JHK’s Three-Act Play
So, last night CBS hauled Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, on board their flagship Sunday infotainment vehicle, 60 Minutes, to blow a mighty wind up America’s ass (as they say in professional PR circles). America is lately addicted to lying to itself, and 60 Minutes has become the “go-to” patsy for funneling disinformation into an already hopelessly confused, wishful, delusional, US public.
McClendon told the credulous Leslie Stahl and the huge viewing audience that America “has two Saudi Arabia’s of gas.” Now, you know immediately that at least half the viewers misconstrued this statement to mean that we have two Saudi Arabia’s of gasoline. Translation: don’t worry none about driving anywhere you like, or having to get some tiny little pansy-ass hybrid whatchamacallit car to do it in, and especially don’t pay no attention to them “green” sumbitches on the sidelines trying to sell you some kind of peak oil story…. It also prepared the public to support whatever Mr. McClendon’s company wants to do, because he says his company will free America from its slavery to OPEC. By the way, CBS never clarified these parts of the story by the end of the show.
First of all, they are talking about methane gas, not liquid gasoline or oil. There are large deposits of methane gas locked into shale deposits roughly following the Appalachian mountain chain from New York State through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, into Ohio, but also hot spots out west. It’s hard to get at. You have to basically blow up the shale rock deep underground with high pressure water that is loaded up with chemicals and sand particles to keep the rock fragments separated once they are blown apart. Chesapeake Energy specializes in this rock fracturing (or “fracking”) method for drilling. You can get gas out of the ground this way. The question is how much, over what time period, at what cost.
At the present time, with America anxious about any kind of future energy, shale gas sounds like a dream-come-true. Mostly what the public saw on 60 Minutes last night was a sell-job for Chesapeake Energy to boost its stock price. Here are some facts:
• Over a 50 year period ahead, all the shale gas drilling of the Marcellus fields in New York State will produce the equivalent of three years US consumption at 2008 levels.
• A price of $8 per unit is required to make shale gas fracking economically viable in theory even for a short time. Gas is currently around $4. Expect to pay at least twice as much for gas.
• Even at higher costs, shale gas fracking is arguably uneconomical. It requires huge numbers of rigs, generally 8 wells per “pad,” meaning very high capital investments. The wells produce nicely for a year, average, and then deplete very steeply – meaning you get a lot of money up front and very soon all that capital investment is a wash. Translation: Chesapeake can make a lot quick money over the next few years of intense drilling and they don’t care what happens after that.
• Chesapeake itself estimates that 5.5 million gallons of fresh water are needed per well, often delivered in trucks, which require fuel.
• It takes three years, average to prepare a drilling “pad” and the up to 12 wells on it, working 24/7 in rural areas with significant noise and electric lighting
• The fracking fluid is a secret proprietary cocktail formula amounting to 5 percent of the liquid injected into the earth. It’s composed of: sand; a jelling agent to suspend the sand because water is not “thick” enough; biocides to kill bacteria that thrive in jelling agent; “breakers” to thin out jell-thickened water after fracking to get the fluid out of the way of released gas and improve “flowback;” fluid-loss additives to decrease “leak-off” of fracking fluid into rock; anti-corrosives to protect metal in wells; and friction reducers to promote high pressures and high flow rates. Of the 5.5 million gallons of fluid injected into each well, 27,500 gallons is the chemical cocktail.
• Mr. McClendon said on 60 Minutes that it couldn’t possibly harm the public’s water supply because they were drilling so far below the 1000-foot-deep maximum of most water wells. He left out the fact that they have to drill through those drinking water layers to get down to the shale gas, and pump the fracking fluid through it, and then get the gas up through it. He also left out the fact that the concrete casings of drill holes sometimes crack and leak at any depth.
• The fracking fluid cannot be re-used. You have to mix new cocktail fluid for each injection.
• “Flowback” fluid inevitably comes back up with the gas, sometimes spilling over the ground. In any case, the stuff that does come back up is stored on the surface in lagoons. Often it contains heavy metals, salts, and radioactive material from drilling through strata of radon-bearing granite and other layers. Liners of flowback fluid lagoons have been known to fail.
• Gas well failures in Pennsylvania, where production was ramped up quickest in recent years, have ended up polluting well water to the degree that residents can no longer use their wells.
• Little is known about the migration of fracking fluids underground.
It seems to me that the chief mass delusion associated with this touted “bonanza” is that Americans would supposedly be able to shift to driving cars that run on natural gas. I believe they will be hugely disappointed. Between the cost of fracking production (and its poor economics), gearing up the manufacture of a new type universal car engine, and installing the infrastructure for methane gas fill-ups – not to mention the supply operation by either new pipelines or trucks carrying liquefied methane gas, we will discover that a.) America lacks the capital, and b.) that households will be too broke to change out the entire US car fleet.
What this disgusting episode really shows is how eager the USA is to mount a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs, including massive collective self-deception. The lying starts at the very top, not just in Aubrey McClendon’s office at Chespeake, but in every executive suite throughout the land – including the Oval Office – where any lie is automatically swallowed and then upchucked for public consumption in the interest of keeping a nation based on addictive rackets stumbling on without having to change our behavior.
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
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First!
Most of these schemes seem to be a rearguard action against the onset of the New Dark Age. It’s sad that America’s reporting apparatus has become a verbal and visual opiate to try to calm the herd and keep them from being aware of the reality we’re all going to have to deal with soon. The only answer at this point is to start preparing for the collapse and not bother gaming out scenarios in our heads about how things could be turned around — it wouldn’t be much different than the Romans scheming about what addled idiot to given the Emperorship to while the Huns are bearing down on Rome.
Visit http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com/ for my own effort to keep at least a small light alive in our quickly arriving dark future.
Minor detail….that was Leslie Stahl, not Judy Woodruff
Last week I posted my full email exchange and only a few people (tstreet for one) saw it as satire. Close enough. Really I was pointing out a problem in Mr. Kunstler’s method of analysis. To wit, he says:
you basically dismissed the book, and it’s ideas, because they rubbed you the wrong way.
and earlier,
I am also allergic to conspiracy theories.
I have dismissed 911 conspiracy theories as nonsense.
He accuses my avatar of the exact crime to which he has already confessed. This is hypocritical. He is, of course, correct in his claim that that the avatar failed in scientific or rational analysis of the thesis of peak oil (which I believe is a valid phenomenon). Kunstler has failed to logically or scientifically analyze the evidence that the official theory of 911 is deceptive. He ‘dismissed it as nonsense.’ On what evidence? I am merely encouraging a scientific appraisal of the question.
See the video presentation by architect Richard Gage at http://www.documentarywire.com/911-blueprint-for-truth/ supported by 1300 architects and engineers, including several NASA physicists.
I came to his book via the 911 truth route – Crossing the Rubicon by another peak oil advocate. I know others who have, as well. I’m only asking that he honor those readers by examining the evidence. His refusal to do so is telling and, as I demonstrate, hypocritical.
I’ve read that in the Depression, Americans were more willing to lose their homes than their cars.
I’m hunting for the source…might be a Lewis Mumford text.
In any case, we are SO fracked. The destruction of our groundwater for our autos and our furnaces! We’re already ruining the oceans and climate…why stop there!
At moments like this, I wonder if an alien conspiracy is not afoot, to make the world so uninhabitable for homo sapiens that we’ll be sick and collapsed and ripe for conquest when the toxic-waste-eating Rigelians move in to take over.
Sure is a better theory than “mendacious overfed white rich men drive us all toward the brink of an abyss in 8 mpg SUVs.”
A nice analysis of the natural gas industry, JHK.
It is amazing “…how eager the USA is to mount a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs, including massive collective self-deception. The lying starts at the very top”
Amen! All anyone seems capable of is kicking the can down the road without regard to the longer term.
Individuals frack expenses for one more month.
CEO’s frack their accounts for one more quarter.
Politicians frack us all for one more term.
The outliers who argue for conservation and sustainability are ignored or told to go frack themselves.
What a system we have. We are so fracked!
I’m really starting to think that he and everybody else is getting the nature of the collapse all wrong. It’s happening now but it’s slow. There is no tipping point, no cliff. Just slow decent, notch by notch, day after day, forever.
I live in Africa and believe me, yeast folk, you have no idea how much things can deteriorate, how poor you become, how many services can fail while at the same time there are still rich politicians and their business pals driving in big limos (more like BMW X6s round here) down new freeways doing exactly what they want. Where I live half the population under 30 has no job and no hope of getting one. A third of country live in shacks. There are plagues, no-go zones, corrupt pigs demanding bribes everywhere, more taxes. But at the same time more golf esates, more BMW X6s and more silicone breast implants than ever before! It becomes normal very quickly, trust me.
If you’re waiting for some kind of poverty limit to spark revolt you’re going to wait forever.
I have long wanted to know the EROEI for shale gas. The proponents of it are endorsing it as our salvation from peak oil. Question: Does shale gas have a truly favorable EROEI? If yes, as depletion ensues how long will the EROEI remain favorable? If the EROEI is not favorable at this time, then why is there so much investment in shale gas?
Last night’s show was a delightful little distraction for the American sheeple. Don’t you worry, now! That huge ass SUV on steroids is gonna run on methane gas now…and we got PLENTY! Sure, it’s a little dicey getting at it, but, hey, we know what we’re doing, okay? Now, for your new SUV, what color pleather would you like? You know, the cream is very popular with the metalic red finish. And you can get super-sized captains chairs in the front (to accomodate your ever-growing fat ass) for a mere $2,899.98 extra! Look, they swivel! And note the faux wood grain finish on the dash. Looks like the real thing, doesn’t it? We call this particular model “The Delishe”. Please note the very elegant “e” on the end. Be one of the first on your street to on a “Delishe”. Better Buy Now! The first 4,000 buyers will get automatic “free” upgrades. Please visit our website at http://www.pleasefuckmereallyhard.com and ORDER YOURS TODAY!
The correspondent was Leslie Stahl, not Judy Woodruff.
It was by and large a puff piece.
Yes there is a lot of gas but gas works the same way as oil. It is traded on a global exchange to the highest bidder. Since they found this stuff companies are scrambling to convert America’s LNG import terminals into export terminals. The gas party will be short lived and the environmental effects are much worse than they showed on the segment.
I have met some of these guys. They are modern-day wildcatters, anxious to make a buck and move on. Many of the ones operating in NYS and PA are from the Texas and Okie oil patches — and they are just moving through the depressed parts of the Southern Tier and the “T” in PA writing checks and drilling wells. They know that they’ll be long gone before anyone can prove there were problems with their drilling schemes — and it’ll be even longer before anyone could mount a legal challenge — if ever.
Funny. There actually is a town in PA called Frackville. Maybe they should make it ground zero for all their operations.
You’d think that people would learn (LOL) from places like Centralia, PA, which is still burning to this day and may continue to burn for another 1000 years! I’m pretty sure the coal companies never warned of such an eventuality….
Apparently it’s fine to do anything to keep the automobile-centered, electricity-wasting, constant consumption lifestyle alive, even if it’s “necessary” to destroy the environment and pollute our drinking water. As Kunstler has pointed out before, we need more trains and other public transportation. But the right-wing is now even trying to stop progress in that area: http://www.lesswaiting.com/111010.shtml
There was a YouTube video going around last week about the US military’s fears for national security regarding the combination of peak oil and climate change. So this current questioning of the viability of shale gas and the recent understandings gained regarding Greenland’s glaciers add up to a slow-motion train wreck I’m observing day by day in horror. Maybe my obsession with simple living via basic foods is really just self-mollification. But we do what we’re able.
Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill
View the film GASLAND, I believe the whole movie may be on youtube. What these cas drilling companies can only be called rape of the planet for short term profits.
I suggest the movie GASLAND, which talks about the fracking insanity http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/gasland/
Everyone should look up online Bob Lazar’s 2009 video of his car running on hydrogen gas. It’s so easy a child could build one, if the US Gov would allow us to. That is how the auto industry could easily be retooled!
Do not become distracted by his older interviews about UFOs, or dismiss him out of hand until looking into his CAR.
Just wondering…doesn’t methane gas tend to explode rather easily? What about a car ramming into yours? I mean, I remember the Pinto, which had a nasty little habit of catching fire when it was rear-ended (gas tank thingy – no biggy).
Leslie Stahl is the official 60 Minutes Energy Prevaricator–last year she did a fluff piece about how the Saudis are going to find even more oil, and it was clearly a PR setup for the Royal family.
It is really disturbing to see the level of delusion in my countrymen when it comes to the cars. There’s no scheme too outlandish or impractical for consideration when it comes to Happy Motoring. To test this sad hypothesis, one needs only go to the ostensibly Liberal Huffington Post site when there are new stories about breakthrough Electric vehicles. Question any part of the theory of EV’s replacing standard autos with only minor adjustment and you’ll get the blog equivalent of being tarred and feathered. Hint to the clueless: the very name Rare Earth Metal implies that the metal may be… I don’t know… hard to find?
You can currently purchase a Honda Civic which runs on natural Gas. It is easy to run any car engine on natural gas without modifieing the engine. just an extra tank and some fuel system mods.In my town we had police cars which would run on either. They had two tanks and could be switched back and forth with the flip of a switch
Everyone should look up online Bob Lazar’s 2009 video of his car running on hydrogen gas. It’s so easy a child could build one, if the US Gov would allow us to. That is how the auto industry could easily be retooled!
Once again, the American capacity for maintaining the collective delusion through self-deception found in the CFN comments.
Alt energy that allows us to keep our happy motoring lifestyle: so easy a caveman can do it!
Yep, Gasland is a film that everyone should watch. Something JHK did not mention is that in addition to the “cocktail” potentially poisoning the ground water, there can be significant methane seepage into water wells. So, turn on your kitchen faucet and out comes flammable methane gas! This methane also makes the water undrinkable. It all makes sense when you realize that the underground rock formations are being fractured. So the gas companies make a few quick bucks and leave a trail of wreckage. The pristine heartland of America, upon which we thought we could depend, is now being ruined by a few very greedy cretins. And we, the populace, are being co-opted through our unhealthy addiction to energy.
Watch Gasland! Sure, it has some “spin” to it, but hopefully you will be able to balance that out against messages from the 60 Minute shills.
We recently saw the documentary “Gas Land” that goes into great detail about fracking.
Be sure to see it.
I always like your writing, Jim, but this is one of your most informative columns yet. I really appreciated the walk-through of how the fracking process works, with the chemical cocktail, the spillage and all the construction work for companies like Chesapeake even if the wells don’t pay off.
Our magazine, Transition Voice, did an interview this month with one of the top critics of today’s fracking gold rush, Houston gas analyst Art Berman, that backs up your analysis that unconventional natural gas certainly won’t save Happy Motoring (or even home heating for that matter):
The great white shale
I can only assume the more-oil-than-Saudi-Arabia-from-tar-sands balloon has been punctured, so now we are on to the-next-big-thing to save our happy motoring ways.
Jim says America lacks the capital to do a switchover from oil to something else. But China is swimming in capital. Lately the Chinese have been looking for ways to launder all the bucks they’ve put aside.
So maybe there’s a way for China to finance some of this. For example, to date they’ve invested billions in Alberta oilsands companies. They’d been wanting to go in on a deal to get a pipeline put in to a western Canadian port (until they got frustrated with the slow pace of the approvals process). Potash Corp of Sasktatchewan has been in play until just recently. There was an Aussie company that made a 40 billion dollar bid to buy it and it was said that the Chinese were also thinking about having a go at it.
The Chinese have been dumb enough to finance bazillions of US govt spending already and you’re already massively in debt to them so what the hell. And if you default what are they going to do about it? Like all other third world debt that goes bad the bonehead creditor eats it. Currency crisis you say? Bernanke and company have been doing their level best to inflict one anyway. There’s no honour among thieves.
Great article Jim. Plus, shows like 60 minutes are a tools for the corporations, nice world we now live in. As for the lying, denial in this country, it is everywhere now.
Why do they keep screwing-around with electric and gas cars, only to
embarrass themselves, when there are proven automobiles that
are IN PRODUCTION (Tata Industries) that run on AIR?
Please see the short videos at:
http://tinyurl.com/6nwcfq
http://tinyurl.com/muhzkv
Besides the AIR powered automobiles, Tata Ind., in India, owns
Jaguar and Land Rover, and turns-out an automobile every seventeen seconds,
twenty-four hours a day.
And, if you compress the AIR using solar, the $6,000. AIR cars run for FREE.
Watch the U.S. Government owned auto industry and petrochemical giants
choke on this one!
Abrahm Lustgarten, of ProPublica, has been covering this issue for many years. The ongoing series is called, “Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat.”
Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat
By the way, in 2009 and 2010, NPR did a 3-part series about NatGas as the “game-changing” fuel. Of course, it was right after they received a fat corporate donation from the American Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA).
American Natural Gas Alliance
Now, nobody can prove any quid pro quo, but it was only AFTER NPR received an avalanche of criticism about having COMPLETELY MISSED the environmental dangers of fracking that public radio attempted to correct the record. Of course, NPR also completely missed the issues that JHK addresses here; namely the idiocy of continuing the unsustainable while fantasizing about the next miraculous technological fix that will save us from ourselves.
Agreed. “Gasland” is a must.
Gasland, by Josh Fox.
I saw those fellows run a car on hydrogen on mythbusters, too.
It ain’t that people are claiming cars won’t run on hydrogen, it’s that figuring out how to make and store and transport a bunch of hydrogen is hard, especially the “making” part. It ain’t like there’s hydrogen bubbling up out of the earth like oil.
If our government goes along with this idiocy — and why wouldn’t they? — we’re going to need a new cabinet-level Boondoggle Czar to oversee this and the Ethanol Boondoggle.
I think Al Gore is the man for the job, since the Global Warming project isn’t going over as well as hoped. Another good candidate, perhaps more palatable to the GOP and the T-Party, would be Sarah Palin.
Yes, Sarah Palin would be the perfect person to sell this new boondoggle to the ‘merican people — She’s got that ideal mix of perky credulity, spiced up with a hefty does of self-anointed certainty.
You will find a picture of Leslie Stahl if you google CLUELESS
Thank you for that, Jim
If you hadn’t written about this today I would have brought it up because I was just about ready to yell back at the TV last night!
Aside from all the points yo made is the absolute silence about how our infrastructure is being bought out by foreign transnationals. Again, something that’s being kept very quiet.
A month ago I posted 2 stories about China buying into the Chesapeake fields. Here it is again:
…But, guess who’s coming to Texas.
Last week I found an article originally published in the Houston Chronicle that I posted a part of on this site.
It’s about how Cnooc Ltd. of China will be getting a 1/3 interest in texas oil and gas fields and they plan to invest “$2.16 billion for a chunk of Chesapeake’s assets in the Eagle Ford, a broad oil and gas play that runs roughly from southwest of San Antonio to the Mexican border. CNOOC also will provide up to $1.1 billion more to cover drilling costs”..
They want to learn more about fracking (groan) to develop their own resources at home. A real steal of R&D once again for the Chinese.
The public relations firm (a branch of Marsteller) says Americans are ready for the Chinese investment as they need an infusion of cash. It’s being played as a real win-win scenario.
Can you leave the spin on the side, please?
“I believe they will be hugely disappointed. Between the cost of fracking production (and its poor economics), gearing up the manufacture of a new type universal car engine, and installing the infrastructure for methane gas fill-ups – not to mention the supply operation by either new pipelines or trucks carrying liquefied methane gas, we will discover that a.) America lacks the capital, and b.) that households will be too broke to change out the entire US car fleet.”
What a moronic statement. (And this is not to say much of the rest of this piece is not as moronic.)
Firstly, if the economics of fracking are so poor you would not have the mad, mineral-rights, land rush that is currently underway.
Universal-fucking car engine? There are currently fleets of vehicles that run on natural gas. The conversion is around $1500 per vehicle. It is done on conventional, gasoline burning engines. (The same fucking engines that have been made for the last 150 years.) The engines burn natural gas more cleanly (the octane of NG is 130 vs 87-93 for conventional gas), pollute less and as a result have markedly lower maintenance costs.
Installing an infrastructure for NG? You have got to be kidding. There is currently 6 million miles of NG pipeline buried in the US. To install some fill-fittings running off of existing lines would be a no brainer. As a matter of fact anyone that has NG running into their current home could install a fill-fitting right in their freaking garage. (Does it get any easy than filling up in your own garage?) Every freaking gas station in America could also tap into NG lines and offer both conventional gas and NG.
As for America having to “change out” the entire US car fleet? They won’t… moron. We’re talking a different type of storage tank and some fitting modifications. For Christ’s sake how about a little homework before your next rant?
“A month ago I posted 2 stories about China buying into the Chesapeake fields”
Y
“A month ago I posted 2 stories about China buying into the Chesapeake fields”
You have got to be shitting me? China currently holds somewhere in the neighborhood of between one and one point seven TRILLION DOLLARS of US government bonds (debt). Yet you are excited about them INVESTING 2 billion in Chesapeake gas fields? You are kidding…right???
Someone once said that we deal with “emergencies” really well but we don’t deal well at all with one or two percent per year declines.
Things deteriorate a little bit every year and you get used to it and you cope and it’s not until 15 or 20 years pass that maybe you remember how it used to be. Of course for younger folk it’s all normal because they’ve never known anything different.
I’m old enough to remember how a semi-literate labourer could easily support a family of four with a decent house, car and still put away money in the bank. You don’t see this anymore though. What’s really disturbing is that some people dismiss these white picket fence memories of days gone by as delusions, invented memories of things that never really happened, that they’re idealized memories of an America (or in my case Canada) that never existed. A Leave-it-to-Beaver-Land of the mind. Sorry but it did exist and things are a lot worse than they were 40 or 50 years ago.
In the 1950’s someone like my father could immigrate here with nothing, with no education and get a decent paying job. No more though, those days are long past. My home town was a propserous bustling place. No more, now it’s emptying, factories are abandoned, torn down or boarded up. Sad to see.
Anyone watching McClendon’s mea culpa for unbridled energy extraction needs to visit those one of the areas where the riches are purportedly housed – the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania. In an earlier era the landscape there was denuded by strip mining methods utilized by the coal industry. Also in an earlier era, public pressure brought forth legislation and enforcement measures which mandated the industry to cease the practice and restore sites to their pre-extraction condition.
Given the prevailing laissez-faire rule in the USA, I’d say that those restorative methods would never pass given the lockdown of the regulatory apparatus by the energy industry interests.
“I’ve read that in the Depression, Americans were more willing to lose their homes than their cars.”
Makes sense. You can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.
The facts Kunstler lists are mostly spot on and ones that resonate most are it’s simply uneconomical, it’s highly toxic stuff, and it pollutes water supply like Texas and other states have experienced
Oh and I did hydraulic fracking in the early 1980’s in Texas
This story actually made me an opponent of the gas drilling practice, after I saw what happened in Texas and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, in an unrelated story, the new incoming Republican governors of Ohio and Wisconsin plan to give back the money for high-speed rail in their states because they don’t want more government spending – Kasich in Ohio insists that no one would ride the trains (“Nobody uses mass transit” – Ronald Reagan) – and Illinois looks to benefit. Governor Quinn and Senator Durbin want more high-speed rail money, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood – of Illinois – will likely give it to them. They get it. They don’t want methane-powered cars for our future!
“… it’s simply uneconomical…”
Riiiiight. In SE Ohio, a mere two years ago, land owners we’re being offered 20 -$25.00 per acre for a paid up, five-year mineral rights lease. Leases are now being signed for between 800 -$3000.00 per acre. What does that indicate to you regarding the “economics” of NG extraction in the Marcellus shale formation?
For fuck’s sake does anyone posting in this site know anything about anything?
Smokyjoe said:
The funny thing is, it definitely could be something like that. It could be anything driving this, from one unlikely end of the spectrum, “It’s ALL the fault of Alien Space Lizards, The Elders of Zion or the Bildebergers,” to the other, equally unlikely side of the spectrum, “It’s ALL just a coincidence or just dumb rich guys being dumb rich guys.”
The only certainty seems to be is that the shit they show on American RW Corporate Media – which is pretty much all of it nowadays – is NOT the actual story, not even close (choose your method of Corporate PR lying to us – lies by omission, false equivalencies, creating false narratives or any other of dozens of Ed Bernays time-tested PR propaganda strategies), and that “what’s really going on” may run pretty damned deep.
In the end, the whys are far less relevant that the results, particularly considering it’s probably too late to stop the avalanche already, even though the ground has barely yet shifted beneath our feet.
It’s happening…get used to it. It’s BEEN happening, maybe for decades. Both environmentally (TLE) and politically (The Rise of Corn-Pone Hitler in the former USA), certain tipping points have already been passed, silently and invisibly, yet no less significantly.
And if all of this is just a non-conspiratorial coincidence, let us ponder why on Earth it would be that the results of said “aw shucks, aren’t rich guys stupid and incapable” coincidence so resembles what a cabal of evil aliens, Elders of Zion or Bilderbergers would do to weaken and/or enslave the bottom 99.9% of the human race?
I know this last point isn’t exactly logical, but still worth pondering.
Why? After watching the RW Lie Machine for the last 30 years bend and twist reality like “Mr Orwell’s Special Mozarella Cheez”, create absolutely false yet unstoppable revisionist lies, and then ultimately fuse itself with the Corporate Media to create a truly advanced, totally seamless bubble of false reality, one thing is clear.
Logic and reason’s got nothing, absolutely NOTHING, at this point, to do with the current USA or anything about it. It’s all 2nd grade playground power play ethos and the most sophisticated marketing (i.e. propaganda) the human race has ever seen.
Hitler must be laughing down in hell when he contemplates the descendants of his Bush Family Allies
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml
selling RW authoritarianism to the rubes using Hitler as a LEFTIST boogeyman, the 100% DIAMETRIC OPPOSITE OF REALITY – the truth can be confirmed by any reading of history, particularly works like “Defying Hitler” written by on-the-ground eyewitnesses to the RW Nazis’ rise.
“Minor detail….that was Lesley Stahl, not Judy Woodruff.” Icarus, you’re such a kidder! 😀
The chemicals used in fracking are kept secret – despite their contamination of public and private water supplies and property (i.e. THE EARTH) because they are “trade secrets”….. now that tells you how screwed up our system is.
> Sixty Minutes were pretty sympathetic to Chesapeake — presenting it as a company that is trying to do things right. They were all over Halliburton which came across as being basically satanic.
To show you how stupid Sixty Minutes research staff is Halliburton still a big player in hydraulic fracking and was the #1 player in the industry when I did this work in the early 1980’s in Texas
Halliburton WAS big in Colorado, until much of the natgas business dried up. The reasons were economic, though Western Slope Coloradoans want to blame it on hippie environmentalists. I recently bought my home from a Halliburton engineer, whoe (while still employed) took a bath on the sale to me. The reason he was moving is because there is no natgas work for him in Colorado.
As for lease pricing, this appreciation may just be another speculative bubble. Much of the fracking in The West is related to OIL exploration, while natgas exploration stands still. There are many variables which contribute to the pricing if leases for oil and natural gas. Undoubtedly, this favorable press from 60 Minutes will jawbone prices still higher in some areas of the U.S.
By the way, one of my best friends — the CFO of a fairly big natgas exploration company headquartered in Denver — has some leases he’d like to unload to all of the true believers. Two and a half years ago, their stock was nearly $40/share. Now, it’s trading at less than $1/share and they employ a fraction of the people they did in 2008. Bring on the land rush!
Fracking AWESOME!
Thank you Jim for your fine post this morning. You suggest that switching over to new engines, etc. is, essentially, pie in the sky. I agree.
I now think, however, that these cockamamie schemes are not actually intended for use by Joe and Jane Average American Consumer. Rather I think the intention is export to emerging economies, along with the engines and attendant paraphernalia.
When viewed from that perspective, a few hundred poisoned communities living along the fracking pads won’t matter much. Ditto the wholesale destruction of all the states you mentioned.
For fuck’s sake does anyone posting in this site know anything about anything? T
Maybe they do and maybe they don’t.
I wouldn’t put a whole lot of trust in corporate decision making. Leases went from 25 dollars to thousands of dollars? I spent a lifetime watching ranting bullies and psychopaths in C suites take perfectly good companies and fuck them up totally. I spent a lot of time in company meeting rooms watching delusional “group think” in action.
I don’t know about the energy industry as I never worked in it but I spent a lot of my life working in real estate development and management where you had to chuck common sense, basic logic and rationality and buy into generally accepted ways of thinking in the industry whether or not they had any connection with market or business reality. The entire real estate industry was infected with these cultural and intellectual viruses and I’ll bet it still is. After all, look at the state of the industry, both commercial and residential real estate.
It seems to me that people would rather destroy their companies and themselves financially than revisit and re-examine their assumptions about how the world works. If you try to inject some sense into decision making you’re branded a “pessimist”, not a “team player”, not with “the program”. So after several public slap downs you shut up and let the “real men” and “grown ups” make a mess of things and you watch the business go down the shitter. It would be interesting to hear from people in the energy business on this.
I think the remade television show Battlestar Galactica summed up the meaning of the word by using frak in place of fuck, as in clusterfrak nation.
Our media gives us an aspirin when we could really use a lobotomy.
For tzatza: people rushing to invest does not mean that the particular industry or activity has any future. Haven’t you heard of “pump and dump”? Haven’t you heard of investing to create tax losses? Haven’t you heard of promoting a “great new idea/product”, getting a bunch of credulous/cynical (90%/10%) investors, getting 2-3 years of huge salaries and stock options, then fucking off just before (or when) the whole operation crashes?
If all you look at, tzatza, is a bunch of greedy, shortsighted investors/entrepreneurs who are currently insulated from paying for externalities (ie. cleanup), then I have a bridge to sell you. Your type of shallow, naive, follow-the-leader thinking is what has led us to this situation and is leading us off the cliff.
Did you catch the the dreamy delighted look on Leslie Stahl’s face when McClendon said there was two Saudi’s worthy of energy in the gas shale deposits. What has happened to subjective investigative journalism?
Here in Berkeley BP has teamed up with the University for the new Helios project. Those who live around here can see the new big building going up at the corner of Shattuck and Hearst. As far as I can find out, this is a project to genetically engineer very greasy plants and then cultivate vast numbers of these so they can squeeze out the oil.
This is a BP response to diminishing oil in the ground. What it will take to make this work will be huge monoculture plantations in warm places. The bigger these are, I suppose, the more green the solution will be.
Odd coincidence: I was watching CSI last week and fracking was involved. I don’t normally watch, but Katee Sackhoff was a guest star, and I’ve been hooked on her since the new BSG came out.
Even odder: the fracking in the episode was the cause of a serious cluster of cancer in a small farming town. Consider for a moment that CSI is on the same network as 60 Minutes.
While I appreciate the 60 Minutes program just happened, Obama’s EPA is already on this.
Bush inhibited EPA regulation of industry and exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Obama believes in science, and is not rubber stamping industry practice. Another instance where the difference between Republicans and Democrats is more than a “dime’s worth of difference”
On March 18, 2010 Obama’s EPA announced it is conducting a comprehensive study to investigate the potential adverse effects of fracking on water quality and public health. The Obama EPA actually cares about public health!
It is nice not to have fossil-fuel industry people as president and vice-president.
For more on Peak Oil, check out the Oil Drum site: http://www.theoildrum.com/
There are some very interesting and informative articles there that you should familiarize oneself with in regards the Peak Oil issue.
But since everyone in the USA has their heads firmly planted up their beehinds as far as energy use is concerned, what else did you expect from 60 Seconds? Like the TRUTH?
To paraphrase: American/Americans CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.
The whole country is being run by con-men.
The closest you’ll get is a bit of ‘Truthiness’
Now carry on swirling round the ol’ bowl….
“Our media gives us an aspirin when we could really use a lobotomy. ”
Ha ha, but I think youv’e got it reversed, they have already given the lobo….
I forgot to mention that EPA sent letters to nine companies currently using fracturing and asked that they disclose detailed information about the chemicals contained in fluids being used to open the underground rock formations.
Although EPA framed the request as voluntarily, it advised the companies that the agency would use legal means to compel submissions, if necessary.
SOURCE: Association of Corporate Counsel
Here is the study the Bush EPA did.
