JHK’s Three-Act Play
T he just-released movie Spotlight is about a Boston Globe investigative reporting team circa 2001-02 that uncovered and documented a vast network of child sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church that had been on-going for decades. More to the point, Spotlight revealed the institutional rot at the very top of the Boston Catholic Church hierarchy, led by then-Cardinal Bernard Law — which marinated church personnel in a code of secret atrocious behavior enabled by systematic lying and deception. In effect, the church gave permission to its foot-soldiers, the parish priests, to engage in whatever sexual antics they wished to, with a tacit promise to shield them from the reach of the courts. The civil authorities of Boston, heavily Catholic due to Boston’s demographics, assisted the church by throwing up every legal obstacle they could to deter the victims and their advocates in the search for justice — and to put an end to the predation of children by priests.
That was the story that Spotlight told, and it did that very economically, without grandstanding. But the movie had another message for me, as someone who has been involved in the media going back more than forty years when I was an investigative newspaper reporter myself. The message was that the institutional support for great journalism that allowed the Globe’s Spotlight reporting team to do its job is now gone-baby-gone. All the newspapers in the USA, and even the TV and radio news networks, are running these days on skeleton crews. At least that is true of the old flagship organizations such as the Boston Globe and CNN. They just don’t have the reporters out in the field. The front-page or flatscreen interface that the public sees conceals ghost organizations that barely have the reporting resources and the reach to discover what is actually going on in the world.
The dying newspapers — and they really are on life-support at this point, including the Globe and The New York Times — can’t pay teams of reporters like the Spotlight crew to work through years-long investigations. But what the movie also ought to remind us is that the hierarchical competence at such an enterprise, the layers of editors who know what they are doing and understand the boundaries and conventions of their own society, is also disastrously AWOL in the new Wowee-Zowie era of instant cell-phone networking, Facebook, and Instagram. In a word, leadership has been made to seem dispensable.
What gets left out of the story, as usual, are the diminishing returns of technology. In the news business — that is, the business of informing society what is actually going on — that blowback is leaving the public not just uninformed or misinformed, but additionally clueless about what they have lost. The result is a society increasingly shaped by delusion and paralysis. For example, The New York Times has gone from being the “newspaper of record” to being the leading dispenser of wishful thinking by a feminized political Left preoccupied with feelings over truth. (This, by the way, helps to account for the remnant media’s hatred of Vladimir Putin, a leader who doesn’t apologize for acting one like one. And, of course, a man.) The Old Gray Lady is also reduced to overt cheerleading for its avatar (Monday’s lead op-ed: HILLARY CLINTON — How I’d Rein In Wall Street Ha!), and making excuses for our grift-and rackets-based polity (Paul Krugman: The Not-So-Bad Economy Ha Ha Ha!).
At the local level, the news situation is simply pathetic. The surviving local newspapers are little more than bulletin boards for news releases from interested parties. They’ve fired all their reporters. Soon the papers will all be gone and the vaunted wondrous Internet will be little more than a grapevine and a rumor mill. The “cloud” that everybody thinks is so marvelous will look more and more like an epochal fog — and we’ll be lost in it. These are the wages of our techno-narcissism, a society now marinating in cluelessness the way the Catholic church, as depicted in Spotlight, marinates in pederasty and deceit. It is frankly hard to see a way out of the cultural predicament. Two things, at least, are necessary to break out of this hall of mirrors: men acting like honorable men, and hierarchies of leadership with the integrity to actually lead. For now, the USA is not interested in those things.
Coming in 2016
World Made By Hand 4 (and final)
The third World Made By Hand novel
!! Is available !!
(The Fourth and final is complete
and in production for May 2016 publication)
“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist
My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books…
or Amazon…
Also: Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author
Bargain Price $3.99
Amazon Kindle …or … Barnes & Noble Nook …or… Kobo
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
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Much of what passes as journalism today, particularly online, is simply advertisement disguised as entertainments.
There really is no deep analysis today of any major problem or issue contemporary in US policy or society. Issues are zapped through TV and online like MTV styled montage– with zero context.
The “buy” button on the bottom of Amazon could also be replaced with the word “laugh” and get the same results.
South Park warned us all
The operative word here is “Cowardice” We have no statesmen, only paid mouthpieces for vested interests, too fearful of offending their paymasters but good at bullying the downtrodden, the unemployed the minorities where these people are almost powerless to resist.
Daily Kos has a cartoon I cannot open here called “profiles in cowardice” which everyone should see. It’s aimed at Republicans but it applies across all the parties and everywhere in the West.
The only solution to this irrelevant journalism is the blogosphere, which allows voices not subject to censorship to be seen.
What started off as another great blog left me again wondering why the superfluous plug for ole Vlad, especially as you bemoan the lack of and need for “honorable men” in the same breath.
“Much of what passes as journalism today, particularly online, is simply advertisement disguised as entertainments.”
I found a good example of that this weekend, when I blogged about the Detroit Free Press reporting on how Fiat Chrysler uses the power of The Force to sell cars. It was big news in the paper’s business section that the former number three car company in the U.S. has partnered with LucasFilm to cross-promote both their automobiles and the movie. That reverses your formulation, making it entertainment disguised as advertising. As for how the paper justifies it, well, what’s good for General Motors, or in this case, Fiat Chrysler, is good for the country.
Another example came the week before that, when WXYZ and MLive reported on a man named Tony who was biking to work in a snowstorm. A car salesman saw him and offered him and his bike a ride, first to work, then to look at a van. The salesman then set up an online fundraiser himself to get money for the van. It worked and Tony now has a lightly used van. The car salesman also made a sale for his dealership and got it in the news. The media spun the events as a heartwarming human-interest story–advertising disguised as entertainment, indeed!
As for our host’s musings on “Spotlight,” a Wall Street Journal critic ended his review of the James Bond flick “SPECTRE” by praising “Spotlight,” saying it was a much better movie. That didn’t stop “SPECTRE” from becoming number one at the U.S. box office, staying there until “The Hunger Games” Mockingjay-Part 2″ dethroned it. Oh, well, no accounting for the taste of the movie-going public. Maybe the voters for the awards shows will give “Spotlight” its due.
Spectre appeals to the people who still go to movies. Movies are aimed almost exclusively at young adult men today.
There was a good article in Vanity Fair a while back about what the ‘franchise’ system is doing to Hollywood.
You mean yet another comic book film? The celibate (not by choice) dweebs that read silly comic book magazines and played roll playing games have seen their dorky underpants clad heroes from ant man (f-ing seriously?) to Thor brought to film by hollywood. Batman is in it’s 7th or so iteration and Spiderman is not far behind.
The elite steal our money, our country, and our futures and pacify us with men chasing inflated balls and juvenile lowbrow entertainment.
I lament the passing of quality reporting but there is another movie that has a parallel message to the state of newspapers in America.
“A Few Good Men“
You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said ‘thank you’ and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
As America now moves from one code red to another all the big string pulling daddies know best and they will shield America from the truths America has no interest in knowing about anyway.
I watched it last night. Coupled with “Full Metal Jacket,” you understand why Code Red’s are so corrosive. This is the fundamental issue confronting America today. To what length are we to go in the defense of our nation? People like Colonel Jessup are poster boys for torture and pre-emptive invasion. We are sold the notion that death and destruction in other parts somehow makes us safe, just like we’re sold the notion that people like Colonel Jessup are required for the job.
The requirement to have people like Col. Jessup, is solely a figment of somebody’s imagination. I my military career, I never once met an officer or a senior enlisted, who acted out or harbored such feelings. I think this is due to the fact that those types of people are weeded out by the training and education process. Just like non cuts get weeded out in boot camp and sent to retread company.
The problem of the current feminized version of our government and military and institutions, is that in the name of political correctness and non-offensiveness, is that we can’t get anything done in a timely manner. That IS a national security problem no matter who is standing on the wall.
I disagree. Most veterans who experience combat are just like that. They view a Code Red as miniscule compared to combat and they are right. They may be weeded out in today’s military, but back in the day the bloodthirsty ruthless types were in charge. But I have no military experience other than friends. So what do I really know. Today’s military is like pre World War 1. They are more corporate policemen. Smedley Butler types. It’s the difference between a peace time army and a army on war footing.
Those of us who have been in combat know that it’s not about the mission or your country or any code you saw in a movie. The ruthless guys are the training types who weed out those who aren’t physically or mentally cut out for it. Private Santiago would have never been in that situation, because he never would have graduated basic. Calm and smarts are the only things that get you home. Watching out for your unit and making sure that you have done all you can to bring each one home alive is what it’s about. Anybody who tells you different is either a liar, or a fool.
Interesting. I think the premise of the movie is Santiago developed a coronary condition i.e. became sick and that is the reason why he could not function at a Marine level. He went to the doctor and the doctor gave him a clean bill of health. He was trapped. He could have passed basic and then gotten sick.
Yes, primarily the truth that the US id the greatest force of instability in the world. Imagine that, all these years we’ve been the bogeymen.
This is why I support ProPublica, NPR, and my local listener-supported independent radio stations.
NPR is National Plutocratic Radio. The pabulum they put out is baby food. Once they were a shining star of quality reporting but they became national propaganda years ago when the NSA sphincter tightened up and the smells of embarrassing truths were stopped from leaking out.
Some of us prefer National Petroleum Radio.
They bring us nature programs sponsored by Chevron and Monsanto .
National Petroleum Radio
Another good moniker for their ‘slick’ programming.
Yes, environmental news from the global warmers because ‘you have a right to be informed’.
Add music here.
Still want “Syrian” “Refugees” brought into the United States? Since the vetting process guarantees our safety, right?
Pulling things out of your ass are you Janos. I never said I wanted Syrian refugees brought into the United States.
I would like the deep state to stop staging false flags and trying to make Americans hate Moslems though!
I get that NPR leaves much to be desired. It’s cool that those of us in the know can tune into Democracy Now or Noam Chomsky to find out what’s “really” going on.
But if you’ve ever driven through Idaho or Nebraska or Oklahoma and tried to find a radio station that isn’t either Rish Limbaugh or country music or The Jesus Revival Hour, you begin to appreciate NPR affiliates for at least bringing some modicum of responsible reporting and reasoned perspective to the paranoid and theocratic heartland.
I value NPR not so much for my own sake, but for the sake of providing heartland America with some semblance of a reality check between Limbaugh’s diatribes about socialists taking our guns and Hal Lindsey’s diatribes about The End Times. Interrupted by sports news, of course. They ain’t reading The Economist in Kearney, Nebraska.
Local independent community radio is better that NPR’s homogenized product, for sure, but they’ll never have the resources to do the in-depth investigative journalism that JHK longs for.
Support ProPublica.
…and they all sound like they’re talking to kindergarteners.
And using their ‘happy voice’.
National Pathetic Radio. I listen to it just to make my blood boil. Utter garbage, totally devoid of content and made to make everyone feel good.
Inter-generational wealth radio.
Locally-supported stations (there’s one down here in Hickville) invariably tilt way Left. I guess this is to balance Clear Channel and the others who find that tilting Right sells more stuff.
It’s all about selling stuff.
At least NPR/PBS is not so unabashedly pro-Big Pharma like the major networks. At least last time I checked in. The only time I watch TV is in hotel rooms. Once as a test I checked in at evening news time on ABC and then switched at the Big Pharma ad (Talk To Your Doctor!) to CBS thence to NBC. They were all running Big Pharma ads.
They even manage to run the same ads concurrently if you want to switch the channel.
That lengthy voice-over detailing all the product information was allegedly what they agreed on in turn for permission to advertise prescription drugs. I’ve come to realize that the real purpose is to be able to run an extra, extra long commercial to fit all the narrative in.
I had an NPR experience during the Paris madness and posted about it in the Doomstead Diner. I’m going to go get it.
……
Quote from: K-Dog on November 16, 2015, 01:16:02 PM
Seattle over the weekend had a rally at a French Bakery as if Bagetts were among the victims. I doubt any of those present even know about the Beirut bombings. On the way in to work today I had unfortunately had my radio dial set to NPR which was all about France France France. National anthem, cultural connections with America, our oldest ally, the whole works. I switched stations before my eyes could get misty.
Quote from: Guest on November 16, 2015, 05:39:48 PM
National Petroleum Radio. NPR Newz now a CIA asset.
End of story.
Quote from: K-Dog on November 16, 2015, 08:23:18 PM
I know; many years ago I was an avid fan of their refreshing open and diverse points of view. I realized right away when they switched to the dark side and immediately stopped listening. This morning was a total fluke because I was getting sick of a local oldies station that has been playing altogether too much Michael Jackson last week and had turned the dial on my way home Friday. That is the last day I used the radio. It is an old radio; nothing digital about it.
It has happened before, tuning into NPR by mistake. I usually get very upset very quickly and this morning was no exception. I really can’t think of anything that upsets me more. It must be because once NPR was golden and now it is shit.
I have to say, meeting at a French bakery to express solidarity seems very strange to me. Don’t croissants just get eaten anyway? Who cares if a few of them were blown up at that restaurant in Paris. I’m just glad my loaf was not there!
Maybe it is because meeting at a French bakery to ‘feel’ France just ‘feels’ stupid.
NPR is a crock. So long as you can detect their more, ahem, nuanced bias (it’s not Michael Savage obvious) you can survive it. Every story comes from the angle of the left. They didn’t question why Hungarians should want refugees, they instinctively questioned why they didn’t (the angle being that accepting refugees is good). David Green shamelessly trying to get Chrissie Hynde to explain her out of context quotes regarding her sexual assault to Steve Inskeep apologizing before asking, and explaining why he was, for stating that the San Berdoo terrorists were muslim. Try listening to Diane Rehme croak away with a stacked liberal coterie that might as well be giving her cunnilingus as opposed to discussing a topic objectively.
Their marketing is geared to making joe-sixpack think of himself as an intellectual just for listening. This is the pseudo-intellectualism that Woody warned us about.
opednews
consortiumnews
fair.org and
nakedcapitalism are pretty good options.
Don’t forget http://www.sgtreport.com !
Much of what passes as journalism today is blogging.
Spotlight? Thanks for the movie suggestion. I’ll have to see this one. I had not even heard about it until you mentioned it just now.
However, it sounds like a conspiracy to me, and I thought conspiracy theories were for lunatics. Did you sneeze a lot to the dismay of the other patrons, or did you take a Benadryl or Zyrtec beforehand?
Probably two Benadryls and a noserag for a few snezzes that could not be stopped. Good point.
O/T, what’s with people who attend public functions and never heard of cough drops?
Our hosts allergy to conspiracy is quite severe and cough drops can’t provide enough relief.
Many of us that grew up during the last fifty to seventy years under the dark shadow of the ‘Holy Roman’ church know about the kinds of shenanigans that go on inside such a tightly controlled, secretive organization. Conspiracy? Damn right it is — all the way to the top where the ‘holy father’ is often guilty of abuses as well as aiding in cover-ups.
Wanna see lots of evidence? Check these out.
I have a sibling that is a multi-degreed theologian and historian (and outspoken critic) of the Vatican in a religious order of the organization under discussion here. This sibling recommended that I watch an old Sean Connery film called The Name Of The Rose for an alarmingly accurate depiction of conditions inside the organization during the story’s time period.
The filth goes back many hundreds of years. Conspiracy? More like an ancient, well-entrenched culture.
p.s. Dog, ‘snezzes’ ?
It is the ultimate evil. The Catholic Church is a bastardization of the child sacrifice cult out of Carthage and Canaan. This whole Jesus willingly allowed himself to be sacrificed to please his father is pure evil.
I think the Catholic church should definitely stop staffing brothels with teenage prostitutes. I don’t abide that nonsense.
You seem to suggest that investigative journalism has died because of budgets, skeleton crews, and new technology. I think it died because the 6 mega-corporations which control the mainstream media today act as the propaganda arm of the globalist oligarchy. They won’t permit anything damaging to themselves to be brought to light.
As Noam Chomsky noted, vigorous debate in our society is permitted within prescribed channels, e.g. FOX vs MSNBC. But it’s as real as Wrestle-mania and bears some resemblance. The presstitutes feed us bullshit and delusions; while a hand puppet named Obama reads from a teleprompter. May it all crash and burn.
Noam also points out that genuine debate on Television is impossible. The medium is perfect for entertainment and spectacle but it does not support critical thinking skills or the cultivation of sharp memories. It dumbs us down an lowers the bar which is already sitting on the ground.
Good you shined the spotlight on our monopoly of the affluent and well connected who have no interest in vigorous American debate.
The last thing they want is a well informed public and as usual they are getting what they want.
There’s a book called “The 4 reasons TV should be Outlawed.” It describes just what you are saying. Television was sold as an entertainment medium, but in the end it can have only one use and that is a political medium and propaganda device. Fitting this all came out of Nazi Germany.
There’s this one, by Jerry Mander;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television
Thanks, I’m going to buy it. Plenty of copies are available on Amazon, cheap.
The Nazis couldn’t get on the radio nor in the newspapers. So they took their message to the streets – where they were attacked by Leftist savages. They fought back and won.
Your idea that all this comes from Nazi Germany is just obsessive silliness. Hitler admitted allied propaganda was superior to Germany’s. After he saw the movie “The Battleship Potemkin”, he said that was great and he felt like becoming a Russian Communist. He urged Germany to catch up and of course they began to do just that.
Where do you get this dribble. Hitler was the first politician to use the airplane. He was the first rock star. His poster can be seen everywhere in Germany prior to his election. He fine tuned the PA. His spectacles at Nuremberg have never been duplicated. Are you trying to tell me he didn’t use the radio and newspaper when he was a pioneer at everything else? Do you listen to yourself ever?
Have you no medical insurance? Is there no CBT in your area?
Have you considered actually really reading a history book, instead of relying on what you catch sight of as you use one’s pages to wipe your metaphorical backside?
No, they could have hours long political debates, with searching questions by the moderators and/or audience. But such things don’t get the ratings. But let’s be clear: “real” life is no better. You’ll have the same experience if you’re actually in the audience. In other words, it’s not the technology per se, but the human consciousness using it.
JHK identifies the problem: “Two things, at least, are necessary to break out of this hall of mirrors: men acting like honorable men, and hierarchies of leadership with the integrity to actually lead. For now, the USA is not interested in those things.”
This pretty much sums it up. More verbiage will not add much value to the discussion, sorry to say.
We used to have a cool cable access channel in Boulder, CATV54. Think Wayne’s World, but alas, it was discarded.
In Boise, ID, it seems the news is mainly a laundry list of every arrested person, weather, and an obsession with the local college football team. That accounts for 95% of ‘the news’. Investigative reporting happens very rarely, even if you spoon feed them a story.
Any coverage of the rancher who was gunned down for nothing?
Objectivity has always been an iffy proposition. But it can hold its own in a society that enjoys a baseline of agreement on what is and what ain’t factual. America is losing that baseline as it fractures into various so-called communities – self-interest groups organized around ideological, ethnic, racial, sexual and economic priorities. ‘Truth’ is often manufactured regardless of fact, and disseminated on the web, influencing whomever might be a vulnerable target.
National consensus is gone and it’s not coming back…no matter how many Muslims we bomb or how many witches we burn.
It was called divide and conquer but has been renamed ‘identity politics’.
It is an old concept and has been with us for a long time.
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” – Jay Gould (US robber baron 1836 – 1892)
I believe these to be germane observations, youses.
I’m bound to be excoriated for this… but here goes:
“At the local level, the news situation is simply pathetic. The surviving local newspapers are little more than bulletin boards for news releases from interested parties.” — JHK
Well, let’s take a little peek at the ‘interested parties’ whose influence is reflected in The Big Nationals (print and talking-head), shall we? The vacuum left by a lack of skilled reporters and the staffs of overseas bureaus has been filled by misdirection, propaganda and outright lies. IOW, a veritable golden age for the manufacture of consent. (Don’t look too closely or ‘things’ could be made very uncomfortable.)
As to the vast cover-up of an entrenched cadre of predatory fudge-packers and pederasts, it’s the very definition of a wide-spread Conspiracy by very powerful and influential ‘folks’ with the highest cover of moral rectitude. Conspiracy Fact; no theory. “This could not possibly be kept hidden because too many people are required to keep their mouths shut about it.” Really? Seems to me, it was kept successfully hidden for a looooong time (in human life-span terms). hmuller above nails it down for the incurious.
Amen, Ozone.
Check out my response to C.N.H. a few paragraphs above.
Yes, the networks are owned by a few Jewish Billionaires who deeply dislike the United States – so of course they’re allowed to control the nervous system of the nation.
Was there ever a greater need for some Anti-Trust legislation?
All the radio stations in my area used to have independent ownership and had great local, regional, national and international news clips. Right before the news clip, they played a neat sequence of tones so you knew the news was coming on. The local news and community events coverage was most helpful and the overall programming quality was very good. They had a reasonable number of commercials and played a lot of good jams. There were no political talk stations then, in the 1960’s in my area.
Boy how things have changed. None of the radio stations in the area are fit to listen to unless you like hearing the wall to wall propaganda and delusion Jim is referring to. One or two mega corporations own all the stations, every one of them. They call themselves “sister stations”, these conglomerates of stations. Mostly the AM stations have a FOX news leaning and are totally biased and never play music or offer local news except from some satellite feed that was probably taken off of the internet. I’m quite certain there are no longer any local reporters for these “satellite feeds” going around the community reporting on actual events. The FM stations are more interested in replaying commercials over and over than playing music. You hear the same commercial twice in a row and other times you have a goofball mumbling off a whole paragraph of disclaimers for an advertisement that is essentially a bag of lies. How annoying!
Radio programming quality has really gone to the dogs. And with the event of HD programming, you get to hear all the crap in high definition – high definition crap all day!!!
And coming soon: VR crap.
Techno-narcissism on steroids. Because virtual reality is much better than the real thing to those with the full infection.
I’m 65 years old, and I like classic rock. In the large city I live in there are at least 2 stations that play that format, but their playlist is for the most part terrible. Our local NPR station used to have great music shows where I discovered many alternative / indie artists. They went to an all talk format a few years ago, and a couple of years ago started a sister station that just plays music, but I can’t relate to most of it. I have pretty much given up on radio and just plug in my Ipod when I’m driving around. I have over 2,000 rock, folk, jazz, bluegrass, etc.songs. I may eventually get satellite radio. There are also some good independent stations you can access on the internet. One of the best I’ve heard is the one in Aspen, CO. It’s KTND. They call themselves “Thunder 95”, and play all kinds of classic rock, some of which is so obscure I’ve either never heard it, or haven’t heard it, or last heard it decades ago.
What’s the difference between “never heard it” and “haven’t heard it”?
So true. It was like … interesting. You never knew what you would get. That’s because it was actually news and entertainment. Today it’s all a load of homogenized crap.
The great forgetting that ushers in the new dark age! Epochal fog – love it!
Economist cover for 2016. The first forecast estimates by Chipstone
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GRZY_BWmao4/maxresdefault.jpg
Stylistically collage is divided into two parts; the right is describing the world in the last thirty years. And almost all the figures shown in this section have an article in the issue of the magazine.
Location of figures on the collage is significantly different from last year. This is not the straight rows, but a double wedge. The right side is headed by Bill Clinton that in some way may be the recognition that he and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” (the Rockefeller group”) behind him were the creators of the observable reality today. And just around those same thirty years since the beginning of “perestroika” in the Soviet Union.
Left “wedge” is represented by current politicians and public figures. It is headed by Angela Merkel, which according to the authors of collage will play a key role next year. The future of Europe and entire world will depend on how Germany will behave, particularly with regard to the “refugees”.
Standing behind Merkel is Hillary Clinton, clearly indicating that she is assigned the role of the future president of the United States by the authors of the collage. And this forecast may, unfortunately, cause only regret because such a choice by the Americans will bring our crazy world close to nuclear Armageddon.
Curiously, all the figures for the second year in a row are divided into four types. Colored (B.Clinton, Putin, Xi, Pope, Tony Blair), Black-and-white in color clothes (Merkel, Modi et al.), Black-and-white. It’s like graduation: Figure (on the chess-board), pawn, spectators and extras. Interestingly Clinton is a cross between B/W and B/W with some color on lips and ear clip (She is not quite dead, but not fully living creature)
Among the painted symbols the euro soaring on the balloon in the background, and the dollar, gradually gliding down on the parachute.
Hillary just had a slip of the tongue in public, when she stated we would consider the nuclear option instead of saying military option; but the interesting thing is she didn’t notice her mistake and it had to be pointed out by a member of her audience.
Merkel is being pumped up by foreign media because she is weak and pliable and does not represent German interests.
But she made a fatal mistake with the refugee crisis.
Her time is coming to a close.
It’s sad to see real reporting go extinct. I wish we’d had an honest look, and not Dan Rather’s faked-records disaster, into the military career of George W. Bush or, even more critically, his party’s antics in Florida in the 2000 election. Or Dick Cheney’s lies that led us into the quagmire in Iraq, three years later. Or, for that matter, why Obama flip-flopped on his “red line” in Syria after Assad used chemical weapons.
As much as I hate the US Far Right, I must credit them with one thing: they understand how to play to paranoia and untruth, denying facts that do not fit until the disenfranchised in our “Ideas” economy all line up behind the latest no-nothing leading the pack.
The Far Left, as in the Academic Left that currently is feeling JHK’s wrath, does the same but not nearly so well. The disenfranchised on the Left just do not vote. Game over.
As much as I hate the US Far Left, I must credit them with one thing: they understand how to play to paranoia and untruth, denying facts that do not fit until the disenfranchised in our “Ideas” economy all line up behind the latest no-nothing leading the pack.
Ummm, any comment on The National Media not reporting on this Obama guy? We instantly knew the details of Palin’s menstrual cycle — talk about investigative journalism — while the details of Obama’s past remained “sealed”.
I heard Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw being rebroadcast from 2008 pontificating to one another that they really didn’t know anything about Obama.
Not that any of it matters at this point, to quote our next president.
Yes, it’s extraordinary that all our Leftist Seekers of Truth have no problem with this. And they did the same thing with Martin Luther King. As his widow said, people would lose all their respect for him if they knew the truth.
It rankles that Sarah’s equivalent, John Edwards, didn’t get the same ‘takedown’ as she. The media didn’t even think the fact that he had started as second family needed mentioning, the second time around.
I know little about the American media but I would be very surprised if this is true. In Britain the BBC regards itself as the epitome of impartiality but it is very much biased, like all the media, towards the liberal consensus, which is a narrow spread of fashionable opinion and which believes it has a monopoly of the truth.
Here the ‘Academic Left’ is at the heart of the intellectual and cultural problem. We have our rich and vested interests of course but socially they largely subscribe to the same beliefs as the liberals, who in turn a blind eye towards them (except from the usual windy rhetoric) while concentrating their energies on inherited faith, tradition and authority.
The hip rebels of the 1960s are now in power but they still fondly see themselves as rebelling against established authority (which has long vanished from the scene) and (that other cliché) speaking truth to power. It is sickening. Of course, for all their open minds and free thinking, they didn’t come up with any of this themselves but borrowed it (here in Ireland) from its American source, via the academic and media luvvies of London. (I can’t remember who I was reading about recently who said, on getting a lecturing job at Oxford University, that the only two there who weren’t left wing were himself and the Sicilian cleaning woman.)
