JHK’s Three-Act Play
F or public consumption, the fatuous haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, a.k.a. Secretary of State John Kerry, hauled out the dog-eared playbook for “negotiating a ceasefire” between the Palestinian Hamas leadership and Israel. Neither side takes him seriously, of course. In this historic moment of Islamic uproar across the entire region, Hamas is just following the larger script: act up and act out.
They would like to catch the momentum of rampaging ISIS next door, but Hamas is not a mobile force of mostly young male psychopaths. They’re stuck in Gaza embedded among their women and children doing what they can to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. For the moment that means lobbing rockets from launch sites planted among the homes and institutions of daily life in the densely urbanized Gaza strip.
So far in the current offensive, they’ve launched over 700 missiles at Israel. Some of the rockets, purchased through the world’s arms bazaar from China, are powerful enough to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But they are poorly-targeted and Israel’s “iron dome” anti-missile system can intercept some of them before they land on anything.
Unlike previous offensives, when Hamas rocketeers could set up mobile Qassam missiles in alleyways or rooftops, and beat it a few minutes after firing, the new larger rockets require sturdier installations. Thus they can be systematically discovered and targeted. Hamas is quite willing to sacrifice the women and children who eat and sleep around their rocket installations for the propaganda value of pretending that they were not deliberately put in harm’s way.
Israel has accepted the reality that Hamas deliberately uses its own people as human shields and has opted to destroy the missile-launch sites in any case, because the alternative is to give Hamas free reign in bombarding Israel. One would think that world opinion would understand this equation. But there is little sympathy for Israel’s predicament, and little appreciation for Hamas’s calculated ruthlessness vis-à-vis its own people.
The birth-rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world. If it is a deliberate result of social policy, it is a cruel bargain for the Palestinians, who are apparently regarded as expendable by the Hamas leadership. In a culture that glorifies suicide bombings, routine human sacrifice must be normal, though to a Western sensibility it seems tragic.
It shapes up as a struggle to the death that will not be impeded by reason, the good intentions of others, or sentimentality. What Israel remembers is that nobody was on the side of its people in 1939 and they’ll be damned to make the same mistake of not fighting back again. This certainly sets up a situation of extreme political danger in the region, but no more now than the ISIS juggernaut, or the larger beef between the two basic branches of Islam, or the fate of the fragile Saud monarchy.
This is not a region of the world than can support large populations of human beings of any religious persuasion, and in the new age of extreme resource limits blind circumstance itself, more than personalities or doctrines, will determine who gets to inhabit what rockpile.
What’s changed is the perception that the USA has any role to play any longer even in the diplomatic theatrics. The Middle East is disintegrating faster than any polity in historical memory. It appears that, if anything, the USA has only succeeded in accelerating the process wherever we turn our attentions. Since the 1970s, we haven’t felt the ultimate consequence of trouble in that part of the world, which would be an interruption in the oil supply coming out of there.
Back then, there might have been something we could do about it. Now there is nothing we can do but stand on the sidelines and wait. In the meantime, wouldn’t it be a good idea to attend to our own problems, especially the critical need to prepare for American life in a post-oil world?
Coming in August
World Made By Hand 3
Pre-order:
My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books … or Northshire Books…
or Amazon…
Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author
Bargain Price $3.99
Amazon Kindle …or … Barnes & Noble Nook …or… Kobo
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
   |
|
|
|
 |
 |
Energy independence at $100 a barrel or energy dependence at $20 a barrel. Is that a false dichotomy? Not sure. I do know we could have paid every able bodied Iraq male $50,000 a year for the last 12 years to stay at home and watch the Flintstones rather than shoot us for the same money we spent on the war. I just read we could house every homeless person in America in a paid for $600,000 home for the money the F-35 is costing us. You remember the F-35, the 3 planes in one that was supposed to save us money but is now the most expensive weapons system in human history. Yep, that one. The pale green horse is the American dollar, and yes hell does come with it.
Yeah they could just give the homeless a $250,000 home with a yard bigenough to grow most of your own food and then house some more people in each house.
Or they could have just given a huge bunch of track land to the cross border people and a small fund for the little things..
What this means is the whole batch of fluff, that we call the }National tax and spend and create out of thin air digital paper currency and have the comodities markets manipulated in London, and just filled with graft, greed and Madoff like people{ System is rigged to give someone nothing, and someone something, but no one really knows whom is making off with the family china, while we look on from the pews, couches, lawn chairs, and ski-do’s……
Oh well I am out of the markets, Have paid for land and have a paid for house with a Do Not Sell clause on the will, from the former owners ( the guy in charge of the estate is a responsible sort, and legally bound, ( though that doesn’t seem to stop some, it does him) to not sell it).
Then to make theday seem a bit more surreal, a Chicken shows up in the yard, we got it into the back yard, it’s wings are clipped, so it walked here, As far as I know there aren’t anyone with them around here, but the city allows up to 10 hens. So maybe I will just built a small hen house and see if I can get an egg or something.
Or maybe a pet chicken will just make my yard look less like a city space.
( we could if we had the willpower grow thefood for 7 billion people on 750,000 acres of intensely growing food forest or planned intercroping land that gets the rain fall needed to grow plants without water imputs and fertilizers and if done right pests are just part of theBioWebScape Design……….. But it takes willpower to not want to kill thy neighbor cause they looked at your left side and not your right sidethis morning. )
Charles.
On NPR today, one of the news stories was that the Federal Transportation fund has one week of money left for road and bridge projects in the entire 50 states.
1 week!
So, the remedy our political elite have formulated are byzantine tax schemes and shaking pennies out of other projects from other departments.
You gotta love our government (not particularly).
Most clear headed and true statement on Israel’s predicament I’ve seen in a long time. Bravo Jim.
–BRH
Ditto Here…
Bravo Jim!
Add my “amen” to that as well.
Mine too.
Ditto for me to BRH. But I would like to add that Hamas is constantly claiming shortages of food, water, medicine and building materials. Thet also claim to have 30,000 missiles, half a million AKs and tens of thousands of RPGs, all of which have to be smuggled in. Its a shame they can’t put as much effort into smuggling in food, water and medicine! As for building materials look at google earth at all the huge private swimming pools, find the house attached to it and if theres an Audi in the drive its a Hamas chief. Two things they can always find building materials for, their own houses and hardened bunkers for the missiles. Never once heard of them building an air raid shelter at a school though!
The only clear thing exhibited in this article is unabashed racism and the justification of collective punishment. The idea that Israel acts in ” self-defense” when it targets women and children, but that Gazans do not when they use the same, though far less effective tactics, is morally absurd.
Israel as a nation has never sought peace, and Rabin, the only Israeli leader who took steps in that direction was murdered by a militant Jew. They took over a place that Jews had abandoned for 2000 years and offered fables from a “holy book” as a real-estate claim. Now their behavior toward the native inhabitants of the region rivals that of South Africa or the Fascists. Many Israelis and respected Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers agree with what I am saying and I can supply quotes to prove it.
The whole picture of palestinians being aggressors and hateful while Israelis are noble and democratic is a bible story for children and bears no relation to reality.
Yeah very disappointing from Kunstler.
“The birth-rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world. If it is a deliberate result of social policy”
What a crock.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/07/19-5
Here is how US media acts in the face of eyewitness observations by its own reporters.
It seems odd to me there is such an increase in road building/widening and new airliner orders at this time in light of the power sources drying up. Pakistan is also a major source of terrorists and massacred millions of non-Muslims, especially at its inception. Last I heard, the USA is funneling millions of dollars into Pakistan. New developments in this country are not taking into consideration the cheap gas and oil age has ended and are making everything exclusively for cars only. There is never anything within walking range – a car is required for every errand. Really strange….
Many people think that by ignoring a situation they don’t like it will go away. What is a situation they don’t like? Anything that will require them to change. Very simple, actually. We have an entire economy built around the motor car. It has no future. We have invested heavily in a living style that is unsustainable. We have two choices; change, and accept the fact that most of our prior investment in this is worthless, or deny reality and continue to throw good money after bad. The basic problem is that many people cannot understand that the dynamic determines the outcome, not desires.
Amen. Victims of the worst fraud with enormous cases against the perpetrators act like deer in the headlights. Denial from an intellectual standpoint simply can’t compare to seeing it in action. In order to live with themselves after the fact the bullied then salve themselves with some religious mumbo jumbo about forgiveness – which of course has been homogenized, pasteurized and propagated by the very same forces who defrauded them.
Cutting your losses takes on an entirely different meaning when it is in essence your way of life. America was bamboozled into this charade. We had more wealth and power than any country in human history after World War 2 and we created the most wasteful system of living possible. It is not a freeway, it is the most expensive way possible. Hubris did us in. The check is coming due in a couple of months or at most years, and the look on America’s face when it sees the bill will be hilarious. WHAT? My entire life!!!!!
Everybody knows the solution to every problem is twice as much of whatever caused the problem! What?
Always a good plan to avoid foreign entanglements. Hmmm, who said that? In any case, sticking to the knitting in our own back yard always makes sense for those of us who must earn our keep by our wits. Unfortunately, those who wax fat from the over-financialized “economy” usually perceive foreign entanglements as yet another opportunity to garner riches. Hence we have had and will continue to have such entanglements until the whole “system” is no longer sustainable.
Yes and that plays well with “I guarantee you that when war is that profitable, you’re going to see a lot more of it” Chalmers Johnson (quotation from Why We Fight)
As usual, your comment is pitch-perfect in clearing away the hogwash that surrounds these “freeing the masses from tyranny” adventures in commercial gain. Thanks.
Just a thought: After “the Israelis” had bent their fellow Semites to their will, including them in the power structure might have been a productive experiment with a one-state solution. The “two-state solution” has always been a fraudulent cover for pushing the post-WWII occupants of the area into extinction or exile. It could have been done differently, but god got in the way again… Oh well; done and dusted. All we await now is the hubristic convulsion and the backlash from those with nothing left to lose.
(Above to AKlein. )
JHK’s post on the topic is excellent but there is more to consider than just the American position on this.
I used to think similarly but realized a one-state “solution” would be untenable. More of my thoughts on this topic at http://mannesneuer.blogspot.com/
IMHO, “the American position” should never have been considered at all, or in any case. Foreign entanglements, remember?
I’ll go to your link and see what’s what; no promise of agreement or response (so goes da web).
Why the 5 year lapse? The end is near?
Seems to me you recommend a kinder, gentler repression of the arab populace. Too late… far too late. 1948 is long gone; done and dusted.
No further comment from me is going to change the ultimate outcome of this self-created clusterfuck. When concessions and honest appraisals could have been put forward, they [decidedly] weren’t. The worst possible outcome is on the way (as you have hinted); a change in ‘policy’ can only come when the current “ideas” are expunged in the harshest context of societal disintegration. It’s the same the world over, isn’t it?
I’m assuming you GTFO of Israel by putting a very large body of water betwixt you and it. If so, good move; if not, good luck (and I do mean that sincerely).
I don’t recommend any repression of the arab populace. My point was that Israel had a right to be in the West bank as a defensive measure and pending a peace agreement. It was unwise to start the settlement movement and exacerbate a delicate situation with a population that ultimately it must try to live with in some sort of harmony – or at least a non-violence pact.
I assume you’ve never visited Israel and thus can’t understand its viability and strength. If you’re just another Jew-hater as others on this post, the GTFO yourself.
Guess what I wrote went right by…
I’ll rephrase.
The time for a viable future that INCLUDED the folks already inhabiting the joint was in (the year of somebody’s lord) 19 and 48.
The wrong decisions, based on some wrong-headed thinking were made (quite obviously, as we can see from the current “troubles”). Writ in stone, die cast, ensuring that all fall down.
All states are viable until they aren’t, due to bad choices. Israel (and modern, financialized America for that matter) are no different and unexceptional in this regard. It’s the same the world over, isn’t it?
Who chooses to kill whom for whatever reason in that area of the world is really none of my (or my government’s) affair. (But apparently, there’s money to be made and power to be exercised, thus the foolish and deadly meddling.)
Watch out for that sudden knee reflex, it can lead to misapprehensions and, again, good luck.
Thank you for a sane and cogent description of the whole gestalt of the ME. It’s ultimately all about land and resources with irrational religion thrown in for destructive measure.
And indeed, people just don’t understand the dynamics……
Back in the 1970’s when I saw the ME as a proxy war for the larger Cold War strategies, I told my sister we were heading for a new dark age.
I observed that people who’s culture was of another century were being armed to the gills by the two super powers. I knew this could only lead to disaster and it would, in fact impact all.
This is such a precarious moment for the world. We have so many issues that are challenging the sustainability of our system in all areas of energy, finance and environment, I really don’t see how this is going to continue in it’s slow descent.
The way things are playing out even with tensions in Asia, Ukraine and failed drug wars in Central America, not to mention a totally moribund global economic system which only serves the top, I think a world war might just be the juggernaut to end this fiasco—only to create a great misery upon us all. Trust me I don’t wish it. I certainly hope there are other options.
But I must ask, Is it deliberate? I don’t know, but I have little trust in the sanity of the Pax Americana leadership.
As Max Keiser so artfully put it this week, (slightly paraphrased):
When you fall off a cliff, the last few feet are the most painful.
That’s a good one. Funny how falling feels like flying – for a little while.
Must be the Icarus complex.
I prefer a variation of Keiser’s theme. A guy jumps out of the 40th story window of a skyscraper. At the the 10th floor, an observer shouts out “How’s it going?” To which the jumper responds, “So far so good!”
“They would like to catch the momentum of rampaging ISIS next door, but Hamas is not a mobile force of mostly young male psychopaths.”
ISIS recently captured Hatra, the site where the opening scene of “The Exorcist” was shot more than 40 years ago. The fear is that they’ll demolish the temple there, just as the Taliban dynamited the statues of The Buddha. The difference is that, if one is supernaturally inclined, the consequences may be much worse for those doing the disturbing. Pazuzu is not as forgiving as Buddha.
Of course, if one is a rationalist, this is all nonsense anyway, but it’s the thought that counts.
It’s just another destruction of human history and art. The good things we accomplish….We are to be left with ruins.
Maybe ISIS -ARE- possessed by demons ?
Just food for thought. I don’t believe they are, but your post got my imagination rolling.
“In the current conflict between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip, both sides have attempted to harm the other. Hundreds of rockets have been fired from Palestinian territory with the aim of harming Israeli civilians, while Israeli military strikes have hit hundreds of targets in the Gaza Strip.
There’s at least one clear asymmetry to the conflict, however. By Friday morning, 100 Palestinians had died as a result of Israeli military action, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, with hundreds more wounded. To date, there have been zero reports of Israeli deaths due to Palestinian rocket fire, though Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, said Wednesday that 123 people had been treated – 80 percent of them for shock or anxiety – since the start of the operation.” – The Washington Post
There are murders in every major city in America every day. Thank the dog above we don’t start shooting fireworks at each other and and escalate things to military action, strafing neighbourhoods with F-16’s every time a perverted wing-nut turns out and expresses their inner rage by killing an innocent.
Considering the size density and poverty of Gaza City makes calling women and children human shields a convenient excuse to excuse mayhem. A war crime is a war crime, except it seems when a side you support does it.
“The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically-cleanse Palestinians.” – Noam Chomsky
A better topic for today would have been on the trials and tribulations of wrapping your fundament in a bathing suit and covering up your cloaca. That or perhaps a discussion about Potatoes. Not this scurrilous screed you chose to pen instead.
To the rest of the world the United States is like a rich senile relative with dark tendacies on amphetimine sulphate, who’s ass you might kiss, or dance with, to inherit some of that mad money.
This conflicts with most American’s perception of the United States as the land of fairness and reason and goodness and right.
Nationalism produces these world views across the centuries and borders, but the intensity of this current paradox arises from the distance from reality , which is increasing,
Kunstler provides signs of reality, he at least has a consistant world view. The problem with signs of reality is people just drive right by them without reading them.
Not this week he didn’t. What is now going on in Israel is an ultra-conservative government is using any excuse they can to advance their particular agenda. Their agenda being the elimination and murder of as many Palestinians as they possibly can. Israel only having room enough for the ‘chosen’ people.
You see things just as they are, my friend, but that seems a difficult feat these days. If you follow the international press for a few years on this and other conflicts, you understand some deeper meanings, and when you glance on typical US newspapers or watch TV infomercial shows, you don’t think, YOU KNOW you are – in your mind, at least – on another planet.
“What is now going on in Israel is an ultra-conservative government is using any excuse they can to advance their particular agenda.”
You could use the same wording and substitute Palestine/Hamas.
No I can’t agree. Hamas has not been systematically killing off Israeli leadership for years and radicalising them. Your appeal at symmetry ignores the brutal asymmetry of the situation. Years of brutality by Israel have made Hamas what it is.
“There was a time, 20 to 30 years ago, when Israelis and Palestinians shared the same space. They rode the same buses, walked the same streets; Palestinians learned Hebrew, worked for Israeli companies; Israelis took their cars to be fixed by Palestinian mechanics. The sharing was hardly equal; it had a colonial bent. But they knew, and in some cases trusted each other; they were business partners, even friends. That is no longer the case. ” – Israel’s Deadly Gambits
Yet 1 million muslims live in Israels border, happy as Larry. Are they chosen people too?
Have you asked Larry how he’s doing lately? He’s not doing so well and he isn’t happy. So I guess you are right after all.
K-Dog–If there were more dead Jews, would that make you happy or change your mind? And who says the war toll has to be equal?
Gazans have one of the highest birthrates in the world and the Palestinian population has increased dramatically. I’d hardly call that ethnic cleansing. And it’s pretty well established that rockets are fired from civilian locations on purpose.