This fracking issue is very old.
Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs
http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/uic/pdfs/cbmstudy_attach_uic_final_fact_sheet.pdf
What about the guy who invented the engine that runs on water? They say that one of the big 3 auto companies offed the poor guy and locked his idea away in a box so we would be forced to use gasoline powered cars! Jesus somebody find that box.
I think I’ll take horseback riding lessons.
Thanks for some (hard) truth. That we would pollute and destroy the planet in order to continue the non-negotiable American lifestyle sounds like a science fiction fantasy. Except that its true and in progress. Poisoned ground water is forever. Its obvious that the only answer is to switch to a 100% sustainable energy
source: the free and abundant solar input we receive daily. At this point we even have the technology to do so but hold back because it would cost 10 cents more. Meanwhile the entrenched fossil profiteers and their henchmen in the media lie to us and turn both the earth and its climate into toxic waste. Talk about a crime against humanity – this is it.
When I saw that segment of 60 Minutes last night I wondered how shale gas differs from shale oil, which proved mostly uneconomical and impractical many years ago.
I think it does not differ.
It only took about 30 seconds last night watching Aubrey McClendon on 60Mins to where I wanted to smash his effin face in. Jesus, the list grows longer every day…will yoga help? Check “Gasland” out for a closer look at Shale gas extraction.
Here is a link to “Gasland” on HBO.
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/gasland/index.html
And PBS/Now
http://video.pbs.org/video/1452296560/
Just for accuracy:
5% of 5.5 million is 275,000, not 27,500.
Most of it is sand. The mystery cocktail comes to about 1/4 of 1%, maybe 15,000 gallons.
http://gomarcellusshale.com/forum/topics/eqts-hydraulic-fracturing
“Everyone should look up online Bob Lazar’s 2009 video of his car running on hydrogen gas. It’s so easy a child could build one, if the US Gov would allow us to. That is how the auto industry could easily be retooled!”
Developing a car and an infrastructure to run cars on hydrogen gas isn’t the REAL problem, even though it would be a huge task to come up with an effective and safe way to provide highly compressed hydrogen gas to cars at “fueling stations” and to keep the cars from blowing up in huge fireballs when they get into accidents.
The real problem is that hydrogen gas does NOT EXIST in this world in any significant form. It is just a carrier of energy, not an actual fuel source. It must be “manufactured” by extracting (i.e. burning huge amounts of energy) from hydrocarbons (uh, the same hydrocarbons we are running out of and trying to replace) or by breaking apart hydrogen and oxygen molecules from water (electrolysis, another energy intense process). Bottom line is you have to burn more energy, generally from “conventional” energy sources than what you end up with in hydrogen “fuel”. It is a lose – lose situation. Sorry.
that was pretty lucid for JHK!
wle.
Well, let’s just say you NEVER saw this happen to Halliburton under the Bush EPA. Who is in the White House makes a difference:
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency subpoenaed energy giant Halliburton Tuesday, seeking a description of the chemical components used in a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing.
The EPA said it issued the subpoena after Texas-based Halliburton refused to voluntarily disclose the chemicals used in the controversial drilling practice, also known as “fracking.” Halliburton was the only one of nine major energy companies that refused the EPA’s request.
“I think it does not differ.”
And that is because you are a MORON. Shale oil is obtained by strip mining shale rock, grinding, applying heat and chemicals and ending up with products that are close to the gas you put in your car and the oil you put in your engine. The process is costly and at this point not widely used as there are cheaper forms of energy.
Natural gas from shale is in a gaseous form. It is the same substance that makes the pretty blue flame that many members of house holds use to cook their beans and franks over.
The Marcellus shale deposit that 60 minutes was discussing is a particularly dense form of shale that is roughly 1 to 2 miles under the surface. New techniques of horizontal drilling and fracking have recently opened this geologic formation to drilling.
As to the economics involved, Chesapeake Energy plans on drilling hundreds of wells, next year alone, in this formation. At anywhere between 1.5 and 3 million per well and the cost of mineral leasing on top of that, I can assure you it is economical to do so.
Fracking Wonderful! And while they are busy fracking us over and fracking up our drinking water we will all be watching dancing with the stars while eating our McBurgers and paying no attention while opportunistic thugs infiltrate the neighborhood with the intent of dropping in uninvited and armed to relieve us of any reserve note we still happen to posses thus fracking us further in a whole other direction.
IMHO, we are so fracked!
I think this fracking biz will do very bad things to the watershed, which extends far beyond the boundaries of Leslie Stahl’s imagination.
I just returned from my daily jog and saw that the neighbor six doors down are installing “PolyGrass — the finest in artificial lawns.” Hideous ticky tack. As soon as my daughter graduates from high school, I am so out of California.
SJmom
Chudleigh, you’re a genius! Those cars are amazing. I would buy one today if they were available.
Everybody on this forum should look at Chudleigh’s video links.
The energy industry, in particular the electric utility industry, is not immune from group think. Recall that California went through “restructuring” in the 90’s. If you worked for one of the three electric utilities while “restructuring” was being designed and spoke out against the corporate group think, you were branded a heretic. The management of the three investor-owned utilities basically gave up against the power of the idealogues and economists running the California Public Utilities Commission and the threats coming from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about how it would change regulation of electric transmission systems. Economists and politicians promised cheap electricity by introducing “competition” into the industry to replace the regulated price.
The result was carpetbaggers from Texas and other points south bought up many of the California power plants that had been owned and operated by the three big investor-owned electric utilities. In addition, a newly-created corporation took over the “operation” of the high voltage transmission system. Then, in the summer of 2000, along with help from Enron, the new owners ran up the price of electricity and brought the system to collapse, but not before billions of dollars flowed out of California and into the hands of the carpetbagggers. (Even if competition had delivered the promised “cheaper electricty,” there will never be a net savings. By the way, competition never delivered cheaper electricity.) The investor-owned utilities were brought to their knees (Pacific Gas and Electric filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor in the recall of Gov. Davis. The recall was a direct result of the “electricity crisis.” (Restructuring was not Governor Davis’ idea, and no one person, even the governor, could prevent or stop the crisis caused by the greed of Enron and a few other players. But because Gov. Davis appeared powerless, the wrath of the voters kicked him out.) By the way, we now have far more regulation of the California electric industry than we did before “restructuring.” Instead of being regulated almost solely by the California Public Utilities Commission, we also have the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 2300 miles away, regulating much of the operation of California’s electricity system. At both Commissions, we have dozens more proceedings than we ever had before “competition” was introduced. In addition, we have a new, expensive, and inefficient player called the Independent System Operator (the ISO) that “operates” the high-voltage transmission system formerly operated by the investor-owned utilities. The ISO adds nothing to the system except additional costs to the price of electricity. A final note: we also have higher prices for electricity. So much for economic theory.
Does fracking impact earthquake faults? Some of that drilling sounds pretty close to the New Madrid fault. Is it good-bye Memphis, St. Louis and Nashville?
SJmom—so you don’t like the idea of America taking on the look of the set for the TV series, “Eureka”? A Stepford Wives fantasy land? Once we can all put on holobands and live in v-world, it won’t matter what happens on the real earth I guess.
As for this shale gas deal, it symbolizes indeed the deep denial the country is in regarding its future and shows also the insane plans involving that denial. But you know, consider that in Los Angeles, GM and Chevron BOUGHT the city’s underground subway system, filled key tunnels with cement, and thus helped directly steer the LA metro area and city to the use of cars. Maybe we will be faced with something similarly outrageous that will steer us all back to sanity. Maybe. We don’t have any power as citizens to change things that is for sure, or things would be changing FOR us, not against us.
What’s your game?, tzatza
You think I’m making up China’s investment in our oil and gas infrastructure? Fine I have some websites for ya.–My imagination isn’t that good!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101011/ap_on_bi_ge/us_chesapeake_cnooc
http://www.silobreaker.com/watching-the-world-china-buys-into-chesapeake-5_2263803393652817942
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/123721-chinas-cnooc-buys-into-texas-oil-project
For the rest of the articles go google it for yourself!
“If you’re waiting for some kind of poverty limit to spark revolt you’re going to wait forever.”
My middle Georgia (USA) urban neighborhood is dirt poor already, and t’ain’t a soul here challenging the system.
And what good would revolt do anyway? The obscene energy use by one of the financial elite divided a million ways is damn near zero. Hardly worth risking your life for. But they make their obscene money off of your consumption! They’re not climbing in your window and taking it from you. You’re giving it to them freely!
Real revolution comes in the form of boycott and self-reliance.
My recommendation to Cluster Fuckers all along has been to forget what HAS been, settle as low on the food chain as you can stand, and, with greatly reduced living costs, start building a local system around you that operates pretty much independently of the formal economy. A small batch brewery or bakery doesn’t require much land really. Things are awfully tight around my 1/4 acre urban farm, but our business ventures are growing slowly, and I can foresee this moment in time as my family’s “poorest,” currency collapse or not. Not a bad vista really.
I spent the weekend at the Georgia Organics conference, and one of the take-home messages was “we local, sustainable producers can’t keep up with demand.” Whether you’re catering intentionally to the financial elites (while living just as large yourself in many ways), or servicing commoners with an actual sense of taste who know the score, the demand will always be there for the necessities of life. Food that makes you smarter and healthier is, not surprisingly, pretty popular!
Bottom line: the world is wide open for people who grasp the fact that relocalization and powering-down are the ways of the future. For every General Mills out there today, there could be a million small regional versions as soon as we can get them online. You don’t have to wait for things to get ugly (assuming they ever do), the unfulfilled demand for a world made by hand is there already!
Engage in radical thought and behavioral innovation at your earliest convenience.
“Hideous ticky tack. As soon as my daughter graduates from high school, I am so out of California.”
Easy, mommy. California will have a lot to offer in an energy descent context, not the least of which is some of the last remaining high quality topsoil in the country. Unless you think north central Iowa sounds like a comfortable place to live instead. My Dad’s soil in Ames is remarkable, but so are the 50 mph winds on -20F winter nights. Our farms swept across the country east to west, raping the topsoil the whole way to California (giving the sunny beaches of north Iowa a miss for the moment). Why do you think we grow most of our high value crops in California?
Here in Georgia, where we started the pillaging, the soils are destroyed. They can barely produce cotton and peanuts some years, even with massive estuary- and aquifer-destroying fertility inputs. Since I’m from here, and know how to rapidly rebuild fertility on a broad-acre scale, I came back home to help, but I wouldn’t suggest that people living on rich soil screw themselves needlessly because of the neighbor’s astroturf. When the time comes, they can rip it up and garden just fine there. Or you can, if they are complete idiots.
One more item of support for an urban farming revolution is the fact that almost all cities were founded on some of the richest farmland in their respective regions. Simply because we were growing our own food when they were settled, and we were smart enough to know good soil when we saw it. So urbanites are generally sitting on a gold-mine of fertility, while the hinterlands we’ve actually been using for crops were usually second-rate real estate to begin with. Now almost worthless without fossil fuel inputs!
I hope everyone puts top priority on important ecological factors when deciding where to settle for the long haul.
“The bigger these are, I suppose, the more green the solution will be.”
I don’t think I could come up with a more backwards statement…
And using our dwindling soil fertility to grow fuel for our cars is probably the most perverse act of hubris humans have ever engaged in.
It won’t take very long for Mother Nature to drop this kind of shit in the dustbin of history.
Just my .02
TT
Tzatza, when JHK writes that fracking in uneconomical, he is talking about TOTAL LONG-TERM COST, not near-term profits. If you cannot understand the difference, let me give you an analogy: mortgage banking prior to 2007. Real estate and mortgage banking made a lot of people a lot of money. But was it economical? For the bankers and the mortgage brokers, absolutely! But not for the country, since now we, the taxpayers, are picking up the tab for the massive fraud involved. Of course an endeavor looks financially attractive if your privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Who do you think will be picking up the tab for the environmental cleanup (if even possible) after the gas is gone from the ground?
Trippticket, your words are wise. Thank you.
There would be less toxic waste falling out of the back of my horse than McClendon’s mouth.
Thank you, Al.
Al Klein said: “the taxpayers, are picking up the tab for the massive fraud involved.”
Al, tzatza does not believe fraud was involved.
Tzatza has posted previously saying that people willingly signed the documents and were not forced to sign anything.
Everything was legal according to tzatza.
Worldsedge said: “”The bigger these are, I suppose, the more green the solution will be.”
TT replied: “I don’t think I could come up with a more backwards statement… And using our dwindling soil fertility to grow fuel for our cars is probably the most perverse act of hubris humans have ever engaged in.”
Tripp, I think he may have been referring to the algae biofuel production in desert areas recycling waste-water and sewage.
No arable land is being used. No potable water is being used. Slimy green stuff grows and converts to fuel that cars can use.
I agree about the obscenity of perpetuating the happy motoring culture, but if it is to continue, I would prefer methods be found which do not affect fertile soil, displace food crops, or affect drinking water supplies. Algal biofuels in deserts may be such a method. India is working on it.
Peace out! Asoka
Asoka, I appreciate your attempted clarification, but that’s not what the post I responded to seems to be suggesting. Not through any reasonable leap of logic anyway.
Also, Tripp, bio-diesel from algae is not a new concept. This is the final report of the Aquatic Species Program which studied things like biodiesel from algae.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf
You might wonder about water — you use seawater. Or you use the same water over and over again, but it’s still a lot of water.
It could work. The ASP was closed because the best price they could foresee producing diesel at was about $30 a barrel, more than twice the cost of oil at the time.
Given that we’re now well over $30, somebody is going to do make money on this, once the technical challenges are worked out.
I’m not really that big on algae. The future clearly belongs to plastic or possibly CIGS solar panels, which are about 25% of the cost of regular solar panels. Every house should have these installed, whether in sunny Arizona or in cloudy overcast places like Seattle or Burlington. Solar energy production should be local and regional.
These solar panels are on the market now ( http://nanosolar.com ) and in mass production.
FROM THE NANOSOLAR COMPANY PROPAGANDA:
SOURCE: http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177
I live across the street from these fracking idiots. They are on the state game lands and the lease I belong to which is for recreational use. Over the summer they did a lot of drilling and installed the pipeline. As I have said before, they screwed up the roads and they pumped a lot of water out of the creeks, etc. Yesterday I was up there for the first time since early September and the sons-of-bitches have pumps in every availabe pond and quarry. The beautiful lime colored water in the old quarry is now a Pacific ocean dull green color. This is just the beginning of the skank. On the other hand, the locals have a saying : Don’t put any fish in your pond or the gas company won’t try to buy your water. Money trumps everything.
Worldsedge said: “Here in Berkeley BP has teamed up with the University for the new Helios project…huge monoculture plantations in warm places”
Tripp said: “that’s not what the post I responded to seems to be suggesting. Not through any reasonable leap of logic anyway.”
Tripp, with all due respect it does not take a leap of logic to read the word algae and think BP may be interested in algae biofuel. Warm places may be deserts. Again not a huge leap of logic. Monoculture = algae.
Worldsedge made specific reference to the Helios Project:
SOURCE: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml
Algae is greasy, slimy, oily stuff.
Frakking huh?
This conversation isn’t so unlike the cavemen sitting around the fire discussing whether they can drag a bison up a hill and back to the camp to eat if they have to venture down to the low plains to hunt and kill it. Or worse yet, will they eat the whole animal before they can bring it back?
Surely someone can run some numbers. We exist on a 20,680,000 bbl/day oil diet (as of 2007.)
What would it take to approach 50% of this? How many “fields” or well heads? How many miles of pipe and how many cubic feet of storage space?
For that matter, what is the energy yield of each raw resource as a measure of cubic foot or some other measure of volume?
Extra credit, what is the ROI of frakking, if petroleum costs increase 20%? How about 40%?
Doctor Jimmy says it “ought” to be possible to build a calculating mathematical model that demonstrates when, where and if gas recovery is profitable, and at which point in the future it will be a waste of time and money.
Obviously, there are markets currently warped enough to make frakking appear profitable. That is, as long as you win the ground water contamination law suits.
Geez. I stopped watching 60 minutes years ago when I realized that it, along with all commercial TV, is just a way to shill products by creating “content” that keeps people watching. How else could “Biggest Loser” or “Dancing With The Stars” be so popular?
I do watch Peter Gunn on RTV, however.
Interesting article on worker-owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgia-kelly/workerowners-in-the-bay-a_b_783545.html
And for the gardeners in the group, a great site for seeds http://growitalian.com/Qstore/Qstore.cgi
I found it because I had a fabulous, tender, large-headed light green radicchio that lasted all summer and is still producing. I didn’t know what it was, and I found it here–along with a dozen other radicchio varieties. In my area, radicchio grows year around, and lasts much longer than lettuce before going to seed.
You can make liquid fuel from natural gas. Google Shell Pearl Qatar. The downside is you need a lot of cheap natural gas and a LOT of capital investment.
Compressed natural gas vehicles ARE practical. People in Utah were converting vehicles when gasoline hit $4+ a gallon a few years back. The downside is you can’t travel far between fill ups. But it can be done. A mix of gasoline, electric, and compressed natural gas vehicles can work, although living standards will fall due to the higher cost of transportation.
At the risk of jumping on a really greasy treadmill, I’ve quoted the original comment below:
“Here in Berkeley BP has teamed up with the University for the new Helios project. Those who live around here can see the new big building going up at the corner of Shattuck and Hearst. As far as I can find out, this is a project to genetically engineer very greasy plants and then cultivate vast numbers of these so they can squeeze out the oil.
This is a BP response to diminishing oil in the ground. What it will take to make this work will be huge monoculture plantations in warm places. The bigger these are, I suppose, the more green the solution will be.”
Nowhere does it say anything about algae. Matter of fact, it specifically uses the term “very greasy plants“, which algae are not. Algae are protists. Whole different kingdom. I would consider that worthy of mention if I was trying to make a serious statement about alt-energy.
And I hardly ever Google anything I write or respond to on this list. My words come out of my head almost every time, and I always cite my source if they don’t. I hardly ever fact-check other people because that really isn’t the kind of post/response I like to engage in around here.
You’re just arguing again. Respectful as it was or wasn’t to begin with. I’m really not interested in this kind of discourse.
Spending energy to grow fuel for cars while so many go hungry is perverse, whether it’s plant or protist being considered. And if we’re not spending energy, but instead stacking functions in a truly beneficial way, like turning a waste product into food, then that should be addressed in the synopsis of the idea. That’s really the only important part. Nearly every sentence in that post raises my hackles. Especially anything to do with “huge monocultures”, which is why my family is in the US in the first place. My Irish ancestors thought it’d be a good idea to feed an entire country on one variety of potato.
It’s not like I just missed a little factoid.
Tripp,
Oil holds the energy that it did because there were millions of years of slow energy input – solar collection by algae, decay of that algae in largely anoxic shallow continental oceans, then several millions of years worth of compression and high temperature.
It’s not coincidence that most oil deposits come from the late Triassic through the early Cretaceous eras – that’s when the conditions were ideal for the creation of oil (high sea levels creating continental oceans that slowly dried out, high temperatures, and comparatively little circulation to stir things up in those areas. That set of conditions really hasn’t occurred since over more than sixty million years.
We’ve used a significant fraction – say 35% – of that stored energy in the last one hundred years. A great deal remains, but most of it is in very inhospitable and difficult areas to drill (as BP showed this year). That we are now reaching a stage of shale fracturing in order to get to NG deposits shows that even this secondary byproduct of oil and coal production is becoming harder to find, and the environmental costs for doing so are becoming untenable.
JK – revolution does not occur by the poor. It very seldom has, and when it does take place, it succeeds very, very seldom. Revolution occurs when one class of people gain economic ascendancy as the dominant class’s economic basis declines. Currently the aristocracy is the oil/financial services oligarchy, but there are a lot of hungry, technologically savvy types out there who understand the way the world works today far better, and I do not see them going into the dark easily.
Why are you talking to me like I’m in 5th grade?
I’m just curious.
Chill out, Tripp!
I didn’t say the original post mentioned algae.
I said it mentioned the Helios Project. Since I didn’t know what the Helios Project is I googled it… that freedom is still available to me.
That is where I read the word “algae” and put it together with big warm places (deserts) and monoculture, which is what algae biofuel production is.
You made mention of “fertile soil” and I just wanted to point out that biofuel production does not necessarily imply soil loss, or food crop displacement.
I don’t feel like I over-reacted, but if I did you’ll just have to forgive me tonight. I came home from my conference to find that my goat had been killed by marauding pitbulls (I’m guessing, but not really, in this ‘hood), probably just this morning, judging by her condition. Shitty thing to come home to. I hate to think about her suffering. My wife is torn up, and my little girl doesn’t know yet. Don’t know how she’ll take it. I buried her in her paddock with some cut flowers to take with her, and planted her favorite little mulberry sapling on top of her. I’m really having a hard time with this.
So I’ll just close out for now, and catch up with everyone later.
If Leslie Stahl were any kind of reporter other than the shill she is, she would have done something like this after listening to Aubrey drone on.
Pretend to go off camera, then pass Aubrey a glass of water.
Meanwhile, cameras are actually rolling, and she says, just as the water hits his lips, “Oh, by the way, that water is from one of the wells that was poisoned by fracking…”
Cheap trick, but an excellent fantasy!
Sorry to hear of your loss, Tripp.
Good work Jim. Glad you wrote about this issue. Thanks for giving a damn.
LOL!
The hydraulic fracturing process, as described in a short video produced by Chesapeake itself, can be found here:
http://www.hydraulicfracturing.com/Pages/information.aspx
After watching the video, now I understand why the whole idea of hydraulic fracturing should be abandoned immediately.
Bencorp
I recently watched Mike Moore’s (love him or otherwise) “Capitalism – a love story”. Really worth the effort.
He documents exactly what you’re talking about. But this decline hasn’t occurred by accident, or fate, or simple circumstance.
It’s clear that some years ago (commentators like Catherine Austin Fitts, place it aroud the mid-90s) the Eliterati decided to “move the money” from the US & the West in general to Asia. They sold us out, we’d got too expensive.
The result is what we are currently experiencing and it will not improve. Ever.
I’m telling my kids now – “Move to China in management/consultancy level if you really want financial security in your life-time”.
Joe Q. Public buys this shit because, as a human being – social creature that he is (unlike a cat) – his brain structure makes him defer to authority and believe in experts. Even if he and his brethren really have the power, and experts are really shmexperts.
Jim, this is probably the weakest part of your column today:
In the Utah area, CNG conversion kits and the cost of professional installation (in 10 hours), totals about $1500 for the kit and labor.
I don’t think anyone would say our hemispheric neighbors in South America have more capital than the USA, yet in Argentina 1.8 million cars run on natural gas and in Brazil 1.6 million run on natural gas. If Argentina and Brazil could find the resources to develop NG vehicle fleets, I’m sure the USA could.
All that aside, the question remains whether we should continue to keep vehicles happily motoring along, whether on air, solar, NG, or gasoline because of what is implied in terms of infrastructure and community/neighborhood development.
I think it is worth playing the Blue/Red game because it does matter whether the president sitting in the White House and the vice-president sitting in the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) are on board with Halliburton (Cheney/Bush) or are on board with science/EPA/train infrastructure.
The current vice-president has commuted via train all his life and the largest investment in train infrastructure has come under the Obama administration (I’ll spare you the statistics) to develop the commons.
Obama’s EPA is playing legal hardball with Halliburton and the other hydraulic fracturing companies.
This is a very different attitude from the Bush era Viking attitude of pillage and rape for personal gain.
Saying Blue/Red makes no difference is ignoring the facts.
Don’t believe in unproven conspiracy theories. Remember the one about the guys that invented a gas-powered car that could get 200 miles per gallon, but the auto companies offed him? No wonder US cars cost so much money – it must be very expensive to employ an army of hitmen.
“I wanna Rock ‘N Roll all night…
And Party every day….”
According to Woodward’s book “Obama’s Wars”, the Obama administration is scheduled to examine “progress” with Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan this December. Obama’s original plan, it seems, was to draw down US forces in Afghanistan if the “surge” wasn’t working as planned.
Well, it seems that the US Generals are already telling Obama to “stuff it”, and to forget about any withdrawal.
Our civilian “leadership” isn’t in control of anything. They just deliver packages.
Tripp,
I’m so sorry about your goat. I think pit bulls are horrible dogs.
SJmom
Interestingly, even CBS’ popular “CSI”
program had an episode about how fracking
polluted well waters in rural Nevada.
Yet I suspect that most watchers of TV
programs seldom even look at the science
behind it because they just want to be
“edutained”.
Both “House” and “CSI” actually have the
capacity to educate is people just looked
up some of the terms they use in Wiki.
Curiousity ain’t what it used to be.
E.
I missed the 60 Minutes interview with Chesapeake, but it sounds like one take-home message from the interview was the point I raised in my post last week: we’ve got a freakin’ GLUT of relatively cheap natural gas being produced in the U.S. right now that no one anticipated just a few years ago.
Yes, that glut comes at extraordinary environmental cost. (As does our glut of coal production via mountaintop removal). Of course I’d like to see EPA clamp down on the fracking madness, which is out of control.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, energy-wise, the United States is NOT about to careen off the Kunstler Kliff anytime soon. (Politically and socially, it might well be a different story. But our self-destruction is not imminent because of some sudden crash in the availability of cheap fossil energy. More a sudden crash in political leadership with the balls to make difficult and long-term decisions.)
Tzata has already aptly outlined some of the obvious aspects of the current nat-gas boom that seem to have gone over the head of many posters here.
Me, I’ll go back again to Kunstler’s prediction in July that before Halloween the U.S. stock markets would implode. We’re now several weeks past that deadline and the market remains up at least 6 to 8% since the lastest forecast Kunstler Kliff.
Other posters here mis-interpreted my observation last week as being some sort of cheerleading for the Dow Jones Industrial Average … or some sort of argument that the stock market is an indicator of the general economic health of our country.
I argue neither of those things. I’m only pointing out that yet another Kunstler Kliff has come and gone (similar to his perennial Dow-at-4,000-by-the-end-of-year predictions, including yet another one this year) … and somehow we’re still muddling along and the economy appears to be slowly regaining its footing.
The United States culture and economy is on a long, grim slide down a slope of unsustainable expectations in the 21st century; in that sense I concur with Kunstler. But this country wastes such ridiculously huge amounts of energy that we can easily modify our lifestyles to cope with energy shortages far beyond anything we’ve seen so far.
For example: Perhaps not everyone is meant to own an automobile (read: more motorcycles, more jitneys, better public transit, a ‘flight toward density’ and away from our suburban wastelands).
Perhaps not everyone needs to heat and cool 3500 square feet of living space for a family of three (read: smaller homes located closer to transit and jobs will gain value; larger homes in remote exurban communities will lose value).
These are not necessarily changes that will implode society. I’ve lived in a third-world country where the options are FAR, far worse. And a country that doesn’t have a glut of cheaply-produced natural gas to supply them for another decade or two.
So of course, yes, there will be disruption and, in particular, much gnashing of teeth in the United States by those who’ve never needed to walk more than 100 feet from their automobile, nor wore a sweater at home in the wintertime. But the serious energy sh*t is unlikely to hit the fan for at least another decade. Which is only my opinion, of course — but I’ve been right over the last ten years a hell of a lot more often than Kunstler.
Meanwhile I antiticipate at least 10 more fruitless years of Kunstler predicting the Kliff around the Korner.
Although if anyone SERIOUSLY wants to bet me that the DJIA will end this year at 4,000 — and is willing to actually BET REAL MONEY on that prognosis, not just yap about it — I will be quite happy to take you up on the offer.
Talk is cheap. Although it apparently also sells books.
SJmom, you stated “I think pit bulls are horrible dogs.”
My opinion is you opened your mouth (typed on your keyboard) and ignorance fell out.
I have lived with dogs in my home since I was about 8 years old and I am now pushing 70. Never have I seen horrible dogs of any breed; what I have seen are ignorant fucking owners of dogs who treat them as shit and want them to be dangerous. I’ll restate that it is not the dogs it is the assholes they are forced to live with.
SNAFU
Yea, Latchkey. Cars can run on water! It is known as a steam engine. Boiled water under pressure provides all the energy to push the pistons and produce rotational energy. Been there done that. There is no free lunch. Energy in=energy out-all sorts of other physical losses. We are still using piston engines for ground transportation, whether internal or external combustion for how long now? maybe 150 years.I guess this is the best we can do. My how far we have come.
Tripp, so sorry to hear about your goat.
I think the list of “chemical cocktail” ingredients is known– arsenic, all kinds of ethyls and di-ethyls, etc.
I heard (unconfirmed) they’ll pipe the gas to the LNG plant in Boston and ship it to Norway.
Pittsburgh city council voted unanimously to ban drilling in city limits.
Pennsylvania “liberal” position is: allow drilling and tax it.
Hydrofracking is one more in a series of stupid stunts we’re going to pull to keep these computers plugged in as long as possible. We’re junkies and drillers are our dealers. They’ve got the dope and we’re going to buy it. A lot of freshly minted millionaires just literally bet the ranch on it.
JHK said: “Often [flowback fluid] contains heavy metals, salts, and radioactive material from drilling through strata of radon-bearing granite and other layers.”
I think the radioactive threat has not been discussed sufficiently. University at Buffalo researchers have now found that fracking also causes uranium that is naturally trapped inside Marcellus shale to be released.
Damn good research question, I’d say, and the UB folks did the sampling to find out.
SOURCE: Research presentation at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver on Nov. 2, 2010.
CFNers in Pennsylvania might be interested in going to a League of Women Voters event tomorrow night in the Gateway Building at Cornwall Manor at 7 p.m. The meeting is open to the general public. (Nov. 16, 2010 at 7:00 p.m.)
The League of Women Voters of Lebanon County will host a presentation by Roberta Winters, an expert on Marcellus Shale. The program is titled “Rock and Roll.” The LWV of Pennsylvania recently completed a year-long study addressing the economic and environmental impact of fracking & industrialization.
Winters, coordinator of the study, will provide an overview of issues of permitting, regulation and taxation of Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction.
For more information on this or future LWV of Lebanon County events, call President Elaine Ludwig at 865-3757
Here is an excerpt from an interview with former state assemblyman Alexander B. “Pete” Grannis, 68, served as the state’s top environmental official for two and a half years beginning April 1, 2007. During his tenure as commissioner, the Department of Environmental Conservation was criticized for underestimating the risks of hydraulic fracturing–a controversial gas drilling technique that is temporarily banned in the state–but also praised for creating the nation’s first fracturing chemical disclosure rules. He was fired Oct. 21 by Gov. David Patterson after a memo Grannis wrote criticizing the governor’s proposed budget cuts for the DEC, was leaked to the press.
Asoka said:
“I think the radioactive threat has not been discussed sufficiently. University at Buffalo researchers have now found that fracking also causes uranium that is naturally trapped inside Marcellus shale to be released.”
Actually, any unsettling of underground materials
causes dangerous radiation release. Fracking is
just a rather extreme example of that. However,
as many Easterners with basements can attest,
many Easter states/counties have mandatory basement radon checks.
That’s why ordinary coal mining and burning
release far, far more radiation than a nuclear
power plant. Anthracite has an enormous amount
of trapped radioisotopes which get release in
the mining and burning of coal.
That’s why I support nuclear power more than
the endless perpetuation of coal-burning
utilities.
E.
I have to concur all my shale wells last about 18 months before rapidly tapering off.
It is no magic bullet.
I have been rethinking what an Asset is.
Something that can save my ass?
Something I can rely on so I can sit on my ass?
Little blimps on a computer screen that I stress and labor for? Try to build up, and look at in my online banking account that are suppose to give me some breathing room and feel financial success?
Coming inflation just erased many of those little blips. Or maybe a overpriced ed-mu-ma-cation that you labor for your offsping so they can pursue those little electronic blips of prospertiy.
Now I am thinking in terms of fruit trees I planted several years ago, and a little garden I have. I don’t know a gd thing about chickens or goats, but now I am thinking some fresh eggs and raw goats milk could be a real asset for my health and a step toward being more independent.