Over here it is fashionable to object to the Daily Mail. A couple of years ago, while visiting my sister in England, here son said that it wasn’t allowed in the house. It’s actually pretty standard liberal like all the other papers (which Hitchens describes as the unpopular press) but does report crime and other stories in a more honest manner than its respectable competition.
In short, the picture you give is a cliché.
“And now you know the rest of the story” – Paul Harvey. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end….
My opinion is that the Newspapers and News Channels have brought this upon themselves. The Nightly News and News cable channels have become nothing more than “Infotainment” as i’ve been referring to it the last 8 years. Why is it that Fox News every so many minutes has to interrupt the news with “This Is A Fox News Alert”? When it’s no real alert at all. Why is it that 99% of the so called on air anchors are pretty people? It’s all for show and so is the news they put out.
The Newspapers for years have served their own agendas especially when it comes to causes and politics. Maybe just maybe people have waken up and started to figure it all out. I know I have.
I think that documentary filmmakers have taken over the role of in-depth reporters.
When ‘Vice’, a Canadian skateboard magazine most famous for its obnoxiously vulgar ‘Do’s & Don’ts’ columns is delivering cutting edge investigative reporting (well, no longer) something’s not right in journalism.
I think you’re right.
I have definitely seen my local paper (a major metropolitan daily) shrink in size and content. Most of the international and national news stories are cut and paste jobs from the internet or day old abridged stories from the New York Times. They still do a pretty good job of reporting and commenting on local and regional issues. I try to keep up with the news, and it is still possible to access good reporting and commentary if you know to look.
I think The New York Times is still an excellent paper if you disregard the op-ed section. Almost all of those stories seem to be written by former Pravda hacks. The business, arts, travel sections are still IMO very good. I find good journalism in such places as, The Wall St. Journal, The (British) Financial Times, especially FT Weekend. The Economist, and such websites such as National Review Online, and some of the British newspapers. A lot of the above mentioned financial publications write about a lot more than business and finance. Anyone care to add to this list?
Try websites like:
InformationClearinhouse
Counterpunch
Commondreams
Zerohedge
Seemorerocks
Robertscribbler
TheGuardian
Corr.
Informationclearinghouse
I will add:
Consortiumnews.com
Whatreallyhappened.com
Voltairenet.org
Truthdig.com
Truthout.com
Crooksandliars.com
America finally died with Bush jr.’s illegal war on Iraq. The press did nothing to expose the huge fraud of the fictional WMD’s that were the justification for the deaths of thousands of civilians, and became unabashed cheerleaders of death, loving their “embedded” status which allowed them to experience and report on the glories of “a shooting war”. The absence of any truthful reporting on the NATO led Libya and now Syrian fiascos show that the American press is still quite dead. RIP .
Some have dated it back to “Remember the Maine!”
Some point to the assassination of Kennedy and the ascendancy of the National Security State.
Perhaps instead the die was cast at Appomattox, where the United “States” of America became The “Irrelevant States” of America.
Good choices. I think it was the Civil War that did it. The Maine launched the imperial USA. JFK launched the Evil Empire. But really when you think about it, with slavery rampant at our independence, this bitch was bad from the beginning.
“Murder and Mayhem in the Middle East” :: https://shar.es/1cSfcC
We live in the era of “native advertising”–articles and television reports, funded by advertisers, such as pharmaceutical companies, to look like legitimate, objective news stories. Media organizations, operating with the “skeleton crews” described by JHK, hungry for revenue as well as content, are eager, willing participants in the subterfuge. “Product placement” in movies and television shows is another dimension of the effort. Enormous dollars are paid to advertising and public relations agencies to plant the stories and the products. The line between truth and propaganda has moved beyond blurring to blindness. The noble fourth estate of yesteryear, guardians of freedom and advocates for justice and the people, have morphed into “ethics free zones” grubbing for a buck, in a single lifetime (mine).
Thanks again JHK for another thoughtful and provocative Monday morning essay…and thank you for your servitude!
-Sticks
The movie is crisp and taut and gripping. My wife and I loved it. I likened it to All the Presidents Men. As Syria watches their infrastructure destroyed we get to watch our institutions blown up. I’m WASP and old and glad to uncover wrongdoing wherever it hides. The dysfunctional part of the church needs to be excised (or is that exorcised?) The Catholic church is not my battle. America is my focus. Are we melting pot or a multicultural coalition? Hispanic Americans want to cheer for Mexico in the World Cup. Blacks are not sure about the type of policing that works for them. Asians are content with a meritocracy. I have no idea where Muslims fit in this mix. I think the Jews and Mormons have the best game plan…Can I go play golf at the Club now? Leadership–surely that is sorely missed.
If you only have one viewpoint you devalue the price of the alternative so you no longer need to hire people who think differently. “you are either for us or against us”…. MSM is the new religion that supports the status quo. Who wants to lose their job if they say the wrong thing about the bowl we live in?
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Rockefeller’s” wing of the financial oligarchy did in the 90s what they always wanted to do: to conduct a humongous dollar emission without causing inflation. That is a pretty neat trick.
With ascending of Bill Clinton to US Presidency in 1993 after breakout of the Soviet Block they finally got their spectacular opportunity: the Informational Superhighway Project, or dot-com business.
The mega-mergers of the Financial Institutions, Media holdings, the takedown of Roosevelt-created banking safety-net regulations, the first “humanitarian bombings” of Yugoslavia and finally, the preparation of the 911-scenery that largely determined the course of George W. Bush Presidency.
I’m not sure the death of investigative reporting makes any difference since the Old Media such as the New York Times clearly would rather based their opinions on a fictitious world than the real world anyway.
The Sunday NY Times is occasionally interesting to read….if you don’t mind getting an aggravating case of cognitive dissonance. The magazine and front section feature hard hitting exposes on terrorism, income inequality, and climate change, but the remaining 80% of the paper does nothing but encourage people to engage in behavior (shopping, traveling, glorifying the 1%) that exacerbates all of the problems. There’s no connecting the dots. It’s very annoying. It’s got a swell crossword puzzle though…
NYT is losing money hand over fist. The definition of insanity is to keep doing… crossword puzzles.
In which case, they’re just part of the Government now, their Pravda wing. The illusion of independence is useful. Brand loyalty. Same thing with nations: the Globalists will keep the names long after they mean anything. Like the “fighting Irish” of Notre Dame – just a bunch of Blacks.
climate change–bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Nature is always in flux, nitwit.
Well, there you have it. Malthuss has it all figured out and wrapped up in five tiny words.
Everything is always in flux… ’til the coming heat death, then perhaps a shrinking and another big bang… despite knowing this, and that it’s all for naught, we can’t help complaining about the heat while we have it.
Have you heard the new study about the oceans losing the ability to produce oxygen with a 6 degree rise in temperature in the next hundred years? (normal temp fluctuation, right?). By 2100, oxygen amount at sea level to be the same as current oxygen amount at the top of Mt. Everest? Nature does have a way of taking care of herself.
All the plankton will die. They produce twice the oxygen trees do.
More humans, a lot more flux, you of all people should know that. Check out the ratio of carbon isotopes related to fossil fuel burning and it will become very clear.
American News Broadcasts are the Rap Music of journalism. And other than a few People like Kunstler, journalism is quite dead.
It was the Mega Swindle of the Nineties that robbed the rest of the world of their State savings, paved the way to American suppression of the descent (real and imaginary) in the 2000s and finally, the anti-American revolt of the 2010s. The Political Correctness also has its roots in the Nineties as well as the end of American Journalism.
If I understand the situation correctly, the world changed when the laws changed under Reagan.
First, laws requiring equal time for an opposing opinion were scrapped. Second, if I remember correctly, it was no longer required to report the truth – it was enough to report that which could be defended as “thought to be true”. Since anything can be thought to be true, reporters became largely irrelevant.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without a profound anti-intellectualism, combined with a reverence for “practical men”; i.e. any dolt with a torque wrench and a credit card. This would appear to extend into modern universities, where freedom of speech is sacrificed to freedom from offence, turning the Constitution on its head.
As a society, we now seem to be criminalizing bad manners of a certain type, and excusing certain types of criminality as bad manners. This reversal is serious in itself, but it may be symptomatic of a broader confusion: a measure of disconnect between reality and mentality, or even a denial of objective reality.
Yes we need a return to Aristocracy, with voting limited to the qualified – those with a record of service, solvency, and education. The practical men, those who despise anyone who can’t “drive stick”, need to be put back into their place.
I would like to see a poll: who do you despise more, politicians or media people?
vengeur,
My answer to your poll: Yes.
If I might add the perspective of a former NPR listener who once worked for fifteen years at a network affiliate: there was a time when NPR reporters understood their honorable role to be acting as bullshit detectors for society. Several things happened to destroy NPR’s niche in the news ecosystem.
They always depended, of course, upon a government subsidy, and those in Washington who defended their annual line item from their natural enemies inside the Beltway eventually got ground down. So NPR stopped going after bad guys.
In 2007 they featured – it wasn’t really an interview – former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who is arguably a war criminal for contriving the bogus rationale that enabled W to invade Iraq. Rather than even question Feith about his part in that disaster they simply rolled over and let him justify himself on their airtime. NPR’s only response to the outrage that I and many other listeners expressed about their failure to confront Feith was to follow up with a “clarification” that Feith’s intelligence report was only officially found to be “inappropriate,” rather than falsified.
NPR also got addicted to underwriters and their agendas. One year they accepted a fat grant “for coverage of Chad.” Prior to the grant there was never any news from Chad but, by golly, for the next twelve months there were all sorts of newsworthy things being reported from Chad. Then the grant ended and, evidently, nothing has happened in Chad since. NPR dreadnaught Cokie Roberts flew into a rage when I pointed out that the network’s news assignments really shouldn’t have a one-to-one correspondence with the agendas of underwriters.
The coup de grace for NPR news was twofold: Operation Desert Storm convinced public radio that news coverage must resemble an action movie for the entertainment of its male listeners; the O. J. Simpson trial then became a template for a long-running soap opera for female listeners.
The result of all of this: a succession of interchangeable “news” programs in which news “experts” talk with each other for a while, and then open the microphone so the national audience can have the benefit of the insight of the next idiot who happens to call. No, it isn’t any sort of news, much less analysis, but this business model is a whole lot less expense and effort than putting veteran reporters in locations all over the world so they can figure out what’s going down and share their investigations with us.
And don’t forget, it’s all delivered with NPR’s nauseating pretentiousness.
NPR has or had not one but TWO, ‘Ari Shapiros.’
Occidental Observer did a story on them.
Zoltar,
Thanks for the helpful insider perspective. My “local” station has also succumbed to the Empire of Delusion. It’s amazing what the commentators believe without any credible evidence or research to support their views! It’s become all about sifting through symptoms and no concern for identifying the diseases…. I guess that might make contributors uncomfortable and less likely to tithe.
Well said. I have listened with dismay at the long, slow decay of NPR. After the recent Paris attacks I had to laugh when I heard that David Green was doing reports from the City of Lights. Just like sending Brokaw or some other chair-sitter to the latest disaster scene. Doesn’t NPR have a full-time correspondent in Paris?
Finally, for a news source that purports such lofty standards, when was the last time they actually broke a story???
yes, if you listened you’d know that it’s Eleanor Beardsley, a native South Carolinian with a strange modified accent and unique delivery. Their most biased correspondent by far is the Texan, Wade Goodwyn, who can’t resist straight-shooting snark. Then again, he had to deal with Rick (now smarter with glasses) Perry.
I get a kick form their fund raising and asking for unpaid volunteers.
How much does the gal in DC make? The one who is their
‘chief leftist?’
Is Cokie on coke or is that really her name? And if the latter, where does such a name come from?
The corruption of WASP names may well be a barometer of the fall of America.
Cokie is tribe [no surprise] and her hubby wrote a book about how wonderful immigrants are.
The only survivor from the proud tradition of the early NPR is Daniel Zwerdling whose investigative reporting has exposed the hypocrisy of the government policies on Gulf war syndrome (liked agent orange contamination it didn’t exist) to PTSD (dope them up, then discharge them for drug dependency, or dump them into the VA system as quickly as possible).
Daniel, when allowed to do so, does his homework, anticipates the government line of propaganda and effectively shows it for the load of BS that it is which is why you don’t hear him very much on NPR any more.
Hey Pogo
Thanks for the great tales from Duluth AFB (at the tail end of last week’s thread). I will get back to you in more detail when time permits. And, yes, I do have a scheme in mind for how we can communicate outside this CFN forum without totally blowing our anonymity.
Great, I’m looking forward to it.
To get an idea of how bad the stenographer-journalists in the US look, try tuning in RT (stands for Russia Today) on the internet. They run a live feed of their US, British, and Moscow feeds in English 24/7/365 at:
https://www.rt.com/on-air/
While reminding yourself that they are owned and operated by the government of the Russian Federation and therefore presenting the
Russian point of view on the world notice:
They have correspondents everywhere unlike US public broadcasting which relies on BBC and other stringers to provide them with reports.
Their US correspondents not only speak English, they speak American English. Their British correspondents speak the UK version of the language. Many of their correspondents are multi-lingual and therefore do not require translators in the countries from which they report.
Their reporters have exposed both lies and exaggerations of official US/NATO and EU spokespersons regarding the Ukrainian, European refugee, and ISIS (or is it ISIL or is it Daesh?) crises.
As a septuagenarian I can remember listening to Radio Moscow and the other communist shortwave services in my youth. Besides the excitement of being able to hear voices from afar, the content of their news and commentary was good for laughs because it was so lacking in credibility.
US networks on the other hand (radio and TV) had their own correspondents everywhere and typically they would gather at the year’s end to discuss the year in review as well as the prospects for the next year. Of course it was not perfect back in the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s but they tackled such issues as Joe McCarthy, civil rights, the Vietnam war, and that odious political toad, Richard Nixon.
Now it is the US media that engages in mindless mimicry and the Russians who are doing the hard work of investigative reporting. It’s a shame, but that’s what happens when journalism’s bottom line is the bottom line. Information transforms into infotainment.
The USSA. The United Socialist States of America.
Thanks for your brilliant insight.
I’ll second the suggestion that readers of Mr. Kunstler’s blog check out RT for “the other side of the story.” I find that filtering out the Russian slant is fairly easy, and there is a wealth of information provided on this website that NEVER appears in the MSM. It’s also very professionally done.
I agree with most of which you wrote. I do find it curious that so many are quick to remind us of the sins of Richard Nixon, yet always seem to overlook mentioning the equally, if not more, “odious” Lyndon Johnson of the same era.
-Sticks
Lyndon Johnson was probably the only insane president we ever had. Truly off his rocker. An absolute sadist.
Lyndon’s downfall was not the murders of the Kennedy brothers and MLK Jr. and Malcolm X which he either arranged or certainly helped to cover up along with neighbor J Edgar Hoover of the FBI.
LBJ’s downfall was giving the military whatever it wanted to prosecute the senseless Vietnam war. This led to the election of the equally loony but at least more intelligent Nixon. Cutty Sark probably flew their flags at half mast at his death since he was a major consumer of their scotch whiskey.
“As a septuagenarian I can remember listening to Radio Moscow and the other communist shortwave services in my youth. Besides the excitement of being able to hear voices from afar, the content of their news and commentary was good for laughs because it was so lacking in credibility.” – Poet
Maybe folks in East Europe and USSR had similar feelings when listening to the Voice of America?
I have also limped into the ranks of the “septuagenarians” and wonder if you remember some old TV show from the 1950’s (black and white of course) about newspaper reporters?
If I recall (and if the memory is not entirely imaginary) each weekly episode was based on some actual event and reporter.
Agree completely, Jim.
There was another expose by the Spotlight series in the Boston Globe that you might be interested in.
This had to do with double booking surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. That is, surgeons scheduling two cases at the same time, and rotating between rooms while other less qualified surgeons continued the surgery in the absence of the surgeon in charge. Dr. Dennis Burke, a highly respected orthopedic surgeon, blew the whistle on that practice and was rewarded by the hospital for exposing this practice by summary dismissal. Patients of course were completely unaware that their surgeon was not performing all of the surgery and was in fact operating on another patient during the time allotted for their own surgery.
Dr. Burke had this to say about the practice of double booking surgeries: When they tell you it isn’t about the money . . . it is always about the money!
David Reese, MD
Exactly. Whatever they say, it’s the exact opposite.
Yeah, if they say we went to the moon, we didn’t. If they say it’s snowing, it’s raining or sunning. If they say the world is round, it’s flat.
Can it be that JHK and the many of of the CFN commenters are slowly making the turn toward recognizing that religions, governments, politicians, and corporations at the beck and call of the obscenely wealthy compose a plethora of conspiratorial unions with but a single purpose; to maintain economic domination over the proletariat as well as the upper middle, middle and lower class bourgeoisie by the upper class bourgeoisie minority?
That was always the goal of Marxism. The idea that the state would wither away was a ruse for the dummies – always the vocal majority. No, the economic order would become the State. A Plutocracy, with Capitalism for the few, and a wretched third world level Socialism for the many.
Thanks for removing the scales from my eyes, O Enlightened One.
No charge, grass huffer. Hope I didn’t hurt your Neo-Marxist feels too much, bruv.
Put your glasses on, Janos. I was replying to Ken’s post.
Where do you get the Neo-Marxist bit from? Probably from Raymond Crotty’s theories which I was talking about recently. He was no Marxist, of course, but I think you could call him an economic determinist. As for myself, I thought Marx was clever and had some penetrating insights but I could never suspend disbelief, even when it was intellectually more respectable to do so.
How can the Catholic Church continue to exist? It boggles the mind. A religion that at its core is the human sacrifice of Jesus Christ, at its core is the mass which is mock human sacrifice and mock cannibalism, at its core is the indoctrination of children before they have a chance to think for themselves i.e. it is woven into the fabric of society and the family, at its core is the accumulation of wealth.
Yes. It must be destroyed. Iraq was destroyed. Libya was destroyed. Syria must be destroyed. Russia must be…
Well said. The savagery of the Left on display.
God incarnated with the intention of being sacrificed is the idea. It was His Idea. In Malachai, the last book of the Old Testament, God says He doesn’t want anymore rams or sheep. He wants the human heart. Of course you would interpret that literally like the Aztec priests did.
That is a very unsophisticated way of looking at human sacrifice. If you study the literature like the Book of Enoch it describes the progeny of Fallen Angels and mortal women as Giants. Those giants built the pyramids and were destroyed in Noah’s Flood. Their souls were called evil spirits by God himself i.e. demons. These demons are who Satanist/Occultist try to contact. They didn’t exist until after the flood. These demons are why humans believe they have a soul. These demons are the foundation of every religion. They require a blood sacrifice, preferably human. Today it is called “Selling your soul to the devil.” A thousand years ago it was called religion, specifically Mystery Babylon the Great, the religion of human sacrifice to contact demons. Satanism or Saturnism. The Romans obliterated it and it went underground and into Secret Societies.
You think demons are why human beings believe they have a soul? Talk about a dark or demonic way of looking at life! You believe in demonic spirits but don’t believe in the human spirit. What the hell?
I’m not the one who pretends to eat the flesh and drink the blood of God every Sunday. That would be the dark, demonic Christians.
The Book of Enoch traveled across time, on Noah’s Ark, was hidden for nearly 2,000 years and was rediscovered when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. I believe it before your dumbass. Any book banned from the Bible is on my reading list.
So do you believe in actual demons or not? And if you do, since they can exist beyond the body, they are superior to humans. If you believe this, you are an implicit Satanist.
Many religions have some version of communion or “eating the god”. You show your shallow knowledge of comparative religions here. And in Christianity, Christ wants us to consume Him – so that we can be assimilated into Him. As mere created beings (creatures or “accidents” in Thomism since we need not exist and He need not have created us) we cannot assimilate Him.
No I am an explicit Satanist. I am aware of the deception. You are unaware, and that makes you the implicit Satanist, along with other 1.4 billion Christians. Your attempts to validate the eating of God are no better than transubstantiation. Of course demons are superior to humans. They are the 1/2 progeny of the Gods.
How can you be a Satanist and a materialist? Real Satanism (not the LaVey psychodrama) believe in the human spirit and life after death.
If you believe the demons are half divine, why not just worship God or the gods? See how perverse you are?
Real Satanism is Magick ala Aleister Crowley the Great Beast 666, the wickedest man in the world, the father of modern Satanism. It is the art of conjuring evil spirits or demons. It is done to obtain their aid. Anton LaVey was the original Ghostbuster; the movie is based on his life, and his Bible is basically a hedonist guide to the universe. These statements demonstrate knowledge of the subject matter. Your posts demonstrate knowledge of flatulent emissions.
Janos, good job countering this post (and many others today).
It’s doing a good job of destroying itself – Bergoglio and his crew.
Its obvious NPR reporters effete pretentious non-entities are stupid, maybe they do reporting somewhere but my guess it is a jobs program for true believers.
One day listening to a North Shore limo liberal supported station a lady reporter recounted her stay in India and its maddening incompetent bureaucracy regarding a few Rupees mistake on her electrical bill which the shakedown crooks threatened to shut her off for overpaying of all things. The crooks had her traveling across New Dehli to have her fill out a new piece of paperwork and then invalidating it when she took it to another office. I will type slow, they were looking for bribes, good liberals.
Jim –
Agree completely about “Spotlight.” Honestly, I’m amazed that it even got made. There were no explosions. No shattering glass in slo mo. No comic book characters. What there was was an actual script! And scenes in which people talked to each other!
And I had the same response after seeing it; what happens when this sort of reporting no longer exists? We are just about there now — and it seems quite hopeless…
Surprised? Why? The Elite hate Catholicism, or at least the old pre-Vatican Two Church. The truly amazing thing would be a movie about Rabbis abusing kids. Think it doesn’t happen?
Btw, Pope Francis has put known pedophiles into high positions. Not much has changed inwardly, in regards to this problem at least.
John Paul II loved pedophiles. That’s why they made him a saint. This all started big time with Cardinal Francis Spellman, or “Frannie,” as he was known. The epitome of the mean, gay priest.
What’s with all the Manly Man stuff? We’re in trouble because men aren’t manly like Putin? I think we’ve had enough of that kind of manliness, thanks.
Yes let’s dismiss Manly Men. They can’t be manly and intelligent at the same time, now can they?
They must be persecuted, made into fags or women. Destroyed as men. Right Soot?
Tonight on the “Decades” TV program, there was a short segment about the great basketball player Larry Bird and I am fairly sure there was a picture of him making a jump shot where his arm pit hair had been PhotoShoped out!
We can’t take a chance on disturbing some small segment of population can we?
No more Manly Men allowed in basketball.
Except if they are the 90% of the NBA’s players: negro men.
Then they can be so manly they will have their tats, armpit hair and uvulas showing when they shout with joy over a basket; when they get a big fat contract to pimp some consumer bullshit; or when they squire some fetching white woman around in a Bentley or wed them cause miscegenation is so very cool.
(Psst -but you do know it is only agit-prop from the Masters of the Universe, right?)
Good comments and I agree. Same with pro football.
I had to look up “agit-prop” and here’s what Britannica.com says:
“Agitprop, abbreviated from Russian agitatsiya propaganda (agitation propaganda), political strategy in which the techniques of agitation and propaganda are used to influence and mobilize public opinion. Although the strategy is common, both the label and an obsession with it were specific to the Marxism practiced by communists in the Soviet Union.”
I think he’s referring to men who actually lead followers to a better world. I suppose these leaders could be women, but that is not the historic norm.
Yes, in the context of journalism, I think JHK’s essay might might be in reference to gruff old codgers in the newsrooms, shirtsleeves rolled up, cigar perpetually jutting from corner of the mouth and riding heard on all the reporters and editors.
Someone that looks like Lou Grant comes to mind, but coarser and much more profane.
“And, yes, I do have a scheme in mind for how we can communicate outside this CFN forum without totally blowing our anonymity.” — Q
Would be interesting to find out how Mr. Q is planning to solve that non-trivial logical problem – even with a temporary, throw-away email account – it would still have to appear on this public site first and be prone to intercepting by unscrupulous third party.
Yes, which just proves how deluded we are in thinking we are “connected” and informed with the internet, social networks, discussion forms and so on…but how we are more disconnected than ever.
Whatever degree of social cohesiveness we once had is rapidly eroding.
You might want to also bring up that there were many corporate takeovers of news media and that many who own newspapers were never in the business of journalism and thus are only interested in the promotion on an advertizing level of maintaining the illusion of journalism in favor of public relations and selling to the lowest common denominator.
The other issue is the built-in corporatism that this bring about.
We get the news from the point of view of corporate giants and the war machine that keeps the economy singing.
Status quo is what it’s all about.
We lost the Fourth Estate, which is why we’re here, Jim.
“Two things, at least, are necessary to break out of this hall of mirrors: men acting like honorable men, and hierarchies of leadership with the integrity to actually lead. For now, the USA is not interested in those things.”
I agree with your analysis, but these solutions are a fantasy at best. The reasons you have outlined, “wishful thinking by a feminized political Left preoccupied with feelings over truth” and “reduced to overt cheer leading” and “making excuses for our grift-and rackets-based polity”, all of which are only in their middling stages and will advance as the Right’s forces try to assert their “Masculinity”.
At the large left leaning papers, this issue has been settled and they will fight to the last to defend the causes they hold as sacred, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, minority rights, children’s rights, etc. All the rights that have made this country the laughing stock of even the most liberal western societies. Has led to extensive litigation, polarization among the races and religious groups and an inability to do anything with out that touchy feely don’t hurt anybodies feelings mentality. That includes our military and it’s policies. Trophies for everybody!, we’re all winners!, you can do it!
This road to ruin is paved with the best of intentions, of course, so enjoy the ride.
Good points, Mike. A story on local news tonight left me feeling the direction we are being pushed by those obsessed with “micro aggression” is not a place we want to end up.
The story was about the state capitol in St. Paul, where these beautiful paintings depicting the battles of the Minnesota soldiers in the Civil War were commissioned in late 1890’s (I believe). Minnesota sent 25,000 men to fight this war, more than any other state. It would be equivalent to 750,000 today. They fought in all the big battles, like Shiloh and Gettysburg. These paintings have been there…like forever, and have been seen by many generations of school kids.
Now, it seems that some people are afraid the scenes depicted might be disturbing to the little school kiddies who troop through the state capitol building. So they are demanding that these famous old paintings be removed. Are these the same kids playing Halo and Grand Theft Auto? Go figure!
I have listened with dismay at the long, slow decay of NPR. –piltmandown
In my community we created a non-profit terrestrial broadcast community radio station that is NOT directly affiliated, owned, controlled by any radio network, school, company, or government.
NPR is not your only option for radio that provides in-depth objective journalistic reporting. If you don’t have a community-owned radio station, organize and create one.
Who controls the script? The “propaganda machine” at the local TV level spotlighted in this disturbing clip from Conan O’Brien:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA
That was great…and disturbing, but perhaps not too surprising in light of today’s discussion.
-Sticks
Wow! I agree Sticks, that was disturbing. In fact, the last words in the clip from Conan are “scary…that’s disturbing”.
What should we expect when a few corporations own and control the “infotainment”? Were all those TV stations part of the same corporation? It’s like a script was passed around.
Is this the type of crap that Howard Beal (actually, Paddy Chayefsky) and Marshall McLuhan tried to warn us about?