And I’d like to point out that Egypt doesn’t want anything to do with Gaza either. It has a blockade and closed borders, and built a really big wall too. Do you think Egypt is engaged in ethnic cleansing?
If I was to get an annual paycheck of $1.5 billion to be friendly with the neighbors I guess I would take it and take note of what the rules are. The alternative has been tried (democratically) but didn’t suit certain people who claim to be democratic.
It truly is odd isn’t it. The palestian muslims are the most unwanted in the world. Israel built walls to keep out the suicide bombers, a tactic that worked, Egypt built a wall to keep out its own kin, Syria and Jordan(Palestine) does not want them and the saudis wouldn’t give them the steam off their poop. Not much unity in this islamic thing is their?
And if you talked about the Sunni / Shia split you would even explain why. But your intent is not to explain.
Let us assume that there was a country in the Middle East named “Outer Bongonia” that practiced the religion of “Nactu.” Assume the “Bongonians” in the past had 1. killed our sailors intentionally, claiming it was an accident 2. sold our military technology to China 3. violated international law in regards to colonization 4.became an international pariah 5. spied on the US 6. got us involved in foreign wars so WE would do THEIR dirty work 7.was the only country in the area that actually HAS nukes and 8. has proclaimed itself a RELIGIOUS state…the United States would have “taken it out” a long time ago. But because the nation is ISRAEL and the religion is JUDAISM, all is forgiven…Besides, because the Nazis killed my Uncle Schlomo, that gives me the right to seek justice by killing Palestinians(?).
US sailors killed by Israel- the USS Liberty incident:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html
That’s an event you don’t hear much about- wonder why?
It’s funny (or tragic) how the closet anti-semites come out so quickly every time Israel is involved.
“because the Nazis killed my uncle…etc”. What an ugly thing to say and to basically deprive Israel of the right to self defense because of the Holocaust. Shame on you and your type Velarde.
I won’t get into every one of the malicious statements made by anti-semitic vermin, except to say that Israel is not a religious state. It is the nation state of the Jews, just as Ireland is the nation state of the Irish. Non-Jewish citizens of Israel enjoy full rights by the Israeli declaration of Independence and its actual practice.
Anti-semitism is a pathetic defense for war crimes. And talk about malicious language… how about calling someone vermin because they think the holocaust has nothing to do with Israel’s imperialist treatment of native Palestiinians and the regular killing of women and children in acts of collective punishment. As far as Jews having a national or ethnic identity as opposed to a primarily religious identity, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand in his best selling book, “The Invention of the Jewish People”, makes a very persuasive case against this premise and traces the expansion of Judaism through conversion and intermarriage from the time of the Hasmonean Dynasty.
There are many Israelis who agree with K-Dog, and with Velarde’s contention that the holocaust has been abused to justify theft and aggression. Are they anti-Semitic vermin?
I continue to read Jim Kunstler because he has important things to say and is a funny untamed outsider voice in an overly conformist media culture. But I cannot agree with his support of the Iraq war or this ugly article. Kunstler is not a thinker marked by empathy or compassion and in this case that is all too evident. I do appreciate that he allows for open discussion on his blog.
Exactly, K-Dog, exactly. Thanks for bringing a bit of sanity to the discussion.
“God’s chosen people” are committing war crimes, with the financial help of the US, of course. . .
Glad to see somebody swim against Kunstler’s current and speak some other side truth to the Zionist propaganda he spouts. The current occupiers of Israel where allowed to take Palestine from the Palestinians, The USA enables Israel with dollars and UN vetos to imprison and kill Palestinians in Gaza. I know that it is true there are Israelis who see the evil of their governments action. Thank goodness for Naom Chomsky.
The same people who a few weeks ago rationalized the destruction of Native Americans are this week rationalizing the murder of Palestinians.
Boycott Israel!
How about we boycott you? Why don’t you log on to a neo-nazi website where your anti-Jewish ranting would be appreciated?
Automatically labelling anyone who dares to disagree with you an anti semite is pretty weak sauce, like “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
Defending the indefensible is pretty tough, I guess…
And yet thousands die at the hands of ISIS, Boko, the Taleban etc etc. They can plant suicide bombers in schools and not one peep out of you, not a squeak. This is because you really don’t have any compassion for the dead and injured, your comments will only appear when jews are involved and that is because you are an anti semite. There is no other logical explanation.
It is a war crime to deliberately build military equipment or house soldiers within occupied civilian buildings. Hamas has been doing it for years yet you don’t call them out on it. If you think Gaza city is poor you have evidently never been there. They have shopping malls that would shame some US cities and try having alook atbthe numbermof outdoor swimming pools. Gaza is wealthy on billions in aid money from the US, UK, EU crap even Japan sends them cash.
Chomsjy is spot on but inversely, Hamas missile almost exclusively nare aimed at civilians and Israel is also a densely packed country the factbthat more have not been killed is nothing short of a miracle.
Again though one has to ask why you do not condemn Hamas for deliberately target civilians, that is a war crime. They fire without warning. Israel on the other hand, leaflet, use loudspeaker and text every known number in the area to avoid civilian casualties. If only the US army were held to the same standard eh!
I also note you do not lament the murders of thousands by ISIS or indeed the multitude murdered elsewhere by the mad islamonutters.
One can only conclude that the reason for your ire is not the dead palestinians, a fact born out by your support in past post for Assads use of heavy weapons against ‘rebels’ killing thousands of civilians in the process. Rather it is your dislike of the people on the other side.
But the fact is Hamas rockets miss. Israelis use top notch American weapons or better. Israelis don’t miss.
You take it to the abstract, pull in unrelated conflicts, and make wild assumptions. You excuse murder and mayhem like the Jingoist you are. The castles in your mind have blinded you to innocence and drained you of compassion.
People need an alternative to this truly outlandish monetary paradigm we now exist in. We are raised to believe that hard work is good and noble. We are raised this way because it tacitly inculcates in us a support for the monetary system i.e. hard work will get you money thus hard work is good. Ultimately a monetary system is doomed to fail. Why? Because it is not grounded in reality. It is grounded in greed. Check out the Resource Based Economy and Jacque Fresco. He makes a good case. Why do we fight wars? It is almost always for resources. Why is their crime? It is almost always for money? At the present moment in history there is sufficient technology so that no one ever has to work again. Blasphemy you say. You say it because you must unlearn what you have learned.
At the present moment in history there is sufficient technology so that no one ever has to work again.” –seawolf77
Are you serious? I must assume this to be some form of sarcasm, since, in reality, its nonsensical if not outright insane. Technology doesn’t grow food, hard work does.
Actually, technology HAS drastically reduced the amount of work human beings need to do. Certainly not eliminated it, however. Plus, physical labor has been replaced by work performed by machines reliant on fossil fuels.
Once the fossil fuels run short, humans once again need to perform backbreaking work to stay alive.
Those who cannot work (including a large percentage of the human race for whom there will be no farmland available once mankind reverts back to low-output subsistence farming), will simply die.
Mostly agree with you there. But “…physical labor has been replaced by work performed by machines…” should perhaps be preceded by the word ‘some’ or even ‘most’; try convincing the thousands of migrants down the road from me who are now stooped over harvesting lettuce, onions, cabbage, etc. which they hoed and thinned by hand a few weeks ago, that machines have “replaced” them — yes, the crates are hauled away on FF powered trucks rather than horse-drawn carts, but still…
Or how ’bout the ones in the packing plant (slaughterhouse) killing and hacking cattle into nice pieces for the rest of us? Yes, machines assist the process, but it’s still ass-busting hard work.
For those of us for whom the hardest part of food acquisition is walking across the parking lot from our SUV to the supermarket, it’s easy to disregard the grueling labor involved in getting those pretty (flavorless!) tomatoes onto the shelf, even with the help of technology.
Yes, our future promises a return to levels of toil that most moderns have never conceived. But there are some out there who know it plenty well, and they stand a good chance of surviving where the overweight diabetic suburbanite will simply perish.
Try this again:
Mostly agree with you there. But “…physical labor has been replaced by work performed by machines…” should perhaps be preceded by the word ‘some’ or even ‘most’; try convincing the thousands of migrants down the road from me who are now stooped over harvesting lettuce, onions, cabbage, etc. which they hoed and thinned by hand a few weeks ago, that machines have “replaced” them — yes, the crates are hauled away on FF powered trucks rather than horse-drawn carts, but still…
Or how ’bout the ones in the packing plant (slaughterhouse) killing and hacking cattle into nice pieces for the rest of us? Yes, machines assist the process, but it’s still ass-busting hard work.
For those of us for whom the hardest part of food acquisition is walking across the parking lot from our SUV to the supermarket, it’s easy to disregard the grueling labor involved in getting those pretty (flavorless!) tomatoes onto the shelf, even with the help of technology.
Yes, our future promises a return to levels of toil that most moderns have never conceived. But there are some out there who know it plenty well, and they stand a good chance of surviving where the overweight diabetic suburbanite will simply perish.
Not to mention the term “the present moment in history” is silly since it is just another way of saying “now”. So why not just say now. Also, isn’t history in the past, so how could the present moment be part of history?
“Technology doesn’t grow food, hard work does” !
Hard work, energy, planning, and paying attention to reality!
A great way to lessen violence in the world — including in the Middle East — would be to stop selling arms to everybody and their crazy uncle in the world. Yes, other people do it too. No excuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters
I am skeptical that such policies would be as useless as gun control in reducing violent crime.
Violence is top down, how do you make people happy that do not subscribe to your system? Vaporize them?
From your link:
Arms controlEdit
Oscar Arias Sanchez President of Costa Rica (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars across Central America through the Esquipulas II Accords) has stated:
“ When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious.[16]
costa rica has no military
In principle I support a “jewish state”, but since they won’t support a state for me and my kind (if we were to get our act together) then my attitude towards this event is of intellectual and entertainment purposes only.
You “liberals” should watch CNN and their coverage of this event, pure propaganda with the casualty count repeated over and over, and over. IMO the lead jewish organizations in this country should give CNN a thorough going over because I’ll bet Al Jazeera is more balanced than CNN.
As for “war crimes” as a side note in the last operation called “Cast Lead” a documentary was being filmed about an Israeli humanitarian doctor doing a complicated heart operation for a Gaza child and part of this documentary showed white phosphorous shells being deployed with air burst fuses (technically illegal, Geneva convention and all that). As a former artilleryman I remember back in the day we all wanted to see what that would look like, and thanks to the IDF I can say “very cool.”
Yes, the current state of things seems dire. So what?
Those who profit from keeping things unbalanced and out of kilter still command, or so it seems. But that which they command, a piece of real estate called “K” Street is becoming a little less important which each passing day.
I’m optimistic about this epochal transition we’ve entered because, despite the tattoos and juvenile decadence, it’s something we’re all aware of. No one can do anything any longer – drive a car – publish a book – eat a meal – have a child – without further contributing to the state of unbalance. And to a large degree, we’re all becoming aware of that fundamental relationship as well. I’ve this overwhelming sense that those presently in command are about to become irrelevant in what will seem like hardly a heartbeat.
And when they do, I’m confident that a critical mass will rise prepared to answer the call to serve that which is righteous.
http://www.thesisa.org (Nothing new there, don’t bother)
Off topic, but since this is about the “Special relationship” country I have to ask if someone in Israel or its disloyal ally the USA if they would grease some palms to get some exemptions for the importation of some semi-auto Galils.
I want to add one to my collection, and since the American made ones are slovenly constructed I would rather go to the real source.
With changing climate and demographics a constant, I don’t understand why Is-real even started back up in such a milk and honeyless fight-prone region to begin with.
Because it is their ancestral land.
In the same convoluted sense that Turkey is the ancestral land of Irish Catholics since some Celts lived in Asia Minor long ago.
Does that mean I have to give my California property to a Mexican, a Spaniard, a Russian or the most recent Pomo, Miwok or Wappo?
If a Phoenician shows up in Tel Aviv do all the Israelis have to leave?
The 19th century nationalism movement, with its poisonous idea that each “race” should have its own “nation”, spread the seeds of the movements that murdered millions in the 20th century and continue to give reason for millions more to be murdered in the 21st. Let’s get over this crazy idea.
Ancestral land means nothing, just ask the Navajos, or when are you leaving?
what happens when you believe a deity is your realtor:
http://loiter.co/v/the-israelpalestine-conflict-illustrated-beautiful/
It seems a case could be made for leaving Saddam in charge of Iraq, and the other mid east dictators as well. The reason being that they didn’t tolerate terrorist organisations in their country. These have gained new strength with the toppling of various dictatorships in their respective countries. I guess the neocons envisioned a democratic middle east, where the people barbecued on sundays and went to their local caucuses to vote for representatives. The neocons guessed wrong didn’t they?
No, I believe they fully intended to encourage terrorism and instability, because that’s where the money is, for them and their cronies. An added convincer is the fact that they went to the trouble of publicly branding it the “War on Terror.” The political class doesn’t call something an apple, unless it’s actually an orange.
Captain, you’re missing the bigger picture. Your assumption is that the objective is to “keep a lid” on situations in these ME countries. For the Neocons, that may be true, since they are pathologically ideological. They want peace on their terms. However, they, along with lots of others, are played as dupes. Those who control the Neocons do not want peace under any circumstances. Let me draw an analogy. Do you think the primary purpose of Wall Street is to increase the wealth of its customers? Of course not. Their objective is to cause as many transactions as possible. They reap their standard profits from buying and selling and their extraordinary profits from making markets for house stock. The average stock market player is a pigeon, not a customer. The Neocons are just useful idiots to keep the pot boiling and provide a rationale. perverted or otherwise, for continued conflict. Why do think Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler called war “a racket”?
No they just funded and supplied ones outside their country. Arms from Libya for the PIRA. Saddam paid bounty money to suicide bombers in Gaza and Israel, Assad armed equipped and trained the north sudanese militia that, so far, have murdered 250,000 south sudanese Christians and animists, though presumably don’t count for Janos cos they were black. We could even throw in Saddams use of gas against the marsh arabs amongst
So. What should Israel have done instead of trying to take out the Hamas missile sites? Complain to the UN? I’m sure the UN has enough clout to make Hamas stop. Do nothing and distribute lead umbrellas among the populace as the missiles rain down? Or maybe this entire event has been an Israeli-initiated false flag so they can attack Gaza and wipe out a couple of hundred Palestinians. Yeah, that’s it, a false flag.
The K-dogs of this world spout indignation, while never having had to live under missile attacks. You’ve seen nothing yet, wait until Janos wakes up, reads this week’s commentary, and begins drooling uncontrollably as his fingers eagerly whisk across the keyboard composing his many anti-Jew posts.
Did someone just mention “false flag”? Why is that so preposterous? Wouldn’t be the first time and won’t be the last.
If the UN doesn’t have the clout to make Israel stop building illegal settlements and taking over more and more Palestinian land every week, why would you think it has the clout to make Hamas stop what it is doing?
What the hell are you talking about? Not only did Israel turn over Gaza but left behind hundreds of fully intact and functional greenhouses which the Palestinians could have based an economy on. First thing Palestinians did when they took over is blew ’em up, sprayed ’em with AK47 fire, heaved rocks thru the glass.
–BRH
Read your history. The Israelis allowed the Palestinians to stay, but they chose to leave. Then the other neighboring countries wouldn’t allow them entry. The Palestinians’ poor decision caused them to get screwed.
This post was meant for coalminecanary. See below.
So. . . by way of analogy, if the powers that be decide to let a bunch of obnoxious strangers take over my property, and i decide to leave, and then have nowhere else to go, that’s my fault and my poor decision? LOL.
I was being sarcastic, Helen.
What are you talking about? Do you deny that Israel is a racist state? I have no problem with that – only the hypocrisy of denying it. Ben Gurion said drive them all out. But you faltered, afraid of what the world would think. As Yoda said, Do or Don’t do. You could have made them full citizens or driven them all out. Instead you dithered in the middle. You have no one to blame but yourselves.
And for the Liberals: Obviously these two can’t live together now. That possibility passed long ago when vast numbers of Jews began to pour in. If Jews wanted a real State with room to grow, they should have taken Uganda or Madagascar. And yes, both were offered. Also a large area of Siberia was offered. But Jews insisted on Palestine. Pure Hubris.
I just found out last night that a good friend of mine, a Vietnam vet, has died. Even though he had made it home, Nam killed him in the end. Exposure to agent orange messed up all his internal organs and he was sick for 40 years. When I last visited him two weeks ago in the hospital, he told me he was suffering from PTSD. He couldn’t sleep because each time he drifted off he awoke shouting’ “incoming, incoming!” Yeah, suffering extreme stress from rocket attacks. Who woudda thunk it?
So sorry to hear that.
You say the Iron Dome system the US spent $2+ million dollars helping Israel develop has taken some missiles ‘out of circulation’. That’s an odd claim considering an Israeli scientist is claiming Iron Dome is a total fraud, that the debris shown is part of the ‘dome’ itself
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/12772-israeli-expert-says-iron-dome-defence-is-a-hoax
But enough of that…
Let’s do an experiment!
How far can you run in 58 seconds Jim?
The Israel Defense Forces claim that they give civilians a “tap on the roof” (i.e. launching a dud missile at them) before the actual explosive one, and that is enough notice for people to evacuate their homes.
Are you up for an experiment dude? From at least a 3rd floor room, see if you can make it out of the building, AND clear a distance of 100 metres to escape the explosive debris.
You have 58 seconds…”
— RUN!
http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/91753198939
For a very good analysis of the Israel/Palestine situation by Chris Hedges, see http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/israel_is_captive_to_its_destructive_process_20140714?mc_cid=48eee95f90&mc_eid=98791c5797
Fantastic article! Thanks for the link.