Older gentleman has said he would set me up with honey bees, but I think I would rather buy the raw honey than have a hundred of those little suckers turning on me. Then I say, “don’t be a pussy” get the little white jump suit and helmet and learn something new and useful.
Learn a few new and useful skills every year and before you know it you are alot more self-sufficient.
This week…
Jim is just stating another given, which is we ‘collectively’ globally will be opting for ever more extreme forms of energy recovery to keep the industriomilitia complex game playing… and no one will give a fracking damn about the eco consequences, the long-term ROI, and what might befall any of the poor people living nearby these sites…
(And so what – has it ever been any different) ?
Much like when Hitler decide that moving his armies into multiple war fronts at the same time and taking on Russia pre the winter, (all running on coal to liquids), that this was going to be a winning uber-vorlagenanschlag-idea…
And what happened?
A lot of people died and the idea was a particularly, incompetent, dumb and lame one and as always history had pretold what was to come, Napoleon found out the hard way too.
(Our leaders are incompetents… so what – has it ever been any different) ?
So lets quit the BS and cut to the chase – its really quite simple CFN’ers – the role of the middle-classes and poor masses of the current energy strapped, and currency debased OECDs is to quickly understand there coming options…. to be exactly like the current third-world dirt poor that we’ve seen on film clips, think Slumdog Millionaire.
And they’ll just have to accept that come 2020 squalid, rubbish-tip pickings,thrift style lifestyles are coming – true not this year for most, maybe not next year either – but within a decade for sure.
However many, and we’re talking millions here folks will be enjoying this lifestyle change within 18 months or so, as we ricochet and bounce ever downward as the energy squeezes and price hikes which feed into ever more insane financial shenanigans fail to halt the inevitable decline. Meanwhile those people and families that are jobless already, and have run there savings and food hoards ragged, and have no fallback welfare to rely on… oh dear?
Well they can say hello to diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, swine flu, measles, mumps and hepatitis, which will help to cull the numbers nicely each winter…
And what will they do about it, absolutely nothing – that’s not there role you see. A revolt or two will be crushed anyway, and due to there physical failings this will not be too much of a chore, for the increasingly army like police forces to beat, cripple and maim.
Then we can all quickly move onto a more feudal system of rule like we had before, with a small set of bankster financed, well tooled-up, land owning aristo class sustainably surf power provisioned and armed comfortable haves, serviced by the remaining food & shelter liking helping the masters have nots…
The timeline on all this is I grant you a tad academic, and we can debate it as much as we like…
But I assure you for those living in on midband wages in over-populated, over-reached and under energy resourced clapped out nations, that this is what you have to look forward to.
And Richard Heinberg is once more ‘fully’ on it…
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-12/end-growth
Be seeing you…
There will be a point, my dear Alexandra, where the good (that’s right, I just said “good”) people of this country will rise up and stop this mother loving bullshit! And when they do, wherever you happen to have your ass planted on this planet at the given time, get ready to ROCK AND ROLL because a shit storm you can’t even BEGIN to imagine is going to break. It’s ramifications are going to be “felt round the world”.
And as for all of you other outside of the states who mock the U.S., history doth tell that when we have a SHIT STORM, EVERBODY ELSE HAS A MAJOR SHIT STORM. So, go on smiling and poking fun at us if you must. Fairly soon you’ll get the idea that we ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN the hand that feeds (oh, we also do dirty little things behind closed doors which ruin ourselves and our planet). But just an aside: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, FUCKERS!
And by the way, when TSHTF, and millions of us Americans die off, either gradually or suddenly, rest assured. I will remember you and others like you. And I will kill you. Even if I have to crawl back from my grave to do it. You miserable little cunt!
Ahhh… the colourful vernacular of Yankie-doodle-dandy youth…
With your oh so recent low-grade immigrant ingrained culture just so fracking lacking in hundreds of thousands of years of solidly domineering history…
Where as those Chinese, Indians, and dare I say us Brits and many of our fellow Europeans, well we’ve been at this game for Centuries… lol
Exploiting others…
Yep I’m quacking in my boots, as I’m sure are those in the emerging economies are too… when the obese, overly entitled-n-lazy diabetes ridden inhabitants of the 50 or so States start throwing the toyz outta the pram…
Bring it on indeed…!!
You’re obviously too young to remember (or to dumb), but you Brits sucked America’s cock for a very longgggggg time. That is, to get the fucker Hitler off your sorry, weak ass butt. Yes, we MADE you do this! It was in exchange for us killing the mother fucker. Sorry…(our bad)…
Oh, and lest I forget…we CAME in Britain’s mouth for years and years….without warning….too bad your “classy” queen is now choking on our cum. Please cover your mouth when you burp!
@SNAFU –
No one can disagree that “it’s not the dog, it’s the owner,” except that, when large muscular dogs go bad, they go really bad. You don’t see many stories in the media about ferocious Dachshunds devouring children or goats.
My suggestion has always been that the owners should be absolutely responsible for whatever havoc their pets create. When a few people start landing in jail, maybe others will think twice about controlling the beasts…. Or not.
Aaaah, Myrtlemay I love your posts.
What you said in your reply to Alexandra 9:20 AM I’ve been telling knuckleheads up here for decades. They think they’re morally superior to the US, they boot Americans in the slats at every turn.
But the lousy hypocrites here know full well that Ontario would be sticks without American investment (auto industry) and they bloody well know that their nice standard of living depends on the US market.
It seems to me that Ontarians don’t know who to despise more, Westerners or Americans. They see Westerners with their unearned oil and resource wealth (or so Ontarians see it) as hicks, red necks and bone heads. So when Calgary elects a Harvard educated Muslim mayor there’s major consternation in Toronto. Or do they detest more those mouth breathing Americans, the only people that could elect a G.W. Bush?
But I love pointing out to America haters up here (it’s a socially acceptable bigotry) that Ontario’s greatest natural resource is > 100 million American consumers within a day’s truck drive from Toronto. And I feel so gleeful when I tell them that 20 to 30% of our GDP comes from exports to the US.
And I love pointing out to America haters on both sides of the border (I think you guys have more America haters than we do up here) that Canuck govt coffers are full of royalty and tax money because Americans buy dirty oil from Alberta oil sands. So maybe concerned environmentalists would prefer “clean” oil from such nice, democratic, woman respecting regimes like Saudi Arabia or Sudan.
I have such fun pointing out to hip, sophisticates up here that you guys have got somewhere between 200 – 300 billion invested up here and that we have roughly the same amount invested in your country. Sets their teeth on edge. I just love it.
A couple years ago our govt owned broadcaster, the CBC, did a breathless news report on how anti-americanism was pretty much absent in the west, ie Alberta. It was depressing to watch such stupidity coming from a media company that we spend one billion tax dollars (yes, one billion, you read that right) a year on. Why was it so stupid? Not because they got the facts wrong but because the whole thing seemed to come as such a revelation to them. “National” broadcaster my ass.
If I was Prime Minister, the first item on my to-do is pull the money plug on the CBC. Watch ’em swirl down the drain. One billion a year saved. There, I feel better now.
Americans are starting to lose it. Almost in every international environmental protection event or workshop you can bet the Americans are in the “Hell no”-camp.
Everything that might threaten the motoring utopia is considered bad. American lifestyle is “non-negotiable”, they say. Now this fracking thing. Are you out of your fracking mind?! That is one huge crime against nature and will create toxic no-go areas all around.
Future American kids will curse the short-sighted greedy grandgrandparents which destroyed everything, polluted the environment so bad that it won’t recover in some cases for hundreds of years. For what, just to postpone the collapse for few years and have few more parties.
An interesting picture formed in my mind at the thought of you quacking in your boots. Are you sure you didn’t mean quaking?
Ms. Myrtlemay,
I’m glad you’re on our side. I can only dream of dishing out a tongue lashing such as yours. 🙂
SJmom
I thought the difference between the portrayal of fracking on CSI and 60 Minutes was striking, considering that both shows are on the same network.
Sorry to hear about your goat, Tripp.
Dogs running around out of control are the sign of dumb owners.
SJm, I believe the time has come, as they said in the ’60s to: LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY! I know where I stand and I just ain’t gonna stand for this anymore. Okay, I’m ready. I’ll bring some folk for a week long spree in D.C. yA’LL GEt your posters, signs, chanting done. I’ll drive (tight quarters ’02 Honda Accord just itching to get there. Let’s start a convoy, and make it a three weeker! Let’s fucking take this country back (peacefully)from these huge, bureaucratric “Too
big too
fail” morons, and have oursevles a little “AUSTERE christmas season”. I’ve already told the kids, grandkidss, etcl. to NOT BUY ME ANYTHING. If you are lucky or unlucky to hit your 80s///, beleive me, you will not appreciate a new “Lady Norellco”, and all of its several speeds of hair extraction. If you do have some extra currency, I suggest you visit your local farmers market and strart learning how to make little things like homemade bread, soup, pinto beans, etc. START BUYING LOCAL! Everytime I walk into the his shop, I figure the day must come when i must offer him a vew hours of work, or (lucky me) PERHAPS A
CONTINUING FROM ABOVE, …”PERPHAPS HE might settle for an ocassionally blowjob when ganny needs squash, onions, and carrots. Don’t get sstarted of if I have to go to the liqour store, or to buy som weed from my friend, “Sherry”.
FATAL DOG ATTACK.COM
there was the POMERANIAN that killed a child…
the endless attacks [fatal or near] from Pitbulls.
most deadly or severe attacks on humans in US by canines…WELL ITS PITBULLS OR PITBULL MIXES.
and of the larger breeds that rescue orgs get…
a significant % are deemed dangerous and killed not rescued.
ROTTS….there was the case here in LA where the rotts snatched the baby from its owners arms and killed it.
in the 80s rotts were popular here as a pet or guard dog..when that killing happened they spoke to ‘rott rescue’ that said…those folks in the 80s didnt know what they were gettin into and didnt replace their old rott with a new one…
i dont see many rotts around LA anymore.
After reading this I need a drink, and I don’t drink.
Awesome thread today. Seems to me a few really know what they are talking about and I listen up.
Thanks for the education. I’m serious.
Yep, when JHK says they left out the part where they have to go THROUGH the water to get to the shale, and the fact that most don’t ‘see’ thru that tactic, or questions things, like I learned to do since 9/11, the way ‘they’ word things is so manipulative.
People just believe what the hear and see on that stupid box, or flatscreen or wtf. they/we are being lied to and manipulated, that is about it.
Seasons Greetings to all of you !
The one poster from Africa really made sense to me,I mean it’s a slow slide, and we are well into it.
My husband in denial, like so many others. So frustrating.
you had written months ago about the pitbulls invading yr yard….better put up secure fencing.
pitbulls attack people as well as children.
or poison them. get animal control involved.
see…fataldogattack.com
Revolutions happen in the mind. Physical change only requires baby steps.
Baby steps:
– Don’t watch tv
– Don’t listen to the radio
– Don’t read newspapers, magazines
– Don’t bank with the corporate banks
– Don’t buy insurance
– Don’t buy corporate food
– Start a ring of friends with a likewise mindset
– Educate yourself
– Help educate others
Baby steps..
“Tzatza has posted previously saying that people willingly signed the documents and were not forced to sign anything.”
What the fuck are you talking about douche-bag?
Awwwww! You have found the keys to the kingdom!
Sorry, the above was for Mika,
I’m worried that my chickens will get into it. I might just have to break down and stand vigil with my shotgun. Damn I hate those dogs right now.
Sounds like a pretty good plan to me, Mika!
“For the bankers and the mortgage brokers, absolutely! But not for the country, since now we, the taxpayers, are picking up the tab for the massive fraud involved”
Well guess what fuckwhit? Maybe if your quit voting for the douche-bags that bail out private industry fuck-ups we wouldn’t have massive fraud.
TZATZA
You got a major party in mind that didn’t vote for bailoutI OR bailoutII?
No fair saying TEA party because they are being co-opted by the party of BushII and BailoutI as we speak.
Now they all better watch out in there. I don’t tolerate serenity very well. 🙂
He had it right long before me:
http://youtu.be/OYzOzLDIpT4
Truly sorry to hear about your goat. As I recall she was the “goat going a whoring….” this winter, so you would have had kids in the spring with any luck. 🙁 And you might find a pregnant doe this winter – but it won’t be the same as the one you raised yourself.
Considering security for your livestock – dogs HATE electric fences. A fence charger is cheap and uses little power, and it’s possible to do a lot with a charger, a spool of aluminum wire and a bag of those little insulators. (It’s also nicely portable if you decide to leave the ‘hood and move to the mountains up here.)
We bought a setup like this to keep deer and coons out of the garden. And all my dogs, my son’s dogs, and the neighbor dogs hit the electric fence around the garden at least once the first year. Now, with my large outside dog keeping the deer and bears away from the house we no longer use the electric fence.
But I’ve got one strand of electric fence wire on three posts ONLY on TWO sides of the garden. No dog will enter the garden, even though it’s not enclosed. It’s a great system!
I see online that electric fences may work for chickens, though I have no personal experience. I do know that the first time a goat or deer encounters an electric fence he/she may go over it or through it. After that, though, an electric fence should work for goats, too.
Speaking of goats, I’ve learned that mountain laurel is deadly poisonous to goats, even in small quantities. Bummer for me, because mountain laurel is about 40% of the browse in the area where I plan to keep the goat(s).
Not sure how I’m gonna work around this. My wife was (slowly) coming around to the idea of goats. But she loves mountain laurel. We have a little situation developing. ;0)
One more thing – most all of the free running dogs I’ve encountered are gunshy. So you may only get one shot with that shotgun. Make it a good shot and then keep an eye out for the owner?.?
Depending on the dog, you might be able to pepper him with birdshot one time and MAYBE that will keep him off your place.
Just unsolicited advice, my friend!
Good luck!
You know, my goat lived around plants that were toxic to her. Never took a bite. I wish I had that good a sense of my food. Probably save me a lot of trouble.
Thanks for the chin up and the good advice! She was the one going whoring as soon as she made weight. I feel really bad that I allowed this to happen to her. Losing a chicken or a turkey is one thing, but she was like a family dog pretty much. Even been in the house a couple of times!
I’ll look into the hot wire for sure.
Tripp
“You got a major party in mind that didn’t vote for bailout”
I don’t vote for major parties, I vote for individuals. Those who want to continually bail out businesses in the private sector don’t get my vote. “What about GM”, some may ask? Fuck GM. Ditto irresponsible banks, mortgage cos., et al. Die or prosper according to your own merits. Period.
The same standards should apply to government organizations. Live within your budget, be productive or you will be legislated out of existence.
Its fish or cut bait time, kiddies. We’re broke and in debt. A debtor is nothing more than a slave. Be pissed. Your government has brought your nation to the brink.
in oakland cali the police now ‘just go out over shootings etc’…
in macon will the police/aspca/ animal control do anything?
now the dogs know theres food at yr place ‘ thats not good’!
are there any rescues in georgia thatll trap the dogs?
EPA subpoenas Halliburton over fracking fluids
I haven’t read this yet, and someone may have posted it already, but just in case it sounds interesting for the discussion this week:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101109/us_nm/us_epa_halliburton_subpoena
And again the thread barks
More dog stuff. SNAFU, good to have you back on the thread. Haven’t seen much of you lately, and your points are noted with general agreement except for the following.
First, I wouldn’t have been so hard on SJMom – she’s entitled to her opinion.
Beyond that, good dog breeders carefully select desirable traits. In the large breeds, especially, no reputable breeder would breed an animal that had a genetic disposition to aggressive behavior.
This is less of a problem in the small breeds. Most anyone with experience with dogs can point to a chihuahua with a badly aggressive disposition. This is known to be genetic within the breed. This can be tolerated because it is such a small breed. A great Dane with a disposition like this would be a disaster waiting to happen and no one in his right mind would tolerate this.
Because of dog fighting rings or poor breeder practices – at least in my area – it appears that some pit bulls have some genetically controlled aggressive tendencies. And there are a LOT of pit bulls and pit bull mixes out there. So this breed may catch more blame because there are so many of them.
One more thing that may be relevant to Tripp’s situation. One dog is just one dog. Two dogs or more are a PACK. That can bring out a totally different dynamic. There was a case a few years ago in middle Georgia involving a relative of mine,where three Labrador Retrievers – no less – killed a colt in a neighbor’s field. IMO, Labs have a genetic tendency to goofiness, not aggression.
My point is that the pack mentality overrode the docile Lab dispositions.
Then, there was a case where two dogs BIT THROUGH THE SIDEWALL of a heavy truck tire on the front of an ambulance in a jurisdiction near my house. They were pit bulls, probably a coincidence.
But a pack of chihuahuas could have gnawed on that tire all day without doing much damage. 😉
“Your government has brought your nation to the brink.”
Don’t let yourself off that easy, man. We might have been intentionally mislead by the people acquiring money and power from our ignorance, but it is still every person’s own decision whether or not to continue being part of the problem. There are real options out there. Options other than pissing and moaning I mean. Sounds like you’re exercising some of those. That’s good.
Asoka said: “Tzatza has posted previously saying that people willingly signed the documents and were not forced to sign anything.”
Tzatza said: “What the fuck are you talking about…?
I am talking about your post to this blog on Dec. 17, 2007 at 9:18 a.m. in which you said:
FORMATTING CORRECTION:
Tzatza said: “What the fuck are you talking about…?
I am talking about your post to this blog on Dec. 17, 2007 at 9:18 a.m. in which you said:
Tzatza, we have since learned that the fraud was committed by the institutional robo-signers who completely failed to perform proper due diligence, not by the individual homebuyers.
“The Future”
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it’s lonely here,
there’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide,
slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
You don’t know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
Things are going to slide …
There’ll be the breaking
of the ancient western code
Your private life
will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman hanging
upside down
her features covered
by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin’ to sound like
Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin’
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder
Things are going to slide …
When they said REPENT REPENT …
Two or three months ago someone here (I forget who) was certain we would bomb Iran by Nov 15th. I bet we wouldn’t. Well it’s Nov 16th and there’s been no bombing.
To whom it may concern: Please send cyber-check to Q, care of CFN.
Mika
That’s not bad poetry.
Is it original with you?
“…an already hopelessly confused, wishful, delusional, US public.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM-0Pwgr7-E
Leonard Cohen wrote that. He’s a Canadian song writer, and a apparently a favorite of Prince Charles. 🙁
http://tinysong.com/AQFO
“Everybody Knows”
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
http://tinysong.com/ADTv
Yo, Tripp: I am so sorry to hear about your goat. That on top of having your car vandalized. Trouble comes in threes, so duck!
Well, some of what you’re maybe feeling now is “I could have done more” (guilt) and maybe some flop sweat fear that “the kid, could have been the kid.” Get up, dust yourself off and keep moving forward. A lot of us are cheering you on from the sidelines.
Cold Comfort but … wait til you move out to the real boonies. Any goat losses might be due to bears, cougars or coyotes. Heck, in this neck of the woods, eagles carry off small goats. Weasels, foxes and possums will constantly test the defenses of your hen house. Crows will carry off small rabbits. Your house cats will be prime pickings for owls. Sound like a Discovery channel special? One of those “vast panorama of nature” things? It is, and we’re part of it.
But I feel bad about the goat. They worm their way into our affections.
Tripp, I’m sorry to hear that your goat has joined the “Big Chill”. (Sorry, but I freaking LOVE that movie!)
Glad that your trip was a success. Can’t wait to visit your blog and find out more. You Studly Stud! (Crazy about the guy~~!)
Democracy
It’s coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It’s coming from the feel
that this ain’t exactly real,
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don’t pretend to understand at all.
It’s coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we’ll be making love again.
We’ll be going down so deep
the river’s going to weep,
and the mountain’s going to shout Amen!
It’s coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on …
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Fracking turns a Wyoming town’s water to piss and poison vapors. Residents warned not to drink it and use a big fan when showering.
http://www.propublica.org/article/feds-warn-residents-near-wyoming-gas-drilling-sites-not-to-drink-their-wate
I’m very sorry to hear about your goat, Tripp.
I know that goats are charming, lovable and helpful members of your homestead.
Condolences.
…
And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry-merry month of May,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?
And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?
(© LEONARD COHEN STRANGER MUSIC INC)
The Russians have done an interesting fifty year experiment duplicating (perhaps) man’s domestication of wolves into dogs. They took foxes and bred the ones least afraid of the handlers. And then again. Within eight generations they got a fox that is a very fine and loving pet. They also bred a few of the most frightened foxes. Within a few generations they produced a monster far more vicious than an ordinary fox. They took a few of these and implanted the embryos within the domesticated foxes. No improvement. The aggression is entirely genetic. And remember – these are all foxes of the same breed, genentically very similar.
Wolves and Dogs are one species too in that they can produce viable offspring. But what a difference a tiny amount of genetic diversity can make at the level of expression or everyday life! Thus same principle applies with the races of man. The small differences in genotype produce large differences in behavior and ability. Thus they should not be mixed together willy nilly as if they were interchangeable. They are not. Thus your whole liberal world view is simply a sentimental mistake and can only lead to ruin.
People who own Pit Bulls are outraged by the persecution, the witch hunt against Pit Bulls – as if ALL Pit Bulls were Bad! That’s the end of the story for them, no looking up and comparing statistics with other breeds of dogs. The whole think is exactly analagous with Blacks and their White Defenders. Stupidity reigns supreme as usual, the Conqueror Worm as Poe put it. Just as Drudge says, the Terrorists have won if we treat everyone as a Terrorist.
The equal treatment of unequal people, dogs, or races is tyranny.
Great post this week JHK.
Sorry to jump in late, but I wanted to let this forum know that a blatant disregard of groundwater contamination when big mining money is involved is a problem not confined to the USA. Here in Australia there have been several reports recently of coal-seam gas operations contaminating groundwater in Queensland. To date, no DANGEROUS levels of contamination have been found, to the glee of mining companies and the State Government “there was no evidence of any environmental harm or impacts on ground water or landholder bores on or near the Arrow site..”
Contamination by carcinogens IS present however and the spin provided by energy companies is suspiciously like the words we heard from tobacco companies for years. Where there’s smoke…
Pucker points out
‘Obama’s original plan, it seems, was to draw down US forces in Afghanistan if the “surge” wasn’t working as planned.
Well, it seems that the US Generals are already telling Obama to “stuff it”, and to forget about any withdrawal.’
Is it not plausible that US forces are being kept in the vicinity of the world’s 2nd and 3rd largest oil reserves so they can enact a plan that pre-dates the current administration, should it become necessary?
If you want to preserve the ‘non-negotiable way of life’, or even transition to a renewable energy economy, you need a large amount of cheap energy. What better way to obtain that than by pre-positioning a significant portion of the world’s largest military.
Here’s an indication of who we’re dealing with. Pittsburgh yesterday banned drilling within the city limits. The gas companies replied, “Fuck you, this is regulated by the EPA and Dick Cheney put them right in our hip pocket.” These people would drill wells in their own family grave sites if they thought they could sell the gas that came out of the hole.
Maybe it’s time to forget about politics as anything other than a farce and hand over control of the national government to the “World Clown Association” and laugh our troubles away. God knows we could all use a break from the tragicomedy that we call a two-party electoral system and all those idiot pundits in the media who are paid to shill for either the Democrats or Republicans.
quote: “I came to his book via the 911 truth route – Crossing the Rubicon by another peak oil advocate. I know others who have, as well. I’m only asking that he honor those readers by examining the evidence. His refusal to do so is telling and, as I demonstrate, hypocritical.”
Of course Kunstler will only ever wallow in his own little niche. He’s excellent at expression with his written words. However, he will never go outside the boundries of his extremely narrow focus. “Suburbia is Dead” and only the things pointing to his theory as having validity will be discussed by him. That 9/11 was perpetrated by our government and that Israel is above reproach for their aping of Hitler’s Nazi politics shall never be admitted by our muse. Rewriting history as it is occurring seems to be the thing nowadays.
Morning Joe does energy week—Ah just another chapter of the love-hate relationship with our better half in Chimerica!
Just a heads up that every day this week offers segments on various -energy “Solutions”.
I’ve missed just about everything discussed this week, but I’m sure the discussions are posted on the Morning Joe site. Today I caught the tail end of a discussion on “clean coal”. According to Scarborough, the reality is that coal fuels our grid and somehow the solution to global warming can be found in clean coal technology.
In an interview with The Atlantic editor, James Bennet this morning he stated that China and US engineers are working together (“secretly”) in China because China is able to build power plants in 21 months to our multi-year construction of plants. So naturally they will use China as a testing ground for either sequestering the carbons after processing or they will liquify the coal first separating the carbons at that point.
Then, as Bennet put it, Chinese engineers will bring the technology here. He did say that there is one plant being built, I believe he said in Texas. (Why not American engineers?)
So what does this tell you about the US being the “innovators”?–You know that’s the meme we keep hearing by the ardent globalists here, but according to Fareed Zakaria on GPS this past week, the US is #8 in the world for innovation and Malaysia is #1.
Why is the US failing to do the R&D, hiring and implementation of ideas and technology? We’re beginning to look more like Soviet Russia all the time. Sometimes going too far to the right ends up being just as dysfunctional as too far left!
Looks to me that our political system is failing and everything emanating from it is at stand still. Our neoliberal ideology that shuns government in all aspects of business and civic life here will be our downfall. On the one hand, you can say that too much regulation is strangling innovation, but that is not quite how I see the problem.
There’s nothing wrong with implementing safely and environmental standards, (adhering to law) but there may be other things that get in the way. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say there may just be too much infighting by different actors trying to get things done to their best advantage. Why should this be any different than the way our politics function?
The discussion ended on a note that venture capitalists are planning on putting more money into alternative energy. They say it could boost employment, but it isn’t clear whether that will be happening here or in China.
Only in America can you watch a story such as Love Canal unfold while shaking your head and wondering how people could be so irresponsible to the earth and the people who live nearby. That could never happen in 2010, right?
As far as fracking impacting fault zones, you can bet that this will be underplayed, or even ignored.
And the New Madrid fault zone is too deep for this to impact, but much shallower zones thru-out the Appalachians will no doubt feel some impact at some point in time. Since they also are into heavy, un-reinforced brick construction, well, the results won’t be pretty.
No doubt the drillers will either be long gone, or will have some innocuous clause in the contracts releasing them from all liability.
So, all you hill billies, get ready to rock & roll!
Tripp, be aware that once those dogs have done a kill in your yard, they will RETURN! You need to make sure your fence is good enough to keep them out NOW! You have children to protect! And if one does get into your yard, you have the legal right to shoot it, no question.
Take care….and get the fence fixed!
Dee
“The equal treatment of unequal people, dogs, or races is tyranny.”
When my son was about 8 we got him a chihuahua because we had been told it was good for his asthma {we were willing to try anything}. Well his little dog got to running with the neighborhood pack and eventually one of the bigger meaner dogs chewed him up and he died. This was witnessed by the kids and the culprit was a large malemute, but no one seemed to know who owned him. One day I was outside and saw the malemute and jumped on a three-wheeler and gave chase. I followed him to a house about a mile away and skidded into the driveway sideways, where a young girl was playing. I asked her if it was her dog and she said yes. I told her that her dog had attacked and killed my kid’s dog. I asked her to give my phone number to her parents. The dad called later and chewed me out because I had traumatized his daughter with this news. I apologized for talking to the child about the situation and asked him how he thought my son might feel. He didn’t seem to care, at all, nor would he agree to keep the dog at home. Neighbors, right.
You’re right regulations don’t do beans. Unless, that is, someone enforces them with a baseball bat.
Unless people know that someone is looking over their shoulder armed with frightful sanctions they will cut corners. It’s not like they might cut corners. They WILL cut corners. Especially, but not only in the corporate world, where the bottom line is everything, people will delude themselves that the benefits of loosening regulation and quality control outweigh the risks.
Here’s two disasters that happened up here because of loosey goosey inspection regimes:
A couple years ago a meat packing plant up here was putting out meat contaminated with listeria which killed 20 people and sickened many more. Govt food inspectors were pretty much useless. According to one account I heard there was ONE govt food inspector on the plant site but he was spending his time inspecting company paperwork.
About ten years ago people in the town of Walkerton were drinking e-coli contaminated water (from farm run-off) which was of course “inspected”. But the inspectors were a couple of high school dropouts that weren’t doing their jobs and were falsifying inspection reports. And so 6 people died (officially) and hundreds more sickened. A commission of inquiry found that the Ontario govt wasn’t enforcing water quality guidelines.
Howdy Progressor,
Your parable “One dog is just one dog. Two dogs or more are a PACK. That can bring out a totally different dynamic.” is similar to the one my first serious girlfriend’s mother told me when I was a yougun, with one major modification. Her’s “one boy is a boy, two boys are a half a boy, three boys are a third of a boy ……..; she was a grade school teacher.
Sharks, bears, lions, tigers, wolves, coyotes, hawks, eagles, dogs; anyone ever take notice that the most populous carnivore on the Earth is paranoid with fear of any other carnivore capable of possibly killing and eating it?
Since 1870 to roughly the present there have been approximately 235 confirmed deaths of a human caused by shark attacks. That is less than two per year over a 140 year time span yet every time a human is attacked the fucking press and public go berserk with fear and hate toward all sharks. Subsequent to 1975’s Great White fear mongering movie and it’s absolutely asinine spawn the manly fucking sport of killing every Great White in the oceans was spawned until finally a few world governments stepped in and put them on their endangered species lists. Add to that the high average IQ Asians (105+) with their superstitious beliefs that eating shark fin soup will confer prosperity and “the strength” of the shark to the eater decimate perhaps as many as 100 million sharks per year most of whom are caught in nets have their fins cut off and are thrown back into the oceans to drown/smother. These are some of the same folks who think that eating the powdered horn of a Rhinoceros will give them a cock with the same sexual characteristics and stamina as a stallion in it’s prime.
Humans are the most ignorant smart animal Nature has created; and they continue to fuck their way into oblivion taking every other species on the Earth with them. Has it ever occurred to you all that the reasons humans think human babies are so adorable and precious is no different than the reason that all critters react similarly, survival of the species? The one major difference is that when times are tough the other critters populations die back and over population of any given species is controlled naturally by Nature. Amazingly some humans (we loosely call them scientists although I simply prefer to think of them as “intelligent”) have been pointing out, for aeons, that too many humans on the Earth will fuck it up beyond redemption. Religious edicts to “go forth and multiply” were/are taken at face value ad infinitum with no concept that the edict is simply a methodology to increase the number of parishioners in a given religious sect and thus increase the power of the local shaman/priest/overlord.
Although I am not too likely to convince those of the “my legacy” is in my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren crowd I will state again my contention that there is only one mechanism by which the Earth can be saved in something akin to it’s present (hopefully better) condition and that is for humans to stop having humans world wide for a period of at least 20, or however many are required, years and allow natural death rates to reduce the human population by 85% or more. Thereafter the population would need to be maintained at such levels (approximately 1 billion) world wide from then on. No more economic growth spurred on by exponential human population increases. Lest there are those who remember not my controversial methodology to stop having humans I’ll restate it; “sterilize every swing dick on the planet” no wussy assed vasectomies that could be reversed.
Progressor I deserted my investigation into the value, or lack thereof, of photovoltaic solar cells when I observed that several others, much closer to the field than I, responded to you with very coherent observations and information.
SNAFU
The equal treatment of unequal people, dogs, or races is tyranny. – Vlad
Macleans magazine just did an article which caused a shitstorm up here entitled “Too Asian?”. The basic idea is that certain of our universities have student bodies that are disproportionaately Asian in origin.
So why did this come about? According to this article Asian kids are in university to work and learn and white kids are in university to party. So while certain schools like the University of Toronto have high academic standards and therefore attract this disproportion of kids of Asian origin, other schools are the opposite, the student body is mostly white and the kids are there for a good time.
So would you say that Asian kids are genetically predisposed to not piss away their youth and their parents’ money?
I posted a comment on that site saying basically that if we end up with an economic/political/professional elite of Asian ancestry in this country then it is an entirely fair and just outcome. If you work harder and are more diligent then you go farther.
But what if this Asian elite in future basically concludes that equal treatment of unequal people is tyranny, that Asians are intellectually superior, that Asians are better endowed genetically, that white people are lazy assed piss-tanks unworthy of a full spectrum of civil and economic rights? What I’m saying is that what you are advocating can come back to bite you in the ass.