As far as we can tell, are there are female persons who participate in this forum, or is this a de facto men’s club?
I’m female.
One of the things that concerns me most in our society today, is the way that Americans are divided and attacking each other on every level.
I’d hardly say the NYT is “feminized” as they support the whole “Bruce Jenner is female” and “boys who feel like they are girls have a right to shower in the girls’ locker room” agenda, which to me is as anti-female as it gets. Lena Dunham is not a feminist.
A friend of mine said, at the time we first started hearing of these Catholic Church scandals, “What did they think they were going to get?”
Pat Buchanan just had a very interesting column, in which he ties the support for Donald Trump in with the state of the press today. He does a nice job of it. Some people will reject it out of hand because it comes from Pat Buchanan, and we are preoccupied with phony ‘sides’.
Hello Beryl.
There is a hierarchy.
I guess women are not at top.
Feel free to disagree.
From top to lower;
Muslims [esp ‘refugees’]
Illegals
Trannies
Gays
Blacks
Non White Women
down to what or who?
One of my relatives has a friend, a black man, who recently started raging about how tough he has it being a black man in America (although she really can’t see where he has it any worse than her white male friends), “Who do you think had the right to vote first, black men or white women?” I must admit I am the one who instigated the question. Guess what his answer was? I don’t really mean you should guess. You know the answer already, without even being there.
Hi Beryl,
Thanks for outting yourself as female. It’s nice to know there’s more gender diversity here than it often seems…with perspective diverging from that expressed ad nauseam by wpa_ccc.
Over the weekend I read the opinion piece by Pat Buchanan you referenced in your preceding post. It was excellent and relevant to today’s discussion. I invite CFN slaves (“shitizens”) who are interested, including those who normally recoil at the mere mention of Buchanan’s name, to read the article* at:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/patrick-j-buchanan/hate-trump/
Thank you for your servitude!
Sticks-of-TNT
*It begins;
“In the feudal era there were the “three estates” — the clergy, the nobility and the commons. The first and second were eradicated in Robespierre’s Revolution. But in the 18th and 19th century, Edmund Burke and Thomas Carlyle identified what the latter called a “stupendous Fourth Estate.”
Thanks for your perspective, Beryl.
Ah, Pat – that’s the first time I’ve seen someone write respectfully about Spiro Agnew in about forty years.
And that’s as much as you need to know.
Despite your snark directed at Buchanan, I did appreciate your lengthy post earlier today with your perspective on NPR. Quite enlightening. Thanks! -Sticks
What is Feminism? A Marxism. And to answer Sartre’s question, Is Marxism a Humanism? No. So since Feminism is a Marxism, it isn’t a Humanism either. Thus that helps to answer why they say nothing as Muslims conduct the mass rape of women in Europe.
What doesn’t Environmentalists speak out against the horrendous effects of mass 3rd World immigration? Because they are now Marxists and not really Environmentalists anymore. Of course they may still think they are and still be concerned. But when the agendas clash, they will go with the Leftist agenda.
I’d agree Lena Dunham is nothing good. But she may well be a real Feminist in terms of what Feminism has become. You’re the one on the outside, not her. And that’s a good thing.
Beryl, It’s one opinion.
http://buchanan.org/blog/why-liberal-media-hate-trump-124373
It’s emasculation not feminization.
WPAsoka, a hectoring chick with a dick, is what passes for female at CFN……
Why would the editors of this blog restrict comments to only men?
What about Bill Moyers, didn’t he piss off enough people to get fired for awhile?
Did he? He must have said something not corporate approved.
Remember when Andy Rooney got suspended from 60 Minutes for allegedly saying something which couldn’t be proved, and which he DENIED saying? He got suspended for someone saying he said something ‘bad’, not for saying it.
I thought his PBS program got cancelled for awhile due to some controversy, but I don’t remember the details. After a quick google search, I found a couple quotes from Moyers:
Meanwhile, the public has failed to react because it is, in his words, “distracted by the media circus and news has been neutered or politicized for partisan purposes.” In support of this, he referred to “the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero. … As Eric Alterman reports in his recent book—a book that I’m proud to have helped make happen—part of the red-meat strategy is to attack mainstream media relentlessly, knowing that if the press is effectively intimidated, either by the accusation of liberal bias or by a reporter’s own mistaken belief in the charge’s validity, the institutions that conservatives revere—corporate America, the military, organized religion, and their own ideological bastions of influence—will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence over American public life with relatively no challenge.”[52] Wikipedia
There’s another article on billmoyers.com that mentions Phil Donohue getting fired and Mr. Moyers getting much pressure:
http://billmoyers.com/2013/03/25/the-day-that-tv-news-died/
Anyway, I just wanted to mention Bill Moyers as a great journalist who did some in-depth reporting with PBS, back in the day.
Don’t forget Lara Logan who told too much truth about Benghazi and got suspended for six months or so.
I did a little (ok, wikipedia) research on Ms. Logan, impressive. Another intense female journalist worth mentioning would be Amy Goodman. I met Amy at a local radio station in the Colorado mountains. She had a book out called “Breaking the Sound Barrier” which she was signing during a quick tour of locally-run radio stations. She told a story about getting beaten while in East Timor. I’m not a big “Democracy Now” watcher, or any television for that matter, but it seems to be pretty non-mainstream.
You might also mention the late, great Molly Ivins from Texas. She warned us about “W” before 2001.
“shrub”
Thanks for the reminder ~Sticks
I had forgotten that Molly may have been the first to use that moniker.
Speaking of Noam mentioned above: You want investigative reporting? Try this on for size:
http://mileswmathis.com/chom.pdf
When you were buying that special IPO of “CatsAndPets.com” for $20 a share to sell it at the close for $70, did you ever wonder where that $50 came from?
Did you need some ass-wise investigative journalist to tell you that quite possibly that $50 was stolen through complex financial shenanigans from African, Haitian or Russian kids and spoil that fabulous celebration of the “American Dream”?
How did that smirking punk who likes to threaten to raise prices of life-saving medicines out of the reach of anyone’s ability to pay, come into possession of a pharmaceutical giant? He doesn’t appear to be someone able to earn a living at anything real, does he?
I don’t really know – most likely a figurehead working for some “real money” and hired for excellent job qualifications – total lack of consciousnesses and shrewdness.
total lack of “conscience”, maybe? -Sticks
“….the vaunted wondrous Internet will be little more than a grapevine and a rumor mill.”
I’m not sure I agree with your prognosis Jim since the idea of not having sites like yours to provoke thought and discussion (along with much dissing and cussing) would, I believe, make us more vulnerable. I’m reading a book by Neil Postman entitled “Amusing Ourselves To Death” which I learned of from someone on this very site. Could it be that ‘news organizations ‘(I use the term loosely) are just giving people only what their harried lives can handle? So which came first the chicken or the egg?
The internet as the last bastion of truth. Imagine that?
I don’t know if I’d go that far but as a means of communication it has no rival.
I agree with JHK’s analysis as regards the social media and the undermining of authority but I am not at all so sure about the contribution made by the traditional press. As for the social media, I joined Facebook in August, just in time to see at first hand the hysteria generated by the picture of the drowned Syrian toddler. I’m reading Le Bon’s classic (1895) The Psychology of Crowds and a lot of what is happening now is described in it so just because the knowledge is there doesn’t mean that anyone notices it.
I am a Catholic myself, but even if I wasn’t I still would be very sceptical about this film. It should be put in the context of the witch hunts of the past few decades. Usually there is an undeniable core of truth to them, a very small core indeed generally. Here’s a reasonable article from the sceptical on-line journal, Spiked:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/9548#.VmX53zYnznM
They are a left-wing crowd by their own admission but they do have the saving grace (and it’s a big one) of defending free speech and questioning the more sensational parts of received opinion. For example, I have read one or two good articles there about the need to discuss the immigration issue honestly (it has in fact never, ever, ever been seriously discussed to my knowledge) although the authors would favour open borders themselves (an idiotic view in my opinion).
I want to link later (maybe tomorrow) to an excellent two-part essay by the late Richard Webster (Sceptical Essays) which he wrote in response to Guardian journalist Nick Davies’s best seller ‘Flat Earth News’, which purported to shine a light on (or as Mary Riddell wrote in the Guardian ‘turns the spotlight on’) ‘falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media’ (from the book’s own blurb).
In this essay Webster traces the rise in the 19th C of investigative, sensationalist and moralizing journalism (centring on the figure of WJ Stead and the crusading role of the Guardian itself).
;As we read Flat Earth News, we are reassured endlessly (with a kind of mechanical prayerfulness), that the main function of journalists is to establish the truth.,, Only because these statements appear in a book from which all history and all culture have been eliminated is it possible for Davies to make them without their shallowness and their absurdity being immediately apparent.’
Here’s a more interesting article than Spiked’s from a one-man Catholic writer in Ireland:
http://irishsalem.com/international-controversies/usa/index.php
I haven’t thought much about the abuse scandals in the Church as it isn’t the kind of thing you would naturally want to think about. Leaving aside the witch hunt aspect (a very big part of the overall package) one wonders what happened. The trite reply is that it was always abusive, just that they could keep it quiet without anyone ‘shining a spotlight on it’ in a remote, barbaric past. I think this writer may have ‘shone his own spotlight’ on it by suggesting that the liberalizing movements of the 60s and 70s played a big role. Some may remember the brief-ish period back in the 80s or whenever where elements of the Left took up the ‘liberating’ cause of paedophilia. In England there was an organization openly campaigning to legalize it, called the Paedophile Exchange. Nobody wants to remember this nowadays of course.
This is hard for extraverts to accept because it challenges conventional wisdom. This is the huge psychological dimension that nobody is aware of. Today the extravert is drawn towards the simple human story, the cliché and stark black and white moralizing. What will he be drawn towards in the future, and will he even remember how he got there?
It will presumably be simple, clichéd and moralizing, but we won’t know about *what* until we arrive. Remember, they are now bombing what is purportedly the opposite side in Syria to the one they wanted to bomb in September 2013 although it isn’t clear if many have noticed.
Well that’s very strange as the Church abuse of the young was monumental in Ireland – in the schools, parishes, and orphan schools. It lead to the end of faith of millions and the end of Ireland as a Catholic country.
The doubts about you continue to grow.
Best thing to happen to those drunken louts since Cesar said “it ain’t f*cking worth it”.
When the latinized britons finally did come to Ireland, it was after the empire was toppled by a virulent middle eastern religion… and the infection spread.
Are all Middle Eastern religions “virulent”? Or just Christianity and Islam?
Is Coleman a Jewish name? Old Sean is saying some strange things for an Irishman.
Janos, why do you think the church abuse in Ireland was monumental? There was some and nobody argues about that, but you have to put it in the context of modern witch hunts, which Richard Webster wrote about but few seem to have understood. I suspect that most of that ‘some’ can be attributed to the liberalization of the Church in the 60s and 70s and (although this is guesswork on my part) gay elements within the priesthood.
I very much doubt that it was a big issue in the past as people probably had more pressing concerns, such as saving their souls or keeping said souls together with the body, than indulge in this.
I do know that there have been some ‘monumental’ outbreaks of hysteria in Ireland in recent times. Here are three examples.
1 The Nora Wall case. She was a Catholic nun convicted of abuse. For once, Wiki tells the story well (or it did the last time I read her link some months ago):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Wall
2 There were lurid reports of mass graves of babies in Co. Galway in the grounds of a Church run institution for unmarried mothers. The usual figure given is 800 but this is really a guess. You can look it up online but this story has made a mountain out of a molehill.
3 A Mission To Prey. This documentary was made a few years ago by RTE, the Irish state broadcaster. It accused a Catholic priest, Fr Kevin Reynolds, of raping a teenage girl in Africa and fathering her child when he was a missionary. He offered to do a paternity test but the moralizers who made the programme knew he was guilty (you see, they are enlightened and sophisticated) and broadcast it anyway. The journalist said that she was sickened by the thought of Fr Reynolds moralizing from the pulpit in his Galway parish. Of course it was all a load of rubbish based on fantasy (the evidence) and gullibility (RTE).
That’s just three cases that spring to mind.
As I keep saying, it’s a psychological thing. Extraverts are the ones who get caught up in it and extraverts form the big majority of those who blog. They have difficulty in understanding that sometimes what ‘everyone knows’ isn’t in fact true.
Coleman is either an English name or comes from the Irish, which isn’t telling you much, but it’s not Jewish. However, my first cousin in America has got deeply involved in religion and is interested in the Jewish faith and such like. She got a DNA test done 15 years ago and told my mother about it. The letter began: ‘Dear Margaret, It’s true. The Irish really are the lost tribe of Israel.’
So mass movement are always bad or mistaken? Your introvert superiority complex is showing. The Great Awakening help lead to the American Revolution. George Whitfield, a diminutive man, could project his voice for half a mile. Ben Franklin measured and was amazed. A skeptic, he ended up befriending Whitfield and even contributing. How can you not love a man who went to remote mines and preached to those abandoned by everyone?
The Germans rose up and threw out the occupying forces and the International Bankers. Something the West no longer has the wisdom or vitality to do. Of course you don’t like that – because other people don’t. Are you really as independently minded as you believe?
The Church crisis in Ireland was massive. You didn’t pay any attention because you rejected the Church early on and only associate with fellow travelers who did the same. You don’t know because you don’t care. People like you rule the West and they haven’t the remotest interest in the needs or desires of the people.
They’re all idiotic, certainly. I’m not sure if a religion that’s not searching for members and is not advocating for the death or reeducation of the ‘non-chosen’ is virulent. Again, they’re nuts all the same, but they’re fine with the small club.
Janos is the type of guy who if a DNA test proposed that he was .5% Jewish, he’d be in the West Bank building settlements raising 7 kids with a portrait of Golda over the hearth. He wants it so bad…
Janos
You are not making full sense here. I don’t agree with a lot of what you write but it is usually logical and consistent.
Introvert superiority: this is an interesting and astute observation one. On the one hand, extraverts (and I assume, as I always have, that you are one, largely because most bloggers are) simply have great difficulty distancing themselves from ‘what everyone knows’. This is just my opinion, but it’s valid in so far as no-one else seems to have one about this. On the other hand extraverts are so much much better at so many things, and as I said early on here, it will be extraverts who will turn this around if anyone will, as they are the ones who usually *do* everything.
Mass movements always being mistaken. Gustave Le Bon (Psychology of Crowds 1895) said that they are always inferiro to individuals. A superior individual loses his advantage in a crowd (or a mass of scattered yet connected people). Yet he also pointed out that sometimes crowds are capable of heroism and other virtues that would be beyond the capability of the individuals in them.
You rejected the Church early on. No, I didn’t. I always stuck with what I was brought up with. The modern church is interesting from my psych. theory point of view in that there is an extraverted-dominant wing (or perhaps consisting solely of extraverts) who consider themselves liberals. They won’t be happy until the Church steps into line with everyone else’s beliefs. It is extraordinary that nobody has noticed this. Fr Roltheiser, an excellent syndicated columnist in the Catholic press (though I haven’t read him in a good while now, and I know he was seriously ill) often alludes to the split between the liberals and the traditionalists.
Janos, I don’t try to belittle extraverts. They feel the pain moreo than my kind do. We have the luxury of being able to step back and distance ourselves from events. Someone has to do it.
I am an INTP – the rarest of the human types. My friend think I traded my P for a J though. Probably. I had little interest in politics until well into my 30’s.
Frankiti, have you been reading Wikipedia again without being accompanied by a responsible adult?
Sean, have you been drinking from granny’s “water glass” again?
Your county priest fondled your pecker. Stop making excuses, and get over it.
I went to a Catholic grammar school in England, on the outskirts of London; that means a selected school as selection on the basis of academic talent was allowed in those days. It was run by the Marist order and there were a number of priests there. I have to say that I never heard of any of the ‘abuse’ that it is so fashionable to talk about nowadays.
By the way, although I have lived in Ireland for 28 years I still keep my Sarf Lahndan accent.
The evidence I have looked at shows that most of this stuff is mass delusion. I have made a coherent case and supplied a few links which you would rather not read. So what’s *your* excuse?
‘It led to the end of faith of millions.’
Of course not. It was an excuse for not having to get up with a hangover on Sunday mornings. It was also an excuse for indulging in witless moralizing at the expense of much that was good and selfless and of the facts of history. Clearly, many or most people accept the dismal claims of scientific materialism because of the clever people on the telly. They also manage to convince themselves that this is evidence of intelligence and (gales of laughter) and open and independent mind.
Erm, Sean,
So, what are you impugning here? That it’s the fault of some ass-lovin’ pederast leftist swine that wanted to make legal what a gaggle of priesthood pederast swine were happily (and without the least constraint) engaging in, under the thick cloak of the Church’s moral rectitude? …Careful, don’t get any on ya.
If so, you go too far in defending your chosen institution of superstitious rot and Death-cult nonsense. (As with all ‘investments’, know when to GTFO and call it “a lesson learned”.)
Please correct/explain if I’ve misconstrued your ‘argument’.
Ozone
Who am I impugning, or what am I implying?
I’ll take the first one first and the second one second. I am impugning those who follow conventional wisdom in the matter of paedophile witch hunts. I don’t deny that there was child abuse in the Catholic Church but it certainly wasn’t on anything like the scale assumed. The Spiked article I linked to makes this point well, if a little dully.
What am I implying? Nothing. I am saying out straight that this belief is a delusion, just as much as the one about man-made global warming. I’d go easy on the splutter and rhetoric for a bit till you understand my case as there’ll be less for you to mop up after. Trust me, I (think) I know what I’m talking about.
SC,
(Yes, that would be who/whom; I can never get those straight.)
Well, we can see which road your beliefs are merrily leading you down, with a whistle and a jaunty stride, but I’m very curious as to your defense of the Wholly Roman Order. Actually, I’m curious as to whether you’re defending the Church, or vilifying the Church’s accusers with this dismissive relativity. Kind of, “Oh there’s really not *too* much child abuse by priestly pederasts, so it’s not a big deal.” …That’s the impression I’m getting anyway. Further enlighten as to your beliefs and what you “know”. (Forgive me Father, for I am deluded; I have questioned the status quo and the priestly privilege of buggering children without fear of punishment.)
Ozone
“Oh there’s really not *too* much child abuse by priestly pederasts, so it’s not a big deal.”
Well, actually this is what I am saying. I imagine you didn’t read the Spiked link. Spiked is a left-wing organization from what I can see. Their editor, Brendan O’Neill, says that the confident reports of thousands of abuse cases are completely misleading. The number of serious accusations is small. I would add that a proportion of all such accusations are motivated by mendacity and fantasy. What proportion? What’s your own guess? I have known a few people who lie so freely that they don’t know what day of the week it is.
By the way, doesn’t pederastry involve under age teenagers rather than small children? You might remember the recent accusation made against Prince Andrew that he had indulged in child abuse, the ‘child’ being 17 years old at the time, which made her a minor in whatever state she was in. The only small problem with the charge apart from that is that there was no evidence and the complainant had serious issues with the concept of truth.
It is related to man-made global warming, although in the case of the Church there is a small core of truth whereas with AGW the delusion appears to be total.
My reference to AGW is that the delusion is of the same kind, basically people believing things which aren’t true.
In terms of loss of faith, the complicity of the Bishops was worse than the abuse itself. Only a small minority of priests actually abused, but the complicity and cover up was and is massive, reaching to the highest levels.
You redeem yourself by your dismissal of the Global Warming Cult.
So, Sean, you are still denying global warming. Please do tell us, when you have time, what is wrong with it.
Specifically.
Janos
As I said, I haven’t looked into the clerical abuse in detail, and I doubt anyone else here has either. There is no doubt there was some and I am inclined not believe the confident claims of the ill-educated that ‘it was always there’. So, there must have been something in the air in the 60s, 70s and 80s where priests gave into temptation. This was before easy access to on-line pornography but my own memories of growing up in the 60s and 70s were of a great increase in sexual permissiveness. (In the England of the 50s, across all or most classes (except I suppose the very top and bottom layers) there was very little allowed if you weren’t married.)
I imagine that there was a strong connection here with loss of faith in general. Was it the Bishop of York or Durham who, back as far as the 80s or 90s (nothing would surprise me nowadays), amazed me by saying that he didn’t believe in the Resurrection? Well, if there is no absolute truth or belief then everything is relative and anything goes, or potentially goes. Hence the Paedophile Exchange I referred to earlier, just to take one example.
As for the Church’s cover up it doesn’t seem that strange or sinister. All organizations cover up. People make excuses for one another all the time, provided it’s for one of their own. Older bishops probably couldn’t believe it was happening or thought it was exaggerated. (Certainly many people of my parents’ generation found it difficult to take in.) They probably didn’t understand it and thought that by moving a wayward priest to another parish he’d get out of it.
I wouldn’t feel safe in many hospitals in England or Ireland. I would hate to be a child in state care. I wouldn’t feel at ease, or even physically safe, in many modern, progressive and caring state schools. I would expect any organization, including medical, police, armed forces, professional (you name it) to be strongly inclined to cover up for individual misconduct in their ranks.
Here’s another thought: what about the arguments that those who abuse children were often or usually abused themselves as children? Where’s the compassion there when the outrage is being pumped out?
Now, here’s someone on Wiki setting the record straight about the (Anglican) Bishop of Durham, who apparently really said that he didn’t deny the reality of the Resurrection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jenkins_(bishop)
See how easy inaccurate reports circulate.
However, to support my earlier comment, I did read of the Irish Redemptorist priest (I have a cutting from the Irish Catholic from about 3 years ago) who went further than this and claimed that Jesus never existed historically. This shows the strength of intellectual conformity: it even in some cases overrides the hard evidence (Josephus etc). He wrote a book about it, which I really should read from a psychological point of view. I have read, though, John Cornwell’s Breaking Faith which you could call an extravert’s bible: isn’t it terrible how the Church makes good people feel guilty and outrageous how it marginalizes women, homosexuals, etc.
Sauerkraut
Thanks for calling me an AGW denier. That’s the first time I’ve been given the award.
The broad reason (which you haven’t asked for) is simply that it fits into what some might call the psychological profile of similar episodes of mass hysteria, another of which I have just been discussing. Yet another, refugees/ mass immigration, passed by briefly at the start of September and did a huge deal of damage before passing on (for the time being).
The narrow, specific, reason is what I have read about the IPCC. There have been many reports (which I have read about mainly, if not exclusively, in Christopher Booker’s book and Donna Laframboise’s blog) of its systematic rigging of its evidence to fit its political agenda. I gave you a couple of specific bits of evidence a few weeks ago. In Booker’s book I have jsut got to 2007 or 8 and the announcement by 400 respectable scientists that they didn’t believe in it either (sorry, that they were *denying* it). The infamous hockey stick graph of global warming is a very good example: two or three likely sources of data were used while the others (like the fish that John West rejects) were ignored, just like the Medieval Warm period was also ignored.
I am grateful to AGW for making me revisit Al Gore, who had always puzzled me in that he is widely regarded (including by himself apparently) as an introvert yet acts like an extravert. That was a sweet moment. I am worried by it in that EU, and Britain in particular, are wrecking their energy policies on the strength of it. Britain is closing down its remaining efficient coal power stations while the more realistic (perhaps they are less susceptible to western hysteria?) Chinese and Indians ignore AGW – China is building coal power stations at a very fast rate.
While I’m here I just read a 2009 blog post from Laframboise:
‘Bill McKibben: Extravagant Emotional Excess
‘A few weeks ago I read Bill McKibben’s 1989 book, The End of Nature. It’s considered the first mainstream book on global warming and is, one presumes, part of the reason McKibben is a revered environmental guru.
‘… What surprised me , as a newcomer to McKibben’s work, is how utterly *emotional* his arguments are…’
Now that doesn’t surprise *me*.
Sean, you talk about psychology. AWG is not a matter of psychology. This is a matter of reality.
It does not matter who tells you a truth, so long as he gives you the opportunity to check it. That is what the publication process is all about: so that you can check the work. So, check the work, and see if it is wrong. Go ahead.
Since the thread is structured in such a way that it appears that I am responding to Ozone, let’s do this down thread where it is unambiguous that we are the two who disagree.
Well the whole point is that the Church isn’t supposed to be just another organization, but rather divinely guided and full of moral men in authority. How could a devout Catholic like you miss that? You must be a Vatican Two Catholic lite kind of guy. Or as the Trads say, a Novus Ordo Kathy.
The Catholic church has much to answer for, far beyond their recent intentional ignorance of priestly ravaging of the innocent young, just the latest revelation in a long line of abuses of power and corruption going back at least 1700 years, and just one of countless examples of the folly of organized religion, an affliction too long infecting mankind and “civilization”, a misnomer if ever there was one.
J’acccuse!
Speaking of ‘intentional ignorance’ are you writing as an evangelical atheist
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/03/what-scares-the-new-atheists
or are you a biblical fundamentalist?
I bet you consider yourself educated and intelligent, though, free of prejudice and with an open, enquiring mind!
‘the innocent young’
Out of interest how would you define this in this day and age?
Bill McKibben: is an idiot.
here,
progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/an-open-letter-to-bill-mckibben/
LA Times: Illegal Immigration Can Reduce Global Warming …
The Los Angeles Times ran a Thursday editorial by Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben arguing … will reduce global warming. … immigration reform, allowing …
[Search domain http://www.breitbart.com] breitbart.com/big-journalism/2013/03/14/lat-increased-i…
“….the vaunted wondrous Internet will be little more than a grapevine and a rumor mill.” –alphie
The TPP will affect the internet and will create new threats for journalists and whistleblowers:
“Dangerously vague text on the misuse of trade secrets, which could be used to enact harsh criminal punishments against anyone who reveals or even accesses information through a “computer system” that is allegedly confidential.”
Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without commercial motivation. Users could be jailed or hit with debilitating fines over file sharing, and may have their property or domains seized or destroyed even without a formal complaint from the copyright holder.”
Good-bye “fair use” … sure was good to know ya. ™ Tim McGraw, “Mexicoma”
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
Working down the page here.
Hi!
yeah wpa the quote you ascribed to me was from JHK’s above piece
Trump call for the end of all Muslim immigration. At last a Man stands up in pubic and speaks the Truth.
http://www.dailystormer.com/glorious-leader-calls-for-complete-ban-on-all-moslems/
epublican presidential candidate Donald Trump called Monday for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
The proposed ban would stand “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” his campaign said in a statement.
The statement added that Trump’s proposal comes in response to the level of hatred among “large segments of the Muslim population” toward Americans.
such refreshing honesty
so simple and understandable
only a liberal couldn’t grasp this
it’s what everyone who’s law abiding knows in their heart
Compare this to “Tom” Brokaw and “Charlie” (don’t you love this intimacy! It reminds of the Old Boston Herald referring to Hinckley as Hink) Rose, both fanatical Obama supporters, admitting they knew nothing about Obama. Did that dampen their faith? By no means!
These two old queens are just cheerleaders with tattered and ratty pom poms, too old to jump they just dish instead – no doubt feeling thrills up their leg all the while.
What is with this country and the idea because a “movie” was made about something it brings import?
This is precisely the problem! We can’t digest or bother to read the news story, most likely because news has lost all objectivity and/or people are too beaten down to care. “What’s that another phony institution that demands legitimacy is involved in an unsavory scandal?”
Documentary films only appeal to a small percentage of people.