A Pretoria-like Apartheid state at war with an ingenious people who are willing to blow themselves up in order to kill a few school children or allow a bomb to drop on their family if it meant moving one step closer to exterminating the newcomers. This is a good example of our own end times perhaps.
Jim, Look into the history of Hamas. It was more-or-less set up or tolerated by Israel as a social welfare organization in the late 1980s to undermine the PLO during the first Intifada.
Much like the US supporting the Jihadis in Afghanistan, the decision has come back to bite — and bite hard, indeed.
Further, Israel is a concoction of western imperialism. The middle east was carved up by Britain and France. The British issued the Balfour declaration which allowed the establishment of the Zionist state.
Any rational person has the greatest sympathies for the Jewish victims of the holocaust. Likewise for all the non-Jewish victims.
But creating these religious states, whether Israel, Saudi Arabia if the Islamic State is madness. It is worse the nationalism on steroids.
When the Balfour Declaration was declared, the Jews in Germany turned against Germany, shutting down factories with labor strikes, factories producing things needed for the army. The Germans knew the Jews had turned against them, but didn’t know why. They learned the real reason at Versailles. The knowledge of this betrayal lead to the rise of Nazism and WW2.
In any case, it proves that the Jews are a nation without borders – exactly as Herzl and other Zionists said. We would do well to remember this.
If you actually believe that nonsense you no doubt have more insighful comments about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and documentary evidence that Jews murdered Christian babies in satanic rites.
Sheesh.
The Jews themselves said they were a Nation without borders. Read some Herzl. Educate yourself. They smartened up and stopped saying it but the reality hasn’t changed. Thus Israel is the most powerful Nation on Earth at long as they keep us under control. If that control is beginning to weaken, well thanks be to God.
You’ve got to realise that janos actually believes the protocols. There isnt any anti jewish claptrap that you could spout that he wouldn’t gobble up in a lusty frenzy.
That’s scurrilous nonsense, Janos. — JHK
You’.re entitled to your Zionist opinion, Jim
Zionist opinion or not it is total nonsense.
Palestine has called for the impartial UN to settle this matter between Israel.
They will ultimately come to your conclusion, upstater, that the religious fanaticism on both sides has to stop.
That decision will ripple throughout the region and globe. There will be enforcement by the militaries of several countries to dismantle and decloak all those who do not secularize their leadership. If it means the destruction of churches, mosques, synogogues and homes…so be it.
The impartial UN. LMFAO.
ya, i chose my wording because it does seem impossible for them to come to a consensus about anything at this particular point in time. however this solution has already been proposed at every level of governance for various reasons.
In the meantime, wouldn’t it be a good idea to attend to our own problems, especially the critical need to prepare for American life in a post-oil world?
I think it’s “standing on the sidelines and waiting” for this, as well. They keep coming and there’s nothing any of you can or will do about it. All you can do is wait and watch. Or prepare to be domestic servants — once again.
Coming To America — The Melting Pot
Maybe I’m just hopelessly naive and ignorant- but if Germany caused all the problems for the Jewish people during WWII why did the Palestinian people have to pay the price by being displaced to create the “state” of “Israel”?
Doesn’t seem right to me.
Canary, Zionism was alive and well long before WWII. In fact, decades before WWI. Conceptually it sounded like a good idea. The “Jewish Question” had rattled around in Europe for centuries and had inspired lots of ugly animosities against Jews. So Theodore Herzl cooked up the idea of a Jewish state back in the 19th century as a final solution to Anti-semitism. The problem is two-fold. Firstly, the Zionists picked the wrong place. They should have picked a place with no people. Palestine was already well populated. Secondly, the idea of a religious state is no longer tenable in the 21st century. Talk about a hard sell! What exactly is a religious state? What does that mean? Add to this that most Jews are not very religious to begin with. At least not any more – just like the rest of civilized humanity. Yeah maybe most Jews were religious back when most lived in stetls in Russia and Poland. But now? So bottom line, Israel is neither fish nor fowl. It should want to be a modern progressive state but it is saddled with a incongrous rationale for existence. I pity the people living there, both Jews and Palestinians. The world is passing both by.
I find it strange that there is no mentioning of the fact that it was the British who fostered the modern scale of the conflict, and I doubt anyone would accuse them of not thinking it through before hand. Having two centuries of colonial experience, they understood perfectly well what this type of “relocation” would lead to.
Later on, they capitalized on the situation, including the relationship between oil and US dollar as the then newly established world currency.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/balfour_declaration_of_1917.htm
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/palestine_1918_to_1948.htm
The jews were used to destabilize the region – divide and concur. After the US “colonized” Great Britain as the result of the WWII, the British pushed to accelerate the process – and almost 2 million jews were relocated to Palestine at around that time. This strategy has proven to be very effective from the British point of view, and it is about to become one of the root causes for the upcoming collapse of the petrodollar. Brits know how to be patient.
“The problem is two-fold… [et al]”-AK.
Nicely done,
Cheers!
To add to AKlien’s answer:
If a whole continent went out of its way to declare your race worthy of death (It wasn’t just the Germans killing off the Jews, and some places (like Poland) didn’t let the end of WWII stop them), would you feel welcome there?
Exactly. As the former Iranian President said, if Europeans felt so bad about the Jews, why not give them a State in Europe? Why torture the Arabs?
If Canada or Mexico would ever have launched a dozen missiles against America let alone 700 they would have essentially been destroyed. Why is Israel the bad guy for simply defending itself? I don’t get it. I used to downplay charges that portions of the world are anti-semitic–now I’m not so sure.
And the reason why Americans tend to not concentrate on fixing their own problems is the leaders, if one can call them that, don’t believe we really have severe problems; they’re not even concerned about them.
I’ve been a huge fan of JHK ever since he began this blog and I’ve spread CFN around to dozens of friends and family but for the life of me I cannot understand how he could have voted for Obama the second time around; I can’t. Can someone here explain how JHK, or anyone for that matter, could have voted for Obama the second time around?
Please……
djc
Because I didn’t want to cast a vote for Mitt Romney or any of the lesser party candidates.
Thankfully, not having to take part in the circus of US politics, it was not a decision I had to make but on reflection James I think staying home and putting the kettle would have been the wisest choice!
It’s not often someone can make British politicians look competent.
it is not necessary for any of us to know if each other votes for anything and who we vote for is private. why people think they have to divulge this info is beyond me. do you want to take the blame for others incompetencies as well as the glory for their triumphs? basically anyone who votes is to blame for participating in a corrupt system.
Upstater:
I agree. The ME carve up by the UK and France was one of the biggest political follies of the 20 Century. Until the oil is gone, the area will have nothing but war. And Israel has no future once it loses it’s US puppet state support, a certainty once the empire collapses. If the Jews need a homeland, best they buy Nevada or the Australian Outback – same kind of land less the biblical landmarks.
Yes. We wreaked havoc while Islam was weak. Now it waxes strong again and will take back the little Crusader Kingdom in Palestine. The old one, the Outremeer was larger than Israel at one point. Nixon himself said that long term prospects for Israel were dim.
The real tragedy is the deal with the devil the Leftists have made. Bring in ten of millions of Muslims into Europe to destroy the traditions and peoples of Europe so they can create their “terrible beauty” – the Politically Correct State. They really think their weirdo gender queer societies can outlast and convert Islam? Pure hubris.
Can someone here explain how JHK, or anyone for that matter, could have voted for Obama the second time around?
.
.
LOL!
Who was JHK supposed to vote for?
John “Bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain?
Or Mitt “Corporations are people, my friend” Romney?
Well that’s the problem isn’t it? We ignore everyone else running for office and focus on the lesser of two vast evils as presented by the twin parties. Voting has become like sports betting: no one wants to “waste” their vote by voting for someone who wont win. So nobody worth having every wins.
True Janos,it seems like a wasted vote, but I voted green anyway, Ms. Stein. And yes, Mr. Kunstler, you are right, it would indeed be a good idea to attend to our own pressing problems, can i get a witness?
The second time around would have been Romney, who, I agree was a corporate shill, but still highly competent whereas Obama was/is highly Incompetent.
Or you could vote Third Party, or not even vote at all.
There was really no excuse to vote for Obama the second time around after his terrible first 4 years. I’d just like to hear JHK man up
and admit he made a horrible mistake voting for Obama in 2012.
JHK has referred to Obama as the worst president ever. I still cannot believe there are so many who think voting will actually make a difference or prevent the US from collapsing. There is no political solution, and martial law will be imposed in the US and probably sooner than you think. I would tend to agree that there an ideological twin to ISIS in the US, and that is the republikkkan party. Like the nut jobs in the Middle East, if they had it their way, there would be an xtian fundamentalist theocracy. They are just as nuts as the Islamic extremists, as far as I am concerned. It is blocked by hostile blue states on both coasts and once industrialized/unionized blue states across the nation. Still, pretty sad when one is reduced to voting out of concern by wish not to live under the mentality of the Catholic church, Ann Coulter, the likes of Falwell, Robertson, Baker, the snake handlers and other toothless wonders and other assorted morons who sit up at night and wonder what their lives would have been like if they had received enough oxygen at birth.
Rand Paul is trying to change the party, trying to belly up to minorities that have been outright screwed by the GOP. (That’s one thing I give them credit for, they make no secret about being the cocksuckers they truly are. Frank Zappa wasn’t joking when he said in his concerts “this is for all the republicans in the audience” and launched into his song “cock sucker’s ball”).
Guess what, Rand, these people have a long memory, and tossing them a few crumbs will never switch their party affiliation, with the exception of a tiny minority that made small fortunes selling pizzas or whatever. The 90% of the others view them as they view Samuel Jackson in that movie Django. I am also noticing increased outrage over videos of police violence and brutality, and this perception that the deck is stacked against them and the people that deal the cards are not letting Obama “do his job”. I see racial conflict as the biggest powder keg in a post collapse US. It is no accident that one of the few thriving businesses, business bankruptcy lawyers, liquor stores, and repo men, is the firearm and ammo businesses. No mortal person will bring back the car, housing values, endless growth, depleted resources, etc
Not that it matters. If there even is an election in 2016, turn out will be abysmal. People are finally giving up on politics and Washington. My prediction is that Rand Paul will split the repug vote, ensuring that Hitlery Clinton defeats Jeb Bush, unless some other false flag event and a great deal of Diebolt black box voting machines so we can get a man in there “with balls” who will take it upon himself to do “what is best for America”, despite the wishes of the majority. Regarding foreign policy, if the military machine doesn’t run out of gas, they will continue with the military solution, which will succeed in killing a lot of people but ultimately fail, if not trigger WWIII
One thing is clear. The US is not going to collapse gracefully or with any sense of dignity. The NDAA, militarization of the police, and the actions of the NSA prove that they have no intentions of letting us dissolve relatively peacefully like the former USSR, and their completely insane foreign policy makes me think that they will douse and incinerate themselves and everyone else in the flames of nuclear warfare rather than admit they themselves wore out their welcome and quite simply fucked up. As Heinberg says, they threw a party they thought would never end, and now the whine and cheese is being taken away and the lights shut off. Time to go home and nurse the life long hangovers.
JHK has referred to Obama as the worst president ever.
He has turned out to be quite the Millard Fillmore. A clueless and forgettable chief executive; ambivalent and unwilling to advance desperately needed change and quell the rise of growing crisis. He fails to do what is needed to bring peace to the homeland.
In our current system the number of credible American politicians can be counted on one hand.
We need a new way.
We need a new way. How about Gil Fulbright?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz_V4lRdtjo&feature=player_embedded
Damnit, sorryJames. I don’t know how to past a video URL without the video itself posting.
HH,
See the “About”, “Share”, “Add to”, (etc.) buttons in small print just below the viewing screen?
Click on the “Share” button/word and a small window/address bar will open with the video’s code (slightly different than the one in your browser’s address bar).
Right click to copy that, then paste it into your comment. That should do ‘er… at least it did when I tried it once! lol
I’ll try it again with this completely innocuous video for filing harmonica reeds:
http://youtu.be/MkFKbHNngNs
(fingers crossed)
Yepper!
Gil is awesome. Once I caught on all the rest of the way through the video I was thinking, ‘at least he’s honest’. That by itself would bring havoc to the system. Not that bringing havoc for havoc sake is the ultimate goal of course.
I was leary of Obama from the get go for 2 reasons. First, he accepted more money from giant pharma then his repug counterparts. He also signed that bill that made it impossible for people to get out of crushing debt, under the rationale that it would make people act in a more fiscally responsive manner. Then he didn’t pull us out of Iraq right away like he promised, Gitmo is still open, the futile and wasteful resource wars have escalated, Monsanto dangles his regime like puppets, he signed that “national defense authorization act” into law, and nobody from the NSA is being prosecuted or thrown in jail. Benghazi would have happened no matter who was in office, but then again, if we minded our own fuckin business people wouldn’t hate us all over the world. That so called “bad prisoner” exchange is just a cheap shot, in my opinion. If that kid defected and repeatedly said that war was bullshit, than I would rather see someone like him exchanged than that overgrown fetus John McCain who remains a patriotic bonehead to this very day, unapologetic for the people he probably killed or maimed in his bombing runs.
That being said, whoever took office in 2008 and 2012 were bound to be the one that was blamed for our “demise”. Obama’s biggest flaw was that he thought things could be solved or fixed. Like I said, there is no political solution. Romney is not only a cock sucker but a right winged religious fanatic. I fucking hate most of the people that support far right winged repugs and still delight in watching their reaction when Obama won in 2012. Grown men, white collar types of mother fuckers, spoiled little rich kids, and religious fanatics all in tears. Too bad no youtube videos, else it would be time to gloat. The dems are more likely to extent unemployment, less likely to cut food assistance (something I suspect most of us will need when the collapse runs its course), less likely to assail unions (with the exception of Bill Clinton and his NAFTA…I thought the blow jobs were cool. If I were the president, I would have the ladies lined up outside my door sucking the chrome off my trailer hitch on an hourly basis), but now people ask “where are the jobs”?….Outsourced and a result of the end of growth and the beginning of chronic contraction and collapse.
This is not to say I agree with everything JHK says. This latest blog seems a bit biased, but I don’t like to waste my time talking about this whole fiasco in the middle east. It seems some countries are immune to international law, and nothing can be done about it. On the other hand, they lost 6 million people and their neighbors are religious fanatics which I dislike as much as the xtians and I have seen real videos of them burying women up to their heads and stoning them to death, cutting off heads, hands, limbs. I would never wa
“He fails to do what is needed to bring peace to the homeland”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like him and think he is a sell out, but he has actually taken steps to bring peace to the “homeland”. The police are being militarized, starting to use drones, he signed the “national defense authorization act”, the “department of homeland security” has purchased billions of rounds of hollow points, and the NSA is spying on all of us, placing us into threat categories. If that isn’t enough proof that they know damned well the shit house is going up in flames and planning on imposing martial law, I don’t know how much proof one needs.
I was leary of the man when he took all that money from giant pharma, then took out the third payer option. He was one of the son of a bitches who voted the bill into law that made it impossible to shed off crushing debt under the rationale that it would make people act “more fiscally responsibe”, then went on to be the most fiscally reckless president ever, thinking he could restart the old economy and monetize debt. Monsanto dangles him and his people like puppets. He didn’t take us out of Iraq nor did he shut down Gitmo as promised. The vain and wasteful resource wars have escalated. None of the mother fuckers at the NSA have been prosecuted or imprisoned for raping our civil rights, and he, along with monkey breath Bush before him have done a great job shredding the US Constitution.
Benghazi would have happened no matter who was president. If that cocksucker Mitt Romney had won, they repugs would have blamed it on the dems for being weak on defense, but that seems to be the attack strategy to beat Hitlery Clinton in 2016, if there is indeed an election. As far as the so called “bad prisoner exchange”, I would rather see a defector who thought the war was bullshit freed than someone like that over sized fetus, John bonehead McCain, who seems unremorseful for that imperialistic war and all the souls he probably took on his bombing missions. Give me a conscientious objector over a brainless flag waver or mass murderer any day.
Whoever took office in 2008 or 2012 was bound to fail, be it Romney, Ron Paul, or Obama. There is no political solution to the physical realities of dying oceans, rainforests, depleting water tables and fertile soil, peak oil and resource depletion, and thus the end of growth. All 3 of those clowns still do not realize the joyride is over. I saw the aftermath of the bombing of Lugansk on youtube, this poor woman with her lower legs blown off and mutilated, covered in blood, still alive, talking to this man who is hysterical with a cell cam. She dies before help arises. I see death and suffering in my line of work, but that scene really touched me. My tax dollars at work. Then I see killer Kerry and Obama talk about “Russian acts of aggression” in the Ukraine. Blatant LIES, the desperate acts of a dying empire in its death throes. The dislike of their policies starts to turn to hate when I see them lie with a straight face and know what’s really going on. Not unlike Hitlery Clinton when she joked about that “little man and his charts” (referring to Ross Perot, who tried to warn us about Bill Clinton’s NAFTA). Then on some syndicated TV show she said “we came, we saw, he died” and starting laughing about the gruesome death of Kaddafy (his crime being that he was meeting in secret with other oil rich African and Muslim nations, encouraging them to dump the soon to be worthless US dollar and sell their exports in gold backed, Arab dinars…….check out “black gold”, the real reasons behind the war in Libya on youtube). That bitch vs Jeb Bush? I think martial law will be in effect by then and we might at least get spared that charade.
