and solar as we have. Alt-energy just doesn’t pencil out money-wise or physics-wise. Plus, you absolutely need fossil fuels to make it happen, even as a science project.

The US is smugly and stupidly under the impression that the “shale oil miracle” has put an end to our energy worries. That comes from a foolish nexus of wishful thinking between a harried populace, a dishonest government, and the aforementioned brain-damaged news media. We want, with all our might, to believe we can keep running the interstate highways, WalMart, Agri-Business, DisneyWorld, the US Military, and suburbia just as they are, forever. So, we spin our reassuring fantasies about “energy independence” and “Saudi America.” Meanwhile, the shale oil companies can’t make a red cent pulling that stuff out of the ground. For the moment, ultra-low interest rate loans, riding on the back of all that wishful thinking, keep the racket going and sustain America’s illusions.

The disappointment over that error-in-thinking will be epic. In fact, it already is, considering how many working-age people without work or sense of purpose are ending their lives by opioid OD in Flyover country. The hipsters of Brooklyn and Silicon Valley haven’t gotten to that point because so much of America’s diminishing capital productivity still flows into their bank accounts — enabling a sunny life of caramel cloud macchiatos, farm-to-table suppers, and sexual reassignment surgeries.

The US and China are actually more like two passengers of a sinking ship racing to swim to a single lifebuoy — which is drifting ever-beyond the reach of both desperate parties on a powerful current of history. That current is the one telling nations quite literally to mind their own business, to prepare to go their own ways, to strive somehow to become self-sufficient, to finally face the limits to growth, to simplify and downscale all their operations.

Alas, the US and China — and everybody else — will apparently be dragged kicking and screaming to those transformational recognitions. (Thus, the agonies of Brexit.)  In the meantime, we may choose to slug it out in pursuit of that chimerical world championship just because we still have means to go at it. Such a contest would certainly speed up the journey to our fated destination, and not in a good way.


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

911 Responses to “Rumors of War”

  1. Pucker May 27, 2019 at 10:04 am #

    What do you think of “Hyper Ethnic Change”?

    “Few debates about national populism fail to mention immigration; this is why it is crucial to explore exactly how this issue and the wider ethnic transformation of the West are creating room for revolts like Brexit, Trump and populists in Europe. Again, we need to step back and take in the broad view. While many Western nations, not least the US, have experienced immigration in recent centuries, more recent flows have often been unprecedented in size, involved different types of migrants, and are more broadly ushering in an era of what we call ‘hyper ethnic change’. This is causing significant fears and resentment among large numbers of voters, which will likely accelerate. However, we reject the popular claim that national populism is simply a refuge for racists and people driven by an irrational fear of ‘the other’. While racists are undoubtedly drawn to national populists, by no means everybody who votes for them is racist. Rather, national populists often raise legitimate questions such as what number of immigrants can be accommodated, what skill set they should have and whether new arrivals should have access to the same benefits as long-standing citizens. Anxieties about the scale and pace of ethnic change are not simply rooted in economics and the availability of jobs. Despite what many on the liberal left claim, and as nearly twenty years of research have shown, what is just as important, if not more so, are people’s fears about how immigration and ethnic change are seen to threaten their national identity. Our overarching argument is that national populism partly reflects deep-rooted public fears about how a new era of immigration and hyper ethnic change could lead to the destruction of their wider group and way of life.“

    Roger Eatwell
    National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

    • Neon Vincent May 27, 2019 at 11:30 am #

      And a somber Memorial Day to you and the rest of Kunstler’s readers. At this rate, I won’t have to buy the book. You’ll reproduce it here paragraph by paragraph in serial form. I suppose I should thank you.

      That’s rather snide, Neon Vincent. I put a lot of effort and thought into writing these original blogs, and for-the-record, my next book has already gone through all its edits and I’m not running excerpts of it here. –JHK Admin

      • elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 11:44 am #

        Neon,
        Have you seen today’s “Google Doodle” on their homepage? I find it insulting. Google has long failed to honor the USMC on their birthday every year, but does not neglect to celebrate those of various obscure Marxists, or notable events such as Maya Angelou’s first menstrual cycle….

        The gloves are off. I would invite those revanchists at Google to kiss my big black ass….

        • Neon Vincent May 27, 2019 at 11:57 am #

          Yes, I saw today’s Google doodle. I don’t know what’s disrespectful about either an American flag folded into a triangle, which is what I saw this morning, or a gray Google logo followed by a bugle playing “Taps,” which I see now, so I’ll let you explain it. That written, I’ve observed the USMC birthday on my blog twice, albeit combined with Veterans Day. The first time I featured the USMC Drum and Bugle Corps and the second time I featured both the drum corps and United States Marine Band, AKA “The President’s Own.” A friend of mine who marched in the USMC drum corps thanked me for posting those. I hope you enjoy them, too.

          • elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 1:02 pm #

            Neon,
            I saw neither the flag, nor the bugle…just the gray. I changed screens repeatedly, tapping on the logo only mentioned “Memorial Day, 2019”.

      • Neon Vincent May 27, 2019 at 11:46 am #

        That written, it looks like a good explanation of the phenomenon written by a scholar who is not sympathetic to the movement. I could use the analysis. So could the writers for “The Good Fight,” who produced a series of animated musical shorts about the political situation in the U.S. in hopes of getting at least one of them nominated for an Emmy. It worked last year. They’re very funny, but the one mocking Pepe attracted a lot of trolls and downrates. Maybe they could use some help understanding the other side.

        As for the U.S.-China trade dispute we’re in, that’s not helping either U.S. businesses, other than some manufacturers, or U.S. consumers. Speaking of which, another retail chain is going away, as Shopko is liquidating and will be close by the middle of June. The Retail Apocalypse rolls on.

        • Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

          Have you blogged about CBS censoring one of their cartoon shorts, that happened to be about… wait for it… censorship? I’d check but I can’t follow your link from here.

          • Neon Vincent May 27, 2019 at 2:09 pm #

            E.H., I mentioned it in passing, writing “it seemed that every episode this season had an animated musical segment, including the one that was censored.” I didn’t go beyond that, as it wasn’t uploaded to YouTube along with any Good Fight Short after “The Legend of John Barron.” If I want to write about the topic, I’d have to do so indirectly by embedding the Vox video about China’s treatment of the Uighurs and another video about either “The Great Firewall” or Google’s and Facebook’s attempts to enter the Chinese market (Chumhum seems to be an Expy of both tech giants), since the video was never shown to the public, although having it seen as censored may have worked nearly as well.

      • Neon Vincent May 27, 2019 at 2:13 pm #

        Sorry, I JHK, I wasn’t referring to you and I apologize for accidentally offending you. I was referring to Pucker reposting excerpts from Roger Eatwell’s “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.” If I was being snide, it wasn’t to you, it was to Pucker. If he wants an apology, I’ll give it to him if he asks.

        • Pucker May 27, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

          Don’t worry about it.

          Some time ago, I quoted from a book that was rather embarrassing to black Americans from a sociological perspective and some bloke kept threatening me with alleged copyright violations, which was a bit weird.

        • gonetohell May 28, 2019 at 3:47 pm #

          So it is revealed that JHK has gotten a tad sensitive, and more than a tad defensive, in his old age.

      • Q. Shtik May 27, 2019 at 2:39 pm #

        JHK,

        Neon V. was talking to Pucker about his endless quotations from National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy by Roger Eatwell. (Interesting last name, no?) He was not being snide to you.

        • K-Dog May 28, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

          Interesting how Pucker anticipated another Golden Golem article and had what could have passed for a thoughtful response per-prepared, shrink-wrapped and ready to go. Interesting how he says ‘Don’t worry about it’ and mentions African Americans in his don’t worry about it response in a totally inappropriate way. Interesting too how nobody calls ‘the bloke’ out. Pucked up to just show up here with your own agenda IMHO. but Puckers agenda is Truptopian. I guess that makes it OK.

      • Majella May 27, 2019 at 6:40 pm #

        JHK – what the actual? This is clearly not aimed at you but at Puker’s constant C&Ping from Mr. Eatwell’s book. I’m a little surprised at the thin-skinned response, especially from a writer of your calibre whom one would expect to have a better level of reading comprehension.

        • gonetohell May 28, 2019 at 1:06 am #

          His next book is said to have been crayoned on a bib while in his assisted living facility.

      • gonetohell May 28, 2019 at 1:00 am #

        By all means buy his next book. In this sequel he’s going to elaborate on how “America’s diminishing capital productivity” is leading to more transgender surgeries. After all, those liberals in Brooklyn and Silicon Valley are always looking for new and interesting ways to spend what’s left of our nation’s wealth. I’m sure he threw Brooklyn in there as some sort of dig on AOC.

        • CancelMyCard May 28, 2019 at 6:48 pm #

          You clearly are an empty-headed,
          flaming asshole . . .

          but then, you already know that.

          • gonetohell May 28, 2019 at 11:00 pm #

            Speaking of assholes, maybe it’s time you finally took that thumb out of yours. You’ll still be a clueless nitwit but you should be able to sit more comfortably.

          • Q. Shtik May 29, 2019 at 1:13 pm #

            flaming asshole . . . – CancelMC

            Speaking of assholes, maybe it’s time you finally took that thumb out of yours. – gonetohell

            ==============

            Oh goody, this is like the good old days when we used to see some nasty ad hominems. Some guy (I think his handle was OEO) would begin a sentence “Hey, Penis breath…”

  2. Pucker May 27, 2019 at 10:06 am #

    I suspect that if one surveyed Asian immigrant populations in the US that you’d find similar disquiet and shock at the “browning” of the US by hyper open border immigration. Go figure….

    “Many leaders and people in Central and Eastern Europe loathe what they see as a cosmopolitan and liberal Europe in the West.”

    Roger Eatwell
    National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

  3. venuspluto67 May 27, 2019 at 10:16 am #

    And just think, we might have a war with Iran to really put us on that toboggan-slide. Ain’t we got fun!

    • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 10:19 am #

      Ain’t we got fun

      That is an old tune.

      • hmuller May 27, 2019 at 11:49 am #

        “Ain’t We Got Fun” is a popular foxtrot published in 1921 with music by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Raymond B. Egan and Gus Kahn.

        It was recorded by such notables as Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Rosemary Cluny, and a popular cat food commercial of the 1970’s.

        If Biden wins in 2020, the foxtrot could make a big comeback.

        • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 6:42 pm #

          America is incapable of supporting a return of the foxtrot or any other such dance. Our culture is too far gone. Not even the corpse remains; only the sticky silhouette of what used to be. Perhaps a few dusty pictures and memories stored in somebody’s drawer.

          The only “foxtrot” that might show up would be if it’s mixed with twerking and grinding somehow. I don’t even think the current clowns of the entertainment racket even know what 3/4 time is, let alone the circle of fifths.

          • Elrond Hubbard May 28, 2019 at 11:38 am #

            JimInFlorida, I would be cautious about too much nostalgia for a bygone era with too little thought or responsibility. Around the same time the foxtrot was being invented, lynching was at its height in the United States.

            If you want to lament the comely surface of days gone by, you ought to pay attention to the horrors underneath as well. And the horrors weren’t even underneath. Not only were these murder festivals celebrated openly and in public, but it was normal to send picture postcards of lynchings through the mail. What souvenirs those must have made!

          • gonetohell May 28, 2019 at 3:39 pm #

            This isn’t a music blog. So no need to try and impress with your limited knowledge of musical terms. No one here is going to know or care what you mean by circle of fifths or 3/4 time.

        • Anon1970 May 27, 2019 at 9:12 pm #

          In 1956, Doris Day’s hit song song from the movie “The Man Who Knew Too Much” was heavily played on the radio. “Que sera, sera”: Whatever will be will be. It seems more appropriate these days, given the political and economic uncertainty we are living through.

          In 1956, the US was at its peak, in many respects, relative to the rest of the world. It was the year the Interstate Highway Act was passed. President Eisenhower refused to consider tax cuts until the debt related to WWII had been paid off. He kept the US out of the Hungarian Revolution and pressured the British, French and Israelis to give back control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. He was not interested in starting WWIII with Russia.

          63 years later, my standard of living is much higher than it was in 1956, although for many American households, that is not the case. These days, some American college graduates are moving abroad to teach English in China or India or even Ukraine, just to get out from under their massive student loans.

  4. benr May 27, 2019 at 10:28 am #

    The oil fields of Newhall now called Santa Clarita started shutting down in the late 60’s early 70’s as they started drying up and stopped producing.

    Flash forward forty years and lo and behold they are producing again with the same equipment and even stranger the oil seeps have been producing for the last decade or so.

    These were oil wells claimed to have been dried up and died several decades ago.

    Even more strange the oil wells all around Ventura and Ojai are also producing and tar a rare sighting in these parts washing up on the beach is now showing up all over as well.
    A Russian scientist believed Oil is Abiotic and replenishes itself naturally if left alone.

    I have seen something of this first hand and during periods when it’s not simply the water table pushing oil out.

    https://principia-scientific.org/russians-nasa-discredit-fossil-fuel-theory-demise-of-junk-co2-science/

    The piece has a nod to our host.

    • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 11:11 am #

      Well, benr, I don’t think I’ll be paying much attention to anything Principia-Scientific says in future.

      The quote from Richard Heinberg, whom I used to read quite prolifically, intrigued me, so I checkout out his views on abiotic oil,which are there for all to see if you just google, unsurprisingly, ‘Richard Heinberg abiotic oil’. And here they are for your delectation and further clarification:

      http://richardheinberg.com/richard-heinberg-on-abiotic-oil

      Here’s the Principia-S quote:

      “Indeed, so lame has the fossil fuel theory become that even its most strident supporters are unable to muster the flimsiest of evidence for their position. In “The Abiotic Oil Controversy” key proponent of the abiotic (fossil) origin, Richard Heinberg admits his case is exposed as threadbare lamenting,

      “Perhaps one day there will be general agreement that at least some oil is indeed abiotic. Maybe there are indeed deep methane belts twenty miles below the Earth’s surface.”

      And here’s what Richard Heinberg actually said:

      Perhaps one day there will be general agreement that at least some oil is indeed abiotic. Maybe there are indeed deep methane belts twenty miles below the Earth’s surface. But the important question to keep in mind is: What are the practical consequences of this discussion now for the problem of global oil depletion?

      “I have not personally inspected the oil wells in Saudi Arabia or even those in Texas. But nearly every credible report that I have seen – whether from the industry or from an independent scientist – describes essentially the same reality: discoveries are declining, and have been since the 1960s. Spare production capacity is practically gone. And the old, super-giant oil fields that the world depends upon for the majority of its production are nearing or past their all-time production peaks. Not even the Russian fields cited by the abiotic theorists as evidence for their views are immune: in June the head of Russia’s Federal Energy Agency said that production for 2005 is likely to remain flat or even drop, while other officials in that country have said that growth in Russian production cannot be sustained for more than another few years. (15)”

      “Given the ongoing runup in global petroleum prices, the notion of peak oil hardly needs defending these days. We are seeing the phenomenon unfold before our eyes as one nation after another moves from the column of “oil ” to that of “oil importers” (Great Britain made the leap this year). At some point in the very near future the remaining nations in column A will simply be unable to supply all of the nations in column B.

      “In short, the global energy crisis is coming upon us very quickly, so that more time spent debating highly speculative theories can only distract us from exploring, and applying ourselves to, the practical strategies that might preserve more of nature, culture, and human life under the conditions that are rapidly developing.

      There’s more, but you can read it yourself.

      So you can have Principia-not-remotely-Scientifica and not even honest, and I’ll stick with Richard Heinberg, thanks.

      • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 11:12 am #

        *checked out*

        • Tate May 27, 2019 at 11:33 am #

          Deleted by JHK Admin for personal nastiness to another commenter.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 12:10 pm #

            Nope. It’s just the probably inevitable consequence of being a language teacher, then working in publishing. My profuse apologies. I somehow thought you’d be more interested in the content, but I guess there’s nothing really to say about that, so well done you.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 12:13 pm #

            Did you even notice they referred to Heinberg as a ‘key proponent of the abiotic (fossil) origin’? Or did you just get to ‘checkout’ and skip to the correction?

          • Tate May 27, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

            Well, I was curious about it so I did just skip to the correction. I don’t ‘believe’ in abiotic oil, in any event.

          • Q. Shtik May 27, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

            just the probably inevitable consequence of being a language teacher – GA

            ============

            GA, I’m confused. Are you responding to the Tate comment that JHK Admin deleted? or are you responding to the JHK Admin deletion itself?

          • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 1:14 pm #

            Q, since the source comment was removed, its very hard to tell.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 2:09 pm #

            I was responding to Tate, if it matters.

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

            Wow. That must have been some “NASTY” there, Tate.

          • Tate May 27, 2019 at 10:49 pm #

            Not really. My own son suffered from the *unnamed* disorder (which goes by the initials OCD). But it’s on a spectrum, it’s not necessarily especially debilitating. And with therapy, children can get better.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 6:54 pm #

            Tate – Really? Is that all?

      • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 11:23 am #

        In other words, timing matters. Even assuming some oil is abiotic and replenishes naturally, if we use it faster than it replenishes (which we are), we still run out and/or it gets prohibitively more expensive to produce in the short term.

        But abiotic oil in general is just another cargo cult cornucopian myth, allowing to indulge the foolish exponential growth myth of western capitalism and signaling that we’re still deep in the denial phase of coping with our plight.

        • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 11:33 am #

          What do you think the immigrants are for?
          To grow the economy– GDP, baby

          schooling
          hospitalization
          food
          houses
          cars
          roads

          etc

          resource hungry people who do not care about the environment–look at what China has done to its own country.

          • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 11:47 am #

            True. To further drive down wages and perform the shitty service jobs that no one else will do, then bankrupt government services, enabling their eventual elimination, and leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

          • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

            Cloward-Piven, baby! Leading the way for Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan 2.0 (U.S. release) once the 1.0 version bugs are worked out in the E.U.

        • Tate May 27, 2019 at 11:35 am #

          That’s the key to understanding abiotic oil, if it even is a thing. It won’t matter.

        • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 6:52 pm #

          I got an angle most people don’t think about.

          Regardless of whether our oil supply is truly fixed or replenishing itself, nobody is thinking about the AIR SUPPLY i.e breathable oxygen that gets burned by the billions of cubic feet at whatever rate it burns.

          All of that carbon, in whatever form, requires a lot more oxygen to burn than the mass of the fuel itself. I contend that the Earth’s ability to generate oxygen or convert via plant life is limited.

          We may even start talking about PEAK AIR before PEAK OIL becomes a serious problem.

      • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:00 pm #

        I first heard about the topic on Coast to Coast am around twenty years ago and thought sounds like hogwash to me.
        I tend to keep topics like this on the back of my mind so to speak and what jogged it to the forefront I saw areas that had not had a natural seep in years start pushing oil out again.
        I reference Ojai and Ventura because my dad just bought property up in that area and there is a bunch of oil coming out of the ground around there.
        They actually tore down great surf spot just south of Mussel shoals called Oil piers rusty old eye soar at best but this time of year it produced some of the only rideable waves in the area.
        As far as the site goes it was not an end all be all source for anything other than to introduce a topic.

  5. Robert White May 27, 2019 at 10:29 am #

    My take here is that the USA MIC cannot engage in hot war or a preemptive first strike against anyone given debt & deficit that is currently intractable to pay off. Moreover, China & Russian Federation will consolidate their war machines in opposition to the USA MIC & NATO collaboration.

    Not only is the USA MIC wholly insolvent but they are morally bankrupt as well as historically known to be psychopathically oriented to the extent that government leadership never learns from past mistakes such as Iraq, or Vietnam.

    Bottom line is that energy and world reserve currency status is not enough to replace ethics & morality on a global level so that NATO can have free range to create mass murder & global mayhem.

    It’s time to realize that BIG oil will not save America from long due comeuppance. The long emergency is akin to bankruptcy as it happens slowly at first and then it manifests all of a sudden into chapter 11.

    RW

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 11:14 am #

      They both can’t do it (from a common sense standpoint) and can’t not do it (from a survival standpoint). Which will they choose? Predicting the actions of psychopaths is always difficult, but I predict they’ll lash out militarily eventually and suffer an embarrassing defeat(s). That will spell the end the military empire, the end of the petrodollar, and very likely the end of the DC/NYC/London/Jerusalem-based USA Inc. as a going concern, after which Israel will throw the empire under the bus, make new arrangements with the Chinese and Russians, and press on with pride, having completed the destruction of their pathetic US client state. Ever opportunistic globalist US billionaires will desert the place in droves and “we the people” will be left to deal with the aftermath. Fitting, really.

      • Robert White May 28, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

        Very astute comment, Ol’ Scratch.

        RW

      • hmuller May 28, 2019 at 7:33 pm #

        Ol’ Scratch
        If the Cabal actually abandoned us, maybe we could rebuild a free and constitutional republic. But as long as there is anyone or anything left in America worth exploiting, their presence will be felt.

  6. robert magill May 27, 2019 at 10:46 am #

    China has vowed to discontinue the manufacturing of gas guzzlers totally by 2025. Right now, they are selling all trade- ins and shipping them overseas.
    They have a prototype Mag-Lev train testing at 350 MPH using much less energy.
    And we started a trade war!

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 10:59 am #

      They’re certainly applying the right strategies, but it won’t be enough.

      • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 11:28 am #

        billions of new cars?

        • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 11:43 am #

          Getting off petrol in favor of electric. It’s a stop gap strategy, to be sure, but having adopted the whole capitalist paradigm, they really have no choice but to pursue growth. It will be their eventual undoing.

          • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

            having adopted the whole capitalist paradigm, — It is called Human Nature.
            read, ‘How to Want what you Already Have.’

          • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:44 pm #

            Might be, but not all cultures share that. But it could be that once exposed to the “miracles” of capitalism nearly all cultures find it irresistible.

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:05 pm #

            It’s a stop nothing going from gas to electric still requires Oil, coal, natural gas or other fuels to generate electricity!
            Electric cars are an absolute joke right now compared to standard gas and diesel cars.
            Love to see someone drive 10 hours straight in an electric car or clear across the country in a day and half!
            No amount of bullshit at this time will replace the simple fact electric cars are good for a local commute at best.

          • robert magill May 27, 2019 at 5:15 pm #

            benr: no need to drive 10 hrs in China. They have trains running now at over 200MPH over most of the country. They plan to do away with short- haul air travel soon.

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

            @ROBERT
            How will China power them trains?
            Coal or fuel…
            How do they power the electric trains?
            Coal or fuel.
            It all comes back to how to power the world.
            Nuclear anything is a non-starter no matter how you paint it we just have no way to deal with the spent fuel in the end.
            Having to much spent fuel around really could bring about the end!

            At the height of the Fukishima crisis which is still going I might add the Tuna had radioactivity detected and the star fish melted off the rocks along the entire west coast.
            Yes I know they blamed a microbe for the Star fish die off but I am not convinced.

            https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/starfish-killing-disease-remaking-oceans/581632/

            https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fukushima-radioactivity-found-in-tuna-off-oregon-andwashington/?redirect=1

          • robert magill May 27, 2019 at 5:50 pm #

            @benr As an American I feel your distress at the prospects facing us.But keep in mind other countries are working and spending time and money doing things about the situation.
            Real things for their citizens, while all we seem to do is talk and lament.

          • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 8:16 pm #

            They plan to do away with the USA soon?

          • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 5:55 am #

            Benr is right that electric is a stopgap IMO. Here in Europe we also have trains that can take you lots of places, but in the end a car is still far, far more convenient — both for the daily grind and, unquestionably, for trips to beautiful places trains don’t run (our bi-yearly trips to Berchtesgaden and Bretagne for example).

            The biggest issue the industry faces with electric is the fact that the pollution involved with manufacturing is immense (batteries in partic.), and that vast quantities of electricity are required for operation. It has, perhaps, some promise, but not sure it will be a long-term solution without a major conceptual rework.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 9:01 am #

            Nightowl

            “but in the end a car is still far, far more convenient — both for the daily grind and, unquestionably, for trips to beautiful places trains don’t run (our bi-yearly trips to Berchtesgaden and Bretagne for example).”

            Not criticising in any way but there’s some generalising in there. It depends where you live whether the daily grind is better done by car. If we’re coming back from anywhere outside of Edinburgh during the evening rush hour, by train or the occasional hired car, we thank our lucky stars we’re not in the traffic jam heading the other way out of town. Same in the morning but reversed. I wouldn’t go back to that for a fortune.

            I dumped my car after moving to my current home and finding that it sat in the street sometimes for a fortnight unused while I got the bus to work and elsewhere, to the point where I sometimes forgot where I’d parked it (and don’t start me on that).

            And for random holiday trips that can’t be done by train (and because the dog comes along, although she’s fine for four hours on a train as well), we can hire a roomier car than we’d need in town because it’s just for a week or two.

            In addition to which you can take a train to loads of places and hire a car when you get there.

            Also, lots of the way we manage our lives is just habit (plus a disinclination to make the slightest extra effort), not necessity. As I have found since dumping the car about 17 years ago. But I’ve only had one for about 13 or 14 years of my adult life, so it was never an addiction.

            BTW, to give you more options for your next trips to the places you mentioned ‘where trains don’t run’, here’s a picture of the Hauptbahnhof in Berchtesgaden:

            https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Berchtesgaden%2C_Hauptbahnhof_von_S%C3%BCdosten%2C_2.jpeg

            …and some info on trains in Brittany:

            https://www.brittanytourism.com/getting-here/getting-around-brittany/by-train/

            Gute Reise 🙂

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 9:06 am #

            Now I’m really in the mood for a trip to Brittany – haven’t been since my first hitchhiking holiday when I was 19!

          • Nightowl May 29, 2019 at 4:14 pm #

            GA,

            We all have our preferences, but it would not be doable for us.

            When we used to live in the “big” city we used the U-Bahn and I commuted to work via bike all year, but the car was still nearly irreplaceable given the day trips we took, bigger shopping runs, taking the kiddo to the Schwiegereltern, etc.

            For vacation, buses and trains don’t work well. There is a Hbf in neary every German city of any consequence, but the only way to get around the valley and mountains in Berchtes efficiently is by car. And day trips to the surrounding areas end up being far too time consuming. Same goes for Brittany; the distances are even worse there.

            As for the daily grind, I don’t know any families here in the ‘burbs that would even consider living carless. That mentality tends to limited to people living in the Stadtkerne (or near them) in the bigger cities; but even when we were in the city, I didn’t know anyone who didn’t own a car.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:57 pm #

            I wasn’t criticising you, Nightowl, just saying exactly what you’re saying – that generalisations aren’t true for everyone.

            My ‘children’ are in their thirties and neither even drives. The one who’s here has a child and has always just had to get on with everything without a car because she and her partner couldn’t have afforded one anyway, which was my issue in the earlier part of my life as well. I’d find the idea of buying something on the ‘never never’ that’s depreciating while you’re still paying it off too traumatising!

            I’m surprised it isn’t easier to manage without a car in Germany – I thought they’d be more into more environmentally friendly options!

