JHK’s Three-Act Play
I played fiddle at a small-town, country dance last night with several other musicians and it was a merry enough time because that kind of self-made music has the power to fortify spirits. About half the dancers were over 40 and the rest were teenage girls. The absence of young men was conspicuous. Toward the end of the evening, it was just girls dancing with girls. A wonderful and fundamental tension was not present in the room.
The young men are out there somewhere in the country towns, but this society increasingly has no use or no place for them, except in the army. There is absolutely no public conversation about the near total devaluation of young men in the economic and social life of the USA, though there is near-hysterical triumphalism about the success of young women in every realm from sports to politics to business, and to go with that an equal amount of valorization for people who develop an ambiguous sexual identity.
There really is no local forum for public discussion in the flyover regions of the USA. The few remaining local newspapers are parodies of what newspapers once were, and the schools maintain a fog of sanctimony that penalizes thinking outside the bright-side box. Television and its step-child, the internet, offer only the worst temptations of hyper-sexual stimulation, artificial violence, and grandiose wealth-and-power fantasies. There aren’t even any taverns where people can gather for casual talk.
Many of the remaining jobs “out there” are jobs that can be done by anyone — certainly the office work, but also the jobs with near-zero meaning, minimal income, and no status in the national chain burger shacks and box stores — and young women are more reliably subject to control than young men jacked on testosterone, corn syrup, and Grand Theft Auto.
Of course, the idea that higher education can lift a population out of this vortex of anomie is a cruel joke, especially now with the college loan racket parasitizing that flickering wish to succeed, turning young people into debt donkeys. The shelf-life of that particular set of lies and swindles will hit its sell-by date soon in a massive debt repudiation — and the nation will come to marvel at the mendacious system it allowed itself to get sucked into. But this still only begs the question of what young men will do in such a deceitful system.
My guess is that they will shift their attention and activity from the mind-slavery of the current Potemkin economy to the very monster we find ourselves fighting overseas: a domestic ISIS-style explosion of wrath wrapped in an extreme ideology of one kind or another replete with savagery and vengeance-seeking. The most dangerous thing that any society can do is invalidate young men. When the explosion of youthful male wrath occurs in the USA, it will come along at exactly the same time as all the other benchmarks of order become unmoored — especially the ones in money and politics — which will shatter the faith of the non-young and the non-male, too. Also, just imagine for a moment the numbers of young men America has trained with military skills the past 20 years. Not all of them will be disabled with PTSD, or mollified with rinky-dink jobs at the Wal-Mart, or lost in the transports of heroin and methedrine.
The authorities will have no way to understand what is happening and we are certain to endure a long season of violence and social chaos as a result. The re-set from that will be an economy and a society that few now yammering in the HuffPo or the Tea Party will recognize. That society emerging from the ashes of the current matrix of rackets will desperately need young men to rebuild, and there will be plenty of opportunity for them — though it won’t feature fast cars, Kanye West downloads, or bottle service.
There are other ways for young men to find a useful and valued place in a society, but these are too far beyond the ken of our current meager narratives.
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Huxley said people would love their servitude: http://youtu.be/0hOnL627Fs0
What is especially Huxley ‘Brave New World’ in undermining the mentality of young males, is the free porn phenomenon documented on sites like ZeroHedge and Tech Crunch. It seems that the leading free porn site – xvideos – at some peak moments is actually taking 2% of the internet bandwidth of the entire world!
The addiction of free pornography of course captures mostly males, starting teenage into 20s, and this is thought to be a major factor in why females are now doing better at school, getting more Master’s degrees etc.
The free pornography sites are curiously inexplicable as a business model. Officially they earn income from advertising links for paid porn, but it’s questionable if that is sufficient. Another thing is the copyright issues, much more laxly treated than mainstream Hollywood movie downloads. One can see grounds for ‘conspiracy’ thoughts, that it is the US goobermint behind all the free porn purveyors … who have all the world’s young men watching it, using web tricks to avoid censors in Saudi Arabia etc. Most of the world’s male ‘revolutionary youth’ enfeebled, as long as they have food & free porn.
It’s also been on ZeroHedge, that whenever young women take photos of themselves nude or in their underwear on their iPhones, and send them or post them ‘privately’, there is something like a 75% chance the picture is hacked in transmission and ends up somewhere on free porn sites or other collections. Women eager to be models, men the obsessive watchers, indulging the reptile brain.
ZeroHedge also had that in the USA, the #1 site for paid porn purchases … is Utah. Could be tho that Mormons are just honest enough to pay for it instead of using the free porn tube sites.
If complaining about America was an Olympic sport, Kunstler would have the gold medal for sure. I think Doug Casey has it right. Leave. He talks about how great Uruguay and Argentina are and I am open to that idea. America has become a cartoon of itself. In short, America is a drag.
I’ll stay. Despite its flaws, America is my home. We complain, yes, but that’s because we love it. We believe that it can be better (against all hope!)