So the political system is a fucking joke, and voting isn’t going to change anything. If that prick Romney had won, he would have been more eager to cut unemployment benefits, food assistance, and other safety nets as well as assail what is left of unions, and we would have been at war with Russia and China by now. And the typical Romney supporters make me wanna puke. White collar snobs who smoke cigars and drink brandy in first class and brag about being masters of the universe, spoiled brats (you wanna gloat, check out “young republican reacts to Romney’s loss on youtube, the little wimp), people from the south with their nose mining habits and drooling problems from too much inbreeding, and religious fanatics who solely voted for the cocksucker because he is anti abortion. So I agree with JHK that there is no shame in an act that was more like voting against Romney than it was voting for Obama. Both were doomed to fail, but Romney would have done as bad or worse.
Hiltery or another son of a Bush in 2016. Like a choice of getting boiled in oil or burned at the stake. I will stay home, like I did in 2008 and 2012. I am ashamed that I supported that son of Frankenstein John Kerry, and I think Al Gore was smart enough to be glad the election was stolen from him, as I think he saw the disaster coming. If there is an election in 2016, it will likely be the last one you waste your time voting in.
“What Israel remembers is that nobody was on the side of its people in 1939 and they’ll be damned to make the same mistake of not fighting back again.” -JHK
“What is now going on in Israel is an ultra-conservative government is using any excuse they can to advance their particular agenda. Their agenda being the elimination and murder of as many Palestinians as they possibly can. Israel only having room enough for the ‘chosen’ people.” -K-Dog
It seems to me that they are both right, depending on your perspective. Israel sees itself as Fortress Masada, the last bastion that exists to protect the Jewish people. They are surrounded by mortal enemies. From that point of view, rockets falling on your territory (even if they are ineffective) is unacceptable. On the other hand, the Palestinians have been living under occupation (apartheid) for 60 years. They have no freedom of commerce, movement, assembly, or defense. Meanwhile, the settlements continue. This is also unacceptable.
Thus we are at an impasse, spiked by occasional intifadahs and ground incursions.
The US supports Israel in large measure because of a cold-war hangover as well as because of the religious predilections of evangelical Congress-critters: bring on the Second Coming! (Read End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount) The interesting thing to watch, will be what happens when the US is no longer able to bankroll Israel, due to our own insolvency. Then all bets are surely off, Israel has the Samson Doctrine, as MD has pointed out many times.
Buckle your seatbelts kids, the coaster is almost to the top of the Hill.
Regards,
dweebus
FDR was surrounded by Jewish advisors. Baruch was like a second president. And the Communist Party of Russia was full of Jews. Stalin had barely beaten out Trotsky (real name Lev Bronstein) for Party supremacy. To claim the Jews were powerless in WW2 is illusion. Some Jews got caught behind enemy lines, but many had gotten out in time. In any case, there weren’t six million Jews under German control during the war.
I never said they were powerless in WWII.
“One of the smartest things the Nazis did was to co-opt rationality and to co-opt hope. The way they did that was by making it so that at every step of the way it was in the Jews’ rational, best interest not to resist.
Would you rather get an ID card or would you rather resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to go to a ghetto or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to get on a cattle car or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to take a shower or do you want to resist and possibly get killed?
Every step of the way, it was in their rational best interest to not resist. But I’ll tell you something really interesting: The Jews who participated in the Warsaw ghetto uprising had a much higher rate of survival than those who went along.” -Derrick Jensen
As to the rest of your post: *rolls eyes* W/E
“Do you want to take a shower or get killed”? You think people actually said that? Are you implying that the showers were “gas chambers”? No one, and I mean no one, believes that anymore. That’s like the soap and the lampshades and the “people without a land for a land without a people”. Face it, we have been ruled by advertising jingles.
So tyranny may come not with a cry, but a whisper.
“In the meantime, wouldn’t it be a good idea to attend to our own problems, especially the critical need to prepare for American life in a post-oil world?”
Yes, absolutely! But it will never happen at the scale required. We are now committed to a serious die-back. It is written. the die is cast, the horse has left the barn…
Or as Dennis Meadows put it, sustainable development is now off the table.
Good for you, your are correct sir! Now, let them go back to sleep…
😉
My response to this week’s submittal comes in the form of a question:
Two dogs fight inside a burning house. Who wins? [*]
🙂
Cheers!
🙂
.
.
.
.
.
[*] Other than Darwinian Forces, of course…
😉
Depends on who holds the policy for the insurance!
(…But, yes, your succinct parable mirrors my P.O.V. And you may as well ask whose side god is on while we’re at it. ;-))
Both win if they start cooperating.
dweebus is right, but he could have also mentioned the Zionists knew the land was not vacant when they worked,even with the Nazis, who also wanted them out of Germany, to steal it anyway.
Moreover the Zionists grew out of the late 19th century, working with
Aryan “racialist” movements toward the same goals. Out of Europe, in to Palestine.
The Zionists worked against assimilationist “right” European movements who wanted Jews to stay and assimilate, i.e. continue the 33% percent intermarriage rate which was threatening the rabbis power(the progeny almost always reared as Christians.)
Zionists regarded this Christian cultural supremacism as a worse enemy than biological racialism, and in fact developed their own, Jewish supremacist-racialist theorie to promote seperatism.
Jim gives no hint of caring about a dispossesed people and one which was being embargoed cruelly in Gaza for the past decade.
Of course Israel owns Congress, but it is important to note, the non-Jewish members of the Elite, the Rumsfleds, the Cheneys have no problem with teaming with Israel in the imperial cause.
As long as this “anglo-jewish” Elite holds sway the US is doomed to intervene until blowback and overextension and a ruined economy collapses both the Empire and Israel.
Just to be clear truthteller,
I was only sticking a stamp of approval on that one particular comment.
Almost, but don’t imply that we were copying us. Their racism goes back thousands of years. The Romans and Greeks were amazed by their superiority complex. And it got worse after the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora. The Talmud was written down and the Rabbis began to comment on it. No one will believe me if I told them what they believed and still believe. But folks, you can research it yourselves if you want to know. Just google Talmud. Btw, I know that not all Jews believe all of this anymore. But attitudes linger in surprisingly high secular places. Ben Gurion believed it. As did Ariel Sharon.
If anything, the Nazis copied them. Their model is the winning one. Nations that ignore race and let anyone and everyone in are headed for the scrap heap of history.
Not exactly. The Jews vacillated and at times proselytized widely.
This is why Rome banned conversion. That’s when the Jews turned inward across the board. Christianity triumphed,
This is taken from a Reform Jewish source, sectors of the Reform are advocating evangelism again and it is written from that perspective.
How was the biblical “stranger” transfigured into the “proselyte”?
In the Bible, the Hebrew term ger refers to a “resident alien,” but ger later took on the meaning of “a proselyte” (from the Greek proselytos ). The talmudic sages (third century C.E.) stressed the equality of the native-born and the proselyte, citing Exodus 12:49, “One law shall be to him that is home born and to the ger, the sojourner among you,” as well as the teaching (from Mechilta Piska 15) that the proselyte was equal to the native-born Jew with respect to “all the commandments of the Torah.” Once the stranger has, by choice, become a member of the family, he/she is entitled to all its privileges (and burdens).
The rabbis also observed that the precept to love, protect, and not oppress the ger or stranger appears 36 times in the Torah, more often than any other biblical precept. The 12th-century philosopher and talmudist Moses Maimonides thus said: “Our parents are to be honored and obeyed; our prophets are to be heeded; but the proselyte we are bidden to love with a full force of our heart’s affection” (Mishneh Torah, Book I).
This suggests that Jews must have been actively proselytizing at the time.
Yes. According to the Jewish historian Salo Baron, in great part because of proselytizing, the number of Jews grew from 150,000 in 586 B.C.E. to eight million in the first century C.E.—at which time they constituted 10% of the Roman Empire! Jews were working very hard then to convert pagans; the Gospel of Matthew reports that Jewish proselytizers traveled over sea and land to make a single proselyte (23:15).
Why, then, did Jews stop proselytizing gentiles?
The cessation was imposed by Roman edicts, not rabbinic rulings. In the fourth century C.E., after the empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, Roman emperors made conversion to Judaism a criminal offense, punishable by death of both the proselytizing Jews and the convert. The code of the Roman Emperor Theodosius declared: Any person who “betakes himself to the nefarious sect of Judaism shall sustain with them the deserved punishment of death…” (Theodosius Code 116.8.1, August 13, 339). The Holy Roman Empire hoped to dismantle the Jewish mission to be “a light to the nations” and thus drive a universal faith into a parochial tribalism.
http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1850
Interesting. They probably were trying to compete with the Christians. The Romans banned Christianity too. Watch any old Hollywood movie to confirm this. And the Christian hunters for the Empire were usually Jews – as were many of the first Christians of course.
The Talmud considers the stranger only another Jews. Gentiles aren’t human according to the Talmud or Maimondides.
Why root for either side? The region is going to do what it does no matter what we do. Remember Iraq? Great job nation building there! Israel was created out of Palestinian goat herder lands when they hand zero power to resist. Yes, facts on the ground, but so what? Today is the issue. Why bother being a cheerleader for either? This region will go up in flames no matter what. Israel has no oil. All it has is political power in the United States–admittedly a good thing to have for a country that is less than fifty miles wide at any one point.
We should quit sending money down the rat hole. No more support for any country in the Middle East. The oil fields are in decline. Any money thrown at these people is a situation of diminishing returns. Oil prices are at highs and will get higher as the fracking boom turns to bust. This will happen no matter what we do in the Middle East.
If you really want the oil, and are willing to pursue similar tactics to Israel’s tactics, you would drive the people in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iran out of their country and settle Americans there. Just do like the Israelis–kill them and displace them. No one will notice.
“The region is going to do what it does no matter what we do.”-Cherenkov.
Yep. America is now in the position that the UK was in 1956, vis-à-vis holding sway over the region. This time however, there is no ‘heir apparent’ to step in and constrain conflict.
From the top-level view, this is a milestone, nothing more.
Proving once again that there’s almost always good sense available – if you know where to look:
“wouldn’t it be a good idea to attend to our own problems, especially the critical need to prepare for American life in a post-oil world?”-jhk.
With that in mind:
‘Boardwalk Empire’? Yeah, not so much.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/nyregion/as-casinos-start-to-fall-atlantic-city-struggles-to-rise.html?_r=1
Quote ‘o’ th’ Day:
“Atlantic City is resilient,” said Mayor Guardian, his words
accelerating with an infectious enthusiasm. Over 160 years, he added, “it’s gone from a health resort to the world’s playground with liquor during Prohibition, to a convention city and then a gambling monopoly, at least on the East Coast.”
“It’s time,” he continued, “to open another chapter.”
– Atl-City Mayor as quoted by NYT.
Hmmm, what chapter would that be? Artificial reef?
“Hmmm, what chapter would that be? Artificial reef?”
LOL, well done!
A couple of blocks in from the boardwalk and it becomes an African nightmare of crime and drugs. “On the Boardwalk, in Atlantic City, I will walk in a dream” – better not White Man. Watch your six.
Slamming the ‘lid’ on another year of unwarranted happy-chat about the economy:
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/07/11/gallup-slams-lid-on-hopes-for-economy/
Take-away quote:
“And what about “escape velocity” in consumer spending? Despite what Wall Street economists and other hype mongers have been predicting for five years in a row, Gallop soberly slams the lid on those speculations:
If there was any doubt that the U.S. economy is still struggling to get back on its feet, the results of this poll reinforce that reality. Because consumer spending is the lifeblood of a healthy economy, these findings suggest that discretionary spending still has a ways to go before it will fuel the kind of economic growth Americans have been hoping for”
Okay, don’t want to listen to Gallup? Hear it from BIS-actual:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/07/13/the-head-of-the-central-bank-of-the-world-warns-that-another-great-financial-crisis-may-be-coming/
Bottom-line: “Brace yourselves. Winter is Coming”. . . and another milestone heaves into view.
Cheers!
File this under ‘Ways to Explain WTH Happened to the Next Generation’:
http://news.distractify.com/culture/craigslist-surveillance-restaurant/?v=1
Volodya? Smart-phones make us so much more *productive*, don’t they? I know that’s just so “counter-intuitive”, but… [chatter fades away]…
.
.
.
.
(/s and the tone’s be meant to be facetious)
Morning’ Mr. D. Give me a call on the cell. HAHAHA!!!! Ah forgetaboutit.!! Don’t bother I’m a dinosaur and don’t have or want one.!
We’ve been playing the same song as a country for twenty years or more now, and I don’t know what will force us out of the tune.
I say the last twenty years, because before then the Soviet Union had our power elite so focused.
9/11 really brought out the real America; Vindictive and short sighted. Like some kind of drunk, violent thug who lashes out.
The macrocosm mirroring the microcosm, I suppose.
What’s happening now is just another hangover in the national story. It seems this is ongoing. If the United States is an addict to things– then withdrawal is a gonna be a real bitch.
“9/11 really brought out the real America; Vindictive and short sighted. Like some kind of drunk, violent thug who lashes out.”-PeteAtomic.
I believed in an ‘indispensable” and ‘exceptional’ USA before 9/11… I really did.
If the Palestinians are living in “occupied territories”, can someone explain what country they are citizens of, what country issues their passports?
I can remember visiting the towns straggling the border between Greece and Turkey in the late ’70s and early 80s. It was a the time when the two respective governments were fussing at each, fighting over Cyprus, fighting over anything. And the people in these towns continued to live as good neighbors to each other, even though their governments were demanding they hate those they have lived next to for centuries (Turkish Muslims or Greek Orthodox Christians).
As with Jews after the holocaust, there was an enormous amount of sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11. Both nations squandered it with their arrogance.
The reality is–because of the way it has treated others–Israel will never be the beloved homeland the Zionists hoped it would be. It will always be “besieged”, always clamoring for more more vengeance, and as the Israeli scholar, Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned moving towards putting others in concentration camps. What a shame.
Some of the Arabs welcomed them at first because of the cash and development they brought. But it’s a small land and there just wasn’t room for millions. Thus there was never any real chance for harmony considering the plans of the Zionists. A few of the Jewish Socialist Idealists seemed and seem confused about this. But the hard core always knew what they wanted. The Idealists seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. Bring all the Jews who want to come in and still have harmony with the Arabs? How? On that small amount of land?
For Chrissake Vlad you made your points now why don’t you let up?
I knew when I read Jim’s post it would be red meat to someone like you.
In the 30s the Germans had a publication called ‘Der Sturmer’, or something like that, saying the same thing about its Jewish citizens you’re saying here.Its not only getting old, it is old.
You sound like a maniac.
–BRH
Red meat? Red meat?
Did somebody say red meat?
In other words, this last post got through to you and you don’t like it. You’re rejecting the light of truth.
No Janos, when a mad homeless guy comes up and rants gibberish at you its irritating. When the same loon follows you home gibbering all the way it becomes really annoying. You need medical help. You have a seriously deluded mind and I often think, when I hear of the next school shooting spree, that it will turn out to be some sad neo nazi with a penchant for posting on CFN.
You need serious psychiatric help, set up a blog page, we’ll all donate!
We as Americans stole the land we inhabit. We didn’t buy it. We stole it; we took it by force. We created movies depicting the people we stole the land from as savages, deserving to be murdered, and taught this to our children. After we had stolen the land, we then enslaved another people, stole their work and effort for our own benefit and accumulated vast wealth in doing so. We created a mythology that these people were animals who wanted to rape our women with their huge genitals, after which these women would be ruined forever. In “Birth of a Nation,” a woman threw herself off a cliff to her death rather than submit. This is who we are as a people. The Civil War was about who would keep the spoils of the slave labor, the rich bankers from the North or the Plantation owners of the South. We crated a myth that we as a people fought to free the slaves. Nobly. Time after time, we as Americans do the wrong thing, then create a false mythology and attempt to make it the right thing. It’s like that movie “The Firm,” where they bring you in, throw money and lifestyle at you, then when you’re used to the good life they tell you the truth. We’re gangsters with dead eyes and shark smiles. Now for any of us to pass judgement on Israel, who stole Palestine because of a lie, are committing genocide on the Palestinians, and are creating a false mythology about the whole enterprise; well just ask the arson about the blazing building’s insurance money. Just ask the laughing bully about the small innocent boy who killed himself because he couldn’t take it anymore. We are cold and calculating and cruel. Listen to the news on Iraq. All you hear about is the sacrifice our soldiers made, and not a peep about the millions of dead Iraq people. We’re the ones shooting and they’re the ones getting shot. Who do you feel sorry for? And they have the gall to fight back! Oh the humanity!
Good post. The stupendous hypocrisy displayed here is what I was trying to get across.
Bill likes it when Whites trash themselves. Old joke: a Catholic and a Jewish women went to a radical Feminist Conference. The Catholic woman stood up and condemned the Catholic Church. The Jewish woman got up and condemned the Catholic Church too. Later, the Catholic woman asked the Jewish woman why she didn’t condemn Judaism. The Jewish woman replied, “That would be anti-Semitic.”
So were we wrong to conquer this continent? If so, why are you still here? And if we were wrong, doesn’t that make the Israelis wrong too? As I said before, the serious Liberals are typically consistent on this question, condemning both White America and Israel. Jewish Academics like Howard Zinn lead the charge in condemning White America but grew strangely silent (for the most part) about Israel.
I wasn’t condemning us for conquering the continent. I was just saying don’t blame Israel for being aggressive when America is the same way.
Who you calling us paleface? You folks tore us to pieces for generations, always leaving out your own role in slavery, colonialism, etc. There may not have been many Jewish cowboys or Indian fighters, but I’m sure there were Jews involved in gold mining and railroads. Now you complain that we have woken up to the hypocrisy. It never ends. We’re always the moral empty glass with you folks.
Whenever I hear “we” as in Americans, I refuse to play along. I’m not shooting. I don’t have soldiers, and I don’t thank them for keeping me “free.” (Also recent enough in this country so that we had dealings with neither slaves nor Indians–too busy being european peasants).