“So naturally they will use China as a testing ground for either sequestering the carbons after processing or they will liquefy the coal first separating the carbons at that point.”
I believe the clean coal mythology is that the carbon will be sequestered deep underground in the form of liquefied carbon dioxide subsequent to being combusted in the coal powered electrical generation facilities. Removing the carbon from the coal prior to combustion would remove roughly 80 to 90% of the energy content of the coal. This would likely present a problem of what to do with all of the carbon black and one would be required to utilize roughly 7 times, 700% not 7%, more coal to obtain the equivalent quantity of heat. If this is what “they” were stating on “Morning Joe” it is my opinion “they” do not know from whence they speak.
SNAFU
I learned how to cut and paste !
Donny-Don said : The United States culture and economy is on a long, grim slide down a slope of unsustainable expectations in the 21st century; in that sense I concur with Kunstler. But this country wastes such ridiculously huge amounts of energy that we can easily modify our lifestyles to cope with energy shortages far beyond anything we’ve seen so far.
This is true. We Could modify our lifestyles, but Will WE. I already have and was never That wasteful to begin with. But so many have an attitude of Entitlement. You know what I mean.
Your post made sense to me. I just hope “WE” DO
modify our lifestyles.
Maybe and I certainly don’t know JHK gives ‘worst case scenarios’ maybe not. but he definitely is on the right track.
So are you.
I went without a car for 1.5 years. took the bus, well it was Safe back then, and still is in the area I live in (except a few gangsters) that piss me off. (I should be more scared less pissed maybe.) but in cities I wouldn’t feel safe riding the bus alone as a woman.
Still I have Always knew and vowed to myself to work close to where I live. Just makes sense.
anyway, yes I hope many more modify their lifestyles to adjust and be much less wasteful.
Grow up and stop acting like spoiled rotten children. etc.
Anytime I get a little moan-y about how much time and energy goes into my business, I just think of the Korean couple over at the Apex (Stop and Shop.) One or both of them are behind that counter from 7am til 11pm or later. I think they take Christmas, off. They have a little trailer off their parking lot where they catch quick naps.
When I was getting my store open I had two bookcases that required 4 coats of paint (the first coat was Kills.) Between the 3rd and 4th coats I had a small meltdown. It didn’t last long as I started reflecting on the fact that my Dad spent 40+ years, standing on a ladder, swinging a brush to put food on the table. And took side jobs evenings and week-ends.
Too many self-entitled white guys (and girls) around.
Jackie and Lewis: You are spot-on! Keep the faith, brother and sister!
Once i was at a meeting, fellow started talking about how ‘the recent killing of the child by the PB, the owners killed the child, not the dog. pitbulls unless trained to kill are so sweet.’
but no the truth isnt so simple.
fools like that always are of the mindset that:
my pitbull was so sweet till it turned into a charging rino and attacked someone’
pitbulls are both..sweet until the dangerous side appears and then they are charging rhinos.
Tripp…id be concerned for yr families safety!
far as more important things go..
WHEN DO THE ILLUMINATI DO THE KILL OFF?
well…..cihuahauas [know its misspelled] are great for barking.
your little dog was wandering and you BLAME SOMEONE ELSE!
no you are to blame.dont let animals wander off yr property.
hahaha you old goat..
last time i was at UCLA it looked like hongkong!
USC i hear is maybe worse.
and tell the kidS [white or not]
THE PARTIES OVER
“and tell the kidS [white or not]
THE PARTIES OVER”
It sure as hell is!
My high school senior explained it all to me…”They’re called asians because they get A’s”
His asian friends interpret their report cards as follows:
A= Average
B= Bad
C= Catastrophic
D= Death
F= Fuck it, don’t bother to go home.
LOL! Love it! So very, very true!
You know, its not a racial or genetic thing with the Asians vs Whitey.
Its a DISCIPLINE thing:
If an Asian kid goes home with bad grades, he/she gets the shit kicked out of them. And if they don’t make it into a good college, its tough shit.
If whitey-boy/girl does the same, the parents just don’t give a shit, and so the kids think it OK to fuck up and go on to a party school.
It all comes down to discipline, which Whitey ain’t got no more, they are just too fat, lazy and stupid.
So the future belongs to those with, what again?
Thats right, DISCIPLINE! And I mean with parents that give a damm and are not afraid to use a little good old corporal punishment on the kids.
Face it Vlad, Whitey is history for more than one reason. If anything, the rest of the world will just breed ’em out of the gene pool.
And there ain’t no amount of clorox you can add to this pool to get it all white & clear again.
Dee
‘You know, its not a racial or genetic thing with the Asians vs Whitey’
maybe, maybe not.
since yr contentious ill leave it at that!
are you…white? black? biracial? asian? or?
but try telling that to ‘children of priviledge’..
the USA is a mess [mostly due to immigration in my opinion] and the biospheres imperiled!
Obama keeps printing $.
he just spent 2 billion on his travels.
Thanks to all of you who expressed condolences about my goat. She WAS charming, and already becoming a family member after only being with us since May. I can’t wait to have another goat, but not until we get the perimeter shored up. I think I’m going to try an electric wire around the property line. Maybe two. Have to teach my little girl to leave it alone.
A friend of mine said that we all have to pay the Nature tax, but I feel like I’ve paid too much this year already. Time to file away the hard lessons, adapt, and modify our approach.
But we will certainly continue on our path! I don’t think there’s any “going back” to be had anyway, is there?
Thanks again everyone;)
asia said: “Obama keeps printing $. he just spent 2 billion on his travels.”
Maybe Obama has installed printing presses of every room of the White House, maybe he spent 200 Trillion dollars on his trip, and maybe he took along the navies of several countries, too. Plus, he is a socialist! And a Muslim! And the Anti-Christ! He is the first socialist, Muslim, Anti-Christ we have had as president who insists on bipartisanship, bends over backwards to make peace with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and is leading in the polls for re-election in 2012.
Vlad,
Interesting analogy:
“Wolves and Dogs are one species too….. This same principle applies with the races of man. The small differences in genotype produce large differences in behavior and ability. Thus they should not be mixed together willy nilly as if they were interchangeable. They are not.”
But the analogy breaks down pretty quickly. For example, possession of wolves is illegal in most areas. There are cities in the US that have outlawed Pit Bull breeds.
But you can’t outlaw Asians, blacks, or whites by similar measures. May not be logical in your view, but it just cannot be done under the US Constitution.
And look, I wouldn’t argue that there are not human racial differences in intelligence, predilection to violent behavior, or whatever – just as among dog breeds. In that regard I never disagreed with TreeBeard. But as I told him, it is useless to obsess over genetic superiority or inferiority of races – because it changes nothing for the better for life in the US as we find it now.
And, Vlad, if you allow all dog breeds to interbreed freely over a period of time something will emerge. It’s a medium size yellow dog of medium body size, medium hair length, medium intelligence, and medium disposition. These dogs are known as survivors, and you see them all over the world in the absence of breeds – because breeds are really artificial human creations.
One can argue that human races may as well be considered to be similarly artificial, as we find them now.
————–
And you’re accusing me if something I never claimed to be a part of when you say:
“Thus your whole liberal world view is simply a sentimental mistake and can only lead to ruin”
I’m a pragmatist. I take the world as I find it and try to make it better for my family, my country, and my planet.
We can’t turn back the clock to a time of White Racial Dominance, Vlad.
“…to blow a mighty wind up America’s ass (as they say in professional PR circles).”
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/16/soros_china_has_better_functioning_government_than_us
“…to blow a mighty wind up America’s ass (as they say in professional PR circles).”
Turkey Dinner – Thanksgiving Day Flatulence
NEW YORK (AP) — ABC’s Barbara Walters will interview President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House for a network special to air the day after Thanksgiving.
“…no you are to blame…”
I don’t deny {ultimate} responsibility for the chihuahua’s death. The point of mentioning it, in response to Vlad, was that little dogs don’t know they are little dogs and sometimes suffer for it because their owners treat them just like all other dogs.
Myrtlemay: And mom was a waitress for 7 years. So we had a few little “extras” when I was growing up. Nothing lavish like a second home, but more along the lines of a 16′ boat to go fishing.
Mom and Dad always paid cash for every car or house they bought (the last one I remember, however, was $8,500 in 1965. One acre, two story brick with full basement. Of course, we had to work every night after school and weekends for six months to make it habitable.)
But not because they were children of the Depression. Even children of the Depression screw up. They had bought some furniture on ‘time.’ Dad’s hours were cut back and they had to collect pop bottles to afford milk for their baby. This is the late 1940s. The humiliation was so deep, they never incurred another debt in their lives.
Tripp: I seem to remember from a Sear farm catalog (when they still did those) that there are some solar electric fences.
Progressorconserve: Here’s a really interesting article about wolf-coyote hybrids that are moving in the the NE United States.
I also read (National Geographic) that there are more Tigers in private hands in the US then in the wild. Want to trump your brother-in-laws Pit Bull? Get a Tiger.
Well, that’s a first. The comment with the link is being held for review by the owner of the blog. Hi, Jim!
To Asoka, Wage and like minded,
This is quite long. You may want to scroll past. It comes from today’s issue of an on-line financial newsletter titled Whiskey and Gunpowder.
————–
Jesús Takes Up the Charge Against Socialism
There are three books that take pride of place in my Austrian bookcase. These are Socialism by Ludwig von Mises; The History of Intellectual Thought by Murray N. Rothbard; and Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In my own mind these books glow when I look at them, up there on the shelf, and I even have one of them signed by one of the authors, while he was ensconced within the cloisters of Oxford University.
You might be asking, where is Human Action? Where is Man, Economy, and State? And where is Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles? Well, these books are there too, further along the shelf. But the Big Three bob in an exalted gravitational bubble of their own, because they form the solar core of my own personal life-long cure from socialism, along with various lesser satellites which rotate around them, including 1984, Atlas Shrugged, and An American in the Gulag.
As a hard-core Stalinist by the age of nine, after having read Das Kapital in my local state library, by the time I had reached thirty I had mellowed slightly into a hard-core Marxist and a willing clandestine ex-Militant Tendency foot-soldier in the Machiavellian rise of the New Labour army in Britain, most of us following the camp magazine, Marxism Today, edited by Martin Jacques, the man who invented the term “Thatcherism”. I was so far entombed within this appalling Death-Eating dark side, that I’m convinced, looking back, I must have had snake’s eyes, a forked tail, and diabolical horns.
Fortunately, I managed to cure myself from this orcish horror, mainly due to the fact, of course, that socialism is utter self-serving elite-generated nonsense and the most evil destructive bone-headed religion that mankind has ever invented. Amongst many other disastrous human-hating onslaughts it has engaged in, in its bid to keep people stupid, sick, and poor — and thus easier to rule over and exploit as tax cattle — socialism has slaughtered tens of millions of people, particularly in the twentieth century, which must truly be its envious bloody golden age. Alas, it took many years to cure myself from this virulent mental infection, involving a decade of self-realisation, self-study, and many tough self-directed questions, as well as several broken relationships, memorable bitter accusations of treachery, and the painful sloughing of mental habits burned into my mind through years of angry hatred and vicious envy.
The three books which finally wiped the usually-immune virus of socialism clean from my mind were the exalted Big Three above, especially Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises, a book which always remains fresh and inspirational on every re-read, a sort of non-fictional equivalent of Lord of the Rings.
But did room exist for a fourth book within my hallowed core? Was I genuinely fully cured or was there the remotest chance I could slip back into the skeletal clutches of Voldemort’s Sauronesque worshippers, the fatally conceited socialist Death Eaters?
Fortunately, I think I am now fairly resistant to the drenching poison of Marxism, and all of its goblinesque derivatives such as environmentalism. However, as the fabulous George Carlin pointed out in one of his amazing HBO specials, you always need to keep your immune system in tip-top fighting order to kill off the re-entry of old familiar viruses. Perhaps I needed a fourth book to provide this required re-inoculation of my fighting spirit against the seemingly endless mindless legions of the state-indoctrinated cannon fodder of socialism?
I think I have now stumbled upon this fourth book.
Although my self-education had kicked socialism back into the envious schoolyard nursery where it belongs, all the books I had read had never clarified one last question, which had nagged at me for years. Why does socialism keep taking so long to fail, with the Soviet Union surviving for 70 years and the fiat currency union of the west surviving for 40 years, since 1971? Yes, there is economic calculation, the short-sightedness of fools, and the system of organised criminal lies which we name government, but what is the essential mechanism that separates the free market from the jackboot of socialism and how does a typical rancid and rotten bloom of socialism survive for decades, when from my previous readings such a malodourous bloom ought to fail within years or even months, once the hideous mask of its hateful spiteful envy is revealed?
Even the most virulent and aggressive form of the creed — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — managed to survive for a dozen years, from 1933 to 1945, before this particularly cancerous party of socialism imploded, with milder forms of the disease, such as our own British Labour Party, managing to survive for a hundred years before collapsing in 1979, only to re-appear in a more camouflaged form as the more fascist variant of New Labour, which predictably blew itself out after thirteen unlucky years of boom and bust, hopefully to now die under the feeble and pathetic leadership of the spectacularly inglorious Ed Miliband, son of the influential Marxist intellectual, Ralph Miliband.
Yes, we can talk about western subsidies to the Soviets and the misplaced faith of people in central banks to refrain from inflating, but this is skirting the central issue; why does socialism survive for decades, no matter how appalling its variant form? If we are to believe that socialism is stupid and self-destructive, why has it taken such a hold of humanity and why does it keep surviving and prospering for so long in its various incarnations? If the flowering Hayekian market of ideas and the evolving Schumpeterian market of freely creative destructionism really do work in partnership to drive out failed innovations and to promote successful inspirations, why are there so many Keynesians and so few Austrians? Why is there so much government and why is there so little freedom?
Jesús Huerta de Soto uncovers and reveals the mysterious ghost-in-the-machine hiding behind these questions in a beautifully simple connective way, in Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship. He distils the rough juniper berries of human action into the Bombay Sapphire gin of entrepreneurship and elegantly blends this with the chilled quinine tonic of economic calculation. Delicately mixing this with the limes of Salamancan history and the Andalusian bitterness of political analysis, the resulting 300-page book is one of the finest Austrian monographs I have ever had the privilege of reading and easily breaks into my triumvirate of heroic works, to help form a new quadrumvirate.
Yes, the top-ranking book is still Socialism, as Gandalf the White, with the other three jostling alongside as Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas; Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship now plays the role of the far-seeing prince of the Mirkwood elves.
So how does Legolas achieve this far-sightedness, where Gandalf, Aragorn, and Gimli fall short? Because Huerta de Soto uses both sides of the mind in equal measure, including the parallel-processing right-mind, whereas most writers typically concentrate on the serial-processing left-mind. Drawing parallel-processed pictures with his words to complement a serial-processed stream of ideas, Huerta de Soto achieves a delicately balanced act between the right and the left conscious minds, enabling them to work together to see through to the root causes of the failure of socialism and the triumph of the free market. As I sat reading his book, I could see a sparkling and ever-changing set of shimmering human connections constantly changing and shifting, with the lights of new ideas twinkling in a flexible Hayekian blend of free human thoughts and actions, always evolving towards — though never achieving — a final perfect form where humanity is best served by this diapha nous liquid molecular structure.
I could also see the destructive boot and the mindless compartmentalising scalpels of the blind self-serving socialist elite, constantly trying to wreck this evolving form and to cut its connections to make this glittering form do what they wanted and to do what served their personal immoral interests, against the independent temporal wishes of the rest of the nodal system. However, despite this constant unwelcome interference, no matter where the socialist boot falls and no matter where its regulatory controls cut the informational connections, the entity always tries to survive, like an ants’ nest disturbed by a spade in your back garden.
Socialism thus survives because of the free market, which constantly tries to repair the damage socialism causes through its taxations, regulations, and debt-fed inflations. The free market self-repairs, re-connects, and re-organises itself — spontaneously — like a river in flow coping with the damming of malcontented beavers. The final triumph of socialism can thus be seen as the complete damming of the river and the obliteration of humanity, and the final triumph of the free market will be when this evil dam is finally dissolved, destroyed, and eradicated, and the river can flow freely again without obstruction.
Thus, the more socialism we have, the quicker it kills itself, destroying that which it parasitises, as with full-blooded national socialism and soviet communism; the more anaemic versions of socialism allow a more bloodless monster to survive longer, as with social democracy in the western world.
However, socialism is an always-expansive beast, feeding upon the seven deadly sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, via the mechanisms of warfare and welfare. Although the ongoing fight between socialism and the free market may sometimes be balanced for long periods, as in a fiercely contested but static Sumo wrestling contest or a brutal but static rugby scrum, socialism is thus constantly trying to break out and to crush the free market, therefore we need to obliterate this green-eyed aberration completely, if we are to achieve a safe, free, and prosperous world.
All this, and much more, becomes clear when you read Professor Huerta de Soto’s book and this short review does it little justice; you must read the book yourself to form your own conclusions. I can only say, however, that I thoroughly recommend that you do, especially all those people who wish to understand the insidious and self-righteous evil of socialism and therefore how to remove its suicidal and destructive human-hating impulses from the face of the Earth, before these self-immolating impulses destroy us in their turn.
‘my goat. She WAS charming’
she was ‘meat or milk’..FOR YOU…. WHICH?
alas in the end…
SHE WAS MEAT FOR THE PITBULLS.
you evil windbag…i state fact, you as usual attempt to spin…there was no spin in my statement
JHK:
i saw yr link on yr homepage and did look at 2 pages of bloggers posts….
found this:
‘One much-fretted-over outcome is authoritarian government in the USA. We can see the larval stage of that now with the tea baggers and the theocratic right-wing and a Republican Party that has made itself hostage to the John Birch Society — but I maintain, as I wrote in The Long Emergency, that it’s more likely the federal government will become impotent and ineffectual, and therefore unable to carry out a “corn-pone Nazi” program, even if such characters got a hold of the offices.
In any case, America will be faced with rebuilding all the major pieces of its economy at a lower scale: farming, commerce, transportation, education, banking, you name it. This re-set will occur naturally — if we don’t blow ourselves to Kingdom Come — ‘
didnt find alot of ‘deniers’ on pages 1 and 2.
“…little dogs don’t know they are little dogs and sometimes suffer for it…”
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2010/OrloveIncompetence.html
“SHE WAS MEAT FOR THE PITBULLS.”
If they were killing for food it would be a little easier to take, but they kill and leave. Seems like a really dangerous pattern to me.
She was going to be the mother of meat, if boy goats were born, and then milk from her, and any girls that came along. She was my Eve for a dual-purpose group (a group of goats is called a “trip”!). Although “dual” purpose is really short-sighted considering how much unwanted vegetation she was turning into readily-available fertilizer. Privet, catbriar, poison ivy even. Neither chickens, guineas, nor humans eat any of that.
So not only did I lose a fairly well loved pet, I also lost a major cog in my permaculture system…
You made me eyes go misty with that Mises Library catalogue.
myrtlemay,
I am not sure what you got your panties in a such a bunch about, but I am an American and I did not take offense from Alexandra’s post at all. To me it looked like she was outlining what the PTB have in mind for us, and was pretty much right on the mark. But my opinion has nothing to do with being on this side or that side of the border – it is a truism around the world that most people are either too ignorant, or too sick, or too poor, or too busy trying to keep from being poor, to rise up in any kind of a revolution.
Question: you say you are in your eighties. Do you swear so profusely in this way to demonstrate how cool an old lady can be or something? Are you trying to show everyone how hip you are, that you can keep up with the teenage boys on the Internet? Why? Because to this 49-year-old, it looks juvenile. Personally I don’t care if you swear at me or not – because in type it always makes the person doing it look ridiculous, especially if it is continuous used, as you do. I would think you should know that by now.
Tripp – I am very sorry to hear about your goat as well. Will you be able to replace her? Don’t shoot the dogs, it isn’t their fault. Much better for everyone, including the dogs, if you can capture them, take off their collars, and take them to a Humane Society or something a couple of towns away and say you found them walking along the highway. The pound will evaluate them as to whether they are adoptable, and the good ones will find new homes far away from your yard. The ones that are dangerous will be put down. Or you can try the electric fence -that is a good idea too. I use this around my top-bar beehive, to keep the bears out. It works just fine, but of course you would have to purchase the fencing itself as well: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002YX8QC/ref=oss_product
Asia, your “fact” stating that Obama “just spent 2 billion on his travels” is completely bogus. That amount would exceed the expenditures to fight the war in Afghanistan for the time of Obama’s visit.
SOURCE: TRIP TO MUMBAI
http://factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai/
“He also left out the fact that the concrete casings of drill holes sometimes crack and leak at any depth.”
The casing is made of steel. The concrete is between the casing and the well bore (the surrounding hole in the ground) to support the casing. The steel casing would have to be penetrated to cause contamination. Steel is very strong in tension, allowing it to stand high pressure. Concrete is only strong in compression. Since it is between the steel casing and the surrounding well bore it is always in compression, giving the steel casing additional support to contain the pressure.
You made me eyes go misty
=========
I didn’t know you were Irish. I thought you were Jewish.
I’ve been playing around on Youtube (got in trouble with “hubby” for over exposure tonight. I came across an early talky from circa l930, Norma Shearer in a drama called, believe it or not, “Let Us Be Gay”. Silly little movie, but still, I remember watching it as a small child in the local matinee. Amazing how times have changed. If interested, tune into youtube for “Let Us Be Gay” to get an (unrealistic) viewpoint as to how my generations’s parents viewed life and “sophistication”. Not that anyone freaking cares….At any rate, scroll past with all deliberate speed, if you find me tiresome (and I completely understand this viewpoint!)
If I seem to be trying to be “cool” than I apologize. I’m not. I simply don’t like the way that Alexandra pokes her finger into CFN while offering no solution. Personally, I don’t give a crap about what you or anybody else on this blog thinks about me. It’s a free space to vent what you have to say about CFN. So where exactly do you get off telling me what I can and cannot post. Do you know where the fuck the scroll button is? Use it, you god damned idiot! I’ve become well acquainted with it on this and other blogs. Fuck you, and the horse you fucking rode in on! Free speech, baby! KMA! (GOOGLE IT!)
Oh, and Network, you are right. I’m 47, white, male, unemployed, penniless, and unmarried. Happy? I know I would be. dumb piece of shit…..
Ok. You made mine eyes go misty.
(Do groise boser!)
Well, here we are back again, a couple of CFN addicts unable to get off the wagon.
You really need to apply your skepticism to the stuff you cut and paste.
Again and again and AGAIN it never ceases to amaze me what revisionist history RW Authoritarians feed their followers, and the complete incapacity of said followers (which in this case, includes you, Q) to recognize lies so mendacious and the opposite of being true as to “Nazi-level Big Lies”.
One of which is the lie that “National Socialism” belongs on the Left with Communism and Socialism and the good old liberal US Constitution just to the left of center.
But that just isn’t the case. How do I know this? Because I have read accounts OF THOSE WHO WERE THERE! Written AT THE TIME and IN THEIR OWN WORDS!
Books like “Defying Hitler” and “I Will Bear Witness” to name two of several. There aren’t all that many eyewitness on-the-ground accounts of that period, but enough to be certain of some basic facts like the Nazis were RIGHT WING!
The history, if you choose to read it Q would confirm what I am saying. Hitler glommed on to the title of the National Socialist Party because, but let’s say it was heavy on the nationalism and light on the socialism, relying on the “socialist” part of the name to help use the name of Germany’s fragmented and many worker’s and socialist parties to pull together his initial crowds, so to speak.
The “socialism” part, especially by 1928 and onward, mostly a meaningless and vestigal term, having very little to do with what the Nazis were really all about, which was RW Authoritarianism financed by the money of wealthy RW German Industrialists like Fritz Thyssen to help keep at bay Communists, Leftists, Liberals, Trade Unionists, Jewish and German Intellectuals, along with other traditional “enemies” of RW Authoritarianism, the wealthy and their corporate enterprises.
Does it make sense that Thyssen and a bunch of wealthy aristocratic Germans would finance a bunch of Lefty Commies, if that’s what the Nazis were, who were going to take their wealth?
LOOK IT UP! READ A HISTORY BOOK, God damn you!
Am I to disregard German contemporaries who described the Nazis as a party of the Right? The Nazis own words describing themselves as on the Right, despising the Left from more centrist Liberals to far-left Communists, and ultimately murdering them by the tens of thousands?
Should I ignore quotes of Hitler’s like this one, “Universal education is the most corrosive poison ever invented by liberalism for it’s destruction.”
Does that sound like Hitler was a Liberal? That he liked liberals and Leftists? That he sympathized with them and was a part of the Left?
Look it up, Q. Read a history book. Read a history book. READ A FUCKING HISTORY BOOK!!!!
Even better, go down to your local Aryan Nations meetings and talk to the Fascists like Vlad and talk to and about them like they are the same as Liberals or Communists or even better call them a bunch of socialist leftists and see what happens.
If Nazis actually ARE on the Left, you have nothing to worry about. They will laugh and agree with you.
But you know and I know that the last thing you will most likely remember before you wake in the emergency room will be some swatiska tatooed knuckles approaching at top speed.
You wonder why I despair at the future of humankind? Here you are Q, 70+ years old, clearly intelligent and fairly well informed. Yet even you so easily can buy into that odious lie that is stunning in it’s size and monstrous in it’s inversion of reality.
It a LIE that Hitler and the Nazis were on the Left. By their own admission and that of their contemporaries, with dozens, even hundreds of concrete examples.
And yet, you will read my post and be unchanged and undeterred. In spite of the fact that a brief investigation of eyewitness accounts will confirm what I am saying, you will continue to believe the opposite. You will continue to believe The Big Lie because it suits you and for no other reason based in reality or history.
And somewhere down in Hell, if there is such a place, Hitler is laughing himself silly between tortures because RW Authoritarianism is not only experiencing a massive global resurgence under a new fresh, hip, kinder and gentler marketing brand, but it has successfully revised and rewritten it’s history to deny it’s deep connection with the Nazis, instead convincing an ever-swelling number of the gullible and weak-minded that Hitler was on the Left, the same side as his Communist and Liberal Jewish and Intellectual Victims.
The mind truly boggles, Q, for to say that Hitler was a Leftist is TRULY a lie big and monstrous enough to be worthy of being told by the Nazis themselves.
No and again No. Fascists see Capitalism and Communism as opposite sides of the same coin. To wit: both are economic philosphies that view Man only as a consumer, worker, or as capital. Fascism is a philosphy of Man. Other similarities: both require a highly centralized banking system, both tend to ruin the environment, both tend to see Man in purely Natural terms as merely an intelligent animal. Thus religion will be looked down upon by a mature Capitalist society as superstition and quite overtly of course by Communism. Fascism on the other hand, reveres the Past and the unique traditions and folkways of a given people. Although not necessarily pro-religion, it is not anti the way that Communism and Capitalism are by their very nature. Thus we call Fascism the Third Way since it is neither but tries to retain the best aspects of both while remaining true to its own vision.
The IEA, today, came out with an
unprecedentedly honest announcement
i.e., “World oil production appears
to have peaked in 2006”. I wonder
why this announcement appears to
have gotten about zilch coverage on
Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Biz??
Seems awfully strange to me!!!
E.
Ah, a passionate defence of the mean, median, medium, and mediocre. But Prog such as that do not create civilization and will scarcely be able to maintain a high tech one such as our’s. Sure dogs like that are survivors and such human mutts inhabit most of Central and South America. The Mestizo Mutts are ruled by Whites who never gave in to such mediocrity or the mean desire to blend in and disappear. No, they are often very proud of their European Tradition and they do not intend to let go of power such as so many of us are doing.
Have I done you wrong? You yourself said you have devoted yourself to leftist causes a week or so ago. What an self indictiment! I merely point out the results of your leftist policiies. As the Mutts pour in they will change America, remake it in their own image of poverty, violence, and ignorance. It’s already well underway and the results are clear to all clear non liberal eyes. But you’re right – what is done is done and America can never recover from what has been done. It didn’t just “happen”. They knew what they were doing; that they were subverting America. And let’s be clear: to allow something to happen is the same as doing it since it was their responsibility to guard our borders.
Remember, LBendet, we’re the dopey country
that wanted to have CHINA install nuclear
cargo detectors in the Straits of Florida
to detect ships carrying radioactive
contraband into the USA.
Innovative my ass. We’re PAYING the foxes
to watch the chicken coop. We’re way past
just appointing them!!
E.
Dee,
I’ve been trying to tell Vlad exactly
what you’ve told him i.e., that whitey
has been going downhill faster than any
human ethnic group in the last two
decades.
Of course, one can find Asian kids who
are “ghetto”, full of tats and piercings,
and dissipative. However, most of my
best students, whether we like it or not,
are Chinese or Indian. I’ll usually get
one or two good white geeks but for each
of those I’ll get five good Chinese and
three good Indians.
Vlad’s perspective is of a white race that
hasn’t existed for 25 years. If you go into
a grocery or department store on the West
Coast, most of the lard-asses and shit-for-
brains in the aisles are honkies. You just
don’t see that many enormous Chinese or
Indians.
This doesn’t mean I “love” these civilizations.
I think they’re way too mercantile and status
mongering but that’s been true of “striving
immigrants” in America’s past. I say: Let the
marketplace determine who is deserving of getting
into good schools and obtaining good employment.
If it’s whitey then “hoorah”. From my point of
view … that’s just not happening.
E.
The Chinese already believe they are better than we are so that’s a moot point. And yes, culture reflects genetic tendencies. They are quieter and more orderly right from the begining. Seriously, man talk to someone who works in a multiracial daycare center. Ask them if the Black children are just like the Chinese.
The Chinese were well on their way to dominating the Malays in their own country. The Malays have an fairly average human IQ of 85 – far below that of the Sons of Heaven 100+. The Malays fought back rioting, smashing and killing. The Goverment was forced to give in and instituted affirmative action for their own people. Do you get the principle? I’m against Affirmative Action for Blacks but I would be for it if Whites were being dominated by Chinese. You see, I am for My People. The Chinese are for their people too – so are the Blacks, the Browns and the Reds. We all understand each other. You and Whites like you are Odd Men Out. You cling to your abstractions while the West dies. You want the scent without the flower. The essence without the substratum which produces it. Very strange indeed.
BTW, I’m not against all interaction with other races – if they have something to offer which the Chinese obviously do. Besides trade, there could be interzones where two or more cultures meet and all kinds of people and shops could flourish. But I don’t understand why you and your kind want to turn all of the West into an interzone of this nature. An Interzone is natural – turning the whole West into one is an obvious agenda of the blackest kind. Absolute Tyranny and Genocide. And that you can’t see this amazes me. You and They see it as an experiment. Well we never voluntered to be your guinea pigs. And we don’t care if it “works” because its success means the end of us.
Ah, good. The meme about the “Big Lie” is now in play. Just a couple of days ago I riffed on about that (including quotes from Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda) on the forum board of our local right-wing, Republican newspaper. In relation to the vast right-wing echo chamber. Another “voice of reason” chimed in with the quotes on the same topic from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”
Dad doesn’t talk a lot about WWII. My theory is he’s made it to 89 with most of his marbles intact because he looks forward, never back. But I do remember everything he said about liberating Buchenwald Concentration Camp. I think he mentioned it twice. The details tend to stick with one.
Testing has proven the average superiority of Northeast Asians. Why do fight this? Diversity is the way of Nature. After being separated for tens of thousands of years – for all the Races to be exactly the same – now that would be strange, Dee; that would be opposed to the laws of Nature which you imagine that you believe. So why your obstinacy? I think it comes down to hatred of your own race. Because if Asians were smarter than Whites that might mean that Whites were smarter than someone else – like Blacks! And that is unacceptable to you. Far better for Whites to go extinct than for us to be more gifted than Blacks in any way.
So the question becomes why do you hate Whites so much? And what are you going to do to overcome this sickness?
As for your argument: people tend to like what they are good at. I know not always but in general. And people are willing to discipline themsleves to become good at something that they like and are good at. Thus Blacks wont discipline themselves at academics because they aren’t good at them and find them boring. But they are willing to disciple themselves at sports, dance, or music. These they enjoy and are good at.