The Americans, despite their ignorant and slothful ways, are my people. My countrymen. I owe it to them to keep trying.
My hat is off to you. But Americans got suckered into a Civil War once, and the way it’s shaping up, they’ll get suckered into one again. You have a group of people who are absolutely, positively certain they know the right way to live, and they want you to live that way too. It’s an out growth of empire. They think they’re the reason America was great. They really do. And what do you know, almost all them live in the South.
No, the South tried to opt out of the nascent neo-puritan empire of people who know what’s best for everyone. The puritans wouldn’t let them go. Amazing how you got it so wrong – you’re probably one of them. Not being able to see themselves is one of the sources of their power.
Next time just raise your hand.
Wow. Janos got up early today.
While not overtly racist, adoration of the slave owning south is PAR for the course.
This site is a sponge for racists of every stripe. The fact that he is still here spouting bile is testament to Jim’s own odd belief system.
Jim, I don’t buy your books anymore.
The cesspool you run online gives a platform to hatred.
I thought The Great Emergency was one of the most important books of our time. But what you do here just creeps me out.
Sorry. Someone has to say it.
seawolf, it’s no use trying to reason with Janos, she’s experiencing a white-out. no telling when or if conditions will improve. it works something like this: you post a comment and Janos will promptly whip it up into a vanilla milk shake and throw it in your face
Alph,
I wonder how Janos got so smart sitting in front of his computer in his mothers basement all day. LOL
None of you guys tried to disprove what I said though. Ad Hominem attacks are an admission of intellectual defeat.
really Janos? girl do you read your own posts? last week you called ozone stupid and accused him of being on the pipe. not exactly adhering to your own rules are you? and as far as trying to disprove what you said…well that’s a waste of time. I mean what are we supposed to disprove? the civil war took place because, among other things the south had built it’s economy on the backs of slaves. so far so good? of course with you Janos one shouldn’t assume so i’ll ask, do you think slavery in the south was wrong? your gospel of “white makes right” has all but vanished with the dinosaurs. if christianity is so superior to other ways, as you say it is, then maybe you should look at jesus. the only people he didn’t embrace were cold hearted people.
@mikecarrick – It was titled “The Long Emergency.”
I was born in the North, lived in the South, moved back North, and now live again in the South, and apart from the “suckered into war” comment I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I think you’d have to go back to the 1950’s to experience the true sectional differences that have been erased by the steady homogenization of culture and commerce.
I’m not sure The South exists anymore except in isolated pockets, and as the denizen of one I can assure you we just want to be left alone. It might not be Doug Casey’s rich man’s Argentinian getaway but if the S really does HTF globally do you really want to be playing polo when the Argies show up for their expropriation party? It’ll be like La Raza reclaiming Beverly Hills.
In my experience, clueless means conservative and white. So does we just want to be left alone. This is conservative speak at its finest. And no I don’t think the Argentine people would be after my balls.
FOR seawolf77, below since there is no reply to your reply:
How about “My experience of the South, such as it is, must be different from yours?” does that work better? I certainly meant no attack. Good guess on the race, bad guess on the politics.
As for being left alone, that was a reference to the EPA’s aggressive approach to water rights, as well as the other lesser State intrusions.
Good luck in Argentina. It is said to be the most European of the Latin American nations. Casey’s a smart guy and no doubt did his homework, but if TSHTF everywhere at once when currencies reset outsiders might find themselves, well, outside. Then again, maybe the Nation States will just disappear and the reset will find folks in self-organizing collectives, wanting to be left alone.
nailed it!!!!!
@ Seawolf – It sounds like you have read “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn from your comment. If not, I think it’d resonate with you. 8 billion people and just one way to live? Who thought that up?
It was the cookie cutters.
Devon, I don’t think you owe your ‘countrymen’ anything. They are here because they were born here, through no choice of their own, just like everyone else. Be loyal to your “tribe”, your countrymen won’t return the favor, but your tribe will.
What does “American” even mean today? The foreign-born population is at a record 41 million by conservative estimates. We have an unrelenting invasion from Latin America and a State department determined to increase “diversity” by way of permanent resident (green card) lotteries in third world backwaters and a refugee program determined to make a Little Mogadishu in every American city. Citizenship is now nothing more than a key on a key-ring, the more you have the more doors to open and the more options you may have as American continues its long slide to becoming a North American Brazil (wealthy elites surrounded by abject poverty). The Indian PM visited DC and he was welcomed by thousands from the Indian diaspora who, amongst millions, have come here mostly on H1-B visas, taking the only middle class jobs our country produces these days-tech and programming. It’s not their fault, the tech companies know a good proven indentured labor pool when they find one. In short, we don’t care about the “American” man because he no longer exists…
Joint gold with this guy!
http://ponziworld.blogspot.co.uk/
Interesting topic JHK. I tend to doubt there will be an organized domestic terrorist group with articulated objectives and if there are I’m sure the NSA has a plan for them. I would think any type of rebellion would be along the lines of a teenager taking it upon him self to be a modern day Gravrilo Princip. Of course, this would most likely trigger a techno witch hunt with all kinds of collateral damage.