I don’t like much of what this country does or believes to satisfy its corporate ownership; I think it’s optional to consider oneself a part of it.
Well, I guess we found a pair of swimming trunks..
News flash..its a God thing..started with Ishmael and Issac..solution coming…maybe sooner than we think…its not about oil,architecture,tattoos,economies or clown pants….its so much more than that…that is just a distraction from what it is really about…amazing to me how such gifted,educated people can be so stupid…
Between the Arabs and the Israelis it may be so, but for Americans it is about the oil and the ant-semitism. It is rather complicated.
In the 1960’s I thought Americans were generally stupid. Over the decades I’ve seen the stupidity devolve into crassness as well. Cultural descent may be a distraction, but just watch TV commercials. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can’t bear to see them, and so it goes with quotidian American life as well.
I’d like a quotidian with curly fries and a side of mediocrity to go. Thank you very much.
You are being too kind in saying “mediocre”.
Hey bill back in the 60s, ya we might have been stupid, but at least we weren’t fat, and people dressed better too. Check out video from the 68 World Series in Detroit or the 67 Series in Boston; fans even in the bleacher seats are wearing white shirts and neck ties.
The only guys with tatts were Marine Corps and Navy vets; a woman with tattoos forget that, you knew what she was all about.
–BRH
Even in the bleachers? Bleachers? White people in White shirts in the bleachers? Get it, bleachers? Don’t ever change BRH. Fight evolution and/or God and the Prophets. You are perfect just the way you are.
But you are right: that is amazing. The 60’s really were a cultural revolution. Roller Coasters rushing down are always exhilarating but where do you go once you’ve hit the bottom?
So now we are stupid, fat and slovenly. We’re making progress (for extinction).
Watching TV commercials in America today and you’d think we’re all a bunch of sick, fat, impotent, bald, depressed people.
You got that one right Seawolf. I loved that book.
Do lots and lots of Israelis live in Gaza among the Arabs?
Do lots and lots of Arabs live in Israel among the Israelis?
kontrahend
And that is the very point. A million muslims live in israel, hiw many jews in gaza? Or in Pakistan, saudi, Afghanistan, Morocco?
Ask the muslims in israel if they’d rather live under an islamic state and you get a resounding NO
Shi sues Zhang for sexual harassment. I can sympathize. The hyper-sexuality of Oriental women makes it very difficult to work with them. I’m sure Kdog has experienced the same harsh treatment from these dragon ladies.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Yahoo-exec-sued-for-alleged-sex-harassment-5620872.php
” The hyper-sexuality of Oriental women makes it very difficult to work with them. “-J.
Janos? Would you say that you are *especially* susceptible to the wiles of “Oriental” women?
😉
?
Well of course since White Women have become so cow like and even bull dyke like. But the Asian woman is no longer submissive either. Oh for the days when she would “love you long time”! Now they turn their pert noses up at you unless you a White Man with $$$$$$$$. So you end up walking around with a bad case of Yellow Fever. Now I find out they’re doing each other in the ladies lounge, broom closet, water closet and what have you
Of course BRH is happy to see this as a sign of my incipient recovery. He went the other way I believe, Spanish like Fred Reed. I mean there’s a reason Fred is so soft on the Mexicans. No Enchilada if he habla la verdad. Sorry Marlin, I aint backing down. No surrender. No mixed race bambinos or haphas.
The thing is, if you want racialist movements, they’re abundant in Eastern Europe and Russia. So abundant the governments at times use them, collaborate with them in attempting, for example, to keep Russian Slavs vibrant as the core of the Russian Empire.Of course some of the purist groups want to get rid of what is left of the Soviet Empire, and just have a Russian Slav nation all to itself.
I’m talking groups which can put thousands on the streets in rallies and have members and friends in government.
Here, the Euro-racialist groups are lucky if they can bring off a
gathering of fifty people at a hotel without getting cancelled.
Yes it is sad. We are far behind, the very belly of the beast, “leading” the world towards mongrelization and its culture of the lowest common denominator, sex and violence. Rap is the sound track of the dark tide that threatens the world. Kids listen to it all over the third world.
That’s Castillian Spanish Vlad, pure Iberian blood.
–BRH
You wishing Zhang would give you some ‘harsh treatment’ too are you? Well don’t worry, you could have an Asian lady helping you find and release your inner dragon verysoon.
I’m repeating the link because my omission of a space before it makes it hard to see.
very soon
You’re out on the West Coast, aren’t you?
Plenty of Asian ladies and a lot more arriving every day.
Pay special attention to John Jay’s Federalist 2. Diversity has destroyed America. Repent.
http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/america-no-longer-1-nation-1-people/
‘Rediscovering’ older technology is a recurrent JHK theme, is it not?
Well, isn’t it interesting that the inevitable misuses of internet technology is pushing people them OUT of that technology:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/germany-typewriters-espionage-nsa-spying-surveillance
Take-away quote:
“According to German media, revelations about digital surveillance have triggered a fundamental rethink about how the government conducts its communications. “Above all, people are trying to stay away from technology whenever they can”, wrote Die Welt.”
Relooking this link I think I see something that exemplifies our late-stage *Empire of Fake* civilization:
http://news.distractify.com/culture/craigslist-surveillance-restaurant/?v=1
Smart phones make us functionally dumber, while giving us a false-sense of being informed and in control – according to these findings…
😉
Cheers!
ya, maybe, depending on your sources of info and how many back up batteries you have in your pockets.
Check the link.
A restaurant compared surveillance from now to a busy night ten years ago, in order to trace the reason for an increase in complaints about “slowness of service”… With funny (and quantified) results.
Don’t miss it.
correction: kunstlers fictional novels have women doing everything!
a single woman is as good as seven men!
“a single woman is as good as seven men!”-k.
There are days when I believe that this is the way things actually are…
😉
Cheers!
I beg to defer, Karah. At the FD they had to lower the physical standards to get more females on the job. I’ll take a 6′ male FF over a woman to haul my a@@ out of a smoker any day. Sorry. That’s the way it is. As far as I’m concerned women don’t belong in foxhole either. I love women, but you gotta admit some things are best left to the men.
there is always the adrenaline rush?
Here’s another one of those issues that hasn’t gone away on its own:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/april_may_and_june_2014_is_the_warmest_three_month_period_ever.html
Hmmm, the fishing should be fantastic over ‘Ye Olde Atlanticke City’…
😉
Suddenly the party is over in Atlantic City.
4 casinos have closed our are closing, including Trump’s.
The bloom is off the rose here in CT too. Foxwoods and Mohican Sun no longer are the moneymakers they once were.
Mass. is getting into casinos in a big way but it seems a little late in the game.
We’ve had these casinos for about 20 years. I’ve heard a lot of stories, hair raising ones! Others are just tragic.
I never go but I have nothing against casino gambling. If that’s what people want to do more power to ’em.
–BRH
Humanity walks a very fine line these days, you see:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/09/india_monsoon_failure_rainfall_is_far_below_normal_in_2014.html
… we’re skating on very thin ice. That’s what happens when things get ‘optimized’ to their logical conclusion.
What do you think the knock-on effect of NO monsoon in India would be?
Just askin’ 🙂
Cheers!
I’m for selling all the Daisy cutters we got at wholesale to Israel, then sitting back and watch Fox News…
Why? The Israelis already have nukes in all shapes and sizes. Sub-critical munitions would just be boring.
Archie slated to die saving a Gay friend. Have they no shame?
http://www.mediaite.com/print/creators-of-archie-comics-archie-will-die-saving-gay-friend/
archie was never supposed to grow older…and neither are homosexuals, right?
Imagine such a thing. Despicable I say.
“Several of the DoD-funded studies went further than merely monitoring what users were communicating on their own, instead messaging unwitting participants in order to track and study how they responded.”
And the Guantanamo bayish tactics used to enforce study security; unimaginable no doubt. Probably violated the rights and terrorised American citizens who went sniffing around their suspicious and loathsome activities. It is outrageous.
And it has been a tag team too!
Seems them there has been everywhere!
There have been people saying the tech market is “Never gonna stop!” for a long time now. Just long enough for the Main Street economy to get sucked dry by the machinations the tech-sector enabled.
Today is different. Oh! How the Mighty Have fallen:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/07/report-microsoft-to-undergo-biggest-layoff-round-in-companys-history/
The problem with all hi-tech gas-baggery is that Technology is Industry, and Industry needs Customers, not fake stock-valuations fueled by financial masturbation. End of story, time to go home…
I am reminded:
” ’Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’ ” (Revelation 18:2-11)
Finally,
Here’s some “good stuff happenin'” I can believe in:
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/sequence-01-reduced.gif
[*]
In some ways, ‘Collapse’ is a cure…
.
.
.
.
.
[*] fossil-fuel exhaust gasses measured from 2005-Now.
James, this (your opening sentence); For public consumption, the fatuous haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, a.k.a. Secretary of State John Kerry…
Is the best description I’ve ever heard and fits Kerry to a tee.
Brilliant word-smithing…
Tim Minchin: Peace Anthem For Palestine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6qA-4PWdsg
http://clashdaily.com/2014/02/exposed-obama-chris-christie-childhood-friends/
When will this end? Maybe it’ll go on for the next thousand, two thousand years, these greaseball tit-for-tats, a whack here and a revenge whack there. After all, the sunni-shiite fight has been going on for 1,400 hundred years and nobody seems too eager for it to stop.
If the Israel-Palestine fight does end maybe it’ll be some combination of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing that does the job once and for all.
But, I think, the existence of Israel on the one side and a mass of impoverished Arab refugees on the other side is just too convenient for various interests for it to stop anytime soon.
No matter what cut-throat regime rules what patch of sand this conflict keeps the attention of a restless contingent of young Arab men away from the mis-rule happening on their home turf.
If you can guarantee anything in life you can guarantee that the priorities of ISIS (once they consolidate a hold on their new country) won’t be all about good governance and democracy and all that. It will be about what can they steal, who can they steal it from. And then, wait for it, kill the Jews. This latter may compete periodically with kill the Shia.
Young Arabs need a cause. And Israel, a Jewish country right smack in the middle of Arabs, is made to order. I think it’s pretty good odds that, in about two hundred years, the descendants of today’s combattants will be screaming about much the same issues. But, instead of misslies and drones, they’ll be riding camels and knocking each other’s heads off with swords. Thanks to the writers of Syriana for that last point.
“When will this end? Maybe it’ll go on for the next thousand, two thousand years, these greaseball tit-for-tats, a whack here and a revenge whack there. . . I think it’s pretty good odds that, in about two hundred years, the descendants of today’s combattants will be screaming about much the same issues. But, instead of misslies and drones, they’ll be riding camels and knocking each other’s heads off with swords.”-V.
Interesting point of view volodya.
I’d say that it’s very optimistic, considering that the ‘M-E’ region has been a net-importer of basic food supplies for a couple of decades now. It cannot feed itself, and this is why it’s so incredibly sensitive to price adjustments in the commodity market.
Why? It boils down to resource scarcity – of Water – not fossil fuel. This basic lack of water and its demographics doomed it to escalating violence…
But that was before we understood how much faster global warming was becoming the leading factor in the region’s demise.
As K-Dog opined, regional cooperation could’ve altered the forecast radically, but that is ridiculously unlikely – given the region’s propensity for generating and exporting conflict-enhancement systems.
From where I’m standing, the region is already in ‘dead-man-walking’ territory. True to regional norms, they’ll be the last folks that acknowledge that.
BTW, I’m not the first or only person to espouse this view. From a BRICS-Bloc p.o.v. the whole **Levantine Conflict System** is succeeding spectacularly at making itself irrelevant.
Bam, Slam, thanks-but-I-didn’t-want-to-know-that-m’am.
This is where the tangential and speculative becomes the obvious and dire.
We’ve discussed this waste of the critical on the absolutely trivial time and time again (me and the dawg of most clear-eyed).
Clinging to tropes of dissolving relevancy is like plunging into the quicksand pool because you can no longer abide the heat and insects of the jungle. Screw a bunch of outcomes; I’m a-gonna do it because it feels good for some [instant/short-term] reason!
What’s the motive? Ahhhhhh, now we get to cases that have nothing to do with grubbing in the dirt of reality; we’re smack dab in the realm of the fervently wished-for. (This is where the bubble-dwellers stake their non-existent claims.)
Just today, I had a strange and dread premonition as I drove (yes, a gasoline powered auto-mobile) over the landscape for a prearranged appointment. I saw all the “independent” homes and businesses strung, one to the next, along my route of travel. In a time of extreme privation and lack of affordable energy resources (that all have become used to as the “norm”), how do these persons react to the circumstances in which they find themselves, ESPECIALLY when they’ve never considered any other way of conducting the business of living (or, as JHK says, “inhabiting the landscape”)?
The various deadly kerfuffles now in play give some examples of coming scenarios… only on a more wide-spread scale. With whom will you throw in your lot, and why? That will be the consideration that determines a modest continuation or assured extinction/extermination. This is why I think JHK’s admonitions to taking care of pressing business (that might just enhance national cohesion of the common-sensical variety) are so very timely. — We’re out of time, and soon to be out of capital; the window of influence on even our own localities is closing rapidly.
Ps, I don’t believe that any fantasies about technological saviors will change the mortal equation in any meaningful way. Jevons Paradox always seems to take care of that quite handily.
Oz when does energy become not affordable?
Huge houses are still being built around here without much thought about how they’ll be heated during these long winters.
Also, there’s no shortage of automobiles lining up to buy gasoline at $4.00 per gallon. This place has a life and logic of its own. The whole world is coming apart at the seams but my niece thinks nothing of driving 120 miles round trip to pick up a pair of shoes on sale at the Clinton Outlet Stores.
–BRH
Also, much was made of a woman being hired as president on the University of Connecticut. Her salary is $500,000 per year and she is provided with a car and driver and a mansion in Storrs. Evidently this was not enough because the Univ. just bought her another mansion in Hartford so she can entertain in the Capitol City in style. Another order of business: bring in Hillary Clinton to make a 45 min. speech for which she’ll be paid $255,000. Meanwhile, tuition is going up 6%.
This is what makes people cynical.
People shot in Hartford and Bridgeport. noted author laid out with one punch in New Haven near Yale.
–BRH
Half a mil here ,half a mil there, It’s all funny money anyway! As you know everybody needs a university degree today and the huge debt that goes with it. Too bad they can’t fix their own car or pound a nail. They just go home and live in Mommies basement. My daughter has a math degree but doesn’t use it . She manages a brew pub and makes a fine wage doing it. At least she supports herself and lives independently. Beer brewing will never go down. When times get tough the tough go drinking!
BRH,
I guess we’ll find out the actual price of energy when the neat trick of swapping our debt for other country’s resources stops working.
Under the ‘right’ circumstances, cynical will morph into damn pissed, leaving the desperate and despairing rooted to the spot, absently fondling their credit cards as if they were magical amulets against the harsh sanctions of waste and overshoot.
(As you vividly point out, this area of the country is awash in wealth for some, so it’s highly unlikely the privileged class around these parts is going to sniff the winds for drastic changes until the ravening beast is upon them.)
Remember, this has nothing to do with anything, especially control issues…
https://www.graphicnews.org/pages/en/31337/ENERGY_Israel_plans_gas_pipeline_to_Jordan
Time to brew a batch! (They must be able to grow their own hops over there, right?)
As K-Dog opined, regional cooperation could’ve altered the forecast radically.
Yes I did, and too bad it never happened. Perhaps one reason why it never happened is Israel always gets a pass to do whatever it wishes without any criticism from our government. The illegal settlements should have been stopped long ago and the United States had the influence to do it.
What we are seeing is the fruits of seeds we planted long ago and it is a sour and bitter fruit.
Thanks for the week’s work, JHK. I know that you and many of your commenters have a big dog in this fight. But, in the court of world public opinion – things are likely to be slowly shifting against the Israelis. At any rate, you are totally correct that it is time for the US to begin withdrawing from that corner of the world, to tend to our problems at home. This withdrawal is inevitable in the fullness of time – though it is most likely to drag on to the bitter end.
Meanwhile, someone in the IDF should work on target selection.
And the whole government needs major help with public relations.
This just happened today http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/16/dispatch-israeli-strikte-kills-four-children-at-a-gaza-beach/
Fight to the Death, indeed.
Globalists intend to submerge American into North American Union – and are perfectly willing and able to shed blood to do it. Why aren’t those FEMA camps being used to house the illegals? Because they were built for another purpose.
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/2014/07/globalist-think-tank-north-american-community-will-be-forged-in-the-heat-of-conflict/
Vlad,
A few years ago I was watching Lou Dobbs on CNN and he was discussing the formation of the North American Union. A meeting was taking place in Canada and Dobbs was interviewing an business advocate for such an arrangement.
This man pulled a real Milton Friedman move on Dobbs, he smiled in a deprecating fashion and said,” You’re an Isolationist. You’re a Protectionist.” I’ve described that very tactic on this blog in the past because I recognized the ploy and realized that it was designed to throw Dobbs off-balance, so the discussion was ended.
Never allow a real debate to take place, because the ideology is weak and they know it.
Milton Friedman admitted that people would never vote for his policies, which is why you have to use a disaster to throw people into a tizzy. Then you make your moves swiftly before they regain their balance. It’s called the Shock Doctrine.
Let’s see now, can you think of anything that’s happened since, say the start of this new century?
Globaism is designed to smash the modern nation state with no contract with the people, while turning the state into a trade zone with no citizen protection, and of course no regulation and no rule of law for some. As Margaret Thatcher so famously said, (TINA) “There is no alternative.”