          • Nightowl May 30, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

            GA,

            I assumed that, too, before moving here. But the reality is that outside of major cities, it’s nearly undoable unless you almost never leave your neighborhood.

            Germany is very much a car culture. Let’s not forget that two of the world’s most respected brands are made here, and, in some areas, they let you drive them as fast as you want. 😀

  7. jivefive99 May 27, 2019 at 10:54 am #

    Nice to see the “Long Emergency” rap is back, though you did do a decent job keeping on topic during the 2014-2019 fracking years. We get enough culture war already on the Internet. This is what I signed up for. Thanks!

    • DrGonzo May 28, 2019 at 9:27 am #

      Indeed. Nice to see JHK turning his attention back to energy and economic issues, rather than Deep State conspiracy theories and snarky put-downs of anyone who dresses differently from him.

      Will it last? Probably not. But refreshing nevertheless.

  8. Rodster May 27, 2019 at 10:55 am #

    Jim has interviewed Gail Tverberg in the past. Gail Tverberg and Dennis Meadows (Oildrum.com) have both been saying the same thing repeatedly, “there are NO solutions”.

    We as humans have boxed ourselves in or painted ourselves into a corner with fossil fuels. Gail Tverberg, Dennis Meadows, JHK, John Michael Greer and now Chris Martenson have ALL been saying the same thing, that wind and solar and switching to some new form of alternative energy, are all a pipe dream because it they still are all dependent on fossil fuels. And if that new form of energy is not dependent on FF’s then by the time it’s ready, it will probably be too late in the game as (“collapse is now in the cards, economic and societal on a global scale”), a Chris Martenson quote.

    We are at the point in history where according to Gail Tverberg, the cost of oil is TOO HIGH for the consumer and much TOO LOW for the energy producers. When the price of oil gets too high, now in the $60-70 range the economy slows down. When the price drops below $45, the economy picks up because the consumer is not taking money away from the economy by paying for energy instead.

    The conundrum for energy producers is that they need around $100 per barrel to break even. But no one including the MSM or Politicians are talking about it, only the Alt-Media.

    Jim, I wish I could make the trip to NY, my hometown but if you are ever in Florida for a speaking tour, I would go in a heartbeat.

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:15 pm #

      I disagree 100%.
      Hemp oil diesel is a viable alternative .

      https://nationalhempassociation.org/making-fuel-from-industrial-hemp/

      Ethanol can be grown using switch grass NOT corn or as illustrated above from hemp stalks all it takes is a good source of cellulose!

      Or.

      https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23745246/algae-could-be-the-next-big-thing-in-diesel-fuel/

      • DurangoKid May 27, 2019 at 8:45 pm #

        I would direct your attention to David Pimentel of Cornell U. The thermodynamics of biomass are just too poor for them to be anything but a small niche in the fuel market. If you have to transport any portion of the bio-fuel feed stocks or product more than 100 miles you dip into negative returns on energy invested. The reason petroleum works is that humans didn’t invest any energy in its formation. Nature did it all. All we had to do is drill holes and pump it up. Millions of years of solar energy were concentrated and used up in a couple of centuries. Nature may have been wasteful in the formation of these deposits, but that hardly matters. It had time on its side. Even if we had 10,000 years of biomass in storage, it still wouldn’t work for long as the replenishment rate is so slow year on year. As Robert Newman said, “There is no way out.”

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 10:08 pm #

          And yet people do it all the time.

        • Rodster May 28, 2019 at 8:08 am #

          “The thermodynamics of biomass are just too poor for them to be anything but a small niche in the fuel market.”

          ^^^ This. That’s what’s always missing from people who feel they have discovered the answer to our energy predicaments. It’s not until someone thinks it thru that the solution turns into a BIG…oops !

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 9:21 am #

            We can do it in America we could grow enough fuel between diesel and ethanol plus food.
            It would take a lot less retooling to get there in conjunction with hybrid diesel cars.
            Think of it freeways always smelling like French fries!

      • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 5:59 am #

        Maybe, but diesel emissions are still terrible for human health, and the amount of tech. involved in keeping emissions down is cost prohibitive, among other things.

        • benr May 28, 2019 at 9:22 am #

          Improperly tuned diesel yes but then so is an old oil burning car belching white smoke down the street.

          • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 9:47 am #

            I am not talking about that. I have a modern Merc with a CDI engine; it is only clean because it has a DPF.

            DPFs are costly when they break, and costly to fit. Furthermore, my car still only meets Euro 4 emissions standards. In Germany they are now banning any diesels from city use that can’t meet Euro 6 (I need a new car).

            At a certain point, the tech is too cost prohibitive and the engines become unreliable thanks to the unbelievable level of computer control requried to keep the car running optimally.

            Gas motors are the future until something else gets worked up.

          • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

            I have a modern Merc – Nightowl

            ==============

            The last Mercurys were built in 2010. How modern could your Merc be?

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 4:01 pm #

            diesel hybrids=the future.

          • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 4:30 pm #

            Expand your thinking, Q.

            Think stars.

    • DurangoKid May 27, 2019 at 8:36 pm #

      Near the end of Robert Newman’s History of Oil he repeats, “There is no way out.” But, but, but, but! “There is no way out.”

  9. Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 10:58 am #

    Great summation today, Jim. No hyperbole, just the facts, straight up without a twist. The poor Chinese really missed their mark in timing their great leap forward, especially in light of their enormous population level, which will accelerate their (and everyone else’s) decline precipitously. Ahh well! It will be a great New Chinese Century for as long as it lasts!

    • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

      Here is to the great New Chinese Century. Celebration in monument of stone and metal is too enduring so the transience of this display is appropriate. The fat lady does not sing, and at the end the sky is black.

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 4:21 pm #

        Maybe China will decide to take Seattle. They already have your neighbor Vancouver.

        First thing they’ll do is build a momument of Chairman Mao right next to the V Lenin monument, call the park Red Square.

        Brh

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 4:24 pm #

          Rest assured nobody will be agitating to pull down ?those? monuments.

          • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 8:15 pm #

            the? those?

            I dont think chinks like their Mao. methinks.

      • Majella May 28, 2019 at 7:22 pm #

        Twenty-five minutes? Sheesh – tiresome after five.

        Was there in 2016, and found the Hong Kong night skyline to be awe-inspiring on its own.

    • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 6:02 am #

      I ususally agree with Jim’s posts almost across the board, but I think China has expansion plans in the long term. They will continue their ecomic activity unabated and if there is going to be a WW III, they will start it.

      I wrote a paper on this in college some 20+ years ago and it has been interesting to see much of it unfold as imagined.

  10. K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 11:11 am #

    Once ‘troubles’ and warring start it will be a rare breed of dog who will connect any of the dots into a long emergency. Everyone else will be blaming the ‘other guy’ for all their troubles and people will believe in technology to the bitter end. It is in their nature. Contenders to the ormolu throne will always be be claiming they can put things right, but as soon as they get power keeping power will be more important than anything, just like in all the days of growth and all the days before that.

    Denizens of distraction will distract by suggesting oil is abiotic. Don’t worry, be happy is what ‘the man’ wants you to be. The last thing power wants is a thinking class who understands the world runs on math and not magic. They prefer you think in fairy tales, it makes you easy to fool and easy to rule.

    Putting men who have more money than god in charge of things like our treasury is no way to go forward in sanity. But America is a crazy place and this is what stupid votes do and America loves to vote stupid.

    • capt spaulding May 27, 2019 at 11:35 am #

      Spot on, K-Dog. I agree completely, which is why it bothers me to see the antics of our politicians and their supporters. The last thing you’ll see when the ocean swallows Florida, are red MAGA hats floating everywhere. They do seem to love voting stupid.

    • Q. Shtik May 27, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

      in charge of things like our treasury……. Dog

      ===========

      According to Google, Steve Mnuchin, our Sec of Treas., is ‘only’ worth $300 million. Chump change compared to others in/on the Cabinet. I am more concerned with Mnuchin’s facial tics. I can’t bear to look at the man as he speaks.

  11. sauerkraut May 27, 2019 at 11:13 am #

    Thank you for returning to the issue of our time, and spurning the distractions which comfort the babes in the woods.

    Sauerkraut: I will continue covering other issues, including RussiaGate. I don’t appre3ciate your backhanded compliment — JHK Admin

  12. volodya May 27, 2019 at 11:14 am #

    In my view the “agonies” of Brexit come in large part from the silliness of giving a Remainer (Theresa May) the task of doing something she doesn’t want done. I mean, what would you expect from a Remainer especially when the Remainer is the Prime Minister?

    But you have to look further back. The whole idiocy had as its genesis the fecklessness of a political class that’s way, way past its guillotine-date, who thought they’d put on a political puppet show of a referendum fully believing in the immovability of the status-quo, fully expecting that nothing would come of it. Cameron thought the vote would be for “remain”, those that “campaigned” for Brexit thought so too, none of them having given the slightest thought as to what to do otherwise.

    So here it is, the country that ruled the waves, that had one quarter of the world’s population under its thumb, that founded the world’s best countries, shits itself daily, the only ones emerging with a modicum of dignity being those that recognized reality and realized that the status-quo arrangements of neo-liberalism had no future.

    Brexit is one way forward, a controlled demolition, a partial dismantling of a system that has no basis in logic, that refuses to encompass the basic facts of life and laws of nature. But there are other ways, uncontrolled collapse being one, starting with a global financial system of intertwined banks and governments choking on heaps of indigestible obligations and ending with violent insurrection, the beginnings of which we see in France and Belgium.

    And why can’t the obligations be honored? Because they are discordant with the laws of physics that tell us that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, that a human cannot expend more calories in planting than he collects in harvesting without starving to death. But common sense in our ruling classes is in desperate short supply, our opinion leaders pissing away time and resources, weaving webs of Russian collusion and gender fluidity, politicians telling us by way of their actions that the only interests that matter are those of the very wealthy.

    Are you a plutocrat? Do you want a tax cut? Do you need slave labor? Or are you in their employ, a resident of a coastal city making your living eating their left-overs hoping you’ll be safely rotting in your grave before the curtain on the shit-show really rises?

    • elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 11:53 am #

      “a resident of a coastal city making your living eating their left-overs hoping you’ll be safely rotting in your grave before the curtain on the shit-show really rises?”

      Volodya,
      …You have accurately defined my situation…I am impressed.

      • volodya May 27, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

        You have my sympathy for what it’s worth. And if it’s any consolation, not that misery loves company, but you have a lot of company.

      • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

        He’s got me spot on too. Coastal city and left-overs. I get good left-overs. Except for the hoping I’ll be safely rotting in my grave part. When it happens it happens but until my personal situation is a shit-show I’ll pass on the grave.

  13. sauerkraut May 27, 2019 at 11:16 am #

    You beat me to it, oh dog.

  14. hugho May 27, 2019 at 11:22 am #

    Thanks Jim. Such a pleasure to read the old Jim I know talking about big picture topics instead of nonsensical irrelevant political parlor games played out in a discredited media. Jim, political collapse is well underway everywhere, call it political civil war if you want. That party boat has left the dock so lets talk about something else besides our corrupt political non entities and move on to the next dominoes to fall which are a helluva lot more significant in the long run:climate disaster, technological digital armageddon, INCREASING INEQUALITY of opportunity and wealth and the winking out of the fossil fuel miracle which kickstarted the whole klusterfick we are living thru. The only hope for the failing ecosystem is to have the fossil energy plug pulled as soon as possible silencing all those chainsaws and dozers and palm oil, soybean and corn farmers tractors. Thanks for moving on Jim.

    Another backhanded compliment. I am interested in what interests me, and I will continue to write about what interests me, not pander to monomaniacs. –JHK Admin

    • JohnAZ May 27, 2019 at 11:43 am #

      You are asking how we are going to run the world without petroleum?

      Damn good question!

      Answer is, we are not. At least not like it operates now, or with the same amount of folks around.

      The beginning? Ask the millennials, the first generation of diminishing economic promise. They are fighting back, attempting to use the ballot box, to elect in folks giving them empty promises of a future that cannot exist. Their professors in college have been spoon feeding them a line of crap for 4-6 years that make them suckers for an easy way out. They are now approaching their first mid life crisis age, and they do not have any resources to buy that new house or new sports car that past generations have enjoyed. So where are they going for spiritual help? ????

      Surely not their parents who they are bankrupting by staying at home.

      • JustSaying May 27, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

        I want to retire and sell my house but most millennials cannot afford the mortgage. Real estate on the coasts are too high and salaries are too low, so pretty soon there will be a real estate reckoning, especially if the bubble bursts again.

        • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 10:03 am #

          Not so sure about that, aside from an economic collapse. If anything, single family homes in nice areas with decent infrastructure are going to skyrocket in value (this is a phenomenon in many parts of W. Europe, too).

          Been reading a lot of articles lately on how in some states in the US as well as here in Germany they are trying to make it nearly impossible to build more SFHs. Instead they want high-rise structures, tiny houses, and other forms of housing with a small footprint. The German market is nuts right now in all the major metro areas within 25 kms of the city.

    • S M Tenneshaw May 27, 2019 at 4:38 pm #

      Psssssssstttttt…Cuntler’s lost it. Man oh Manischewitz, whadda wacko.

      • Farmer McGregor May 27, 2019 at 8:31 pm #

        “Psssssssstttttt…Cuntler’s lost it. Man oh Manischewitz, whadda wacko.” — SMT

        Um… Exactly what the hell is that bunch of gibberish supposed to mean?

    • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 6:04 am #

      An attempted coup of a sitting US president is a political parlor game?

      Interesting take.

      Not.

  15. JohnAZ May 27, 2019 at 11:32 am #

    As the goodies decline in availability, the fight to see who gets the goodies intensifies. Our southern border is a good example. Somebody —————, ( fill in the blank), is taking advantage of the discontinuity in goody availability to give have nots the hope that they can take goodies away from the haves. How long will the haves endure this? The wall is inevitable! Or it’s equivalent. This will turn into a shooting war if necessary to preserve the goody availability barrier. When? When enough folks here say enough. How to tell? When Trump’s successors become the mainstream. As the Liberals press for an open border to preserve their voter source, a voting point will occur where they will be denied their wishes and the border will close. How much the “somebody”., afore mentioned will fight back is yet to be determined. Rest assured however, “somebody” does not have the best interests of America at heart.

    If peak oil starts to set itself in place, it is all moot as economic areas really start to duke it out to ensure oil availability. As everything produced involves oil, folks will fight to get it.

    1973!

    • capt spaulding May 27, 2019 at 11:41 am #

      I was not a pessimist by nature, JAZ, but unfolding circumstances, and much reading, combined with a better understanding of human nature, have conspired to make me one. I cannot fault your reasoning at all.

      • JohnAZ May 27, 2019 at 11:54 am #

        Rational, intelligent and resourceful folks wil make it through what is coming okay.

        The others. ????

        • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

          What is it Robert Burns said again?

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 11:20 am #

            “Jean, hae ye seen ma car keys?” 🙂

  16. DrTomSchmidt May 27, 2019 at 11:35 am #

    That comes from a foolish nexus of wishful thinking between a harried populace, a dishonest government, and the aforementioned brain-damaged news media.

    This really is the issue. As Rodster points out, many in the peak oil crowd insist that “nothing can be done” at this point. What’s broken isn’t the industrialized economy, but the financialized industrialized economy, with ever-growing debt, rising exponentially. The
    S-curve of energy production from oil allowed us to keep pace with that debt growth, but oil has returned less energy profit to counterbalance debt.

    I suspect that the powers that be know fully well what is coming. I had thought that “climate change” was a way to get people to use less fossil fuel, per capita, not because it wasn’t there (the real reason) but so that they would be saving the planet by doing so (a nobler reason to sacrifice). So instead of focusing on the real societal problems (infrastructure that’s a joke, healthcare that is a series of rackets), both sides take up issues most people didn’t care about: a large tax cut by the Republican House, and constant subpoenas by the Democratic House.

  17. RB May 27, 2019 at 11:38 am #

    Changing weather patterns
    Trade wars
    Middle East powder keg
    Superbugs–failing antibiotics
    Open borders–migrations of the poorest, least capable.
    Ungovernable populations
    Massive reliance on computers
    Disastrous economy
    Divisions by race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, agendas
    Failed public education system/failed any type of system
    Disappearing middle class
    Thousands of store closings
    Medicare/Social Security broke
    Unreliable news media
    Ongoing attempt to overthrow sitting president
    Opioid epidemic
    Obesity epidemic
    Suicides dramatic increase
    Over half of babies born to single mothers
    “War” on white males
    Divorce rates above 50 percent
    Pornography addictions
    National debt
    Spent nuclear fuel fires
    Biowarfare (poor man’s WMD)
    Disease pandemic (flu?)
    Asteroid strike
    Solar flare strike
    Activist judges
    Cyberwarfare
    Endless wars

    Talk about a long emergency. It is with us. But don’t worry, be happy. We have a strong military and by gosh we are democracy incorporated. The good news for me is I won’t live long enough to see most of the above come to their end result. Our children and grandchildren are screwed. The critical issue though is tariffs messing with Xmas decorations from China.

    • JohnAZ May 27, 2019 at 11:51 am #

      RB

      Your tongue is stuck in your cheek.

      The fallacy of it all is that our federal government acts like they are the solution to your list of problems. There are no solutions.

      So we have to live with the baloney and rhetoric the government comes up with. How to control the populace? Divide and Conquer.

      The MSM and the Deep State politicos spend the time getting us the fight each other rather than address your list of priority.

      Tab forward. Because there are no solutions.

      I guess we will just have to pay more for our Xmas lights.

      • RB May 27, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

        Agree. There are NO solutions. Is there anyone left who thinks FEMA will make any difference? Red Cross? Cops? FBI? Presidents, Congress, Courts? Wall Street? Federal Reserve? New technologies?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q

    • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 1:12 pm #

      Endless Debt, end the Fed.

      • Robert White May 28, 2019 at 12:28 pm #

        I’ll second that.

        RW

    • Majella May 27, 2019 at 7:19 pm #

      That’s quite a list and a real downer. If one takes the negative view by default, madness is one’s future.

      Let’s look at some of these and use the unjaded eye:

      Changing weather patterns – sure, okay *sigh*

      Trade wars – sure but these are reversible when sanity is restored.

      Middle East powder keg – was it not ever thus? Since oil became the commodity of modernity?

      Superbugs–failing antibiotics – just a little ‘back to the future’, no?

      Open borders–migrations of the poorest, least capable. – Passports were only required since 1918 (in the US)

      Ungovernable populations – really? here?

      Massive reliance on computers – this one is a bit freaky, for sure, but the whole system is diffuse rather than centralized so it’s probably a lot more resilient than it seems on the surface.

      Disastrous economy – where?

      Divisions by race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, agendas – what’s new here? Before, these divisions just weren’t discussed, but they’ve existed for millenia

      Failed public education system/failed any type of system – really? this is nihilism gone nuts.

      Disappearing middle class – yes to this one. The clear result of deliberate policies to enrich the already wealthy at the expense of the rest

      Thousands of store closings – yes – lots of minimum wage jobs gone, but I can still get exactly what I want, with Amazon and with less hassle

      Medicare/Social Security broke – really? Nothing a decent reshaping of the tax system on the uber-wealthy won’t fix

      Unreliable news media – really?

      Ongoing attempt to overthrow sitting president – all for that!

      Opioid epidemic – the direct result of corporate greed, already proven (Purdue) and the lack of willingness to enforce existing law against these crooks.

      Obesity epidemic – really? Yes, it;’s ironic that the poorest among us look the MOST fed but are probably suffering or headed to malnutrition. Again the result of corporate greed and a government will to do anything.

      Suicides dramatic increase – it was ever thus

      Over half of babies born to single mothers – yet the Banana Republicans want to FORCE child birth on thi=ose who would choose otherwise

      “War” on white males – imaginary

      Divorce rates above 50 percent – better t divorce than ‘stick together in misery’. Maybe be less eager t marry?

      Pornography addictions – seen the antics of the ancient Greeks & Romans?

      National debt – this is how an economy is funded. No debt = no money

      Spent nuclear fuel fires – yep, that’s a new one and apparently intractable…

      Biowarfare (poor man’s WMD) – another new fad, but to date, mostly, only a threat

      Disease pandemic (flu?) – what’s new…1919/20? Black Death?

      Asteroid strike – not much to be done about that and worrying won’t change anything!

      Solar flare strike – ditto

      Activist judges – a matter of opinion and perspective. What’s one woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure

      Cyberwarfare – yep a new one for sure and beyond the minds of 99% of the population to understand.

      Endless wars – what’s new?

      So, you see? Don’t work yourself into a lather over

      a) things that are just human nature; or
      b) things taht aren’t actually the huge problem you see tham as being; or
      c) things taht you can’t do anything about anyway

      • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 12:08 am #

        “War” on white males – imaginary

        you are a fool and / or a liar.

        • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:30 am #

          She’s not concerned about thousands of store closings and activist judges either…. Majella aren’t you British?

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 7:11 am #

            British stores are closing too.

            But we don’t have politically appointed judges, thank gawd. Better system – I would recommend it.

            Or maybe that was just a dig and a non-sequitur, despite the ellipsis suggesting otherwise.

            Not that I’m intervening to defend Majella, who can defend herself – it’s just the British implication that intrigued me.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:04 pm #

            What would being British have to do with anything? But for the record, I’m not a Brit.

          • Exscotticus May 29, 2019 at 12:43 am #

            Your judges still wear powdered wigs and are as pompous and arrogant as they come. Your judiciary has no power to strike down legislation that goes against common law or any foundational compact. You have no Constitution. Under your system, Brits have lost the right to self defense. You like your system? You can keep it.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 8:35 am #

            Exscotticus

            “You like your system? You can keep it.”

            How kind of you. We shall. With continuing reforms when appropriate.

            “You have no Constitution. ”

            We have no unitary codified constitution.

            “The British constitution primarily draws from four sources: statute law (laws passed by Parliament), common law (laws established through court rulings), parliamentary conventions, and works of authority. Similar to a constitutional document, it also concerns both the relationship between the individual and the state and the functioning of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary.”

            You are of course aware that Scotland and England have separate judicial systems. English law is based on common law, while Scottish law is a mixed system based on both common law and Roman law. And that judges don’t all wear wigs (to lend solemnity to the occasion).

          • Exscotticus May 29, 2019 at 12:15 pm #

            @GreenAlba, statute law trumps everything else. So it’s pointless to talk about any rights derived from common law, as they can be swept away in an instant. That is how you went from having a right to self defense to having a duty to retreat. That is how you went from having some semblance of freedom of speech eroded by “I’m offended” hate speech laws, in which merely stating facts can see you off to prison.

        • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 6:29 am #

          Ask him if he eats cauliflower or yucca.

        • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:03 pm #

          You’re a paranoid and/or deluded.

  18. messianicdruid May 27, 2019 at 11:50 am #

    “Workers of the world [ system ] disperse! [ come ye out from among them… ]

    It means land , river or sea access with some kind of resource that you can [ exploit. ] water is essential to mobility without wheels.

    • JohnAZ May 27, 2019 at 11:52 am #

      The Erie Canal will become important again.

      • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

        Yes, as a place to dump nuclear waste.

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 6:16 pm #

          The maniacs have already done so all along the Colorado river!

  19. meargen May 27, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

    Seeing how this is Memorial Day, I’d like to submit my usual poem for this day. I’ve avoided all the ‘hero’ stuff, recalling how the holiday was started in remembrance of the Civil War dead. I noted a local church said ‘In honor of Memorial Day to remember Jesus…our military…police…fire fighters.’ How the hell did the cops and firemen hog in? And what about Jesus?

    Here goes:Memorial Day, 1988
    The skies mourn in their opacity
    Rain pats down like notes of a bugle
    Grandmother remembered it as Decoration Day
    A child dressing graves made from civil war.
    Of my great-great-grandfather Reeder;
    An oral soldier, uniformed and musketeer by her words,
    Who fought in the Union army, suffered from fever,
    Recovered to battle at Pilot Knob in 1864,
    A fort scooped between breasts of earth and rock;
    Men hurled at it in a day of gunpowder and foliage,
    Repelled the invasion of that last Confederate autumn
    Blood-staining hills named the Arcadia Valley.
    Buried in his uniform,a white-haired, frail man,
    Asthmatic chest sunken in bemedalled burden.
    His coffin lowered, dirt tossed over it thickly
    As turbid heavens cover earth with moist ablution.

    I liked JHK’s commentary and will add to it tomorrow.

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

      Yep. I still remember it growing up as Decoration Day. It was a originally a somber and cautionary holiday with regard to the horrors of war, rather than the modern day celebratory glorification rite of the MICC.

      • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 1:02 pm #

        bankrupt government services, enabling their eventual elimination, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

        –My impression is a push to depopulate.
        No, Im not paranoid.
        Obama imported african [s] with ebola. It cost Texans a hospital.

        • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:41 pm #

          Exactly. Of course that must never be said, but yeah, that’s the long term plan. How could it not be?

          • MiddlePeninsula May 27, 2019 at 3:53 pm #

            I was pretty amused Facebook had a hissy fit about CrossFit. So what, someone wants to eat a low carb, high fat diet….yeah high carb, processed foods are working so well for us. Those folks look pretty buff to me and perhaps Facebook is less concerned about their diet than they are not sitting on their butts all day on Facebook.

  20. 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:28 pm #

    China has vowed to discontinue the manufacturing of gas guzzlers totally by 2025. Right now, they are selling all trade- ins and shipping them overseas.

    They have a prototype Mag-Lev train testing at 350 MPH using much less energy.

    And we started a trade war!

    China, with its substantial lead in 6G and smart cities based on it, will soon enough be awash in cellular radiation. In effect, it will be likened to dropping nuclear bombs on its people and all people the world over if it has its druthers. Well, I guess that’s one way to depopulate. There are so many ways, aren’t there?

    China is now working on 6G networks!

    • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

      Oh gee, what fun! Our sweat ducts act as antennas. Nice. I love innovation, don’t you? I always wanted to be an antenna from a very early age. Now I am. Look, ma! I made it. Aren’t you proud of me?

      This is 5G. Imagine 6G which is a thousand times more everything than 5G and China is set to roll it out by 2023 while America dithers with an already obsolescent 5G.

      Have we reached the Singularity yet? Maybe so. We wouldn’t recognize it if we did. Trump may be the signal that we have.

      Imagine the effect on our hearts & minds of all this CO2 and electromagnetic radiation. Something akin to frogs in a pot of water slowly coming to the boil.

      Health Risks of 5G Technology: Dr. Devra Davis

      • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 4:03 pm #

        Here’s more from Dr. Devra Davis. Her credentials are impeccable. She’s not some quack. Just as there are real police, there are real scientists and she’s one of them.

        This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s the scientific method. The American establishment to include the media are blacking this out. Full censorship to include Google & YouTube which have removed numerous links and videos about it over the years from legitimate sources. The lobby for this industry is this powerful. It gets to say what will be scientifically studied and what won’t be and any scientist who bucks it will be effectively ostracized and ruined.