Besides this factor, the Chinese have always been a “group” culture and into subordinating themelves for the good of the group. Whites haven’t been like that for a while now. Whites now seek fufillment – which often is seen as decadence and often in fact becomes decadence. Under the new Consumer Culture both here and in China, the Chinese are just entering into this phase in modern times. So as far as this goes, we probably are largely in agreement.
One big difference is that the Chinese are far more practical – there are rather few that value the intellectual life for its own sake. They want the wealth and prestige that the mind can achieve in a career. Even in our decadence, we are still the most purely intellectual people in the world. None love the life of the mind as much as we do. Is this part of our decadence? I would say not intrinsically but that it can lead to this if not careful.
Hancock,
Anyone who’s studied world history knows were these terminologies lie in the right left spectrum.
There’s a two pronged method to the madness of the right wing.
They have learned that if you label people in extreme terms it will kill the debate. An example I like to use is something I saw on Lou Dobbs a few years ago.
When Dobbs who is against free unbalanced trade and neoliberalism confronted someone on his show about globalism, the person smiled smugly and said, “You’re an isolationist, you’re a protectionist.”
The tactic ends the debate. The person (Dobbs) now has to defend himself from the extreme terminology and a new dynamic to the debate has been successful. Dobbs cannot stick to the ideas he wanted to put forth as he defends his position.
The second part of the tactic is to confuse those who are not reading and thinking for themselves. They already have a certain segment of the population who may be suffering from the economic policies that are destroying their ability to make a living, but there are always the enemies of capitalism to blame.
Just imagine if those angry people are free to think too much, they might even want to explore the possibilities of those economic systems that could work better for them.–We can’t have that, now can we?
————–
E.,
In my complaints about the shifting of innovation to China is not an attack on China, but on our policies and some of our other big lies. When I listen to the free traders and globalists talking on shows like GPS, I’m amazed that they think they can assuage the American people who have noticed that we’re losing ground as a result of the ideology of neoliberalism. We are a service industry economy and innovators. Everything points in another direction.
So, you’re trying to sell fascism as CENTRIST Authoritarianism?
Even IF that were true, which it isn’t, based on the Nazis own words and the words of their contemporaries, how then does it make you feel, Vlad, to have your beloved fascism denigrated and shamed by the fact that an ever-growing number of Americans, possibly a majority, fully believe Hitler and YOU to be on the same side as your old Commie Nemesis Joe Stalin?
Does it make you feel good that the average American now believes you and Hitler and Stalin to be on the same side, with the same basic beliefs and goals?
Or does it make you feel better that wide dissemination of such a 100% falsehood (it’s false even if fascism is “centrist” instead of “right wing”) is helping pave the way for the resurgence of Right Wing Authoritarianism you seek?
I’m guessing the latter outweighs the former for you.
Why?
Fascism, as you have so often let slip, not only accepts the eternal domination of the weak by the strong, the ignorant by the intelligent, the poor by the rich, and the gullible by the cruel, it positively CELEBRATES it.
Fascism definitely does have some things in common with Communism, but in the realm of Authoritarianism, as both philosophies positively CELEBRATE telling lies in the advancement of their goals, RW Fascism by celebration of the noble past and LW Communism by a celebration of a coming utopian future, both of which are based on lies.
Conflicted much, Vlad? Here you have a BIG LIE which unquestionably is helping bring about the RW Authoritarian renaissance you desire (under a new brand name), vastly assisted by RW Corporate “Gleichschaltung”, but seeing history rewritten lumping YOU in with Stalin and the Commies, and knowing that more, soon most, American people will believe you to have be the same as a Lefty Commie, must KILL you inside.
Ironic, isn’t it? The very RW Big Lie about Hitler and the Nazis is one of the RW Lies that most assists your ultimate goals, the breakdown of liberal representatuive democracy and the rushing of RW Authoritarian/fascist structures to fill the void as it fades.
But, really Vlad, I want to hear more about your views on Hitler and the Nazis. Tell us how many Jews, Gays, Liberals, Poles, and Gypsies REALLY died in the Holocaust you believe to be a fraud.
Tell us more about all the good things you think Hitler and the Nazis accomplished. Please do tell. Enlighten us.
The talking chihuahua found a flat nose asian mongrel that will look at him, so now the asians are a superior race. Bah.
So here we go again, the talking chihuahua with its brainless pronouncement. Do you ever think? My god, the more I hear you barking, the more I realize how fscking stupid you are.
And what have we seen from the collective brain trust of a billion fscking Chinese? A billion fscking people, and all they can do is copy the Russians or copy the Americans or copy the Japanese or copy the Israelis. A billion fscking people, with ZERO capacity to innovate and ZERO originality.
It all comes down to smart marketing for the American RW Lie Machine, which is just shorthand for saying properly calibrated advertising/propaganda using the very latest in focus-grouped techniques and possibly as many as millions of hours of corporate and university research into behavioral, mass, and statistical psychology.
All of these fields have advanced a hundred or perhaps a thousand fold since the Nazis’ heyday.
The tactic you mentioned is actually one of literally dozens of similar tactics too numerous to list. These tactics, while in a current form that suggests maximum scientific advancement, actually aren’t all that different from the intuitively discovered propaganda tactics in use since at least the Dark Ages and probably going back in some form to the dawn of human society.
An example from history: Leading up to the 1410 AD Battle of Grunwald, Poland had been a Christian nation for hundreds of years, since roughly 800 AD. But the Teutonic Knights wanted the usual RW authoritarian goodies, more land, more peasants to work like dogs, more money, more power and control.
In the time leading up to the Battle, the Teutonic Knights recognized the importance of having their own version of Fox News to help tilt aristocratic opinion (public opinion, as it has been for most of human history, sadly, was meaningless) in their favor and deny the Poles any part of the outside assistance that was pouring into Teutonic lands.
What did they do? Just like an early version of Fox News, they employed many many scribes, writing until they dropped, sending numerous letters to various courts containing not only lies about Poland’s King Jaigello and Polish barbarisms, but actually selling the completely 100% false idea that Poland was NOT a Christian nation, and therefore the Teutons were merely “liberating” the nation and converting it for Christ.
Even if Jaigello and the Poles knew what was being done and tried to counteract it, they had nowhere near the wealth and power, let alone the number of scribes, of the Teutons to implement such counterstrategy.
Just like today’s shrinking reality-based community in the USA. Ah, how little history really changes over time! How much more like a snake that is continually shedding it’s skin or a new one, yet still the same old snake beneath.
In the end, Teutonic strategy worked so very well that almost all of the outside assistance went to the Teutons, who lost anyway. (Thank God)
Did it matter that they were telling 100% demonstrably false lies? Does it matter than the American RW tells 100% demonstrably false lies over and over again?
My point is, it worked so very well for many of the same reasons Fox News and the RW Lie Machine is so successful at disseminating 100% lies. The Teutons stayed on message, ignored the truth when they happened to brush against it, and were shamelessly repetetive in telling Big Lies.
Just like Fox News and the rest of the RW Lie Machine.
Hell, if King George III had adopted a similar propaganda strategy of the Teutonic Knights and the modern American RW Lie Machine, the Declaration of Independance and the founding of the USA would most likely never have happened.
Because who would support a bunch of Intellectual Liberal Elites like Washington, Jefferson and Franklin with their moonbat extremist ideas against the Right and Honorable Nobility, divinely entrusted and ordained by God?
The Poles are not Christians, they’re Roman Catholic. As are ALL Catholics, they are little more than Papal heathens worshiping a Papal heathen religion. There are very few real Christians in the world, and none of them are found in Europe.
In my previous reply to you, I missed this quote of yours:
That’s great, but what about the other 95% of people?
Vlad, you say:
“… Whites to go extinct than for us to be more gifted than Blacks in any way.”
I’d like to say this as politely as possible.
WHITES CAN NOT GO EXTINCT BECAUSE WHITES ARE NOT A SPECIES!! ONLY A SPECIES CAN GO EXTINCT!!!
You do make a good point that 1000’s of years of relative isolation did produce the races of mankind.
BUT, that isolation has ended, especially in the United States. We’ve got to deal with the situation as we find it. (Besides that, there are plenty of “white genes?” already to be found in the “black race” to prevent their *extinction.*
Culture, religion, EVEN RACE, is just an overlay over the essential nature of man.
And on a humorous?? and ironic note, if the human species does drive itself to extinction it will be because of the relatively “big brains” (or drive, culture, ambition??) of asians and whites. Left to their own devices your sub-Saharan Africans and many other “cultures/races?” would still be building fires with elephant poop and throwing rocks and sticks at each other instead of building nuclear weapons.
Some posters refer to this as “living within the background energy of the planet.”
Now that Thursday has arrived I’d like to have the thread take a look at conspiracy.
Mr. Kel1 says 9/11 is a conspiracy and it is JHK’s business to address it. James Crow seems to agree.
I’m looking for a conspiracy that is unifying – sort of a Grand Unifying (conspiracy) Theory, if you will.
9/11 doesn’t work for me. Even if Mossad and our CIA planted those explosives, furnished those box cutters and piloted those planes – I don’t see how it helps understanding. And I don’t understand why such a powerful conspiracy needed to blow up two New York buildings. If they are so powerful, why don’t they just go ahead, take over the World, and be DAMN done with it??
Hancock, I’m coming around somewhat. I do agree that the RW is positioning itself to take over the US. But I’ll argue that 30%? of US males are completely happy with the idea of RW life.
Like the WWII Germans – a huge percentage of our countrymen are completely happy taking orders and giving orders. It may be part of our gene pool, maybe?
We’re not Christians we’re Roman Catholic?
I don’t know what your definition of Christianity is and I doubt you’re a religious scholar. Doesn’t matter I’m not one either but that shouldn’t stop us.
So, take it from me, I grew up Roman Catholic and I’ve worked with a lot of Jews and had Jewish bosses for a lot of my life as did my wife: Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general are just Judaism for Gentiles. The main man here is Jesus Christ who was no Christian. He was Jewish through and through. But the early Christians who were Jews were great religious entrepreneurs. How did they attract new converts? They got rid of a lot of bothersome rules like having to be circumcised (a powerful disincentive to conversion to Christianity for adult men) and not eating pork which Italians liked to eat. Plus they were very accommodative to existing ways of thinking so now you have in effect a goddess, the Virgin Mary, in place of earlier pagan goddesses.
Wow, do you really HATE White Christians.
Your most recent post is rather tepid compared to some of the hate you have spewed towards white “savages” in the past.
Ironically, this hatred most definitely mirrors your favorite DUer, Resident Impediment, who also pretty much shares your beliefs regarding white “savagery”, though he is much less vitriolic in his presentation of the beliefs he shares with you, and would no more admit similarity to you than you would to him.
I used to say that Resident Impediment was CFN’s mirror image of Vlad, but it’s quite clear that you, are now the holder of the title “Closest to being an exact mirror opposite of Vlad”.
Congratulations. Quite an honor you’ve achieved.
No, I’m just stating the truth. They’re NOT Christians. You want to argue that that’s hate, that’s your prerogative. I’m telling it like it is. Papal Catholicism is not Christianity. Catholicism is nothing more than paganistic Roman Imperialism dressed up as something it is not. It is the antithesis of everything Jesus was, and everything he stood for.
You seem to be very capable in cutting through the BS of the old german/right wing nazi propaganda machine, you should be just as capable in cutting through the BS of the old Roman Imperialist propaganda machine.
Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general are just Judaism for Gentiles.
==
There is no Judaism for Gentiles. What there is, is Roman Imperialism and paganism dressed up as “Judaism for Gentiles”.
The God of Israel is the God of Israel. HE is a God specific to One People, One Land, One Language, One Culture. That’s where HE starts and that’s where HE ends!
Btw, a very simple “litmus test” to understanding the left wing right wing division is to see who’s backing who. Hitler was right wing by the simple fact that the old money (which is by definition the right wing) the aristocracy the papacy was backing Hitler. As they say, follow the money.
Hi, Prog, long time no speak.
You said:
Don’t do it, pal. It’s an answer that can never be known and searching for one will just make you upset inside (because there’s no way to confirm or deny said theory) and make everyone around you think you are nuts, if they don’t already since you speak in the voice of reason instead of “Fox News”, which probably isn’t too welcome down there in the Fiefdom of Georgia, one of the primary seats of RW Authoritarian Lies and Power in the modern (i.e. Inverted Totalitarian) USA.
I’d like to help you to understand why the modern roots of RW Authoritarianism are deeply intertwined with the Old Confederacy, like the post-Civil War Southern Media which so closely resembled Fox News in it’s relentless smearing and ruthless lies told about “carpetbaggers”, “scalawags” and liberal Christian missionaries, mostly women, who went down to educate the newly freed slaves.
I’d like to tell you to take an afternoon and mosey down to the Library and start reading old copies of your local newspaper, anytime from May 1865 to the early 1900s and probably later, because as a person of reason, I seriously doubt that you’d be able to disagree with me after viewing such a preponderance of evidence directly with your own eyes.
I’d like to tell you that even the dogged 150 year old Confederate propaganda which refuses to acknowledge the “Yankee Liberal” names of battles or even of the Civil War itself, is the direct lineal ancestor the Orwellian twisting of language as battlefield rather than as communicator, so often successfully practiced by Hannity, Savage, Beck, and the rest of the RW Lie Machine, these days.
I’d like to tell you all that, but how could you give up the vanity of your regional pride as expressed through your occasional Confederophilia? How could I ask you to give up your fun and stop tweaking those Yankees by calling it the “War of Southern Independence” or to look at it as part of a larger picture?
You also said:
Given that we can never truly know who or what was behind 9/11, allow me to speculate in general. Consider the machinations Caesar went through to capture the dictatorship of Rome. You might equally ask, if Caesar was so powerful and beloved, why didn’t he just go ahead and take over Rome in 52 BC instead of wasting all that time on unnecessary maneuvering that didn’t get him his full lifetime dictatorship until 44 BC, just in time to be assassinated?
Because, relatively speaking at the time, Rome was a Free Nation. In Free Nations, or those pretending to be free, outright power grabs are typically self-defeating because a certain amount of “consent of the governed” is required for complete longer-term success.
Even if the “consent” needed is very small, this changes the dynamic. Thus, plausible deniability is required to manufacture this consent in order to achieve goals.
It’s why Caeser did what he did. It’s why even Hitler didn’t grab straight for power but delayed his rise by necessary political and media maneuvering, as the Weimar Republic required a certain amount of “consent of the governed”, even if the consent was being asked for the ultimate purpose of wholly removing the Nazis’ need for said consent.
It’s why the Bushies let Obama warm their throne for them. Because if a significant number of Plebes wake to the game being played on us by the Aristcratic Elite pulling the string on our phony Liberal vs. Conservative debate (which obscures that fact that only NEOconservatism and NEO liberalism, both “soft” authoritarian philsophies, now rule the USA), our consent might be withdrawn before it is no longer needed by said Aristocratic Elite to peacably finish the transition.
It’s one thing for a dictator to rise to power in a dictatorship. It is quite another for a de facto dictatorship or authoritarian oligarchy to rise in a nation that was once a free representative democracy or a free democratic-republic, and who’s founding myth is that we shall NEVER bow to Kings or Dictators.
Such moves require subtlety, time, AND the “consent of the governed” to embrace said changes under a plausibly deniable cover story.
You also said:
It’s probably more than 30%, and not just white males. I would argue that RW Authoritarian Followers of all races, creeds and colors are and have been for quite some time by far the fastest growing demographic in the USA.
I have long said that the collective psychological makeup of the National Character of the USA is at this point FAR closer to that of the 1933 Germans as it is to the Americans who defeated them. I see nothing about that diminishing over time, but rather increasing by lunatic bounds every year.
The reality of this last quote of yours, and it’s apparent near-universality as a precondition for human power politics and society, is what leads me to further believe that humanity’s destiny is extinction.
Which might not be such a bad thing at all, galctically-speaking.
Vlad, white Europeans built Stonehenge, brown Africans built the Pyramids and the Sphinx at roughly the same time as Stonehenge.
If you were alive at the time, let’s say an Egyptian trader who’d seen the newly finished Pyramids and the Sphinx and who’d been to Britain and seen Stonehenge, what would you conclude about relative inferiority/superiority of the peoples that built them?
I’m not sold on the idea of Asian brilliance either. China has a billion dirt poor people that have roughly African standards of living. This is not the work of geniuses. After all they’ve been civilized as long as or maybe longer than anyone else so what’s the excuse? And what was the excuse for the lunacies of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism in general? I’m married to an Asian, I know a lot of Asians, family and non family and I do not see any superiority there. They’re as bright or as dumb as the broad run of humanity. Once in a while I get these little sneers from them about their alleged superiority in terms of self discipline and brainpower so I just point out this one fact about their one billion miserably poor compadres and it shuts them up.
Just so we’re clear I am implacably opposed to the idiocies of multiculturalism. I do not want to see this country incubating messed up third world cultures. Where you and I differ is in seeing culture as racially based. Based on my own observations it is not.
Why do I say so? From personal experience. The generation before me spent their time starving, trying to scratch out a living as tenant farmers with a donkey and a stick. In terms of genetics and ancestry I would say I have more in common with Middle Easterners and others living in the Mediterranean Basin than I do with Northern Europeans.
But Canada was a country founded by northern Europeans with ideas, culture and way of life a lot different and, in my opinion, superior to those sweating their asses off in Italy. Nonetheless, regardless of the genetics, within one short generation me, my sister and all my cousins born in North America became university educated professionals. We are/were as good as and better than our classmates intellectually.
But you would never have guessed that short, barrel chested, Neanderthalish people like us would ever be the intellectual equals of tall, fair people already here especially seeing the disparities in the respective societies.
What I’m saying is that different peoples and their cultures have periods of rise and fall. Egypt, Babylon, China, India all had their times of glory. Italy, its Latin language and Roman and Reannaisance civilization was dominant in Europe for a while. Until it wasn’t. Same with Britain and same with you guys in the US. Britannia ruled the waves. Until it didn’t. The US was brilliant, it was a hegemon. WAS brilliant, WAS a hegemon. White Europeans colonized the Americas and carved out worldwide empires. That was then.
You said:
Even if I partially agreed with your characterization of Catholicism, what about your comments on the innate savagery of White people?
I’ll make you a deal. I will try harder to see through the “BS of the old Roman Imperialist propaganda machine”, if you can just once acknowledge the deeply intertwined relationship between the Mossad and the CIA, RW authoritarian Israeli leadership with RW authoritarian American Leadership, or the fact that “God promised us this land,” is not a good enough reason to do to the Palestinians essentially what the USA did to the Native Americans.
You do know that Native Americans were barbarians and weren’t using the land “properly”, which is a standard Israeli rationale for why it’s OK to steal Palestinian lands today.
Also, Native Americans practiced asymmetrical warfare and what would today be called terrorism, in defense of their land against a technologically superior conqueror. Just like today’s Palestinians.
Ironically, the Nazis themselves termed resistors to their regime, including Jewish resistors, “terrorists”. Look it up.
Life is too funny, isn’t it? It just keeps going ’round and ’round and ’round on the same carousel scored with frenetic calliope music.
But it never really goes anyplace different, in the end, no matter how much the window dressing changes.
Now I’m confused. If YHVH is specific to Jews and Israel then what is he in your opinion? A tribal war god? And also, if Jews have their own God, then who is the God or Gods of non Jews? Are you saying there are in reality multiple, maybe competing, tribal Gods ie Thor/Jupiter/Zeus/Diana/Apollo for Europeans, YHVH for Jews, Brahman in his various incarnations for Indians etc.
How eloquent of you, Myrtle. At least Alexandra had something to contribute to the discussion. You? Nothing interesting at all.
Tripp,
So sorry for the loss of your gentle stock.
(I’m always profoundly saddened by the death of a gentle innocent due to banal and random viciousness.)
Hope your family is coping okay.
Palestinian land. Why don’t you tell me another fairy tale Egyptian propaganda story, you piece of shit.
Oh, man, you hit it on the head, Prog.
My main dog is half German Shepherd, another breed bred for aggressiveness.
She is a stone cold killer, and VERY protective of me. I can always count on her back-up, even though she’s now very old and crippled.
Then I have two mutts, brothers, although one is yellow, and the other, spotted. They are pretty worthless when it comes to protection. I can only assume that it is inbred, since they’re treated the same way.
For instance, I was attacked by my billy goat twice. Once, the boys were out with me. They cowered in fear. The second time, my main dog was out. She took on the goat and helped me fight him.
On the other hand- I had a cat who was an indoor cat. My main dog lived in the house with him for 10 years, and knew that she wasn’t allowed to attack him. She never touched him in the house.
The boys at that time were outside dogs.
I let the cat outside one day to bask in the sun, and I thought that he was by the house, but when I came around the corner with my three dogs, and there he was, out in the middle of the yard.
The boys went for him, and my main dog joined the pack.
Me and the cat fought those damn dogs off for about 20 minutes, until he ended up against a tree and I was able to grab them all, because they couldn’t get behind him.
He was badly injured and ended up with an amputated leg.
People asked me why I couldn’t control my dogs. Well, I could, one at a time, but the three of them were a pack, and even the dog who had lived with the cat for 10 years tried to kill him.
Are you saying there are in reality multiple, maybe competing, tribal Gods ie Thor/Jupiter/Zeus/Diana/Apollo for Europeans, YHVH for Jews, Brahman in his various incarnations for Indians etc.
==
That’s the world view of Jews. Other peoples have their gods, and Jews are their God. That is why you always hear the expression:
adonai eloheinu adonai e?ad
the lord OUR god the lord is one (my emphasis)
Btw, Cash,
I’m sure you’ve seen Zeitgeist the movie part I, The Greatest Story Ever Told, so I’m sure you know exactly to what I’m speaking of. Roman Catholicism is really nothing more than old school paganism. There’s a lot more involved here than just eating pork.
Q,
You spewed? -yawn-
Geez, I thought there was very little as irritating as a “reformed” smoker… Now I see it’s minor when compared to the “conversion” of a true believer. (Oopsie, forgot about them nice RW neo-con assholes; seems they were once dedicated Trotsky-ites. But they didn’t do a lot of damage, did they? Extremists of any stripe don’t really hurt anything do they? It’s all just harmless “talk”, leading to enlightened discussion and reasoned, civil argument, right?)
Q, that was a really interesting article. But I wonder if the writer and de Soto aren’t maybe over complicating things when he’s asking why did socialism and its evils manage to survive for such a long time.
In my estimation the reason socialism survived is because it sounds good on paper to a lot of people, people are sheep, stupid ideas take root and are difficult to extract and self serving socialist elites know that power emanates from the barrel of a gun. The sheeple know it too. Speak up and if you’re lucky you get a rifle butt in the mouth and if you aren’t you get a bullet in the head. Maybe the secret police think that you’re just a little mouthy but salvageable so you get a 5 year stretch in a “re-education camp” where you survive by the skin of your teeth and at the end you fully realize who has power, who doesn’t and what happens if you try to be a smart mouth.
No Vlad the Impared. I don’t “hate” whitey.
I just think the human race will be better off if white & black fade into a nice, coffee colored race, with perhaps a little more cream here, or more dark roast there.
Then people will have to have something better to argue and fight about than ones skin color.
Perhaps dick size will do….oops, you’d lose out there too.
Dee 🙂
BTW Jim: I really hate the way this blog displays, one has to wait for the whole dam page to load to get to the more recent comments. It was much better when you had discreet pages, one could just skip to the last page of comments and not have to wait for THE WHOLE DAM PAGE TO LOAD.
Its a pain to me ’cause I am living outside the US, and have a slow ‘net connection.
Is this format cheaper? Any way to implement pages again? Perhaps segregated by DATE?
Just askin’….
Thanks, your pen pal Dee
So glad to see you back, Hancock.
I think that you hit it on the head, also.
Why have 9-11? Because even though Americans are ignorant and warlike, they wouldn’t really easily support the US openly taking on the goal of controlling the world by military conquest, as the PNAC document pointed out.
It takes a causus belli, as dictators throughout time have known.
9-11 was quite spectacular, but it took continuous hype to keep it going to this day.
I watch Obama talk about catching BinLaden, as Bush and Cheney did before him, and I marvel that people can still fall for this.
It takes a mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda to keep fear alive.
I also agree that the majority of humans are content to live in submission, as long as they are fed and housed, and even sometimes when they’re not.
How many slave revolts were there, compared to how many millions that lived their lives in slavery?
How many people fought against tyranny, whether religious or political?
A rebellious spirit is kind of like intelligence, randomly distributed among humanity.
Once in a while, you get a Spartacus, or a Tom Paine, or a Lumumba, but most of the time you don’t.
It’s like an Einstein, or a Galileo, or a Newton.
Vlad likes to believe that brilliance is in one breed of humans, but it seems to me that brilliance is like a shooting star – random and rare.
…Which leads us to muse: Does reading Ayn Rand lead to ossification of the brain? And: Will a fracking procedure break up these concretions? Does the concept of “justice” get well and truly poisoned unto death by the fracking fluid; or is that a pre-existing condition?
Good Night, Irene.
I agree that roman catholicism has a lot of pagan stuff in it ie Greek ideas, old folk religious thinking and I know there’s a lot more to it than eating pork. I was raised Roman Catholic so I have more than a passing familiarity with it.
I mentioned the early jettisoning of Jewish rules because I think the Jewish founders of Christianity knew that pagan converts wouldn’t have a lot of patience for it. And what we see now as Roman Catholicism took hundreds of years to come together. The early Christians had a multitude of churches, religious writings and it wasn’t as if they even knew that they’d survive Roman persecution. The organized, disciplined authoritarian Church you see is the one that lived through that nastiness. The other forms of Christianity didn’t.
But I think you’re under-estimating the role the Old Testament writings play in Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism isn’t all magic and ghosts.
Having said that, this process of cultural accretion is ongoing. I’ve read that Roman Catholicism is picking up a lot of converts in Africa (I’ve read that African missionaries are going to the US and re-christianizing the US) and in the process picking up a lot of African religious thinking just like what happened in Europe in Roman days. For example I’ve read that Jesus is referred to as First Ancestor by former ancestor worshippers and Great Snake by former animists. I guess the Vatican lives with it because a convert is a convert. It’s either that or Islam wins.
It’s either that or Islam wins.
==
What’s needed is an educational push towards enlightenment, and to call both these authoritarian imperialistic evil ideologies for they are. And make no mistake about it, both Catholicism and Islam are pure evil.
I read a biography of Harriet Tubman when I was a kid, and totally identified with her rebellious spirit.
Later, I saw an enactor point out that she always carried a gun on her freedom trips, partly so that she could threaten any slave who decided, half-way to freedom, “screw this, I’m going back to slavery”.
One day I was hanging out with an African-American woman, and she started joking about what a lousy slave she would have been, due to her smart mouth.
I was thinking “Harriet Tubman” and was joking with her.
She was talking about having her hand cut off, and her foot cut off, and then I was riffing on Monty Python and Harriet Tubman, until I realized that she was talking about punishment, not running to freedom.
Then I realized that she was a descendant of slaves, and that what was passed down to her was an oral history of punishment for resistance, but not a history of escaping to freedom.
That was an eye-opener for me.
Wage, I think that you are way, way over estimating US military power and for that matter political influence. I think the Butchers in Beijing have different ideas about who controls what, as do the oligarchs ruling Russia, as do the people with their finger on the nuclear button in India. I think you under-estimate the power and ambition of these foreign elites.
Remember, you guys gutted your manufacturing by offshoring it to China. They now control it. How much power do you think the US has left? Not much IMO. The US is a shambling wreck, a bankrupt, half rotted living dead zombie.
And remember I’m your biggest defender. And I’m saying this with no joy. If I’m right the US will pull us down too. You guys have a lot invested here but we have just as much money invested in the US. Trade with the US accounts for about a quarter of our GDP.
Even if I partially agreed with your characterization of Catholicism, what about your comments on the innate savagery of White people?
==
History speaks for itself. You breed for war and conquest. Everything you do, is aimed for that purpose. Be it Athens and Sparta, or be it Anglo fascist imperialism or Russian soviet imperialism, etc.
As for your deal, the only deal to be made is one to tell the truth. And if the truth hurts, then maybe there might be hope for you.
And make no mistake about it, both Catholicism and Islam are pure evil. – Mika
I dunno “pure evil” is pretty strong. If you want to say that about Nazis I’ll go along as I can’t see many redeeming qualities. If you want to say something about specific instances of beastliness like the Spanish Inquisition OK fine by me. But if you go by Old Testament accounts it’s not as if Jews have clean hands either.
IMO both catholicism and islam have their good points. Western Europe was civilized by Rome and I think that without the Church, especially in the Dark Ages, I think things would have been massively worse. Same goes for Islamic cultures. They had a huge impact on pulling Europe out of the Dark Ages. Right now I think is a “down” time for Islamic cultures but I think that if we lived seven or eight hundred years ago we’d have a different view of the civilizing influence of Islam, Islamic scholarship etc.
Q stirs pot…
Hancock goes berserk…
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
But I think you’re under-estimating the role the Old Testament writings play in Roman Catholicism.
==
To the extent that the TaNaKh is used by Roman Catholicism, it is used as a source of derision and a source of negation. Roman Catholicism is everything that Jesus was not.
I dunno “pure evil” is pretty strong. If you want to say that about Nazis I’ll go along as I can’t see many redeeming qualities.
==
Who do think funded the Nazis? Who do you think facilitated the escape of Nazi war criminals? Who do you think stole Jewish babies from their parents?
I’m not overestimating US military power, PNAC did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
They planned on going on to Iran, Syria and, possibly, Saudi Arabia.
They planned total full-spectrum dominance, including in space and cyber-space.
As for being afraid of the Chinese boogey-man, I refuse.
The factories in China are used to provide cheap labor for capitalists, to make what used to be made by higher priced labor.
The Chinese government provides the muscle to keep labor down, as did so many other governments before them, including the US government, back in the day.
It isn’t the “Chinese” people who benefit from being cheap, exploited labor, anymore than average “Americans” benefit from having multi-billionaires with US passports.
The vast majority of people on this planet are nothing more than cheap labor, cannon fodder, or useless eaters to our ruling overlords, no matter which nationality.
To the extent that the TaNaKh is used by Roman Catholicism, it is used as a source of derision and a source of negation. – Mika
Why do you say that? I curious to know.
That was never my own experience. I curious to know yours. In my experience the Old Testament was an integral part of RC belief. In Sunday school and in Sunday school books we learned about Genesis, Exodus, Passover, the patriarchs, all the old famous stories about Cain and Abel, Moses, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac, Jonah, Ezekiel etc. Not once did I ever see any derision. The stories about Jesus were of course the most important but we spent a lot of time on the Old Testament. In church services priests would refer to Old Testament writings in their sermons. I think it was this current Pope that said that Mary was the bridge between the Old Testament and the New.
Very interesting discussion resulting from Q’s post on socialism. Thank you, Q! I have enjoyed reading all the comments. Here is my take:
Many of the traditional “isms” (religious and political and economic philosophies) have murdered and tortured millions … from the Old Testament times right up to secret CIA torture prisons today.
So many “isms” justify killing “enemies” and justify destroying our habitat (“stewardship”).
My suggestion is to break with the past, break with “an eye for an eye.” Violence only leads to more violence, in a vicious cycle of violence/ desire for revenge/more violence.
Break with the idea that humans should have “dominion” over the Earth, as if we are “stewards” separate from the Earth.
My suggestion is to live in harmony with the Earth (permaculturalism, not fracking)and refuse to harm others (pacifism, not militarism).
If we could only agree on two things: not to destroy our environment and not to harm each other, maybe we could live together in peace.
Even in a violent world full of fundamentalist fanatics, even in the absence of agreement, we can lead by example … by engaging in sustainable, permacultural practice; by refusing to harm others, or imitate/adopt their violence, even if it means your own death, as it did for Jesus, for Gandhi, for Martin Luther King, etc.
American capitalists no longer have control of the industries they offshored to China. The Butchers in Beijing have control.