As for FEMA camps—just don’t buy it. But when disaster strikes, who knows…….I wonder what it will be….
Ah Lou Dobbs, a blast from the past. All those shows, all that concern, all that fiery rhetoric – and then he just nonchalantly does a 180 and becomes in favor of the immigrants. It was all just a pose, a an attempt to manage opinion – hoping for “brand” loyalty perhaps? In any case, a well paying gig for a couple of years.
At least you understand that Capitalism can’t save us. Only real White Politics. You don’t believe in the FEMA camps or you don’t believe they were built for us? If the latter, why did they buy all those rounds? After all we’ve seen, I don’t see why my premise is incredible in the least. Remember also Bill Ayers and the number of White Americans who have to go. Is Bill Ayers in prison? Or is he a powerful and respected member of the establishment? And you think I’m extreme?
and a fine brew pub it is Rip, if Im thinking of the same place.
I’ve tipped a few back in there (up on Rte 10 headed your way)
–BRH
Hey Marlin, It is a nice place . the food is so-so, Wings are good. They do brew a fine beer, almost as good as my own. ;o ) Also the back deck is nice , Not far from the the Farmington. http://cbhgranby.com/
Time to hoe the beans. I’ve been waiting for a dry spell. No rain for a month and now almost everyday. Such is New England, give it a day and the weather will surprise you.
Why the plane which can fly at 35,000 feet was only flying at 10,000 feet over a conflict area is one of the questions the relatives of the 295 human shields on board the jet which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur will want to know as details emerge.
Good thing Hamas does not have BUK rockets or they could do some damage and hit what they aim for.
The below article says they were flying at 10,000 meters or 33,000 feet. Have you jumbled up our system and the metric terms? Quite a system if they can hit at that level…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_UKRAINE_PLANE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-07-17-12-47-41
No, I read some reports that said 10,000 feet. Now I am reading some that say 33,000 feet. Of course it may not have been a BUk missile or any missile at all. This is breaking news.
Breaking news and some of it coming from Facebook. It may be a while for facts we can trust to come in.
It never fails: Al Gore goes to Brisbane for Global Warming Conference and is met by record cold. God leaves signs of His displeasure if we would just notice.
http://news.heartland.org/editorial/2014/07/17/two-simple-questions-al-gore
Israel launches ground invasion into Gaza.
Malaysian airliner shot down over the Ukraine/Russia border. 295 dead.
Wow. The whole deal is unraveling!
Wait ’till we leave Afghanistan in a few months. Wait till you see what happens there.
Hey is the esteemed president taking his much needed 2 week vacation at Martha’s Vineyard in a few weeks? In the $12 million ‘cottage’? The Vineyard, for 2 centuries the home of stalwart Yankee whalers and farmers. They’re long gone. Who’s taken their place?
–BRH
Dr. Eran Elhaik, an Israeli geneticist, has studied the DNA of jews, past and present. His conclusion… There is no jewish genome. There is no jewish race. It’s all self-serving bullshit. 95% plus of present day jews are unrelated to the demented denizens of the old testament and mostly unrelated to each other by blood. So who are they?? Maybe just another large loosely knit crime family…….
edit the demented denizens and the nsa got something right!
non jews have been part of the chosen nation since exodus and abraham. technically, the circumcision was the only real defining factor of the race even into the christian era when they constantly got into debates about its necessity. they kept birth records and genealogies but all that went up in flames centuries ago. end of debate.
The air crash has false flag written all over it. Just as when Russia poisoned Litvinenko, they didn’t do it on Russian soil and they had plausible deniability. Russia is far too clever to down a plane right on the Ukrainian/Russian border.
Note that in Obama’s speech he said that an “investigation” was being conducted but he couldn’t stop talking without mentioning the pro-Russian rebels. In effect he was insinuating that the results of the investigation were in before the investigation started. Typical Washington double-speak.
I understand that this is slightly off-topic, but the lies told by various “leaders” and their effect on the lumpen-proles do determine the pits of desperation innocents get thrown into while these psychopaths scramble for continued power and control/influence.
” Kiev deployed powerful surface-to-air missile systems to E. Ukraine ahead of the Malaysian plane crash – reports: The Ukrainian military reportedly deployed a battery of Buk surface-to-air missile systems, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, to the Donetsk region the day before the Malaysian passenger plane crashed in the area.”
Now that’s pretty interesting! And who would be getting the most benefit from this aircraft shootdown, hmmm? (I wasn’t taught how to believe, I was taught how to think.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39135.htm
Our president is either gullible, not good at objective thought, or a bald-faced liar.
Oh yes, he said she said. The check is in the mail and I won’t…………………..
from ZH:
The Final Moments Of Flight MH-17: The Russian Side Of The Story
Was the Shootdown of the Passenger Jet Over Ukraine a False Flag?
Who bears responsibility? Why was the plane there? The ten previous had passed through well to the south. Do Malaysian airline pilots know how to fly? Where the pilots directed to pass to the north?
There are many layers to this cake and Ukraine seems very quick to say it is covered in Russian frosting. Perhaps too quick.
A good chance to practice keeping an open mind and practice paying attention to all the facts coming in. Not just the ones you like. One thing’s for sure. There are shooting wars going on an innocent civilians are being killed every day.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-18/ukraines-security-service-has-confiscated-air-traffic-control-recordings-malaysian-j
Well, that would be about the end of knowing what really happened.
So, according to the time-tested scenario (since the evidence is being disappeared/buried under a thick layer of concrete as we speak), the “facts” will now be conjured out of some official agency to bolster the foregone “conclusion” and someone with a last name beginning with the letter P will issue a damning indictment, loaded with incontrovertible “proof” to the U.N. — and away we go!
Say it with me kids: P is for perfidious! Yay, Good Job!
Powell, Powers……… P.O.W.! Punk’d again.
And, yes, K., our president is also very quick to make sure to equate the location of the downing with “rebel-held territory” to make sure that “thought-stopper” is firmly in place in case of any opposing/contradicting narratives. Why, it’s a frame-up, I tells ya. We’re about to see just how dumb-assed the public is. Any bets on whether they’re even dumber and more herd-able now than at the beginning of the 21st C.? Or if they’re more easily frightened, which will make them swallow the latest gulfoftonkinincident even faster and more completely?
Good cover for economic collapse and that push down the dark cellar stairs for what remains of poor ol’ Bill O’Rights. So long pal, we were just about to actually confer with you about… er… something or other.
The situation has a history and going by the history we can’t trust our president. I’m glad I only voted for him once. The second time I wrote myself in.
“It can be reasonably concluded that the snipers killing people indiscriminately, and illegally, in Ukraine were trained by the US, through dodgy contractors they dare not employ at home.” – Kiev Snipers: Mystery Solved
Yes Ozone, we are about to see just how dumb-assed the public is. And I don’t think you or I will like what we see.
Our president is either gullible, not good at objective thought, or a bald-faced liar.
Does it have to be a case of either-or or could all of the above be true?
Our president is either gullible, not good at objective thought, or a bald-faced liar. – Ozone
Somehow, there’s an apt metaphor here:
“”It was kind of surreal, you’re watching it and you don’t realize how rare it is at the time until you get home and have a look at the footage.”
In a statement, Rory McAuley of Australia’s department of fisheries explained the shark had no obvious signs of injury — just a large Australian sea lion stuck in its throat.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/07/17/great-white-beach-sea-lion_n_5595303.html?ncid=webmail4
I added ‘The Star Online’ to the newspaper rack in my reading room. That’s in the left column on the bottom of the list. Or you can just get it here.
The Star Online is Malaysian news. The MH17 crash is about all the news they are reporting on right now.
maybe malaysia airlines has developed a bad reputation since the discovery of weaknesses in their security checks for valid passports and suspicious muslim pilots. why is the plane flying low enough to be targeted by militants on the ground? since shooting down of aircraft is not new under those volatile circumstances in that wide swath of country…why were domestic flights passing through that airspace to begin with? i think malaysian airlines should be boycotted and/or shut down until further notice by the investigation teams.
If the chain of evidence can be trusted flight data recorders will give altitude and course data and many questions will be answered. But until then speculation will roil like a pot of water on a red hot burner.
What makes a muslim pilot suspicious? Do all muslims want to kill themselves in a glazed and crazed passion for the invisible boss?
I think not.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, thousands of aliens are pouring over our border. This crash sure makes for a good distraction from the Real Story – the Only Story for us here and now.
Yes, you wouldn’t want to hear anything complimentary about muslims; not on your agenda. So giddy-up on back to the ranch.
this is not about all muslims…just the ones who fly for malaysia.
the crime scene has already been tampered with so trust is out the window in those circumstances.
there is no reason for the ukraine to trust anyone or anything since their “brothers” have turned on them like a rabid dog.
Privateering. It’s officially back in business:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/07/mattis-soldiers-without-borders/#!bhTeBh
…And, they have a “General Letter-of-Marque”.
Take-away quote:
“Under the guidance of General Mattis, Soldiers Without Borders will allow those veterans to once again visit decisive, remorseless peace on needy and deserving recipients around the globe.”
You can’t make this shizznitzel up…
Cheers!
It’s a joke site. You have to try a bit harder.
Well, you could’ve figured that out from the ‘take-away’ quote… But these days, who can tell eh?
Well MD, American fighting men need a place to go since the highest ranking 4 star Admiral in the US Navy is a black lady who never commanded a fighting ship, and the new Lt General who commands the US Air Force in the pacific is a middle aged lady who never piloted a combat aircraft.
We’ve come a long way since Curtis ‘bombs away’ LeMay bombed Germany and Japan to rubble, and Admirals Forrestal and King crushed the mighty Japanese Imperial Navy.in the pacific theatre.
Putin will be sh-tting in his pants when he hears this news.
–BRH
The bodies at the crash site have been looted of all valuables by locals and militia!
But the black boxes are safely back in Moscow where they can’t be altered or substituted by New World Order hacks. You’re still fighting WW2. You still think the US is the good guy. It isn’t now and it wasn’t then.
What? You’re not a patriot?
Yes – a patriot of America as it should have been. The foundations were faulty. The Revolution was largely a mistake since it was based on a rejection of Tradition and a desire for greater commercial freedom. Yet not to be too hard on these guys: obviously they would have been horrified at what they have wrought and would have done it differently if they had known. Obviously Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have said all men are created equal – a vague statement, false on the face of it, and opening the door to endless malicious interpretation and litigation.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/07/america-imagine-a-world-without-her/#comments
Australia rejected Global Warming Death Cult – and the Carbon Credit hucksters who sought to profit off the Dark Age to come.
http://www.vault-co.blogspot.com/2014/07/go-tony-good-on-ya-mate.html
Hey Vlad let me be the 1st to wish you Happy Nelson Mandela Day.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the world unraveling after all just a few months ago we were told by John Kerry the biggest international threat we face is Global Warming, bar none.
Remember just a short 5 1/2 years ago it was a new day, peace was at hand, we were on the doorstep of utopia?
What, you think we forgot all that bullsh-t?
Right now I have Washington Week tuned in and all the media sh-theads are busy running flak and covering for Obama. In short, none of it is his fault.
–BRH
Not a joke, AND in accordance with this week’s fixation:
Best I’ve seen from an MSM source, so far.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/07/israel_launches_ground_assault_on_gaza_the_israeli_government_no_longer.single.html
The Israeli government seems to have forgotten how to think strategically; at the very least, they have a self-destructive tendency to overplay their hands.”-FredKaplan.
I find this new-found attention to strategic thinking interesting, especially when it comes from Mr. Kaplan… This is even more noteworthy in that he’s someone who generally stays ‘on-message’ and with the rest of the pack…
Cheers!
So how many times in the mirror did this reflection bounce. An even number of times the Russian rebels did it. An odd number and the Ukraine Nazis did.
Rebel leader gives bizarre account of plane crash
Obama says he has satellites that say the rebels did it. It took a day to ‘download’ that data. Is that a bounce in the mirror?
In a Struggle to the Death it appears the bullshit never ends. Someone did say truth was the first casualty. Can’t remember who.
“In war, truth is the first casualty.”
—> Attributed to Aeschylus, and later to Sen. Hiram Johnson but the credit most likely belongs to Philip Snowden in his introduction to __Truth and the War__ (circa 1916).
It’s one of my favorites…
;]
Thank You!
This guy. No mention of that book at Spartacus link though.
Searching more gave me:
this
The Fed has fixed everything and everyone is SO HAPPY now!
/s
Actually… well, just look at the chart:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/07/20140718_gdp.jpg
Oh! You Poor Dears! Don’t like the way your stock price looks? Just buy some more of it:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-17/scariest-chart-ibms-history
And remember children; “Just Keep Swimming!”
/s
“So how many times in the mirror did this reflection bounce. An even number of times the Russian rebels did it. An odd number and the Ukraine Nazis did.”
Plane was no brought down by surface-to-air missile – the Ukrainian BUKs actually missed. It was brought down by air-to-air missile from two Ukrainian jet-fighters that were escorting the Boeing. The unmistakable pattern of air-to-air missile impact vs Buk missile impact will easily prove it.
Also, there is a conspiratorial version that this is the SAME 370 Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing in March.
Please let us know where you found this. Send us a url.
One I thought was interesting is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MrASx-RiM
Listen, the whole story sounds like huge provocation. First, the Ukr army got itself surrounded by the Novorossia army, then the new emission center announced by BRICKS and now we have another airliner down.
Links to u-tube videos aint gonna help professional investigation and for sure we aint gonna see one, not in that case.
So make your own conclusions, look for u-tube videos yourself.
Here plenty of links : https://twitter.com/WebsterGTarpley/
Right about now those Black Boxes are locked down in a vault deep inside the Kremlin, next to Hitler’s skull. Nobody outside Moscow will be examining those things for a long time, if ever.
I wonder what Edward Snowden’s thoughts on these events are? Maybe he feels he picked the winning side.
and who’s going to do anything about it? The Dutch? Malaysia? The USA? Nato? ha!
–BRH
“And, yes, K., our president is also very quick to make sure to equate the location of the downing with “rebel-held territory” to make sure that “thought-stopper” is firmly in place in case of any opposing/contradicting narratives. Why, it’s a frame-up, I tells ya. We’re about to see just how dumb-assed the public is.”
– ozone –
Plenty dumb, O3, plenty dumb.
But why does it really matter. The US has a professional military that can be ordered into harm’s way without the public even knowing, much less caring.
Maybe the European public is being manipulated, so as to make them support the economic pain associated with stronger sanctions on Russia? Maybe, but I’m not seeing much evidence for that manipulation, either.
We are ruled by multi-national oligarchs, so why does public opinion matter at all??
It’s a serious question. Does anyone have a serious answer?
That’s an easy one. Its all about ROI – return on investment. If you ever had a herd of a livestock you’d know that a tranquil herd is much easily being manipulated than an angry one.
Containment of a dissent is a costly proposition.
Its like in Nazi death camps. How would you herd hundreds of people into the gas chambers if they’d knew what was coming?
Imagine how many more guards you’d have to put on your payroll?
It’s far more easy to convince the crowd that they are entering a decontamination showers – boom, problem solved!
So public opinion is sooooo important.
That’s exactly why they still have elections in US. You, idiots, deep down there still believe in Constitution, Democracy and Invisible Hand of the Free Market.
To maintain power public opinion cannot be ignored. Honest effective government could pay minimal attention to public opinion but a despotic regime will anger the herd at their peril.
To MisterDarling
Such is the condition of the Middle East that you’d consider “optimistic” a scenario of the future where contending parties go into combat riding camels instead of motorized vehicles, wielding metal blades instead of high velocity projectiles.
What would be a pessimistic outlook? Sharp sticks instead of metal blades? Expanses of sun-bleached bones poking from the sand? “Dead man walking” as you say?
Don’t get me wrong, given our recent past, I don’t discount the worst outcomes. I saw on the news that uranium went missing from the university at Mosul. Imagine that. Oh, but don’t fret, it’s low grade, so says the UN and we can trust them can’t we?
The Iranians are on this propaganda spree where their smiliest, most genial bullshitters are out making happy-talk about their allegedly non-existent nuclear weapons program. You have to laugh.
Imagine that about ten years from now the Iranians unveil the shiny new Kebab bomb sitting atop one of their not necessarily so high-tech missiles. Just high-tech enough to hoist the device over Tel Aviv or a Sunni city.
Unimaginable that they’d produce a nuke? Au contraire, IMO highly imaginable. But don’t worry. Because what do they ALWAYS say? That the Iranians are – cough – “rational”. You heard the argument, that they won’t do anything dumb for fear of being turned into an ash-tray.
Yes, yes, yes, they’re “rational”, they write beautiful poetry, they’re a charming, educated, literate, sophisticated people, sure they are, and not only that but their modern-minded urbanites all want to smoke pot and do top-less sunbathing on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Sure they do. And they’re all in favor of pre-marital sex and, if not that, then their young women are highly skilled at satisfying their boyfriends without going “all-the-way”. Didn’t you see that high-spirited video of Iranian young people dancing to that hit tune? And the young Iranian woman didn’t have a head covering! But, correct me if I’m wrong, haven’t we seen this movie before?
Didn’t German scientists and philosophers and composers ascend to the Everests of intellect and creativity? Wasn’t Berlin just the most avant garde city? Didn’t our well respected leaders assure us that we can reason with Hitler? Didn’t he sign that bit of paper in front of Chamberlain? Wasn’t another great war unthinkable?
And anyway, wasn’t Fascism the way of the future, the modern, rational, efficient system of governance that got things done, that scrubbed off the worst edges of unfettered capitalism?
In the end none of this mattered. Because, in the end, all the optimism about Germany and Fascism was bunk.