“The few remaining local newspapers are parodies of what newspapers once were…”
Still thinking about starting a local newspaper? That’s something you mentioned in “The End of Suburbia.” Of course, that was in the context of the book publishing industry collapsing. Here it is, a decade later, and books are still being printed and distributed for the mass market.
“Television and its step-child, the internet, offer only the worst temptations of hyper-sexual stimulation, artificial violence, and grandiose wealth-and-power fantasies.”
Including a metaphor for the end of civilization and humans, the zombie apocalypse. That meme is so prevalent that marching bands are doing shows about it. I found so many that I had to post a sequel. Seven bands in Texas alone performed such a show. That says something about how people were buying what someone was selling. Of course, that might just mean that we’ve hit the top of the trend, but it also means that in entertainment at least, the end of the world is big business. Too bad reality hasn’t caught up to the fantasy in that regard.
I think the 20th century was a one-hit wonder and a wonder it was. In just the course of a couple of centuries, mankind had tapped and harnessed the massive treasure trove of fossil fuels and built a society unlike any before. They even “conquered” nature (for a very, very short while). There will be no time in the future – even the distant future – that so much “free” raw energy will be available from the bowels of the earth to run such a fantastic power civilization. It was really great while it lasted.
Bottom line is people love the ride up but hate the ride back down. It’s been said that everything that goes up must come down. Here we are, fellow cliff hangers…
Just like the trust fund baby that spent the previous generation’s wealth on cocaine and hookers.
It’s called a roller coaster.
“That society emerging from the ashes of the current matrix of rackets will desperately need young men to rebuild, and there will be plenty of opportunity for them”
They will have to develop a lot of skills they don’t currently have the hard way. Being able to steal the helicopter in GTA or fight better than Master Chief doesn’t cut it when you need to know how to frame a barn, make compost or grow corn.
I am a pediatric ophthalmolgoist, so I see a number of older teenager girls. I often ask them what they plan to do with their lives. There are a number who response: masonry, carpentry, auto mechanic. In my limited sample size, there are as many girls choosing such careers as there are young men planning to enter these traditionally male career paths.
Something is going on there that is mostly below the radar. It’s well-thought out and completely rational, and it’s wonderful.
There are none so blind who will not see. You think the young men are going to stay home and be house husbands? Or you just think it’s fine that none of these “career women” get married at all? Think man, think. Women don’t marry below their income level. Men do. So who will the women marry if they have taken the place of the men?
That’s right… The women are smarter.
Not JUST a Racist.
Misogynist too!
what a freak show this site is
Jerry Jerry Jerry!!
You are right down there with the tatoo bearing trailer park dwellers, Jimbo. Classy site you run here.
Why not just get a facial tat now?
Sounds like name-calling political correctness at its finest, Mike.
LOL…women marry beneath their station all the time…I might even go so far as to say EVERYTIME
actually, women seldom marry down – although it is currently becoming more popular. and it may become necessary to a greater degree if the current economic imbalance continues.
Well, let’s see. Everybody can’t marry up. Since, throughout history, since few women have had any income at all, of course they married up. When women have their own money, maybe they’ll marry whoever the hell they like.
Have any of these promising white teenage girls who plan to engage in heavy manual labour and construction work ever tried an internship at a construction site working with underpaid Mexican construction workers?
I suppose you’re hinting that Mexican laborers might treat women worse than your average white American asshole. Hard to imagine.
Very true! Plus, there’s an edge of desire for younger “women?” in Mexican culture. We in the US call it pedophilia when a 20 or older male hits on a female less than 18.
Most Mexicans that I’ve seen call it a Spanish version of , “COOL!”
uh, hello? that’s not actually what pedophilia is (surely you have wikipedia if not some other resource). are you suggesting 17 year-old girls don’t date 20 year-old guys?
anyway, my main point is how surprised i am that JHK’s comment section attracts such a diverse group of loons. Janos, mikecarrick, florida power, et.al. – you guys gotta’ seriously look for a life.
why do you even bother with a site you have no connection to?
just askin’?
Bashar Assad was sounding a similar warning about his country as early as 2006. Unfortunately, the United States chose not to listen to him.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-syrian-president-bashar-assad-america-must-listen-a-438804.html
I hope “the deciders” will listen to what JHK is saying here, but I’m confident his warnings will be taken no more seriously than Assad’s were.