Power comes from the barrel of a gun and the Chinese have immense military power. Those industries are gone. Because of offshoring of US money and know how the living standards of about three hundred million Chinese rose to heights they could not have otherwise imagined. China now has over 100 billionaires. The Beijing regime loves this because it gives them immense credibility in the eyes of the Chinese people.
I don’t know what drugs these morons (American CEOs) were smoking when they moved all that stuff to China, I’ll bet the Chinese couldn’t believe their eyes, all these stupid white people bringing all these resources, money and know how for them to steal. And I don’t know what addled state American politicians and people were in when this all happened under their collective noses.
That think tank may have delusions of American grandeur but that’s what they are, delusions. The US economy is gutted, its public finances ruined, its household finances a catastrophe, its central bank governed by ninnies, its people unable to see a way out of this mess. The US is cooked. Stick a fork in it.
I work in the electronics industry and the hot topic is “smart energy”. What it really means is installing equipment in all houses, offices, and factories so the central authority can brown out and black at at will when the supply is below the demand. It is fed mandated in offices in 2014 your home soon to follow. At least I can make some money off the dying corpse. :\
That was never my own experience.
==
Your experience is a statistical outlier, even the Catholic Church admitted as much.
That is good advice. Except this advice can only be taken after we all have a real education and a real enlightenment.
Those factories are outsourced, meaning that the only control US capitalists have over them is financial.
That’s all they need. It gives them deniability when it comes to labor and environmental abuses, and cheap products to import to their US subsidiaries.
Those factories aren’t worth anything to China unless they can sell the products, because they aren’t using them for the good of the people anymore than the US did.
That’s why they continue to sell the US products and continue to buy US debt.
And I’m not convinced that the US ruling class sees no way out.
Their usual way is bombing and killing.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the US start a world wide war.
And the threat of that is probably what keeps the rest of the world from putting an end to US hegemony.
‘I’m not sold on the idea of Asian brilliance either. China has a billion dirt poor people that have roughly African standards of living’
depends on how you look at it or who you look for…bill gates looks for his genius/coolies there and pushes for open borders here[gee do you see conspiracy JHK?]
ruining the enviorment, killling infants,having a cultural bias toward male infants…superstitions galore.
a friend went there and said between the ruination of the enviornment and the hatred of [white] women in business…well…draw yr own conclusions.
did you know its ‘universal’…to see other cultures as ‘cool’ or superior?
if not i can give you examples.
wage..thers a term for it:
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS.
‘They’re as bright or as dumb as the broad run of humanity’
have you read the ‘bell curve’?
what it says about asians IQ’s and what area of IQ they excel in and what they choose to study in colleges?
YAHOO NEWS never ceases to amaze me with its idiocy:
25 jobs created in washington!
Washington State Makes Big Bucks in China
17 hours ago – ABC News 1:49 | 56957 views
Chinese consumers are going crazy for goods from the Evergreen State.
Interesting, edell. It figures.
I work in the medical industry and I think that the centralization of computerized medical records is not to make medical care cheaper OR more efficient.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/12/health-care-in-america.html
‘ A billion fscking people, and all they can do is copy the Russians or copy the Americans or copy the Japanese or copy the Israelis. A billion fscking people, with ZERO capacity to innovate and ZERO originality’
yes but!
if they imitate GOOD FAST CHEAP….well they dont need to lead! why lead when you can follow better.
i agree china stinks but they are good at doing what they do well.
i remember the story of the motor cycle factory.
a us company put millions in…but 6 months later the scoooters were made elsewhere..good fast cheap.
copyrights? patents/ baa
asia said: “what it says about asians IQ’s and what area of IQ they excel in … ”
This is an important point, asia. Aren’t there nine or ten different kinds of intelligences according to the research done by Howard Gardner? Which one is most important? Different people seem to have different things to offer, so why run down one group or another for having an “inferior” intelligence? We are complex beings.
WHO BACKED MAO?
WHAT GOES AROUND!
You bought animals to exploit / slaughter….
and the dogs of doom were a bit more direct.
first come first served.
The Chinese people are little more than slave labor, living in a poisonous environmental toxic soup.
When a billion people are under the control of one political party, they are not worthy of any respect. Same goes for the 300 million in the US or Russia. It is an utter disgrace, an intellectual bankruptcy.
hahahahahahah
thats funny!
welcome to mikas madhouse! gotta go for awhile.
at least 8m hasnt been overposting!
The same money that backed Stalin and Hitler.
As the Mutts pour in they will change America, remake it in their own image of poverty, violence, and ignorance….
are you fuckin crazy?its a done deal
yeah its called the ‘turd world’
with leprosy, voodoo [ hear about the headless body in san fran? if not ill tell you]
and lotsa israelis!
the dis united states has already been ruined.
blame the kennedys and lbj.
Discussions about religions really are meaningless because there is no god; therefore all this talk is fiction writing. Discussions on religious culturism, on the other hand, are valid.
The origins of catholic culure, while interesting, aren’t an important factor in dealing with today’s issues. What is important to know is that organized religion (codified worship of supernatural entities) has caused more pain and suffering than useful help. That scale indicates religions should be abolished or allowed to die out.
Unfortunately, recent research into brain function seems to indicate that the default mechanism in humans as regards to cause and effect is hardwired for belief in supernatural explanations for events. Sigh. But since many people (albeit a low percentage) are rational, there’s hope for us yet. Perhaps education into critical thinking can overcome our brains’ capacity for delusion.
“The US economy is gutted, its public finances ruined, its household finances a catastrophe, its central bank governed by ninnies, its people unable to see a way out of this mess. The US is cooked. Stick a fork in it.”
While you are most likely correct, you also stated that power comes out of the barrel of a gun. That, too, is most likely correct (dissenting opinions also say that the pen is mightier than the sword). And if it is, then the US is still the most powerful nation on Earth, regardless of its failing society. Not that that is a good thing, but it is reality – the US has more nuclear weapons than any country, and more other arms. And power breeds influence. I don’t worry about the Chinese because their goose is cooked, too.
Europe might not have any real Christians, but I can say with certainty that Beantown has, and his name is Bill.
To Asoka:
“That is good advice. Except this advice can only be taken after we all have a real education and a real enlightenment.”
Again, Mika, that’s pretty well stated – except I’d suggest adding a couple of points.
========
That is good advice. Except this advice can only be taken after we all (YES, ALL 6 BILLION OF US) have a real education and a real enlightenment…OR WE’RE ALL DEAD IN SOME GOD’S (gOD’S) HEAVEN (hEAVEN).
To expect 6 billion humans to think like Jesus or Thoreau, or Mansur (all men without families, BTW) – when most humans are mostly worried about where their next couple of meals are coming from –
Let’s just say it’s not happening in this century.
(No matter how many Blarney Stones we all rub.)
Nice attempt at recovery, David Spade. Once again, I busted you in an outright lie for which you have no answer.
Now, like a small child, you try to flip things around with a good old “I meant to do that.”
Yep, I am sure you did. (snicker)
But what is even more amusing is that your lil’ quote indicates that your motivations are no different from Resident Impediment.
Not that I believe that for a second.
You’re just a smarmy old patronizing Right Wing douchebag who got caught in a lie again and has nothing to say in reply, so you respond with either attack, or in your case, nonsensical “gotcha” smarm unworthy of an intelligent eight-year old. Nothing special there.
Regarding the Chinese and how they can only copy *our* ideas.
Most of you should be old enough to remember when the words, “Made in Japan,” printed on an item caused laughter? When “Made in Japan” meant a poorly made trinket – or even a poorly made car?
Now let’s go back and think about the increasing quality of Chinese products – and the numbers of Chinese – and the amount of our money they have.
I’ve gotta side with Cash on this one. As a country, our CEO’s and politicains have allowed something unfortunate to occur.
My understanding of Jewish history is that the Jews are, and have been for the past 2500 years, the most habitually abused people ever. The litany of Jewish suffering is unparalled. I’m not saying Jews have the patent on suffering, but over the millenia, they have been consistently wronged. From their conquest by the Babylonians to the Inquisition, to their attempted extermination by the Germans, and countless other assaults in between, no wonder Israelis are aggressive. Just as African-Americans were proud of the Black Panthers in the 1960’s, Jews around the world are proud of Israel (and I’m not comparing Israeli’s to Black Panthers, just making an analogy).
Thus, this sympathetic talk about the Palestinians is just the hypocritical flow of crocodile tears. Let’s move on to other discussions – like when the SHTF, and the God of the Jews doesn’t seem to be there for them, as well as the rest of humanity.
I suspected it was a waste of time to converse with you, Mossad Mika, but stupidly I went and did it anyway.
I must confess, the first thing that came to mind when you snarled “Egyptian Propaganda” was the very similar snarl of “Jewish Propaganda” (if we were in Germany, circa 1930s) by people with very similar motivations and personalities as you when confronted with facts they wished to deny.
I have read many on-the-ground-eyewitness books on Nazi Germany, the better to understand modern Bushie America, and on more than one occasion I have read both anti-Nazi Germans and one Jew (Victor Klemperer) express concern at the time about their Zionist contemporaries, stating that Zionists in many ways mirrored the beliefs, feelings of superiority, and arrogance of the Nazis, which made them generally uncomfortable about Zionism, even though it, too, was anti-Nazi and ostensibly an ally.
I didn’t want to see it, but Good Lord have you shoved it in my face! I suppose I should thank you for that, for helping me pierce the veil of my denial.
Face it, Mika, you think non-Jews are little more than animals. It literally screams between the lines of your posts, especially your reply to Cash regarding YOUR God. Dead giveaway. I’ll tell you what I tell Vlad – just drop the mask and say it plain. Say what you really feel, it will make you feel better.
Disgusting and grotesque. You truly are a walking advertisement for anti-semitism.
Could you stand by or actively participate in the industrialized murder of 12,000,000 people?
Bet you could if Jews were doing the murdering, instead of being murdered. Bet you’d be pretty gung ho for that.
Ha, ha! But you are reading something inaccurate into what I’m saying, I believe. I’m not saying this is a good thing, just that in reality power does come from the barrel of a gun. I may not want it that way, but that’s the way it is, and always has been. Israel itself wouldn’t still exist as an independent Jewish state if it s military power wasn’t greater than its neighbors -and that’s a fact, no matter who armed who.
BTW, I’m not a Roman Catholic, I’m an atheist, nor was I brought up catholic. Nor do I approve of the Roman Catholic Church. You don’t know my background, so please don’t comment on it.
PC, you’d be surprised how quickly things can go “viral”. Bill is correct, there is no God. What there is, is culture. Either a culture is bankrupt, or it is not. And a culture based on imperialism and (informational/economic/cultural/physical) genocide, is a culture that is supremely bankrupt and evil.
Q said: “To expect 6 billion humans to think like Jesus or Thoreau, or Mansur…”
That was not the point of my post.
I said anyone can begin today to lead by example, to put into practice permaculture values and to refuse to do harm to others.
You don’t have to wait on 6 billion people before you decide to act in your own life.
Mossad Mika
==
LOL! There you go. I knew I’d draw it out of you.
Bill, you don’t have to explain. I know a decent human being when I see one. Even when I scream at you that I want your yankee imperialists out. 🙂
Hancock asked Mika: “Could you stand by or actively participate in the industrialized murder of 12,000,000 people?”
Hancock, if they were 12,000,000 jihadists, Mika would not blink an eye.
Mika is of the old school and believes in violence toward enemies, instead of following the teaching of a great Jew who said to love your enemies.
A passionate defense of the mean, median, and mediocre, you say!
I think you and I are on different time scales regarding race. You look ahead maybe 50 years and think your own children/grandkid’s generation may save the white race from “extinction.”
That may be. But I look ahead 1000 years and see the white race slowly turning brown. Maybe due to climate change and increased UV radiation, if nothing else. 😉
And then you ask:
“Have I done you wrong? You yourself said you have devoted yourself to leftist causes a week or so ago”
That’s a pretty nice thrust, my worthy opponent.
EXCEPT as Hancock and Wage have both pointed out at different times – I don’t live in a normal State. Georgia is so far into the RW aristocracy that I may have deluded myself into thinking I was a leftist.
Actually I’ve been a pragmatist the whole time.
It literally screams between the lines of your posts, especially your reply to Cash regarding YOUR God. Dead giveaway.
==
It’s not my god. It is my ethnic cultural and national identity. And fsck you for trying to debase it`and take it away from me, you thieving imperialist piece of shit.
I’ll let Mika defend himself, but really, comparing Zionists to Nazis is over the top. Look, Nazis, I’m sure, loved their own families, and as a rule, probably displayed affection and kindness toward them. Priests and ministers love their families, and probably display affection and kindness toward them. Therefore, priests and Ministers are Nazis. Makes no sense. Makes no sense to handpick a few common traits, and then make a positive comparison. I don’t remember when Zionists created a cold, machine-like, highly technological program for total extermination. I must be losing my memory as I get older.
Hancock asked Mika: “Could you stand by or actively participate in the industrialized murder of 12,000,000 people?”
Mika is of the old school and believes in violence toward enemies, instead of following the teaching of a great Jew who said to love your enemies.
==
This says everything about the intellectual honesty of the person asking the question. And everything about you too, Asoka. We know where “Christian Europe” stood on this matter. Same for your Islamic thiefdoms, Asoka.
Oh, yeah, one comment about the races. If you make a list of every conceivable human trait, and every conceivable physical trait, and every conceivable cultural trait – the list would be very long – and apply all of them to each of the races, and assign value judgment points to each trait on the list, I believe the point totals would be pretty much equal for every race.
Picking out a few traits and making racial comparisons is what hateful racists do.
Conspiracy theories are only good for speculative and fanciful “what ifs”, not for important and relevant discussions. To think rationally, apply Occam’s Razor to each theory, and you will find most of the conspiracies disappear. Or maybe there’s a conspiracy to promulgate conspiracies in order to befuddle and pre-occupy the populace. Hmmmm.
Picking out a few traits and making racial comparisons is what hateful racists do.
==
Only that serves an agenda. A well funded agenda. An agenda of divide and conquer politics, of theft, domination, and empire.
Thanks for the comments, Bill.
Actually, it wasn’t me who compared Zionists to Nazis, much to my surprise it was authors of on-the-ground-eyewitness accounts of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany who did.
Victor Klemperer for one. Sebastian Haffner for another and at least one more author who’s name escapes me, it’s been so long since I read the book at the library.
I was merely pointing out that listening to Mika’s loathesome drivel and rhetorical misdirections had made me look more closely at what they had to say, after I had kind of looked through them, even after one, two, three different authors mentioned it.
I most definitely agree with your post overall.
But Mika is clearly an uber-Zionist who can barely conceal his dripping contempt of people who worship pagan gods and are savages, which is to say everyone not Jewish. His rapid demonization of others and absolutist language also betray him as, shall we say, being of an authoritarian ilk.
To sum up Bill, you are absolutely right. It would be nonsense to compare all Zionists with all Nazis, for the reasons you eloquently described.
But I wasn’t doing that. I was pointing out that conversation with Mossad Mika reminded me of those passages I had ignored, with his speech and overall attitude.
I stand by that. Firmly.
I also think he could very easily, based on what he has said up until now, participate in or allow by inaction to occur the industrialized murder of 12,000,000 human beings, so long as it was Jews doing the murdering.
But much of what you said is true.
“You bought animals to exploit / slaughter….”
Yeah, but nowhere near as many die here as when you cultivate and combine a field of soybeans. My animals are happy up until the time of their deaths. I only hate that death for her wasn’t as swift as I would have made it (if she were even for that purpose, which she wasn’t). That and the meat was spoiled, so I can’t even have her for that.
Vegetarians live in a world of extremely false moral superiority. When I eat a grass-fed cow, exactly one animal dies in the whole process, cradle-to-grave. When you eat tofu, it is tainted by the blood of divers species. Wild animals too, animals that never made a contract with you for their success. I wish you guys could see what a sanctimonious and myopic bunch you are.
The funny thing is that it will be grazing animals that save America’s sorry behind, as the rest of you slowly figure out how to use them for healthy food, carbon sequestration, and fertility building. Humans can’t do it. No matter how much carbon we scrub from our smokestacks and bury underground. We need the animals to help us out of this mess (and in turn, get them out of this mess).
Losing my goat was a major setback in a lot of ways. Not the least of which was the time spent explaining once again why the self-righteous are anything but.
You’ve got a lot of nerve Mossad Mika.
To accuse me of intellectual dishonesty when you constantly dance around your true feelings about the goyim.
Please explain in more detail your belief in a god for each tribe of humanity and why therefore the only true God is Yahweh and none seeking God under another name can possibly find the one true God.
Please explain your opinions on Christianity and the Christian God, and what, if YOUR god is the only TRUE God, do the rest of the world’s savages worship, smoke and mirrors?
Please explain in more detail your beliefs on why Whites are such unredeemable savages and why the Jews are not.
These are simple questions asking you to flesh out beliefs you have stated not just this week but pretty much every week since you’ve been here.
But we both know you dare not answer. To expose your true beliefs even more nakedly than you do now would make you as despised as Resident Impediment.
You accusing me of intellectual dishonest.
Now that is rich! (guffaw)
Hi, Wage. Nice to be back, though like anyone struggling with an addiction, I may yet fall on and off the wagon again before I’m through.
You said:
I might further add, “How many times throughout history have the wealthy, to paraphrase that ancient, famous quote, ‘hired one-half of the poor to kill the other half’?”
That sad truth of all those things is indeed a liberals’ dilemma.
I envy the liberals Washington and Paine one thing. Back in the late 18th Century, at the culmination of the Enlightenment, it was possible for those guys to delude themselves that they were literally remaking the world and advancing the human condition in a way which could never be turned back.
Certainly it was at least partially true, but now as we see RW Authoritarianism, in it’s shiny newly marketed-brand snakeskin, rapidly dispels the remains of the Founders’ vision, it is clear they didn’t remake the world at all, they just won a BIG skirmish in the battle that always seems to end with the destruction of human social progress or Liberal Enlightenment values at the hands of fast-talking ruthless authoritarian sociopaths and their followers.
It has become abundantly clear that the only thing it would take to “turn things back” is a significant decrease in our energy budget. Those techno-triumphalists better be right or humanity is in for a long, slow. painful demise, which will make our long, slow, painful rise look like a picnic in the park.
Sad. But no sadder than the fact that modern science and understanding of human psychology and motivation has been harnessed as a tool used to decimate all of what the Founders and the Enlightenment had hoped humanity could become. Not a utopia, but a moderate place where people could live in something other than a Kleptocracy, where ANYONE who worked hard and followed the rules could have a decent standard of living, where no one minority could seize unchecked power, and where law, while never perfect, could at least strive to treat all citizens equally, regardless of race, power or wealth.
Where wars were only fought for real reasons, instead of for transparent lies fed to gullible fools so as to enrich the already wealthy (this means that wars would be fought at about 1/20th or perhaps even 1/100th the rate they are fought at now).
At this point, we have none of those things and they get further away every day. Even though our energy budget and technology level has increased a thousand or million-fold.
It’s a dilemma that has no answer. If the environment and energy budget don’t collapse, if humanity had 50,000 or 100,000 years to run this endless cycle of authority and liberty 50 or 100 more times, then maybe, just MAYBE humanity might actually evolve a little bit.
But we don’t have 50,000 years. We as a species probably don’t have 5,000 years left and as a hi-tech species we may not even have 500.
Please accept my condolences over the loss of your goat.
I became a vegan only because I felt it is a much more healthy diet than eating meat. I believe it is foolish to not eat meat for moral purposes. Before this, I was a meat-eating person who greatly enjoyed a good steak. I am not superior to meat-eaters, I’m just doing it because I want to feel physically well for as long as I can. I’m sure a lot of vegetarians do feel morally superior, but only the ones that don’t want to kill other creatures.
Could you please explain to me what you meant by stating tofu is tainted by the blood of divers species? I’m curious. BTW, I haven’t seen the word “divers” in years – what a great choice of vocabulary.
Chespeake can go frack itself !
Beantown, Tripp probably means that due mechanized harvest equipment used in soybean production plant agriculture results in the mass slaughter of countless animals, including rabbits, gophers, mice, birds, snakes, and other field creatures.
It is a weak and twisted logic, for which I have never seen any hard evidence.
But it is a way to attack vegans and justify eating meat, meat they lovingly raise themselves and kill themselves (not meat that is mass produced by agribusiness)
Well, I’ll wait to see what Tripp meant before I comment.
Hey Hancock,
I agree with Wage – “why can’t we just talk?” (paraphrased slightly from weeks ago) –
So now that you’re here, stick around. It’s not like CFN is meth and will kill you or something.
And I’ve got to say that you and Wage have doublehandedly got me considering all sorts of conspiracy theories. Maybe I’ve missed something. Hell, check that, obviously I’ve missed something – because, one way or another, here are two talented minds (representing many others) that believe something I just can’t see. (yet?)
Nice little jabs about the South, btw. I’m not as Southern Fried as I present myself on CFN. JHK has a fascination/fear of the south – and it makes me want to go all Southern on him – And on the rest of y’all on CFN, for that matter, sometimes. 😉
We can argue that out whenever you’re ready. But in the meantime, let’s talk conspiracy. If there is not a Grand Unifying (conspiracy) Theory, WHY NOT??
Consider the three defining (conspiracy?) events of our lives: Pearl Harbor, The Kennedy Assassination, and September 11.
If they’re related – damn, that’s a conspiracy for sure. If not – well, three important events with conspiracy appended to them don’t help move the World forward.
And look, if we were talking in person, I’d know when to back off. We already seem to agree about most important stuff. If conspiracy is part of your Religious Worldview – pretty quick I’d know that, change the subject, and we’d be off on something upon which we could more or less agree.
So, yeah, I’m sparing. BUT, I wouldn’t be doing it if I were not looking for some idea that I may have been missing since 1955.
———————
Side note: You mentioned Washington and Paine. Thomas Paine, correct? But George Washington??
There’s a new biography out on Washington. I’ve only read the reviews, but a liberal Washington was not – not in the traditional use of the word.
He apparently had a pretty dim view of human nature. And public hangings and public floggings were an important part of the way he managed his troops.
Fair enough. I cannot think of another explanation for the destruction of divers species through the consumption of tofu.
There is a definite allergy though, to anything that smacks of “moral superiority,” as if all actions are morally equal … which explains the attempt to make soybeans the fall guy for vegans.
Thanks Misterk for the documentary link. Well done and good information.
Kunstler is a real piece of work, eh?
His inability to consider the validity of conspiracy theories is a breach in his mental process that you could drive several Mack trucks through abreast. Anyone who brings up any of the numerous holes in the official 9/11 story is automatically labeled “peevish” and “dumb”. Reminds me of a Christian fundamentalist who insists he’s right because he says he’s right. No use trying to change anyone like that.
N.
We’ll wait and see, Asoka, what Tripp has to say.
That’s the coolest response to A that I’ve ever seen on CFN.
Wish I’d used that when he broke in to tell MILA? what my views on secure borders were – and WHAT MY VIEWS SHOULD BE if I were as enlightened as our “resident impediment.”
Asoka, you say:
“Beantown, Tripp probably means that due mechanized harvest equipment used in soybean production plant agriculture results in the mass slaughter of countless animals, including rabbits, gophers, mice, birds, snakes, and other field creatures.”
Tripp can speak for himself. Asoka, you have never watched a combine go through a field if you can say this:
“It is a weak and twisted logic, for which I have never seen any hard evidence.”
Sorry, Asoka, but get out in the real world. It is impossible to argue that a serving of tofu is not responsible for the deaths of many of god’s (God’s) creatures.
Neckflames
Even if Mr. kell1’s link is completely and 100% correct – how does it change anything?
The basic argument would go that *some* agency of our government placed explosives in the Towers to bring them down in the event of a future incident.
I don’t believe this happened, but so what if it did?
Maybe after the 1993 bombing when Clinton was president *someone* realized that those towers were a sideways falling disaster waiting to happen.
Maybe we should be glad we have a government that can be that proactive?? It’s about the first proactive thing the US government has done since 1980, IMO.
But if someone deliberately detonated those demolition charges – deliberately killing 343 firefighters who could have been extricated first – then that someone deserves a special place of rotting torture next to Adolf Hitler in Hell – if you believe in that sort of thing.
But at the worst that would be an error of timing.
It doesn’t change the basic fact that 2 US commercial aircraft were hijacked by Saudi fanatics armed with boxcutters and used to attack the towers.
Without that attack the towers would still be standing, correct?
And if you argue that the CIA, the House of Saud, the CFR, das Jews orchestrated that hijacking – well, that’s a whole ‘nother conspiracy that has nothing to do with Tower 7 and those explosive charges.
You’ve got a lot of nerve Mossad Mika.
To accuse me of intellectual dishonesty when you constantly dance around your true feelings about the goyim.
==
LOL! You really are a piece of work.
I accuse you of a lot more than intellectual dishonesty, and I’ve been very clear and very consistent about that from the very start.
I accuse you and your “white race” of being a bunch of thieving imperialist genocidal blood vultures, and I got centuries upon centuries, millenia upon millenia, of hard proof to back me up on this. So yes, I do consider you little more than savages, animals if you like, because there’s little reason not to do so. How’s that for dancing around the issue.
As for your pagan worship, I don’t give a shit what you worship as long as you don’t call your genocidal imperialism: “Judaism for Goyim”. As to my god, “my god” is my people, my language, my land, my culture, my history. That is Judaism, that is Bible, and that is “my god”. And it has zilch to do with you lying thieving genocidal imperialist blood vultures and the web of imperialist lies that today passes for “Christianity”.
Now, to specifically address my charge against you, the charge of intellectual dishonesty. It is quite simple. While I can present hard facts, the only thing that you can present is lies, fabrications, and your genocidal projections. You call me Vlad, but when I hold the mirror, it is you who is Vlad. And it is you that defends the people that Vlad defends, with exactly the same bunch of shameless lies and propaganda that Vlad uses. So you can go stuff your anti-zionist CIA/MSM nazi propaganda up your ass, including your MOSSAD conspiracies.
Also NECKFLAMES, et al. Just ’cause someone does not explicitly subscribe to your particular conspiracy theory, does not mean that the person has not considered it. I get this all the time. For me, it’s just that sometimes I gotta pick my battles to wage my words- and I’d rather pick something that is clear and ongoing to invest my time railing against it.
Obama turns his back on rail once again.
http://www.theonion.com/video/obama-replaces-costly-highspeed-rail-plan-with-hig,18473/
I bet goodrich and dodge are in on the scam, all buying rails and melting them into bus stop signs.
So after several public slap downs you shut up and let the “real men” and “grown ups” make a mess of things and you watch the business go down the shitter. It would be interesting to hear from people in the energy business on this. –Cash
Yes, I’ll talk about He-men in boardrooms.
(assuming that Cash is American) …
Not speaking about the energy sector either, but three of your people fracked our Telstra (Sol Trujillo and 2 other Americans). Ziggy Stardust was there before Sol, but it was Sol that accelerated the decline.
Hands up anybody who has spent more than 10 months and/or $400 in phone calls to fix a problem with your phone/internet (or phone account)? There are several people in Australia (plus several thousand that have waited more than 3 years for broadband).
David Thodey has a long bloodied road ahead of him, but he’s making the right noises (iPhones can now be network unlocked without charge, and he’s apparently bringing customer service back on-shore).
Did someone say competition? Optus isn’t that much better, and Vodafone/3’s cellphone network has fallen apart.
Kiwi Nick.
Continuing to answer Cash’s question: this is probably the finest example of Men Behaving Badly in energy sector boardrooms.
1998 Auckland power crisis (Wikipedia, Peter Gutmann’s text file)
They then tried to force a full load over the remaining cables by management will-power alone, which unfortunately wasn’t enough to overcome the basic laws of physics, and everything which was left failed as well. –excerpt from Peter Gutmann
Kiwi Nick.
Hello SJmom,
I’ve been trying to reply to a comment of yours for several weeks, about teenagers texting for drugs delivered faster than pizza.
I reckon the drugs would get delivered faster than the SMS, given the cellphone networks are so rooted (look up Vodafone network performance on whirlpool).
Kiwi Nick.
Link for that text delay comment: link.
And one more thing (again, technical troubles last week when replying) … Your problem with the bank computer … our problems with the phones/internet … so many computer systems being programmed and operated by drunk monkeys.
Yeah, it’s not meth, but it IS addicting!
You’re kind of proving Hancock’s point when you call 9-11 truthers “conspiracy theorists”. He talked about the power of the ruling class to shape our beliefs through very effective propaganda and manipulation of our emotions.
Clearly you’ve been conditioned by the mass media to dismiss any questions about convenient deaths or events by calling them conspiracy theories.
Because the official stories of the Kennedy and King assassinations were “lone nut” theories, anyone who questioned how such things could be pulled off by lone crazy people, believing that more people must have been involved, were ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists”.
But, in this case, the OFFICIAL story is a conspiracy theory!
And yet, smug believers in government explanations use the words that they have been conditioned for decades to use. Pretty sad, indeed.
Did you watch the entire video that MisterKell linked to?
I find that pretty convincing evidence that steel and concrete buildings do not just implode into vast dust balls at the speed of gravity by themselves.
I pointed out to Q before that tiny bits of human bodies were found on top of other nearby skyscrapers years later.
How do the true believers explain how fire and gravity can blow humans into tiny bits and expell them hundreds of yards away?
They don’t. They don’t have to. Americans are so used to not questioning that they accept anything they’re told!
Those who blame Mossad or the like are NOT honest 9-11 truth seekers.
I recommend David Ray Griffin, one of the original questioners of the official conspiracy theory. Try “The New Pearl Harbor” and its follow up for logical and well-reasoned arguments against the official story, a catalog of government lies and inconsistencies, and a clear and convincing argument for who benefits from the fear and hatred that is being stirred TO THIS DAY by the ruling class.
If you are really interested, and I hope that you are, David Ray Griffin is a very good place to start.
During WWII the Americans did everything they could to make sure the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and they made sure that the Japanese have a clear corridor to carry out that attack.
I have zero doubt that the Americans knew about the 9-11 attack, and that the MOSSAD also knew and warned the Americans about the impending attack. The Americans deliberately chose to do everything possible to facilitate that attack, because it allowed them to materialize their hegemony over Middle East oil reserves.
Just another example of the cold blooded callousness of our blue-eyed white lizards passing themselves as humans.
BushII was our worst president ever, no argument from me, even though he just wanted to be like St. Ronald the Second Worst.
The aftermath of 9/11 was managed deliberately to instigate fear and justify the invasion of two (2) countries – separated by a third country that also hates us – no argument from me.
BushII and the gang spirited Saudis and some of the Bin Ladin family out of the country after 9/11 – looks like it.
I could go on and on and we’d mostly be in agreement.
The physics of the collapse was exacerbated by explosives previously planted in secret and triggered remotely; No – I concur with SNAFU’s analysis on CFN – and other investigations I have read – there’s little or no empirical evidence for this.
What happened to the US in the management of the aftermath of 9/11 by BushII and the gang has made us a fearful and irrational country – much worse than we already were in this regard.
I fail to see how adding in a layer of conspiracy on top of all this is going to make us any less fearful or irrational. It only makes us more doomed.
—————-
Wage, if you’re a “True Believer” on all this we’ll have to change the subject. I’m never going to try to convert a faithful follower of some other religion.
I’ve got a theory that those of us who were thoughtful and caring and came through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War have had some of our circuits permanently fried. And that leaves those who were thoughtless and uncaring for leadership.
This gave us Bill (free Willie) Clinton and George (decider) BushII – and a whole bunch of other riff-raff in national office.
I guess I’m saying we’re screwed – no conspiracy necessary. 😉
Thanks for your response. I’m not interested in trying to change anyone’s mind, expecially if your mind is already made up. You might want to read Mike Ruppert’s ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ which adds up to a far more coherent overview than the official government story which leaks like a sieve.
Neckflames
Hello Neil,
My statement referred to Jim Kunstler, who labels anyone an idiot who even brings up the subject.
Neckflames
You truly are a walking advertisement for anti-semitism..
well H1863…’semetic’ means..languages of the middle east, including yidsh!
but check in a real dictionary and get back to us.
mazeltof
The subject of IQs came up (yet again) today and Asoka replied to an Asia post as follows: “Different people seem to have different things to offer, so why run down one group or another for having an “inferior” intelligence?”