        The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation — Dr Devra Davis

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 6:23 pm #

          How does a microwave work?
          The very cells or should I say the water in the cell oscillate at the rate of bombardment and heat up or pole shift the negative and positive charge flips at the rate it is being bombarded with.
          The same thing happens at a lessor power with cell phone emissions.
          I was a radar tech in the Navy and all along the waveguide I was required to use a power meter to check for 1milliwatt of power leakage and ordered to report it if it was happening.

          Why because people got cancer and died really quick at those frequency rates.

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 7:27 pm #

            Really?

            Isn’t this the non-ionising stuff?

            “Near ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwave, radio waves, and low-frequency radio frequency (longwave) are all examples of non-ionizing radiation. … These reactions occur at far higher energies than with ionizing radiation, which requires only a single particle to ionize”

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:28 pm #

            Yes but don’t confuse the frequency levels with radioactive.
            I suggest looking at the frequency spectrum to understand.

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 4:04 pm #

            Food for thought if you put a WAP near a microwave the microwave will affect the signal of said WAP.
            WAP- Wireless access point.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:05 pm #

            Thanks, benr.

      • elysianfield May 28, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

        450

        An interesting article that describes China’s ascent and abilities;

        http://www.unz.com/article/huawei-5g-and-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

        Of course, it was printed in the Unz Review so it must be a goddamned lie….But still….

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:52 pm #

      Good for them. They’ve got 1.3B plus people to keep busy, so that’s as good a thing as any other to waste their time on, realizing that it will never actually happen on any appreciable scale.

    • elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 7:31 pm #

      “China is now working on 6G networks!”

      450,
      Where I live we don’t even have cell phone service…

      Can you hear me now?

      • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:31 pm #

        I believe the cell phone and all the nonsense people do on them ALL days is part and parcel to the destruction of humanity.
        Social media has done more to drive the wedge in at least in Amerika than even the ridiculous Democrat good Republican bad or vice versa stupidity.

  21. JustSaying May 27, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

    It’s important to watch Trump because he is actually accelerating the decline.

    • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

      Yes, Trump is great for climate change. I mean that sincerely. Progress as we know it equals worsening climate change. Trump is anti-progress and therefore is great for stymying the worsening of climate change.

      Of course, he has no clue he is this. All he knows is that he’s gorgeous. That women can’t resist him. That’s he’s filthy rich even though it’s borrowed money he could never pay back and he’s miraculously president of the most powerful nation the planet has ever hosted, or, I should say, ever tolerated and its patience is running thin.

    • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

      You may be JustSaying but your comment suggests a dark thought. What could be worse than a long emergency? A short emergency that leaves everyone dead but lasts long enough to produce a maximum amount of pain I DoThink. ThatSaid accelerating the decline can’t be good and accelerating the examination of Trumps tax records will be good.

      • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:40 pm #

        Trump is going after the treasonous bunch that attempted a coup.
        His tax documents are nothing and will prove zero considering he has been audited for the last twenty years. Just another red herring to polarize the bases and he is playing games with Democrats yet again.
        They will go after him stomp their feet and their proxy fools in the main stream media will also bleat out their approval and then bam another nothing burger! He has been way ahead of al his detractor time and time again.
        Pretty great feat consider they all think he is a moron which leads me to ask who is really the moron?

        • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 9:59 pm #

          He is not a moron but he plays the fool and the man is as Blinkered in attitude as a Central Park carriage horse.

          Now lets get to the chew you are trying to spew. I recall and correct me if I am wrong that Trump once owned Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. It was a gaming and hospitality company which owned and operated the now shuttered Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino and the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and the Trump Marina located in Atlantic City.

          I’m thinking, and perhaps it is unfair to speculated on the fine moral character of the accused, but it seems to me laundering money in a casino would be a tempting thing to do. Particularity if said casinos were on the road to bankruptcy. It is obvious to all that the fine moral character of Donald Trump would prevent such a thing yet the rest of us are weak and under similar circumstances might do something like launder Russian Mafia money to make payroll.

          This being the case, that we are weak and Trump is strong, might give the golden one a moment of pause should a fair wind crease his brow. Not wanting the American people distracted by trivial records from the hard good work the man is does and is doing; records which certainly have nothing to hide, was understandable. But now perhaps Trump should open the book on his tax records and show his pure gilded heart to America.

          America own fear need daddy to say it is all good. To feel the love they are afreaid they do not deserve.

          • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 10:01 pm #

            Sorry it is butchered so bad.

          • Majella May 30, 2019 at 6:17 pm #

            (…’butchered so badLY…’)

        • Robert White May 28, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

          The ‘moron’ is plural in that imbeciles assumed incorrectly that bluster, buffoonery, & bellicosity would be sufficient to boost flagging USD enough to get over the hump of Secular Stagnation post-08 Lehman Moment whereby the fourth largest investment bank in the world was leveled & eviscerated at the hands of Wall Street’s longest running CEO who bet the farm [read USA] 44:1 on a simpleton’s bet that housing prices would never decrease in a Fed backstopped macroeconomic landscape.

          Trump is the same mindset as Richard ‘the Gorilla of Wall Street’ Fuld in that both have bet long on margin that did not exist anywhere but in their dreams. It’s as though they hold the mistaken belief that the irrational exuberance promulgated by the Greenspan era ‘Put’ can be re-mastered with another helmsman like P.T. Barnum II.

          The irrational exuberance & halcyon days of American consumerism of yesteryear pre-08 Great Financial Crisis is over & out. Post-Lehman ushered in empirical certainty as ruler of the Western Banking System and not commercial grade politicians with a penchant for deal making & asset accumulation in Real Estate.

          Orwellian Finance-speak cannot correct the empirical truth of debts & deficits over time. In the end we see that empirical rule always wins out over time & trials.

          RW

  22. GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

    Alas, the US and China — and everybody else — will apparently be dragged kicking and screaming to those transformational recognitions. (Thus, the agonies of Brexit.)”

    If Brexit had been sold as a gentle (-ish) introduction to the coming Long Emergency, and an exercise in cultivating self-sufficiency and a re-organisation of priorities, that’s a Brexit I could really have got behind. A Brexit that would put money into training people to do things that really need to be done.

    But it wasn’t. It was sold as unicorns, sunlit uplands and ridiculously dishonest promises on the sides of a red bus. And I won’t go into what the investment banker Brexit leaders will have promised each other (which they, at least, are more likely to get in the short term).

    Many Brexiters have now twigged that the unicorns have been deleted from the menu, but they are still whistling past the graveyard when it comes to the need to shrink our expectations and rearrange our priorities. And gawd knows what happens to £2 trillion of public debt.

    Brexit was sold as a new spreading of the wings of Global Britain, an economy that will surge anew as it trades with China, Saudi Arabia, India, the Philippines, and all those other ‘happening’ economies. And the biggie, the US. Also with the 1.1 billion Africans apparently to be jettisoned into a middle class lifestyle by 2060, trade with whom will propel us onwards and upwards, according to Liam Fox.

    http://www.ukpol.co.uk/liam-fox-2018-speech-on-the-uks-trading-future/

    Such a shift, not just in global demographics, but in the rise of the collective wealth of developing countries, will determine where the golden opportunities of the future will be and where we must be too.

    Aye, right, as we say up here.

    I won’t bore you with the postcard-sized list of deals that’s actually come out of Liam’s team’s 150 overseas visits, compared to what was promised by April 2019 to make up for the 40 trade deals from which we currently benefit through the EU. But that’s Liam for you, all mouth and trousers. And it will make him or his successor even more desperate to sell you the NHS and to sell our employment, food safety, health and environmental standards down the river as he grovels for a trade deal with the US. David and Goliath, but this time David’s pulled off more than he can chew.

    So, yes, a realistic Brexit where people were told what the future would really be like and we were ‘all in it together’ to quote the Cameron boy who rang the doorbell and then ran away, would have been a Brexit worth following. A Brexit that managed expectations and shared the harsh truth that we won’t always be able to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds extending one person’s life for three months but it would be a good idea to hugely expand palliative care so that people can live out what time they have without pain Just for starters.

    But one that’s just going to let the British people down – again – is a lesser thing. It’ll be a lesson, though, as people slowly realise the sunlit uplands will just be more rainy flood plains. The thing is, who are the people going to blame when they realise they’ve been lied to again and there isn’t the EU to blame any more? And how will they vent their anger?

    • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 12:58 pm #

      Brexit is the microcosm of the macrocosm of the challenge the planet faces in addressing the human plague called growth & progress. One country can’t even figure out how to, or agree on a plan to, detach & untangle itself let alone all the nations on this once stunningly blue & green living planet. It’s impossible because politics is the art of making the possible, impossible.

      • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

        It’s not trying to detangle itself from the growth & progress delusion, though 450, it just thinks it will do better swinging from a different branch of the tree – or several faraway branches at once. Which has always been my point!

        Reculer pour mieux sauter, as it were, when it needs to sit down and have a proper think about where we really are. Liam Fox certainly has no idea. And I don’t think many others do either.

        • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 1:52 pm #

          Yes, I realize it’s not trying to detangle itself from the growth & progress delusion, but it serves as an example of what happens when a nation, let alone nations, try to detangle from anything and address issues at the root. You get the likes of Brexit and all it entails. In otherwords, a clusterfuck. Cliusterfuck Nation. Clusterfuck Nations. Clusterfuck World.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 2:02 pm #

            Yep!

      • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

        It’s impossible because politics is the art of making the possible, impossible.

        Nice phrase!

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:19 pm #

      I suggest you take a real close look at what was happening around 100 years ago.
      All the same issues and talking points with in reason of technology.
      Brexit is a symptom of the human condition.

    • Slugoon May 27, 2019 at 6:35 pm #

      GA, you are so perpetually wide of the mark on Brexit and what Brexiteers think they are getting I feel the need to make my first post here.

      Please explain to me why a Briton who wants to buy French wine, Italian shoes or German cars needs to send £11bn per year to a cabal of Marxists (whom you can’t vote in and you certainly can’t vote out) that need their own flag, anthem, parliament, supreme court, central bank, currency and soon-to-be army.

      An organisation that has insidiously turned a trading bloc of several north-west European countries with similar economies and values to a grotesque wealth redistribution racket taking control of social policy, economic policy, agriculture and fishing, environmental policy, consumer law, transport, energy, and freedom and justice to the European institutions.

      I’d rather live in eternal penury than give away my right to self-determination. That’s all it is, pure and simple. No unicorns and no British Empire. There are millions more like me.

      • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 8:21 pm #

        Slugoon

        “Please explain to me why a Briton who wants to buy French wine, Italian shoes or German cars needs to send £11bn per year to a cabal of Marxists…”

        I’ll leave the ‘cabal of Marxists’ bit to you, but they don’t need to do that to buy French wine, Italian shoes or German cars. Neither does anyone else.

        But if farmers want to sell meat or dairy products into the EU single market, they’re going to be looking at tariffs of up to 40%. And 27% for steel. I presume you follow the vagaries of the tiny bit of steel industry that we have left. I believe after last Friday you and I are temporarily paying the wages of the guys in Scunthorpe and possibly Teesside too (fine by me). Orders from Europe have dried up, as you’d expect.

        And then you’ve got non-tariff barriers. Which is going to be particularly important for services, which are 80% of our economy, and which aren’t covered by WTO agreements at all.

        I’d be perfectly fine with something more like the original Common Market, but I had to choose on the basis of what we have.

        If you’re fine living in penury, great. I don’t expect to live in penury and I didn’t vote for me personally as it will make pretty much no difference to me except for the increase in prices, which I can manage.

        But I don’t work in a steel plant in a town with nothing else on offer, or in Swindon or Sunderland who will find themselves in a similar position.

        And I’m still waiting to see the trade deals we were promised. 150 overseas junkets and hardly anything to show for it. And a fraction of the clout in future trade deals that we had as part of the EU.

        I’m fine with Brexit happening tomorrow morning if that’s what you want, but let’s just wait and see how everyone feels a few years from now before we let ALL the Brexit voters, not just you, say how they feel about what they’ve gained.

        And we’ll see how self-determination works out when we can’t pass an environmental or food safety law in our own Parliament without being fined in a secret corporate court by American firms because it’s going to hurt their bottom line.

        • Slugoon May 28, 2019 at 2:43 am #

          At least we have moved from unicorns to valid arguments. The latter are hard to come by these days.

          I think we would ALL get behind a Common Market whose purpose was to facilitate trade. Was not that the very sales pitch in 1975, at least overtly? My ire lies with the duplicitous way we are being railroaded into a federal Europe.

          Brexit will of course be blamed for everything. The car manufacturers haven’t invested a red cent in British plants for decades but you know the headlines. It’s the same with British Steel. They’ve been job-cutting since the turn of the century. A company with high debt and low demand after Lehman went down. Brexit is a convenient but specious argument. As I understand it we can’t provide state aid to the workers in Scunthorpe without going cap-in-hand to Juncker. How did we put ourselves in the position of supplicant?

          For what it’s worth I don’t expect a Brexit will lead to any sunlit lands. I don’t expect to gain much of anything. The Eurozone, along with much of the world, is navigating the sea of problems well-documented in these forums.

          My point is that the lazy arguments of unicorns, xenophobes etc. just doesn’t cut it. We voted for much more subtle reasons.

          Oh, and you’ll be waiting a long time to see how the trade deals or anything else pans out. If you haven’t noticed Brexit is still-birthed. It has been hobbled by those who never wanted to give it chance so how will we ever know that we may all have regained some common purpose or identity when the boot of the Commission is on all out faces?

        • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 6:39 am #

          Slugoon

          “At least we have moved from unicorns to valid arguments. The latter are hard to come by these days.”

          That’s entirely unfair. I’ve made these same arguments – and others about the environmental consequences of Brexit – endlessly on here, so either you’re newish or you only see what you want to see.

          I haven’t used the argument of xenophobia. I have mentioned a very specific issue regarding the small but real minority whose motivation was that they think there are too many brown and black immigrants here. I’ve heard them, so I know they exist. And I don’t even call them xenophobic; I call them ill informed.

          Some people on here have shown exactly the same misunderstanding and they’re generally more intelligent than the average UK voter (or the average voter anywhere).

          Non-EU immigration has for years been higher than internal EU migration to the UK and it was and is entirely the responsibility of the UK government. And the Tories have reneged endlessly on their promises to reduce the numbers (including Theresa May as Home Secretary, despite her crass warnings on wheels). And, as I said on one of the last couple of threads to brh, it was obvious that non-EU immigration would increase as a result of Brexit and it has.

          Do you have ‘self-determination’ over that? No, me neither.

          Ideally, of course, we’d train an adequate number of doctors, nurses, engineers, IT specialists, (curry chefs?!), etc. etc. But we haven’t because (apart from the facetious example) we don’t want to spend the money. Well, I don’t mind, but most people whinge about taxes so what can you do? Even with a doctor clocking up £80-100K in individual personal debt, it costs more on the part of the training institution.

          I don’t think we should be poaching Indian doctors (I’m not bothered about German ones coming and going or even staying) but GP practices, just as an example, are going down like ninepins – people forget they are private businesses providing a service to the NHS (for about £140/patient on their list per year – not even the price of one private consultation!!!) and they can go under just the same as any other business. And they can’t get the staff, yet people complain about waiting for appointments. So what do you do in the short term? It takes 10 years to train a GP.

          It’s the same with business. UK businesses have for decades been lackadaisical about investing in training, with obvious results. German businesses seem to take a longer term view. As do their banks.

          “Oh, and you’ll be waiting a long time to see how the trade deals or anything else pans out. If you haven’t noticed Brexit is still-birthed. It has been hobbled by those who never wanted to give it chance”

          Liam Fox and his team haven’t been hobbled. He’s a true believer. They’ve made well over 150 overseas visits and their achievements are derisory. We were told countries were lining up.

          People forget that a ‘deal’ works both ways – you give me something, I give you something. And (a) we have way less clout outside the EU (wait for the negotiations with Trump’s folks – they’ve already made their demands clear and its my way or the highway as far as they’re concerned) and (b) May was told on her first trip to India, as an example, that the price of a trade deal was a significant increase in the number of work visas to the UK. The Brexit leaders – and I mean the totally committed ones – seem to have had no clue how these things actually work in the real world.

          I may obviously be wrong but I don’t think Brexit will be still birthed. I think we’ll see a no-deal Brexit. I don’t support a second referendum. I do think it’s entirely reasonable and democratic to have one now that we know infinitely more about the consequences and what’s on offer (how could it not be democratic when no-one is being forced to vote any differently from the way they want to?) but I still don’t support it practically because I think it would create issues we’d never hear the end of.

          And that’s in spite of knowing that 63% of the electorate didn’t vote for Brexit. Tough titties for those who didn’t get out and vote but it’s well known in terms of political analysis that it’s the people who support the status quo (and in this case who didn’t think the status quo was in jeopardy) who are least likely to get out and vote. Their fault, but the 37% figure for a major constitutional upheaval remains derisory. Entirely valid but derisory.

          As for the boot of the Commission, I joined the campaign against TTIP (albeit only financially) when I discovered what was in it and that it had been negotiated in secret. And that American firms were to have the right to sue our government if they didn’t like our domestic legislation. I can’t tell you how incensed that makes me.

          And if you think you’re going to have any ‘self-determination’ over what’s in trade deals with countries we don’t even have anything to do with, let alone share common institutions and rules with, I don’t know how that is. It’s going to be a fight even to get Parliament the right to see what’s in these stitch ups, to try to prevent a race to the bottom.

          • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 12:20 pm #

            stitch ups – GA

            =============

            Another nifty piece of slang.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:27 pm #

            Hi GA

            I don’t really understand why you cannot support a second referendum.

            I may be wrong, but it seems to me that given the wafer-thin winning majority and the fact that the turnout was so low, the ‘mandate’ it has bestowed is fragile.

            On top of that, there’s already been a significant effect of the currency and the sad spectacle of 3 years of humiliation for the country as a whole.

            In light of these effects, I would expect that the turnout to a second referendum would be measurably greater and that many who voted “Leave” back in the day, will switch to ‘Remain’ now.

            If a second plebiscite voted to Remain, the argument would be over, would it not?

            Sure, plenty of Brexiters would be pissed, but, as you know (and state so eloquently above) many of them – in particular, the noisy asses like Farage & the cynical Rees-Mogg – have little to lose (and possibly much to personally gain) compared to you and your neighbors.

            So, if you would, could you expand on how a second referendum would ‘would create issues we’d never hear the end of.’

          • Slugoon May 29, 2019 at 4:04 am #

            @Majella

            Just to correct you, the turnout was over 84%.

            In the referendum run-up our Prime Minister sent everyone a glossy brochure extolling the ‘virtues’ of the EU (just like the brochure of lies in 1975), the Chancellor threatening punitive taxes on the people if we left, the American president (talk about meddling in foreign affairs) saying we’d be at the ‘back of the queue’ for any trade deal and every media hack, captain of industry and vested interest explaining to use quite clearly and in no uncertain terms what the implications of leaving were. And on that massive turnout we voted to leave anyway.

            ‘We didn’t know what we were voting for’ is one of the most common excuses. What, in light of the above, really? Anecdotally, I’ve had many people who voted remain say to me they would now vote leave having witnessed the nasty, vindictive nature of those megalomaniacs in Brussels. I’m guessing you don’t live in Britain or really understand the mood here.

            A second plebiscite, ahhh. Best of three? How about best of five? We haven’t even enacted the result of the first one. A second referendum would be a choice between revoking our Article 50 notification (remaining on existing terms) or accepting a watered-down version of Theresa May’s surrender document (worse than remaining on existing terms).

            So you see, the fix is in. Just like the referenda held in Denmark, Ireland and France. Democracy, EU-style. Can you see now why a second referendum will only make things worse?

          • Slugoon May 29, 2019 at 4:07 am #

            Correction, I was wrong, it was a 72% turnout. Hardly ‘low’.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 9:56 am #

            “A second plebiscite, ahhh. Best of three? ”

            We’ve had the second plebiscite. The first one was in 1975 and the losers haven’t shut up since, including the majority of the press. And that wasn’t a close-run thing like the latest one.

            And you can’t use the argument that the question in 2016 was different because the parameters were different, unless you accept the same about the difference between the one in 2016 and the hypothetical one now, which would include both the no-deal option and the option of the deal negotiated with the EU.

            There were exaggerations on both sides, but the Leave side was worse for actual lies (the pound has indeed plummeted and will plummet further; jobs will indeed be lost, and whole sectors put in jeopardy.

            Leaving aside the investigation into the dodgy secret source of Arron Banks’ funding of the Leave campaign, Boris Johnson is currently facing investigation in court in a private prosecution (accepted by the courts) for lies about the EU during the campaign. He’s the one who (in addition to the famous lies on the bus) fearmongered by asserting that the EU was about to create its own army (which it couldn’t without the UK’s agreement – either he knew that or he’s not fit for high public office) and that Turkey was about to be allowed to join (we can safely leave that one for probably longer than the EU will exist), and widely proclaimed that a deal with the EU would be really easy because ‘they need us more than we need them’. Hmmm…

            Then we had this work of a latterday Goebels:

            https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/06/19/10/farage.jpg?w968h681

            Note Syrian refugees not able to enter the UK because (a) we are not in Schengen and (b) we are not under any EU obligation to take them (the UK made its own decisions about the small number it took in directly from Syria, but has mostly invested in helping Syrian refugees in situ).

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 10:16 am #

            “Correction, I was wrong, it was a 72% turnout. Hardly ‘low’.”

            It was a reasonable turnout but nothing more, in view of the seriousness of the question. Not even up there with the 84.6% for Indyref1 (sadly it looks like there will another – gawd save us from Neverenda).

            I’d be interested to see a list of the conditions pertaining in referenda involving similar constitutional upheavals from ‘serious’ countries, in terms of the basic requirements, e.g. straight 50% +1 victories but with compulsory voting or no compulsory voting but with more than a 50% requirement in view of the seriousness of the departure from the status quo.

            The reason I don’t support it is because while I personally don’t think it’s undemocratic (how could it be when people can vote how they want and know so much more – democracy utterly depends on proper information) it will be claimed as such to the heavens forever as such so what’s the point, politically speaking?

            Farage himself said before the referendum that if Remain won by 52% to 48% it would be Unfinished Business. Ha. Ha. Ha. What’s sauce for the gander seems not to be sauce for the goose. ‘Twas ever thus. And whatever the consequences, I want to see those responsible being forced to take responsibility for them for a change instead of bleating about the EU.

          • Slugoon May 29, 2019 at 3:42 pm #

            You know full well that the EU in 2016 is not anything like the EEC in 1975. The former I would totally support, the latter I will not. Major didn’t have the guts to consult the people over Maastricht where *everything* changed so here we are. The establishment always knew it was a political project but thought the British wouldn’t swallow it all in one go. It’s the deceit that hurts the most.

            To negate your presumption, I would be for another referendum if ‘no deal’ was an option but the Establishment isn’t going to make the same mistake again. While I don’t feel I should have to vote again on principle I would grudgingly accept it to bury the argument.

            I think you *should* leave aside the issue of funding though when ‘Remain’ had the entire weight of government, big business and the mainstream media behind them. I remember being told I was a ‘dangerous fantasist’ by Nick Clegg for believing an EU army was on the cards. Silly me… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46108633

            Anyway, may I extend an olive branch? We aren’t going to agree over Brexit, that is plain, but I am new here and sparring with you is probably uninteresting to others as well as bad etiquette. We might at some point agree on an environmental issue or something.

            And may I ask, since I believe you are north of the border: How does the apparent thirst for an independent Scotland square with a disproportionate desire to remain in the EU? I can’t quite work it out.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

            “You know full well that the EU in 2016 is not anything like the EEC in 1975. “

            Exactly, and what we know now about our options on leaving the EU is not the same as what we were told when we voted.

            “I remember being told I was a ‘dangerous fantasist’ by Nick Clegg for believing an EU army was on the cards. Silly me… bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46108633”

            That article was written at the end of 2018 when the UK had already voted to leave, making an EU army possible. It still won’t necessarily happen, though.

            Regarding the hypothetical second (or third!) referendum, I have heard various things proffered but my understanding is (especially in the light of the EU election results) that no-deal would have to be an option. I would certainly expect it to be – I think it should be.

            And whatever the Remain campaign had on their side, it certainly wasn’t all of the media. I’d agree with you that there was some bias on television, but the majority of the press pushed Brexit, and have done so for 40 years.

            I’ve posted this before:

            http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-23-uk-newspapers-positions-brexit

            But thank you for the olive branch – willingly accepted in the same spirit and I hope you’ll enjoy posting on other things now that you’ve jumped in!

            “And may I ask, since I believe you are north of the border: How does the apparent thirst for an independent Scotland square with a disproportionate desire to remain in the EU? I can’t quite work it out.

            Me neither, Slugoon, me neither. We (in my house) voted ‘Remain’ there too 🙂 . At least I’m consistent.

            I was brought up mostly in England, then lived in France for a few years, then came back to Scotland. I’m perfectly comfortable with my Scottish and British identities.

            Both my brothers are still in England with their English wives and half-English families and my friends are from all over too, so I’m not for carving up the Kingdom. And I don’t think the maths adds up either, but what would I know?

            Where are you in England, out of interest?

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 5:54 pm #

            I’ve got a Northern Irish granddad too, although I never met him (he was born in 1880-something) so I’m hoping to get an Irish passport at some point too, just for the heck of it and to avoid future queues in my infrequent travels to the EU!

          • Slugoon May 30, 2019 at 2:06 am #

            I am in the north-west but have lived in the Midlands, south-east and East Anglia. I haven’t tried Scotland yet. I once visited for New Year and ended up at a tea dance in Thurso. Plus, it was so cold. I haven’t been back since.

            I chanced upon Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over” at an airport a few years back for some ‘light’ holiday reading. That led me to “The Long Emergency” and others but those two books connected many dots. I always had a hunch that some things just didn’t add up (I’ve learnt that the concept of entropy explains much of it) and that exponential population growth is a radical break from the natural order.

            I won’t compete with many of the minds here but I’m a Patreon now so will no doubt engage in a bit of jousting.

          • Slugoon May 30, 2019 at 2:10 am #

            Are you not going to get one of the new blue design British passports? Much nicer than maroon, don’t you think? 😉

          • GreenAlba May 30, 2019 at 8:22 am #

            Slugoon

            You’re almost local, then. 🙂

            I have a brother in Hebden and a nephew in Formby. Whole family’s Remain though, haha.

            A tea dance in Thurso – there’s a thought! I imagine it being a bit bleak up there. My only connection is having had a long chat with a female police officer from there a decade ago who called me because my daughter, who has friends there, had dropped her passport in a taxi after a night out and my contact details are in it. So we had a friendly ‘mother’ chat about kids!

            Re the blue passport thing, I saw a while ago that we could have had blue passports all along if we’d wanted to – some other EU member country has them, apparently. I actually still have my old blue passport in a drawer with my young self in it. When we changed over they sent them back to us as keepsakes, with a corner cut off. It’s in a red leather protective cover, with the same ‘gold’-embossed design as the passport, so if they make them the same size again for nostalgia’s sake I’ll be good to go 🙂 .