My wife and I talk about the lack of roles for young men, and since we have three boys in their20s, it really resonates. With many economists pointing to the automation of 60% of jobs there will be even less to do…..assuming society holds together that long. But another point here is that women no longer need men. Gone are the days of the girl needing a man for everything from housing to legal participation. Add to that the breakdown of families, towns, or any collective idea of “us”. There is no need to have children anymore, nor is there the need to have children in a “traditional” setting. Parents don’t parent anymore due to the rise of the daycare industry and the need for two incomes. Have the kid, wait twelve weeks. Stick them in daycare. The student loan fiasco is already unravelling. “Pay as you earn” plans offered by the government allow for “payments” of zero dollars. And the debt is “forgiven” after 10-25 years depending on your job. 1.3 trillion in debt will never be paid back. An uprising seems likely, but I sense it will be aimed at elites. A little bit of 1789 France? Let’s not even get into the housing “situation”.
Moreover, when things collapse, our young men will lack the ability to do most of what we need. They are physically weak and have no idea how to do the most basic task. I recently had to teach a 16 year old boy from Manhattan how to use a rake. After 15 minutes he stopped because his hands hurt. Therefore, the over 40 crowd will need to teach them real skills and not “communications” or “business” as the college cannibals are encouraging.
It will sure be interesting!
You’re are correct. The paradigm has been shattered, and I for one think our parents had it better. I shudder to think you may be also correct about 1789 France.
I taught a city boy how to rake leaves too!
I know a man who works for a local highway crew, he’s had to show entry level workers from this area how to use a shovel.
What ever happened to Boy Scouts?
The Gays got it. But even before that it was too dorky for most.
Even so, “Be Prepared” has a certain contemporary ring to it…
“you think it’s a man mike, I think it’s a woman.”
– alphie attempts to insult janos –
Calling someone female as an insult says a lot about “alphie.”
And I’d ask what, but doubt anyone’s going to read this.
Plus, it won’t make sense in this skidmark of linked comments.
Hi O3!
And finally, Gay bashing!
A Trifecta for you Janos.
A sterling performance.
straight into the muck in record time.
Why anyone would work THIS hard to be repellent really is an interesting question. Ask yourselves why this man is on this site like an addicted tick.
Its not just twisted bile.
Its almost like ‘binders full of bile’ ever ready to repulse. I want to think its simple pyschopathy, but it’s so much more. Maybe a dash of OCD, and some child abuse in his past?
Anyway, my hat is off to you for completely undermining this site.
textbook subversion. a stunning legacy of hate you have built here. Sort of like Jims own personal termite, destroying the very foundation of his online persona.
Jim if you condone Janos, it says way more about YOU, than it does about him.
Good luck with whatever this is supposed to be.
/m
Gay bashing? It seems that you really don’t understand these terms. You sound a bit hysterical Mike (and not in the humorous way). Anyone not in lockstep with your views is doubleplus non-good huh?
you think it’s a man mike, I think it’s a woman. let’s just say what we have here is an androgynous creature.one of us is going to have to go in after it. should we draw straws. but really, bringing up any topic with janos is like walking into a fun house where the floor is tilted and the mirrors make everything look weird and distorted and not a place any sensible person can stomach .
Can’t really think of any language in which “Janos” is a woman’s name. Ever hear of Janos Starker, the cellist?
“when things collapse” many women will be looking to avoid being robbed and raped. As bad as the police have become, their presence and the threat of consequences are still keeping many scumbags from doing what they really would like to be doing. I could be wrong if just this one time history refuses to rhyme. But I’m not. Anytime order breaks down there is usually some rape and theft and murder, but when the lawlessness becomes long term or permanent the world become very dangerous and more so for women. I don’t think rape gangs are going to be impressed with a lady’s university degree or employment skills. I hate to think of it happening but I don’t see millions of broke, angry, testosterone fueled, gonzo porn watching, tattooed, mix martial arts worshiping young men rebuilding anything. I see them tearing it all down.
I deal with young people (so-called Millennials) on a fairly frequent and ongoing basis. My interactions are typically friendly and casual; I’m not a professor or platoon sargent or anything of that sort. My young friends and associates are from various social and economic backgrounds; a few are of foreign birth. I, myself, am a Boomer.
MY observation is simply this: the young of today are neither prepared nor inclined to organize around a common cause of any type. The ‘Age of Ideology’ is fading fast. As the large-scale organized structures (nation-states, alliances, corporations, religions, etc…) needed to maintain elaborate thought paradigms wither and die, so the Quixotic call to revolution will be largely ignored by the young.
The young know about decline better than we do. The were born into it.
Well put.
James,
Attend a local tea party or patriots gathering and you might find out where some of the young men are gathering.
While the young people were “born into it” they have never experienced true hardships in the manner of the Civil Rights Movement, 1968 riots, Vietnam, the Great Depression/Dust Bowl, WWII. Millenials have lived the easiest lives ever. They have higher quality of life than any preceding generation. They have more access to information, healthcare, science, leisure, etc. than any other generation. The decline is happening and even the slightest tremor will shatter what is currently a pretty cushy existence. Imagine millennials not having access to the internet, Starbucks, or skinny jeans and having to actually work and god forbid, work in a physical task. That is going to be brutal.