I wondered if anyone here happened to see the following article which appeared in the NY Times on Nov 9th.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=BLACK%20PROFICIENCY%20ACHEIVEMENT%20GAP&st=cse
I doubt that Vlad or TBU would be astonished in the least by what was revealed.
The article prompted me to write the following letter to the editor which, understandably, was not published in the paper or on-line:
The one thing that struck me most in reading “Proficiency of Black Students is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected” (November 9, 2010) is that the author never mentions the most obvious potential cause for the appalling academic achievement gap between black students and their white and hispanic counterparts: Genetics. Apparently the overwhelming pressure of political correctness does not permit that awful word to be spoken.
‘you cultivate and combine a field of soybeans’
nope, not i…never owned a combine!
and those who do are involved in darwinism…survival of the fastest [who critters run from the noise survive].
again…beware of those dogs, they have tasted blood there so theres no reason for them to not return.
ask the guy who runs fataldogattack.com
i think chinas more toward 1.5 billion.
and russia/xussr 180 million..
could be wrong.
did you hear about the doc in kosovo selling kidneys to israelis?
vegan !
you getting yr minerals and b12?
so why run down one group or another for having an “inferior” intelligence”?
did i ever do that?
hahahaha
recently mika accused me of
1..killing 6 million jews
2..being a troll
3…being a shit head
JHk has banned many peeps here..but not mika far as i can tell..
anyone notice favoritism?
Vegetarians live in a world of extremely false moral superiority
thats a generality!
substitute the word trippster for ‘Vegetarians’
and thats specific!
rich indeed…the mentally ill project alot!
EXTRA EXTRA….ALL VEGANS AND VEGETARIANS:
‘I wish you guys could see what a sanctimonious and myopic bunch you are’
Direct quote from tripp…..’sanctimonious and myopic ‘
no thats YOU!
theres a story from [the fatal shore? or some book]…
the tahitians go to australia and observe the aboriginals….and call them ‘ savages’!
tibetans move to the US and still are ‘sectarian’ buddists [ nigma better that kagyu] and look down on americans..the ‘host’ people…and thats Buddists for Christ sakes!
baaa…
i read ‘mad cowboy’.
the west was green till the cattle, goats, sheep and horses were moved in so i say…baaaa…[like a sheep or goat]
libs use the words ‘racist’ and ‘idiot’ to shame people and shut them up.
diverse
that sacred word ‘ diversity’…
once i was at a college function and we were asked..what should the parties theme be?
and someone said ‘diversity’
Kind of interesting- don’t know what it means…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/08/11/GR2010081106717.html
like not noticing 1 in 4 black males a felon?
hence the democrats wanting to give the duty of voting to felons
like 1 in 3 black males been in jail?
i was on pico blvd tonite….there was a tiny asian boy with a skateboard…and a calculus text.
………………………………………next
do you have a dick? how big??
since you brought up the topic
so much for asokas ‘equality’
also since 90% ??? of blacks grow up w/o a father
that doesnt help.
k.a. fitts was saying on the radio that before the big tsumani the asian markets were shorted so who knows
asia said: “hence the democrats wanting to give the duty of voting to felons”
Why shouldn’t someone who has paid their debt to society have the right to vote?
Ex-cons are supposed to return to be a productive member of society, so let them vote.
Exactly Hancock – Zionism is Nazism for Jews, La Raza is Zionism for Mexicans, Black Panthers is La Raza for Blacks, and so on. The East Asians don’t need movemnts like these – they have nations that preserve their ethnic interests very well. Now that all White ethnic interests are demonized as “Nazism” our very survival is in danger. You better think it through again. The Left in general and the Jews in particular are committed to the complete dispossesion of Whites in both Europe and America. Do you believe Blacks have the right to their own lands? Yes? And the Asians too? Yes? Then why not Whites, your own people for God’s sake.
As for the Holocaust so called – the Red Cross saw no sign of any crematoria. Nor have the mountains of ash that should be there ever been seen. Alot of people died in those camps – people of many ethnicities. Towards the end of the war conditions in the camps degenerated horribly – as did the conditions for the German population. Millions starved and died of disease even after the supposed end of hostility. The Allied Occupation was cruel indeed but better than that of the Red Russians who had orders to rape as many German Women as they could. They complied. Everyone who could fled away from their onslaught including Anne Frank’s Father. He prefered to stay with the Germans rather than the Russian Communists.
On a nearby building top Jewish “moving company” guys were watching the action – drinking wine and quietly celebrating. All over the Western World people mourned for America but in Israel a sense of complacent satisfaction reigned. 9/11 was expected to be good for Israel and what’s good for the Jews is all that matters. And some poor fools consider Israel a Western Country!
The Mossad motto is “through deception thou shalt make war” or something close to that. Throughout history Jews have sought to degrade and corrupt the nations they dwelt in. Thus they have been kicked out of many places. Sure sometimes it might have been unwarranted but you automatically assume their total innocence and our total guilt – a priori. It’s that kind of bizarre masochism that made me rebel against the Liberal West. It’s just decadence to assume all guilt and then feel superior to other Whites who don’t. Just pure sickness that has grown to monstrous proportions since it became the official and only allowable philosophy in education and the workplace.
How can you say such terrible things. You must have had a bad experience. Not all Blacks are bad; not all Pit Bulls bite. Medical Marijuana might ease your racist PTSD and help you to love again.
Hey what do you make of the “missile plume” off the L.A coast the other week? One site I read thinks it was the Chinese giving us a warning after we made clear our intention to cheat them with quantitative easing (financial masturbation). He thinks it was a submarine launch and not our’s because we use much cleaner fuel that wouldn’t leave such a dirty plume.
Hi,
Here’s a good video about the advantages of permaculture and the problems of industrial agriculture (Tofu):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo&feature=player_embedded
I think some people will benefit from this short course on how the system works, how it got this way, and where it’s headed:
http://www.csper.org/renaissance-20.html
Diversity in everything but thought and opinion.
If you don’t mouth liberal, “progressive” pieties your life on campus will be nasty.
Carleton University student association tried to shut up and shut out a campus anti-abortion group.
So much for diversity of opinion and freedom of speech. The young ‘uns don’t realize that what they do to others can be done to them. If they try to limit the rights of people to speak because they don’t like their ideas other people can do the same.
To their credit the university administration and the canuck Civil Liberties Assoc were against the student assoc on this.
But shame, shame, shame on the student assoc. They should hang their heads in shame.
I am ready to sum up my opinion of this week’s postings in the form of two old bumper stickers. 1) The more time I spend with my goats, the more I hate people. 2) I’m for the seperation of church and hate.
Bean, IMO this military power can only exist with economic power and by that I mean the financial and productive wherewithal to fund and equip the US military.
IMO there’s no way for the US govt to fund such a massive military and also meet all its other financial obligations. For one thing, I can’t see your Chinese paymasters living with this situation for much longer. Especially now since China is flexing its muscles in regional territorial disputes and its Asian rivals are rediscovering American “friendship” as a counterbalance to Chinese military might.
I think the US will have to undergo a massive military “re-structuring” ie mothballing most of its navy and airforce, shutting down bases especially overseas bases, releasing massive numbers of personnel. Maybe Canadianize its military. We have 60,000 people in uniform. You’re ten times our size. Can you do with 600,000?
But even if the US had the economic power to keep its military I just don’t think the American people have the stomach to use it anymore. The wars you have on the go are tiny in comparison to the fights you had in WW1/WW2/Korea/Vietnam. If you guys had to suffer the casualties you had in those wars there’s no way the American public would stand for it. And you’re not willing to inflict the mass death of those past wars either.
But anyway all this is why I think American power and influence are going down down down. We’ll see when all is said and done whether it’s for good or ill. As Gandalf said not even the wisest can see all ends or something to that effect. As I said to Wage earlier on, I’m not saying this with any joy.
2) I’m for the seperation of church and hate.
– Mook
That’s really witty. Did you think of it yourself? I may borrow it but I’ll give you credit.
Markets are always shorted, by the smart money. It’s only the morons that go long.
Exactly Hancock – Zionism is Nazism for Jews
==
LOL!
But Vlad, you seem to be all for Nazism when it comes to Germans and the “white race”, so why are you not for Zionism when it comes to Jews? Why the schizophrenia, Vladik?
Btw, Hancock,
How does it feel sucking on Vlad’s cock? I hope you’re getting all those life affirming swine juices, like the good bitch that you are.
recently mika accused me of
1..killing 6 million jews
==
And? What’s your defense, nigger?
On a nearby building top Jewish “moving company” guys were watching the action – drinking wine and quietly celebrating.
==
Good. I wish I was there to join them. Fsck America. Now get the fsck out of the Middle East, you imperialists racist swine. And take your blood money with you.
Do you think Israel would survive without American “friendship”?
Honestly Mika, Israel may be a big deal to yourself and people like you who live there and maybe to Jews outside of Israel who see it as a refuge. And to Arabs who are living in craphole refuge camps in the vicinity. And I can see that and have no quarrel with that.
But maybe I need some instruction here. I’m not seeing why a small strip of land in the middle of nowhere should have half the world in an uproar.
Why is it again that almost 3 generations after the Holocaust (which I think you said was a lie if I’m not mistaken and if I am mistaken then I apologize) that so much of the US foreign policy apparatus is pissing away so much time and energy on an issue that directly affects so few people? How many people live in Israel? How many Arab refugees are there? Maybe altogether 10 to 15 million people? How many people are there on this planet? Close to 7 billion?
I agree that the US should get out of this. There are bigger problems to worry about.
Yes, thank you for asking.
If you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting, how come he hasn’t banned Vlad?
Do you think Israel would survive without American “friendship”?
.
.
But maybe I need some instruction here. I’m not seeing why a small strip of land in the middle of nowhere should have half the world in an uproar.
==
The reason for the conflict is America.
The Anglo-American imperialists are the reason for pretty much all the wars the world over for at least the last 100 years. Hancock might be right. If it was in my power I would personally see to it that these imperialist swine and their seed would be no more.
Well, alrighty then – note to human race – don’t make Mika dictator of the planet:
“If it was in my power I would personally see to it that these imperialist swine and their seed would be no more.”
Keep in mind that most of us swine are just rooting for acorns.
And I’m with you and Cash that Israel and the rest of the planet would be better off if the US would butt out.
Why is “Obama is not a friend to Israel,” such a talking point for the right??
One answer is the American Jewish community and their votes. What’s the rest of the story?
And so, Mook, tell us about your goats.
And I’m told that honey made from mountain laurel flowers is poisonous to humans. Anybody know anything about this?
The Anglo-American imperialists are the reason for pretty much all the wars the world over for at least the last 100 years. – Mika
So you don’t think that French, German and Japanese ambitions and aggression had anything to do with these wars? Or Russian for that matter? I think there are a lot more swine in this world than the anglo-american variety, not that I’m minimizing their role in it.
Also do you think it’s valid to group the Anglos and the Americans together? Do you think that Anglo and American interests always converge? The Yanks were noticeably absent from WW1 and WW2 for long stretches of time when the Brits were getting their asses kicked.
So you don’t think that French, German and Japanese ambitions and aggression had anything to do with these wars? Or Russian for that matter?
==
No, I don’t. They were all middle powers and they were all contained by each other. It’s the financing and the divide and conquer propaganda emanating from the anglo-american establishment that pushed events forward.
Cash, generally you are correct. But to launch nuclear missiles only takes a command and the pressing of a few buttons. I think that’s why every country that can, tries to develop nukes – because they are so scary, and fear creates power. Americans worry about foreign nutcases having access to nukes, but we already have plenty of similar crazies in the federal government, with more clamoring to get elected. If I was a foreigner, I’d be scared shitless of us. So, in that sense, I believe we have a lot of power. And since whatever we do in the world causes reactions, we have a lot of influence, too.
Yes, the American people don’t have the stomach for long, drawn out wars, but if we felt threatened we would mobilize fast and strong.
We should get out of everybody’s business, and we should downsize our military. Unfortunately, downsizing the military is probably the last thing to happen as we go down the tubes.
Hi Neckflames
I was kind of hinting somewhat lamely, but now I’ll go ahead and get explicit- In this age of state surveillance, and freewheeling micro-political warriors doing god’s work on every level, it probably makes good sense to insulate yourself from the lightning rods of popular conspiracy lines whether or not you agree. Lest you get the wrong kind of attention, it makes for bad luck.
It was actually, the more time I spend with people, the more I like my dog. The variation was a tribute to Tripp’s pet. On a lighter note, there was a guy in our area (Harleysville) who was arrested for diddling a farmer’s sheep. His wallet was found in the barn in the morning. Incredibly, he had been convicted of the same behavior in the past.
Why is “Obama is not a friend to Israel,” such a talking point for the right?? – Pro
I’m with you here. Why would anyone give a shit besides maybe American Jews.
One answer is the American Jewish community and their votes. What’s the rest of the story? – Pro
Good question. Maybe there’s a partial answer. My understanding is that the three I’s – Ireland, Italy and Israel – figure hugely in US politics. So maybe here’s the partial answer: tell’em all to fuck off. Shit or get off the pot.
They or their ancestors came to the US. They changed “tribes”. They did this for a good reason. They owe their one and only loyalty to the country that let them or their ancestors in. They owe their one and only loyalty to the people they live and work with and rub shoulders with every damn day not some gang across the ocean. They should be saluting one flag, Old Glory and that’s all, because it symbolizes a great country that gave them a new start. Their self identifying with any of these foreign groups is a distraction and dispruptive to the lives and well being of other Americans so fucking stop it right fucking now. Or get back on the boat and get the fuck out. Sorry about all the Fs.
And the same thing goes up here in Canuckistan.
Keep in mind that most of us swine are just rooting for acorns.
==
I know swine when I see swine. And if you’re not a swine, you have nothing worry about.
Btw, why is that nigger, Asia, pretending to be white?
I started writing you to say that you ought not respond to the likes of Vlad and I thought of several reasons you shouldn’t. But, as I was writing that, it hit me that keeping silent legitimizes what he has to say. So go ahead and be yourself and continue posting in your inimitable style. God (or really whatever universal power of good may exist in this universe) bless.
You “big picture” folks sure do love to use the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense!
Enlightening as always.
Vlad doesn’t worry me. His floor sweeping career is not going to take him anywhere. But Vlad is useful to me, because he allows me to draw out closet racists, like Hancock. (God bless: You and yours, Bill).
…keeping silent legitimizes what he has to say. – Bean
That’s how I look at it. We’ve seen where racist ideology goes and its nasty: industrial killing, slavery, denial of civil rights, denial of simple dignity. I’ve not seen much racism in action but what I’ve seen is enough for me. So maybe this forum isn’t meant for discussing racial issues but racial issues are what come up.
“And if you argue that the CIA, the House of Saud, the CFR, das Jews orchestrated that hijacking – well, that’s a whole ‘nother conspiracy that has nothing to do with Tower 7 and those explosive charges.” -PoC
I think the specific “actors” in this obvious false-flag operation will be more than difficult to pin down. (If it ever is revealed, it will be so far down the road as to no longer matter to most.) The loss of trust is nearly gone, at any rate. “Consent” of the public will be strictly by force from this point forward, IMO.
Tower 7 was [common-sense-wise] the perfect locus for controlling the whole shooting match (pun intended). Plus, all kinds of “interesting” paper records involving Enron and the like conveniently vaporized in the ensuing demolition of the control center (building 7), as well as the equipment used to blow everything to hell and gone.
…And that’s simply my own personal take from watching the videos. How tough would it be to reach the same casual (perhaps almost unavoidable) conclusion by those with a trained and experienced eye for such things?
Yes, a conspiracy was formed and acted upon, no “theory” about it. Only the shape of it is in contention.
Ps. Didya see the Chinese skyscraper inferno, caused by unlicensed welders working in the place? Wonder what their building codes are like there. Didn’t collapse into its’ own footprint now, did it?
A floor sweeper has the right to speak and to persuade and to cast votes so a floor sweeper has power.
“But maybe I need some instruction here. I’m not seeing why a small strip of land in the middle of nowhere should have half the world in an uproar.” -Cash
I believe it’s called “force projection by proxy”.
Yep, this shit has got to cease, EVERYWHERE.
Now, just what are we going to do with all of those newly unemployed service-folk flooding back from “overseas”? Hmmmmm, I hear the hoofbeats of Orlov’s approaching horsemen…
Vlad had passports from at least 3 countries. I can guarantee you that he hasn’t yet voted in any of these countries.
Now, just what are we going to do with all of those newly unemployed service-folk flooding back from “overseas”? – Ozone
Beats me. It’s going to be a problem. Better do something though because if you want trouble the way to find it is to have a large number of unemployed, frustrated young men hanging around.
Please be aware that the dreaded “Chinese” (and just about everybody else that’s interested in trade between nations) are stocking up on each others’ currencies in order to make end-runs around the dollar. Enslavement by hucksterism is about to be dealt a serious blow…
Stay tuned.
I don’t believe in organized religion. per se.
And I don’t believe in The Bible Story.
One of my favorite books is WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE by Howard Kushner. Well Kushner is is last name. A small Excellent book on what he thinks God is and I agree with him. He is Jewish.
I don’t have alot to say, I just appreciate this page and peoples views, and I gleen what I can and try to see what I believe is the truth.
I love Triptickets’ posts and BTBill, and the other guy Donny-Don.
and Yes Mika I KNOW, I also was going to post that one myself. I don’t think ‘everybody knows’ tho.
Wish more people did. Love the song lyrics.
Here they are the Holidays.
Good Luck and Seasons Greetings
Drive safely. Or don’t drive at all, if you can.
I’m staying close to ‘home.’ as usual.
Wise man say, one picture worth a thousand words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnWlTyZLQhQ&feature=player_embedded#!
After all is said and done Cash, your vision is ugly and even its utilitarian benefits will prove to be illusory. Like the painter who lets the colors on his palette run together, all he gets is mud. But you are worse – his error was carelessness, you do it by intention expecting beauty! It’s a vision utterly unworthy of decent men like you and Prog. Cash & Prog – has quite a orc like ring to it. Maybe you guys could get together and start a Mortuary.
Hey, what is Canada doing as far as airport security? As you know, we have descended to the level of treating everyone as a terrorits down here.
I love you Mike. You are the living, breathing proof of everything Dr Duke says, namely that the old Talmudic hatred of other ethnes survived despite the Enlightenment and is still present in varying degrees in many agnostic and atheist Jews. We should go on a lecture tour together – we could make millions of shekels.
America caused all the problems in the Middle East? The Anglo Establishment with no Jewish involvement on the ground or in that Establishment? Oh that is rich. Don’t change Mika, you are priceless.
A small Excellent book on what he thinks God is and I agree with him. He is Jewish.
==========
You agree that God is Jewish? Well, I never thought of God being of any particular race, color, creed or national origin but it would certainly explain why He made the Jews His chosen people. Birds of a feather … etc ;o)
“Why is it again that almost 3 generations after the Holocaust (which I think you said was a lie if I’m not mistaken and if I am mistaken then I apologize) that so much of the US foreign policy apparatus is pissing away so much time and energy on an issue that directly affects so few people? How many people live in Israel? How many Arab refugees are there? Maybe altogether 10 to 15 million people? How many people are there on this planet? Close to 7 billion?
I agree that the US should get out of this. There are bigger problems to worry about.”
Maybe it has to do with the fact that that area is the birthplace of 3 major religions that number 3 billion people. There goes that pesky organized religion stuff again.
All a moot point because He/She/It does not exist.
Look, I’m American as I’ve stated before, and as my passport says. As much as I’d like to disagree with him, Mika is right about the Anglo/American influence. The Brits butchered territorial lines in the Middle East in the early 20th century, and helped foster much of the enmity that now exists there. And America doesn’t have the balls to admit to the world it is there to grab the oil it needs so much.
Further, just think how the Romans would have handled it: We’re taking the oil and tough shit what you think! Morally repugnant, but at least it’s honest.
Mika, I’m very curious about Israel’s airport security. The new US regulations about airport body scanners and patdowns are causing controversy here. I would expect that Israel is the world’s expert in security. What does it do at airports? In other words, are Americans being wusses or are these regulations valid?
Don’t change Mika, you are priceless.
==
I never will, Vladik. You can count on that. I’m timeless in that way. Only there’s a small subtle distinction. I hate swine, liars, crooks, thieves, etc. And I don’t make distinctions whether you wear a pope’s yamika, a rabbi’s yamika, an immam’s yamika, or no yamika. When my eyes catch you, it will be the end of you.
What does it do at airports?
==
Israel does a background check on you the minute you book a flight to Israel. At the airport you’re asked if you packed your luggage yourself, and whether the luggage was ever left unsupervised. At the airport all luggage is then scanned prior to entering the plane. And that’s it.
In other words, are Americans being wusses or are these regulations valid?
==
No, the regulations and procedures are not valid. People are being deliberately harassed. There’s zero reason to what is done at the airports or rail stations, as far as security goes.
Thank you for your answer.
You’re welcome, Bill.
There’s a very sinister agenda being implemented. The smile is coming off from America’s fascism with smile.
..fascism with ^a smile..
Hi Vlad,
Mika’s problem with just about everyone (gays, whites, etc.) is that he’s a victim. Let’s all have a pity party…boo, hoo. Because he’s a victim, he has the need to persecute others.
I recall the lyrics to an Eagles song, written by Don Henley.
“Get Over It” (relevent lyrics only)
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else,
Spend all their time feeling sorry for themselves,
Victim of this, victim of that,
Your mama’s too thin, and your daddy’s too fat.
Get over it.
You drag it around like a ball and a chain,
You wallow in the guilt, you wallow in the pain,
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown,
You bitch about the present, and blame it on the past,
I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.
Get over it.
SJmom
‘Hey what do you make of the “missile plume” off the L.A coast the other week?’
i dunno what to make of it….
i asked you about a bigger issue..the illuminatis kill off..any news on?
Wait ’til I go on my victimizing spree. We’ll see where your crooked little fingers point to, SJmom.
see books like ‘ new thought police’ anything by tom sowell, larry elders [1 dyke and 2 blacks!]
OR EVEN READ THE REVIEWS AT AMAZON….
or here, predictably a jewish,leftist, protected ideologue: ‘WHILE EUROPE SLEPT’
Eliot Weinberger, one of the board members of the Circle, when he presented the list of nominations for the award, stated that Bawer’s book was an example of “racism as criticism.” Following that, the president of the Circle, John Freeman, declared that “I have never been more embarrassed by a choice than I have been with Bruce Bawer’s ‘When Europe Slept’. And claims its hyperventilated rhetoric tips from actual critique into Islamophobia.”[2] Bawer declared that comments such as those from Weinberger and Freeman came as no surprise, as he had been expecting a considerable amount of criticism from “politically correct” officials; in response, he stated that he had never criticized a race, only Islam as a “political ideology.”
In A Place at the Table, Bawer argued for what he considers a centrist and mainstream political philosophy at odds with the gay left. In Stealing Jesus, Bawer leveled sharp criticism at evangelical, Pentecostal, and other strains of modern Christianity, including premillennialism and evangelical apologism for capitalism.
In While Europe Slept, Bawer writes that Europe’s politically correct culture defends and protects the Islamic fundamentalism that is preying upon its liberal social systems. Bawer argues that Islamists use welfare and religious grants to fund extremist mosques and support imams with a violent past. Once established in Western European nations, Bawer maintains, the Islamists avoid integration and answer only to sharia law, while avoiding the legal systems of their host nations, allowing abuse of women, gays, Jews and non-Muslims.
In his conclusion, Bawer states that rising Muslim birthrates and “refusal” to integrate will allow them to dominate European society within 30 years, and that the only way to avoid such a disaster is to abolish the politically correct and multicultural doctrine that, according to him, is rife within the continent. He also suggests a physical solution for the problem he perceives: “European officials have a clear route out of this nightmare. They have armies. They have police. They have prisons. They’re in a position to deport planeloads of people everyday. They could start rescuing Europe tomorrow.”
i heard similar on public radio today..author of ‘republican babylon’
id be ok about it if hed also written ‘ democrat babylon’….
he ran on about mels ‘passion of christ’
[temptation?]..ignoring ollie stone and yoko ono going to cuba to lick fidels ass and ‘make a movie of yr life comrad fidel’
recently here someone wondered why obama hadnt done more for railways…duhhh
becuase they hadnt greased his palm and that of the dnc!
‘During WWII the Americans did everything they could to make sure the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and they made sure that the Japanese have a clear corridor to carry out that attack’
in order to get in WW2 and ‘save the jews’?
how could gds chosen be anything less?
victima dn victimizer
bring it on in all yr obscenity..maybe youll be banned
maybe well be free of you
in order to get in WW2 and ‘save the jews’?
==
They didn’t. They deliberately didn’t.
Now, nigger, why are you pretending to be white?
Oh, don’t worry about that swaggering bitch. She’s on top of the world now. But not for long.
C’mon Asia. I hope you were just trying to get a rise out of Mika. Otherwise, what about the boatload of Jewish refugees in WWII that was turned back by the US government and had to return, where they were exterminated?
Bean to Mika: “Thank you for your answer.”
=========
I don’t get it Bean … Mika is an insufferable, paranoid misanthropic blowhard who thinks your grandson’s last T-ball game was fixed by the CIA. Why do you grovel in deference to this asshole and give him any credence whatsoever? Seriously, it is quite unbecoming.
Because he knows I’m right. Because I see through all of you. And so does he. Only he’s more tempered and resigned to the situation, and I’m not.
i didnt know about that one..or is it an urban legend
“Markets are always shorted, by the smart money.”
We’ll see how smart they are.
http://crashjpmorgan.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/banner_crashjpmorgan_eclipse_600x146.png
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article24334.html
earth to JHK……
this is really humorous!
earth to JHK
Actually, it’s very sad. They must have terrorized you good, back in Africa. Is that why you left?
Yes, we’ll have to see. You know I’ll be rooting for the silver and gold vigilantes. I do hope they succeed.
It is fact. Let me do a little research and I’ll then give you a reference you can check out.
David Korten Interview by David Brancaccio Excerpt:
DK: That’s exactly what they’re trying in Bellingham, Washington. And it’s very interesting, this drive to rebuild local economies. When we first started organizing the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, so many people responded, “Oh, you’re talking about rebuilding community.” You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way but bingo, that is exactly what they’re doing. It’s part of recognizing that your community economy is part of the glue that brings people together. And part of what I love about Bellingham is when you visit there you see the joy of the people as they participate in the economy. And best of all if you go there when they’re having one of their street parties, it is just amazing. I think one of the most important skills of a local organizer of a local economy is an ability to put on a terrific street party.
DB: But you’re making a serious point, right, that this is not the hair shirt approach to running an economy. You’re not asking people to desperately sacrifice.
DK: That’s exactly right. It’s truly amazing that the changes we have to make if we’re going to have a human future are exactly the same changes we need to make to create the world that most people have dreamed of for millennia—create an economy that brings prosperity to everyone. An economy supports strong families, strong communities, and a healthy natural environment. And that is exactly what is being created in these local economies. It is the key not only to survival but also, quite literally, to our physical and mental health and happiness.
Q, I get uneasy when others tell me they dislike someone, and then somehow imply I’m doing wrong when I don’t dislike that same person. Strip away Mika’s anger and seeming paranoia, and his basic beliefs, IMO, are correct. That’s why I treat him like I treat anyone else. I wouldn’t say, nor is it my intention, to grovel down in deference to him. It’s too bad if you think that I don’t mean that dismissively). And is it paranoia if someone is REALLY after you (like
a few hundred million of your neighbors out for your destruction)?
Bill, when you said ‘thank you’ and took your deep bow in deep deference, I want you to know that I fully acknowledged it, even if I was looking at and talking to someone else. Of-course, you will never out do Q-Joo in your groveling, him being a well read and well-heeled socialite.
The gold bubble is going to burst soon. Best get rid of any gold you have … unless you bought it back when it was less than $300.
Invest in more valuable things like friendships, community, and permaculture.
Mika, it’s difficult to write you right now because my fingernails are filled with dirt from groveling so much. Seriously, though, Q has his own opinions, too – especially of you – and I still want to discuss things with him, it’s just that I’m such a sarcastic bastard, at times.
“It’s too bad if you think that I don’t mean that dismissively).” Forgot the paranthesis.
Should be: It’s too bad if you think that (I don’t mean that dismissively).
I’m really impressed, Asoka. I hope you are sincere.
(Did I somehow get through to you?)
Jeez, I’m having problems here. Should be parenthesis.
I have to grovel in the mud. Tiz my 1 hr daily exercise. 😀
TTYS.
And is it paranoia if someone is REALLY after you
=========
This is the classic retort of the truly paranoid … ask any shrink.
The gold bubble is going to burst soon. Best get rid of any gold you have … unless you bought it back when it was less than $300.
================
How soon is soon? Name a date by which gold sinks below $300. I love making bets with you … especially re matters financial. I think I’m batting a thousand if memory serves.
I don’t trust any shrinks – they all are plotting against me.
First tell me if you took my advice to move your money out of BofA
First tell me if you took my advice to move your money out of BofA
==========
Although these two things (the gold and BofA discussions) are unconnected I’ll play along.
Apparently you missed my post on 11/14 at 12:20PM, element #4 of which is excerpted below:
4. djcrow22 | November 8, 2010 1:22 PM
close your accounts with … BofA
Q: How many here think BofA won’t be around 5 years from now if you move your money to the credit unions? raise your hands. You will be like suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves for the cause only to discover there are no Victoria’s Secret-clad virgins waiting for them in heaven. You will just drive yourself crazy with administrative detail. It makes my head swim to think of all the banking arrangements: on-line bill pay, EZPass, on-line State and Fed’l income tax returns, pension direct deposits, SS direct deposits that I would have to RE-arrange for the miniscule pleasure of tweaking BofA’s nose. No thanks, I’ll let YOU do the tweaking for me.
Going Through the Motions
– http://bit.ly/cUdiaa
Gold in US dollars?
LOL! There be no US dollar!
Q said: “Q: How many here think BofA won’t be around 5 years from now…”
Q, both are troubled assets.
I’ll make the bet using your time period: 10 Friedman Units.
“The God of Israel is the God of Israel. HE is a God specific to One People, One Land, One Language, One Culture. That’s where HE starts and that’s where HE ends!”
For your Maker is your husband, The LORD of hosts is His name; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth. Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, And to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant—The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says, “Yet I will gather to him Others besides those who are gathered to him.”
For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever.
God is infinite. Burn you idols.
If everyone stops engaging Mika, he might just go troll another blog. Narcissists can’t stand to be ignored.
Or, an alternative would be for Jim to ban his ass.
It was 1939, on the eve of WWII. The US knew about Nazi atrocities against the Jews. A ship, the St.Louis, was filled with almost a thousand Jews who wanted to escape the Nazis. The trip became known as the “voyage of the damned”. Access this site and learn what happened:
http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/voyage.html
“Other peoples have their gods, and Jews are their God.”
http://www.barruel.com/judaism-strange-gods-hoffman.pdf
There be no US dollar!
========
What’s the story? Yesterday you spoke with an Irish lilt and today it’s ebonics. Whether you intended that sentence as written or made a typo and meant to say “there will be no US dollar” makes no difference.
You’ve got it precisely ass-backward. There are already far far far far too many US dollars and will soon be 600B more and at some point they will all be absorbed into the price of gold, silver and other commodities.
“There’s zero reason to what is done at the airports or rail stations, as far as security goes.”
Yea, they even want to feel up the Pilots! These are the guys with the ability to fly the plane into anything they might want to. If you can’t trust the Pilots…
Asoka said “The gold bubble is going to burst soon. Best get rid of any gold you have.”
I pinned him down and now he says soon means 5 years so you don’t need to enter those sell orders first thing on Monday.
Asoka, you are such a jerk. The reason you don’t understand gold is that you fundamentally don’t understand human nature.