            They’re big and cumbersome, though, so who knows…

            Anyway I’ve bolstered JHK’s Patreon account by sucking you in over Brexit. It’s an ill wind etc. etc. 🙂

            Let’s just hope it all works out before too many years and the damage is on the low side. I’m sure we can agree on that.

            ‘Dispatches’ are doing a programme on chlorinated chickens and related issues next Monday evening, hehe…

          • GreenAlba May 30, 2019 at 11:12 am #

            Did you notice, Slugoon, that the contract for the new British passports has gone to a Franco-Dutch company?!

          • Slugoon May 30, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

            Yes, I did read that some time ago and had a good laugh. Guffawed in fact. You couldn’t make it up. Of course, I’m going to put that down to the EU’s procurement laws rather than a botched British tender 😉

            I’m struggling to think where your daughter might have had a ‘night out’ in Thurso. Apart from the parish hall, venue of the aforementioned tea dance, there wasn’t much else in the way of civilisation. I imagine the policewoman welcomed the conversation. I’ve all that to come. Mine are still waist-high.

            Well, a toast to all that.

          • Majella May 30, 2019 at 6:22 pm #

            Slugoon said: “I am new here and sparring with you is probably uninteresting to others as well as bad etiquette”

            Not at all, Slugoon. I (at least) have learned MORE about the whole Brexit schmozzle from you & GA’s exchange here than hours of talking heads & paid ‘pundits’ on the tube.

            Being both British, one on each side of the equation, one older & one younger, one Scotland domiciled (am I right GA?) and one in England, you guys are the perfect prism through which to see the various arguments.

            Thanks again!

        • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 8:25 am #

          By this logic you could just as easily support Brexit and the anti-EU parties on the continent. When the EU disappears new trade negotiations take place and the system corrects itself.

          Why support the supranational behemoth that now wants an army, increased “movement of labor,” and is run by an unelected set of BCs?

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 8:56 am #

            Nightowl

            Paradoxically, the UK was always against a European army and the EU couldn’t have one without the unanimous approval of all 28 member states. Now with the UK gone they can – a kind gift to Europe I’m sure. This was of course yet another of Boris Johnson’s lies – that the EU would soon have an army, when he knew full well they couldn’t because of the UK veto.

            I have nothing against Brexit in principle. But there are very few principles around, apart from the kind supported by the investment banker types like Rees-Mogg and John Redwood, who, you will remember, advised his clients to invest in the EU and not the UK, knowing which way the wind was blowing. Currency speculators will make a killing following a no-deal Brexit. And Joe Public will pay the price.

            I don’t support the supranational behemoth in its supranational behemoth-ness. Drunken Juncker is an arrogant arse. But I have to say they can run circles around their British negotiating counterparts who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. The Brits haven’t had to negotiate anything in 40 years and it shows. And they were living in cloud cuckoo land thinking they could cherry pick what they wanted, thanks, and leave the bits they didn’t. Typical British government arrogance.

            I am a pragmatist and I like to see families with food on their dinner table and a roof over their head. I find the people who say ‘Take everything I have, but give me my sovereignty’ are generally the ones in no danger of losing very much, and least of all their job and their home. I don’t imagine many of them trekking to the foodbank. That’ll be for someone else, including people who didn’t vote for it, which it’s worth remembering include the bulk of the younger generation who will be most affected and for longer. My brother’s mother-in-law, she of the five-bedroom house and the dislike of eco-lightbulbs (her quoted reason for voting Brexit) has already shuffled off this mortal coil and left the situation for her Remain-voting children and grandchildren to live with.

            The ill effects of free movement are cast into the shade by non-EU immigration. That was where they should have started, but there are interests who like to mix things up in people’s minds. Nigel Farage being one of them.

            I’m a fan of a lot of the environmental, food safety and work safety regulations brought in by the EU. We have a lot to thank them for, considering the historical lack of interest of the British governing elites in the day-to-day welfare of the plebs. I remember when Britain was the ‘dirty man of Europe’ and we’re still in contravention of EU air pollution standards in many of our cities, including Edinburgh city centre, I believe.

            I maintain that the fault lies with the pollution and not the regulations.

          • Nightowl May 28, 2019 at 9:49 am #

            Thanks for the detailed answer.

      • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:43 pm #

        @Slugoon,

        While Brexit seems like a start in the right direction no one really controls their own self-determination that is an illusion.

        Other than that welcome to the board may you post many more times just ignore the idiots who are here to troll.

        • Majella May 27, 2019 at 8:52 pm #

          “Troll” = ‘disagree with the Banana Republicans’?

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 10:12 pm #

            No just you and a few others the term troll was not about GA.

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 11:36 pm #

            🙂 Troll! I’ll make a badge….

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 6:47 am #

            Majella

            Thanks for the links on the other thread. I couldn’t get the first one to work, but I will listen to the second one. I didn’t get round to is as the sound on my PC is dead so I need to get it on my laptop at some point.

            Maybe today!

  23. wm5135 May 27, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

    GA – “And how will they vent their anger?”

    Against each other! The tryouts for the cheerleading team to lead the savagery are Web-Wide.

    The village will be saved!

    and to start things off on a happy note, a kiss at the window as in the Miller’s Tale.

  24. elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 12:58 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    An article on the site “The Next Big Thing” posed an interesting thought.

    It is well understood that, at death’s door, humans sometimes feel a rush of calm and contentment, giddy behavior, even detached excitement. This is known as the Dopamine Effect…a defensive mechanism, like shock, that the body maintains to ease the angst of the soon to be dead. Examples abound of terminal patients, their last hours evincing calm and acceptance. The terminally burned find a few hours of solace, those suffering animal attacks and victims of violent crime sometimes describe a detached observation of the event…pain being secondary, or not immediately experienced.

    Parallels can be drawn to the same effect regarding failed cultures, the populations of which can experience the same lack of pain and substitute deviant behavior for concern, or alarm.

    Consider the Weimar experiences in Germany,

    Consider our own responses….

    http://www.dailyimpact.net/2019/05/23/the-dopamine-hypothesis/#more-4220

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:36 pm #

      I’m reminded of a blog post several years back on another site which detailed the fact that soon to be freezing death victims often feel overheated and strip off what remaining clothes they have just prior to succumbing. Likewise, warming them up too quickly in the event they are found often kills them too.

      • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:38 pm #

        To add, people dying of thirst will literally drink anything they can get their hands on before giving up the ghost, including their own urine, their own blood, and engine antifreeze and motor oil. I wonder if we’ll resort to similar when the oil runs out?

  25. GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

    wm5135

    Haha… I should be seeing Absolom, but I’m seeing Boris. 🙂

    But for the rest, I fear you are right.

  26. Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

    EU Elections 2019: SNP to have three MEPs as Labour vote collapses

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48417424

    “The SNP is on course to increase its number of MEPs from two to three in the European elections amid a collapse in support for Scottish Labour.

    “With 31 of the 32 Scottish council areas having declared their results, the SNP has 37.9% of the votes – up from 29% in the last EU election.

    “Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has the second most votes and will have one MEP, as will the Lib Dems and Tories.

    “Labour is fifth with just 9.3% of the votes – down from 26% in 2014.

    “It means Labour will lose both of its MEPs in Scotland, including David Martin who was the UK’s longest serving elected EU politician.”

    Watching an entire political class be dismantled in real time is a rather awesome sight — interesting times, and all that. I can’t quite grasp what it must be like to be in the midst of it. I hope the UK, or at least parts of it, has something left of its patrimony once the dust settles. I hate to ask, but it seems necessary: if the UK were to actually dissolve, would a Scotland-only NHS survive in the embrace of the neoliberal EU?

    • Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 1:05 pm #

      Ergh, this was meant to be a reply to GreenAlba above.

    • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

      Elrond

      “I hate to ask, but it seems necessary: if the UK were to actually dissolve, would a Scotland-only NHS survive in the embrace of the neoliberal EU?”

      There’s so much in that small question! Before Indyref1 Nicola was all over the EU trying to get support, then pretending she’d got it. The fact is that the EU would resist letting Scotland join separately anyway pour courager les autres, principally the Spanish Catalans.

      But who knows?

      I don’t know that I’d want to go there anyway. I kinda think once you’re out you should stay out, and if they reform themselves back into a trading bloc with not much else in the way of pretensions, we could all go back in! And while I believe a large number of jobs are at risk in Scotland with the end of ‘seamless trade’ with the EU (try getting Scottish langoustines to Spanish tapas outlets with a week-long delay!) many more would be at risk without seamless trade with England.

      On the other matter, Scottish people like to delude themselves that we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns and the NHS will survive better than in England, but while there’s some truth in it (Scots – and the northern English – are less dog-eat-dog in their evolution than the southern English and many will be happy to pay more to keep the NHS going) – a lot of it’s just fantasy. NHS Scotland is aleady collapsing, just more slowly than NHS England (NI is the absolute worst, hence the usefulness of the billion pounds they got on false pretences to support May’s beleaguered government).

      There’s a demoralised workforce and unrealistic expectations from people who have no clue how much quality healthcare actually costs (I’m not talking about any layer of parasites such as feed off the system in the US – I mean the actual cost of training doctors and providing facilities).

      The interesting thing here is that the usual suspects can’t say the NHS is collapsing because of immigrants, which is the go-to slogan for the already biased. Scotland doesn’t have that many immigrants so that isn’t an issue. It does have a lot of old people, though, which is more to the point, and efforts to combine NHS services with Social Care (paid for by struggling local authorities) isn’t solving any problems yet.

      The NHS, for all its faults, has done magnificently over the decades considering the 9.7% of GDP that is spent on it (compare that with the US, along with its overall outcomes). But creeping privatisation is the order of the day, which Brexit will certainly increase. And I don’t think post-Brexit Scotland – and certainly post-Independence Scotland – could afford a comprehensive NHS for long. The private sector will cherry pick the easy stuff and the sexy stuff and the public sector will be left with chronic and geriatric care.

      • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

        I should have mentioned PFI, though, which started as a way to keep large government loans off the books for new schools and hospitals, but ended as a massive and shocking transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector.

        The NHS pays about 7 times the cost of the project over its lifetime in interest payments and at the end of the payment period the hospital doesn’t even belong to the NHS. Nice work if you can get it. And they wonder why the NHS is collapsing.

        • Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 4:12 pm #

          I’m not familiar with PFI, GreenAlba, but it sounds like an iteration of the ‘public-private partnership’ (PPP) grift. There are all kinds of ways to skim and extract. The city I was born in has been planning to consolidate its various hospitals into one big, new ‘mega-hospital’, which city government vowed would be built at an existing site. Guess what? The instead they approved a greenfield site out by the airport – far away from where anyone lives, but very attractive to local developers who look to cash in on the deal. One wonders whose palms got greased to make that happen.

          The location, on the city’s fringe, Is also very pleasing to middle-class residents of the surrounding county. It will vastly increase the auto-dependence of the new site, making it as difficult for city residents to access it as possible, while mildly lengthening the trip for county residents. These are stereotypical suburbanites who purely love consuming city services, but rear up like cobras when you mention the idea of taxing them for any of it. Transit service to the area, needless to say, is more of a rumour than an aspiration. At this point, the best hope is that a collapse will come before the waste of resources is locked in, not after.

          • Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

            Mildly shortening, I should have said. Error #2 today.

          • GreenAlba May 27, 2019 at 8:46 pm #

            Yes, PFI is pretty much the same thing – Private Finance Initiative. I think in Scotland it might even be called PPP as in your example to make it sound more palatable.

            Your new hospital certainly doesn’t sound very user friendly!

            Re your comment further up, ‘Watching an entire political class be dismantled in real time is a rather awesome sight’, my favourite moment was watching Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka ‘Tommy Robinson’ lose his deposit. It’s the very first time I’ve seen ‘Tommy’ (or, as Janos would say, ‘Our Tommy’) have absolutely nothing to say when a microphone was pointed his way.

            He’s been living high on the hog, allegedly, since he became the darling of the international alt-right, but I’m thinking maybe his days as their mascot are numbered. The higher they fly…

            Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

          • Elrond Hubbard May 28, 2019 at 11:14 am #

            I certainly hope so, GreenAlba, but I caution against premature celebration. From what I can see, Brexit has damaged the political brands of both the Conservatives and Labour, and there will always be people looking to fill the vacuum. This is true no matter how poorly Calgon of Uruk, or whatever YouTube pseudonym Carl Benjamin uses, does in the polls.

            No doubt you’ll have heard of Rob Ford, the crackhead former mayor of Toronto, now deceased? His brother Doug, now premier of the province of Ontario, is yet another of the current breed of know-nothing populists in the Trump vein. Ford’s party won a majority of seats in the legislature with a resounding 40% of the popular vote, thanks to first past the post, and he now enjoys a resounding favourability rating of 19.9%. These are worse polls than his predecessor had at the time her party went down to historic defeat, and we have years to go before we get a crack at ousting him.

            In short, This Is Fine. It’s aaaallll fine.

  27. FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 2:41 pm #

    Why not look for a cat with a flashlight, highlighting the fact that the US needs oil.

    The planet is in a period of falling wells debits, the amount of easily accessible oil is declining, the peak of traditional oil production has been passed or is soon to be passed – in Europe they started an active campaign against diesel engines, Russia went into the Arctic looking for oil.

    The United States has Canada at its side, where 10% of world oil reserves are located, but

    – of the thirteen varieties, only two are heavy
    – deposits are located in the continental part of the country
    – there are no pipelines
    – politicians flew over the cuckoo’s nest on the basis of green energy

    There are also Brazil and Mexico, but reserves of 3.5 and 1.5 billion tons against 27.9 billion tons (Canada) and even more so 46.6 billion (Venezuela) are not worth the trouble.

    Venezuela got 17% of the world’s heavy oil reserves, ready infrastructure for tankers and political weakness makes Venezuela a tasty morsel for oil industry.

    Russia saw this long time ago and bought 40% of PDVSA.

    Well, and dear American partners went the traditional way of asset stripping through color revolution.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 2:53 pm #

      Forget about oil. New coal fired plants being built in Poland, Indonesia, both Koreas, China, India, Viet Nam, to name just a few.

      Germany needs to build coal fired power plants to make up for foolishly closing its nuclear power plants a few years back. Its either that, or brownouts. When it comes to making electricity, (as JHK has pointed out) there’s no free lunch.

      Coal is the past. Its also the future.

      Brh

      • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 4:01 pm #

        Forget the coal. Coal is the past – at least in energy generation. The future is nuclear fission of heavy metals using Linear Particle Accelerator.

        It’s not for nothing that Obama picked Ernest Moniz, specialist in linear accelerators, as his Secretary of Energy.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Moniz

        But then the time was not right yet due alignment of political forces.

        Now, after appointment of John Durham as a Prosecutor in case of the beginning of Mueller investigation, the time may be just right.

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 4:59 pm #

          Im down with that.

          Fire up the nukes.

          But in the west nuclear power is being abandoned, nuclear plants being closed. To be replaced by what exactly? Windmills? They go even farther back than coal.

          Brh

          • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 6:03 pm #

            Windmills and Solar Panels is an ideological diversion to keep “deplorables” from developing too much, and which already cost trillions of taxpayers money.

            What do you think, were they going to power up those luxury nuclear fallout shelters in New Zealand with windmills?

            Fat chance.

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 9:16 pm #

            Indeed. NZ power system – 75% hydroelectric, 20% geothermal, 3% wind/solar & 2% natural gas burning turbine (to top things up in a dry year):

            https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/new-zealands-billionaire-doomsday-preppers

      • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 4:27 pm #

        Coal is the future.

        So too will guttural grunting as language be the future.

        Inuit Throat Singing

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 6:30 pm #

          Low sulfur coal is good stuff with the right scrubbers c02 and water vapor are the by product.
          Odd that most of the low sulfur coal was set off limits in the US.
          Now guess the resident in the Whitehouse that pushed this agenda!

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 9:21 pm #

            benr – “c02 and water vapor are the by product.”

            Therein lies the problem.

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 9:33 am #

            Only IF you believe the narrative C02 and gasp water is bad.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:31 pm #

            benr…but ‘belief’ doesn’t make it true or not. If you didn’t ‘believe’ that the sun would rise tomorrow, would your ‘belief’ make any difference?

      • Coal power plants make great fixed targets for precision munitions.

        Build against the New Green Deal, or align with the old Brown, that is every last man’s choice

        • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:39 pm #

          If we could develop a very widely distributed power generation system, with solar on every house/roof etc, feeding back into the grid when in surplus and drawing when needed, with major back-up from hydro stations (where possible) and/or low-risk, compact thorium reactors, we could get there.

          The goal need not necessarily be to become totally oil-free, but using as little as possible for functions where there’s no viable alternative – at least, not yet. Much of that usage would not require it’s burning, but we’d be pretty screwed if we could make no more plastics.

          • Exscotticus May 29, 2019 at 1:05 am #

            At 7+ billion people and counting, neither coal nor AOC fantasies can supply what’s needed. We don’t have an energy problem; we have an overpopulation problem.

            In any case, Scotch is a much better use of peat than letting that peat sit around for a hundred million years to produce coal.

      • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 7:08 pm #

        I’ve got an angle most people haven’t thought about.

        Regardless of whether our oil supply is truly fixed or replenishing itself, nobody is thinking about the AIR SUPPLY i.e breathable oxygen that gets burned by the trillions of cubic feet at whatever rate it burns.

        All of that carbon, oil, gas, or coal, requires a lot more oxygen to burn than the mass of the fuel itself. I contend that the Earth’s ability to generate oxygen or convert CO2 will suddenly become a major talking point.

        The Talking Heads may even start fear mongering about PEAK AIR before PEAK OIL becomes a serious problem. TPTB will float the idea of privatizing the most vital of The Commons. The AIR. That means the owners of the airspace over a particular political entity can levy a User Fee on us just for breathing or by Happy Motoring.

        Why privatize the Commons? No government has the power to claim it but, they CAN do to the air what they did with the public lands. Turn them over to private cartels. Each country can then collect tax revenues by taxing the fees generated by corporations who agree to take ownership. They will be able to sue polluters in court for polluting THEIR PROPERTY.

        There is no limit to this perversion if you just let your imagination run with it.

        • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 7:11 pm #

          I was not accusing you of trolling, in previous thread.

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 7:20 pm #

          Jim, that’d be a good theme for a scfi film, suddenly people having trouble breathing, find out air is disappearing from the atmosphere. And then a desperate struggle for air.

          Actually i remember reading an article not long ago about this very subject, said there was a way to measure amont of air extant, at the time of writing there was enough.

          Brh

          • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 8:28 pm #

            Fiction isn’t capable of matching reality or conspiracy for the intense reading experience.

            A movie that lets loose the process by which Commons, which had never been Titled or owned before, is decreed to be a possession of the government. Which then leases it out to private parties for the purpose of collecting tax revenues from it. The private parties are then granted certain freedoms to develop it as they see fit as long as taxes are being collected.

            That same process can be used to privatize the air we breathe. We can even be charged with trespassing on some company’s air if we move from one geographical area to another without permission. User fees, of course, are the tax everyone is born with.

            Like I said, there is no limit to this.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 9:28 pm #

            There you go, Jim.

            A synopsis for a screenplay.

            brh

          • City_of_76 May 27, 2019 at 10:35 pm #

            Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, last November 2018 was when we got a taste of the hells to come, when the Camp Fire burned up over 18,000 structures, destroying the town of Paradise, California. We usually have fantastically fresh air in San Francisco, but for a two-week period, the city and surrounding counties choked on sooty poisoned air. I hunkered down at home and tolerated the heat as best I could (no air conditioning), but eventually I ventured out — foolishly, without an N-95 smoke mask. My eyes stung, my windpipe tightened and my chest hurt for days after that. And yet what could I do — I had to get on with life, work, family. It was then I realized that some of us may face a calamity where we die like beached fish, simply unable to breathe.

            About ten years ago I had a marijuana-induced paranoid daydream, set in the near future. In the dream, I was at a party like the one where I had just gotten so untenably stoned, and we were talking about how hot it had gotten. “Remember when we were learning that global warming was going to change the weather?” “Yeah, and wow that happened really fast. Now it’s hot nearly all the time.”

            After the climate chaos of the past couple years, I have only dread for the years to unfold. I don’t know how we’ll explain this mess to the young ‘uns in our midst… we burned up the planet so we could drive ourselves around in SUVs, fly ourselves around for cheap thrills, stuff ourselves full of cheap meat, entertain ourselves with glowing screens.

            My 84 year old mother, born to East European immigrants on a North Dakota wheat farm but who eventually “made it” to the East coast post-war suburbs, hems and haws when we talk about the ecological bind we’re in. How strange it must be to know that her “upward” trajectory, from farm girl to college graduate to suburban household, was part of a pattern that leaves few options for those to follow.

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 7:24 pm #

          Yes, maybe air being burned up, but also the possibility its leaking into outer space. You have to consider all possibilities.

          Brh

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:47 pm #

            As long as we have water we have oxygen.
            Worry more about water evaporating off into space.
            What keeps everyone really alive?
            Earths magnetic core and gravity if either fails we all die.

        • Majella May 27, 2019 at 9:25 pm #

          Ben Elton – Gasp!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wWnmtvs2fw

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 9:36 am #

            Love new order!

        • Indeed, the oxygen/carbon balance of the atmosphere is trending away from what is optimal for human beings.

          How do we get the word out?

          Seriously

      • Exscotticus May 29, 2019 at 1:22 am #

        At current rates, China will exhaust its known coal reserves in less than 30 years. Then the trade war will surely be over, as those cargo ships will return to China with USA coal.

    • “Russia saw this long time ago and bought 40% of PDVSA.”

      Will Russia’s fat profits be used to bump the salary of their lowly surgeons?

      • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 6:05 pm #

        And how much commission does the “New Pogrom Times” pay?

  28. BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 2:44 pm #

    Well, I’ve changed my mind about women serving in the US Armed Forces. This morning I took part in the Memorial Day ceremonies in a little town west of here — my hometown in fact. Its always a fun day, big part of it seeing relatives and old friends. This year a female ‘vet’ joined our color guard. Phew! What a hot little number! It looked like she had her camos tailored to fit her body just right and show the curvacious nature of it. She was flirting with everybody; at the right moment she removed her cap and out came a thick mane of blond hair. A little later I overheard her telling a story about her Colonel, something about his wife and some problem that came up. Wow! (Which is why she didn’t re enlist)

    Brh

    • Ol' Scratch May 27, 2019 at 2:47 pm #

      LOL! Imagine that!

    • Don’t worry, Western Sharia will come and save the day…

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:24 am #

        Oh yeah right. Please do tell us about that scary Western Sharia. I hear a lot about it but I think its a Straw Man.

    • Tate May 27, 2019 at 7:03 pm #

      How did you change your mind?

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 7:29 pm #

        It might be a good thing if done right, for example recruit blonds like the one who showed up today. Good for moral, maybe not so good for unit cohesion.

        Brh

        • Robert White May 28, 2019 at 10:40 pm #

          You are confusing moral with libido, BRH.

          RW

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 10:43 am #

            And morale with moral 🙂

    • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 7:55 pm #

      The surest way to wreck male unit cohesion and focus is to bring women into the mix.

      I don’t give a rat’s ass what she can do, or claims she can do. The highest consideration must be given to what creates camaraderie, trust, and organic group performance. All male crews have done that since the beginning when the Greeks built the first known warships.

      I served eight years in the old Cold War Silent Service. Yes, every workspace on the boat has its own porn magazine supply. Now and then, the subject came up of who tagged the ugliest chick.

      But, the idea of women being on board was unthinkable because it would break up the social and professional environment that was critical. Subs and small surface combatants have limited space and barely have enough manpower. Female distractions are not wanted. Only when we pulled into port did we go hunting.

      HOWEVER, TPTB don’t care. THEY have their AGENDA and that is to eradicate male-only space. Thus ensuring that men conform to the diktats of doubleplus goodthink aka feminism.

    • Majella May 28, 2019 at 9:47 pm #

      Unbelievable.

      Public leering on a female.

      And why’d you put ‘vet’ in speech marks?

      …”she was flirting with everybody” was she? Or was she just showing friendliness, open to misinterpretation? If she’d been assaulted later would she have ‘been asking for it’?

      And SSL – you have nothing else to say but snipe at an obvious joke?

  29. Q. Shtik May 27, 2019 at 2:45 pm #

    I will continue to write about what interests me, not pander to monomaniacs. –JHK Admin

    ===============

    Wow, JHK Admin has awakened on the wrong side of the bed. This makes 4 reprimands and it’s not even noon.

    I’m with Jim though, he should write about whatever he wants.

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:21 pm #

      His site don’t like the writing on the wall don’t read em.

      • K-Dog May 28, 2019 at 11:46 am #

        Point being his site.

        • benr May 28, 2019 at 4:10 pm #

          point being, his wall, his site and most of all his writing.

  30. 450.org May 27, 2019 at 3:57 pm #

    Speaking of the growth & progress delusion, there’s this. It’s for real, I promise. I wish it was satire and perhaps it is since the Singularity guarantees the union of satire and the reality upon which that satire is based.

    The iPotty; Train the next generation how to piss & crap away what’s left of its future.

  31. BuckP May 27, 2019 at 3:59 pm #

    Thanks Jim, for another terrific essay that must be read slowly so as to savor every word. Your Clusterfuck Nation posts are the “caramel cloud macchiatos” of the Blogosphere Coffee Shop.

    “The US and China are actually more like two passengers of a sinking ship racing to swim to a single lifebuoy”

    As the Titanic was sinking, John Jacob Astor IV,an American businessman worth $150,000,000 at the time, refused to board a lifeboat with his wife, even though sixteen seats were still available, because he was in concert with the belief that woman and children had priority. He did not use his status in first class to bump steerage passengers, specifically Irish women and children emigrating to the United States, off the lifeboats.Like Astor, wealthy elites, Benjamin Guggenheim and Isidor Straus (Macy’s) refused to board the lifeboats and perished. I sincerely doubt we will see that kind of bravery and chivalry from our elites today when the next Titanic-like disaster occurs, namely the demise of the fiat dollar as the world’s reverve currency, a war or something else.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

      Buck nice post,

      What you wrote there about Astor and Guggenheim is not widely known.

      Brh

    • 450.org May 27, 2019 at 4:21 pm #

      This is true. In all, 115 men in 1st class stood aside for women & children exceeded by 147 men from 2nd class. Less than a 3rd of the passengers from steerage survived because 3rd class had no life boats and many of the access points to the upper decks were blocked by gates due to immigration law at the time, not because the crew was cruel and wished for them to drown as Cameron’s movie would have us believe.

    • elysianfield May 27, 2019 at 7:39 pm #

      Buck,
      Their actions reflected the culture of Western Civilization of that period.

      • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 10:03 pm #

        Women in general have long ceased to be worthy of such sacrifice. The Social Contract that inspired men to be so noble was broken many decades ago and feminism broke it with gusto.