Good points. But decline is not a lifestyle – it is an unseen process that lacks a center or any semblance of a unifying ideation (or opposing ideations as in the cases of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam war). Decline is murky and personal. Above all It is alienating.
Yes, things may get brutal, but I doubt that this brutality will be organized – at least on any scale that we remember from the last century.
“… The young know about decline better than we do. The[y] were born into it.”
Wrong; decline is their norm – looks like UP to them.
All must take the journey inward; above was stated that power’s strength was from lack of introspection – psychopathy’s platform for oppression of Other Beings.
Intended for Greg Knepp, above:
Speaking of Millennials Drudge linked to this provocative short piece:
http://www.vanityfair.fr/culture/livre/articles/generation-wuss-by-bret-easton-ellis/15837
I fathered one and have first-hand knowledge. As you imply, this generation ain’t gonna lead or be no movement. What if they gave a Fourth Turning and nobody came?
Thanks for the link FP.
I don’t agree with all of Bret’s conclusions (he’s a bit too judgmental in my view) but his observations are right on target. We agree that the Millennials are truly a brand new breed. Every generation following the Boomers has been heavily influenced by the breakthroughs the Boomers made (some good, some not so good) but the Millennials are trudging a new landscape in their own way and at their own pace. I’ve learned so much from them that I’m exhausted from merely trying to process it all.
Oh, I think that ‘The Canyons’ is a great movie, and that Lindsay Lohan is a goddess…there, I said it!
…an equal amount of valorization for people who develop an ambiguous sexual identity.
An odd way of describing a minority segment’s gains in social acceptance despite fierce opposition mostly frrom religious fanatics.
But this does show society can still be moved with concerted effort.
The minimum wage fight is promising and points the way toward a useful channeling of rage to a useful purpose. But victories will be necessary to prevent the energy of the movement from being transformed to destructive purposes.
Communication is key and the high density urban scene of the 30s which resulted in collective bargaining success was lost through suburbanization and can now be reclaimed through social media. Not for nothing is Putin moving to choke off this possibility. Will it happen here? Most assuredly if NSA is any guide. See the Israeli/NSA connection to control Palestinian plotting.
In the last resort all those weapons in the hands of the marginalized
could come back to haunt the congressional whores.
This to my way of thinking is spot on. Time kick the so called leaders telling us they are interested in our best interests way out along with the money grubbing business school mutant bunch. Send them all to Texas for all I care. As for schools all they are for is to teach conformity and obedience to out dated concepts of exseptsulism. Ha again. Very good observations Jim.
Well now; seems to me that this whole screed has a basis in the catastrophic erasure of trust that anyone paying attention should damn well have taken note of (and started preparing for, accordingly)! We’re beginning to see concrete results.
As to this:
“Of course, the idea that higher education can lift a population out of this vortex of anomie is a cruel joke, especially now with the college loan racket parasitizing that flickering wish to succeed, turning young people into debt donkeys. The shelf-life of that particular set of lies and swindles will hit its sell-by date soon in a massive debt repudiation — and the nation will come to marvel at the mendacious system it allowed itself to get sucked into. But this still only begs the question of what young men will do in such a deceitful system.” — JHK
What’ll they do? Why, some of them who have a rudimentary command of the English language, can type, and can put together words into sentences, become professional internet deceivers, disinformation artistes and slavering trolls. I don’t care, it’s just more of a pile to sort through; we all do this parsing, sifting and discrimination on the fly anyhoo. Interestingly enough, all the “ideas” contained in their various reperetoires are hard-core, inside-a-welded-steel-box of parochial convention. There is very little that isn’t simply a polyglot of tried and failed tropes. (Tried, and proven to be EPICALLY failed…) This lack of imagination, coupled with a desperate, at-all-costs propping up of an extractionary, ossified and suicidal status quo and hierarchy will surely lead to the type of reckoning and comeuppance that JHK outlines. (Protestations that “it can’t happen here” [for a raft of talking-points reasons] actually prove his point, strange as that may seem.)
BTW, what makes the religious folk of this country any less susceptible to bringing correction-by-extreme-violence/terror than anywhere else? …Don’t answer that, history is not our friend in this regard.
You made me look up “screed”: “1. a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious.” I must say that I find today’s post neither long nor tedious.
Apologies… but you get extra credit for scholarly curiosity and effort! 😉 You are correct and I’d agree.
So, would “premonitory essay” be more to your liking?
(Annnnnnd, backtotheissueathand…)
So many words that I think I know the meaning of, I look up and find out I don’t. Well, we’ll get it exactly right one of these days! Cheers.
Me too. Funny how the accepted, common-usage, contextual framework is sometimes completely wrong and bass-ackwards. (Plain ol’ laziness? I dunno…)
And cheers backatcha!