So we have fictionalized hollywood versions that dramatize the news story. People can only digest the medicine, the reality, with sugar-coated film.
The stupidity of this vehicle for “news” escapes attention.
Can’y wait for the film version of Benghazi, San Berdoo massacre, the debt implosion. When it’s fictionalized we’ll believe it!!! Always after the fact.
Nation of dummies.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/08/rise-documentary-film
…a new breed of theatrically-minded, more commercially viable documentaries that are contributing to the genre’s increasing success. Recent British Film Institute data show that the number of documentaries released in British cinemas has grown steadily every year over the last decade, from a measly four in 2001 to 86 last year. Documentaries now also account for about 16% of the Cannes film market according to its director, Jerome Paillard, compared with 8% five years ago. Netflix, an online streaming service that also makes television series, recently announced that it will soon be producing documentaries for the next wave of its original content drive.
http://www.janson.com/focus/documentary-films-rising-in-popularity/
While the blockbuster feature films with huge budgets get lots of attention, the demand for factual content and documentaries are growing rapidly. Part of this burst in popularity is due to the Internet and the increasing number of platforms that stream documentaries. In 2013, documentaries account for 16% of the films being marketed at Cannes, while only 5 years ago that percentage was half, at 8%. Another driving factor in the increase is the advancement in technology of editing software and camcorders. Documentary films can be made with very small budgets with many being crowd funded and crowd sourced.
That is reassuring, but is it flocking to this media by those unable to get investigative news from print (my suspicion) or is incredulity with mainstream corporate media now in fashion (my doubt)?
Now, if we can only put an end to the endless stream of comic book movies
Trump’s proposal comes in response to the level of hatred among “large segments of the Muslim population” toward Americans.
“large segments of the Muslim population” Janos? I don’t think so, given there are 1.6 Billion Muslims and millions of Muslim-Americans. But I guess it depends on how you define “large” Do you have any evidence?
Regardless, the barbarians have been the westerners, not the Muslims. In 2009, Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, wrote in Foreign Policy:
“How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.”
Do The Math: Global War On Terror Has Killed 4 Million Muslims Or More
I don’t think a “large segment” of Muslims hate us. But I understand the reasons for those few who do feel some level of resentment. We are imperialistic occupiers.
“Nasser, Saddam and Gaddafi – dictators as they certainly were – were engaged in efforts to create a modern, progressive and self-sufficient society and to uplift their peoples. However unsavory they were politically, they did bring education, better health and security. We didn’t like them. We tried to kill Nasser and did kill Saddam and Gaddafi.” –William R. Polk
We should open our borders to Muslims, especially to refugees. We should embrace Muslim-Americans, many of whom are serving in our armed forces. Antipathy toward Muslims and discrimination against Muslims is playing right into the hands of Daesh.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/do-the-math-global-war-on-terror-has-killed-4-million-muslims-or-more/
We should embrace the reality that all religion, particularly the middle eastern strains are batsh*t crazy.
Humanity needs to have an honest talk with the dummies that still believe in the tooth fairy and who are hellbent on ruining this world.
Secular materialist scientists made it possible to destroy the entire world with nukes, not the religious.
Of course dummy, religion gives them the will and not the way, never the way…
Not just the secular materialist scientists. Compton was one of the major leaders of that project, and he was as religious as a Chautauqua tent.
When the secular materialist scientists got uppity and wanted to have some influence with bomb policy, Compton read from the Bible to call them back to their duty. In 1942.
Thanks, excellent article
How Hillary would rein in Wall Street – she’d essentially say, “Cut it out!” :-p
http://www.yatedo.com/s/Smoki+Bacon
How does one get a name like Smoki Bacon? And why? What’s your favorite weird upper class Protestant name?
My favorite is Stringfellow Barr, associated with great books movement. At least he tried did something positive by trying to get America to stay Western.
I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Great reporting by well educated writers. True, it’s a right-wing propaganda rag but its not a liberal spin with local politicization which is much worse. It’s a new day when Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney write an opinion.
Iraq was a quagmire of sorts, but it’s the liberals including Obama is who gave the soldier’s hard won collateral away to a bunch of desert clowns.
We had it in our hands, our 51st State, and gave it away. Stupid of Obama to give up a strategic vantage point just a cruise-missile’s throw from Tehran!
Clearly Obama never played RISK! when he was young. He is, indeed, as Rumsfeld said it, a FECKLESS President.
That’s what Moochelle called him too. no wonder she’s always in such a bad mood.
“Two things, at least, are necessary to break out of this hall of mirrors: men acting like honorable men, and hierarchies of leadership with the integrity to actually lead. For now, the USA is not interested in those things.”
There’s talk of bringing back the Victorians… well, their dress, ornamentation, and drinking habits… we are a nation that appreciates the veneer more than anything. Skin-deep change in a president and a round of gin-slings for everyone.
I know it must be difficult to get a rant going every week but it’s pretty lame when stale rhetoric like “the leading dispenser of wishful thinking by a feminized political Left preoccupied with feelings over truth.” gets thrown in.
What passes for Left in the US is better called LIberal. the very Liberal defined by the right which surely has been reduced to an obsession with gender issues, then other very specific issues appealing to particular interest groups and then maybe fiddling with the tax code. The former isn’t “feminized” in any way that’s relevant historically, and the latter are as out of date as the dial phone.
The increasing school marm/old conservative Yankee sentiments in JHK’s work that belittles the little at the expanse of the big issues is rapidly diminishing his message.
You are absolutely correct. The left is not feminized. The left is emasculated, and these days, they prefer it that way.
Men have not made a humane world. It’s time to give control to women.
The men (Germans, Russians, Brits, Americans, etc.) of the “greatest generation” really messed things up during WW2. Years of war, millions dead, and at the end millions remained under Stalin’s oppressive communism. Complete failure… leading to Cold War.
Time for women to take over. Giving women full access to all combat positions in all branches of the armed forces is a start. Requiring that more than half the congress be women representatives. Hell, we may even have a woman elected president next year. It is time for 200 years of rule by women (40 or so women presidencies).
I don’t know, some years ago Hillary was quoted as saying that with the polar ice caps melting we will have greater access to the oil there. Say what?? What happened to climate change? And women have become as aggressive as men behind the wheel. Power corrupts…(any gender)
The left is fake. It’s role is to replace real issues like globalism and corporatism with LGBT and transgender silliness.
C’mon everybody, do The Social Issue Shuffle!
Yep. Not like the right, who can’t be controlled with fake issues like abortion and gun control. That would never work.
Well, except for the word “feminized,” which evokes Julius Evola, I agree.
-Phut
I’m writing in response to “daytrip’s” earlier post at 2:22 pm and his longer 4:05 pm sub-post, extolling Bill Moyers as a paragon of virtue for PBS, concluding with, “Anyway, I just wanted to mention Bill Moyers as a great journalist who did some in-depth reporting with PBS, back in the day.”
Even further “back in the day”,choirboy Billy Don “Bill” Moyers (who served as an ordained Baptist pastor and in 1959 completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas) was the protégé of the previously-referenced “odious political toad” Lyndon Johnson, working tirelessly behind the scenes, helping carry-out Johnson’s typically seedy political moves. From Wikipedia:
“In 1954, then-US Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson’s personal mail. Soon after, Moyers transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper. In 1956, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stations, owned by Lady Bird Johnson, wife of then-Senator Johnson…
“During Senator Johnson’s unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign he acted as liaison between Democratic vice-presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy…
“When Lyndon B. Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson, serving from 1963 to 1967. Moyers is the last surviving person identifiable in the photograph taken of Johnson’s first inauguration on Air Force One. He played a key role in organizing and supervising the 1964 Great Society legislative task forces and was a principal architect of Johnson’s 1964 presidential campaign. Moyers acted as the President’s informal chief of staff from October 1964 until 1966. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as White House press secretary.
After the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Walter Jenkins because of a sexual misdemeanor in the run up to the 1964 election, President Lyndon B. Johnson, alarmed that the opposition was framing the issue as a security breach, ordered Moyers to request FBI name checks on 15 members of Goldwater’s staff to find “derogatory” material on their personal lives. Goldwater himself only referred to the Jenkins incident off the record. The (Frank)Church Committee stated in 1975 that “Moyers has publicly recounted his role in the incident, and his account is confirmed by FBI documents.” In 2005, Laurence Silberman claimed that Moyers denied writing the memo in a 1975 phone call. Moyers said he had a different recollection of the telephone conversation.
“Moyers also sought information from the FBI on the sexual preferences of White House staff members, most notably Jack Valenti. Moyers indicated his memory was unclear on why Johnson directed him to request such information, “but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.”
“Moyers approved (but had nothing to do with the production) of the infamous “Daisy Ad” against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign. That ad is considered the starting point of the modern-day harshly negative campaign ad.
“Journalist Morley Safer in his 1990 book “Flashbacks” wrote that Moyers and President Johnson met with and “harangued” Safer’s boss, CBS president Frank Stanton, about Safer’s coverage of the Marines torching Cam Ne village in the Vietnam War. During the meeting, Safer alleges, Johnson threatened to expose Safer’s “communist ties”. This was a bluff, according to Safer. Safer says that Moyers was “if not a key player, certainly a key bystander” in the incident. Moyers stated that his hard-hitting coverage of conservative presidents Reagan and Bush were behind Safer’s 1990 allegations…”
For much more insight into the kind of political “animal” (in the worst sense of the word) Lyndon Johnson was, and the enabling role Bill Moyers repeatedly played on his behalf, including communicating Johnson’s request to have the bubble top removed from President Kennedy’s limo (purportedly to make him more accessible to Johnson’s fellow Texan constituents): “Get that goddamned bubble [top] off unless it’s pouring rain” said Bill Moyers just hours before John Kennedy’s head was blown off in Dallas on November 22, 1963, I highly recommend:
“LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination” by Phillip F. Nelson, and his follow-up book, “LBJ: From Mastermind to ‘The Colossus”
I have read a number of books on Lyndon Johnson and am convinced not only that he was the worst President in American history, but that he was a criminal and a sociopath who, in a just world, should have been sent to prison very early in his political career.
Sticks-of-TNT
LBJ did more to crack this country’s foundation than the heaps of fools after him. Perhaps why a poor corn poke commoner should never be elected again.
LBJ is known as the man who consolidated White House war powers. Too bad Obamanation can’t effectively use them. Damn. We’d not be having Muslim issues (ISIS) were Bush still in charge.
Yes and when Israel attacked the Liberty, Johnson said, I wont embarrass an ally. Let them sink it. Extraordinary. America was already gone at the highest levels – it just hadn’t worked its way down yet. Luckily, the military wasn’t on board yet, and ignored his orders. Seeing the approaching US planes on radar, the Israeli jets fled.
You are absolutely correct, Janos. A disgraceful story and we can be certain the truth is not taught in our government-controlled schools. -Sticks
Several years ago, I happened to meet a guy who was on the Liberty. He told me the attacking airplanes had no insignia or national markings and that the attack last for a very, very long time.
Well, who’da thunk it? I admit that I don’t know much about Bill Moyer’s past. Probably the earliest thing that I saw from him was the “Power of Myth” series with Joseph Campbell, which I enjoyed. My impression of him was (is) that of a progressive voice that spoke for the common man. Your post is interesting.
You are very gracious. Admittedly, Moyer has a folksy charm which he uses to his advantage. Obviously, a product of his Texas upbringing and his time as a Baptist pastor. Behind that facade is the spirit of a serpent. Be well. -Sticks
LBJ was rude, crude and socially unacceptable. He was a lunatic. A sociopath. Ruined the lives of millions of people. 3,000,000 Vietnamese died and all we ever talk about are 58,000 Americans. A 60 to 1 kill ratio. Made a fortune off the war. NASA made him rich. Few people have noticed how that happened. The faking of the lunar landings made LBJ millions. In the end he could not bear the weight of the mendacity of his life. He had a nervous breakdown. Tricky Dick had to finish the farce. The 2 greatest American events happened on the same day July,16. The Trinity Atomic Bomb Test and Apollo 11 both occurred on July 16. JFK Jr died July 16. Stanley Kubrick insisted “Eyes Wide Shut,” be released on July 16, 1999 the exact day and year JFK Jr died. Kubrick also predicted the year of 9/11, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
You are right on target here Seawolf.
LBJ was an evil bastard… spawn of the devil…destroyer of America and other places.
Plus the co-inky-dinks you mention are so damning.
Ramstein’s great video says it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxroiTRg7Tg
It’s clear that Trump has become the de facto President of the United States of America with his honest remarks about muslims – our mortal enemy – during the present wartime.
Stating obvious truths that the current JV president in the White House will not utter. His failure to do so is directly resulting in the slaughter of Americans.
Trump’s words alone are hundreds of times more powerful a deterrent to terrorist acts than Obama’s failure to act – which stokes muslims’ resolve to kill Americans.
muslims know that an America under President Donald Trump will crush them.
Trump speaks muslims’ language very well, and they understand this
Compare this to Ted Cruz’s statement, We will carpet bomb ISIS into non-existence. I don’t know if sand can glow, but we’re going to find out.
Not a word about keeping America safe. And sure enough, he is opposed Trump’s plan to keep the enemy out.
The next step is deportation. It is the only reasonable thing to do.
Trump is similar in many regards to Theodore Roosevelt.
I have a coffee table sized book called “A Free and Hardy Life: Theodore Roosevelt’s Sojourn in the American West”, by Clay S. Jenkinson. There are many things from the book that I could use to illustrate the similarities but happened to flip it open to page 143.
“Roosevelt and the Libel Suit”. [Trump will suit you in a NY minute]
“On October 12, 1912, towards the end of the Bull Moose presidential campaign, the Ishpeming, Michigan, Iron Ore [newspaper] published the following statement:
“Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way; he gets drunk too, and that not infrequently, and all his intimate friends know about it.” [We don’t know about Trump’s drinking habits but can only wonder if they are similar.]
…”It was easy to see why Newett [the editor] might regard Theodore Roosevelt as an intoxicated man. His behavior was so hectic and over-the-top at all times that it was hard to believe he was not pouring something into his gigantic cups of coffee. Even my friend Henry Adams wrote, “Theodore is never sober, only he is drunk with himself and not with rum.”
“His election rival William Howard Taft [why didn’t they just call him Bill?] said, “I think the intoxication was altogether with his own verbosity. I would make an excellent witness in his defense.”
“After the Bull Moose campaign ended, Roosevelt sued Newett [the newspaper editor] for libel.”
The subject of cultural “health” hardly lends itself to objective metrics.
I wish we had a method of measuring the meaning of the judgments and accusations made in this BLOG.
For me, I considered the media-industry’s acceptance of GW’s and Dickie-boy’s “WAR ON TERROR” as my “1984” truth-speak moment.
Of course – on the other side it could depend on what your definition of what “IS” is ???
Anyways – never mind – that’s what everyone else does……
Men have not made a humane world. It’s time to give control to women.
The men (Germans, Russians, Brits, Americans, etc.) of the “greatest generation” really messed things up during WW2. Years of war, millions dead, and at the end millions remained under Stalin’s oppressive communism. Complete failure… leading to Cold War.
Time for women to take over. Giving women full access to all combat positions in all branches of the armed forces is a start. Requiring that more than half the congress be women representatives. Hell, we may even have a woman elected president next year. It is time for 200 years of rule by women (40 or so women presidencies).
God save the Queen!
I’m sorry but I just can’t see a 500 ft obelisk change into a 500 ft taco.
Vote for Trump for Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. What? You don’t like being told who to vote for? Ok, vote for someone else then. One question though: why are you in favor of immigrants who have no heritage of Democracy and who will just vote for whomever their elders tell them to?
http://www.today.com/news/times-person-year-2015-caitlyn-jenner-donald-trump-isis-join-t59931
” immigrants who have no heritage of Democracy and who will just vote for whomever their elders tell them to?” –Janos
Oh, those poor, stupid immigrants! They have no place in the American white nation! They are like children who cannot think for themselves… poor things! They need strong white men to lead them. /sarcasm off
Truth from the mouth of babes. A child will lead us.
No, a woman will lead us… HRC.
Here is Knox’s masterpiece, First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. It is our answer to the SCUM Manifesto which you implicitly support.
http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm
a little “art” piece I put together in late 2012 – from a larger 30 minute tape I titled, “Brides of Nonsense”.
(The HLS mentioned is my character calling Homeland Security)
https://soundcloud.com/lowvibes-on-the-totempole/timothy-mcveigh-is-gonna-pep-em-up
*note – I am from the town that executed Timothy McVeigh. In fact, my Uncle was his nurse at the Federal Pen.
I still recall the news trucks lined up outside the Penitentiary during my freshman year of high school. A good early lesson in the mechanisms of the Spectacle.
And yes, the pep band drummer on tv did look like Timothy McVeigh.
Your “town” did not execute McVeigh, nor did your state. Don’t put that on the good Hoosiers of Terre Haute, Indiana. -Sticks
I am certainly not.
Goodness, now I am left to wonder where you might be carrying those ‘Sticks-of-TNT’.
Please pardon my vernacular into the future when referencing location(s), events, and meaning. As is laid down in historical record, yes, the town did not collectively inject like a horde of white coated zombies or a lynch mob. A topic I might very well explore into the future with you fine people, if the curmudgeons about the residence do not nitpick too hard, will be historical event and possible psychic weight that might instill within a people.
Thanks,
pjs
Sticks,
Is your handle a spaghetti western reference?
How do you feel about the music of Ennio Morricone?
Words matter here. Welcome aboard (if you can stand the heat, you’ll learn a lot.) -Sticks
SHINING A LIGHT ON TRUMP
Six reasons I will not vote for Trump:
1) He wants to create a database of all Muslims in the United States.
2) He lies about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11.
3) He is the birther-in-chief, cynically sowing doubt about President Obama’s legitimacy as the duly elected President of the United States.
4) His misogyny.
5) His xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants, including his lies about Mexican immigrants and his ardent desire to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
6) His unmistakable passion for bullying. Again, there’s no shortage of examples, but you could start with his defense of supporters who roughed up a protester at one of his rallies or his ridiculing of a disabled New York Times reporter.
You’ll look great in a burqa….but better skip the burqini.
We’re laughing our asses off here at Fort Apache.
Some guy from kenya named hussein….what is there to be suspicious about?
We need to shine a light on Trump. How can we know where he was born when he refuses to show his birth certificate.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has refused to release his long-form birth certificate and passport records, despite demanding the same from Barack Obama during the 2012 election. The Guardian contacted the Trump campaign to request the birth certificate and passport records of the Apprentice host, but a spokeswoman refused to share the documents.
What is your happiest childhood memory with a Catholic priest?
An excellent question. I cannot think of a single one. I am Catholic, born in New Orleans, went to Catholic schools all my life. Priests were like another life form. It’s hard to describe.
Donald Trump is now an actual threat to national security. He’s providing jihadists ammunition for their campaign to demonize the US. –Jeffrey Goldberg
Well if Jeffrey Goldberg said it then it must be true.
I once saw on one of those CNN fashion shows a hot, svelte Russian model walking the runway in a see-through Muslim burqa. She was Hot!
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/12/brown-university-professor-denounces-mccarthy-witch-hunts/
These educated fools actually thought that could give the bully their milk money and that would be the end of it. No street smarts at all. To the Black bullies, milk is too White what to speak of the professors.
Trump wants shutdown of Muslims entering USA.
Others respond:
Good opportunity for Canadian tourism: our dollar is down and we don’t exclude visitors because of their religion! –Ingrid Mattson
https://t.co/zjAbXUZbsp
Good opportunity for Canadian tourism: our dollar is down and we don’t exclude visitors because of their religion!
================
It’s one thing to visit; it’s another thing to STAY.
Attn Kdog:
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/12/isis-has-targeted-refugee-program-to-enter-us-homeland-security-chairman-says/
This is mere confirmation of what aware people already knew. It was obvious to us and completely opaque for you. It’s not necessarily that you are without intuition or the power of deduction, but you are simply refusing to use them on this (and other) issues. Political Correctness is a mind killer.
“The surviving local newspapers are little more than bulletin boards for news releases from interested parties. They’ve fired all their reporters.”
True. One of the interested parties influencing reportage at the LA Times is the Los Angeles Police Union, whose $18.4 billion pension fund is managed by Oaktree Capital, which is the single largest owner of Tribune Publishing, parent company to LA Times and San Diego Union-Tribune. Additionally, editors and writers of the San Diego Union-Tribune have been fired at the behest of the police and fire union in Los Angeles.
http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/01/ted-rall-lapd-la-firing-scandal-rall-vindicated-lapd-under-fire-exclusive/
I sincerely wait with great anticipation for every Monday morning when I can click over to this place and read your words every week. Thank you. You have hit some long balls this week sir and I applaud you achievement!
Institutional rot of the Catholic Church – They purport to represent Jesus on earth. Look at Jesus. Look at the Vatican. Seriously WFT are they smoking?
Dying newspapers – nothing ever dies in American culture and newspapers will always be useful because they soak up a lot of dog pee and are great for starting fires. I get mine second hand because they are not worth paying for.
Diminishing returns of technology – Don’t speak this too often or they will tie you to a stake and burn you. There is ALWAYS a great price to be paid for such things but it is always hidden well enough to fool the Common Idiot who would pull out his own teeth with a pair of lineman’s pliers to get the next upgrade to his techno-baubles. Ah but so true, well written – I am proud to be a fan sir! Keep up the good work.
The concept of shining a powerful light on a subject to showcase the truth or at least its shadow: powerful and dangerous.
Notice how cockroaches scatter the moment the light comes on; the old interrogation room has the one bare bulb right above the perps face causing him to squint as the detective do some heavy grilling; sunlight causes the laundry to dry clean and fresh on the line.
But as JHK laments we don’t have it anymore, that availablilty to read all about it. It has truly dissolved into the abyss of the digital world. Lament the loss of the IBM Selectric with a moments silence please.
Just look at it: the facile, almost infantile, coverage of the momentous (Le Front Nationale makes historic victories in French regional elections) while deep analysis is rendered to the idiotic and dare I say retarded (Kim Khardashians new whelp and any American sport you care to choose.) At least in the U.S.A. European radio, press and TV know that the winds of change are blowing against the EPIC FAILURE of Liberal government folly ( and probably the royal houses of Europe also – they have been utterly complicit in the catastrophic experiments in national destruction.)
And the triumph of technology makes it oh so simple.
Research? we don’t need no stinking research – we use Wikipedia!
Where legwork and connections in the borderlands of society used to exist – now there are treadmills at the gym for any legwork and wifi connections will do nicely because its just too fucking dangerous to go into the ‘hood, or Monrovia; or Raqqa for that matter. Way too messy and inconvenient. Comfy and safe spaces are what’s important.
Like the attention span that has been gifted to the watchers of the TV, it seems almost no one can sit and write a letter in cursive anymore – takes too much time. Best just tweet that thought and send it out into the ether and share with everyone: the jejune, the mundane, the banal because that is exactly what has become interesting to the masses. Not investigative journalism that can hurt peoples careers or send them to jail or expose entire industries and institutions for what they really are: nightmares made corporeal for decades, centuries and millennia .
A civilization with a backbone of silly putty and grey matter that has metamorphosed into cotton candy. Sort of just like Barry’s speech last night. No research, no history, no passion – simply specifics of marshmallow fluff and presented in a way not to hurt anybody’s feelings.
The senior Islamic State militant leader known as Abu Nabil in Libya, and the senior Al-Shabaab leader in Somalia had more than their feelings hurt by our Commander in Chief.
Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis also confirmed the death of Abdirahman Sandhere, known as ‘Ukash’ in an air strike. He was a senior leader of Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia.
Marshmallow fluff? You mis-characterize President Obama. Obama is kicking ass. It’s all illegal, and grounds for impeachment, but the Republicans in Congress are ignoring Obama’s unauthorized war and refuse to give him the authorization Obama requested over a year ago.
Pentagon confirms airstrikes killed top ISIS & Al-Qaeda leaders in Libya, Somalia
https://www.rt.com/usa/325022-pentagon-isis-leader-libya/
Pssst! That’s the news service of CFN’s beloved macho man, Putin.
wpa,,,you just don’t get enough oxygen to that head of yours.
All the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members are, with the exception of CHina, actively engaged in military operations against the proto-state of the Caliphate aka ISIS. However, there is no coordination between them to make a battle plan e.g. NATO member Turkey shoots down Russian warplane to cause antagonism that could escalate into WWIII.
Reason enough I think to disband the useless NYC home of a cake gig for well connected diplomatic family types and technocrats. The U.N. stands for useless nonsense.
A medium sized military expeditionary force of the said Security Council, say 10 infantry divisions, 10 armored divisions, two special forces brigades, and current in-theatre air assets should EASILY crush the “J.V.” team of Yzlamik soldiers of ISIS. In a month. Why hasn’t it happened? Bidness? Hurt feelings? Geo-political shenanigans???
There is hand wringing from the Europeans with some air warfare thrown for feeling good; the Russians doing a yeomans’ job of supporting their client Rump Syria; Barry sez the solution to terrorism is to bring them to America and don’t insult them, or I’ll sic Loretta Lynch on you; and the Chinese, sitting in their box seats, laughing their asses off.
NO sorry, no party here except for the Russians and Turks are serious: the Turks want the bidness with their brethren to continue and the Russians want revenge. There will be no Gallipoli , or Treaty of San Stefano or Berlin, this time should things escalate.
Whatever the case, you, wpa… are a hard-core, true believer in Barry of the Apotheosis, and as such there is no convincing, compelling or coercing arguments for you that the occupier of the Oval Office is a phraud.
I applaud your ignorance, for it is strength.
Peq,
More and more, I am enjoying your excellent and common-sense-ical rants.
I appreciate your compliment and also your usual snarky participation in this CFN forum. Thank you.
WPA is a multiple personality/avatar troll. A Phil Hendrie character testing the limits of absurdity and believability.
“We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media – sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment. We should target social accounts for terrorist groups like the Islamic State, and remove videos before they spread, or help those countering terrorist messages to find their voice.”
“Without this type of leadership from government, from citizens, from tech companies, the Internet could become a vehicle for further disaggregation of poorly built societies, and the empowerment of the wrong people, and the wrong voices.”
This quote, from Today’s BBC website, purportedly verbatim, from Google’s CEO, who may well soon decide who are the wrong people with the wrong voice.
“How do you like it now, Gentlemen”?
NEO-NAZIS BACK TRUMP
“Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR.”
That’s what Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer had to say in response to Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
“Finally: someone speaks sense,” Anglin wrote, pasting Trump’s new proposal under the headline “Glorious Leader Calls For Complete Ban on All Moslems.”
“Make America White Again!” his post concludes.
====================
As an orator, he’s not a pimple on Adolf Hitler’s ass.