Q, in inflation-adjusted dollars gold goes up and gold goes down. What does that have to do with human nature? Is human nature cycling up and down in cycles? Does human nature change when gold prices change? Will human nature have changed when the gold bubble bursts and goes back down, as I predict it will, based on historical data:
Up in 1914 $446.10
Down in 1924 $260.50
Up in 1934 $557.37
Down in 1944 $414.09
Down in 1954 $280.45
Down in 1964 $243.78
Up in 1974 $695.51
Up in 1984 $746.98
Down in 1994 $557.86
Down in 2004 $466.98 (back to 1914 levels)
???? in 2014
Nothing happening here folks.
Things go up and things go down. Things cycle round and round.
Within 5 years, after the gold bubble has burst, we will see who the jerk is.
I’ll be here, Q. Will you?
Asoka said: “Within 5 years, after the gold bubble has burst, we will see who the jerk is. I’ll be here, Q. Will you?”
If you are not here due to human mortality, what does it say about human nature that you will not be able to take even one ounce of gold with you to the grave? Yet people stupidly hoard the stuff while in their mortal frames.
CORRECTION
Yet people stupidly hoard the stuff while in their mortal frames, as if gold has value.
Jim could have been far more expansive in
his description of massive denial and the
resultant attempts to “sustain the unsustainable”.
QE2 is an attempt to continue the “growth”
mentality at all costs. Yet with wages in
decline, major industries on their deathbeds
(autos, airlines, for starters), and health
care breaking America’s back, where, pray
tell, is “growth” going to come from?
When an empire like the USA starts slipping,
history tells us that these empires become
debauched, full of themselves (like all these
Republikook radio guys who still think America
is a “great” country), and full of inertia.
The inertia is created by generations of
opulence. The tendency is to think that
one has a “copyright” on opulence so nothing
new or innovative need be done. We don’t
need to be “hungry” to continue empire.
As in sports, “hungry” teams often defeat
teams with twice as much talent. Hunger
is that edge that an empire has when it’s
at the peak of its power. All one need to
do to see a decline in this “hunger” is to
teach enough Gen-Y kids. Most of them are
really sweet kids but they’re spoiled rotten.
They’ve hardly had to lift a finger in their
lives to get high-end cellphones, DSL, cars,
or trendy clothing.
Globalism, as IBendet and others have pointed
out, is actually hastening our end but I think
it’s particularly hard on America because we
don’t have the mental horsepower and capital
to compete in such a scheme any more. But
most importantly, we lack the DRIVE. However,
I agree with those who oppose globalism because
it just causes a complex interdependency on
people whose allegiance (and GOODS) could be
denied us ON A MOMENT’S NOTICE.
E.
I’m sorry – I didn’t see your post. Ask again.
Withous the Anglo-American Imperialists there wouldn’t be any Israel. They defeated the Turks, set up Palestine, and then put down the Arabs when they realized that they were being sold down the river. In return the Israelis turned to terrorism against their benefactors when they objected to the mistreatment of the Arabs. And now we have your rabid post. Gratitude doesn’t seem to be much of a Jewish virtue.
The Selling of a Low-Information president
What describes the country best, but who is being bought and sold as our next leader.
Ah, Sarah Palin is back and ready to rumble. Enter her new “reality” show for which she is handsomely paid $1 Million per episode. Is this campaign funds from the “Lame Stream Media”? —Oh and a new book, written by someone other than herself.
She is seen in the wilds of Alaska awkwardly shooting a gun and self-consciously climbing rocks. She extorts, that she’d rather be outdoors in her beloved state than working (as Gov. or Pres.?)
But that is largely ignored as our media sees her largely as a sellable product and you know they just see her as the raw material they can form in the public eye.
The plutocracy is making a statement that no seasoned statesman need apply. They will be running things directly through the White House from now on, using their low information president of the free world as puppet.
Bill Kristol’s wet dream is to play Charles Bernard Shaw (as god) pulling the strings of his brilliant political find from some lofty clouds as seen on the cover of the album of “My Fair Lady” to her puppet regime.
That was a really interesting video. Reminds me of the taverns in my hometown on a Friday night.
But anyway I think I lost the thread. Which post were you responding to, the one about political correctness gone amok in Carleton University or the one about racist ideology taking us places we don’t want to be?
Cash, what the hell, man? We give up a 2-0 halftime lead to lose the north London derby 3-2?? When we had a chance to move into first in the league???
Just damn.
Vlad, we get inconvenience in airports without security just like the US.
The only thing that stops terrorists from inflicting more havoc is their own incompetence. What terrorist in his right mind would send mail bombs from the wilds of Yemen (Yemen!?) to American synagogues? That’s assuming that whole thing was for real in the first place which I doubt. You don’t send such stuff from Yemen. As soon as I heard bloody Yemen I started laughing. You mail such stuff from some nice, friendly place like bumfuck Winnipeg or Saskatoon. Anyone could tell you this. So like I said, good thing the terrorists are stupider than your lawmen and spies or the dimbulbs we have up here.
But still, as long as you have your own Homeland Security Chief (Janet Napolitano) still thinking that the 9/11 boys came from Canada then the terrorists have a fighting chance.
Yeah and at home too. Sometimes I think maybe this is the new age of parity ie Chelse getting beat by Sunderland and then sometimes I think the games are getting fixed.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the whole league is fixed, to some degree. If seen some ridiculous come-from-behind victories, and chokes, and really confused refereeing squads too.
Perhaps the parity keeps more viewers handy? (Secret: I was a Tottenham fan before I started pulling for the Gooners.)
Hi Wage, you’re right, US capitalists have financial control. But this is where we differ. I don’t think that financial control in a place like China is enough. The American nomenklatura may be lawless but IMO the Chinese PTB are orders of magnitude worse. They will rip those assets out from under the American capitalists’ feet without blinking and at that point American impotence will be blindingly obvious if it isn’t already. There may be people in the US that think the US is mighty and all powerful but there are people in China that have a different take on the situation.
If the rule of law in the US means little (ie the foreclosure debacle) it means next to nothing in China.
I hear Donald Trump is thinking about running for President. And I heard he’s saying the Chinese think Americans are fools.
“I have many people from China that I do business with, they laugh at us. They feel we’re fools. And almost being led by fools. And they can’t believe what they’re getting away with.” – Trump
Trump is a donkey but about this he’s right.
Well, Prog, I’m sure you didn’t diss me deliberately, but you should know better than to call an atheist a “true believer”!
9-11 truth research is not a religion.
I believed the official story myself, until 2005. I was of the Chomsky blowback faction, believing that US imperialism creates enemies, blah, blah, blah…
Except, of course, that the official conspiracy theory tells us that Saudis carried it off.
Shouldn’t it have been Vietnamese, or Koreans, or Nicaraguans, or Panamanians, or Iraqis, or Serbs, or Indonesians or any more likely victims?
In 2005, I was exposed to the logic, physics, and rational explanation of 9-11 truth, and I was persuaded.
No irrational suspension of thought, no true belief involved!
I thought that you expressed interest, so I responded.
By the way, the airport groping and radiation that people are talking about are rationalized by the authorities as being necessary because of 9-11.
They STILL use it!
That is why it is important to talk about it.
Back when I was a true believer in the official story, I was on an Amtrak, and the conductor asked for my ID.
I asked why I needed to show a driver’s license when I wasn’t driving.
I believe that Americans should have the right to travel without official government papers. You pay your money, you get a ride.
No shit, he answered, “9-11!!”
So I said (still in my official beliefs) “Why should I lose my civil rights because Bush’s buddy blew up a plane?”
(Because you should know that the official story is that BinLaden masterminded the plot, and the BinLaden family and the Bush family had business deals together).
And all around me, I could hear female voices saying “That’s right, why should we?”
Although I did plan to show my papers, so as not to get arrested or kicked off the train, the conductor backed down. I think that they know the whole repression thing is bullshit, also.
And I did write a letter to Amtrak pointing out that it is incredibly stupid for them to hassle passengers, when anyone could derail a train without ever getting onto it.
So why would anyone bother going through the hassle of getting on a train and then blowing it up? It’s absurd!
It is simply repression for the sake of teaching Americans to humbly submit to any ridiculous demand from goons in uniforms.
And the pathetically sad thing is that it works so well.
As long as the world’s business in done in dollars, the US will control what happens to the products that the Chinese wage slaves produce.
It may be true that the rest of the world is finally cooperating to switch to another currency.
In that case, I stand by my speculation that the US empire will not go down easily.
Although I would prefer it to. I have no problem with living within my means and my watershed system.
Although I should be able to travel on a train without papers!
Actually, I shouldn’t say the “US” when we are talking about US capitalists and the US military.
The people of the US have no power or control over our economic lives, our political lives or our military.
We are taught to identify with those in power, but we actually have nothing in common with them, and our interests are opposed to theirs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
Progressorconserve:
Washington WAS a Liberal. Liberalism is a moderate and relative concept that is evolving as
science and technology evolve our own society into more complexity, for the moment.
(leaving aside the larger TLE questions regarding the wisdom of increasing complexity, which I mostly agree with, but for the purposes of this strictly political post, lets ignore the scientific, technological and environmental aspect of it, which we probably both agree is, overall, a Clusterfuck in how humanity has managed it’s ascent of power in these areas)
This is the one of the many difficuties involving liberalism, historically. Once liberalism batters down another door such as monarchy, divine worship of a cruel, callous aristocracy, slavery or universal sufferage, to name a few, these ideals within a few generations become “conservative”, even though at every step of the way the same general “liberal vs conservative” battle was being fought by the same basic groups of people (I’m am not speaking of race but of ideology here).
IT is why, I believe, Authoritarianism has to keep inventing new re-marketed, rebrnding, plausibly deniable snakeskins to cloak it’s very old product in new “kinder and gentler” methdologies.
Thus, in 1776, Washington et al, were liberals for their assertion that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to invest a very few people with all the power, wealth and knowledge, creating greast misery to almost everyone else in order to gain these things. Everybody flogged soldiers and everybody had slaves. At that time, to consider abolishing either of those things was not just liberal, it was radically insane… beyond the pale.
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
–George Washingtion
Still think Washington wasn’t a Radical Liberal in his time?
But in 1861, Washington’s pro-slavery stance would have placed him firmly in the conservative camp. Jefferson would also have been considered deeply conservative, at least regarding his firm belief (just like Tony Scalia recently announced) that the Senate should NOT be elected by citizens, but by State Legislators. Jefferson and Scalia, how crazily ironic!
Of course, in 1776, the Scalias of the world were adamant that there should be no Senate at all, that the monarchy and feudal aristocracy of Europe were sufficient to meet all of humanity’s leadership and governing needs for the rest of time.
Having said, all that, let me defer in replying to your question regarding a Grand Unifying Conspiracy Theory except to say that I also suspect that, on the scale in ranging from full “coincidence theory” to the most extreme “conspiracy theroies” in which everything is controlled by a single group of people, much to my astonishment after a decade of detailed study, I have travelled from being a dedicated “coincidence theorist” to realizing that SOMETHING is going on far beyond coincidence, but acknowledging that we can never know exactly where exactly on the conspiracy scale reality lies.
If “conspiracy theory” is just that, why is the crime of conspiracy prosecuted literally thousands of times a day amongst the bottom 99% of the people and yet, for the top 1% and especially the top 0.01%, criminal conspriacies suddenly become unthinkable. Amazing!
Lastly, this is the very best 9/11 info site I have found. Check it out.
It is very “just the facts” and though by now many of the links are dead, every single random fact (and I did quite a few to check for veracity) I doublechecked to see if they were
“Fox News-ing” me, instead checed out and verfied to a satisfactory level (100% verification being impossible). Feel free to randomly crosscheck to prove it to yourself.
Beware of self-referencing circles of bullshit circularly reinforcing lies, misinformation, or grains of truth with a Big Lie wrapped around them.
But see the site for yourself. I guarantee you won’t regret it. You too, Wage, and anyone else who wants to break away from Corporate Media phoney-baloney Neoconservative-Neoliberal dialog and Coincidence Theory.
http://killtown.911review.org/oddities.html
She extorts, that she’d rather be outdoors in her beloved state…
========
extort??? I have no idea how this word makes sense in the sentence above.
From dictionary:
extort – verb
a. to wrest or wring (money, information, etc.) from a person by violence, intimidation, or abuse of authority; obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like.
b. to take illegally by reason of one’s office.
Perhaps you intended exhorts as in urgently advises.
Whatever. If this airhead who “seems to have no first language” becomes president it will be a sad day for America.
mika. replied to comment from Hancock1863 | November 18, 2010 9:14 PM | Reply
Thanks for being so honest, mika. It has been clear for quite some time that you think non-Jews are little more than animals.
I would also strongly advise anyone reading Mika’s vile calumnies to try not to let it color or influence their dealings with other Jewish people, for that is wrong. People are individuals and so Mika’s personal reprehensible vulgar vileness of philosophy can NOT be proof of an Elders of Zion or any of that crap.
Mika said (without a trace of shame):
Beantown Bill either looked right through that heartfelt comment or he thought you were joking being facetious, which I imagine most CFNers know as well as you that you are being adamantly truthful. Bet you bared your teeth when you typed those words, you were so hatefully excited.
As for the rest it is your usual schtick, not worthy of a response, which essentially is, “I know you are, but what am I.”
I also want to thank you for reminding every who reads you that Jews, in spite of a history of suffering which Beantown Bill laid out, are no different from any other human beings, including the White Savages you personally have now openly admitted you think to be little better than animals. There are Mikas in every race, creed and color. When your socipathy is assisted or mated with wealth and political power, you proceed to make hell on Earth for everyone else.
You, personally, Mika have demonstrated with you posts that indeed you are little different from the spectrum of authoritarians who’s linguistics, rhetoric and tactics (up to and including the literal verbal dehumanization of The Other) you ape with remarkable fidelity, because that is what you are.
You make me sick, and I am done with you.
Wage, several years ago the company I worked for (a US multinational) had a contract in the Ukraine to do some work at another US company who had production facilities there to service the Ukrainian market. Because of this contract my employer had to file income tax returns in the Ukraine, which was done by our European accountants. Somehow the Ukrainian tax authority lost the return and thought we didn’t file.
So then what happened? If such a thing had happened here in Canada my employer would have got a phone call or a letter saying that the Canada Revenue Agency did not appear to have received the return for the year 20X0 and could we please produce a copy along with proof we had filed. Pretty please with sugar on top. Same sort of thing with the IRS.
Not the Ukrainian tax authority though. The Ukrainians sent a vanload of police armed with submachine guns into the American owned factory where the contract work was done looking for people to arrest.
Naturally, the people working in the factory were scared shitless. News of this raid went to our client CFO who called our CFO in the US who raised hell. The missing return was pulled from our European office files, delivery records were produced and, after some tense correspondence with the Ukrainian tax authority, peace was restored.
Why do I recount this story? To illustrate that business in other parts of the world is not done by lawyers with briecases. It is done by men with guns. The US company I worked for is massive and known world wide as is our American client with the Ukrainian factory. The power and might of my employer and its client and the reach of the US nuclear armed military cut absolutely no ice with the Ukrainians. They came into that factory with machine guns. They didn’t bother with diplomatic niceties like polite letters and telephone calls.
That’s what I’m trying to convey about production offshored to China. The Chinese have men with guns, the Chinese military and cops do not have a humanitarian bone in their bodies, the Chinese judicial system has got no concern whatsoever for human rights or due process and, most importantly, they are not afraid of the US. American capitalists have taken a gigantic risk by locating there and one that I think will blow up in their fat faces.
Not to bore you further but Brazil tried to shake down my employer with a ludicrously huge income tax assessment. The Brazilians threatened to throw into prison execs working in Brazil for my employer if the money was not paid forthwith. Not even Brazil is afraid of Americans.
That is the larger point I’m trying to make. I think you’re overestimating American power and underestimating the power of other countries. I’m not condemning you or deriding or disrespecting you. A lot of people think the same way (a lot on this side of the border). But I think the reality is different. The US is powerful but not THAT powerful. Its reach is limited.
Another thing about the American people. There is no army that can match the power of enraged mobs. Even the Communists in the Soviet empire ran and hid when their populace, that they had brutalized and murdered over decades, took to the streets. I think that you guys have more power than you all think. At least on your own turf.
Mika said (without a trace of shame):
Did you really look right through that, or simply chalk it up being a joke or a lame attempt at sarcsm?
I mean, from your previous posts you seem to be a decent and reasonable human being, so I cannot help but think that if you had believed that quote to be Mika’s genuine philosophy, you would be appalled.
Am I wrong? Do you stand by such a hateful and vulgar statement as it and such a hateful philosophy producing it? By which I mean Mika’s personal philosophy, NOT Judaism.
Did you think he was just joshing?
You’ll notice he has not once directly denied believing all non-Jews are little more than animals (quite the opposite). If you or I had been accused of having such a vile ideology, would not our first inclination be righteous indignation and denial?
Forget the whole irrelevant Jew/non-Jews thing and just look at his repeatedly stated philosophy as it stand alone, for ANY human being.
Think about it, Bill.
I know it makes you uneasy to hear this sort of argument, but I don’t think you are doing wrong nor am I arguing such.
But I would like to know if you think Mika’s stated philosophy as quoted is palatable to you on a human level, or if you think he’s joking?
Wrong doesn’t come into it. I am just trying to understand why you would back something that seems to be diametrically opposed to all of your previous posts?
Vlad,
You were civil, so I will be civil in return.
I have my own beliefs, but don’t for a second think that I can lured into that Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff.
Whatever I might think of Mika, it’s pretty similar to what I think of you and fascism.
In both cases, let’s just say I am irrevocably opposed to both your beliefs in the inherent superiority of a single race, creed or color.
And I don’t much like the way you both worship and seem to celebrate life’s injustices and unfairness, the dominations of the weak by the strong, the ignorant by the intelligent, the poor by the rich, and the gullible by the controlled and controlling sociopaths.
These are both terminal deal-breakers, and why it would be that I might agree with your characterization about Mika personally, but would never apply it to all Jews as Mika applies things to all Whites, since that is repugnnt and absurd, in my opinion.
‘Nuff said now.
I accuse you and your “white race” of being a bunch of thieving imperialist genocidal blood vultures, – Mika
Mika, cut down on the caffeine. And Mika, do you think that Judaism didn’t borrow ideas from religions that the ancient Israelites came into contact with? I read that the Jewish idea of YHVH is an amalgalm of the Israelite war god and the Canaanite god of justice. I’ve also read that some ideas were picked up from the Zoroastrians like the idea of satan as the evil opposition, angels, immortality of the soul.
So if this is true and Jews can use the religious ideas of others why can’t others use the ideas of Jews. I don’t know why you’re so possessive of your religion anyway. Why does it matter to you?
I have no idea as to the truth of this but I’ve read that Islam was formulated by dissident Christians. So what’s wrong if Christianity was formed by dissident Jews who didn’t take an ethnocentric attitude towards their beliefs?
Q:
My apologies for the word extorts instead of exhorts! Maybe it was a Freudian slip!
If she ever got in, in might be time to find another country!!–It would be a very bad sign of what is really going on.
Wouldn’t it?
Hancock, to answer your questions are for me maybe the most difficult and personal aspect of my life to explain.
I was born a Jew and I will die a Jew. Obviously, I am not religious in any way. I’m not trying to be superior or smug or condescending or anything like that when I say if you are not Jewish, you can’t really know what that means – as African-Americans say that if you aren’t black you do not know what’s it like to be one (read some James Baldwin).
My grandmother emigrated from somewhere in Europe in 1921 – my family doesn’t know exactly. Maybe Russia, maybe Poland, maybe Belarus, maybe Ukraine. She didn’t speak very much English. In her apartment, she had pictures taped on the mirror of her dresser. These were of cousins of mine I never heard of. She showed me letters from them; they were fairly regular until 1938 or 1939. Then they stopped – for obvious reasons.
When I was in public school, there were 700 catholics and protestants and 7 Jews – I was the only male. I had no Jewish friends at that time. Once, out of the blue, all my friends, kids I grew up with and hung out with, decided to gang up on me and beat me up – because I was Jewish. I suppose I could have fought back, but I was so shocked that my friends could do this to me that I just couldn’t fight them. There were other incidents, many of them.
It’s been that way for Jews for going on 4,000 years. Given my background, and the things I had to endure, don’t you think I would give another Jew a lot of slack? Mika is the way he is probably because of history – both his and his people’s. He’s channeled his anger towards others. Me, well, a long time ago I figured out that anger burns away at your soul, so I stopped being angry. That doesn’t mean I can’t get mad, I do when I see injustice. I’m just not angry at the world.
Great post, Hancock. Washington was also a permaculturalist, way ahead of his time, though there was no pressing need to have invented such a thing as permaculture that long ago. Moving from politics to ecology (I know, go figure), I like Jared Diamond’s term “landscape amnesia” which describes how no one notices major changes (compromises) in the landscape, because we only see a year’s worth at a time. Fifty year olds should remember a fair amount of snow on the Bitteroot Mountains in Montana all the way through summer from their childhood, despite the fact that it melts entirely these days, and somehow the planet’s not warming?
People who are staunch environmentalists have usually been exposed to drastic deleterious changes in their personal ecologies. I signed off on way too many permits allowing forests to be brought down in the name of progress. Even though the wetlands were protected! So I have much to atone for.
But that brings me around to my point. Energy guides, and always has guided, our reality. Politics and pop culture are subsets of energy flow. You know the old comparison of skirt length to the strength of the economy. Bear markets don’t bare legs. You can see what a steady loss of fertility (latent energy) has done for the women in the Middle East. No wonder we cringe at the thought of permanent economic contraction!
But I think we can safely say that the amount of cheap energy our civilization has been exposed to has pushed the envelope in every direction. Everything has been tried, and with an internet connection, one fringe loon like me can even find his “realistic but hopeful, systems-thinking, deep green thumb with druidic/pantheistic tendencies” community! And of course assume that it’s on the rise! Which it is in my case;)
This is why I don’t worry too much about all the feudal fascism scenarios, the theocratic political regimes, or the hostile takeovers by communists/brownies. In the long view at least, our energetic reality will foster cooperation, among ourselves and with Nature, increased biodiversity (potentially an evolutionary flowering event), and natural health like we haven’t known in a long time.
If we’re past the peak, and I think (and feel) that we are, then this is underway already. I take great comfort in that. People who aren’t experiencing this quieting and reconnecting existence deserve to, and have only themselves as an obstacle to overcome. Although I certainly don’t want to trivialize the danger lurking in those micro-undulations of our macro trajectory.
As you seem aware, our current reality requires more novel thought and behavior from us than any other time in history. If that is thought of as “liberal” than let’s be the most liberal people the planet has ever known, for the alternative of staying the course leads to anihilation. This is our defining moment as a species.
I realized today that the main difference between “cool” and “avant garde” is the number of people who have your back. We in the know should always be pushing for avant garde.
Enjoyed your piece.
Tripp
I tried that link, but it didn’t work.
Coincidence? Hmmm.
(Just kidding, prog!)
You’ve got it precisely ass-backward. There are already far far far far too many US dollars and will soon be 600B more and at some point they will all be absorbed into the price of gold, silver and other commodities.
==
The US dollar regime is coming to an end. The US has been exporting its inflation for almost one hundred years (via the petrodollar mechanism). But those dollars will soon be coming back to the US, to explode the the value of US dollar into nothingness. There will be no more US dollar, because the US dollar will not worth the paper it’s printed on. Oil, gold, copper, and everything else that’s worth trading will no longer be traded in US dollars. It really is that simple, Q.
Now, for part two. I find it highly offensive, that first of all, Q-Joo, it doesn’t even occur to your racist ass that perhaps my grammar peculiarities are uniquely Israelian; and second of all, I find your “correction” of my uniquely Israelian dialect, insufferably infantile, rude, and boorish. So now that you have been warned, if you do it again, I will, I kid you not, have you expelled from the UN! Comprende?!
Thanks for being so honest, mika. It has been clear for quite some time that you think non-Jews are little more than animals.
==
I call it as I see it. Care to show me how I’m wrong? You can start with Vlad.
Btw, I like it suddenly occurred to you to rebuke Vlad. Yeah, that should cover your ass: for about 5 minutes, you slimy racist fish.
Hehe, too over dramatic? What can I say, some asswipes bring out the best in me. 🙂
Tripp to Hancock: “Enjoyed your piece.”
========
Tripp, I too might enjoy a post by Hancock if only he could get a grip on his verbosity … just say his piece succinctly, leaving out all the mamby pamby modifiers which rob his message of power (examples provided upon request). But verbal diarrhea aside, I would be ecstatic if, just once, a post did not contain innumerable references to “RW Authoritarianism.” Truly, it gets old.
Ok, I think I covered everyone.
the US dollar will not worth the paper it’s printed on.
==========
not be worth
I am prepared for expulsion from the United Nations. Teeheehee
holy moses this blogs gone to s*it!
Q — I don’t know what you do for a living, but I wish you’d critique my son’s term papers!
SJmom
ANG,
certainly if no one responds theyll be alot less posts from him!
You make me sick, and I am done with you
praise god or goddess [whichever is yr choice]
Shut up, nigger.
Bill, I’m sorry to hear about that experience, but I’m even sorrier to hear that you’re resigned to let it slide. I would’ve smashed their skulls. But that’s just me.
Qstick, No I meant the Author is Jewish not God.
I don’t have a very good way with expressing myself in words. sorry you misunderstood.
BUT Neil Diamond is Jewish and he IS God !
just joking.
Kushner the author of When Bad Things Happen To Good People is a Rabbi. Just a comment.
wouldn’t care if he was other, but it was just an observation. means nothing.
Like I said I don’t believe in the Bible Story.
I definitely should read more and talk less. I KNOW i don’t know much. but like to read what folks have to say here.
God ? who knows. I doubt it.
“…leaving out all the mamby pamby modifiers…”
Damn, Q., now you gone an’ done it!
Just how many times in your long (and scrupiously scrutinized) life have you heard the idiom expressed? You know durn good ‘n’ well it’s “NAMBY” that goes with the “pamby”!
Geez, I’m in such a huff now, I simply don’t know when I ever shall recover.
;o)
Qstick, No I meant the Author is Jewish not God.
==========
Yes Jackie, I understood that completely (it reminded me of “Eats Shoots And Leaves”). My reply to you was intended as a spoof and I thought I signaled that adequately with a winking smiley face at the end. (After all, what good is a spoof if you have to advise people up front that what follows is a spoof.) But then Beantown fired back a reply to me which showed that he, too, did not get my little joke. You know what they say … if you have to explain your joke either the joke’s not very funny or the listener is not too bright.
Do me a favor (you too, Bean), go back and re-read the sequence and see if you don’t spot at least a little humor in my reply.
no, have yr [college?] student son DIH
“But verbal diarrhea aside, I would be ecstatic if, just once, a post did not contain innumerable references to “RW Authoritarianism.” -Q.
Ah, perhaps that’s because it’s the milieu, life-approach, and political genre in which you’re so desirous of wallowing (and have probably always wallowed). God speed you to your realization of the next comfortable Reich. (Things will be so much more in proper conformity to your specific “ideals”, eh?)
Mika, do you think that Judaism didn’t borrow ideas from religions that the ancient Israelites came into contact with?
==
Of-course. But you’re missing the whole thrust of my argument. Pagan Roman Imperialism, which is what Roman “Christianity” basically is, is the antithesis of Judaism. It is the antithesis of what Jesus was and what he stood for. And selling this Pagan Roman Imperialism as “Judaism For Goyim” is a disgusting affront and an offence.
And selling this Pagan Roman Imperialism as “Judaism For Goyim” is a disgusting affront and an offence.
==
Actually, it’s down right demonic. And only twisted demonic minds would’ve come up and perpetuate something so wickedly perverse.
“holy moses this blogs gone to s*it!”
Dig deep and find something inside you that will make all the other voices go away. This is YOUR world, Asia. You know more about the news than anyone here, so obviously the rest of us should be hanging breathlessly on your opinions.
Why is that not happening? I just don’t understand you people…
Thanks for being so honest, mika. It has been clear for quite some time that you think non-Jews are little more than animals.
==
You slimy racist fish. I was very specific. I was talking about you specifically and your “white race” specifically. This is not a Jews vs non-Jews issue, as much as you slimy racist fish and Vlad would like to make it out to be.
mamby pamby
========
Watch/listen to Geico commercial link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhlWddAXSRA
“The people of the US have no power or control over our economic lives…”
Start buying one ounce of silver each week, and tell your friends to also. Then watch what happens.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article24334.html
http://crashjpmorgan.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/banner_crashjpmorgan_eclipse_600x146.png
Wage: “The people of the US have no power or control over our economic lives…”
We do too. Bamboozled and obfuscated into confabulation we are, to be sure, but there are simple and accessible choices that can be made when we wake up to reality.
Getting people to do that is the surprisingly difficult part.
What is DIH? My son is a high school senior, but has semester-long writing projects in economics and physiology.
I respectifully submit my comments to Ms. Alexandra: Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party”, 1963, ===and to her apologist(s). It WAS my party…I did cry, even when I didn’t wantED to! Don’t tell me what to do, you young, sniveling idiot! I was FREAKING THERE! STFU!
“Getting people to do that is the surprisingly difficult part.”
Yes, the alarm is going off {again} with the full body scanners and homeland proctologists for three year olds and grannies, so they hit the snooze button with stories about Kate and William getting engaged. The Wednesday before next Thursday ought to be interesting.
and by the way, cfn’ers….Miss Gore RULES!
Okay I will go back. I am not that bright, not a joke either. I don’t know the symbols on computers.
learning tho. And I really didn’t get a bad feeling when I read the response I just misunderstood.
Now I will go back and see if I can ‘get’ it how you meant it. Could be both it wasn’t funny AND I am not so bright. I already know that tho let’s see :). first time I did that. serious.
here I go. back in a few mins.
S***. I am stupider than I even thought ! cracked myself up. It actually reads as if I did mean that God is Jewish ! But I know you know what I meant. And you can tell I aren’t that smart.
I am a living example of everything that is wrong with our educational system. I graduated with a’s. long ago.
Can’t even form a complete sentence or paragraph.
I need to take more time to edit what I post.
I think I be quiet for awhile, and just read. Or embarrass myself again.
I like your posts Qshtik.
I scrolled forever, and couldn’t find BTBills’ response. Will look more tomorrow.
I didn’t see the humor, but like I said I didn’t feel attacked either. So yeah, me not so intelligent. You probably are. Really. I appreciate people who speak and write correctly and intelligently. Need to work on that.
Please do not put yourself down. You aren’t dumb. Speaking and writing well can be learned with practice. Just the fact you’re on this blog speaks well of you.
Also, I have yet to respond to Q, which is why you couldn’t find my posting on this.
I believe that that the Northeast Asians and the Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than Whites and also have other good qualities that we have lost: both are very loyal to their nation for one thing. So how am I White Supremacist?
As White Nationalists we simply ask for what is granted to everyone else – the right to have our own Cultures and Nations. How on Earth do you contrue that as “hate”? Can’t you see your knee jerk response is just your mainstream media and academic conditioning? White Nationalism is far more about Love than it is about hate. But sure we hate our enemies, that is entirely natural. But the love of our own People is paramount.
Sorry, Q, I guess I missed it; and I was having such a nice evening.
Thanks BTBill. It’s never too late to learn.
Yes I ‘found’ Kunstlers book inn ’85 Home From Nowhere or Geography of Nowhere. And could totally relate so just followed him since.
Seasons’ Greetings
I tend to agree with a lot of what Jim says, but in regards to fracking, drilling wells, and producing oil and has he should learn a little bit more. I have ownership of several fracked shale gas wells that produce economically, so I don’t know where Jim gets the $8 figure. I must really be doing something efficient to make money at $4.
I find it insulting when someone like Jim who has no experience in the industry, nor any technical experience to make the kind of judgment/comments he did today.
So Jim, if you want I can give you a lecture on how everything goes together. I only spent my whole life doing the stuff. Plus you’d like to have chat with me. It won’t be so bad man. I’m pretty left wing.
BeanTownBill said: “Once, out of the blue, all my friends, kids I grew up with and hung out with, decided to gang up on me and beat me up – because I was Jewish.”
I am so sorry to hear about this incident of persecution. Together with Tripp losing his goat and hearing first hand fr