Dear Mr. Kunstler,
I don’t think there are as many young men failing to know things as you might seem to think. Though I am not a young guy, pushing the 5 decades plus mark now, I never was the regular young guy, I still don’t watch sports, and can’t seem to get the news feeds to delete the whole section from the frames, though I do like mountain climbing and surfing, but those aren’t the normal sports to take minds off not having to know how to use a sword and go hack into battle on a month basis with your valley’s hillside neighbors.
I learned to grow things early on, learned to sew, draw and think outside a box they were trying to put me into because of my size, I refused to be put in a uniform and run after air filled bladders on a rectangle grid for the roaring crowds, of which I’d have not gotten much of the fame anyway, just sore joints and head injurys.
Those sports seem to cause almost as much damage as actually going into a battle, but for the scars of bladed weapons.
I think the ISIS like american isn’t there yet, we haven’t got the zeal for it just yet. We are to much a mixed bean stew pot, with lots of grains thrown on top to make it beans and grains as a diet, we turn ourselves off and on like light bulbs, but if we had to live like the people in Iraq, we’d complain and drop off the map face faster than they are. The recent riots in Missouri are sort of where we are in some cases, The looting wouldn’t have lasted to long into the night if they ran out of store fronts and then only had houses to go harm, someone would have started the shooting first, instead of just the tear gasing. Hong Kong is one of those places we will see the blow up soonder. Though they are more evenly mixed than the USA is, mostly Chinese, mostly people that know a bit about a free-English rule than we are.
The blow up of recent police shootings has been a bit of hte sparks you mention, and the out and out, man hunts and guns blasting are only a sign that the general population would not tolerate the same thing that is going on in Iraq, here. We’d not drop our uniforms and run just yet.
Maybe in the 20 years up the timeline it might be that the GTA gang will have had Bitcoin’d their way into a new thinking and stopped all the sports injuries from banging big heads together and started to learn that greens are good and that you have to keep the soil covered to prevent the sun stealing your minerials and plant’s vitamins, Just maybe they will know how to get things done by hand a bit better, and be less into the Lights from the screens…….. Just maybe.
Charles.
As far as student loans go, my bet is that at some point all loans will be forgiven. After all, higher education should be free to begin with, like it is in Cuba, and evidently New Zealand. Senator Blumenthal D CT was suggesting this just last week, in fact is crafting a bill right now to get it done.
–brh
Make it free for those who actually qualify. I have seen hordes of kids in college who lack the cognitive ability to be there. But, since it is about filling seats and getting Federal money, the colleges take all comers. Bring on the free college!
They didn’t forgive mortgage debt. In many cases when the house was sold at a loss, they came after the homeowner for the difference.
Brh,
As I have mentioned on this site before, my tertiary education in the 60’s in New Zealand was free, provided by the government.
Unfortunately, New Zealand was also taken over by neocon free-market ideology, and neoliberal economics, in the late 70’s, and all the great social program’s went the way of the dinosaur.
New Zealand today is ruled by a right-wing government, and the utopia I grew up is long gone.
My college education in the US (Berkeley, early 70’s) was virtually free.
A lot of young men are stuck in their parents’ basements, going nowhere. They end up in dead-end jobs and become resentful. They get suckered into blaming women for their problems and support the GOP’s misogynistic policies. They see celebrities living the jet-set life while they’re permanently grounded. Russia was a land full of resentful have-nots a hundred years ago. Russia devolved into anarchy in 1917. America will devolve into anarchy by 2017. It won’t just be the lights we see go out on Broadway.
If they’re black, they get suckered into blaming white people as well.
Neighborhoods like Arbor Hill and Hamilton Hill are a petri dish. Maybe the reason for endless war is to siphon off large numbers of young men and give the something to do.
In other words, there’s nothing to see here. It’s fine that women are glorified everywhere and men ignored. And such women wont think themselves too good for the young men, right? And any young man who feels cheated is just being a whiner.
You are typical. Men’s complaints are never listened too. Just a bunch of whiners, right? Thus they must take up arms to be heard.
Jim,
We have created a artificial world based on lawlessness, happy talk, egomaniacal adolescent behavior and rampant consumerism.
40 years of this has turned us, basically into a worthless piece of shit.
Defeat ISIS? Hell, we’ve got to defeat the 1% and big everything first. But that won’t happen because most Americans are addicted to “the easy button”. They want what they want and they want it now.
Among friends & colleagues, I’ve talked about the growing displacement of young men in our society for the last 15 years. I mostly get blank stares, or, quick agreement with little in the way of follow up conversation.
In higher education, almost ALL of the schools now have a male/female ratio of 40/60. Some even higher. And these are not traditional women colleges.
Where are the young men? Higher education is not even addressing this question and why it might actually be a real problem worth solving.
In a fake nation, you don’t address real problems.
Clusterfuck? Yes indeed.
You’re going to see a lot less men on campus, too, with this new emphasis on preventing ‘sexual assault’, which can mean anything from a wolf whistle to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Why even bother going to college if you have to put up with that political bullsh-t and a whole bunch of other stuff too. Let the women have to colleges and universities to themselves, which seems to be the goal anyway.