        The rapid rise of MGTOW is a reaction to the toxicity of today’s women and the Police State that they use against men with impunity. Including perjury in divorce and family courts.

        Who all remembers the feminist mantra: “Women need men like fish need a bicycle”

        MGTOW says, “Men need women like fish need a hook!”

        • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 12:45 am #

          They wouldn’t even row back to pick up their men in the water except for one or two exceptions. Many of the boats were only half full apparently.

          Men are better, be it the best of times or worst of times.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:27 am #

            Said every women ever since the dawn of time who’s been gang-raped by an invading army of every colour or lack of it under the sun.

            And I’m not interested in your hierarchy of rapists.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:29 am #

            Men are good, bad, ugly, wonderful, awful, honest, liars, gentlemen and brutes. Somewhere. Some time.

            And the equivalent is true of women. Except they don’t rape and they rarely kill.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

            And women don’t care about men’s lives. You don’t dispute that I see. And no wonder you don’t care about Britain or Western Civilization – since Men are Men and you don’t care about my “hierarchy of rapists”. Islamic men will do nicely. What delicious revenge against us!

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 12:55 pm #

            What utter claptrap.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 1:00 pm #

            “And women don’t care about men’s lives. You don’t dispute that I see”

            In general I consider it nonsense. But in the specific case you mention, I have no reason to accept your reasoning, which is always poisoned on such matters.

            So, I checked it out – just Wiki.

            First of all, it wouldn’t have been up to the women. It was up to the crew in charge of them, but anyway…

            ” As the half-filled boats rowed away from the ship, they were too far for other passengers to reach, and most lifeboats did not return to the wreck, due to fear of being swamped by drowning victims. Only two lifeboats returned to retrieve survivors from the water, some of whom later died.”

            “due to fear of being swamped by drowning victims…”??

            Yep I recall you white-splaining that one to me many a time. The lifeboat metaphor. Those in the lifeboats need to whack the people in the water with their oars, wasn’t it?

            Not that they did that. You are shameless.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

            In other words, I was right. They didn’t go back to pick up THEIR OWN MEN because their cowardice was greater than their love.

            Thank you, Alba. You are so dense that you don’t even realize when you are helping me. You need to learn to think. Bet you were a lot more canny when you were younger and more Christian. Now you’re just foaming at the mouth with Anti-White hate.

          • benr May 28, 2019 at 4:14 pm #

            @ green alba
            _ She said and women don’t rape…
            Really are you So sure about that?
            Pretty sure I have read about women raping other women and men it’s rare outside of prison but it does happen.

          • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 4:15 pm #

            Now you’re just foaming at the mouth with Anti-White hate. – Janos

            ============

            Talk about foaming at the mouth!

            Janos, you do your cause no favor with this over-the-top bullshit.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 5:04 pm #

            I don’t know about other countries, benr, but rape in the UK involves a penis. Legally speaking. What you’re thinking of would be sexual assault. Legally speaking.

            But I think it’s a bit disingenuous to bring in a few spurious incidents in a prison and compare them to Genghis Khan. For example.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 5:06 pm #

            Janos

            I think Q has said enough so I’m not bothering to reply to your hysterical tripe. You remain shameless, which is not my problem.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 6:23 pm #

            Q throws his drowning grammar buddy, Alba, a frayed life line. She grabs onto it with gusto and then goes on the attack again. She even brings race into it. Shame on you, Q.

          • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 6:38 pm #

            Shame on you, Q.

            ===========

            We can discuss our mutual shame this summer over coffee in the great northwest. We’ll get Dog and make it a threesome.

  32. FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 4:10 pm #

    It’s not for nothing that Obama picked Ernest Moniz, specialist in linear accelerators, as his Secretary of Energy.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Moniz

    Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia article about Ernest Moniz has a link to Bates Linear Accelerator Center, but that link leads to nowhere, or, rather to Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science with NO mentioning of Bates Center.

    Here is the Hand of Manipulator at work in real time.

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 6:27 pm #

      Obama Fundamentally fucked up everything he touched.
      He managed to almost turn the US into a third world nation in 8 short years.
      Almost!

      • capt spaulding May 27, 2019 at 7:20 pm #

        Considering the problems that “W” and his Republican buddies created in the previous 8 years, and the emergency measures that had to be enacted to save the country, I would venture to say that your post is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance.

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:53 pm #

          Venture all you want but Obama just continued the measures GWBush started and doubled down on all the toxic plays.

          QE
          ZIRP
          Toxic derivative swaps
          Spending like there is no manana!

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 9:31 pm #

            …and now Trump is continuing the putrid trend.

            “Don’t vote! It only encourages them!”

    • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 8:15 pm #

      How come nobody blame Clintons, who actually created current economic crisis by unleashing the Printing Press in the 90s and, according to some estimates, printed 20 trillion dollars backed by nothing, but fraudulent dot.com companies during the Information Superhighway project?

      Where’s that money, dudes?

      • JimInFlorida May 28, 2019 at 6:18 pm #

        If that money is parked in foreign central banks, then it’s not on the domestic money supply. If we then borrow it from those foreign central banks, then it is debt and that doesn’t count.

        For all of your magnificent commentaries on Russia and other things, I marvel that you can’t see the obvious.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 8:21 pm #

      How come nobody is able to put 2 and 2 together and answer a simple question: how come Dow Jones almost doubled every year in the 90s, while the real economy grew at 4-5% rate?

      • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 10:13 pm #

        That question is easy to answer. Supercomputers are able to kite all the fictitious and fantasy assets we need to justify the exponential growth rate of the money supply.

        There is no limit to what can be claimed as an asset. Expectation of fees and penalties can be used by government agencies to borrow more. All they have to do is commit legal extortion on a few victims and the paper gets a good rating.

        That paper, in turn, can be security for dozens of other securities. Eventually, we get into kited securities and, again, supercomputers can create false trading activity to make it all look legit. And I’m sure even my imagination falls short of the reality.

        • FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 7:46 am #

          Oh, for fuck’s sake!

          Question is not about the technicalities of money printing, question is in whose pockets does it print it!

          • JimInFlorida May 28, 2019 at 6:10 pm #

            Oh come on now Finc. The wild inflation of the Dow Jones is all about the technicalities of money printing, the games that underwrite it, and the kites that make it go higher.

            The skimmers and pocketers are way down the chain of events.

  33. Pucker May 27, 2019 at 4:24 pm #

    At the Pret a Manger in Hong Kong, the only people who work there are Chinese people.

    “By the end of the twentieth century, therefore, the US and much of Western Europe had witnessed large and often unprecedented waves of immigration which were also often more visibly and culturally distinct than earlier ones, and which then accelerated during the first two decades of the twenty-first century as the ethnic transformation of the West reached new heights. This has been especially apparent in the US where, by 2011, more than half of all cities were majority non-white. Cities like Austin, Tucson, Charlotte, Phoenix and Las Vegas have now tipped into ‘majority-minority’: people from minorities comprise a majority share of the population. By 2016, whites were also a minority in the states of Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, California and the District of Columbia, while for the first time in history white non-Hispanic children under ten years old had become a minority across America. In Western Europe, meanwhile, by 2015 some countries had a higher percentage of foreign-born populations than the US. This ranged from 11 to 17 per cent in Austria, Sweden, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands. 7 In the decade before the Brexit vote, Britain also witnessed historic ethnic shifts as net migration (more people coming in than leaving) surged. As often low-skilled workers from other EU member states like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania moved to Britain, net migration soared from 50,000 per year in the late 1990s to reach record highs of more than 300,000 per year by the time of the Brexit vote. In parts of the West, these dramatic shifts have been especially visible in the cities where, as sociologists point out, a population comprising more than 170 nationalities is now the rule rather than the exception. 8 While cities in North America like New York, Los Angeles and Toronto have long lacked a dominant majority group, European cities are now also witnessing profound change. Brussels, Geneva, Frankfurt and Amsterdam are already majority-minority. For the first time in history, by 2011 white Britons in London had become a minority, as they also are in Birmingham, Leicester, Luton and Slough. Head to the popular Pret a Manger fast-food chain in London and you will be served by somebody from the more than 105 different nationalities that work there. This trend of rapid ethnic change looks set to accelerate. For example, only one in three schoolchildren in cities like Amsterdam have Dutch parents, while in countries such as Britain minority ethnic pupils recently accounted for over 70 per cent of the increase in student numbers at primary schools.“

    Roger Eatwell
    National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

  34. FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 4:29 pm #

    I am sorry to inform you, but after listening to a couple of lectures by Russian nuclear physicists, I could tell you that all that you know about the possibilities of modern nuclear energy generation is a complete nonsense.

  35. Pucker May 27, 2019 at 4:38 pm #

    Should Muslim transgender Men be required to wear the hijab?

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 5:23 pm #

      A bolt on does not make you a man nor does hacking it off make you a woman.
      It’s science after all.

      • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 7:59 pm #

        Science discovers whatever the benefactor or sponsor is paying for.

        • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

          That’s Clinton science, real Science is trying to read the Mind of God.

          • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:56 pm #

            Insert AGW and the science is settled.

  36. FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 4:40 pm #

    Today is the anniversary day of founding of St. Petersburg

    I just learned that Peter the First founded “San (k) t-Peter-Burh” (according to the Dutch version Sankt Pieter Burch – “City of St. Peter”) on May 27 because this is the last day of Constantinople.

    The next day, May 28, 1453 at about 7 pm Constantinople turned into Istanbul, and Peter the Great, founding a new capital exactly 250 years after the fall of Constantinople, wanted to confirm the idea that despite the transfer of the capital “Moscow – Third Rome” the Roman Empire continues to operate and continues its existence for one and a half thousand years.

    I am shocked!!!
    This changes everything, absolutely everything!

    • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 8:11 pm #

      Does the Vatican regard Moscow as the place where the Eastern Church resides in exile?

      Who carried the Title and signets of authority for the Eastern half of the Roman Empire to Moscow? Somebody somewhere in Moscow must be able to show that chain of custody. Somebody must be able to show that the entity which once resided in Constantinople is now operating as it was before 1453.

      I’m sure it may have been dormant from time to time. In which case, a legitimate custodian always had possession of the Trust in which the life of the entity existed.

      I’d love to see that unbroken chain be revealed. The kind of revelation that would cause the Vatican to declare it as such. That would be epic.

      • FincaInTheMountains May 27, 2019 at 8:24 pm #

        The Trust is the Orthodox Christian Faith, and the chain of custody is indisputable.

        • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:57 pm #

          Worship based on ritual is foolishness.

          • Majella May 27, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

            Simplify that statement – “worship is foolishness”.

          • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 9:43 pm #

            Ritual teaches the Truths of the Faith by repetition. In time, the mature spirit can commune with God and learn even deeper Truths by direct experience. Including finding other ancient witnesses who communed with God and wrote about it.

            Every expression of true religion has prescribed rituals, penances, and works for sanctifying the worship. God is not into free-form modernist abominations i.e. contemporary pop-culture “praise worship.”

            But, I can understand the error of some who get caught up in the ritual technicalities and yet, having no understanding of what is being taught.

          • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:20 am #

            Rituals have a time and a place. Ritual is yet another item the Western mind has some difficulty with.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:13 am #

            Just came from a Traditional Mass done by Dominican Monks. Ritual, well done and beautiful, offers a way to participate in the mysteries, a way of worship that goes beyond mere rote and “ritual” as people understand it. Of course one must be instructed already, with an ardent heart and an attentive mind. But the Beauty itself offers a way into Faith for some.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:06 am #

            HypocriteinFlorida

            “God is not into free-form modernist abominations i.e. contemporary pop-culture “praise worship.”

            I expect he likes it a whole lot better than those stashes of porn you mentioned and your off-ship ‘hunting’ expeditions.

            Don’t tell me, you’re one of those Sunday Christians. Do as I say not as I do. Or was it ‘give me continence, oh Lord, but not yet’?

            But I guess you’ve got your ritual penances, so it’s all just a game.

            Maybe he doesn’t mind those pop-culture services so much after all. They could show penance afterwards too.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:08 am #

            I don’t even think he exists of course, but I think you presuming what he ‘likes’ is an absolute peach.

          • JimInFlorida May 28, 2019 at 5:27 pm #

            HypocriteinFlorida eh Green Alba?

            That’s a really cheap shot and not up to your usual quality.

            You actually suppose I bring up my pastimes as a reflection of what I am now? I am NOT the same character than I was in the Cold War Navy. You don’t want Good Boys doing the job I was doing. By the grace of God and despite my failings, I’ve been spared fatherhood. If you didn’t know me by my personality here, you’d think I was just a great guy.

            I become an asshole here when I see worthy persons (Janos and SSL for example) and worthy ideas being attacked and I defend them with gusto. I also attack the attackers and have been banned twice for rebuking the Gefilte Fish Gang. Not here but at large.

            While I revere Jesus Christ as He is, I long ago renounced the modern manifestation of Jewdeo-Xtianity. I find the Mind of Christ to be much more visible in the Srimad Bhagavatam than in the Bible. The Bible is hopelessly inadequate because the crypto-Jews in the Council of Nicea had no intention of compiling it to reveal the Deep Truths; which they kept for themselves.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 7:40 pm #

            “Jewdeo-Xtianity. ”

            How old are you – 12?

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:07 pm #

            JimInFlorida:

            “Ritual teaches the Truths of the Faith by repetition. In time, the mature spirit can commune with God and learn even deeper Truths by direct experience. Including finding other ancient witnesses who communed with God and wrote about it.”

            The human brain can be convinced of anything, and trained to believe whatever you want to believe. It creates its own reality so while your BELIEF in all this claptrap is undoubtedly genuine, it remains utter clap-trap.

            I have two brothers, one s-i-l & a mother who are Trumpsters, conspiracy theorists AND believe that the only real connection they can have with their ‘god’ is a purely personal one – but as you can see from the first two descriptor points, they’ll believe ANYTHING.

            Fortunately, I have 5 other brothers who are sane. You might spot the possibility of an infection of familial Catholicism..you’d be right.

            Janos, I recall the old Latin Mass and can recite my Catechism to this day. Not much about it comes across as ‘well done & beautiful’, particularly when I see all these ‘boys’ in my age cohort coming forward with their horrendous stories of sexual abuse by priests & lay brothers. For me, ‘religion’ is sham and ‘the religious’ duped – some unwittingly but many entirely wittingly.

          • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 11:42 pm #

            If the human mind can be trained to believe anything as you say Majella how can you be so convinced that you see reality any more clearer than the next person?

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:18 am #

            “If the human mind can be trained to believe anything as you say Majella how can you be so convinced that you see reality any more clearer than the next person?”

            Human beings have additional faculties, known as logic and reason. It’s what helps keep homo sapiens – or at least some of them – from degenerating into homo sap.

          • Elrond Hubbard May 29, 2019 at 12:07 pm #

            GA: “How old are you – 12?”

            Given how JimInFlorida‘s remarks give evidence of his sympathies, then yes, a mental age of about 12 is correct.

            Back in 1946, a man named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, and shared what he learned with people in a position to do something about it. The FBI? No, don’t be silly, the FBI was on the KKK’s side. No, he shared his valuable intelligence with the producers of the Superman radio show. The producers then took on the Klan in one of their radio serials, not only casting them as the villains they were, but mocking and deriding them mercilessly.

            Their method was simple: all they had to do was present the Klan’s own dirty laundry, exactly as-is, courtesy of Kennedy. Stetson and Robert Maxwell, the Superman producer, knew that their program was listened to not just by kids, but entire families gathered around the radio. They gambled, correctly, that simply and accurately depicting the viciously childish and hateful mentality of the KKK, just as it was, would turn the public against them. And so it did — the fearsome KKK’s membership rolls dropped precipitously thereafter.

            So there you have it. For all his would-be high-minded maundering about religion, JimInFlorida is quite typical of the true American bigot. He exhibits mental characteristics of a particularly vicious pre-adolescent.

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 9:23 pm #

          Its high time we got Constantinople back from the Muzzies.

          • JimInFlorida May 27, 2019 at 9:46 pm #

            A fitting way would be to take it back in the same way the Muzzies took it. It would be a shameful disgrace to get it back by paying an extortionate price. Constantinople must be won by battle and sanctified by blood.

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:10 am #

            Said Jesus, foaming at the mouth with blood lust.

            Let the little Muzzie children come unto me, so that I can cut their little Muzzie heads off.

          • elysianfield May 28, 2019 at 12:01 pm #

            “Let the little Muzzie children come unto me, so that I can cut their little Muzzie heads off.”

            Alba,
            Someone on this site once observed that “Nits become Lice”….

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

            EF

            Why am I not surprised?

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

            Little Muslim boys are taught to execute grown man. You can find it if you look unless they’ve deleted these executions.

            Does Alba ever show such passion in defense of Whites beaten and raped by Muslims? I’ve never see it. So her much vaunted vision of Equality is a Lie….

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 4:58 pm #

            Yeah, I’m always calling for the murder of little white children.

            Don’t you ever get tired?

          • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 4:59 pm #

            “Little Muslim boys are taught to execute grown man”

            But you’re better than that, surely. No? Not sure what the point is then.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 12:08 am #

            What else is to be expected from one who so freely insults Sages? How dare you make such careless equivocations! The two paths could not be of any greater difference. One is Life and one is Death. One day you will have to choose Alba. You aren’t going to like Islamic rule. Its not the Islam of the White Prophet you know. I fear in that day you will have deep regrets for not standing for your own people. Open your eyes and come into the Light.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:40 am #

            “How dare you make such careless equivocations! “

            How dare I? Hark at ma’am.

            You may have forgotten that this conversation started with HiminFlorida proposing a modern sacking of Istanbul and its innocent inhabitants, including babes in arms.

            I was tempted to follow suit by looking out the descendants of Norman intruders in my own area with a view to doing them in, but reason prevailed and I just calmed down, had a cup of tea, and decided that you have to stop somewhere and just get on with people.

            Don’t take that too seriously. I have always been fine with Normans. Just as well as I now find I’m descended from their original ancestors. Does it matter? Make that a resounding ‘no’.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHVz45n5a9M

            he two paths could not be of any greater difference. One is Life and one is Death. One day you will have to choose Alba. You aren’t going to like Islamic rule. Its not the Islam of the White Prophet you know. I fear in that day you will have deep regrets for not standing for your own people. Open your eyes and come into the Light.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:41 am #

            Delete that last para – accidentally pasted from yours.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 9:41 am #

            Your desire for peace and good will is noble Alba. That cannot be taken away from you. However, that was my point about bringing up equivocation. You see the Normans, while being brutal conquerors in their time, are now of little consequence being absorbed into other populations and ultimately disappearing as a separate and unique identity and culture. However, today’s Brown Muslims are a thriving and colonizing confederate group of populations and cultures. They represent an existential threat to native European populations whether that threat is recognized or is not. While Christians have undergone “Enlightenment” and have lost much of their original flavor and zeal, the Muslim world is not far removed from those practices which they set in stone in the Dark Ages. These include barbaric and brutal practices. Jim is simply stating that sometimes force and brutality needs to be met with force and brutality. What he is saying is not anti-Biblical. People who are not Christian or are Christian in name only like to only recognize the pacifists aspects of Christ’s teachings. However there is much in His teachings as well as those of the Prophets throughout the Bible that indicate that pacifism in certain circumstances is unacceptable and ultimately unholy. Sometimes enemies need to be erased as they have established abominations before the Lord and their offspring will always present a menace to His people.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 11:19 am #

            “Jim is simply stating that sometimes force and brutality needs to be met with force and brutality. What he is saying is not anti-Biblical. “

            No he isn’t. He’s advocating retaking Istanbul by force, which is the capital of a nation not currently at war with any country in Europe, let alone the US. His use of ‘we’ – from FLORIDA for gawd’s sake – is so beyond outrageous it would be hard to know where to start. Not to mention that Turkey is currently hosting millions of Syrian refugees, in a deal with the EU, to keep them from entering Europe.

            He said ‘Constantinople must be won by battle and sanctified by blood’. Sanctified by blood! How fecking blasphemous should that be to a Christian?

            “What he is saying is not anti-Biblical.”

            Florid Jim has disowned the Bible. It’s the outpourings of Jewdeo-Xtianity, don’tcha know?. So you aren’t batting for the same team, I’m afraid. Florid Jim is just another of those pagan mystics lightly coated with a bit of opportunistic Christianism, like the object of his man-crush. What they do is start from their own personal world view and pop along to the World Fair of Religiosity to pick out the offering on which it would be easiest to project that world view. With a tablespoonful or two of whatever religion they were indoctrinated in as a child.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:28 pm #

            I should have added ‘mix well, put in the oven and remove when half baked’.

            No-one noticed my er…deliberate mistake and pointed out that the capital of Turkey is actually Ankara. I was tempted not to correct it, especially since correcting something that’s not even germane to my point might incur an unsolicited medical diagnosis, but anyway – it’s more than I can do to leave it there till Friday!

            I’m confused, though. I’m told the EU has a plan to replace all the white folks in Europe – the Kalergi thingy. And yet here we have the EU paying actual money – for years now – to Turkey to keep these poor souls out of the EU.

            It’s all so confusing. You’d almost think people were making stuff up and that Germany didn’t, y’know, bomb Syria to manufacture refugees it could then welcome into Germany.

  37. The “Can’t Do” crowd always freights their diagnosis with the omission on simple ideas that worked in the past.

    OF COURSE rationing would never work

    OF COURSE the government can’t do anything right

    OF COURSE people wouldn’t go along with the ethics-centered plan

  38. Tate May 27, 2019 at 6:49 pm #

    “We will contest all 650 seats across the country at the next general election. I will not stop until the job is done.” — Nigel Farage tweet 5/27/19

  39. malthuss May 27, 2019 at 7:17 pm #

    I was pretty amused Facebook had a hissy fit about CrossFit. …

    Crossfit is unfit for facebook? why?

    • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 8:14 pm #

      Is it that CF is too damn YT?

  40. Elrond Hubbard May 27, 2019 at 7:50 pm #

    Some Americans Have Fled The Country To Escape Student Loan Debt

    https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/05/27/0141238/some-americans-have-fled-the-country-to-escape-student-loan-debt

    “Some student loan borrowers are packing their bags and fleeing from the U.S. to other countries, where the cost of living is often lower and debt collectors wield less power over them,” reports CNBC:

    “Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. ‘I’ve put America behind me,’ Haag, 29, said. Today he lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. ‘I saw four elephants just yesterday,’ he said, adding that he hopes never to set foot in a Walmart again. More than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don’t feel real anymore. ‘It’s kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?’ he said…

    “Haag tells CNBC that because of his student loan debt, ‘I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America.’ The average student now has around $30,000 in debt when they graduate, according to the article (which is nearly double the inflation-adjusted average of $16,000 in the early 1990s) — while inflation-adjusted salaries ‘have remained almost flat over the last few decades.'”

    America eats its young — film at 11. (Remember ‘film at 11’, complete with theme music by Lalo Schifrin? Those were the days.)

    • malthuss May 27, 2019 at 8:12 pm #

      No one forced them to take the money.
      No one forced them to flee.

      • benr May 27, 2019 at 8:58 pm #

        Nor a worthless study like lgbtq history!

        • K-Dog May 27, 2019 at 9:36 pm #

          Living in a cave seems a high price to pay to get out of an obligation that probably is not much more than a car payment. Chad does not pick good friends.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:17 am #

        Yes, perhaps this was the best decision Chad ever made.

        • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

          Did he ever live in Florida? Did he ever have a bent back? Did he vote for “W”? He caused a lot of problems down there.

          • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 2:00 pm #

            Oh that was another Chad :-). He is living in a big retirement community down there now. He drives a golf cart everywhere and plays cards with friends until like 2 in the morning every night. He hates W for all the work and stress he caused. And yes, he has several slipped discs so he does have a bad back. He enjoys “Asian Night” on Wednesdays. I can’t go into all of the details of what that really means versus what he thinks it means but I am sure you can imagine it all lol.

      • Elrond Hubbard May 28, 2019 at 11:24 am #

        Forced them to take the money? Well, on the one hand they were sold the image of America as a middle-class country, where you can make it if you work hard and follow the rules. And since the well-paying middle class jobs have been shipped overseas, what’s left (if you accept the image that’s being sold) is to get a college degree so you can work at a white-collar job.

        No one forced them to flee? Except what they did was to take the deal that was on offer — borrow money to go to school, so they could have a better future — and then find out that the other side of that deal was empty bag. That is to say, they were swindled. And they have decided to check out of the swindle.

        Lots more people should be doing this. Not going overseas — simply repudiating their student debts as odious. The law will be against them, of course, so they’ll need a political movement to get the boot off their necks. Frankly I’m surprised it’s taking this long for that movement to form, but forming it is. I wish them luck.

        • elysianfield May 28, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

          “Lots more people should be doing this. Not going overseas…”

          Elrond,
          Why go overseas when our northern border is close, permeable, and the Canadians so forgiving of treachery and the disreputable?

          #Vietnam

          • Elrond Hubbard May 28, 2019 at 2:56 pm #

            There are well-worked-out procedures for seeking enforcement of U.S. civil judgements through Canadian courts, elysianfield. I’m sure the students have taken this into account.

            As for Vietnam draft resisters moving to Canada: by treaty, the U.S. government was and is entitled to pursue extradition from Canada for conduct that is recognized as criminal in both countries. Right now, for example, we’re helping you out by apprehending the daughter of the CEO of Huawei and holding her in custody. (At some cost to ourselves, which we weren’t looking for, I might add. Nonetheless, you’re welcome.) However, neither treachery nor ill repute, within the meaning of your question, are indictable offenses defined by law in Canada. Until Parliament acts, it ill behooves you to expect to have your way on our soil.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2019 at 9:39 pm #

      F###kin ingrate partied 5 or 6 years at Uncle Suckers expense — finally getting his degree in Intersectional Race/Gender Dynamics — and now he’s welshing on the loan — let a squad of US Marshals track him down in India or wherever drag ’em back, and make this grifter pay up.

      brh

      • benr May 28, 2019 at 9:40 am #

        Why so we can pay 40k to put him behind bars?
        We as tax payers lose either way.
        When government gets into the business o providing service we all lose big and the cost of everything involved sky rockets.

      • Elrond Hubbard May 28, 2019 at 11:29 am #

        Manufacturing indebtedness is one of the best con games there is. If you can maneuver someone into feeling indebted to you, then not only do you control them but pretty much everyone will blame the debtor for their situation. What a gorgeous swindle that is.

        • elysianfield May 28, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

          “Manufacturing indebtedness is one of the best con games there is. If you can maneuver someone into feeling indebted to you, then not only do you control them but pretty much everyone will blame the debtor for their situation. What a gorgeous swindle that is.”

          # The Holy Bible…both New and Old Testaments

  41. malthuss May 27, 2019 at 8:13 pm #

    OO says—

    After Israel renders the entire Middle East uninhabitable, via some false-flag trigger, they are all going to Andinia; Patagonia, Argentina.