Marshmallow fluff? You mis-characterize President Obama. Obama is kicking ass.
obama spends 98% of the time coddling muslims. it took 2 major terrorist attacks with 500+ casualties for him to begin to kick ass, which consisted of killing 1 jihadi
he also wants to bring in tens of thousands of unvettable muslims, calling them orphans and children
we saw what just 1 of the orphans and widows did last week in san bernadino (malik the unvetted fiance)
your side has brought down death, destruction and anarchy upon law abiding citizens.
the epic failure of insane liberal policies has come home to roost. you are in the process of being taught a brutal lesson in common sense
anyone with a smidgeon of decency knows islam is a cancer on modernity & is incompatible with Western ideals
Le Pen in, French borders closed, muslims deported, Trump in, muslims tracked, muslim immigration stopped, mosques and individuals wiretapped
you can thank us normal folk when you don’t get melted by a nuclear device
or do you doubt the muslims would use one on the US?
you tout the rule of women, while standing for the worst ghastly religion that literally murders them for no reason
you are a typical mixed up lefty
liberalism is a mental illness, oh it is so obviously so
“obama spends 98% of the time coddling muslims” where’d you get the stat flo-nase? Another example of why Flonase is…..nuttier ‘n holiday fruit cake
what’s wrong with making america white again?
i thought all cultures are to be celebrated?
a website say up with whites, blm and farrakhan say up with blacks…
whites, like noble blacks, have given the world so much.
we’re all equal and part of the rainbow
right, wpa?
“what’s wrong with making america white again?” Because then everbody ‘d look like you. Uggh! This is just too easy
THE EIGHTH CRUSADE HAS BEGUN……christians and muslims in a death match with the jews instigating in case the battle slows down. The christians have managed to destroy 5 muslim nations in 10 years….now the counterattack commences. Enjoy…….the first seven crusades blundered on for 200 years.
nsa,
Imagine what the crusades of olde could have ‘accomplished’ (body-count-wise) if it had a even a small portion of modern weaponry! Glorious, I tell you!
But the question remains: Will we read about this glorious clash of former “civilizations” in the Sunday comic section or hear it from the Great Wurlitzer?
Exactly. the Muslims people are fighting for their collective lives. Many are leaving, abandoning their homes, just like we wanted them to. Bomb the shit out of them. They’ll leave their oil wealth behind. GLADLY. Trump is now trumpeting the goals of the Catholic Church. Destroy Islam. People laugh at me when I say the Catholic Church runs the world. Look around man. Who are we killing? Who are we stealing from? Whose nations are being destroyed?
Do you drink your Mad Dog 20/20 from the bag, or pour it into a plastic cup?
The UUP “dollar express” which you advised people to buy at $26 has gone down 2.42%
My checking account at the credit union is paying me +2.03% … outperforming your UUP “dollar express” -2.42%
Your credibility is wavering, nsa.
here is islam in a nutshell. what a sorry, sorry ‘culture’. :
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/12/07/police-officer-bitten-by-rampaging-migrant-screaming-allah-akhbar/
this, leftist scum, is what you have done to advanced wonderful civilisations with your horrific compassion
Fundamentally the Catholic Church is a criminal organization based on Satanic principles. It is based on human sacrifice and demon worship. It is organized along the same lines as ancient pagan religions including command structure, holidays, sacraments, and dogma. It has no useful purpose in a modern world. The wealth it holds must be liberated. It is capital held hostage.
Lets turn it around,
The [insert, whatever, Muslim or Jewish] Church is a criminal organization based on Satanic principles. It is based on human sacrifice and demon worship. It is organized along the same lines as ancient pagan religions including command structure, holidays, sacraments, and dogma. It has no useful purpose in a modern world. The wealth it holds must be liberated. It is capital held hostage.
Agreed.
I don’t think Islam or Judaism or Hinduism has a financial equivalent to the Vatican.
Can’t say much about the Hindu, Buddhist or Yzlamik balance sheets; but I will mention one name to consider against your suggestion about Judaism’s financial equivalent of the Vatican:
Rothschild.
The richest group on Earth. Pure delusion now. The Vatican Bank was taken over a century ago. And after Vatican Two, the Church dismantled its shrines to children who had been martyred by the Jews in the different parts of central and Alpine Europe. And changed its entire liturgy, social policy, and Theology. Masons, Jews, and Protestants were all there giving advice as Catholicism was dismantled and put back together against as an adjunct of the nascent global state.
A nearly 2000 year old institution and you think they’re broke. C’mon! During the Dark Ages they were the governing authority so they taxed and stole the people blind. During the Inquisition they stole enormous wealth. During the Crusades they raped and pillaged and looted. They’ve had that basket going around in thousands of churches dozens of times a day. They sold indulgences and dispensations for decades until Martin Luther began the Reformation. It is the most powerful entity on Earth. It is the richest entity on Earth. The Rothschilds are fronts for the Catholic Church, just like the Jews. Look through history. Why is it that the countries that suffer the most are all enemies of the Catholic Church.
You said that Satanism was good up thread. Were you fooling around then or are you fooling around now?
Good and evil are children’s toys. You gotta get past that Janos if you wanna run with the big dogs. Of course if you want to stay up on the porch with the puppies…maybe you should lay on your back and get your belly scratched.
So why did you condemn the Vatican as Satanist? How can you condemn anything if good and evil don’t exist? You are a very self righteous person who needs good and evil. You’ve just under cut your whole existence.
You have to stop talking in hyperbole. Condemn is “I sentence you to 30 years.” Or “Building is unfit for human habitation.” What I am CRITISIZING is an entity that purports to be a force for good and is evil instead. It is the hypocrisy and the deception I find galling. The buggaring of little altar boys at Christmas. The holding of enormous wealth while accepting money from the poor. That sort of thing. If you’re looking for “I gotcha’s” there’s an old 70’s song that goes “I Gotcha, Uh HUH, HUH you thou I didn’t see ya now didn’t you.” You can probably find a 45 on ebay.
Wow. If that’s what you meant, why isn’t that what you said? Now you believe in Good and Evil again, and are for the Good. I understand your exasperation, but it has turned to rancor, creating misunderstanding and exasperation in others. Poorly done.
You pretend to be a Satanist and then get huffy when I believe you. C’mon, accept some responsibility. Of course bad people pretend to be good. Does that Revelation excuse your pretence?
I never said that. Don’t put words into my sentences.
That’s a canned line he has unleashed, pun intended, time and time again. Cut and paste.
Those ancient “pagan” religions are your European/occidental patrimony. Their holidays and sacraments were appropriated by a middle-eastern born cult. As they stripped the marble and stone from their temples, they stole their feast days and their rituals… finally their empire.
io saturnalia
“You tout the rule of women…” –fodase
Yes, because women are oppressed in the USA where there has never been an America woman elected president… compared to more enlightened Muslim countries which have had woman presidents.
Movements for Muslim women to seek roles in national leadership have increased rapidly. Greater opportunities for women in education have further encouraged their involvement in politics. The most prominent Muslim female leaders are former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto (served 1988-1990 and 1993-1996), Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri (elected 2001), former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller (served 1993-1995), former Senegalese President Mame Madior Boye (elected 2001), Bangladeshi Prime Ministers Begum Khaleda Zia (served 1991-96 and 2001-06) and Sheikh Hasina Wajed (first elected in 1996), former Iranian vice president Masoumeh Ebtekar (served from 1997 to 2005), Malian president Cissé Mariam Kaïdama Sidibé (elected in 2011), current President of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga (elected in 2011), and current President of Mauritius Bibi Ameenah Firdaus Gurib-Fakim (elected in 2015).
Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah, an Islamic institute that advises Egypt’s ministry of justice, issued a fatwa stating that female rulers and judges are allowed in Islam
The Qur’an contains verses that appear to support the role of women in politics, such as its mention of the Queen of Sheba, who represented a ruler who consulted with and made important decisions on behalf of her people. Further, the Hadith provides numerous examples of women having public leadership roles. Prophet Muhammad’s first wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid was his chief adviser as well as his first and foremost supporter. His third wife Aisha Abu Bakr, a well-known authority in medicine, history, and rhetoric, often accompanied the Prophet to battles, even leading an army at the Battle of the Camel.
The USA is slowly becoming more accepting of women. 1400 years after The Battle of the Camel now American women can assume combat roles in all ihe branches of the armed forces, just 1,400 years after Islam’s progressive feminist reform of the 7th century… And even now many Christian men disapprove of women being equal to men in combat roles in the US Marines.
oh, sorry, you’re right! muslim countries have elected women presidents!!!
my bad, i thought throwing acid in their faces, denying them education, forced clitorectomies with a kitchen knife, obliging them to cover their entire phreaking bodies, marrying 6-year old girls to 54-year old men, divorcing them by saying ‘i divorce you’ 3 times out loud, not allowing them to enter the same heaven as men, killing them if they’re raped, stoning them to death, murdering them if they talk to another man who’s not their husband, muslim conferences which discuss the kuran’s approval of wifebeating, not allowing them to worship freely in the mosque’s etc. etc. etc.
now i see why liberals support islam – it’s so woman-friendly!!!! makes perfect sense.
gee, thanks for setting us straight!!!!
“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs…”
John Jay, Federalist 2
Absolutely the antithesis of what the multiculturalists want.
United We Stand
Trump ’16
Trump is absolutely fracturing the GOP as it was once known. Now, traditional GOP politicians such as Chris Christie, Jeb! Bush, Lindsay Graham and John Kasich are using terms such as “unhinged” to describe front runner Trump.
Trump, however, is rolling the dice with his Muslim policy declarations. He is betting on more ISIS inspired attacks or even direct ISIS attacks on American soil. And does anyone doubt that ISIS seeks to do exactly that? In that regard, who really is “unhinged”?
With every attack, Trump at once solidifies himself as “prophet and savior” while Bush, Graham, and Christie, et al only amplify the irrelevant status they hold within the current GOP electorate.
Somewhere in the background another politician is smiling with glee at the brush fire within the GOP and relishing the prospect of facing off against Trump in November 2016. But I also have to wonder, if incendiary nature of the ISIS/Muslim dynamic in the homeland might light her campaign up in flames as well.
As a condescending misogynist might quip, this is a powder keg, Honey, so be careful what you wish for.
Trump is nothing but a set-up for Romney to enter the race. The GOP power brokers have it all arranged. Romney will announce his candidacy next spring. He will be seen as the party savior. He will have newly found gravitas. And, gosh, he will have conveniently escaped a year’s worth of public scrutiny!
I have read that theory/rumor and I don’t buy it, although I have no doubt ‘they would if they could’.
But the genie is out of the bottle and there is simply no way that a Romney or anyone else for that matter can present a new GOP “Tabula Rasa” which actually wouldn’t be a blank slate, but just more of the previous-to-Trump same old.
Put another way, no GOP candidate can win without the Trump wing of the party and nobody but Trump cannot represent that wing.
Checkmate!
Millions stayed home rather than vote for wimpy, vacillating, Owned, Romney.
You’re wrong. If Romney comes in, he’d be just another Rubio. Why bother?
Godwin’s Law has, as of yesterday, been annulled for the 2016 election.
You are 50 times more likely to be killed by a policeman than a terrorist. This is a red herring. When somebody points that out to Trump, he’ll look like a fool. Terrorism is a freak event. You can’t plan for freak events. And it is a crime. It is not a war. They call it a war so they don’t have to adhere to the rights a person has under habeus corpus. Then they say he doesn’t belong to a country so they are not bound by the Geneva Convention. These guys lie out of both sides of their mouths.
Terrorism is another name for guerilla warfare, an early stage perhaps. Stop it now or it will progress to full on guerilla warfare. A stich in time saves nine.
You mean like the American Revolutionaries used to defeat the British.
Yeah that’s fine. It started with snow ball fights in Boston.
“my bad”
Your bad is generalizing to an entire religion based on a minority sect’s behavior. There has been no American woman president, there have been many Muslim women elected president… and not by “acid throwers” … by the great majority of peaceful Muslims in a women-friendly religion. Muslim women were assuming national leadership roles when American Christian women were still fighting for basic rights and expecting to be good stay-at-home Stepford wives.
From other fronts of European military operations
Snipers of Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) kill civilians in order to provoke the fighters of the People’s Militia
Ukrainian snipers kill civilians to provoke the soldiers of the Donetsk People’s militia to open fire. This was reported by a source in the military headquarters of the Republic.
According to him, on the night of Monday, December 7, UAF sniper opened fire on 70-year-old resident of the village of Pioneer region Maria Prikhodko. The woman was wounded in the leg and fatally – in the head.
http://rusvesna.su/news/1449560155
As Cold always says: “Follow the money” …
The big money Republican donors are now saying if Trump is the nominee, they will support HRC. Big money does not like to lose.
Here’s the link I promised to Richard Webster’s Flat Earth News article:
http://www.richardwebster.net/jersey2.htm
There is a Part 1 as well, but it’s probably better to start with this one. He promised a Part 3 but I have looked everywhere but can’t find it. I understand that Stead ended up in prison.
Webster argues that crusading journalists are dangerous. I have argued this before on quite a few occasions so I’ll save myself the trouble of typing by pasting in a quote I prepared earlier. Nick Davies, author of the best-selling Flat Earth News, which takes the press to task for its uselessness in this globalized world, himself joined in with the hysteria over the Jersey (that’s the Island off the coast of France) abuse scandal which (like them all) never was.
“A former care-worker writing in the Mail had written this at the time about the Jersey case:
“My mouth went dry and my fists clenched when I heard about the remains in Jersey. [which turned out to be bits of coconut shell]
“I felt sorrow and rage that police are once again belatedly investigating a huge paedophile ring based on care home kids, and expect to dig up more bodies.
“A ring of evil men exploited the most vulnerable children imaginable for up to 40 years, ad no one stopped them.”
Webster concludes his article: “Stead’s modern heirs, who credulously drove forward the witch hunt that took place in North Wales in the closing decade of the twentieth century, make up, as we will see, a roll-call of some of our most distinguished journalists.
“It is a matter of some interest that this roll-call, which relates to those who enthusiastically embraced one of the most dangerous flat-earth stories journalism has ever seen, includes the name of Nick Davies himself.”
Webster coined the term Good Cause Corruption to describe what happens to educated people in responsible positions who allow themselves to get swept along in these insane crusades.
Webster’s explanation for it is interesting but only partly convincing (he traces it back to the 17th C English Cultural Revolution, as it were) but his research and insights are devastating.
In England the so-called Westminster Paedophile Ring story has been simmering along under the surface, erupting from time to time with lurid allegations, usually against dead people, such as former Prime Minister Edward Heath (presumably because this former officer who served in Europe during WW2 was a confirmed bachelor) and former Home Secretary Leon Brittain (because, I imagine, his Spitting Image puppet was so grotesque). What these things always lack is named witnesses.
I’m not commenting about Boston specifically as (unlike the truly deranged Casa Pia case in Portugal) I don’t know anything about it, but I don’t see why it should be immune to the general trend.
It pales in comparison with the culture of PC denial. Rotterham much? Over a thousand English girls were trafficked over the course of a decade and a half. No crusading journalist showed up to publicize the atrocity.
Look, you are beating your drum about half of reality. Sometimes journalist create trouble by doing something – sometimes by doing nothing. Sins of commission and sins of omission.
Yesterday Bernie Sanders presented his plan for improving the correctional system and improving police-community relations. Did anyone see that?
Yesterday Hillary Clinton presented her plan for taking on Wall Street. Did anyone see that?
The news focused on something else yesterday… how convenient Trump is for corporate America. How convenient fear is for the NRA and gun sellers. Apparently you can never have too many guns… or feel really safe. Even though in the USA white supremacist terrorists have killed more Americans than self-radicalized ISIS sympathizers.
Good rant ! I find it comforting so many on this blog have found real sources of ” News.” Can we try something a little different on the slide down ? Anarchy ( Chomsky) style anyone ? This top down male or female leadership thing has not gone very well. What a shame if we take the worst of our past into a new future. See you on the way down. Full speed ahead and Damn the pyramids!!! Time for new social shapes.
How Putin used the cover of “Russian corruption” to modernize the Army under the nose of clueless Americans
President Putin at the time of the Munich speech (02.10.2007) realized that tough confrontation with the West is inevitable, but the Russian army was not ready for it.
At the same time, open preparations for the coming war would give the West time to strike Russia at a time when it is still not strong enough, or very well prepared for a new Cold War with the prospect of turning into hot, and in any case does not give Russia the opportunity to take revenge for the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century – the collapse of the Soviet Union by the CIA agents.
The plan was simply brilliant.
The essence of it was to mask the true vector of development of Russia and the Russian Armed Forces.
President gave a very difficult task to Anatoly Serdyukov, appointed to the post of Minister of Defense of February 15, 2007 (immediately after the Munich speech!).
Appointment of demonstratively incompetent in military affairs person for the post of minister of defense was to create for Western “partners” the appearance that the Russian army is close to its final breakdown, only capable of holding the local anti-terrorist operations.
But the military competence of Serdyukov was not required – in military affairs were engaged other specially trained people, whose names have not yet been declassified. From Serdyukov other talents were required, the possession of which he had perfectly demonstrated in the previous post – the Federal Tax Service.
This was the ability to conduct secret financial transactions, the ability to mask the serious public spending in the veil of the one-day firms, kickbacks and illegal tax refunds.
It was a truly brilliant Putin’s decision, based on a deep knowledge of psychology of the Western “partners” – in fact the best disguise is a lie in which Western intelligence readily believes itself.
The West was so convinced of the total corruption of the Russian elite that it swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
The Western intelligence constantly brought information about total corruption in the Russian Defense Ministry, and it was for them so believable, so in line with their own ideas about Russia and Russians, that they have not guessed to dig deeper.
And at this time the “stolen” and “irrationally spent” money accelerated pace, in secrecy, of rearming and preparing for future fights of the Russian Army, built secret facilities, bunkers and command centers, new electronic warfare systems.
When Serdyukov has fulfilled his mission in the defense ministry, the special operation has entered its final stage: on him and his assistant was opened a criminal case with a view to defer the moment when our “friends” would realize the terrible truth.
We have seen that Russia out of nowhere came to a possession of a modern efficient army, force to reckon with, and that leaves our Western “partners” with only one possibility – grind their teeth in impotent rage and reassure the Europeans with ridiculous marches demonstrating old equipment which is now could be playfully destroyed by any Russian Motorized Rifle Division.
http://cont.ws/post/114563
Putin is kicking ISIS’s ass!!! http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20151208/1031439645/russia-syria-300-sorties.html
Trump wants to “close the Internet”. Woah! Trump is headed back to the future – 1984 – Orwell’s 1984.
By closing the internet we can deny Daesh its means of communication, recruitment, and radicalization of alienated youth.
Don’t you think it makes sense for Trump to want to close the internet (“and a lot of other things”)?
Democrats are doing cartwheels of joy over these Trumpisms.
Whoa, now Trump is saying internment camps may be necessary. OK. Deep breath. We should trust Trump to know who to put into internment camps, and whether or not gas ovens will be needed. Trump knows about good management (“and lots of other things”).
We should trust Trump to know who to put into internment camps, – wpa
=============
Easy peasy.
Any swarthy bearded male. Any female wearing a vale. Anyone with a foreign accent. Anyone in or near a mosque. Anyone whose first, fourth, middle, third or last name is Mohammed. Anyone who refuses to eat bacon. Anyone with odd head wear. Anyone whose home has no Christmas lights. Anyone who acts so completely normal that you would never suspect them to be a terrorist. Anyone accepting UPS deliveries from Smith and Wesson. Anyone who looks ‘funny.’
veil
‘veil’
The good Captain is revenge…Q his comeuppance.
“Is”
His…
Capt and Elysian,
That was a test to see if you were paying attn. ;o)
I remember how much shit was given to Putin in Russian blogosphere during that infamous Serdyukov’s criminal affair in connection with Presidential pardon. (even more with regards to rumors of awarding Serdyukov with the highest military medal of honor – the star of “The Hero of the Russian Federation”)
I hope that article gives the CFNers the idea in what complex conditions the leaders of modern states are operating, and how little of the truth they could really convey to the public.
So when I read on this pages critic of President Obama, I wonder how much understanding of the real mechanisms of American governance the critics have.
i have to laugh at you lefty folks who berate Trump for this or that remark about foreign threats.
it was TRUMP only who began talking about the problems connected with immigration during the early part of his campaign, several months ago.
no one else would touch it……thanks to the insane PC crowd’s dictum that discussion of certain topics is verboten
and now, everyone’s talking nothing but immigration
that’s called leadership, taking the country where it needs to go, in spite of the PC weaklings that’ve brought us to the brink of disaster at the hands of a semi-invisible enemy they purposely brought in
democrats/leftists gladly trade American lives for votes.
all power-mad liars, much like the republicans
so, leftist maniacs, continue to berate Trump as fascist, hitler, unqualified
the good genie is out of the bottle, you liberals know your time has come to an end, liberalism has shown itself to be a failure of colossal porportions in most every area in Europe and the US, sowing discord, racial hatred, favoritism, racism, gross disrespect of basic family values, and welcoming and facilitating atrocities.
yes, you have facilitated atrocities by abandoning your basic governmental duty to protect borders and keep out undesirables
…..all to get votes because you are power maniacs
it’s the same old tired rant about liberals. I know people, myself included, who hold both liberal and conservative views. Gee where do I fit in? Trump is merely playing on the confusion of the collective madness we call society today. Everybody’s divided about everything. And we all know a house divided can not stand. This country is imploding in slow motion
What did you expect? How many cultures can exist in a single State? Guess what? Optimally, there is only one. You know, like one mind per body. More than one? Madness. Or absurdity like that Steve Martin movie. America is a Tower of Babble and it will fall.
Now admit it: you think it’s great. Dilute those evil Europeans. Who taught you to think this way? Howard Zinn among others, right? Now how did this utter bigot get his book into every college in the land? Follow the money. The great Corporations and Foundations wanted it taught. But they are evil White racists, and moron Patriots! How little you really understand. The Left and the Corporations have been on the same page for a long time. Capitalism isn’t what you think it is – and neither is Communism.
So much of the world devolving into chaos. Political boundaries dissolving. The only thing that makes us look like an intact country is the protection afforded us by the two oceans on either side. We see the desperate running out of options and clamoring to come to the only secure place on the planet. Even my liberal self doesn’t think we should take in Syrian refugees. How could we possibly know who to trust. But like Jim said last week about how the US has left a train of broken governments, we are implicated in all this(or at least our government is)
I would like you to expound on your last sentence: Capitalism isn’t what you think it is – and neither is Communism. We may find common ground after all
Too much diversity. Homogeneity is strength. Fascism is Nationalism and Patriotism is Nationalism, therefore the Leftists are right: Patriotism is Fascism. They are wrong to say it’s bad – it’s good.
Fascism is based on Man whereas the Economic philosophies are based on things or matter. Thus Capitalism and Communism untied against Fascism and will do so again. They are the vehicles of Globalism. White Americans were duped into fighting their brothers in WW2. They fought for the Globalists and against Nationalism.
“i have to laugh at you lefty folks…” You go right ahead Flonase there’s no law against laughter. In fact it’s healthy to have a good laugh.
“the epic failure of insane liberal policies has come home to roost. you are in the process of being taught a brutal lesson in common sense” –fodase
Watch carefully these next two months, fodase. You can witness the process of Trump being taught a brutal lesson in common sense. If the United States gets its first USA president, it won’t be the Republican candidate whose face Trump said looks like a horse.
^ If the United States gets its first WOMAN president ^
I don’t question Trump’s business savvy but his emotional IQ is that of a 4th grader. He’s short on policy details and big on name calling. I want a president I can look up to not one I would be inclined to say, “hit ’em again Don”. He wants to build a wall along the US/Mexico border. He better build it 50 miles into the Gulf and 50 miles into the Pacific because they’ll be comin’ in boats. And he better build it many feet under ground unless he doesn’t believe they can dig a tunnel. It’s nonsense
You talk defeat because you want defeat. Only this is considered virtuous by your ruined mind. And of course you want to impress the other ruined minds of Liberalism too. Who can betray their own country the most? A potlatch for Whites!
Yes Janos we all see you on your white stallion. And as far as this betrayal of country(you’re so cute when you wax patriotic), what part of it do any of us actually own. You think you own your house? Try not paying your taxes for a while and see how long your country lets you stay there. What’s mine is my voice. And I think the founding fathers would agree that free speech trumps(can’t look at that word the same anymore) correct speech. You think you’re correct. I don’t agree with you. This is the country you live in Janos, deal
Janos still clings to some far-off notion that the US is a country of countrymen. Never really was, never will be. It’s been diluted with cosmopolitanism and saturated with the “inclusion at any expense” doctrine. It’s beyond redemption, and as Kunstler is prone to say, “not a place worth caring about” (that is until you travel and recognize that 90% of the world is an irredeemable sh*t hole).
Passports are keys on a keyring, swearing fealty to a flag is for chumps… and people that put put their hands over their hearts during anthems, an act they confuse with pledges, the other jingoist childhood indoctrinator. The media will give them a state created plutocrat to vote for, and all is well.
Yes, you people have won. But you admit despite yourself that my vision is the correct one. Israel is a Fascist State – always was. America was 90% White up to the 1960’s. It hadn’t been easy assimilating the different European groups, but it had been done. Thus the Jews, with the help of gentile front men like Kennedy, finally pushed through their dream agenda, which they had been advocating for decades: 3rd World Immigration. America had to be ruined in order for Jews to feel good. You explain it to yourself. I already know.
Have you thought of getting into the dog food business? The property tax should never have been created, obviously. Just a scam to create the bread and circus mob of Obama voters.
Alexander Brodsky: Will commander of the flying monkeys surrender Bastinda?
It’s unbelievable, but the Obama’s “Oval” speech provoked a tantrum from his opponents on the right and left, and everyone rushed to correct him: all started with the fact that he did not use correct type of visa of the California female terrorist, and the White House corrected him gently. Immediately some Clintonite “corrected” the president in the sense that Obama did not ask for US Congress to formally declare a war to Islamic State.
The piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that Obama did not in his speech use the word “war,” and appealed to Congress to “take action”, which, considering the pathos of the Oval Office and the seriousness of the situation could only mean one thing: demand to officially declare war on Islamic State.
But the word “war” was not used, and it is very important for Clinton’s people because official declaration of war means the activation of “Trading with enemy Act of 1917″ and those who are now in the United States surreptitiously helping DAESH will be the customers of the Act, which provides as awards imprisonment as a minimum.
So the stakes in this debate are extremely high: the precedents in 1917 and 1943 indicate that the law is retroactive, which, as you know, worry Hillary Clinton. Perhaps now it is the only option that allows taking her off the race with relatively peaceful means, though of course the commander of the flying monkeys is already knee deep in that mess and will not surrender the owner of the magic hat without a fight.
Now Trump says he still might run as an independent. That would mean he wins with Republican, Democratic, and independent voters… or not. Hee haw, Hillary!
American tourist just came back from the trip to Russia and sharing his experiences with friends:
“You know, I can’t believe how backward those people are: they still have men sleeping with women”
of course a wall can be built, it’s been done in israel with great success.
so what if they come in boats – turn them back.
what do you think an army is for, if not to protect a country and its citizens from invasion?
these are commonsense ideas.
he doesn’t have policy details?
1. build a wall
2. send back illegal immigrants
3. kill isis
4. simplify tax system to 10%, 20%, etc.
5. stop muslim immigration
don’t you pay attention?
just doing 1-2 would vastly improve the country.
come one, wake up.
so what’s hillary’s policy details? let us all know
They want us to accept Muslim terror just as we accept Black crime. Even one of these is too much, now they add another. We must not let them. The Blacks will unite behind the Muslims and we will be in even more dire straits.