–brh
Also check out the dearth of Whites at Ivy League Colleges. They are the least represented group at Harvard per capita. Jews and Asians are half of the student body.
Don’t get mad, believe me or disbelieve me: Look.
And none of the Harvard Jews are White?
Hmmmmmmmmm . . .
Are they all African Jews, perhaps?
cmc, Janos is desperately trying to convince the world that white people(apparently jews are excluded) are the rightful overlords of the human race.
Just a coincidence? This piece in Forbes:
“Why Is The Mideast Failing? Because There Are Too Many Young Men, And No Women.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/09/26/men-without-women/
Elvira: great link – NTBM.
Thanks!
I saw that article too, but it didn’t explain places like Ferguson, where there are plenty of women around.
Because, last I checked, Ferguson is in Missouri, NOT the Mideast.
“The most dangerous thing that any society can do is invalidate young men.”
I couldn’t agree more! Over the weekend I overheard a radio broadcast in which one of the panelists mentioned that there were curious similarities shared by the Bolsheviks, the Cuban revolutionaries and the ISIS. The first was that most of the participants were young, ranging in age from their late teens through their mid-twenties. The second was that once they established themselves in a particular town or village, one of the first things they set about to do was execute those whom they perceived as anti-revolutionary.
I would imagine that in both Russian and Cuba, in the decades running up to the revolution, young men were invalidated: hence bringing the emotions that fueled both revolutions. Yes, these same emotions now simmer out of the limelight in the US, ready to fuel a spontaneous phantom revolution that all the militarization of local police forces and roll-back of basic constitutional rights will prove totally unable to stop.
This militarization and the constitutional adjustments suggest that those loyal to the 1% knew this was coming and hence their exalted status. But theirs is a vast closed world, one where forming a new conscientious is difficult. So far they’ve anticipated and prepared for something that has yet to reveal itself. When it does, it will come in many forms and it’s doubtful the loyalists will be able to stop all of them.
An era of chaos lies at our doorstep, one that will defy all reason and destroy all traces of civilization, at least in a global sense.
We blame the ‘bitter clingers’, we blame the Occupiers, we blame the Michael Browns, albeit privately, we blame white people, we blame women. We have entire “news” sites devoted to blaming conservatives or liberals. God forbid that these ‘groups’ get together and compare notes.
Excellent topic, Mr. K. I’m 48 years old, and I’ve had the feeling my whole life that American society didn’t really know what to do with me. As a young man, I was presented with cultural ideals of masculinity that didn’t match what was actually rewarded. Some of the ideals, like the two-fisted he-man, will get you put in prison. Coming from a rural area, I saw far too many of my peers and slightly older cohort turn to the military, and return broken and unable to function in saner society. It was obvious that the traditional male role wasn’t even wanted any more.
I actually think that’s a good thing. The traditional American male role was a bunch of BS anyway. I’m married, with two kids, and I don’t want to be the unquestioned leader of the household. I married a woman at least as intelligent as I am (which probably means she’s smarter) and I did that very much intentionally. She doesn’t need my permission or help to do what needs to be done. She’s got my back, every bit as much as I’ve got hers. Right now I happen to be the primary breadwinner, but it hasn’t always been that way, and it may change in the future.
Our kids (14 year-old girl, 16 year-old boy) have seen their parents disagree in polite, civil ways, and reach agreement or at least mutual recognition. They’ve seen their parents openly discuss money, plans, hopes and dreams, past successes and failures, likes and dislikes. They’ve never seen either of us use a disrespectful word to the other, nor heard it through the walls late at night.
They’ve learned that their parents will be where they say they will be when they say they’ll be there. They’ve learned that adults should do what needs to be done to meet the basic necessities, and will have time and focused attention for each other and the kids. They’ve seen both of us cook, clean, do maintenance and repair, and coordinate and reinforce each other when (inevitably) my carpentry project interferes with her organize-the-basement project. They’ve seen us balance each other’s priorities with our own, in a matter-of-fact way that acknowledges the importance of each other’s priorities and decides based on efficiency rather than dominance.
They’ve learned that adults will make a budget and stick to it, but also buy little things they know the other will like. They know that both men and women can prepare real meals from food ingredients. They know it’s best for the whole family to sit together at meals. At our meals, phones ring unanswered, nobody texts, and everybody has to tell a story and everyone else has to listen all the way to the end.
So my kids haven’t seen dad excel at sports or manly things. They haven’t seen dad buy the best of everything, or stand up to the Boss, or become the Boss. They have seen their father at every school function, every morning and evening in a present and respectful frame of mind. They have seen their father reject immediate gratification in favor of a larger long-term benefit, and enjoy that when it came. They have heard constant positive reinforcement, and when they don’t hear that, they know they’ve fallen short. When they do hear disapproval, it’s never in anger, nor directed at them; the disappointment is that they have not done as well as they should expect from themselves in whatever regard. Every morning on the way out the door to school they heard, “Remember who you are,” whether or not they knew what it meant. They’ve heard, time out of mind, a quiet, “That’s not the way we do things,” or, “That’s not how we behave.”