So you can paint the ugliest pictures about the Middle East. A scarcity of water? Sensitivity to “price adjustments”? That may be a way of saying they have one foot in the grave from mass starvation. Starvation may be the worst of it. Or it may not even be the worst of it.
Berlin was avant garde until Joseph Goebbels moved into the city and ruthlessly eliminated progressives of all kinds. The Institute for Sexual Science (1919-1933) was vandalized, looted and shut down in 1933, its staff driven into exile by National Socialists. Nazis moved into their old buildings which were used for their own purposes.
Fascism and avant garde Berlin mixed like oil and water; with fascism floating to the top and smothering all.
So you compare Fascism to oil and Pornography to life giving water? Fascism or Nationalism was the salvation of a Germany being destroyed by debt and decadence. Watch that old movie Cabaret. The most beautiful part is when the young Nazis stand up and sing their own future into being.
Hitler investigated who was behind the porn. You guessed it. Same group is still behind it here in America.
Hello Volodya,
“Such is the condition of the Middle East that you’d consider “optimistic” a scenario of the future where contending parties go into combat riding camels instead of motorized vehicles, wielding metal blades instead of high velocity projectiles.
What would be a pessimistic outlook? Sharp sticks instead of metal blades? Expanses of sun-bleached bones poking from the sand? “Dead man walking” as you say?”-Voldya.
A pessimistic forecast is no “sun-bleached bones” at all, only irradiated blister-glass in those areas remaining above the new waterline.
Forget Jerusalem, forget Mecca, or *any* recollection of what happened and why. It simply will not matter who’s ‘fault’ it was. The only thing that outside observers will truly know, is that the former inhabitants collectively failed to survive.
How would they get there? That’s a good question. Let’s walk back from that pessimistic scenario, and examine the components of catastrophe:
Current Situation:
The ‘Levant’ [*] is beset by two high-impact risk items: (1) nuclear annihilation and (2) effects of global warming.
There are two regional actors that can accomplish Item 1, (note that we’re not even factoring nations and non-state actors from outside yet) Israel and Pakistan[**]. Both are nuclear powers. Both are ruled by folks feeling less secure daily.
This is an unstable situation. Risk Response needs to be marked __”Avoid”__, but given the regional penchant for self-sabotage, there needs to be a robust __”Mitigate”__ effort stacked behind that.
This is an accident waiting to happen. We need to understand that in all our words and actions regarding the region.
Item 2 has developed a 100% chance of happening. At 400 ppm – catastrophically above the 280ppm baseline that pertained throughout the evolution of our species – and in light of the VAST divergence between the wishfully predicted and the data gathered thus-far, we can expect that the issue will get out of hand, quickly.
The persistent resistance on the part of relevant decision-makers to the facts of this unfolding predicament __is not encouraging__. Even more than the eventuality of nuclear catastrophe (something that we can still do something about, without changing the fundamental terms of our lives), Item 2 requires a complete and utter about-face and re-routing of resources.
Current Manifestations:
We are already witnessing massive demographic pressure moving from *the equator outwards* and from *coastlines inland*. Mass migration into US territory from the south and into the EU from Africa are two examples.
There’s a third example that I will get to in a moment.
Both are in reaction to scarcity, traceable to events that could have been mitigated by more responsible ruling structures. Unfortunately, they were in fact *enhanced* by them, shortsightedly. Ironically, the Global North is responding no better, they’re simply getting hit later.
Within the USA we are beginning to feel that pressure increase. As the very intelligent mayor of Miami observed, it will only take a 1-foot rise in baseline sea-level to render the real estate of Miami un-insurable, but before that happens the exodus will already be on. Repeated jack-hammerings by storm-surges will ensure that.
When this happens, expect a number of other dominoes to fall, region-wide.
Africa and Central America/Mexico are already demographic toast.
India however [***] is already a death-trap, simply b/c the ruling elite of India were far more interested in putting cash into prestige projects, rather than establishing a robust system of water sanitation, nationwide.
As a result, they will probably be torn apart by cholera and typhoid before they have a chance to die of thirst. This will set off a mass-migration north, east and west… Into their neighbors.
One of whom is Pakistan.
You see where this is going, I’m sure…
😉
Cheers!
— — —
[*] I’ll be using the words ‘Levant’ and ‘Levantine’ for a while. It helps establish a sense of continuity from UK-led policy to US.
[**] Pakistan belongs in the Middle-Eastern region politically, b/c it is an Islamic nation, tied inextricably to Mecca and all that is around it. In terms of what it would be willing to launch for, that can never be overlooked.
[***] Shortsightedly forecast as the center of population increase “by 2060”. Oh, the hubris…
“A scarcity of water? Sensitivity to “price adjustments”? That may be a way of saying they have one foot in the grave from mass starvation. Starvation may be the worst of it. Or it may not even be the worst of it.”-volodya.
PS; about the water scarcity: I was just looking at the issues pushing conflict at the moment, not the deal-extinguishing items on the horizon. Water and land scarcity are the tip of the iceberg.
Meanwhile, we have our own Arab/Israeli war going on at CFN by proxy. But, like the real thing – some of the damaging blows are hidden away from public view. What??
To explain – I decided to do a search for “19,” using Chrome software’s search function. And that lead me to a post by turingtest on the 19th, and that post was linked to a post by jonabark which contained the following excerpt:
“The only clear thing exhibited in this article is unabashed racism and the justification of collective punishment. The idea that Israel acts in self-defense when it *accidentally* targets women and children, but that Gazans do not when they *deliberately* use the same, though far less effective tactics, is morally absurd.” – jonabark, to jhk –
*deliberately* and *accidentally* are terms added by yours truly for clarity of discussion – There’s been a lot of ink spilled saying the distinction is important. World opinion is beginning to disagree with this notion. Accuracy of munitions, asymmetric force projection; and all that.
Three points:
1. Jonabark’s point, whether one agrees or not, is DIRECTLY relevant to JHK’s post for the week. It is worthy of discussion, especially by Israeli’s and the American Jewish Community.
2. Several posters will (mentally, if not in comments here) accuse me of anti-semitism for reprinting jonabark’s idea. Not for agreeing with it even, just for suggesting it as worthy of discussion. This is an indication of how far down the rabbit hole we in the US have all already gone.
3. A lot of good thought and discussion is being totally lost and overlooked because of the system of “nested comments” that JHK and his tech guy have enabled in this blog comment software package.
Meanwhile, events are unfolding in Iraq.
ISIS is consolidating its power and administering the considerable territory it controls. First order of business: require remaining Christians to convert to Islam, get out, or else. You don’t have to guess what ‘or else’ means.
Of course this will make some here happy, Christianity, along with Judaism and free markets being the root of all evil and strife in the world, The sooner this troika is eliminated, the better.
–BRH
Your are equating a perverted schadenfreude with antipathy to Christianity, Judaism and a hatred for capitalism without proper government regulations.
Yet you do so without presenting any logical basisl. Like you are heckling; nothing more. Like a Nazi pig on the loose in avant garde Berlin in 1933.
Wow!
And like you can’t dish it.
Yeah, Backrow – it does appear that some force is conspiring to completely eliminate Christian expression from public view in the US. I see people gloating about it all the time on the internet. It also appears that globalism, prosperity, and such – are eliminating lots of other things, equally useful as organized religion – to survival in a decaying country. This does not please me in the least.
You remember the talk to neutron bombs, right? They were said to “kill the people and leave buildings behind.” Well, what’s been happening over the last 50 years is more like a psychic bomb, to me. IOW, the people are alive, the buildings are standing, but all the structures that give psychic resistance – family, faith, etc – have been destroyed.
And I’m a Christian, still. Despite the efforts of the internet and the many Atheists I have encountered, I’ll claim Christianity until I die. And the type of Christianity in which I was raised says that the Jews are the chosen people with God behind them all the way. Which makes it distressing to know how many Jews have now turned atheist.
You know, Jesus was all over Palestine, and poor people, and all of that, right? Do you think we’d be more likely to find Him among the poor Palestinians – or sitting astraddle the cannon barrel of an Abrams tank? http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-02/news/ct-met-huppke-column-tanks-20130502_1_abrams-congressional-district-army
well C., remember what Joseph Stalin said, and I paraphrase, “God is on the side with the largest, best trained and best equipped Divisions”.
–BRH
That is wise Prog. T.S Elliot once said that building a new culture would be the work of many centuries – and once done not one of us now living would be comfortable in it. We are in that sense Christians whether we believe or not.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/632336-it-is-in-christianity-that-our-arts-have-developed-it
Yes being Jewish is now just an ethnic thing. But that doesn’t deter the Christian Zionists – who believe more than ever that they are the Chosen people. Meanwhile the Jews try to make everyone else forget their own ethnic identity.
“If you think Gaza city is poor you have evidently never been there. They have shopping malls that would shame some US cities and try having alook atbthe numbermof outdoor swimming pools. Gaza is wealthy….” – ww –
Interesting stuff, ww. I’ve never been to Gaza and have no great desire to go, especially right now. I can’t find any information on swimming pools, except that men and women can’t swim together. Oh, and that women have to swim in hijab, which has to keep them in shallow water, or else right on the edge of drowning all the time. (It does make JHK’s clown-pants-swim-suit-dilemma of last week assume a different perspective, as well.)
This pool was destroyed in 2012 – apparently for allowing women to wear “international dress,” or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Water_Park
As far as shopping though, here you appear to go a little over the top. I found the “Gaza Strip Mall,” which is a nice double entendre, at least to US ears. I certainly would not say that this mall would “shame some US cities,” though. It looks pretty small and not all that well stocked. You got a link to a bigger one?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-shrybman/gaza-strip-mall-did-the-e_b_650362.html
WW means Was Wells, and not Walter White.
.
.
.
The population density of the Gaza Strip is 5044 per square Kilometre.
The population density of Israel is 377 per square Kilometre.
That ratio is 13.4.
Income in the Gaza Strip is $2,000 per-capita annually.
Income in Israel is $31,000 per-capita annually.
That ratio is 15.5.
Talk of shopping malls and affluence on the Gaza Strip is ridiculous. As ridiculous as stating that: “The birth-rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world.” All the while neglecting to mention that the Israeli birth rate is now higher than Egypt’s at 3 per woman.
As Christian soul would not stand for such discrepancies. But some claiming to have Christian souls would.
Or Walt Whitman.
“Plane was no brought down by surface-to-air missile – the Ukrainian BUKs actually missed. It was brought down by air-to-air missile from two Ukrainian jet-fighters that were escorting the Boeing. The unmistakable pattern of air-to-air missile impact vs Buk missile impact will easily prove it.” – mountain dwelling fincain –
Very nice propaganda, fincain, very nice indeed. Nothing “over the top,” here. Are you a professional, by chance. It matters not to me – your posts are enjoyable reading, and give a nuanced perspective from the “other side.”
And my sympathies, Lord help me, have shifted over to the Russians and the (eastern, rebel, sepratist???) Ukrainians, in this matter. Free market multi-national capitalism is an unstoppable juggernaut – and the World badly needs a counterbalancing force.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure the separatists are responsible for shooting the missile that downed that plane. I’m also equally sure that it was a mistake of targeting. If it’s a false flag? Well, damn – I just don’t think that’s possible. These weren’t Nicaraguan peasants being killed at the behest of United Fruit, after all – they were 100’s of Europeans on a modern commercial airliner.
=====================
On another note altogether, to Backrow. Look, man – the Country that you and I grew up in, and loved, and served; that country is gone.* I don’t know what is replacing it just yet, but it’s gone. A lot of people of our generation will end their lives wondering what the hell happened. You strike me as too well read and too analytical for that to be your fate.
So – what comes next? Beats me, exactly – but for me it’s going to involve family and faith; and hopefully, some kind of a rebuilding.
Assuming we live that long, right? ;0)
*I think this is only the second time I’ve made this suggestion to you. I’d really like to hear your thoughts about it. Maybe you can talk me out of my conclusions.
P2C headed into work right now. Will discuss this further as time allows.
C. one thing I never got your opinion on a few weeks ago CNBC named Georgia as the best state in the US to own a business. Is that an honor, or a dubious honor?
–BRH
Where did America go? It was destroyed from within and from the top, but the seeds of destruction were sewn long ago. An Ideology like Capitalism that doesn’t nurture its own people is a very poor ruling ethos. Combined with political correctness, we’ve now accelerated to permanent Cultural Revolution. The roller coaster is going to hit the ground very hard indeed. Read this review and then go see D’nesh D’Souza’s movie. He’s very rosy about “our” future, a future with an Asian technical class, a Hispanic/Jewish ruling class, and a decreasing White underclass.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/07/america-imagine-a-world-without-her/#more-48471
Here’s what I think happened. This separatist militia, bunch of yahoo amatuers running around in camo carrying AK rifles, drunk on vodka most of the time. They were previously unemployed anyway at least now they have something to do and some pay, play army The Russians give them a battery of BUK rockets and some perfunctory training, enough to make the thing work and not much else. there is nothing like command and control or an effective chain of command. These dudes are eager to try this thing out much the same way it was on some of the ships I was on, you get a new weapons system and everybody is eager to get underway and fire off some rockets. Here come an aircraft civilian or military who gives a sh-t the important thing to do right now is get some rockets in the air and see if this bad boy works as advertised. After they take down the target its high fives, back slapping and shots of vodka all around, a dream come true.
–BRH
Your heckling can be over the top, but I confess you can also be stimulating.
And here you could be on to something. (Or did you find what I found before you wrote your comment?) Drunken brigands soused on vodka indeed. This just in from Sepang, Malaysia; where it is front page news.
SEPANG: Malaysia is frantically trying to get assistance to secure the site where Flight MH17 crashed even as drunken rebels loot the wreckage, rob the dead and keep investigators out.
A member of an international team of monitors described the area of the crash as “the biggest crime scene in the world”.
He also stressed the need for a lot of “professional work” to be done at the site “very, very, quickly”.
So alcohol may have been involved. Drunks may have done it and political ideology is altogether irrelevant to the situation. Ass-holes did it, nothing more. For which there will be no justice. But not that it matters, because:
Remember the Maine!
Which blew itself up due to a design flaw in Havana harbor in 1898. The sinking of which started a war when it was claimed to have been sent to the bottom by a mine. The equivalent then of a weapon of mass destruction of our time.
“your heckling can be over the top” KDog.
Its just hyperbole, KDog. Half the sh-t on here is over the top.
The BackRowHeckler is that annoying dude out in the cheap seats, in the shadows way up back, shouting out crazy stuff, pissing everybody off, until the time comes when he is forcibly removed by security, but then finds a way to sneak back in the side door and continues the heckling. He just can’t help himself …
–BRH
From a newer in The Star Online Article (Malaysia).
““There’s a grandmother. A body landed right in her bed. She says ‘please take this body away’. But we cannot tamper with the site,” Borodai said. “Bodies of innocent people are lying out in the heat. We reserve the right, if the delay continues … to begin the process of taking away the bodies. We ask the Russian Federation to help us with this problem and send their experts.””
True, or not true, or partially true, this jet was shot down in an area where the rule of law has broken down. The result is chaos and confusion which prevents conduct appropriate to the time and place. A dark and dismal place of uncertain future, where infrastructure and society have been shattered, and compassion is in short supply.
Perhaps what we see is a presage of our the failure to prepare for American life in a post-oil world. The world which awaits around the next bend in the American road.
The Ministry of Truth claims hundreds onboard had AIDS and that the rendered bodies are being looted…….the perps may get more than they expect.
No Mini-True says that a hundred AIDS researchers were on board. The news reader said “Maybe the cure was on that plane”. Violins…
“True, or not true, or partially true, this jet was shot down in an area where the rule of law has broken down. The result is chaos and confusion which prevents conduct appropriate to the time and place. A dark and dismal place of uncertain future, where infrastructure and society have been shattered, and compassion is in short supply.”-K Dog.
Good observation. This is what it looks like when a nation fails. This is 3rd Stage collapse.
Each stage does not inevitably follow the last, it is possible to halt collapse at one of the stages, however this becomes _less_ likely with each succeeding stage.
It’s like a disease. Early intervention is *much* easier than trying to halt the spread of it later. This all depends on the ability of the patient to 1) _understand_ that they need treatment and 2) they have _adequate resources_ to take effective action.
The scarcer the resources, the quicker the reaction time needs to be. Without that rapid response time…
😉
Cheers!
Your observation is also good. Comparison with disease is apt.
One thing that may happen is that as misery mounts, excuse my gloom speculation, a contagion of despair may spread. The weight of it all could engender a feeling that we are powerless to make changes and arrest collapse. Like it was all meant to be, preordained, and that this is just the way it is.
I fact I’d say the notion is already beginning to infect. If so an unnecessary stage of collapse will have been reached, if, that is, arrest of collapse is even in our future.
“Like it was all meant to be, preordained, and that this is just the way it is.”-K Dog…
Or, like it’s all just part of a “New Normal”?
😉
Or part of a “Greater Delusion”!
the perps may get more than they expect.
‘
‘
‘
Karma.
P4W: “And I’m a Christian, still. … You know, Jesus was all over Palestine, and poor people, and all of that, right?”
Glad to hear you are a Christian, P4W. Jesus was all about welcoming strangers. Christians love, welcome, and seek justice for immigrants. Christians follow Jesus and welcome the stranger. The Bible speaks clearly and repeatedly to God’s concern for the immigrant, guiding the Christ-follower toward principles that should inform both the interpersonal ways that we interact with our immigrant neighbors and the public policies that we support. Welcome, Christian P4W!