Classic xenophobic language: “they” and “them”. You left out “those people”. I think you’re slippin’ Janos. I think most of us come here because we believe the sky is falling. I noticed with you Janos the sky is so much of the time black. Too bad, you’re missing out on some fine people. They’re not all as you believe them to be
Actually what you listed aren’t policy details. Simple solutions for simple minds. Let’s just take one: #3 kill isis. How? Where? Do we just start bombing. It’s not like they have their own country. Or maybe we can just turn the other half of the world into a moonscape. And great success in Israel? Wow! You heard it here first. You better contact the Associated Press. You’re nuttier than holiday fruit bread
“Merkel is being pumped up by foreign media because she is weak and pliable and does not represent German interests.
But she made a fatal mistake with the refugee crisis.
Her time is coming to a close.” — 439
Merkel is doing a lot, considering that she is a subject of Chancellor Ac of 1949.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-183232
Angela Merkel:
First woman to win TIME Person of the Year in …
Angela Merkel is the first woman to win TIME Person of the Year in 29 years.
whooopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
it’s the same old tired rant about liberals. I know people, myself included, who hold both liberal and conservative views. Gee where do I fit in?
uh, these ‘liberals’ and their unfettered immigration insanity/multiculturalism is getting people SLAUGHTERED by muslims in europe and the US.
gee, i dont know, where do you fit in on this ‘stuff’?
can’t make up your mind, i see.
too difficult to figure out what’s right or wrong.
another vote for hillary.
“too difficult to figure out what’s right or wrong.” – fodase
It seems so for you. Open your eyes and maybe you will see the world in Technicolor…or at least in shades of gray. For you, apparently, everything is black or white and nothing in between.
I agree with the post from alphie. I am probably more “liberal” than tea-party conservative, because I have a belief that everyone screws up sooner or later and needs a “hand up” rather than a “put down”.
That doesn’t mean that I believe in “unfettered immigration insanity/multiculturalism ” as you put it. In fact, I lean more toward the Donald in this regard…but for the simple reason that I believe the world is vastly overpopulated and we don’t need any more people of any stripes, colors, frecking religion or whatever.
My first election, I voted Goldwater. How right wing is that? It was 1964 and, fresh out of the military, I was a believer in the “domino theory” [do you remember that BS?]. So Barry, who was a General in the Air Force Reserve and an honorable man, was my choice to protect our freedom and all that crap.
Next, I voted Nixon. Liberal choice? I think not. But after Watergate, the scales were off my eyes. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, etc.
A person can change. Maybe its not too late for you. Open your eyes. There is a spectrum of stars in the universe.. not just a fixed sun. Try to open your eyes and your mind. Best of luck…
The morally challenged love the ambiguities (they do exist) and try to universalize them. But some things really are black and white, wrong and right. Murder is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Rape is wrong. Bringing in Muslims is wrong.
Who do you think was behind 9-11?
Don’t know. Don’t know if we ever will. Probably a vast conspiracy which allowed the Arabs to do what they intended to do in order to get the new Pearl Harbor they (the Neo Cons) so desperately wanted. The British reported reporting the fall of Bldg 7 before it fell is particularly damning.
I like the way you slip in “bringing in Muslims is wrong”. Right up there with rape and murder aye? So much for “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” I agree with Jim that the US left behind(in the middle east) a train of broken governments. And you know what they say, “you break it you bought it”
Another angry white male. pity
Why shouldn’t we be angry? Everything is being taken from us. If you’re not angry, you are either an animal or a god. Men are angry.
But the anger is misplaced and simply becomes scapegoating
Well I give people a great compliment: I accept them as human beings who can be held to account. Liberals don’t. And I believe in corporate or group identities that I can get angry at too. I exist. I take up space. I have needs. You’ve renounced all of these understandings and all of these rights.
Read the link I sent Buck. An allegory: a lost tribe of men held that each person and being and situation was a unique event. So if a tiger killed and ate someone, it didn’t mean that tigers were dangerous. Or even that the same tiger would do the same thing again. Or even that “tigers” existed. Each moment the world was born anew. Think the tribe made it?
Scapegoating is Stereotyping is Generalizing is Thinking or putting things into categories. Scapegoating is the bad category. If you can’t do this, you are useless, a danger to yourself and others.
“Well I give people a great compliment: I accept them as human beings who can be held to account. Liberals don’t”
So Janos here I am a liberal by all accounts, although I don’t have much use for labels since calling someone a liberal or conservative precludes any new information that might change one’s thinking, but for now it’s appropriate. So tell me how I don’t hold “them” to account. It would help if I knew who “they” were and what exactly they should be held to account for.
You see Janos I don’t see people as tigers or berries or snowflakes. And I refuse to judge much less condemn a whole group of people based on the bad behavior of a few.
Greg Johnson in his piece entitled “In Defense of Prejudice” says,”There are seven billion people on this planet. It is impossible to treat each and every one as a special snowflake, and if one tried it, even with the limited numbers of people we encounter in our individual lives, it would consume all one’s time and make it impossible to pursue one’s own goals, i.e., to actually live.” Where do I begin. I would say to Greg that nobody is saying that you have to take everyone you meet out for coffee and learn the intimate details of their lives. It’s not even about something you have to do. It’s about what you don’t do, namely judging. Stop being fearful. That would free up a whole lot of space for other things
He goes on to say,”…the purpose of life is self-actualization” In other words ‘be all you can be’. Did Jesus fulfill his potential? And what did he say were the two greatest commandments? Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe that’s the path to self-actualization
Greg begins his next paragraph with these words: “One of the ways that civilization advances….” Has civilization advanced Greg? Technologically yes but spiritually and ethically I’d say no
ANGER IS SEXY
Ok Flonase I’ll interpret the quote for you. I hold some views which are conservative: I am against gay marriage. I hold other views that would be considered liberal: we are warming the climate with the burning of fossil fuels. Do try to think these things through for yourself Flonase I can’t keep stopping to explain things to you
THIS WEEK’S submittal by JHK was interesting in two ways: that which is seems intended to say and that which is does not.
As I see it, there’s a problem with ‘Framing’ here, ie., the role of legacy News Media – what it says that it does and what it actually does. For instance, in “Manufacturing Consent”;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
– Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman ‘shine’ and lot of ‘light’ on Mass Media as a tool of political elites [*] and (amusingly) enumerate the ‘Five Filters of Editorial Bias’ that repackage the unvarnished documented Truth into a something that serves and/or flatters relevant Powers That Be [**].
Mister Kunstler seems to be saying that we need _more_ not less of editorial bias, along with more not less top-down hierarchical structure – and that somehow this top-down ‘command-push’ instead of bottom-up ‘recon-pull’ structure will inform and guide society in a way that heals and strengthens.
That’s interesting coming from someone with a large online presence. Right now, one of the biggest threats to the corrupt and increasingly ineffective Powers That Be is the as-yet untamed Internet in all its manifestations – so much so that whistleblowers like Mister Snowden have been able to yank the rug from under an entire raft of command, control and surveillance programs funded, aided and abetted by the top 1/10th Percentile of the global power elite – and royally piss them off along the way… And yet, Mister Kunstler seems to argue for a return to legacy paper media and the political message-control which masqueraded as ‘editorial quality management’.
Well, of course he’s right about the gutting of Journalism as an industry. It has been defunded in ‘The West’ – with good political reason – because it’s **unwanted** by the Powers That Be (et al.).
This is a time of great “turbulence” (caused by their gross mismanagement), the bad news vastly outweighs the good (from their standpoint) and therefore it is time to swing a scythe across press-room floor – as many times as necessary.
Conversely, across the pond things are different; Russian Today and Al-Jazeera have been packing on staff for the better part of a decade. Their journalists have a lot of work do, their operation is a ‘hive’ of activity… Make of that what you will.
😉
SO MUCH for what the weekly installment seems intended to say. What about that which it does not (yet does, inadvertently)?
The phrase “epochal fog” is telling. Every great empire descends into chaos shrouded by the “fog of war” and the dust-cloud its collapse raises. Imperial communications break down, unorthodox alternatives and surviving back-channels are officially condemned. Take the collapse of the Western Roman Empire for instance; an “epochal fog” shrouded its former territory (Western Europe and North African Littoral) for centuries and there was no ‘One Official Source of News & Information’ – until the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was established and the Church he led was pronounced ‘Catholic’ in authority [***].
Hmm, wasn’t the Catholic Church intended to be a ‘light in the darkness’ resting on the strong, capable shoulders of “men acting like honorable men” working within a ‘hierarchy of leadership’?
Something tells me that we’ll be seeing a lot more “epochal fog” before being ‘rescued’ by purportedly honorable men, and when we are we’ll need to keep a weather eye on *them* – and their hands – as well.
Cheers!
— — —
[*] whether, feudal, oligarchic, theocratic, ‘democratic’, fascist, communist, etc.
[**] A term referring to everyone with actual hire/fire/life/death/fund/defund decision-making power in any given scenario.
[***] Ie.,via ‘Mass’ & ‘Universal’.
I think I mostly agree, MisterDarling, but am not sure. Just to offer a few points:
I believe Mr. Snowden is a courageous individual just as Daniel Ellsberg was…believing in a cause larger than themselves. And please don’t forget the history: The “Pentagon Papers” was made public by the Washington Post, a major newspaper. And Snowden’s revelations and escape were only made possible because of the assistance of traditional newspaper reporters. He needed help in getting his message out…and in getting out of the country. Ellsberg got a walk in the park while Snowden got condemned to the dark regions.
What I think Mr. Kunstler is getting at in this essay is that an informed “vox populi” is essential for the continuance of this grand experiment we call “democracy” or, if you prefer, representative government in the form of a Republic. So the fundamental question is how do we, the vox populi, stay informed? How is the news and essential information gathered and delivered and what means or methodology is used to deliver the information?
Was Marshall McLuhan correct when he proclaimed that “THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE”? To quote Wikipedia:
“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.”
This implies we receive a different message when it is delivered via the Internet, and I do not disagree with this view. I would still rather read a good, reliable newspaper that cruise the Internet for news. Trouble is, there aren’t any left.
I disagree with your assertion that the demise of the newspapers was because “It has been defunded in ‘The West’ – with good political reason – because it’s **unwanted** by the Powers That Be (et al.).”
That’s not my view. To apply Occam’s Razor…the great newspapers of this country (which were at one time the greatest in the world IMO) declined simply because all the advertising dollars were sucked up by the Internet. Craigslist alone wiped out a major source of revenue; not to mention that, for the Internet, the manufacturing costs and delivery costs are practically nil compared with traditional newsprint.
I have an affinity for newspapers, perhaps, because I had paper routes back when every large city had two, three or more more major newspapers. I had a paper route delivering the Memphis Press Scimitar (the evening paper) but later delivered the Memphis Commercial Appeal (the morning paper). At the peak, I delivered about 200 of the huge Sunday papers (filled with advertising supplements, naturally) which required my Mom to get up on Sunday mornings to drive the car since I could never had delivered that number using just my motor scooter. Was I really a soldier in the vast Army delivering “news” or was I merely a slave working for the advertising shills in Manhattan?
There was a tactile connection with the newspapers when I folded then for sailing into my customer’s rose bushes. I loved the smell and the feel of the newspaper! There was and is a tactile and implicit connection with the all the people responsible with delivering the news, and this connection I believe is shared when a person can quickly scan the summary leads on the front page (the way it was then) then leisurely fold the paper back and page through those stories that attract attention. I don’t get this feedback with the internet, and the goddamn popup ads are only getting worse and worse! My newspapers never had an unwelcome, obnoxious and obtrusive popup ad that I recall!
I also have an affinity for newspapers because my grandfather arranged a tour of the newspaper company, where I got to see the giant Linotype machines spitting out hot lead slugs of words that were then inserted into the even more gigantic printing presses where these word slugs were magically arranged into coherent sentences that accurately reflected the coherent news story constructed by a skilled, trained, educated and competent reporter, and where a competent news editor and proofreader had ensured the story was accurate, grammatically correct and coherent. It was one hell of a lot more magic going on than constructing a web page. It was noisy and hot but you had the feeling that something of consequence was going on.
I find it supreme irony that some of the most admired writers and thinkers in this country like Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain of course) began their careers learning to set type and print a newspaper. Is there a lesson here? If there is some discipline garnered from the practice of getting a good newspaper out, can the same be said for producing a virtual newspaper? One difference that comes to mind is that Ben Franklin, Sam Clemens or any others of an army of printers probably spent one hell of a lot of time proofreading…which entails reading what you have written over and over…obviously not a practice in the world wide web of wisdom.
The demise of the traditional newspaper has had a profound affect on collection, assimilation and delivery of news. News that is vital to keeping the “informed citizenry” that Thomas Jefferson felt was necessary to maintain the democracy.
I don’t know where we’re going with all this, but I have the deep and profound feeling that we are at a point of major change…and the lack of large news gathering and reporting organizations will not help us in finding our way. We only have Breitbart and Alex Jones to guide us.
So fellow travelers, the end of the year has arrived and it’s time to take stock.
For instance, Jeff Gundlach said that IF Oil Prices dropped into the $40/barrel range, THEN there’d be geopolitical hell to pay:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-05/jeff-gundlach-if-oil-drops-40-geopolitical-consequences-could-be-terrifying
… Looks like Gundlach was right. Kudos to Jeff.
😉
James is once again harping on Putin as a ‘leader’. If you consider a mob boss as ‘leader’, so be it. Putin has autism, specifically Aspergers Syndrome. [ from a Pentagon Report 2008 ]. The characteristics of which are: ‘lack of social interaction and inability to communicate’ – just the attributes you want in a leader. Putin in utero had a stroke as well as the mother while having the demon seed.
Thie above explains the vacant, demonic stare during photo ops and as a purveyor of propaganda. Rumor has it he has been taking lessons from Anderson Cooper. His right arm does not move while walking, the right side of his brain is not working either based on the orwellian rubbish discharging from that orifice.
Other characteristics of the ‘leader’ include steroid use to enhance his otherwise diminutive body mass, amphetamines to jump start cognitive dissonance and neurological damage. His facial skin is getting randomly puffy, a certain symptom of the above. If anyone bombs or shoots down another one of his airplanes, it looks like his head will explode.
Interesting information(and hilarious, too!) Trypillian–thanks for posting,
I’m not sure why Vlad gets a pass in certain internet quarters, but I think it has to do with that ‘former Reagan Cabinet member’ providing a certain weird sort of credibility.
Putin always reminded me of a banty rooster types especially when I saw how short he was in comparison to other world leaders. I think Tom Crusie might even be taller that Vlad Putin and that’s not saying much.
Tryp,
Yeah, and Hitler was a paperhanger, housepainter, failed artist. Himmler was a chicken farmer. Von Ribbentrop was a wine peddler, Goering (Meyer) a dope addict, and Rudolph Hess a toady.
For me the jury’s still out regarding Putin. I don’t mind “the vacant, demonic stare during photo ops”. It beats the “please elect me because I’m a happy guy and oh look I’m kissing a baby!” act we in the US get. But I am aware that Putin is the soviet version of George W. Shoot first and ask questions later(spoken with that ‘down home’ Bushian drawl)
Once in a while it feels good to engage in some irrelevant nonsense, such as a shit talking “poem” (Dana White) lionizing the Irish cage fighter Conor McGregor:
Conor McGregor had a staring contest with Medusa and won.
Jesus walks on water. McGregor swims on land.
Conor McGregor once jizzed into a semi trucks gas tank. That truck is now called Optimus Prime.
Dragons breathe fire.
Conor McGregor breathes dragons.
Conor McGregor was in all 6 Star Wars movies… as The Force.
When Alexander Bell invented the phone, he already had 3 missed calls from Conor McGregor.
Conor McGregor has already been to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life.
Conor McGregor can beat you in connect 4 with only 1 move.
Conor McGregor has a grizzly bear carpet in his room. The bear isn’t dead, it’s just afraid to move.
Conor McGregor can slam a revolving door.
“Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is facism. Period. Nothing else to call it.” –Jeb Bush
In any other context, they’d jump at the chance to get us all carrying a biometric ID card. Maybe they’ll use the Muslim presence to bring that about. Never waste a crisis, but create them whenever possible.
It looks like the educational efforts of Frankiti and Alphie are paying off: it reads like you’re wising up. But probably just for an instant.
Trumps declares it’s “Us or Them”. Isis declares it’s “Us or Them” Therefore Trump = ISIS in the “Us or Them” dynamic, Behind the scenes, of course, are the war profiteers or those you claim ‘never waste a crisis’. Does it occur to you that not only do they never waste a crisis, but actually instigate and orchestrate crisis’?
And speaking of that, what’s up with fodase? Posts after post, after post it’s “stupid liberals” and ‘scum Muslims’? Doesn’t this hyper-repetitive asshole ever get bored with himself? Truly an aberration of Nature, no variety within harmony,and yes, even in Lucifer’s den a certain torturous harmony exists and I’m sure fodase will fit right into that choir. But no evidence of the beautiful “other” lends variety to his inane world of ‘sameness’.
But I digress. Flash forward to the fall of 2017 and Janos, lying in bed and all alone with nothing but his honesty wonders: What happened to ISIS? They dominated the news cycle and then poof, were gone right after the elections? He doesn’t go so far as to consider that there are those who actually pay others to kill in order to further the ‘Us or Them’ dynamic and besides, it felt so good, “The Great White Hope” –the “Great Man” as Janos exalted–pounding the podium with ’round em up and send em back’ declarations.
But the moment of insight and reflection didn’t last. Because in a quiet honest moment and all alone with nothing but his honesty Janos likes the feel of the propaganda dildo thrusting in and out of the anus of his mind.
It’s “Us”, it’s “Them”. Us, Them…US, THEM! In and out it goes, deeper and deeper the propaganda penetrates and let’s face it, nobody in mainstream political circles drives it home quite like the “Great Man” . Never mind the the dull chaste reality of barren truths; the lies, the manipulations –over and over and over again– feel too damn good.
So you don’t think of ISIS as other, hence the quotation marks? That simply bizarre. Imagine if our Founders had the same attitude – think they would have triumphed over the Indians? Look Buck, we’re obviously not all going get along. The very idea is not only preposterous but childish. Grow up.
Of course our Government is the enemy of American Whites. When have I ever said otherwise? They desperately want to flood America with dangerous aliens. What is wrong with you that you trust them all of a sudden? Is the criterion that you support them as long as they are hurting America? That would explain your support for Hillary. But what does that make you? A monster.
“Triumphed” over the Indians has to be the silliest hair-brained comment from a litany of hair-brained comments posted by Herr Himmler on CFN.
It’s obvious that Janos has never heard of, nor subscribed to, the concept of universality. If he did, he’d be fully aware that all humans screw all other humans all the time. His primitive mind seeks patterns, it needs to categorize, the primitive mind needs to find something else, a flaw, it cannot accept that humanity itself is the problem. That categorizable flaw for him is something simple or arbitrary; a color, an origin, a religion, an ethnicity. Once he places the things he dislikes in their appropriate category, his cognitive dissonance subsides. It’s not all people after all, it’s some people… the bad ones unlike me.
Janos thinks he is pure as the driven snow. Your line Frankiti,” that all humans screw all other humans all the time” is not only apropos but funny as hell.
just as an aside here: how do we know Janos is male? Could be derived from Jan or Jane. I’m not trying to be funny here just an honest inquiry
Try harder. Start here:
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/12/in-defense-of-prejudice/#more-59632
http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/3368959/posts
Suing because of Whites in art.
Too dam funny! I need to frame that Buck
“What’s your favorite weird upper class Protestant name?”
I always liked Nevil Brownjohn.
That’s a fine one. Maybe we could create a deck of playing cards with these names? I’ll raise you one Stringfellow Barr to match your Nevil Brownjohn.
Two things in San Bernadino shootings that do not fit into “Muslim terror” scenario:
1. “After the shooting began, San Bernardino Police Department Lt. Richard Lawhead said that their SWAT team happened to be conducting training nearby. The team was suited, “ready to roll” and responded rapidly, Lawhead said.”
http://www.popularliberty.com/12253/breaking-swat-team-drill-turns-real-mass-shooting-scenario-san-bernadino-ca
2. The reports in Fox News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Los Angeles Times, Mediaite and elsewhere named a 28-year-old Qatari citizen, Tayyeep bin Ardogan, as the second suspect.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/2/tayyeep-bin-ardogan-identified-second-san-bernardi/
There is apparent similarity in the mistaken identity of the San Bernadino terrorist to the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Was it a message to certain part of American Elite: keep supporting Erdogan and you’ll have more DAESH-related terror in US?
Dmitriy Sedov: Turkey and the US looking for Russian weak points in Syria
Recent reports from war zones in Iraq and Syria say that the forces of self-proclaimed “caliphate” can be destroyed quickly enough. And then the fate of the region will be in the hands of the victors, and the American-led coalition does not play a prominent role among the winners.
The victory of Syrian troops with the support of Russian and Iranian allies for the US will mean the beginning of the failure of the project “Greater Middle East”. NATO is going to have to admit that its concept of the “zone of responsibility of expansion and projection of power around the world” has failed, as well as the practice of gang-raping of unwanted regimes.
And independent, confident Russia’s actions have received support and sympathy in other countries.
All three provocations of the last days – the Turkish “ambush” of the Russian Su-24 bomber, Turkish tank units entering the territory of Iraq, an attack by Western “coalition” aircraft on the positions of Syrian government troops: their general sense is that the US and Turkey are making overtures to turn the front of the war against Russia and its allies, carefully analyzing Moscow’s reaction to each next step.
Actually, the “minimum program” of further escalation of the conflict has already formed: Turkey takes control of border areas in Iraq and Syria, the Western “coalition” bombs Syrian government forces, the Russian air group in Syria is trapped.
Judging by how strongly the US allies, for example, the same Germany, rejected the possibility of military cooperation with Russia in Syria, the disengagement has already occurred and the line of confrontation developed.
Apparently, Moscow is well aware of the feverish state of Washington strategists. Moscow decided not to be afraid. In response to Washington’s threats Su-30 jet fighters are securing the positions of Syrian troops and tactical bombers and attack planes have increased the intensity of the attacks on militant positions.
Together with air defense systems covering the whole territory of Syria, the Russian military have quite strong positions.
I feel that Chomsky’s critique of journalism post-WW2 is substantially correct. I seriously doubt there was ever a golden-age of journalism where the “powers that be” were “kept honest”. In fact, journalism has had “agendas” every since it came into existence. So, I have a hard time shedding a tear for something that never existed.
But of course it was better back then, it always was, is, and will be.
The International Monetary Fund loosened its policy on lending to countries that default on their debts to sovereign creditors, easing one potential obstacle for bailout money continuing to flow to Ukraine if the nation fails to repay a Russian-held bond this month.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-08/imf-eases-lending-policy-in-move-helping-ukraine-in-bond-feud
Yesterday’s IMF’s decision is that now no one has to pay nothing to anybody in principle. And who will live and who will die will be decided by United States. US blocking stake in the capital of the IMF will be more than enough. Along with the votes of those who do not want to sink alongside defaulted debtors.
Even more simple: Europe has been had to complete loss of political sovereignty. In response to any disagreement with American policy they now instantly will get non-payment of debts by Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the list goes on. A collapse of the debt market in Europe.
The yesterday’s decision has another consequence, which can be figuratively described as “better a horrible end than horror without end.” In fact, go-ahead was given to a complete destruction of the global financial system as we know it.
And this is also US response. This time to China, which until recently has used the mechanisms of the existing system for their gains and attempts to intercept the power from the dollar. And it almost reached the goal. All theoretical and technological work is completed. The status of reserve currency the Yuan has received; issues of sovereign Yuan bonds and their distribution through London are set in motion.
Mutual currency swaps with dozens of countries have been concluded. International banks (the BRICS and ABII) started the work.
In this situation, the United States could no longer wait. The countdown now was measured in weeks, not months.
What will be Chinese, London and Russian response?
It is impossible to fight with DAESH without first nailing in the US those who created those cannibals, nourished and released them into the world, those who prepared for ISIS in Mosul 2000 Hummers and 300 tanks.
Obama needs enacting “Trading with the enemy act”.
Finca: Obama needs enacting “Trading with the enemy act”.
==========================
To my knowledge that is already the law–it has been enacted. Obama needs to enforce that law, is what I believe you are saying..
Whether America’s abandoning military equipment in Iraq, that equipment then being appropriated by ISIS, is the same as trading with the enemy is dubious, at best.
Still, I get what you are saying, Finca.
“too difficult to figure out what’s right or wrong.” – fodase
It seems so for you. Open your eyes and maybe you will see the world in Technicolor…or at least in shades of gray. For you, apparently, everything is black or white and nothing in between.
how thick do you have to be to not recognize that muslims are hellbent on destroying the West – aided and abetted by the insance policies of the left?
it may not be too late for you to recognize this.
or do you want to dilly dally about the fine shades of technicolor while another muslim takes out 35 americans?
you people are blind. you see paris, you see san bernadino, and then tell us things can’t be black and white.
you are the problem.
no worries though, real men are coming to your aid to make your country safe again, so you can ponder things in peace.
“-aided and abetted by the insane policies of the left” How conveniently you forget the 8 years of George W who broke open the middle east and unleashed this hell on the world. Fodase-nuttier ‘n a holiday fruit cake
Mr. Sean Coleman, you seemed to have missed my response above, so I’ll respond again.
You are still denying global warming, that is, AWG. I quote, “It is related to man-made global warming, although in the case of the Church there is a small core of truth whereas with AGW the delusion appears to be total.”
Well, Sean, when you have time, please do tell us what is wrong with AWG.
Specifically.
You do know, do you not, that a life of riches and glory awaits for the One who can do that. Just ask some of the entrenched manipulators of opinion. So please, do us both a favour and publish.
Sauerkraut
Just did that above. I also gave specific examples which you ignored in our earlier conversation a few weeks ago. One of them was the former head of your country’s national scientific association. You remember, where you poured scorn on my sources, after a quick consultation with your kindred spirits on Wiki*, as either graduates in gender studies (La Framboise – give the lady the credit of being attacked by the Sisters for heresy) or (in the case of Booker) evolution deniers (there’s that word again!). I told you that the IPCC were trying to shoehorn a complicated subject into crude computer programmes designed to disgorge the right answers.
But hold! We’ll leave it there for now. One delusion at a time folks!
* For those who missed it, this is where I said that Wiki is a superb resource if you want to know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall or (as I once discovered) the weight of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in metric tonnes. The same post where I mentioned a school quiz where several questions were written in a curious language that sounded like English, but not quite, and which distressed both audience and participants alike. Afterwards, on a hunch, I found the answers where we all find them: in Wiki.
Your memory fails you, Sean. I did respond to that.
Now, why don’t you respond to this? Keep to the point. What is wrong with AWG?
Let me help you, Sean. You passed over the right track when you wrote, “I told you that the IPCC were trying to shoehorn a complicated subject into crude computer programmes designed to disgorge the right answers.”
That at least acknowledges the existence of the issue, which is, “What is wrong with AWG?” Now all you have to do is to justify that remark, by
1. listing the programs and specifying how each is deficient; and
2. telling us how you know that the “programmes (are) designed to disgorge the right answers”.
You can’t be part of the Liberal Tribe if you do not believe in man made global warming. He is offering you a ultimatum: believe or be expelled.
Why is it so inconceivable that our species couldn’t produce enough waste in the form of CO2 to alter the climate?