    Herzl already considered that in his Der Judenstaat as an alternative to Palestine. Thousands of active IDF forces members as current [ reconnaissance ] tourists. Major Rothschild, Soros et al, joint investments. Eduardo Elsztain owns it all and manipulates the IMF, World Bank and others as a virtuoso, aiming at Andinia’s secession and as his personal acquisition.

    The Pattern making friends. Worth the research.
    The NYT explained to those in the southern half of Argentina how bad they had it under Buenos Aires: time to secede; but don’t ask into whose arms !

    • benr May 27, 2019 at 9:00 pm #

      The 17 countries using nuclear power are a better bet at that moving target.

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:14 am #

      What about Jerusalem?

  42. aibohphobia May 27, 2019 at 8:23 pm #

    Hi JMG–
    Again, thanks so much for another brilliant and insightful commentary!
    The way things seem to be going, I really wonder whether the 2000’s will become known as the Amish Era–
    The Amish and Mennonites are the only folks in the Americas that generally have current skills with living non-electric and using animal power. I could see droves of people joining up, turning over their suburban parcels to be converted back to farmland in exchange for a black hat and a mule. Maybe all those Chinese and Mexican immigrants will be learning to speak Pennsylvania Deutsch in the 2050’s. Whaddaya think?

    To honor those who died on our behalf, I have composed a haiku;

    Boys saved us through war.
    Their sacrifice–What moved them?
    Duty, not delight.

    • Yes, but, the Amish and Mennonites are also leading in Measles and cavities.

      I prefer the old “Real” American way. Just pick and choose, a la carte, the best parts. For example, give me modern dentistry AND the community and skills to erect buildings over a weekend. And of course, farm wives to keep me erect.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 12:39 am #

        And Black girls leading tank columns. You are an amazing combination of Wisdom and utter foolishness.

  43. PeteAtomic May 27, 2019 at 10:03 pm #

    Well you are exactly right Jim, this is going to be an extremely dangerous time. I remember reading the CIA’s “Millennium Report 2000” almost twenty years ago now which predicted nations and blocs of nations fighting over dwindling natural resources.

    It’s very scary. A lot of vicious state security apparatus’s out there who are going to go down fighting each other so they can keep control of their own populations.

    • Reading your comment, logically I surmised the updated edition, Millennium 2040 would be out there.

      Let us know when you’ve found the future

      • PeteAtomic May 28, 2019 at 9:46 am #

        lol ha well, remember this is the federal government we are talking about so.. very possibly!

  44. pkrugman May 27, 2019 at 10:06 pm #

    Meanwhile, the shale oil companies can’t make a red cent pulling that stuff out of the ground. For the moment, ultra-low interest rate loans, riding on the back of all that wishful thinking, keep the racket going and sustain America’s illusions.

    In a capitalist petrodollar world, companies will not invest if they “can’t make a red cent.” Some companies are making money on shale oil in places like the Permian Basin. For example, Chevron, the world’s third-largest publicly traded oil producer, is spending $3.3 billion this year in the Permian and an additional $1 billion in other shale basins. Its expansion will further bolster U.S. oil output, which already exceeds 10 million barrels a day, surpassing the record set in 1970, i.e., 1970 was not “peak oil”. We still have not reached peak oil in 2019.

    Nearly half of U.S. shale is profitable when crude is at $45. Crude oil has already rallied around 40% since the start of the year, thanks mainly to OPEC limiting supply. Oil is now rallying between $60 to $75. That is why companies like Chevron are making big investments in shale. Shale oil is still profitable.

    • DrGonzo May 28, 2019 at 9:42 am #

      Thanks Krug. This meme that no one is making any money off of the largest oil and gas production spike in US history strikes me as being quite audaciously inane. In several respects I’m sure the productivity is unsustainable, and even counter-productive … but that’s quite different from claiming it’s not a profitable enterprise for anyone. Good lord. Just pay a visit to Wyoming or Texas.

  45. pkrugman May 27, 2019 at 10:35 pm #

    “Morgan Stanley has noted that U.S. shale is slowing, “but with 200 [billion] barrels of resource with breakevens in the $40-45/bbl range, there is an increasingly credible scenario that shale could grow >1 mb/d per year out to 2025.” Moreover, oil producers are turning to a variety of digital technologies, robotics and automation that could keep costs in check.” — Nick Cunningham – oilprice.com

    • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

      That’s great news. Guess that means we can keep burning oil right up to the end of life on earth.

      • pkrugman May 28, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

        Having only five years left could be an argument for slowing down economic growth, not to keep burning oil at the same rate.

        • benr May 28, 2019 at 4:56 pm #

          five years left on what?
          What a ridiculous statement.
          12 years another ridiculous statement.
          No ice on either polar caps by 2014 in the summer months?
          Doom and gloom chicken little prognosticators suffering from reading comprehension deficit syndrome no less!
          Always wrong.

  46. malthuss May 28, 2019 at 12:07 am #

    Don’t celebrate Memorial Day.
    USA hasnt fought a war important to our liberties since (possibly) 1812.
    The more we put “the troops” on a pedestal, the more that volunteer and allow even more wasteful wars.

    Apparently, the American people are too dumb to understand this or don’t want to question prevailing sentiments.

    • What, are you scared of a proud black girl at the head of the tank column rolling into the center of your town, coming soon?

      Maybe you should enlist. 3 squares, every formation a parade.

      No better place than the military in TLE.Logistics and command and control will be secondary considerations for the public.

      In exchange for being told what to do and when to do it all day long, you’ll have gun and uniform and some measure of power among the throngs of starving and desperate… if not esteem.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:03 am #

        Working for the UN Globalists eh? What is your mission?

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 12:59 am #

      Our Southern Border is being completely overrun with invaders. What good is the military if we don’t even have sovereign borders? There isn’t a country to memorialize!!!!

      • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:16 pm #

        Same old trope….give it a f%$#@*g rest, why don’t you?

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 12:17 am #

          In other words, don’t talk about the open and wanton destruction of my country, people and culture. In other words, give into and accept the flood of foreigners and allow them to usurp power.

  47. SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 12:55 am #

    It is true that the end of Globalism is at hand. The beneficiaries of the current system see the writing on the wall and thus their visceral panic. The entrenched Elite will not go quietly and have already unleashed tremendous political and social turmoil just as Nationalists and Populists are increasingly taking the reigns of power. The inability and negligence of the Elite to respond to the crisis of borders and national identity has completely dscredited both Globalism and Liberal Democracy.

  48. Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:25 am #

    Seeing America the Way China Wants You to See It

    While I was in college during the last decade of the Cold War, I used to head down to the basement of my university library to read Pravda. A nice little NROTC guy, I wasn’t anywhere near a communist … but I wanted to read what the Soviets wanted people to think about them, and what they thought about the USA. Along those lines, everyone should make an effort to read outside the standard Western press; read the state controlled press of rising powers. After a while, you can start to get an outline of what is or is not exciting or worrying them. Just the edges and shadows, but it is there. You can start to see their insecurities, and what they think are yours; what they see as weakness, and what they see as a threat. Take a read of this abstract of published in Global Times, a subsidiary of People’s Daily, owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Nothing gets published by accident. There is a reason they liked the comments made by a professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani, at the May 9th Munk Debates in Toronto. Just a couple of pull quotes;

    Out of the world’s population of 7.5 billion people in the world, only 12 percent live in the West. 88 percent live outside the West. So if you want to judge China’s international behavior – let me emphasize that, international behavior – ask yourself how is the 88 percent of the world reacting to China’s rise? And amazingly, they’re welcoming it, they’re cooperating with it. … You know the only major power on planet Earth that actually has not gone to war in 40 years and has not fired one bullet in 30 years across its borders is China. By contrast, under the peaceful presidency of president Barack Obama, in the last year of his presidency, the US dropped 26,000 bombs on seven countries. These are facts. Am I being an apologist for the Chinese government? Go and check the facts. …which society is progressing forward and which society is regressing? Let me just tell you three important facts about regression. Point No.1, the only major developed society where the average income of the bottom 50 percent has gone down over the past 30 years is the US. Fact No.2, I mention this in my book, two-thirds of American households don’t have $500 cash for emergency purposes. I think two-thirds of Chinese households may have gotten theirs already. Fact No.3, and this is the most damaging fact. Believe me, it was a great personal shock to me when Guantanamo happened. How is it that the world’s biggest defender of human rights became the first major developed country to reintroduce torture?

    Yes, we could go on for thousands of words about slant, the fidelity of Chinese statistics, and double standards, but we would be missing the point. Can you read what the real message is here? I hope so, as this last pull quote is exactly what the CCP wants you to ponder.

    What is this window of opportunity? While it is still No.2, and while it is still willing to play by the rules, this is the moment for the US to actually work with China, to strengthen the multilateral order and to serve as a good role model. But unfortunately, as you know, the US is doing the opposite and is walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement, has withdrawn from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is walking away from the Transpacific Partnership and has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council… I can keep going on and on.

    If you think that is in the American interest, you haven’t been paying attention.

    United States Naval Institute Blog

    JS: But are they wrong? Doesn’t that question come first, before the political ramifications? If it wasn’t true, they couldn’t make hay with it, right? I don’t want War or Unification with China because I eschew the Globalism that leads to those crazy ends and means. But facts are facts no matter who says them.

    ? ? ? ?

    • tucsonspur May 28, 2019 at 3:39 am #

      In the long run, it won’t come down to who has “the righteous and harmonious fists”, but to who has the most powerful fists.

      • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 7:02 am #

        The most powerful fists are nuclear warheads and they will be used when the zeitgeist manifests.

        • JimInFlorida May 28, 2019 at 7:27 am #

          More powerful than nuclear warheads are the hands that kill the ones who have the authority, and motive, to order their use.

          The ONLY people for whom the nukes will be used are the BILLIONAIRES. Wipe out the billionaires and there will be no cause to use nukes.

          What are the generals planning their wars for ultimately? To protect the status quo that serves the ones who control the POTUS and the Congress. With the billionaires wiped out, (including any lesser Trustees who might be granted authority in their place) the civil authorities would then have to respond to the people in general. War is not good for maintaining a healthy and productive workforce.

          I’ve noticed from time to time the frustration and angst over the specter of nuclear war and TPTB. Little by little, you are all inching forward to my guaranteed solution that I proposed quite a while ago:

          Kill The Billionaires Or Billions Will Be Killed. It’s Just That Simple(TM).

    • Majella May 29, 2019 at 9:02 am #

      Who wrote that?

  49. Pucker May 28, 2019 at 6:27 am #

    I don’t have any Nigerian friends.

    “These cultural anxieties are absolutely crucial. One comprehensive review of 100 studies that looked at how people across the West think about immigration concluded that while arguments which focused on economic self-interest ‘fared poorly’, people were far more anxious about how immigration impacts on their nation and its culture. 19 Worries about cultural incompatibility–for example, whether Muslims share the West’s commitment to gender equality, or immigrants will respect and uphold domestic cultural traditions–influence the type of immigration that people support. Americans are most approving of immigrants who have college degrees, good language skills, good job experience and who have legally visited America in the past. But they are much more hostile towards immigrants who have no plans to work and who come from more culturally distinct Muslim states like Iraq, Somalia or Sudan. In Britain, people are likewise more opposed to immigrants from Africa and South Asia. 20”

    Roger Eatwell
    National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

    • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 7:01 am #

      Worries about cultural incompatibility–for example, whether Muslims share the West’s commitment to gender equality….

      Your schtick appears rather “mono” to me, but maybe I’m just imagining things.

      This statement from what you posted is laughable, insulting and malevolent when you consider the most recent anti-abortion legislation passed by the moronic, braindead white orcs in Alabama & Georgia — presumably the target audience of this racist tripe.

      Those braindead, moronic white orcs couldn’t care less about gender equality and I’m guessing you don’t either.

      That aside, it is a valid point that those who claim they do support gender equality, the so-called “Left,” don’t really care about gender equality either except to give lip service to it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t support immigration to the extent they do. Welcoming cultures that are centuries behind in regard to gender equality is a funny way of showing how committed they are to gender equality. The culture of those countries is part & parcel of why so many of them are considered “shitholes.” They’re flawed. And these so-called “Leftists” want to incorporate those flaws into American culture and call it changing it for the better? This is one of so many reasons “Liberals” and “Progressives” simply have no credibility.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:37 am #

        Ah the Janet pivot. And just when it was almost not obvious…..

        Please live in Saudi Arabia for a year. Then let’s talk Sharia. Until then your arguments about an American style “Sharia” are simply silly.

      • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 12:32 pm #

        Right on, 450, they’re no better than the right wingers. A pox on both their houses.

        • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 1:54 pm #

          But in practice you hate White “right wingers” much much much more than you hate Brown Muslim Supremacists. So your feelings don’t match well with your stated belief that apples and oranges are in fact the same. That is unless you are wholeheartedly supporting a Muslim Ban. Are you? Didn’t think so.

          • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 7:22 pm #

            Is that what I said? Then let me clarify. I hate right wingers regardless of their race or gender, and I’m not too fond of leftists either. Both represent extremes of opinion, and want to control what you say and think.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 12:26 am #

            Ok but you are still biased. You hate the right but your only not fond of the left. We all have biases so I am not criticizing you for yours. I’m just saying that you are not really n the middle. Like I guess your left of center but not too far over there.

      • malthuss May 30, 2019 at 2:00 pm #

        Buttgag is vocal about climate change; he says it’s a national security threat and was one of the 400+ mayors who signed a pact to adhere to the Paris Accord after President Trump pulled out.
        Buttigieg is a strong advocate for stronger gun control laws, including a universal background checks and is against guns in schools. He’s a religious man and has spoken out against the extreme right’s claim over Christianity. He believes Christianity aligns more so with the democratic party.
        Peter Buttgag is going NOWHERE . Another nobody mounting the pedestal of lunacy . Cheap flash in the pan .
        Flavor of the day .
        Its OK to be a white candidate ,but you got to have an angle.
        LGBTQ , Pinko , socialist or woman.etc.
        They will surely solve the USAs problems

  50. Pucker May 28, 2019 at 6:42 am #

    What do you make of all of the angst in society? Everyone seems to be rude, irritable, and generally “Freaking Out”….

    “The Harvard scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argued that there is no example in history of a successful multi-racial democracy where the once-majority group has become a minority. 23 The mainstream has by and large failed to respond effectively to this angst, largely because the values of many in politics and the media mean that they accept or celebrate these ethnic shifts.”

    Roger Eatwell
    National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy

    • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

      But I bet these two august gentlemen are still in favor of mass immigration. This is just their rational hat. They wear others just like Paul Krugman does. And then they have other agendas….

  51. Pucker May 28, 2019 at 6:53 am #

    The people of which ethic group are the Biggest Bullshitters?

    I read somewhere that the Carthagians were Big Bullshitters.

    Hell, I like the Carthagians.

    • GreenAlba May 31, 2019 at 8:27 am #

      They’d like you better if you got their name right.

  52. 450.org May 28, 2019 at 7:11 am #

    Our Southern Border is being completely overrun with invaders. What good is the military if we don’t even have sovereign borders? There isn’t a country to memorialize!!!!

    I agree. Let’s tear down the Statue of Liberty along with all the Confederate monuments. They’re both irrelevant and no longer reflect who & what America is. All the sports arenas are the true reflection of America. Those, and the thousands of military bases.

    America’s True Monuments

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:34 am #

      The Statue of Liberty is not a symbol or memorial to America. It is a symbol of Lucifer actually. I agree. The Statue of Liberty should be obliterated. But the Confederate monuments. Well that is real and true Americana. The Confederate monuments should be featured in all of our sports arenas and military bases. But our military bases need to be right on our own borders. Yes, they should come home.

      • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:32 pm #

        Waaaahhhaaa!

        The Statue of Liberty is “a symbol of Lucifer”.

        Right in one sense only – Lucifer meaning ‘Light Bearer’ in Latin, and supposedly “Yahweh’s” favored archangel, who apparently let him down (or fulfilled his raison d’etre).

        You, however, are trying to invoke the SATAN thing, which is as much bullshit as the rest of organized Christain religion.

        The hypocrisy of the organized Christian sects is mind-boggling. I don’t claim to be a Christain but my morals & ethics fit with those propounded in the New Testament. They boil down to ‘love one another as you love yourself’, and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.

        These principles are not difficult to understand – though admittedly they can be a challenge to follow from time to time.

        Unfortunately, many proclaiming their Christianity or generalized ‘religiosity’ in the public eye are at a polar opposite, particularly when the subjects are equality, fairness, justice and immigration.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 12:44 am #

          Ok first off, why are you launching into yet another anti-Christian diatribe here and now? Lucifer is Lucifer. Your excuse of the Statue of Liberty’s symbolism is dangerously negligent in recognizing only the alleged positive aspects of Lucifer while ignoring the negative. Lucifer also represents rebellion against the created order, natural law and the earth itself. Do you support the destruction of the environment?

          And in regards to your boiler plate cherry pickings from the New Testament. That’s sweet and thoughtful but also lacks even basic understandings of Christ’s teachings. Unfortunately this is what our culture has been reduced to. The eager chirping and twittering of catchy feel good phrases and snappy cracks that all amount to an amorphous blob of unidentfiable and pointless goo.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 6:59 am #

            Christ’s teachings – ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me’.

            Is that plain & simple enough for you, you racist, hateful, mealy-mouthed fool? You with “televised examples” of fixing your perceived “problem people”?

            As to ‘snappy cracks’ and ‘amorphous goo’, try some more of your own Christian wisdom & remove the plank from your own eye before the splinter in mine.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:03 am #

            As to “boilerplate cherrypickings from the NT” – are you f?$&ing kidding me? Those two ‘cherry-picked’ statements are purportedly the words of Christ himself when asked, ‘what’s it all boil down to?’

            Like everything else you have to say here, you’re just totally full of shit. Bah!

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 8:05 am #

            You’re wasting your time, Majella.

            SSL thinks Jesus came to save the Great White Tribe.

            Makes you wonder why he wasn’t born in Whitby instead of Nazareth.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 9:50 am #

            Both of you are incorrect. Majella, you are cherry picking verses from the Bible that you agree with and like to promote because it settles in with your pacifist worldview. That is fine if that is what you want to do. Theologically it is not complete or correct but hey that is what freedom is all about right? I know for instance you would not happily quote most of the Old Testament. So really, your calling BS on my Christian views doesn’t amount to anything more than personal criticisms which are fine but lets just call them what they are.

            Alba, Jesus came as a Light for all people. I never said He came only for Whites. Yes, He does have blue eyes and yes it was White people for the most part who chose to follow Him and thus became His people. But His revelation was not a revelation specifically for the White race. We can view the entire revelation between the Old and New Testament as supporting the protection and maintenance of racial identity as was taught to the original Hebrews. That cannot be denied.

          • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:06 am #

            @ssl
            -Alba, Jesus came as a Light for all people. I never said He came only for Whites. Yes, He does have blue eyes –

            Ugh no he probably had brown or dark black eyes and a great tan and black hair no he was not lily white how could he have been he was of the blood of Hebrews dark skinned but not black.
            A desert dweller them blue eyes would have been burned right out of his skull.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 11:36 am #

            “Yes, He does have blue eyes”

            Hahaha. Hahahahahahaha.

            Hahahahahahahahahahahaaha.

            They didn’t even have colour photos back then, only black and white.

            You can tell this one’s been Photoshopped.

            https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/3XdWn-4cHsUYOw7sJZSazFtDYxrnW1YC5h9ABjw2Xctx-bcFgkc_qvb-Ss6HalyBj1W1y_MeGmdLUo-glxMkiQ=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu

          • Elrond Hubbard May 29, 2019 at 1:05 pm #

            Fabio of Nazareth! I don’t know who came up with that epithet, but it’s perfect.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 3:09 pm #

            SSL – you’re unbelievably tenacious in your delusions, I’ll give you that much.

            So, how about YOU do some cherry-picking of Christian teachings and show me where they support your blatant racism?

            I know, you’ll claim you’re NOT racist and the immigration argument is all about patriotic defense of the poor li’l USA.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 3:15 pm #

            Green Alba – brilliant find, that ‘icon’ SSL will probably get a blow-up print of it and she can hang it beside her Ben Carson reproduction, to prove she,s not REALLY. Racist…

            http://jensenkarp.com/ben-carson-jesus-christ-print-now-available/

            Oh, but I forgot! She wants to send D Ben and, presumably, Black Jesus to their ‘Homeland’ once the indentured students have built her $1.5 trillion WALL.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 8:20 pm #

            SSL said:
            “And in regards to your boiler plate cherry pickings from the New Testament. That’s sweet and thoughtful but also lacks even basic understandings of Christ’s teachings.”

            I’m still waiting for your enlightenment of how I lack ‘even basic understandings of Christ’s teachings’.

            Please! Instruct me!!!!

          • SoftStarLight May 30, 2019 at 12:49 am #

            You can laugh and joke as much as you want but He is real.

            http://godreports.com/2012/01/for-child-art-prodigy-akiane-jesus-is-for-real/

            There are significant numbers (though still a minority) of Middle Eastern people who have fairer complexions and even fair hair and eyes. To just immediately dismiss the possibility that Jesus could have possessed such traits doesn’t seem fair minded.

          • GreenAlba May 30, 2019 at 7:10 am #

            I think his mind is pretty much the only thing that would have been fair.

            The more important point is why do you <need to believe he was fair and had blue eyes? What could it possibly have to do with the value of anything he said?

            And why didn’t God send him to Whitby? Or an ancient settlement on the west coast, even, so that his message could have got to North America faster?

            Imagine if the indigenous tribes had been converted to Christianity before you got there – that would have set a cat among the pigeons, wouldn’t it? Ah, the moral dilemmas…

          • Majella May 30, 2019 at 6:49 pm #

            SSL – thanks for the link – you’re not the starred artist are you, this Akiane? If not, she’s as deluded as you anyway.

            Still, what was the point? I wasn’t in response to my challenge to you to give me some gospel (or at least NT) verses that could in any way be used to support your ugly racism?

            You are still invited to show me, please how I lack ‘ even basic understandings of Christ’s teachings.’

            Come on! Or are you now admitting you’re full of s&%t?

          • GreenAlba May 31, 2019 at 6:35 am #

            “We can view the entire revelation between the Old and New Testament as supporting the protection and maintenance of racial identity as was taught to the original Hebrews. That cannot be denied.”

            What cannot be denied is that a tribe of primitive people told a story about themselves which centred on themselves and made them right about everything and, in consequence, ‘the stranger’ always wrong. And therefore deserving of any treatment they chose, at their convenience, with a justification neatly projected on to their deity. Well, we’d all have done that thousands of years ago, wouldn’t we?

        • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:13 am #

          You sure don’t show much love in fact what you show is the polar opposite.
          Oh that’s right you’re trolling the evil white people but exactly for what?
          Do you think you are going to change their mindset?
          Do you think they are evil because of their beliefs and you are good for yours?
          Is it good to let people into your country who don’t love your country have the same values and are just their to get the freebies?
          As you sit across the pond in Merry ol England (or so I have seen) do you really think you have clue as to what the average American is going through?

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 11:39 am #

            benr

            (1) I am not sitting in Merry ol England.Or even Merry new England.

            (2) What have you seen me say about what the average American is going through? We seem to be having endless conversations about Europe and the UK – and now Turkey – in which nobody shows the same courtesy as I do as regards what’s going on chez vous.

  53. Pucker May 28, 2019 at 7:14 am #

    Ask Beto if all Road signs in the US should be translated into Spanish….

    • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 7:43 am #

      Beto is a genius with so many great ideas. He’s going to put an end to poverty if he’s elected. I wonder what Michael Brown would have thought about “Farm to Table” in his part of town before he attempted to take Darren Wilson’s gun from him. Maybe he would have asked, “do they have cigars?”

      Beto O’Rourke: ‘Farm-To-Table Restaurants In Every Community’ Would Solve ‘Food Desert’ Crisis

      Beto O’Rourke has a solution to the problem of chronic poor nutrition in impoverished communities that is as tone deaf as it is hilarious.

      During a Friday event hosted by the Nevada State Democratic Party at a local brewery in Henderson, a city outside of Las Vegas, the former Congressman called for the establishment of farm-to-table restaurants in every community to combat poor nutrition, according to the Washington Examiner.

      For those who aren’t familiar with the ‘farm-to-table’ movement, it can best be summed up as a pretentious ‘sustainable’ ‘health-conscious’ movement currently in vogue among wealthy urbanites. It involves serving meals using ingredients directly sourced from small sustainable farms. These meals are typically sold at outrageous prices.

      As far as we know, most farm-to-table restaurants don’t accept payment in food stamps.

      Political reporters at the event couldn’t help but laugh about the comment.

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:14 am #

      If I were President Chad’s student loan debt would be canceled if he came back home and worked on the construction of the Southern Border Wall. Any student who works on building border walls and/or other infrastructure projects (among other things) could enroll to have their debt forgiven. If Chad chooses not to come home at all. Well then his citizenship is revoked and he can make his home with the Asian Elephants. How do you feel about that plan?

      • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:05 am #

        Thank the stars you’re not President. You’d make Trump look like a stable genius.

    • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2019 at 9:23 am #

      So? Did they take out the loans, or didnt they? Was a gun held to their heads when they signed the papers? Like I said upstream, this grifter spent 5 years at Party U courtesy of Uncle Sucker, finally getting his degree in Intersectional Race/Gender Dynamics.

      Let him come back and get a job in the beetfields or picking apples and start paying back his loans.

      Brh

      • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 9:29 am #

        I think you’re singing to the choir with this latest comment. I’m guessing OBL was weighed down with a shitload of student loans too considering how much time he spent in the caves of Afghanistan. Didn’t he have something like 20 PhD degrees? One fo the was in demolition, I believe. Another in economics from the University of Chicago. He was a yuuge Milton Friedman acolyte.

  54. Pucker May 28, 2019 at 9:09 am #

    Student Debt….

    The US Educational System, now there’s a Racket, a big steaming pile of Bullshit with a cherry on top….

    I once had a British boss who was a horrible human being. He used to sexually abuse the secretaries.

    He always used to rant: “Don’t bullshit me, Pucker! You can’t bullshit a Bullshitter!”

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:20 am #

      So basically you were telling him tales and he didn’t like it too much ;-). His tales were bigger and better. I didn’t get the connection to education though, except that most of what you learn in school isn’t practical for everyday life and a lot of it is libtard propaganda.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

        The Truth is not in Books – it’s in Horses.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7q4LUDIHIw

        • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 2:25 pm #

          A simple and beautiful fact. Life would be so much easier if more people really understood this.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:39 pm #

            We shall ride the Endless Steppes together – as we have so many times before in so many different worlds.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 12:51 am #

            A sacred connection not bound by time and space and thus we always meet again. And it is as if we were never apart.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:06 am #

            Like I’ve said before, you two – please! Get a room!

  55. BackRowHeckler May 28, 2019 at 9:15 am #

    Well, in Chicagoland, when you come right down to it, the one legged black lesbian mayor didn’t make much of a difference. Memorial Day weekend tally, (results not in for Monday) 36 shot, 5 dead.