Christians take the “I was a stranger” challenge seriously.
http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/iwasastranger/challenge-yourself/
“This separatist militia, bunch of yahoo amatuers running around in camo carrying AK rifles, drunk on vodka most of the time.” — BRH
BRH, a mobile BUK missile battery is usually composed of three separate track-mounted units, made up of a radar, a launcher and a command post. These are operated by technicians who have had months of training. Rebels drunk on vodka might not qualify. Russian military would have the know-how.
Good point Asoka …
Those technicians are probably by now long gone then, skedadled back across the Russian border. What’s left are the drunken Ukrainian local militiamen, milling around the crash site, causing havoc, frightening legitimate investigators, looting bodies, rifling thru luggage, firing their weapons in the air at the same time grabbing anyting that may be of value.
Asoka….’s explanation that drunks could not have done it and that well trained technicians are needed to launch missiles makes sense. But well trained technicians follow orders and they do it well.
So who gave the orders?
The real hard core drunks around here drink Bukov Vodka. only $4 or $5 a pint. Warms you up in the winter and cools you down in the summer. Drink it straight or mix it with orange juice take it either way
But first they eat raw onions. Such fare make Men strong and fierce. It clean blood and clear heart – and that clear head. You weak Americans have no idea what it is to be Man.
Your parody of a Russian I assume? Or have you changed nationalities?
Reagan would have been quick to call Putin an international war criminal. Obama is more calculating and calm.
Obama had Kerry (who JHK disparages) work out a deal with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov so that both the U.S. and Russia will use their influence on the two sides of the Ukraine conflict to end hostilities. That is smart foreign policy. Obama saved lives and money by not going for a knee-jerk military response like McCain wanted.
Kerry also got the Russians to agree that all evidence, including flight recorders, should be made available for international investigation and that experts should be given access to work on the site and that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) should play a leading role in the investigation. It is a win-win outcome. Obama got ‘er done!
McCain is an embarrassment who capitalizes on this tragedy to advance his own political agenda. But where there should be shame there is only a dearth of clues. If you say Obama and Kerry are doing something good and they actually are that’s great news and McCain needs both a haircut and a brain.
Not sure why the partisan Obama worship here in the midst of such degradation, but I guess O needs whatever help he can get these days.
I read the Reuters and Tass accounts of the telephone call and it does not appear that Russia was somehow caving to the wise and just American position, skillfully advanced. Quite the contrary it appears that Russia is as interested in an impartial investigation as say, the Dutch. Hence the employment of the ICAO, of which Russian AND Ukraine are members. And the agreement that everything including flight data recorders should be made available.
I don’t have a clue about the black boxes – either their location or whether it is somehow possible to alter the data within. It is of more than passing interest that ZeroHedge reported the Ukrainians took possession of the air traffic control tapes of conversation with the pilot:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-18/ukraines-security-service-has-confiscated-air-traffic-control-recordings-malaysian-j
This is in stark contrast with the previous Malaysian Airline disaster where these tapes were immediately made available. Any form of “taping” whether analogue or digital can be altered and if the ZeroHedge reporting is correct that leads one to suspect the Ukrainians may have something to hide. That the flight took an unusual, perhaps even singular path has been reported by every source. It leads one to wonder who would benefit from having a flight full of Dutch and East Asians shot down.
Obviously the least benefit confers to Putin. He has lost at least a knight and bishop and is in serious jeopardy. The most benefit confers to the forces defending the petrodollar status quo. The Western Europeans who have been less than enthusiastic about the sanctions are now confronted with an atrocity of sufficient magnitude to alter their behavior toward the emerging Eurasian trade zone. This could hinder the BRICS movement to create an alternative reserve currency. Dutch…. East Asians. Maybe not the Dutch so much (they are still in the Western sphere) but certainly the non-Chinese Asians must be having second thoughts about the changing tableau and who their future partners may be.
So given what is known now it looks like the rebels shot it down, possibly with technical assistance provided by Russia, believing it was Ukrainian based on the flight path which was directed by Ukrainian air traffic control. The rebels and their enablers took the bait.
Well said!
It’s easy for people, including JHK, to sarcastically tear down we’ll-known leaders. But I find it refreshing to find someone who truthfully acknowledges good effort, regardless of whether or not it may be popular to do so at this time.
The other, the rampant criticism with no real viable alternative solutions offered, has the stench of “hipsterism” .
Routine human sacrifice must be normal, though to a Western sensibility it seems tragic.
But western sensibilities are responsible for a very bloody Friday of human sacrifice. Just another day of uneventful normal in Israel where this picture I’m linking to is not considered tragic at all. To the western sensibilities causing the smoke it was inspiring.
“….one thing I never got your opinion on a few weeks ago CNBC named Georgia as the best state in the US to own a business. Is that an honor, or a dubious honor?” – brh –
That’s fascinating, backrow!! You pay attention to CNBC? ! ?
Seriously, though – thanks for the shoutback. And honestly, I don’t find the business climate in Georgia to be all that different from most other states. Some areas are booming, many areas are in decline. Education is a perennial work in progress, etc. etc. Looks to me like some writer(s) just tweaked the algorithms concerning taxes, growth, transportation, etc – to the point that Georgia came out on top; and then decided to write an article.
What is more interesting, is the comments to the CNBC article you reference. Take a look: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101767549#.
I mean WOW. What an incredible assembly of bigoted, racist, and completely unthinking south-bashers. I always suspected that the “normal” CNBC audience had some issues – but the hate and fear expressed in those comments is something to behold. Amazing.
I had no idea. Thanks!
“Christians love, welcome, and seek justice for immigrants.”
– asoka, per JHK, “the poster who must not be named” –
Asoka*, you’re certainly not the first person to distort the meanings of Christianity toward your own secular ends.
You probably won’t be the last.
It is good that you call for “justice” for immigrants, though. In many cases this will mean deportation proceedings leading to a swift humane return of recent immigrants to supportive, sustainable, and walkable communities in their country of origin.
Yeah, what’s up with these loser Arabs that “act up and act out”. Why can’t they just accept the fact that they don’t really need electricity, those very valuable liquid fuels (needed by more deserving peoples) medical supplies, and sewage treatment. And unrestricted travel? Are they completely crazy? I mean really, why can’t they just swim in their own sewage in the Mediterranean? It’s better than no beach, right? And why do they need to visit relatives, that’s what cell phones are for.
And what about this “doing what they can to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic state”? Those damn Philistines have been trying to do that for over 3000 years. You’d think they’d learned their lesson by now! Israel will obviously replace Islamic fools, not the other way around. Come on Gaza, who has the bigger guns?
“The birth-rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world”. Well look out Palestinians because those Israelis have already killed a bunch of those unnecessary babies and I’m sure they will get many more. Stop having sex if you don’t want dead children, OK?. Maybe the Israelis can work out a more efficient way to eliminate all these extra useless resource using humans.
And how can Hamas “uses its own people as human shields”? Why not just build an iron dome? What’s the problem?
These poor Jews, “nobody was on the side of its people in 1939”! It just isn’t fair that the whole world is now on the side of the Palestinians. It’s a tragedy! How could this happen again?
Enough already, just get these f***ing foreigners the hell out of Israel!
Yes and the ungrateful residents of the Gaza Strip can’t appreciate the pains and money Israel went to and spend to stimulate the community in Gaza. Israelis remembering those warm and cozy nights in the Warsaw Getto nostalgic and wistful for the tight bonds of community the wall there engendered, wanted to pass on this gift to the residents of Gaza. As payment or reparations for stealing their lands I suppose. A kindness.
http://www.telegram.ee/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/m%C3%BC%C3%BCr.jpg
Getto should be Ghetto.
Oh, and since it’s Sunday and ‘we’ like more fuel for the fire:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://friedensblick.de/12462/abschuss-mh17-spuren-deuten-auf-kugelhagel-von-jagdflugzeug-hin/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://friedensblick.de/12462/abschuss-mh17-spuren-deuten-auf-kugelhagel-von-jagdflugzeug-hin/%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D657
Forget ‘BUK’ anti-aircraft batteries, the plane was shot down by the Ukrainian AF, apparently…
If so the Rebels will be taking good care of the flight data recorders. A very interesting article by someone who knows what they are talking about.
Clinton can barely contain his glee as he talks about the shot down plane. Evil? Of course. A Lusitania type incident? Perhaps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2KG2gMT08k
Clinton simply grows more despicable with age.
From last week –
And concerning the “children” coming over the southern US border.
Many are not children, they are teens. Makes a BIG difference.
http://www.greenevillesun.com/news/ap_national_news/article_100fed44-74a5-56ec-b023-aa03fbf858bf.html And well over 50% are male teens; which will prove to make an even BIGGER difference, eventually
And BeingThere – you referenced the 2008 law concerning “child” immigrants from non-contiguous countries as being somehow less bad because it was “passed under the Bush administration,” or something.
Come on, dudette! You’re one of the ones who first started to teach me that BOTH sides of US politics are biased against citizens and in favor of the oligarchs. This “Bush era” law looks like a pretty good example of your basic thesis.
It’s not about the skills. It never it was.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249837/U.S._Senator_blasts_Microsoft_s_H_1B_push_as_it_lays_off_18_000_workers
Oh, and about that layoff ‘letter’?
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140717221024-54592984-microsoft-lays-off-18-000-with-ridiculous-letter?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0
The process of economic cannibalization continues…
Addendum:
See, there’s a structural problem with this entire direction:
http://pando.com/2014/07/17/new-san-francisco-billboard-warns-workers-theyll-be-replaced-by-ipads-if-they-demand-a-fair-wage/
If you’re not profitable enough to pay workers a wage that leaves discretionary income, what does that say about your business model, long- or short-term?
I’ve taken the suggestion to not use automated checkout stands. In so doing I’ve noticed others doing the same. So stinkin App, we don’t need no stinking app.
Wait a minute..
Just last week these same silicon valley types claimed we need tens of thousands more H-1B immigrant visas to fill jobs Americans won’t do.
Many are not children, they are teens. Makes a BIG difference
.
.
Teens are children.
We deported teen gang members from LA to Central America. We thought that deportation was a solution ( an expensive one) …
Now the deported gang members are making life unlivable for other teens there (in Honduras, El Salvador, etc.) … Hence the influx back to the USA.
When a 14 year old girl watches gang members assassinate her brother, then tells her she is going to become their property or she will meet the same fate, she decides to immigrate to the USA.
We created the problem for her when we deported the gang members to her country. It doesn’t matter that they are teenage children; they still need our love and support. They should be rewarded with amnesty and given schooling. They should not be sent back to Central America to be killed, or worse.
“Now the deported gang members are making life unlivable for other teens there (in Honduras, El Salvador, etc.) … Hence the influx back to the USA.”
– pkrugman* conceding that “teens” manifest violent adult behaviors –
And honestly, I’m beginning to enjoy watching Pres. Obama and the pro-immigrant forces spinning in the wind because of the situation on the southern border. And I think the best thing for the long-term – might well be two more years of 100’s of thousands of illegal immigrant “children” being allowed in – and resettled willy nilly into various cities and liberal strongholds.
Two years of that, with the resulting social mayhem it will cause, could lead to “comprehensive immigrations reform” that actually restricts population growth the one place that we in the US have some control – INSIDE the US.
And don’t give me that specious argument that it doesn’t matter which side of an “invisible line” a person lives. I’ve heard it. Hearing it again won’t make it valid.
And honestly, I’m beginning to enjoy watching Pres. Obama and the pro-immigrant forces spinning in the wind …
–P4W, being honest
Of course it matters which side of the border you live.
Nobody is “allowing” the children in. They fight to get here. They risk their lives to get here. The least we can do is to reward their effort with amnesty. So damn few make it across the border anymore.
“Of course it matters which side of the border you live.”
– pkrugman* concedes truth at last –
And then you spoil it by giving me a modified version of the “nation of immigrants-best-and-brightest” moral platitude. sigh.
I’m pretty sure many of these recent “child” immigrants are going to stay, by hook or crook. Leaving behind, of course, all their remaining family and friends in their walkable, sustainable home village.
In fact, pkrugman*, you should take two to live with you. Why just two?
Because by the time those two bring in their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents – you will have more than your share. I hope you have a big house and a well stocked pantry.
Just leave the keys on the counter when you leave for the last time, would you? Hasta la vista, kruggy*.
I’m pretty sure many of these recent “child” immigrants are going to stay, by hook or crook. Leaving behind, of course, all their remaining family…
–P4W
Many of the children come here to reunite with family.
It is good we agree that many will stay here.
“Many of the children come here to reunite with family.”
– pkrugman acknowledges more truth –
Family all ready here illegally, correct? Otherwise the family could sponsor the child as a legal immigrant. Not that it matters, in an unsustainable country, on an overcrowded planet.
“It is good we agree that many will stay here.”
– pkrugman* parses meanings –
It is good, only if this latest influx becomes the last influx.
================
And – to the aunts, uncles, brothers, and parents, be sure to add a couple of cousin gangbangers. Best stock a LOTT of cerveza in the fridge of that big mud hut of yours. The cousins will expect it – drinking age south of the border applies to anyone tall enough to reach-the-bar.
speaking of too-early drinking ages
“However, the Office of Immigration Statistics reported that of the 188,382 deportations of illegal aliens in 2011, 23 percent had committed criminal traffic offenses (primarily driving under the influence). Congress estimates that illegal alien drunk drivers kill 13 Americans every day — that’s a death toll of 4,745 per year (snip)
another 23 percent, more than 43,000 illegal aliens, were convicted of drug offenses. The violent crime category of assault, robbery, sexual assault, and family offenses comes to 12 percent. The non-violent crime grouping of larceny, fraud, and burglary totaled seven percent, and on the list goes — equaling 100 percent of illegal aliens who have been through the criminal justice system….”
– website –
I sure am glad they are all going to be living in your state, in your mud hut. Thanks for helping.
http://cpwp.swehes.com/illegal-alien-crime-and-violence-by-the-numbers-were-all-victims/
Oy vey, P4W. Nobody, in or out of government, keeps track of statistics of crimes perpetrated on “illegals” or by “illegals”
The numbers you cite are bogus. You are spreading misinformation.
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2007/kingillegal.html
Lies, Conservatives, and Statistics
dueling websites –
And, aww gee – isn’t it cute that pkrugman* managed to find one that obfuscates the issue and denies that “migrants” commit many crimes at all. Reality is worse; check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Crimes_committed_by_illegal_immigrants
=======================
Looking forward to the new week’s work, JHK. Last night’s news seems to say things aren’t going as well for the IDF as is normal.
My sympathies are with the dead, injured, and oppressed on both sides. This thing needs to come to a resolution. 60 years of stress and war in one small region is too much, IMO.
Hello, this is a test
Mikhail Khazin: Why America Can’t Stop
United States is deliberately destroying the entire system of international security. In the 1990s the generation of “victors” came to power , these people are convinced that they had “defeated” the USSR.
They decided that collective security arrangements are onerous, and that they need their own security system, the one that only they will have control over.
Obviously constructing a new security system from scratch is an endeavor that is both expensive and slow. The trouble is that all those plans, which were developed in the 90s and which US began to implement during 2000s (quite possibly, the events of September 11, were organized to launch the execution of those plans), so those plans had been based on the premise of continuous economic growth, itself founded upon the primacy of America’s resources. Instead US ended up with a crisis, which has significantly reduced those available “resources.”
The capture of former Socialist Commonwealth’s markets has indeed become “the golden age” of American economy, even the budget scored a surplus.
But at the beginning of 2000 the US economy was standing on the brink of abyss comparable to where it found itself in the early 1930s.
Today’s picture is far more frightening and what can be done about it unclear as well. The old security model has been destroyed. Trust cannot be restored, a new model does not exist, there are some elements of it here and there, but they function only if the US directly intervenes into the process. Intervention factually consists of allocating large sums of money to all participants in the process, and it is faulty: Palestine, ISIS, etc.
This is happening while the situation inside the US worsens. The problem is that for a long time US have a barrier in place that has separated the elite from the rest of the society. American educational system, system that prepares societal leaders, has been destroyed already back in the 1960s, an average citizen (the sheep in the parlance of the elite) has actually no chances of advancement to an upper “elite” level, the one from which the society is being governed.
However for those few who are born active, unless the punitive psychiatry destroys them at a tender age or they fall victim to juvenile justice, for them there are still mechanisms for upward social mobility which could bring them up to the level of technocratic elite.
The trouble is that in the course of this half of a century America had accumulated lots of people who are absolutely unprepared to tolerate a sharp decline in their standards of living. But along with the worsening of the economic crisis, in order to maintain their grip on power and their status the “actual” elites must most definitely reduce the living standard of these population strata of the American society. And that can push the system up onto the critical level of mutual contradictions. Because internal resources necessary for maintenance of the quality of life of this so called upper middle class are depleted, they need to find some substitute external resources.
To phrase it differently: the United States can only preserve domestic social stability at the expense of someone else.
The Bretton Woods system was based upon a premise that all assets of participating member states will be dollar denominated. So fresh dollars were printed along with introduction of new assets into the system, and the US elites could then work out how those dollars are to be shared with the elites of those new countries (or regions) that were about to be incorporated within this dollar zone. How those regional elites were going to split those dollars with their own population was their own concern. But there are no more assets to be brought into the system, consequently no new dollars are being printed, and worse than that, existing dollars are being redistributed for America’s benefit through US controlled world dollar system.
This makes internal conflicts in many of the world’s countries all but unavoidable.
Some of those conflicts are at their beginning stage while others are already burning hot, but their essence is all he same, counter-elites, the ones who were not let into the proverbial dollar cookie jar now make claims upon existing elites demanding either to restore the scale of support they get (that means that the old elites must commence financing of the economy from their own pockets) or yield power and get out of the way. Most obvious that because those existing elites are all pro-American, the scenario is developing under accompaniment of increasingly anti-American rhetoric.