I don’t know if I phrased that right. My question is: why is man made climate change not within the realm of possibility?
Prove it before you change all our whole Civilization. We tore our whole educational system apart for Blacks only to realize that the Old South was right about them to begin with. Let’s not do the same thing here.
The planet was much warmer at various points in the past. Did the Medievals create the warming period, when Greenland could grow Trees in some places?
Or in the remote past, the planet didn’t even have ice caps. Did the dinosaurs do it – or did the Sun change?
“We tore our whole educational system apart for Blacks only to realize that the Old South was right about them to begin with” Right in what way Janos, that they should be slaves. You really can’t get past skin color can you? You operate on the most superficial level possible and call it thinking.
Do you even consider them human? A good way to justify the mistreatment of people is to, well…not consider them people at all. Are blacks people Janos?
You come off like you know the corrective for what ails us but you can’t see what’s staring you in the face. It’s hatred that’s destroying us and you’re playing right into it Janos
Janos.
Proof? It’s been done beyond a reasonable doubt. We have a known effect, that the globe is warming. We have a plausible mechanism, CO2. And we have a very good correlation between the two, all worked out in the greatest detail. What more do you want?
The planet was indeed warmer at various points in the past. And colder in the past. There are many reasons for this, such as astronomical alignments, solar cycles, galactic orbits, continent-wide burning of peat during volcanic eruptions (there’s that CO2 again), celestial collisions, etc. These are known causes, and are incorporated into the models.
The problem is, it’s not just global warming. Excess CO2 is changing the chemistry of the oceans, and that messes with oxygen production. Yep. The stuff we breath. Change our whole civilization? Lack of oxygen will do that right smartly.
So why not take out a little insurance against catastrophe? I spend a few dollars on car insurance, and even insure my house against fire, even though the chances against fire are thousands to one. So why not insure the global climate? Costs about the same: 1 or 2% of income.
Are dogs the same species as wolves? They can inter-breed but they are so different that they are classified as separate. There are other examples such as chimps and bonobos. Clearly Blacks and Whites are a similar case.
“Are dogs the same species as wolves?” Ok I’ll bite. Science classifies all people, black, white, red ,yellow and everyone in between as homo sapiens. Now do you want to argue with science Janos? Or maybe you’re a science unto yourself. All the brilliant scientific minds down through the ages, devoted to unraveling the mysteries of the universe and life on earth can’t contend with the one Colossal mind of Janos Skorenzy(queue angelic choir)
And no Janos not “Clearly Blacks and Whites are a similar case.” In fact not at all. For someone who purports to be intelligent your arguments have no basis in science
No, no, no Janos.
Belief is not involved. This is a matter of reality, which is independent of belief. The best way we have of understanding that reality is the scientific method. The scientific method informs our investigations. Those who investigate a particular phenomenon are experts, that is, they know a while lot more than the uninitiated. That makes their expert opinion, in that particular subject, worth more than inexpert opinion, and worth a whole lot more than belief.
And expert opinion is nearly unanimous: AWG is a fact.
Let me give you an analogy, Janos. If your daughter had a big unsightly lump on her body, and you went to 30 oncologists who said, “Yes, we all agree it’s cancer (Global Warming), and yes we can treat it, and we all agree about how to treat it (reduce CO2),” plus one guy who said, “Yes it’s cancer (Global Warming), but no, we can’t treat it (because we don’t understand it),” would you opt for treatment? Yes or No?
No my doctor says the lump is benign and needs no treatment.
Janos, do you seriously doubt that the globe is warming? Or do you seriously doubt that it’s a problem?
Please clarify.
Michael Hudson: The IMF forgives Ukraine’s debt to Russia
The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century.
This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.
But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). With IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass.
What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites.
Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.
Should Russia withdraw from the IMF? Should other countries?
The mirror-image response would be for the new Asian Development Bank to announce that countries that joined the ruble-yuan area did not have to pay US dollar or euro-denominated debts. That is implicitly where the IMF’s break is leading.
Hi FitM!
I saw that information this morning as well. At this point I can only be amused by the way that Global Finance is burning down its own house to ‘save’ itself… from *itself*.
_Good Luck_ to them all with that!
Cheers!
Michael H.? Turn out that light!!!!
With females being granted a combat role in the USIS military, we here in Ft. Meade are requesting the public’s input: should the helmet be worn over the burka or under the burka?
Get on board the UUP dollar express, nsa said… and since that great nsa advice UUP has lost 3.56% (-3.56%) while my credit union checking account is paying me +2.03%. Goldbrickers at Ft. Meade don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to finances.
wpa,
What was the date of nsa’s recommendation? I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but coming from the investment business, unless he and Q are day-trading, their time horizon should be longer than a couple of weeks.
We used to ask people like you, who wanted to measure their investment progress day-by-day from the stock prices in the daily paper, if they were gardeners, would they pull their carrots out of the ground every day to see how they were doing?
wpa, you may very well be correct, although I didn’t have the impression you were a currency trader by profession, but give the guys a little time before you start dancing on their graves! Otherwise, you just sound silly.
Sticks-of-TNT
P.S. Meanwhile, putting liquid funds on deposit in a demand account at your friendly local credit union at the interest rate you cited, in today’s ZIRP environment, sounds like a smart move. I intend to investigate it for myself.
nsa announced it like it was leaving the station and used the word “express” … maybe it takes two weeks for the “express” engines to warm up?
Look for Kasasa accounts. Checking account interest rates vary from 1.63% to 4.64% depending on your local institution.
https://www.kasasa.com
wpa,
Good point. The “all aboard” call timing was pretty awful. Unfortunately, it happens a lot, even by the very best in the business. Murphy’s Law, I guess. Egg on the face seems to go with the territory. It’s as much art as science.
Thanks for the Kasasa info. I do intend to look into it.
Peace. -Sticks
CAIR demands that the child of the shooters be given to a Muslim foster family. But Obama already said the parents were not Muslims. So since everyone is equal, and the baby was not born a Muslim, why not give it to atheists just to show the principle of equality? Why are parents allowed to raise “their” children anyway? Shouldn’t the State being doing that?
Turn off the ‘news’–you know its disinformation.
http://www.dailystormer.com/zulu-king-blacks-destroy-south-africa/
The Brutha is a very switched on spade.
@ Pogo:
Hello! Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful, cogent & interesting response. It is appreciated.
Regarding | “I believe Mr. Snowden is a courageous individual just as Daniel Ellsberg was…believing in a cause larger than themselves. And please don’t forget the history: The “Pentagon Papers” was made public by the Washington Post, a major newspaper. And Snowden’s revelations and escape were only made possible because of the assistance of traditional newspaper reporters. He needed help in getting his message out…and in getting out of the country. Ellsberg got a walk in the park while Snowden got condemned to the dark regions.”-pogo.
While newspapers were helpful they did not play a critical role in the Snowden Saga. Taking it from the top: 1) Edward Snowden got _himself_ out of the country – he was hunkered down in a Hong Kong hotel room registered under an assumed name when he finally found some newspaper folks who would take the story. 2) It took _months_ to find legacy media ‘journalists’ who would work with him, 3) The journalist that ended up taking the lead was a maverick outsider within his profession: a homosexual extrovert naïve enough to think that he had nothing to lose and that the people opposing the story played by rules and had scruples. 4) Without leveraging the internet Mr. Snowden wouldn’t even have gotten that far: he encrypted, then backed up his story in four different remote locations with the implication being that the story wasn’t going to die with him and that if the newspapers didn’t take it someone would, 5) It wasn’t the newspapers that did the heavy lifting of getting him out of Hong Kong and the Moscow airport, it was a freelance documentarian and a Hong Kong Chinese human rights organization… So again, no thanks to legacy media. They did eventually publish _some_ of the story – with enough arm-twisting and spoon-feeding (and reap the monetary reward). So there’s that… /S
Regarding the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg is on record – in the movie ‘Citizen 4’ – stating that he didn’t face the same level of resistance nor did he have as large & immediate a historic impact as Mr. Snowden did. The Summer that the Snowden/NSA story got out all of the largest US tech corporations (/NSA sock-puppets) took double-digit hits in their overseas sales figures. That was the _strategic level_ beauty of the Snowden disclosures: they circumvented the obstructionist American system of ‘public discourse’, legislation and ‘justice’. The vote came in immediately in the only way that the American Power Elite understand: big money losses, and it didn’t stop there.
And since we’re not forgetting our history, let’s try to remember how many people the legacy newspapers destroyed for displaying the ‘presumptuous effrontery’ of publishing a story that they (he New York Times for example) didn’t think the public was ‘ready’ for. Let us remind ourselves of what happened to Gary Webb;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
– When he broke the story of the CIA developing a network of cocaine smugglers and crack dealers to help raise funds for organizations they’d been explicitly told to not be involved with. What happened to him? The NSA and the CIA didn’t need to get directly involved, they simply made some phone-calls to their pet newspapers and the helpful editorial staff did the rest. . . So much for integrity! [*]
And while we’re looking at historical examples, let’s look farther back at the Vietnam War. One of the things that I found discouraging about discussing Afghanistan (when prompted) was the almost total lack of recent information available to the people I talked to. It was as if they were talking about another war – or the war the way it was two years earlier. I conferred to with veterans from the Vietnam era and they showed me that the lag in American news coverage from the top-5 newspapers was the same back then – “22 months” – and I was memorably told this: “…really, it’s the job of the newspapers to make people *feel* that they know what’s going on, and that’s it. Too much truth and things change, and we’re can’t have a bit of that!”
Sir, I understand your affection for paper media in all its forms. I too feel an affection for its physicality, but No Sir, you will not get me to feel emotional about the legacy version of the Elite’s Propaganda Machine.
Regarding | “That’s not my view. To apply Occam’s Razor…the great newspapers of this country (which were at one time the greatest in the world IMO) declined simply because all the advertising dollars were sucked up by the Internet. Craigslist alone wiped out a major source of revenue; not to mention that, for the Internet, the manufacturing costs and delivery costs are practically nil compared with traditional newsprint.”-pogo.
Pogo, this is simply a tacit admission that legacy media was and is in thrall to commercial interests. Refer to ‘Manufacturing Consent’ regarding he manifold portals of corruption that opens. The internet on the other hand is filterable. I see very little in the way of advertising – because I set my filters to block it – and I see a much less ‘locally customized’ version of webpages because I anonymize my traffic. By analogy; you don’t *have* to chat with every hooker and junkie you see when you drive down the street, similarly there’s no reason that you have to be distracted by AdWords/AdSense garbage. In either cases it’s not my job or yours to spin the wheels of commerce for it. There are ten suckers lined up behind us that can take that job if they like!
Additionally, the internet informs people who know how to use it faster, freer and better than was possible in the Pre-1990 era. Besides search engines (yes, there are multiple and not all of them track and store your queries) there’s simply the freedom to get to the source overseas and get it from them. The amount of information that a freelance researcher has at their disposal now VASTLY exceeds what their counterparts in a national intelligence agency had back in the 80’s (caveat: outside of their operational area if they were HUMINT data collectors, before they got downsized). The ability to get versions of a story from beyond the American MSM Oligopoly is a bigger deal-killer for the newspapers than ad revenue. Truth is the essence of Relevance. The real world needs actionable information. In the long-run, Impressions, Clicks and Readership figures will forever flit about in its shadow.
With all of this clearly in view, the real problem of the old newspapers was that they became victims of their own success. They ‘played the game too well’ as it were – and now they can take their rightful place – in *History*.
😉
Cheers!
— — —
[*] Yet another CIA-human monster alliance. If you’re wondering if this is part of an established pattern of organizational behavior, it is.
MD,
Excellently reasoned response.
Careful, you might be branded as, “eminently sensible in the face of uncomfortable truths”. (As you know, we can’t have that.) 😉
– just passin’ through
MD,
Incisive analysis, as usual, particularly your Snowden vs. Ellsberg insight.
I got the Gary Webb story from his book, “Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion”. Lengthy, but worth it. Highly Recommended to CFN “shitizens”. Great look into a part of society who operate above/outside the law as a way of life and more confirmation of the old, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
As always, “Thank you for your servitude!”
Sticks-of-TNT
@ MisterDarling
Just to let you know I read your reply and appreciate the time you put into it. I’ll admit that I was “waxing nostalgic” about the olden days of newspapers (with the help on a brandy). In fact, I don’t subscribe to any printed newspapers and get all my news from the Internet, including RT and Al Jazeera and BBC, German news, etc.
Overall, I was trying to make the point that it takes large organizations to do the actual shovel work of gathering and delivering the news. If we don’t have organizations like UPI, AP, Reuters, API and so on, but instead rely on untrained onsite individuals who twitter what they see…then that is not reliable reporting in my book.
Have large, traditional newspapers ever lied to us or been manipulated by the government? Well, of course. But are we better off without them? I don’t think so.
In 1841, Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”.
We could probably debate this point forever but I still maintain that something has been lost when anyone can throw out any piece of “news” without it being question, vetted or edited.
One example I might make is to compare the quality of self-published e-books with some of the great writers of the past who were guided to fame by great editors of the past like Maxwell Perkins. There was a symbiotic relationship. The old question of whether a group of monkeys banging away at keyboards could ever produce a great novel is an interesting one…but I think we really know the answer to that.
You seem to have a greater depth of knowledge about Edward Snowden than I. But is it not a fact that Snowden arrived in Hong Kong on May 20 and contacted The Guardian in June? My memory of the story is that is was major newspapers all the time that helped him get his revelations out.
I certainly agree that the Internet is one of the great inventions of all time. Not quite as much as the concept of an alphabet or the printing press but pretty damn important and useful. I use it all the time, and yes, I may be old but am aware of search engines like DuckDuckGo.
I also use AdBlock Plus but it is not perfect and the amount of intrusive advertising is becoming oppressive. Or popups like one I encountered tonight that required a survey to be completed before viewing the article.
Let’s face the fact that good journalism cannot be delivered for free. People need to be paid for their work, including James H. Kunstler.
Here’s an example from Wikipedia (which is begging for donations lately):
“On March 5, 2010, Ars Technica experimentally blocked readers who used Adblock Plus—one of several computer programs that stop advertisements from being displayed in a web browser—from viewing the website. Fisher estimated 40% of the website’s readers had the software installed at the time. The next day, the block was lifted, and the article “Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love” was published on Ars Technica, persuading readers not to use the software on websites they care about:[24]”
” … blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical … It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin.”
“The block and article were controversial, generating articles on other websites about them, and the broader issue of advertising ethics.[27][28] Readers of Ars Technica generally followed Fisher’s persuasion; the day after his article was published, 25,000 readers who used the software had allowed the display of advertisements on Ars Technica in their browser, and 200 readers had subscribed to Ars Premier.[24]”
Well, it is late in the week and time to get to my book. A printed book by the way. So good night.
Pogo
“Who do you think was behind 9-11?” –Malthuss
OBL.
Who do you think killed OBL?
BHO. Kicking ass.
What did you guys do before you wasted time out bullshitting each other? Do the crypto nazis that make ” pronouncements” on Jim’s blog shine their jack boots all day? I have never see such a bunch of needy egomaniacal jackasses since I worked for ” the company” in DC eons ago. It is what it is all you armchair geniuses…. Get over it and live your life best you can. Amen.
Lol!! True dat! (said the guilty party)
Just how many Mexican and Central American immigrants is enough? How many Muslims is enough? You don’t even have the modus operandi to answer these questions. You are struck dumb, thumb in mouth, a complete tool and follower.
bg,
Thanks for dropping in to bless us with your insight. There are a billion sites on the World Wide Web out there waiting for you to visit. I’m sure you can find one more to your liking if you get started now. Please hurry! Amen back. -Sticks
Wow. Crypto Nazi. I haven’t heard that expression since Gore Vidal used it on William Buckley. Buckley in turn called him a Queer. Obviously that particular debate degenerated into name calling, however, I do miss those Buckley debates on PBS, that were couched in more civilized tones. Buckley vs John Kenneth Galbraith, for example. It was a wonderful opportunity to watch two skilled users of the English language engage in debate. All we have nowadays is rush limbaugh and his ilk to listen to. simplified down to the lowest common denominator. No class.
Captain,
One of my fond remembrances of Buckley’s “Firing Line” was his discussion with Eldridge Cleaver, whom Buckley introduced, at the beginning of the show, as a “rapist of white women….”
Priceless.
I’m more than happy to take in to the US as many qualified, legal immigrant South/Central Americans or anyone of any other flavour, Muslim, Shinto.
They should all be asked to state their allegiance to the United States, pass English fluency/political acumen tests and, in the case of Muslims, renounce the supremacy of Sharia Law and all violence against non-Muslims.
Trump will whip ass and bring back respect for the United States of America.
Under BHO and sseveral past “D” and “R” presidents, we’ve become a laughingstock that illegal felonious aliens mock, sue & otherwise extort.
Time to put them in their place.
Get in line, get legal, get a skill that your prospective new country can use.
fodase
Hey now,
That’s an especially piquant “armchair” series of pronouncements and declarations, Brasileiro. “Keepin’ it *real*.”
Check Greg Hunters latest interview on Youtube.
The Japanese used to make the Dutch Traders trample crucifixes if they wanted to trade. Why? Because they have been badly burned by the Catholics in the previous century or so (the Church converted one of the southern Islands and started a huge rebellion). Maybe we should make Muslims burn the Koran or something? If they can’t, then they are too devout to come in. But that’s unfair, many will scream. Yes. The ideal of a Universal Republic is absurd and failing badly.
At the NY Times it’s Trump all day every day…Trump, Trump, Trump. The left wingers are starting to get hysterical. Check out Frank Bruni’s op-ed today: ‘What To Tell Trump.’ The fear is palpable.
Sure, I am appalled that a man so inarticulate can go this far but I am loving his message against any Tom, Dick and Hasan just walking into this country with no intention of ever assimilating.
In the 1990s the BIG HEADLINES were along the lines of
‘Oh No, Le Pen might rule France.’
Do you really consider Trump to be “inarticulate”? He seems like a good communicator, getting lots of ovations and leading the polls for months now. He shouldn’t have any trouble getting the Republican nomination.
Of course, he could decide he is being disrespected by the Republicans and run as an independent. In that case 68% of his supporters say they will vote for him as an independent… which gives Trump zero chance of being elected president.
How will the kenyan-in-chief handle the influx of muzzies with multiple wives and multiple litters of little muzzies? Will there be multiple welfare checks and multiple section 8 apartments and multiple food stamps and multiple obamaphones and multiple medicaid? What about the “earned income tax credit”…..a fucking muzzie with a couple of wives/litters could get a $50k refund back just by filing a 1040EZ. We don’t have enough freeloaders already?
“$50k refund back just by filing a 1040EZ”
I think this is impossible. How can you get a $50K “refund” if you have not paid $50K in taxes? Or is this like your UUP dollar “express” comment? Wishful fantasy world thinking.
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/scalia-argues-black-students-benefit-from-slower-210637220.html
It’s called winning. Because we are smarter? No, because we are right. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if your sacred cause is bullshit. Behold the turning of tide. Enjoy, brothers. Gnash your teeth, haters.
Watched NBC news tonite, they opened with a story about the two ISIL LoveBirdz. Sooo fuxored – NBC anchorz (dupez) just dictated whatever US Govt told them. Completely contradictory to the story from 3-letter-acronym club-boyiez only a week earlier (but who’s paying …). No Mo investigative journalism, *WHATSOEVER*.
Corrupt (conspiratorial?) political/religious/social structures, eh? Mr J-H-K. You still doubt conspiracy? (Well,) You still *DELETE* me…
Oh, and in case you wanna jam hardcore, well, then – just have a *GANDER* at the following tune :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKgv0R9LiA4
So in other words, you agree with Trump and I, that Muslims should be banned.
How about we get a “news” report after every (US?) drone bombing, “1-3 high level terrorists killed, 15-30 collateral deaths (women, children, uld fux – U no).” Can U *imagine* what happens after the 10th report, said-same-day?!?
TRUMP’S PLAN FOR BAN ON MUSLIMS EXPLAINED
MSNBC: The Customs agent would ask the person his or her religion?
Trump: They would say: “Are you Muslim?”
MSNBC: And if they said “Yes” they would not be allowed in the country?
Trump: That’s correct.
=============
Trump has a foolproof plan. Everyone knows that Daesh’s one weakness is they can’t tell a lie.
This is proof Trump has good management ideas and knows lots of other things, too.
Finca’s theory of Trump being Ross Perot circa 2016 for Hillary goes mainstream
A Trump-driven conspiracy to elect Clinton?
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-conspiracy/index.html
“Actually, that this is the current phenomenon of Trump that he began as Ross Perot 2.0, suddenly discovering that he is not only 2 times bigger than the most popular of any other Republican candidate, but also enjoys considerable support of Obama’s Democrats, who are so sick of Hillary Clinton’s statement about her invincibility that this time they are ready to vote for the Republican candidate. And as an independent candidate, as Clintons originally intended, Donald Trump will be simply unbeatable, taking votes not only from the Republican candidate, but from Democratic candidate as well, which would guarantee to bury the American two-party political system as in the word “forever.”
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-spectacle-so-far/
A striking example – strategic B-52 bombers, of which the United States have 65 pieces. The last batch of these aircraft was made back in 1962, 53 years ago. Last renovation of them took place somewhere before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that is, over 25 years ago.
Pratt&Whitney engines J57-PW-19W and J57-PW-43 for these planes are not produced since 1970, spare parts are not available, even the technical documentation is lost. US military-industrial complex tried to fit engines from 747, but failed.
As to what the US military budget is almost eight times more than the Russian. On the one hand it is a demonstration, who is actually a militant imperialist and who only defends itself.
However, tens of billions spent annually on various overt scams, like “weapons of the future.”
For example, $19 billion was spent on the software, which should be able to predict the actions of the enemy. As a result, the program is mistaken in 70% of cases; so any quarter-dollar coin shows better reliability.
These facts partially explain why the US is in a hurry – part of the technology is lost, the new often do not work – missiles SM3 and aircraft the F-35 really do not fly – so if they do not come into direct confrontation in the next couple of years, when they still have a residual life of past achievements, it will lose new opportunities for attacks on China and Russia for many years and will require even more resources. And given the stagnation of the US economy and the future of US superiority at all becomes unlikely.
If it comes to confrontation of Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton, she’ll find an Islamist terrorist who would kill Trump, and then the US will fall into a civil war that is going to end with autodafe on the White House lawn.
So now desperate efforts are being made to withdraw both Trump and Hillary from the race, and then Bernie Sanders will automatically become the next President, who will work under the strict control of board of directors of “USA, Inc”.
All this is absolutely hopeless because of Hillary’s personal qualities, who is now to crawl out from the frying pan, is ready to promise Putin anything, up to Yalta-2.0, just to hang him later like Saddam Hussein.
And if she gets a chance to use “nuclear option”, make no mistake, she’ll go for it. And all of it is being determined now, not a year later, alas!
Eagle Named Uncle Sam Attacked Donald Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S259QYLFbXM
Even Democrats should applaud Trump (and vote for him), simply because he has done what many people on both sides have wanted for decades: someone outside to shake up the establishment. He has done that and is not stopping. It’s time that someone who isn’t an embedded politician take office and not be owned by some corporation or billionaire who is more often than not a Wall Street insider or banker. Go Trump! BTW, no person, especially anyone who calls himself a man, would vote for Clinton. She says anything to anyone to get elected. Just look at her response when anyone brings to light the rapes and molestations of her husband. If she was any type of real person, or a “strong woman” as she likes to say, she would have dumped him after the first instance. Go Trump!
“A German court has ruled that Islamists who patrolled a city’s streets as “Sharia police” did not break the law and will not be prosecuted.
Nine were arrested in September 2014 after patrolling streets in Wuppertal, western Germany. They wore bright orange jackets with the words “Sharia police”. They told passers-by not to frequent discos, casinos or bars.”
The above news, earlier today, posted on the BBC site.
How do you like it now, Wpac?
Joe Biden has triggered a new war in Ukraine: Go, Joe, go!
A new war is breaking out in Ukraine, and it has been triggered off by no other than the vice president of the United States. During his visit to Kiev last weekend, Joe Biden publicly warned President Poroshenko that “the country is on the cusp” of being completely ruined by rampant corruption.
Ukrainian media reports Joe Biden, US Vice President, demanded action, among other things, the removal of certain Ukrainian officials in the Ministry of Defense and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
But instead of encouraging the war on corruption, Biden’s intervention seems to have given a new impetus to a war between various oligarchic and political clans in Ukraine.
The credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20151210/1031539590/joe-biden-ukraine-corruption-war.html
“Us–IN; them–OUT!” And in and out it thrusts, the dildo of propaganda driven ever deeper into the collective mental anus of Janos, Fodase and other minds prone to delusional delineations.
And why is it delusional? Because there will NEVER be a resolution. On purpose. The only sure thing about this mind fuck is that Janos and Fodase are the voluntary, unquestioning grease that lubricates the perpetual war machine and their endless stream of profit. “Resolution” is bad for business, after all.
But why can’t Janos or Fodase see this? Is it because they’re too deep into the jungle, with every twig and every leaf viewed as yet another “other” to be vanquished and removed in order to prune their perceived ideal forest of humanity? Last year it was the Mexicans; this year it’s the Muslims. And every year it is the “Blacks”: Always the “Blacks”. And because Janos at least has the sense to recognize the importance of variety, he throws in the occasional anti-women, anti-gay screed every now and then. Oh, and let’s not forget the Jews either; how could we; Janos won’t let us!
Hate does not expand vision; it condenses vision into the tip of a spear. Which is why the higher martial arts train their adepts to transform animalistic impulses and the adrenal response into a more effective awareness able to see beyond the constricted and condensed perceptual response induced by hate/anger/retribution and into an expansive awareness capable of deciphering motivation and purpose. A type of vision not driven by lower energies that is aware and broad enough to recognize that another “Us/ Them” roll in the hay is sometimes best avoided altogether. Witness Reagan hightailing it out of Beirut when terrorists killed nearly three hundred Marines. But developing that type of awareness is painful. One might realize they are an addict and worse yet, a stooge tool.
Put another way, Janos/Fodase are still down below, throwing rocks at false shadows on the cave wall. Childish, in other words. And surely not the mindset of a promising child.
Congratulations, Dupes.
“Put another way, Janos/Fodase are still down below, throwing rocks at false shadows on the cave wall.”
Here’s nice illustration of the concept:
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/serfilatov/37945564/325916/325916_600.jpg
You mean shadows like this?
http://www.dailystormer.com/jewish-terrorist-khodorkovsky-plans-new-bolshevik-revolution-for-russia/
Think Putin takes this lightly, considering what Jews did last time? Think he regrets letting this fucker go after the guy vowed to stay out of politics? Think maybe he’ll rectify the situation?
Here’s your existential choice: Putin who you claim to love or a fellow tribesman. I think we all know which you will choose.
Don’t you worry, Janos, Russians got a good vaccination against the Bolshevism – for next 500 years.
As far as Khodorkovsky is concerned, he’s just pathetic, he should stay out of politics and enjoy fishing in Geneva ponds – that’s what he was planning to do anyway, but US is so desperate for regime change in Russia, that they dug him up.