    “Large crowds gathered at a public housing project in the west side of the city”.

    It might be a long summer, and not only in Chicago. I know, I know, Lori Lightfoot’s election was ‘historic’, and from here on in everything she does is ‘historic’. Not long ago, in Baltimore, Catheribe Pugh’s election was ‘historic’ too. Now the city lies in ruins.

    Brh

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:28 am #

      Wow Brh!!! An epitome of diversity like Lori Lightfoot cannot literally move mountains and make the sun rise and set? WTAF? I thought Chicago was about to have a gilded age of inclusion and equality! Sounds like thousands of Wokester Shamans are needed to gather in downtown Chicago to beat their drums and call upon the gods to route the White Supremacists out of the city. Clearly Ms. Lightfoot’s inability to stop the Black on Black carnage is linked to White Privilege.

    • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 9:32 am #

      One leg?

      Taki Mag–you might get a kick out of—GAY WHITE JOURNALIST WHO OPPOSED ‘WHITENESS’ KILLS HIS WHITE SELF
      Pieter Bosch Botha, AKA Pieter Howes…

      BLACK-ONLY GRADUATION CEREMONIES AT 75 AMERICAN COLLEGES
      A recent study by the National Association of Scholars finds that American colleges are becoming more segregated than at any time since the Jim Crow Era. This only applies to blacks segregating themselves, because as we all know, there is nothing more supremely evil on Earth than when white people do it.

      and—best of all—

      FROM WATER BOTTLES TO WATERMELONS, EVERYTHING IS RACIST
      The Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently apologized for something about which they apparently didn’t need to apologize, but no one wants to make the black kids and their black teacher angry, now, do they?
      According to middle-school teacher Marvelyne Lamy, when she attempted to take her black students to the museum, a staff member told her group:
      No food, no drink, and no watermelon.
      A museum spokesperson responded that the staff member actually had said:
      No food, no drink, and no water bottles.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 12:59 pm #

        And meditate on the incredible energy, both human and mechanical, that went into integrating our schools. And the human suffering and expenditure of time. Now the Blacks are deciding that they’re not interested in that anyway. The salient point with them is that Whites are always wrong, no matter what we do. That’s the takeaway. And of course both they and the Leftists love, love, love that Whites can’t have anything of their own.

        • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 2:24 pm #

          I recall someone writing, of the 1970s, someone noted–we fought for integration and now the black collegiate s went and started a black students union and black housing.

        • ZrCrypDiK May 30, 2019 at 5:58 pm #

          All you gotta do is watch a few episodes of Judge Judy, and you’ll see that the retarded inbred white racists are at the same level as the imbecilic dark-skins (gotta love those names too – why doom your child liek that).

          • Q. Shtik May 30, 2019 at 9:33 pm #

            Welcome back ZrCryp.

    • Anon1970 May 28, 2019 at 12:51 pm #

      Updated body count for Chicago for the long weekend: 7 dead, 36 wounded (from heyjackass.com) . At least it’s not as bad as for the prior five years. Instead of US trying to be the policeman of the world, I’d like to make our own cities safer.

  56. 450.org May 28, 2019 at 9:22 am #

    Well, in Chicagoland, when you come right down to it, the one legged black lesbian mayor didn’t make much of a difference. Memorial Day weekend tally, (results not in for Monday) 36 shot, 5 dead.

    The best way to deal with this senseless violence is more poverty, more guns and less abortions via draconian anti-abortion legislation. Don’t let the “welfare queens” abort the inevitable gang bangers. BRH would no longer be able to feel good about himself by pointing to all the senseless gun violence and saying, “look at these savage beasts and what they do to one another.”

    • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2019 at 9:25 am #

      A lot of stuff has been tried starting in the 1960s.

      Nothibg seems to work.

      Brh

      • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 9:30 am #

        Abortion works. They have to be born to bang.

        • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 12:38 pm #

          Just read about a black woman in Chicago who won an award for her anti gang activities, she’s had 6 abortions.

          • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 12:50 pm #

            We should build a monument to her. She’s a Saint in my book.

          • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 2:32 pm #

            LOL both of you might as well have posted “I hate Niggers”. I agree however that it would be most salubrious to simply follow through with good ole Abe Lincoln’s plan to remove them all to their homeland or homelands. Clearly you both agree but can you say you do? To me, peaceful separation is so much better than murdering a baby but hey, people and their tastes are very different and clearly some people just like killing. But either way, its clear both of you do hate for sure Black culture.

          • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 4:27 pm #

            I don’t actually hate them, SSL, I just can’t resist a funny joke.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:40 pm #

            SSL, where’s your funny bone at?

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 1:06 am #

            Sorry ya’ll. I do love to laugh I can’t lie. But to me this topic lacks humor. It’s Life and Death after all.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:13 pm #

          Good point. Blacks should be encouraged to have abortions. And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be even more salubrious to remove them altogether as Jefferson, Lincoln, et al so earnestly desired?

  57. SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 9:56 am #

    It would be so easy to do if we were really committed. Of course many of the people are but not so much our leadership. No big surprise there. We are changing that day by day though don’t you worry! When we do actually get our Wall these patriots’ faces should be carved into it. And their names should be recited among the list of heroes on the annual Day of the Wall.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/05/exclusive-video-we-build-the-wall-completes-first-half-mile-of-us-border-wall-in-4-days-from-private-donations/

    • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:54 pm #

      Hmm, SSL. So, as I read this thread, what you’re proposing is that once your beautiful wall is built for free by students wanting to pay off their college loans, you’d have all the ‘niggers’ gathered up and put OUTSIDE it?

      Thanks too, for the link to the laughable ‘Go Fund Me A Wall” page! $20 million puts up 1,680 feet? The border is 13,104,000 feet long. At that rate, the total cost would be $1.56 trillion.

      Good luck with that, but then you can always get Mexico to pay for it. I also have to ask just how much graft will be extracted by the inevitable grifters at “We Build the Wall”. What a joke.

      • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 1:19 am #

        Ha as if!!!!!!! I never said the students would work for free. Gee free room, free meals, free healthcare, free clothes, free games and entertainment aren’t enough? Foreigners in detention who are robbing our country get this treatment at our expense so why not our own students? Great on the job training too!

        Blacks will be safely transported to their homeland. Great happiness should ensue since they don’t have to deal with Albinoids anymore. And lastly, Speedy Gonzales will pay for the Wall because we are literally gonna seize all remittances. So it will happen doubting Majella.

        • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:56 am #

          “Blacks will be safely transported to their homeland.”

          How can your homeland be somewhere you’ve never even been? Where do you intend to go back ‘home’ to? I’m not planning to go back ‘home’ to Scandinavia.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 9:53 am #

            If I had to be returned to my ancestral homeland Alba from everything I can tell it would either be somewhere in Holland or in the Brittany region of France.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 11:46 am #

            Indeed. But it’s not your homeland, is it? It would be the homeland of your ancestors and you would not be at home in it, which is my point.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

            SSL – “If I had to be returned to my ancestral homeland Alba from everything I can tell it would either be somewhere in Holland or in the Brittany region of France”

            Probably wishful thinking because they sound so quaint & romantic. How about the hell-holes of Cornish tin mines (just a few miles across the waves from Bretagne).

            Or, assuming you claim Acadian roots, perhaps the rocky windswept shores of Nova Scotia would suit?

            Wherever you’d end up, it’d be cold as all get out compared to Louisiana.

          • GreenAlba May 30, 2019 at 6:57 am #

            Leaving aside the er…let’s just say ‘questionable’ ethics of this ill thought-out notion from the emigration side, I haven’t noticed any discussion of the immigration side.

            When these people arrive in Liberia 2.0, which I haven’t heard geographically located any more precisely than heaven, with their cars, laptops, children’s toys and pet dogs, are the sitting tenants of the place they arrive in supposed to hand over their keys and jobs or just, I dunno, generally squeeze up a little, to make room for these people they’ve never met and have nothing in common with bar their level of pigmentation and possibly not even that?

            Are we looking at creating another paradise like Palestine or even ‘just’ Northern Ireland?

            I realise the receiving side’s views on the matter have a lot less weight than the donating side, because pigmentation an’ all, but I’ve yet to see a single word mentioned on that score.

        • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:09 am #

          What a blithering idiot.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 9:54 am #

            My logic blew your mind and you are not happy about that fact. Don’t worry, you will come around soon enough.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 3:21 pm #

            Like I said, what a blithering idiot. Keep it up SSL! You entertain like no other can!

        • Elrond Hubbard May 29, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

          Hey SoftStarLight, I have questions about your big plan. When black people in America are ‘safely transported’ from the land of their birth to, well, somewhere else, what happens to their stuff?

          I mean, who gets their homes and businesses? Cars too? Anything else of value that they don’t take with them? Do they get to take anything with them? The clothes on their backs? What about gold fillings?

          If your little daydream were carried out, it would be an enormous theft on top of being a crime against humanity. I don’t think you would advocate mass theft as blithely or with as much self-congratulation as you advocate ethnic cleansing. My read on you is that you respect property, whether or not you respect all human beings. Or am I wrong? Maybe you could clarify.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

            Elrond, she’s already declared that she,d ‘seize all remittances’ to pay for her wall. Grand larceny or civil forfeiture?

          • SoftStarLight May 30, 2019 at 1:12 am #

            Now that isn’t quite fair Elrond. You are implying that I don’t care about people. Well this may come as a great shock but I actually care about people a lot. Why else would I be advocating for a more peaceful detangling of our twisted society? Ideally yes, those being repatriated would be able to bring all of their material possessions with them. We would need lots of ships and planes but we already have them. They just need to be brought home to do the job. Yes we can ship cars too! And we should. It hurts me that you think I want to steal their stuff. Now homes and businesses are obviously tougher to deal with. Those may need to be sold and of course all of those funds would go to the owners so again no theft. Then we can help build new homes in “Liberia”. We can make it a win win.

            On the other hand, look how the White minority is being treated in South Africa. Their property is being stolen. They are being murdered. Do you care about their real non-day dream plight?

          • SoftStarLight May 30, 2019 at 1:16 am #

            The remittances of illegal aliens is theft Majella. Yes, all of that should be seized and returned to the citizenry. You don’t like it because you support illegal immigration and Dia De La Raza.

          • Elrond Hubbard May 30, 2019 at 10:08 am #

            SoftStarLight, I’m not implying that you don’t care about people. I’m stating, explicitly, that you consider some people fit to go on living in the land where they were born, while others born in the same land are fit to be dispossessed and expelled into the wilderness by the first set of people. That’s not a misrepresentation of your position, simply a restatement of it in clearer terms — terms that don’t flatter your delusion that you’re a good person.

            Your answer suggests that what it means to you to ‘care’ for people is trimmed and warped to fit intentions that are criminal in themselves. And please, no hairsplitting over ‘dispossessed’. Not unless you’re prepared to explain what kind of recompense you would accept as a square deal, in exchange for what you propose to do to others.

    • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 8:24 pm #

      Janos, please check.

  58. wm5135 May 28, 2019 at 10:23 am #

    pkrugman, do you read St. Angelo and totally discount his research or do you just believe in “a chicken in every pot and every man a king”?

    I would refer you to a January 1879 article article titled “Gambling in Chicago” printed in “The Inter-Ocean” newspaper of Chicago, Illinois.

    see benr and GreenAlba above – “Principia-not-remotely-Scientifica”

    remember Mark to Maket? where did that go?

    go to St. Angelo for another view of Exon-Mobil’s tight oil bonanza

    • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 10:54 am #

      wm5135

      I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, but I didn’t really comment on the existence or otherwise of abiotic oil (I have no reason at all to believe it’s a thing, but what would I know?).

      My principal point was that the article praising the notion to the skies contained one of the most egregious examples of deliberate misrepresentation (of Richard Heinberg’s position) that I have ever seen in print. RH, from what I’ve seen, looks too nice to sue them 🙂 .

      I would therefore not give Principia Calumnia, whoever they are, the time of day in future. I don’t know if you’re agreeing with me or disagreeing!

  59. FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 10:33 am #

    Peter the Great Strikes Hillary Clinton

    This post is a continuation of the previous post, after which it became clear to me that the worldwide activation of the Black World Project, which I wrote about on May 6, was not only a very significant phenomenon in world history, but also quite diverse, and the failure of this activation rhymes not only with Sicilian Vespers or the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which finally stopped the War of the Roses, but above all with the Battle of Kursk in World War II, during which the strategic initiative passed to the Allies, or rather to the Red Army, as the Anglo-Americans in the war were still on the sidelines.

    But this time, the struggle of Trump America with America of Hillary Clinton, plays the main or in any case the most noticeable role, and the failure of the attack on May 5 is noticeable primarily in the US, but after it the strategic initiative seems to have finally moved from the Black World Project to the Alliance of Red and White.

    And yesterday I came across a very important statement by Oleg Buryan that Peter the Great realized himself as an Orthodox emperor, fighting the global West long before the Moldovan campaign and that is why he founded the new capital of the Russian State on May 15 according to the Julian calendar or May 27 according to the Gregorian calendar.

    I checked with my sources and it turned out that this fact was mentioned in the reports to the Vatican by the Polish Ambassador to Moscow Dzyalinsky, who also represented the interests of Pope Clement XI in Moscow.

    Dzyalinsky cites Peter the Great about the founding of the new capital of Russia as the City of St. Peter on May 16, according to the Julian calendar, in memory of the last day of Constantinople as a threat to the Holy See and the entire Global West.

    You understand what role this played in the cause of Tsarevich Alexei, whose praised Christianity perfectly combined with the desire to bring Catholic troops to Russia 90 years after the Time of Troubles, during which Russia lost up to a third of the population (several million people).

    Well, I realized through the chain that Peter the Great’s “Satanism” is from the same series as “sadism-paranoia” of Ivan the Terrible’s with Joseph Stalin, and that this “Satanism” somehow badly combines with the transition to the calendar from the birth of Christ, and not from the Creation of the World , while maintaining the Julian calendar.

    Peter the Great changed the names of the years and the beginning of the year from the Creation of the World to the Christian Era and the New Year was moved from September to the First of January in order to emphasize the importance for him of the idea that the Birth of Christ began a new era, and not out of respect for Pope Gregory and its calendar reform.

    Well, the thread continues to seemingly apparently thought, that the ingenious Emperor could not help but understand that Moscow, in the statement of the elder Philotheus “Moscow is the Third Rome” means Russia, not Moscow, which in the 1930s almost turned into the capital of world Satanism.

    And this means that the events in Yekaterinburg were not only reconnaissance in force, but also an attempt to eliminate Putin due to the fact that Hillary Clinton really lost her mind and convinced herself that Vladimir Putin really brought Trump to power and without him her enemy, who openly threatens her closest assistants with an electric chair, will not last a month in power.

    And I saw this connection with the date chosen by Peter for the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress, listened to a couple of Hillary Clinton’s interviews again and Trump’s interview after the failure of the aforementioned “activation of the Black World Project” and the related Trump’s phone conversation with Putin, which content was most likely was put in an hour on the Hillary’s desk, as well as a video of Nancy Pelosi, showing the Speaker of the House of Representatives as a demented old lady, struggling to relate a few words, and realized that Trump’s words to this speaker “Nutcase Nancy” are in fact not addressed to her, but to Hillary Clinton, as well as the words that there is no longer a “Deep State”.

    And Hillary Clinton’s reaction to these words showed that she took it personally and realized that her control over the people whom she had exposed during the above-mentioned activation of the Black World Project was lost.

    And it may very well be that these were her last reserves.

  60. 450.org May 28, 2019 at 11:25 am #

    Please live in Saudi Arabia for a year. Then let’s talk Sharia. Until then your arguments about an American style “Sharia” are simply silly.

    Forcing women to carry pregnancies to term against their wishes is Sharia for all intents and purposes, especially when you consider the draconian legislation requires no accountability or responsibility for the impregnators.

    Is that the same Saudi Arabia Trump loves so dearly? Speaking of SA, does anyone know where I can get a really great deal on a bone saw? A Memorial Day discount, perhaps? I hear they have continuously variable transmissions now that make them much more efficient in dismembering inconvenient & pesky journalists who don’t show proper homage. I’d also like to bequeath the Golden Golem with one this next Christmas. His very own bone saw. Who would be his first victim? I’m guessing Jim Acosta, what do you think?

    You’ve heard of the movie Moscow on the Hudson starring the inestimable Robin Williams, right? Well, the sequel is Mecca on the Potomac. Casting is not yet complete.

    But hey, SA’s not all bad. They love pro wrestling, afterall. What a match made in hell. Yet another example of bizarre in a world gone insane, or maybe this world has always been insane and this is the latest incarnation of insanity.

    Why Is WWE Creating Propaganda for Saudi Arabia?

  61. volodya May 28, 2019 at 11:37 am #

    Stupendously complex systems aren’t just of the electronic-mechanical variety. Take a look at the impenetrable tax codes of any western country, their baroque administration complete with procedures beyond the ken of the administrators never mind the ordinary citizen. Or fantastically convoluted legal systems and costly legal professionals that only the wealthiest can afford.

    Present-day tax systems need an army of expensively educated people who spent years mastering the intricacies and, of course, none of these people work for free having spent so much time and money in the learning process.

    What takes their place? I’ve said it before. Have a look at the Ten Commandments as a template. Those simple rules apparently took shape in the collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean three thousand years ago or thereabouts and have the look of a legal code of a people who abandoned indefensible coastal towns and cities and who had no time and resources for the legalistic ponderings of an army of bureaucrats.

    There will be simplification for no other reason than the lack of energy resources to maintain a bureaucracy that decides how to slice and dice tax obligations, or fight over who’s guilty of what and who owes who how much money. It’s like Herb Stein said, if something can’t go on, it won’t.

  62. PeteAtomic May 28, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

    Anybody been watching the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”?
    It’s really well done. My wife comments how it feels a lot like a horror movie with how they build tension. I think I remember reading that they needed to shut down all the RBMK reactors after the accident to resolve the fatal design flaws.

    • 450.org May 28, 2019 at 12:27 pm #

      If there aren’t vampires or zombies, it’s crap.

      • capt spaulding May 28, 2019 at 7:34 pm #

        I ran into a kid I know who used to live in Chernobyl. He’s grown another foot since the last time I saw him.

        • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 9:46 pm #

          hahahaha lololol ha hahhhhh

        • Majella May 28, 2019 at 10:57 pm #

          hahaaaa!

    • GreenAlba May 28, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

      Digressing laterally, but since you’re PeteAtomic, have you seen K-19 – the Widowmaker – the Russian sub whose reactor coolant system bursts and the crew have to take turns to go in and fix it? Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, I think.

      I found that gripping too. I was also interested to know that Vasili Arkhipov (who saved us from Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis), was on the sub.

      • FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

        Vasili Arkhipov (who saved us from Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis), was on the sub

        Don’t count on repetition of that treachery incident. It’s been taken in consideration.

      • PeteAtomic May 28, 2019 at 5:00 pm #

        oh, I’ve never seen that one.

        The other show I’ve been watching is called “The Spanish Princess” on the Starz network about Catherine of Aragon.

        It’s a good one as well.

        • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:52 am #

          It’s a good film. They were incredibly brave. Some died immediately; some died years later. Vasili Arkhipov survived to piss off Finca.

    • benr May 28, 2019 at 5:27 pm #

      Yes it has made me even more aware of just what a bad idea Nuclear power really is.

  63. meargen May 28, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

    All of the China/U.S. rivalry reminds me of a book, Endless Enemies, by Jonathan Kwitney. It was written in 1981, and Kwitney argued against our relentless anti-communism. He stated the main reason we make mistakes is because we DON’T use capitalism or free enterprise, we use corporate/banking interests to define what our interests are, and this leads to mistakes and making enemies.
    Kwitney gave an excellent account how Iran was screwed by our coup in the 50’s, engineered by the CIA (with a lot of help by banking/oil interests, many of whom served in the CIA), then placed the Shah back in power, and juicing up Iran with tons of weapons to be ‘our policeman’
    in the Gulf, although a lot of the oil crisis in 1973 was brought by Iran raising oil prices to pay for their new weapons.

    Kwitney compared China and Cuba. In 1981, he showed China as a dictatorship, still coping with a ton of rural poverty and ill-managed agriculture as a result of Mao’s rule and killing free enterprise. He doubted that China would fulfill our hopes of it being a capitalistic paradise because the leadership would never share power. Also, Kwitney believed much of building up China was due to our American leaders having a misguided vision of what China should be…am endless market for consumer goods. He felt in the long run, our cultural differences are too much to overcome, and China would remain an adversary.
    He argued the opposite with Cuba, claiming Cuba was a western nation, culturally shared much with us, and there was no reason Cuba and America couldn’t share markets…if done equally, which didn’t happen in the past. He admitted it was a dictatorship, and yet the people got around a lot of it, and Kwtiney argued much of Castro’s system was forced by our war on him.
    To restate, he simply thought China was just not going to adopt the western frame of mind our leaders want it to.

    But a lot of American see what they want to see. I know a gut who went to China to invest, create a business, married a Chinese woman, and you can’t convince him China isn’t the future and we’re the past. Much like Fred Reed, where a recent column of his showed China with mag-levs, new factories, housing, and it will leave us in the dust. A certain element of America kind of worships anything outside of America.

    As for a war…I’m 67, and every few years there’s a war scare. I re-read my diaries, and in 1987, we were ready to go to war with Iran…just like today. Same with resources. Every six years, all the oil, coal, etc., will be gone. I’m still waiting.

    Also the presidential race. Shall I recall all the dozens of ‘new’ candidates who would remake America? Like George Romney? Edmund Muskie? Oh, and yes, Gary Hart? Man, he was going to REVOLUTIONIZE everything…until the Monkey Business crew got in the way.

    Same with war. John Bolton is creepy, but in the 50’s, there was John Foster Dulles, who kept talking of ‘going to the brink’ with the Soviet Union, and ‘brinksmanship’ was what his diplomacy was called, but he was always kept under control by Eisenhower, who used him for window dressing…Dulles, also, was tied in with a lot of banking and legal interests Kwitney recounted in his book, and how those said interests loved to drum up the communist threat.

    As for running out of air, that reminds me of Mt. Everest…a dozen climbers already dead, and isn’t it absurd seeing them lined up like it was the commute out of Manhattan? And many simply die when their oxygen gives out. There’s something very warped about this, the ‘need’ to climb Everest. Now, it’s just a tourist event.

    Yeah, the Titanic did have noble men on board…but why the hell did so many of the damned lifeboats remain half-filled? What an example of incompetence. I always felt ‘women and children first’ is a cover for that kind of blundering.

    • volodya May 28, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

      Aide from the broad brush-strokes, the way things turn out is nearly always a surprise.

      In the year 1900 the idea that an Austrian corporal would be ruling Germany would have sounded laughable.

      From my perch in 1975, the USSR looked immovable and the Iron Curtain looked like it was really made of iron.

      In the year 1980 the notion that American industry would move to China would have sounded like science fiction.

      In the year 2000 a Trump presidency was inconceivable.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:45 pm #

        Yes, thus the Terror of the Left about a White awakening. To prevent this, you people will do anything.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

      The Chinese are colonizing both the Third World, particularly Africa, and the dying White, First World. That has been left out of the conversation heretofore. Add that into your calculations.

      • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 2:19 pm #

        youtube–you might enjoy this NY gal gone to Israel

        Doreen Dotan THIS IS HOW SICK HER AND HER FAMILY TRULY IS

        Look up some of Doreen’s older vids where she admits to being family to the illuminati/Rothschild and hates all Christians and the deserve exactly what they are getting.
        And that she has to control her gag reflex when speaking of us or thinking of

        So there’s that and that her family is controlling the weather like hurricanes, and tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes and the can also make even the cascades caldra
        .go as well.

        She has removed alot of her rants against Christian’s and rightly so she is a CHILD of LUCIFER and should not be able to spread her hatreds onto the masses.

        And she also stated that if we are to say anything about it that the WOULD be summoning her god of the world, which is Lucifer

        • Majella May 28, 2019 at 11:20 pm #

          malthuss:

          “So there’s that and that her family is controlling the weather like hurricanes, and tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes and the can also…”

          Surely, when you got to this part, didn’t you realize, in a Blinding Damascene Flash, that she’s a nut-job, laugh and go do something worthwhile?

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 9:56 am #

            The Rothschild family also supports the chipping of the entire human population. Thus they would totally dominate every aspect of human life on the planet.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 3:26 pm #

            *yawn*
            Yet another unsubstantiated conspiracy theory masquerading as ‘facts’ in yourrat’s maze of a mind, SSL.

  64. Tate May 28, 2019 at 1:21 pm #

    “Manufacturing indebtedness is one of the best con games there is. If you can maneuver someone into feeling indebted to you, then not only do you control them but pretty much everyone will blame the debtor for their situation. What a gorgeous swindle that is.”

    The student loan racket is one of the biggest swindles out there. I notice the UBI idea has sort of died down. (No, nobody has to worry about Andrew Yang riding to the White House on that one.) So, who’s in favor of forgiving all that student loan debt? That would be a more targeted form of relieving those who need the relief the most. It would stimulate demand in the economy because instead of worrying about repaying their loans, these students could be getting themselves re-indebted to private lenders to form households & raise families. (Not so good the relending aspect but no solution is perfect.)

    It could be a package deal where the government agrees to get out of the student loan racket altogether. That would force cutbacks at all these expensive 4-year resorts with their crazy lazy rivers where young people go after high school for their advanced indoctrination er education in intersectional gender studies & critical theory. All the administrative mini-deans & sub provost assistant outreach assistant positions could be eliminated. That would be an excellent trade-off.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 1:48 pm #

      Did you just say eliminate mini-deans and sub provost assistant outreach assistants? I’m all ears, one giant ear. But why stop there? Look higher my dear man.

  65. FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 1:56 pm #

    I was also interested to know that Vasili Arkhipov (who saved us from Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis), was on the sub. == GA

    The fact of the matter is that if the captain of the second rank Arkhipov in 1961 was not yet a spy for the United States and the media on both sides of the conflict, rightfully regard his refusal to execute a military order as an act of heroism and personal and civil courage, the theory of World Projects considers it as a precedent in the chain of events leading up to the collapse of the USSR and a reason to look differently at all the activities of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, who exactly 65 years ago on April 26, 1954 forced the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to turn the illegal transfer of Crimea to Ukraine into the law of USSR.

    Moreover, it was this episode that forced the phrase about the possibility of a preventive nuclear strike by Russia in response to the threat of the very existence of the state inserted into the military doctrine of Russia.

    And if the commander of some aircraft carrier now surrounds the Russian submarine around Venezuela and, like the commander of the aircraft carrier Randolph, orders the bombing of it like in 1961, then I have no doubt new Arkhipov will not emerge and commander of the carrier will simply die with his team and escort ships teams.

    After that, the US Senate and Congress will have to decide whether to increase to 300 million the number of Americans who also simply die because they do not have time to repent, for the pleasure of knowing that 140 million Russians have gone to heaven as victims of aggression.

  66. Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:16 pm #

    South China Morning Post

    A viral picture of a “traffic jam” on Mount Everest, which may have contributed to as many as 10 deaths, has caused outrage after some suggested the mighty mountain has become a tourist attraction.

    Mountaineer Adrian Hayes, who has climbed Everest, K2 and Makalu, has branded the packed peak “unacceptable and disgraceful”. He blamed the Nepalese government, a number of expedition organisers and above all, a social media-driven need for approval.

    The long queues on the final ridge line for the peak of Everest meant some climbers spent too long in the “death zone”, above 8,000 metres, until they eventually succumbed to altitude sickness.

    “Everest is the tip of the iceberg for this drive for social media recognition,” he said. “It’s recognition instead of significance. And that’s the difference between internal significance. That internal drive has been over taken by ‘look at me – look what I’ve achieved’. We’re on this PR drive and we don’t even know it.”

    JS: Check out the picture – lined up on the peak as if waiting to go into a theater. Grotesque. Avoid these canned experiences, be they Everest or Yosemite with its traffic jams and air pollution. Meanwhile empty trails and parks are nearby. And no one climbs the far more difficult and almost as high K2 or Mt Kailas. Just as well since the gods live there and wouldn’t like it.

    Many of these people are tourists, with no climbing experience and completely dependent on the Sherpas. They might as well just let the Sherpas carry them up as well. But even though the challenge is gone, it still remains very dangerous. And the less experienced can cause the death of the pros as well. I mean if you want boring and dangerous, just drive in L.A or take the subway in N.Y. Why pay all this money for essentially the same?

    • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

      “They might as well let the Sherpas carry them up as well.”

      Haha that already happened, in a Simpons episode when Homer got carried to the top of Everest by Sherpas.

      Brh

    • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

      And I read the sherpas dislike working for one type–Israelis.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2019 at 2:39 pm #

        Did you really :-)? You are like a fount of factoids. I love it!

        • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 8:27 pm #

          I forget IF it was ‘we dont like working for J— or we dont like these Israelis’–anybody else is ok.

          • Majella May 28, 2019 at 11:02 pm #

            I’ve never met an Israeli myself, but many people I know who have, on their travels, found them to be extremely arrogant.

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 1:24 am #

            Very interesting. I hear that Israelis are as liberal as Western Europeans. I can’t imagine that bodes well for them in the long run.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:46 am #

            “Very interesting. I hear that Israelis are as liberal as Western Europeans. ”

            You hear a lot of things, SSL. You need to broaden your aural range. Leave Tel Aviv and venture into the settlements on the West Bank.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 6:50 am #

            You’ll find quite a lot of your compatriots there too, so you’ll be able to gauge their liberalism for yourself, without a translator.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:41 pm #

        For a second I thought BRH had said that and I was beginning to rejoice.

      • Exscotticus May 29, 2019 at 1:45 am #

        I would think sherpas would dislike anyone who makes them haul up cappuccino machines regardless of nationality.

    • Tate May 28, 2019 at 2:48 pm #

      Government of Nepal issuing too many permits. Yes, it’s a regulated market. But here’s what’s going on. The Nepalese government is issuing too many f*cking permits (likely due to corruption)

      What if there were no permitting system? Would there be more climbers? Probably not. Nepal is issuing what the market will bear, it’s that simple. In other words, even in a “free” market system, where supply increases to meet demand, bad outcomes can result. So don’t give me your “wonders of the free market” bullshit.

      As for these so-called ‘climbers’ who have met their ends on Everest — which means, if you didn’t know this, that their bodies will remain up there forever as a testament to human folly (google ‘Green Boots’) — I have no sympathy. I have had mountaineering training & have summitted a number of 14ers in Colorado. You should do it on your own or stay home.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 3:04 pm #

        Yes, as the Taoists say, to fully extend a bow is to court disaster. And one should exercise at 70% of one’s capacity only. To do more is too Yang and invokes Yin, exhaustion and possible injury. Most things can be hit at 70% – and one’s health can improve as well. Of course there is such a thing as long shots and strength training, but these things are either exceptional occurences or outside the Tao. In other words, long shots Ok but strength training possibly not. Or maybe one can do it in a gradual way that doesn’t strain the body too much.

      • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 6:46 pm #

        Government of Nepal issuing too many permits. – Tate

        ==============

        I heard on TV last night they were charging $11,000 a pop for these permits.

        • Tate May 28, 2019 at 7:12 pm #

          You’re pretty naive, Q. That’s like a Starbucks capuccino for the V.C. payout nerdniks who buy these permits.

          • Q. Shtik May 28, 2019 at 9:49 pm #

            the V.C. payout nerdniks – Tate

            ============

            Viet Cong?

          • Tate May 28, 2019 at 10:49 pm #

            Venture Capital.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 12:49 am #

            He named his son, “Thom” and wants to go out for coffee with me. Have I gone mad or is it just everyone else?

        • malthuss May 28, 2019 at 8:28 pm #

          to climb Everest?

          why not charge? as of a few decades ago, life expectancy there was 45 or 50 ish.

    • JohnAZ May 28, 2019 at 6:10 pm #

      In 2015, the movie Everest showed up a true story of one of these commercial ascents in 1996 that turned deadly. Eye opening!

  67. Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7071713/FBI-tapes-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-40-affairs-laughed-friend-raped-parishioner.html

    The Twilight of the Idols. Have we been right about everything? Well prick near erything as Jed Clampett used to say. As his widow said, If people knew about him they’d lose every bit of respect for him. Pursuant to this, his record has been sealed until 2027 – but obviously it will be pushed back again and again. The Monster was made into a God and the Truth is thus outlawed in this Lawless Land.

    The FBI investigating him? Trying to “smear” him with the Truth? Insinuating that he was a Communist when he was in fact a Communist? That was what they were created to do: Protect America. Give me that FBI over the current one any day.

    But America is so far gone that the Left won’t even care about this or his other crimes. The Decent still do but they have little power. The vast majority of middle class people are Men without Chests and Bones – like the guy whom King plagiarized who said, I’m very happy that I could help such a great man.

    • Tate May 28, 2019 at 3:10 pm #

      They’ll say it should be the Truth even if it’s not? That about the size of it which is what some deluded liberal once said about another matter. Jesse Helms knew all about King & tried to prevent his deification but Reagan caved for momentary political advantage.

      There are no Great Men anymore although Drumpf rises to the occasion on occasion. When they repurpose King’s statue, it would be fitting to fit on the Head of Helms.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 28, 2019 at 3:43 pm #

        The Orcs are in the Deep. Helm’s Deep? Maybe not that deep. Truly he was another Theodore Bilbo, a true Ted or Chad if ever there were.

        • Tate May 28, 2019 at 4:21 pm #

          The O.B. (the Original Bilbo). “The Man.” You could liken such as he & Helms to a stubborn disciplined rearguard holding their own against overwhelming odds. Is the tide turning? Oy vey! We’ll see.

    • Majella May 28, 2019 at 11:14 pm #

      Come on…the FBI wanted to discredit King at any cost. If they had this proof, they would have produced it right then and there, considering the times (height of the civil rights movement).

      It’s also curious just how the narrative expressed in these documents would probably have exquisitely met the titillation needs of J Edgar Hoover.

      There is no way they would sit on something as noteworthy as this.

      As the GGG would say – “FAKE NEWS!”

      • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 12:47 am #

        Others have reported the same. I know it’s a bitter pill but face it you must: Your God was a Demon.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 1:30 am #

          They used his philosophies to destroy us and turn us against ourselves. I am thankful that the Truth is coming out.

        • malthuss May 29, 2019 at 11:00 am #

          https://www.leofrank.org/100-reasons-leo-frank-is-guilty/

          Has there ever been a play about Mary Phagan? No, just one about Leo.

      • Tate May 29, 2019 at 1:56 am #

        Majella, look who reported it.

        His own biographer!

        • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:17 am #

          A biographer is someone who writes a biography – some are ‘authorised’ and might be considered to be ‘hagiographers’ (look it up), but this guy is unauthorised. The basis of his claim is unproven, and while it is so, doubt remains.

          MLK is no particular hero to me and, being human, he was surely as flawed as the rest of us. Like JFK, LBJ, WJC, and this current Whitehouse Fuck-Up, DJT.

          • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:32 am #

            Ah your opine and yet old Donald has done more with his life then you ever will.
            Sad really that certain people bring out the worst in our responses when they are brought up.
            DJTrump is not even your President so your opinion really does not count for much.
            Have a nice day trolling.

          • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:33 am #

            New troll here.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-gTtdwk3ak

          • Tate May 29, 2019 at 11:00 am #

            Fair enough. We’ll know in 2027.

            Or not, if the fix is in.

            Wow, answered my own question!

          • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 12:32 pm #

            “A biographer is someone who writes a biography.”

            We have a giant among us….

            Just a regular old guy? So why has he been exalted above our Founding Fathers, with statues of his repellent visage dotting the land?

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 6:25 pm #

            Tate – my point exactly.

            benr – you really should try using a LITTLE punctuation so third parties can get a grip on what you’re trying to say, preferably without guessing.

            Once again, I declare I’m NOT a Brit, and besides, what would you know about what I’ve done with my life? I can tell you what I HAVEN’T done – ripped off small business owners ‘coz I could, cheated on my taxes, lied every time I’ve opened my mouth, grabbed women by the pussy, or openly discussed how I sexually lusted after a daughter.

  68. FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 3:12 pm #

    Forbes confirms that Vladislav Surkov is fired:

    The true reason for the dismissal of a key cabinet member Dmitry Medvedev could be accusations of links with the anti-Putin opposition.

    https://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya/vlast/238807-vladislav-surkov-ushel-v-otstavku?fbclid=IwAR1eBil81lN55BmMpRe6xQrGf-33OPX3VEi-lVWfbRYihz5e4BEb08V_B6c

    • FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 3:13 pm #

      Now the purges will start in earnest on both sides of Atlantic!

    • FincaInTheMountains May 28, 2019 at 5:30 pm #

      Dmitry Medvedev’s Cabinet is the anti-Putin opposition!

      This is what I had in mind in the previous post, when I spoke about the exposed people of Hillary Clinton.

  69. malthuss May 28, 2019 at 8:32 pm #

    benr–

    men it’s rare outside of prison but it does happen.

    Norman Mailer wrote about this. The feminists were unhappy.

    • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:29 am #

      Feminists are in a state of unhappy all the time.
      Ever seen a happy one?
      Thought not.

      • Majella May 30, 2019 at 6:58 pm #

        I have…I know many.

        Perhaps you don’t meet any because

        a) you try to avoid the possibility of meeting one like the plague; and
        b) you give off a very clear vibe that you’re antithetical towards them from the get-go?

  70. Pucker May 29, 2019 at 4:51 am #

    Americans are Big Bullshitters….

    George Carlin has a routine about the Americans’ love of Bullshit.

    Progressivism is a narcissistic type of Bullshit exemplified by Beto. Beto is a huge narcissist. He likes to bask in the public approval and adoration when Beto tells the people what they want to hear and promises them lots of free stuff and apologizes for being a white male.

    Americans have a very narcissistic view of the “Hero” as is apparent in those weird, freakish Marvel comic book movies like “The Avengers”. In reality, a real bona fide hero is someone who takes it on the chin and gets beat up and spit upon for doing what most people are too weak and too scared to do for a principle, like Snowden or Assange.

    Or like the time that I told my horrible British boss Gordon that his sexual abuse of the secretaries was “inappropriate”, and then he promptly sacked me. But what can you do? A “Hero” is somebody who gets shit upon, like Cato and Socrates, not “Iron Man”, and “Captain America”. Bullshit….

    • Pucker May 29, 2019 at 5:38 am #

      Except for Tulsi Gabbard (and maybe Elizabeth Warren?), the rest of the candidates are ridiculous Narcissists who are completely, hopelessly Full-of-Shit….

      Beto is the biggest Narcissist….a failed, wannabe, skate boarding Rock Star….

      Biden sucks too….

    • Pucker May 29, 2019 at 5:42 am #

      JHK is a bit of a “Hero”. JHK in good faith says what he thinks is True and then lots of ideological dogmatic people crap on him.

    • 450.org May 29, 2019 at 7:19 am #

      Remember all the heroes on the bus who told Trump not to say “grab that pussy” because it was inappropriate? I don’t either because there were no heroes that day or any day.

      Woe the country that needeth a hero.

      The would be heroes instead saved the tape and sold it for a shitload of money later on. That’s what heroes are these days. Opportunists.

    • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 7:35 am #

      “In reality, a real bona fide hero is someone who takes it on the chin and gets beat up and spit upon for doing what most people are too weak and too scared to do for a principle, like Snowden or Assange.”

      There are minor ones that you never hear of. Decades ago, before whistleblowing became heroic, I watched a programme about whistleblowers who’d paid the price.

      One was just an accountant. He’d been told by his boss to regularly bill hours for work that the firm hadn’t done and he refused, being an honest soul. So he was sacked, like you. But that wasn’t the end of it. He was blacklisted too and couldn’t get a job anywhere again in the sector, so ended up living on a barge on the river.

      My daughter in Sg had a horrible British boss called Gordon too. He didn’t sexually abuse people quite in that way but he was groomy-gropey and she had to tell him it wasn’t appropriate to grab her flesh (she’s fit but not a stick insect) and say ‘why are you like that when you run so much?’. In the UK he’d have been sacked (or so a senior manager she knew in a UK office of the same firm told her).

      She had to leave as she couldn’t take any more of his groomy gaslighting (he destroyed her confidence too in terms of work). But she refused to give in to his attempts to find out which firm she’d got a job with (Sg is a small place; he probably eventually found out, although none of her colleagues would tell him).

      She worried for some time afterwards, when she had to meet clients who knew him. People like that can destroy your career even once you’re not working for them any more.

      • benr May 29, 2019 at 9:45 am #

        And then there is this.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEidCVusDkY

        • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 11:53 am #

          Sorry, benr, it doesn’t look relevant enough to anything I said to make it worth my while cranking up the laptop to get sound.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 6:32 pm #

            I can give you a heads up, GA –

            It’s that English twit, Paul Joseph Watson, of the alt-right, conspiracies-everywhere-you-look school, doing a low-brow ad hominem on those who are vocal in their opposition to Brexit and in particular, vocal about the hypocrisy of the Brexit Cheerleaders, Farage & Rees-Mogg.

            I see he’s now dispensed with his ‘alt-right’ nomenclature and has re-branded himself (and presumably his claque of 30 like-minded idiots) “New Right”…that’s as likely to get any traction as “New Coke” and “New Labour” did

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 7:15 pm #

            Thanks, Majella. That will save a few minutes of my life.

          • Majella May 29, 2019 at 8:05 pm #

            *I’ve got sound*

            It only took 20 seconds to glom to this particular rant’s objective, so I didn’t waste too much time.

          • SoftStarLight May 30, 2019 at 1:35 am #

            LOL please, Paul Joseph Watson’s pinky finger possesses more logic and rationality than like the combined brain power of a thousand progresstards. They are obviously trying to censor him to oblivion because his message makes sense.

            Now if we can just flip him on Race. He is a Civic Nationalist. That does need to change.

          • Majella May 30, 2019 at 7:01 pm #

            SSL, he’s a pompous ass. Just your type, I guess!

            Thanks though – I had to go google ‘Civic Nationalism’. I’m sorry, but wee JP Watson doesn’t quite fit the bill on ‘tolerance’ or ‘equality’.

            It’s true, though, he does sound a little more INCLUSIVE than you, you racist sad-sack.

  71. 450.org May 29, 2019 at 6:40 am #

    Come on…the FBI wanted to discredit King at any cost. If they had this proof, they would have produced it right then and there, considering the times (height of the civil rights movement).

    Exactly. Plus, the FBI are a bunch of cowards. White collar thugs and I’d be happy to say that to the faces of any agents who are monitoring this comment section and/or me. You’re cowards through & through. You’re an illegitimate, undemocratic organization and Washington & Jefferson as well as many other Founders would consider you an abomination.

    • elysianfield May 30, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

      “the FBI are a bunch of cowards. White collar thugs and I’d be happy to say that to the faces of any agents who are monitoring this comment section and/or me. You’re cowards through & through”

      Well I would like to add;

      Fibbies are a great bunch of guys. I’d like to buy you all a beer. Thank you for your service….

      (And if you ARE monitoring…J. Edgar was not gay…just ahead of his time….)

  72. 450.org May 29, 2019 at 6:59 am #

    Anybody been watching the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”?
    It’s really well done. My wife comments how it feels a lot like a horror movie with how they build tension. I think I remember reading that they needed to shut down all the RBMK reactors after the accident to resolve the fatal design flaws.

    I watched the first two episodes last night. It’s excellent. Your wife is spot on.

    The takeaway is, humans are metaphorically playing with fire when it comes to technology. Our technological evolution is well beyond our social evolution and that’s a combination ripe for self-annihilation. If not for the bravery and audacity of a female nuclear physicist who butted her nose into the affairs of the arrogant, obstinate, recalcitrant men in charge, the entirety of Ukraine and parts of Poland and Germany would be uninhabitable today. Millions, maybe even tens of millions, would have perished.

    America today is much like the Soviet Union of Chernobyl days. The Dunderheads are in charge, for the most part. It’s one calamity after another ready & waiting to happen. It’s not a matter of if but when.

    Take climate change, for example. The Dunderheads won’t accept what the scientists are saying. It was the same for the Chernobyl incident. Former shoe factory workers were running the show and they took great delight in marginalizing the scientists and letting the scientists know who was in charge. That’s America today. That’s a substantial number of those who comment to this comment section. Ignoramus shoe factory workers who think they know everything like their ignoramus in chief leader in the Oval Office.

    How nothing worse than Chernobyl hasn’t yet manifested is nothing short of a miracle. All the UFOs these military pilots have seen for decades now must be saving us from ourselves because we should not be here right now. All the nuclear reactors across the planet are Chernobyls waiting to happen. It’s just a matter of time before we’re bathing in our fate.

    I Melt With You

    • elysianfield May 30, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

      450,
      Chernobyl was bad…31 initially died, probably thousands of lives shortened.

      However…spend a few months without electricity…the body count could be in the millions.

      Perspective.

  73. FincaInTheMountains May 29, 2019 at 7:02 am #

    A significant figure of the Western Black Project, a spy for the Fourth Reich of Angela Merkel and concurrently the Prime Minister of United Kingdom Theresa May is finally fired

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UI9XcQ0jFc

    The immediate reason for firing was her disrupting Trump’s State visit:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/donald-trump-us-president-state-visit-uk-theresa-may-prime-minister-fixes-warm-welcome-a7843391.html

    But she still has to answer for the murder of Scripal’s cat Nash van Drake.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/nintchdbpict0003964316451.jpg

    The ashes of Nash van Drake are knocking at my heart!

    • FincaInTheMountains May 29, 2019 at 7:07 am #

      Let the purges start in earnest on both sides of Atlantic!

    • Majella May 29, 2019 at 7:23 am #

      What arrant bullshit.

      • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:27 am #

        What errant bullshit.
        Never seen the word arrant English is so odd.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 1:40 pm #

          https://www.dictionary.com/browse/arrant

          Medieval variant of errant. Wantonly errant, basically. English is so Olde and ever changing. It has to reach its fixed form, and when it does, it will begin to die. See how things work?

        • Majella May 29, 2019 at 6:35 pm #

          Oh, big surprise there….

  74. 450.org May 29, 2019 at 7:06 am #

    Speaking of Everest as a grotesque self-actualizing tourist destination.

    Here’s an excellent Netflix 10 episode documentary related to this topic for anyone interested. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s evocative food for thought and the visuals are stunning. It’s so well done in every conceivable way. I would have loved to have seen it, or would love to see it, on IMAX.

    The Polar Sea

    So many discussions can be rendered from this documentary. One such discussion is how the Northwest Passage is now becoming a popular tourist designation for the jet set who enjoy watching the long emergency play itself out all the while denying man has any hand in it. In fact, in the documentary, they discuss how the Northwest Passage is now the new Everest for those who have the means to self-actualize amidst the carnage.

    • 450.org May 29, 2019 at 7:15 am #

      Here’s an excellent book by an excellent author, Jon Krakauer, about his Everest experience. He climbed Everest as part of this self-actualizing spectacle to report about it and nearly lost his life in the process. That’s true journalism. Jon really knows how to captivate and tell a story. I highly recommend this book. He also authored Into The Wild (the Chris McCandless story) which is an excellent read as is Under The Banner Of Heaven.

      Into Thin Air

  75. 450.org May 29, 2019 at 7:30 am #

    They used his philosophies to destroy us and turn us against ourselves. I am thankful that the Truth is coming out.

    I agree. It doesn’t matter that Jesus was a cold-blooded murderer, he was the “Word” and that is what matters most. The “Word” that made into the highly-edited bible, that is.

    Jesus Killed Children

    • FincaInTheMountains May 29, 2019 at 7:56 am #

      And 450-AI algorithm is killing this website.

      • ozone May 29, 2019 at 9:20 am #

        Sorry, but your reams of historical fantasy and revisionism, plus sharp-elbowed, professional victims fulfilling their “duties” while pretending to be some kind of ‘movement’ consortium of KKK and neo-nazi, Foxfire Republic denizens, killed it quite a while ago. (Probably while you were composing one of your endless expositions.)

        There is no more room in this comment section for people of reason. This will likely be proven in mere hours. (Maybe less.)
        Do I have ‘time’ to ramble beyond JHK’s actual post and sift through all the agit-prop drivel to see if there are any people who are taking his writings seriously? Sure, sometimes. Is it worth the trouble? Very rarely.

        In order to cover your social sins, always accuse “the other” of those very same trespasses. Just how stupid do you think some of us are? Evidently… very.

        • FincaInTheMountains May 29, 2019 at 9:54 am #

          There is no more room in this comment section for people of reason

          Well, Ozone, at least you’re not a spam robot like 450, however, your not so funny distortions of the English language, apparently aimed at proving that you are a “Person of Reason”, make me doubt that.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 10:04 am #

          Wrong!!!!! I have tried to converse with you and you withhold your opinions and actually have shown me you are not interested in discussion at all. You just always criticize. If you believe this comment board needs more reason and logic and you have got it please, for the love of God, POST. Your shtick appears to be simply to drop in with a “truth bomb” that most everyone else here is full of BS, their concerns meaningless and contrived, and then you just leave without stating what the heck you even really think other than you are totally against the status quo. I honestly feel like you do this on purpose. So okay you freakin got our attention. Now do something.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 12:37 pm #

            Finally someone else notices. And on the VERY rare occasion he gives his actual position on something it’s a complete let down. After all that build up, one expects something special, but No – just more garden variety Leftism.

    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 10:07 am #

      Right Janet. Let’s go back two thousand years to accuse Christ of murdering children. Let alone thousands of children are murdered every year right here where we live. I suppose it isn’t politically correct to discuss that though is it. Oh yeah, I remember how hypocritical this post is when just yesterday up thread you talked about him great it was that babies get mutilated and pulled apart before they are born.

  76. BackRowHeckler May 29, 2019 at 8:25 am #

    The farmer where i bought my pepper and squash plants the other day said to me “let the soil warm up a little more before you plant those.”

    “But its almost June”.

    Driving out of the city this morning, coming over the mountain to get home, it was 45°F, and a greasy rain was falling … I’m thinking, the soil can’t be warming up much right now, I’d better wait. A hot humid day with full sun is what we need, but when?

    Brh

    • ozone May 29, 2019 at 8:55 am #

      Warm air holds more moisture. More warm air than usual is responsible for larger storms. Concentrations of water vapor (clouds) block the sun.

      I told you we would become Washington state long ago due to the escape of polar winds by atmospheric warming, leading to more clashes of warm and cold masses. I don’t think you believed me.

      • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2019 at 10:08 am #

        I remember you saying that, Oz.

        In New England the soil began being played out by the 1840s, after only about 2 centuries of farming. Historically, that’s not very long. Combine that with 7 months of cold weather every year you can see why, after the Civil War, tens of thousands of ex soldiers just never came came back and sought opportunity elsewhere.

        Brh

        • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:21 am #

          NEW England = COLD
          it could also be New England is not the best place to Farm…

          The New England Colonies are also referred to as the North Colonies: Fact 1 – Geography: The geography of New England consisted of mountains thick with trees, rivers and poor rocky soil that was difficult to farm and unsuitable for crops.

          There is that I mean if you want to farm why in the name of God would you try that in New England?

          • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2019 at 10:38 am #

            Well, this is where the Puritans landed, and they had to raise crops to survive.

            Their countrymen but English Civil War enemies, the Cavaliers, were already in Virginia and the Carolinas, raising tobacco primarily.

            In fact the American Civil War can be looked at as a continuation of the English Civil War 220 years prior.

            Caveliers vs Roundheads, a divide that still exists to this day.

            Brh

          • stelmosfire May 29, 2019 at 11:18 am #

            Benr, you forgot about the “Hadley Grass”. The pioneer valley is great farmland with rich deep loam. Lots of tobacco also.
            https://www.mediterraneanliving.com/a-famed-asparagus-hadley-grass/

          • benr May 29, 2019 at 11:34 am #

            @stelmosfire

            Actually I did not forget I did not know about that famed valley.
            Thanks.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 29, 2019 at 1:52 pm #

            The Sioux called a killing field like the Little Bighorn, the greasy grass.

        • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2019 at 3:25 pm #

          Oh ya, the Pioneer Valley and a little south the Connecticut River Valley an exception to the rule, very fertile, and the first ‘breadbasket of America’. The Pioneer Valley and west into the Berkshires (Ozone Territory) amongst the nices places on earth.

          Brh

        • ozone May 29, 2019 at 8:32 pm #

          BRH,
          Good points all.
          Even with modern-day attention to soil building, I’m wondering if the shortening of our growing season (due to a lack of springtime sun) is going to seriously affect the viability of this little corner of the world.

          (I see a glass greenhouse in my future… which I was really hoping to avoid.)

      • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 10:12 am #

        The world is naturally headed back into another ice age. No one knows the timing for sure. If ozone is correct, more cloud cover blocking sunlight will result in a feedback loop that will ultimately cool the planet. From everything I have read it looks like average global temperatures will continue to fall over the next decade. In other words, this comes as no surprise Brh. Although it sounds like (and for good reason) you are itching for some sunshine and warm weather.

        • benr May 29, 2019 at 10:19 am #

          This may in San Diego has rained and been colder than I can remember of course that only goes back thirty years so what do I really know.
          In fact what do any of us really know how long have we been accurately recording weather patterns?

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 10:43 am #

            You’re right benr. Even a few hundred years of data don’t necessarily prove much when the earth is allegedly billions of years old. However, your anecdotal evidence is interesting and appreciated. It sure does seem like there has been a lot of wet and cool weather throughout the lower 48 during the winter and spring this year.

          • K-Dog May 29, 2019 at 10:47 am #

            When people talk about the weather doesn’t that usually mean there is something they are not talking about?

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2019 at 10:57 am #

            Well like I told ozone. Please let us know what you think we should be talking about. Otherwise people naturally drift through topics no?

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2019 at 12:28 pm #