Well said Buck. We have many enemies, both foreign and domestic – just like the Founding Brothers. They triumphed and and so can we. But we can’t triumph by being “nice” – which means allowing unspeakable cruelty to be inflicted on innocent people, people our leaders have sworn to protect. We must hold men to their Oaths. Surely you can understand that much at least?
Preach it brother. I didn’t want that to end Mr Stud. I think the firm of J & F just got schooled(J&F standing for Just F….well, you get the idea)
Former Aussie PM Abbott tells ‘grand mufti’ that White culture is superior.
The PC tide is going out fast, not to return for several generations, i.e. until the lessons of the need to call evil for what it is, and destroy it, have once again been forgotten:
=================================================
As Breitbart London has reported, Mr Abbott, who was ousted from his leadership position in a coup by his own conservative coalition in September, said in an interview with Australian broadcaster Sky News on Tuesday that “all cultures are not equal.”
“A culture that believes in decency and tolerance is much to be preferred to one which thinks that you can kill in the name of God, and we’ve got to be prepared to say that,” he said.
Mr Abbott followed up his statements in a column for The Daily Telegraph newspaper in Sydney, pointing to the death of two Australians at the Lindt café siege in Sydney in December 2014 and the shooting of police accountant in Parramatta in October as reasons the Muslim religion needs to be overhauled.
He pushed for change within Islam and said Western Civilisation should declare “clear superiority” over a culture that justified killing people in the name of God.
“Islam needs to delegitimise the urge to ‘behead all those who insult the Prophet’ but only Muslims can do this,” he wrote.
========================================
hear hear Mr. Abbott
“A German court has ruled that Islamists who patrolled a city’s streets as “Sharia police” did not break the law and will not be prosecuted.
Nine were arrested in September 2014 after patrolling streets in Wuppertal, western Germany. They wore bright orange jackets with the words “Sharia police”. They told passers-by not to frequent discos, casinos or bars.”
The above news, earlier today, posted on the BBC site.
===
How do you like it now, Wpac?
wpac likes it a lot, it’s a peaceful interfaith multicultural exchange that stops drinking and dancing.
anything that furthers compassionate leftists’ urge to control despicable christians and side with islam
Fodase,
I’m sure the Brown shirts of Ernst Rohm, very early in the struggle, and when a vast minority, were courteous and made vague suggestions regarding their idea of propriety, all the while helping women cross the street, etc. In Iran, Afghanistan, and other nests of fundamentalism, the suggestions became more…strident…and ass whippings and worse were the order of the day.
I would opine, that if we were to give crossing guards cudgels, or whips, the school children, those little bastards, would soon wipe the smirks from their faces.
Edit: “were the order of the day”…
“have become the order of the day.”
You can say what you like about the multi-talented Mr. Trump but at least he gives the appearance of having left the script in the limo.
I say “appearance” because maybe, like Hillary who plans to be more spontaneous, Trump’s incontinent blather is in fact highly scripted. This IS show-biz after all.
Showbiz or no, maybe what Trump needs is to slow down. Think things through a bit more.
How does a person sound all high-falutin’ and smart? He convolutes things. He avoids certain terms. He wants to sound calm and serious and temperamentally fit for high office so he uses 10 words to say what can be said in 5.
What am I talking about? Do you remember what Randy Paul said? You don’t remember? Ok, well, neither does anyone else.
But Randy said (before Trump) that he wants to put a pause on immigration from 34 countries, these countries being “high risk”. But, no, Randy’s not in favor of a moratorium based on religion. No, of course not.
See what I mean? Note that Randy didn’t say “Muslim”. Randy’s way of saying it sounded much more level-headed than Trump. Different terminology, more words, but the same thing.
Trump COULD puff things up with some politically correct fluffery, so that with the benefit of sober reflection, things that at first sound grossly inflammatory might come across as more well considered. It It might give Gwen and Amy something to chew over on PBS.
Like, what if Trump said, OK, the USA is ALL about freedom to worship as you see fit. Because, at its root, if America isn’t about THAT, then what’s it about?
But, in the next breath, what if Trump said, look, America is all about freedom. And so the individual has wide latitude as far as lifestyle, modes of belief and all that. But having said that, what passes muster in a Bedouin encampment or a Pakistani mountain village may not pass muster here. You can stretch the behavioral or societal envelope only so much.
So, for example, Trump might ask, are face coverings ok? And he might answer, maybe not so much. They creep people out, especially modern western women, especially given that it took centuries to cast off the shackles of father and brother and husband.
To the modern western woman who doesn’t take her hard-fought status for granted, things like face and head coverings and floor length dresses might represent female subjugation and submission and, as such, represent a step backwards.
In short, never mind the Confederate Flag, just as slavery has no place in the modern USA, neither does second class citizenship for non-whites, nor anything that implies second-class status for women, symbolic or otherwise. The road up from subservience was exceedingly long and steep, the road back down could be exceedingly slick and fast.
America is the new world, it is the embodiment of progress and freedom. Or it’s supposed to be.
Trump would be smart enough to know that no matter that the screed touched on freedom of religion, the plight of women and racial minorities, to the almighty enlightened, particularly those having been educated in those bastions of political correctness, all this sounds deplorable and so they will go on the assault.
Now, Mr. Trump might then say in reply to the inevitable counter attack, consider this, maybe what he says sounds deplorable to these people here who really don’t have a clue about conditions overseas.
Anyway, the broader issue is one that’s been around as long as America. What cultural practices are acceptable here? Do we give foreign ways a foothold? Maybe it sounds broad-minded and intellectually and morally elevated all that sheep-shit, and as long as a miniscule proportion of the population adheres to backward foreign ways, the rest don’t care.
Clitorectomy? Infibulation? Forced marriages? A shrug, a yawn, whatever, out of sight in their own enclaves and, therefore, out of mind. Nobody gives a shit, especially the exalted ones in their leafy, green neighborhoods and ivy covered campus buildings. As long as the backward one percent don’t go shooting dozens of people at a time or setting bombs at public events.
But what if it’s not one percent but ten percent? How tolerable will it be then? What if it’s twenty percent? What about thirty? What if some of these bearded people forget their “place” and start demanding a say and start challenging for power? What if they start calling the Progressive Left morally depraved and perverse and unfit for influential position in society?
What if American cities become subdivided by self-segregating, mutually exclusive no-go zones? What if disparate groups start insisting on separate schools, separate justice systems?
Or, for example, what if that age-old civil war, Sunni vs Shia, flares up here, or that old civilizational conflict, Christian vs Muslim. Can’t happen? Why not? Happens all over the world.
What about when the spunky, liberated, progressive-minded western woman who wears and goes and does what she bloody well wants, finds herself called an infidel whore out in the streets? How tolerable is that?
Can’t happen? From what I’ve heard, it happens all the time in Europe. Never mind that fourteen people are dead in California and 130 in Paris, calling a woman names is exceedingly small beer. Compared to shooting her, that is.
I noticed that Obama gave the obligatory scolding lecture. Yeah, yeah, how many times have we heard it, Americans have to be tolerant and accepting blah, blah. But these things go both ways, so did he give a lecture to American Muslims also, that there are corresponding obligations to accept American-Western societal and cultural norms? Heaven forfend, that would never do, not even after a series of mass murders on US soil.
But, if we’re going to give lectures, don’t stop with Muslims, there’s many others. For example, what about proponents of the Hispanicization of the USA? Hispanicize to what end, one wonders, given the sorry state of things south of the Rio Grande?
I know that the Billionaire Club rub their hands with glee at all this, you know, America as an agglomeration of mutually antagonistic groups, because the billionaire’s aim is to divide and conquer. Wage suppression is the agenda so, to billionaires, this is the stuff of dreams.
It’s not just the billionaires, the Idiot Left wants the same thing. See, they think they’re above all these greasy, inter-ethnic vendettas so they think that the more that society is fragmented, the more their power would be enhanced as thought leaders and societal adjudicators from their lofty perches in the academy and civil service and judiciary.
But I would caution especially the Idiot Left. Did they notice who the Paris attacks targeted? The young, the hip, you know, “progressives”.
Maybe Lefties still think that their agenda passes muster with Islamist killers. They should think again, the ironically detached atheist, especially those in positions of power, could well find themselves at the front of the be-heading line. “Je suis Charlie” you say? OK, have it your way, but you better make out a will just in case. For now it’s the “soft” targets, but just wait, how long before the jihadist targets the well connected and powerful? There’s a precedent. Remember Pope John Paul II getting shot by that Turk way back?
See, there’s a lot of people in power or in positions of influence that take their place for granted. They shouldn’t. There are many others in this world, from many different places, that don’t see eye-to-eye with the Harvard educated and these others want a place in the sun.
Hard for an American to accept but education comes in many forms, sometimes in centuries old academies in places like Mecca and Qum. Never mind far more ancient places from the Far East. Sometimes these folk may don a suit and tie. So they may dress like an American but they sure as hell don’t THINK like an American and they sure as hell don’t think of their own age-old ways as inferior. The opposite in fact.
The melting pot model of assimilation served America well. It has a centuries long track record of success. Don’t mess with success…
“Trump COULD puff things up with some politically correct fluffery, so that with the benefit of sober reflection, things that at first sound grossly inflammatory might come across as more well considered. It It might give Gwen and Amy something to chew over on PBS.”
If Trump did that he would sound like the generic GOP candidate. And that’s not going to fly with “the base”. Trump has injected PCP into the collective psyche; they ain’t going back to cock tail hour niceties.
But you’re right, there can be some intelligent solutions to the illegal immigration problem and it is a problem. And it starts with strict employee verification, which, ironically, Obama has championed and the GOP opposed.
Trump is simply antagonizing Muslims which will inevitably lead to more violent responses on both sides. To use a cliche, it’s a cycle and cycle that Trump not only perpetuates, but enlarges and speeds up.
I notice “conservatives” never mention how Reagan ‘turned tail’ and exited Beirut after terrorists killed 300 in the Marine barracks bombing. Can you imagine the hypocritical outrage if Obama or any Dem for that matter would have done the same?. Clearly there is a double standard in play and reveals why the GOP should never, ever be trusted. Ever.
Once upon a time–1979 or so– the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played a three night stand at the base of the Great Pyramids. Their legendary legion of fans accompanied them on this remarkable sojourn/ ” cultural exchange”. Obviously that can’t happen today. What happened?
Back to Spotlight. I saw the movie last weekend, and enjoyed it very much, and it depicts a world of investigative reporting that has fallen away. I also enjoyed the Boston locations, since I lived there, as did JHK, although he admits it wasn’t a kind city to him.
I kept being reminded of a lot of the old Sidney Pollack films.
If there was real investigative reporting, totally unbiased, Obama would never have been where he is. Nor Bush, Clinton, etc.
That weekend I also saw Brooklyn, another good movie. It’s fun to watch, and although not very dramatic, it catches a woman’s struggles and the world of NYC in the fifties, as well as Ireland. Like Marty, a little movie about little people.
I thought the film had a real JHK moment when Eilis, the Irish heroine, is with Tony, a plumber she starts a romance with. Tony takes her to Long Island at a stretch of countryside, showing some new houses he and his brothers will build, especially one for their mother. I thought ‘suburbs!’ JHK has to see the film and comment on this.
It shows how people wanted some space away from cities, and their noise and worn-out architecture, as JHK has noted in his books. There was a reason for suburbia.
Having grown up in the fifties, I like the way they recaptured the clothes and locations. A church hall is exactly what dumpy halls looked like. Also, you see women working and deciding their own lives. I’m tired of it being called ‘oppressive’, like the recent Progressive commercial where Flo (my favorite TV character) is in fifties mode, being chastised for thinking and not having a husband. That’s not the way I remember it, and all the women I knew were working and had a say in things.
Also, it was a contrast in the two films where Eilis had a kindly, helpful priest get her through things, Spotlight is about a real loss of trust in the Church.
All of you should see both films.
As for the political stuff, I’m always to the right of Janos, so he can do the heavy artillery for me. The only two things I’ll say is that Trump, whatever you think about him (and most of you despise him), has shown the apathy of the corporate class. They have no interest in the country. America is dead, and needs to die so world corporate rule can replace it…much like Protestantism was a reaction against a super-national Catholic church.
Also, Time making Merkel Person of the Year is another slap in our face about any concern for the white race and national survival…but I guess we’re lucky Jenner didn’t get the merit badge this year.
Merkel reminds me more and more of a pod person.
She creeps me out.
Thank God for Eilis. And Flo.
“Person of the Year” does NOT mean that Time likes them or agrees with them……although in this instance they probably do.
Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year back in 1938, back before it became politically incorrect to say “Man.”
You are to the right of me? I doubt it: only God and Attila the Hun are. I am so far right that I am left. Reality is curved after all.
Trump isn’t a conservative – he is a nationalist. Big difference as people have finally begun to realize. Fascism!, the paid whore media cry. Yes, they are right, but they say it like it’s a bad thing.
“You are to the right of me? I doubt it: only God and Attila the Hun are”
Janos,
I believe a correction is in order…I am sure you meant the God of the Old Testament…not the New.
Have you ever read the New Testament as an Adult, of your will? Try it again and you will see. No Prophet talks as much about Hell and Damnation as much as Christ. Yes, his focus was on the personal and psychological, not the political or the national. But to the point: a softy he wasn’t.
Janos,
In the Old Testament there was a hell of a lot of “Smitin'” going on…Lot of threats in the New, and, as we all know, talk is cheap…. The Old Testament God would show you the back of his hand…the New? Threats and promises.
“I am sure you meant the God of the Old Testament…not the New.”
Isn’t God eternal, all-ways good, powerful, all-knowing?
So, the God of the Old Testament is identical to the God of the New Testament. You can’t just go changing God around to fit your preconceptions, can you? OK, maybe you relativists can, just to justify your lifestyle.
““A culture that believes in decency and tolerance is much to be preferred to one which thinks that you can kill in the name of God, and we’ve got to be prepared to say that,” Abbot said.” –fodase
———————————-
Killing in the name of God is an American tradition and is NOT a desirable culture.
Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin told another audience, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”
“We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this,” Boykin said last year.
On at least one occasion, Boykin said of President Bush: “He’s in the White House because God put him there.”
Killing in the name of God is an American tradition and is NOT a desirable culture. America has killed millions of Muslims. Muslims have not killed millions of Americans.
this is the culture they come from, it’s endemic to islam –
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2015/12/10/watch-little-palestinian-girl-demonstrates-how-to-stab-israelis/
Trump doesn’t need any pointers on how to talk, he’s simply saying out loud what a majority of US Americans know is true about islam, PC rubbish, illegal immigration
“They told passers-by not to frequent discos, casinos or bars.”
Gee, I saw some kids waving signs telling people to get their car washed by the students in Glee Club.
The fake “Sharia Police” have as much authority as the high school glee club or the Westboro Baptist Church. They can tell people not to “frequent discos, casinos or bars” all they want, but they have no legal authority. Sharia law is not even supported uniformly in Muslim countries.
=============
A Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in 39 countries asked Muslims whether they want sharia law, a legal code based on the Quran and other Islamic scripture, to be the official law of the land in their country. Responses on this question vary widely. Nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law. But in some other countries, especially in Eastern Europe and Central Asia – including Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%) and Azerbaijan (8%) – relatively few favor the implementation of sharia law.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/07/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/
How do you like it now, with some facts on board, elysianfield and fodase?
Wpac,
Well, when the Glee Club starts beating the shit out of you for refusal to get your car washed, then we will discuss the facts….
The glee club does not beat the shit out of anybody and neither does the shariah police. They are both harmless and legal. You are making shit up to fear monger.
A German court has refused to press criminal charges against a squad of “Sharia Police,” who “patrolled” the streets of Wuppertal in self-styled “uniforms.” The group alarmed locals last year by preaching Salafist morals outside of casinos and bars.
A Wuppertal city district court rejected a case against the controversial self-declared ‘Sharia police,’ saying the orange safety vests worn by the group did not breach any laws. The court said that the bright neon vests that bore the inscription do not form any intimidating or threatening messages and furthermore could not be confused with a real police uniform.
Oh, they were “preaching” … How scary!
CNN anchor tries to fight Trump official by pointing out that Jews weren’t banned after all of their terrorism in America. Guess she didn’t get the memo that you aren’t supposed to talk about that. Oh, she put her foot in her mouth up to her ankle. Delicious.
http://www.dailystormer.com/cnn-anchor-accidentally-calls-out-jews-as-terrorists/
lol, wpa your constant standing up for islam has become chucklingly funny to behold.
now you’ve likened a sharia patrol in Germany to a high school glee club, say it has no authority….
except we have sharia patrols (and no-go muslim areas) now in germany, france, the UK, belgium, holland, denmark, sweden, and likely other european countries.
yep, it’s all as innocent as “the Westboro Baptist Church” you cite.
lol, i am chuckling.
yeah these muslims just fit right in, just like their wretched call to prayer blasted from loudspeakers in michigan 5 times a day.
that’s how they “assimilate”.
no need to keep the noise down, it’s religious freedom.
but americans – if they’re white – are forbidden from putting up a Christ in the Manger nativity scene.
that’s offensive and must be stopped. separation of church and state.
right, wpa?
TECHNO NARCISSISM
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/14/bill-gates-cloud-whitening-dangerous
However, the truth is we are being sprayed. Look up and see the planes. Chemtrails are NOT contrails.
I assume there is a population control thing going on and Gates whats to make it look otherwise.
Check–youtube — Dane Wiggington.
Alphie calling fodase flonase is nonsenseical but very funny.
Alphie the sacred river ran,
In caverns measureless to man.
Doesn’t sound right. Anyone who calls themselves Alphie deserves to eat dog food even before they are old. Countless senior citizens survive on dog food. That’s what you get in late stage Capitalism as well as early stage industrial Capitalism. Only the middle is good and that’s over now.
“Countless senior citizens survive on dog food”
Why can’t they/us eat cake? I am planning to survive on plantains. Just planted 1500 trees (it’s not really trees, it’s one-time palms)
What about Comrade Komerofsky?
Ruff ruff
A.Brodsky: Bosch inspired thoughts of US Elections
Hillary should be removed from the elections, it is more or less clear to everybody, especially after yesterday, when Putin expressed the hope that he will not have to use nuclear weapons against the DAESH, of which she is the Godmother.
We say DAESH – we mean Hillary, we say Hillary – we mean DAESH. Therefore, no one wants to go to the Last Judgment with a photo of Hillary in the teeth, but it is inevitable if she becomes US President.
But the removal of the main candidate from the election is unprecedented, and to keep the balance Trump will be removed too. Moreover, I’m sure that concrete negotiations are underway on this subject.
Now when Trump and Hillary are removed from the primaries, a candidate number 1 from GOP becomes Ted Cruz and runs against the Donkey Sanders. Trump becomes independent candidate or creates his own party (such as The Party of The Common Sense) and gets 40% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats vote (100% Obama’s Democrats).
Trump president with 56%, Cruz becomes vice president with 30% of the vote, while Sanders is gaining 14%. US two-party system comes to an end. Hillary finished it off. This is a fact.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Last_judgement_Bosch.jpg
yet another muslim killing for allah:
http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/muslim-arrested-after-neighbor-flees-sword-attack/?cat_orig=us
now now, we mustn’t rush to judgement, it’s only a small number of muslims
the rest are those moderates you never see denouncing the small number
they’re too scared
anne coulter hits the nail on the head. i don’t expect most of you to get it, it’s too commonsensical
======================================
For my best birthday gift this week, Donald Trump called for blocking Muslim immigration to the United States. If he throws in all immigration, it will be my merriest Christmas ever.
By contrast, the eunuchs running against Trump went mental.
Marco Rubio called Trump’s proposed moratorium on Muslim immigration “offensive and outlandish.”
Rubio’s idea for stopping Muslim terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is something simple: Launch several wars to clean up the entire Middle East.
Chris Christie called Trump’s plan “ridiculous,” saying, “This is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about.”
People with “experience” say things like: Walls don’t work and are “too expensive.”
Ted Cruz said he disagreed with Trump and instead would focus on “radical Islamic terrorism.” Cruz will have a lot more radicals to focus on if we keep importing a quarter million Muslims every year.
And these were Republicans. MSNBC acted as if the nation had come under terrorist attack (by a Muslim immigrant) with its round-the-clock, breaking-news coverage of Trump’s proposal, rife with images of dangerous demagogues from George Wallace to Hitler.
People without real arguments call anything they don’t like “racist” or “unconstitutional.”
Trump’s proposal is neither – I won’t waste space mentioning 100 years of constitutional law and practice, but of course our country has absolute authority to decide who gets to immigrate here.
In the 14 years since Muslims killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, this country has admitted another 1.5 million Muslims. So we’re xenophobic, bigoted racists if we don’t make it 2 million? Three million? When will we have enough? How many murdered Americans is an acceptable number before we can shut off the spigot of Muslim immigration?
The amazing thing is that no one (except the American people) wants any pause in Muslim immigration – even after more than a dozen Muslim terrorist attacks on our soil in the last 15 years.
House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he will refuse to consider cuts to Muslim immigration, saying, “That’s not who we are.”
Republicans are totally copacetic with Pew’s recent finding that white Christians are now a minority in America, but furious with Trump for suggesting we take a break from importing Muslims.
“Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole” is Ann Coulter’s latest best-selling book driving the left nuts — hard, cold facts about immigration’s impact
Can we move them to Ryan’s district? According to Pew, only 11 percent of Muslims are Republican or “lean Republican.” They may not make the “best Americans” – as Ryan claims – but at least they’d get rid of him.
The hysterical demand for never-ending Third World immigration has gone beyond the rich’s need for cheap servants and the Democrats’ need for voters. It’s a mass psychosis.
Everyone acts as if Pakistani pushcart operators are the same as American blacks, and we’re required to bring them here to make up for the legacy of slavery.
Foreigners aren’t the descendants of American slaves! The rest of the world does not have a civil right to move here. We’re under no moral imperative to allow any immigration at all. We don’t owe citizens of other countries anything.
But as long as you brought it up: They owe us. America runs around saving other countries from tsunamis, earthquakes, pirates, disease, starvation, warlords, dictators, Nazis, communists – then their citizens show up full of grievances, as if we owe them.
Angry Muslims have been popping up all over TV to denounce Trump and complain about anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. If they’d prefer a country with a larger Muslim population and no white devil oppressors, low-rent mud huts are available in any of about 50 Muslim countries around the world. First month free; after that, two goats a month.
In addition to the thoughtful policy objection that Trump is a racist, we’ve been treated to an endless stream of stunningly stupid arguments against Trump’s proposal.
Fox News’ Dana Perino complained that Trump’s policy doesn’t “distinguish the peaceful from the radicals.”
Yeah, nor can our government.
Given the devastation caused by only two Muslims in San Bernardino, eight Muslims in Paris, two at the Boston Marathon, one at a Chattanooga military recruitment center, one at Fort Hood, 19 on 9/11, etc. etc. – it’s really irrelevant whether “most” Muslim immigrants are peaceful little lambs. It doesn’t take a lot of them to create havoc.
I don’t know why we need any.
While it’s fantastic news that most Muslim immigrants aren’t terrorists, as Samuel Johnson said, “A horse who can count to 10 is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.”
We want remarkable Americans, not immigrants whose selling point is: “hasn’t blown anything up yet.” What’s the upside of admitting 250,000 poor, culturally backward, non-English-speaking Muslims every year? When are we allowed to talk about what’s good for America?
San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s mother described his father – the original immigrant – this way: “My husband is mentally ill and is on medication but is also an alcoholic and drinks with the medicine.”
Fantastic. So glad we got him. The father, who has been here since 1973 – thanks, Teddy Kennedy! – told an Italian newspaper that he preached moderation to his son, saying it’s not worth fighting Israel, because Russia, China and the U.S. “don’t want Jews there any more.” In “two years,” he assured his son, “Israel will not exist any more.”
So after four decades in American culture, these highly integrated, model immigrants are still clinging to their insane magic potion fantasies.
The senior Farook didn’t come here to work in some highly complex technical field, like nuclear physics or cell extraction biology. He’s a truck driver. So one American lost his job as a truck driver and 14 Americans lost their lives because of Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act.
How else have the 1.5 million Muslims admitted since 9/11 made our country better? Their massive welfare use? Overburdening our schools and hospitals? The machete attacks? The clitorectomies? The honor killings? The occasional terrorist attack?
Currently, there are more than a thousand active investigations of ISIS in all 50 states. Here’s an idea: Instead of paying for an ever-expanding federal workforce to track, wiretap and investigate immigrants with possible terrorist sympathies, let’s stop bringing them in!
Beginning to sense the public’s fury, a number of Republican politicians have been trying to talk tough on immigration. This week, Trump proved that that’s all it is: talk.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/trumps-muslim-plan-happy-birthday-to-me/#gwuBlCKRm3iWRWzE.99
“For my best birthday gift this week….. it will be my merriest Christmas ever.” -How sweet Flo-nase
Why do I feel like I just stepped into a Disney Christmas Special?
This article from Richard Webster puts the clerical abuse witch hunts around the world, and particularly in Ireland, in context and is a good general summary of the late author’s approach.
http://www.richardwebster.net/print/xbrynestynireland.htm
I had forgotten about the repressed memory movement from the 80s onwards.
I posted this link above:
http://irishsalem.com/international-controversies/usa/index.php
Notice that one of Fr Paul Shanley’s accusers withdrew charges when he developed sudden problems with his memory.
You chose your words wisely. It is about time the church got a taste of it’s own medicine. Payback is a witch.
its… its… heaven forbid floridadbag or the other resident pedant pounces on it…
Wrong again.
In correcting yourself you should have said it’s its.
negative. i was saying the correction twice, as in “its! its!”
Is it only me, but I have a feeling that fodase is the other reincarnation of wpa_ccc.
They just work perfectly in unison, but from different angles.
More than likely. I have read a few accounts of how certain trolls treat comment boards like a roll playing game, complete with distinct personalities and beliefs for each avatar. Creepy and sad.
it’s…it’s…role playing
-Sticks
it sure is, now get back to your bucket full of dicks
No, fair is fair. You caught ’em, you eat ’em.
I said it a few times in the past, and I’ll say it again, at times I feel as though I am getting duped by personas here a la Phil Hendrie.
By the way, I do not think that Donald Trump is really that stupid that he believes that he could suspend the US Constitution and install a religion test for people entering the US, he’s just playing his role.
He’s aiming too low. The question should be, “are you religious?”
Someday, future inhabitants will look back at homo sapiens like we look at children believing in tooth fairies and egg hiding hares… and wonder “what in the f***were they thinking?”
even the democrats are starting to get it & say That Which Must Not Be Named:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/loretta-sanchez-muslims-caliphate-terrorism-216656
shows what a leader Trump is.
he has reoriented the entire country to ditch PC nonsense and recognize these truths about immigration and cancerous islam
this presidential election is already over. Trump is already much more listened to than obama, and is considered the real President
Another slice of fruit cake anyone?
Trump right again when he says there are no-go zones due to muslim terror:
http://www.dailystormer.com/uk-cops-say-trump-is-right-about-moslem-no-go-zones/
if i’m not mistaken, he was vehemently castigated for saying this
once again, this is what a leader does, he highlights and confronts a situation that needs fixing
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3352406/Scotland-Yard-mocks-Trump-s-claims-London-police-terrified-Muslim-areas-officers-claim-tycoon-RIGHT.html
so refreshing to see the truth finally