Now my son seems to want to teach music to kids, and my daughter seems interested in Engineering, if she can work her way around her mild dyslexia. The more theoretical the task, the better she is at it.
I’m just fine with discarding traditional American male roles. The real core values and positive traits haven’t changed. The old ways stunk, and weren’t good for women, men, or anyone else. Bring on the new ways, which are really the universal, oldest ways that have never gone in or out of fashion.
I’m sure it was just coincidence that your son wants to teach music to kids and your daughter wants to be an engineer. You think the men and women have no intrinsic natures. Remember who you are? What does that mean to someone who doesn’t believe this? No doubt you influenced your children to take up anti-traditional roles.
Good point about the military, if you do a youtube loop of the infantry and other combat disciplines of the GWOT that is where you will find your young white men. The Combat Arms are whiter now than when I was in back in the halcyon days of the 80s. Call these young white men escapees from Mommy Professor’s prison of Political Correctness.
Think about this liberals can you turn the young men of color into nice sensitive white women like people? I bet not, and that task obviously failed in Oklahoma last week, a young black man staunchly defended his faith by decapitating a woman and stabbing another. Even Britain’s Labour Party and its secular mission is going under the waves of Islam and its young men, last white liberal turn out the lights of Atheist Inc and just go away. Can you really imagine a nice young Islamic man in an office of old white liberal back bighters, or can you imagine him a Jihadist.
True and this is why those that return are listed as possible terrorists by the Government. They fear the young white men the most only second to fearing the white race in general. This is now a Global movement to remove power from them and make them slaves. They know the only race that will not tolerate submission is the White race.
One world governments worst nightmare is them standing in front of and in defiance of their goals
Does anybody know the name of that poor woman who was beheaded in Oklahoma the other day by a radicalized black muslim convert? Obama gave a speech last nite to the black caucus and the name Michael Brown as invoked a dozen times. He didn’t mention the gruesome beheading by a American Black Muslim of a white working woman in Oklahoma, not once. Why would that be?
Does anybody in power give a sh-t? I know, I know, she wasn’t from LA, San Francisco, New York or Washington, just a nobody in flyover country working in a meat processing plant, so I don’t expect to see Holder or Jesse Jackson, or Gloria Allred for that matter, on scene to stir up racial animous and console the family, and stage some lefty political theater.
–brh
…”young men jacked on….corn syrup”…
Thanks for making me laugh, JHK.
Corn syrup. If I wanted to raise a bunch of fat kids, I’d make sure they got a liberal dose of corn syrup in practically everything they ate. Yet the First Lady’s Healthy Kids program or whatever it is doesn’t seem to be concerned with getting the stuff out of school lunches. Hmm.
Calories are calories. That said, cane syrup tastes better in a bottle (never can!) of pop. No HFCS for this boy.
Seriously?! Eat your daily intake in the form of fast food, Fruit Loops or candy corn for a couple days and let us know how you feel.
What has all this Feminist promotion done to advance the countries fortunes? Nothing it is just more liberal hogwash as they offer what they consider the useless eaters MEN to be used only as cannon fodder in far away death pits.
The shutting out and demeaning of young men and also all men is a plan to put control into the hands of Feminist who by and large have only a fantasy world of reality when it comes to power and control. They are easy to manipulate and steer into what will be a day of reckoning when they will once again want the security of the strong male protector.
Needless to say they will not be there on that day when it comes and that is the plan plain and simple. Testosterone removal by your government in every aspect of society. Once it reaches the tipping point you and I will all be slaves to the tyranny.
Keep the young men playing GTA, I say, if there are no jobs working hard with their hands and no social safety net. England keeps its post-industrial lid on by the dole.
Is that cynical? Heck yes. We have this surplus population that could get restive. I’d offer them Soma as long as everyone had the option to opt out.
I see this from many angles.
A recent NPR story had a young soldier talking about how horrible war was and how he’s had so much trouble dealing with it and how he’d never get over it. My father, and many of his generation, who fought in Europe were somehow able to return to the US, get jobs, build families and put those experiences behind them. Today I sense that these soldiers actually enjoy whining about it, because it engenders sympathy. Besides, exactly WHAT did they think was going to happen when you join up and go to war? Do they really think it’ll be like TEEVEE and video games?
This morning a co-worker asked me about a certain US city, because her step son is getting married and he wants to take his honeymoon there. She was asking about stuff to do and hotels, etc., and she mentioned that she was checking airfares for him. In the most office-appropriate way possible I say, “WTF are you thinking? The kid is in him mid-20s and can’t make his own airline reservations?”
One more snippet. We hired a young guy to do our lawn and some other work this summer. He was glib and talkative (aren’t they all like that today?) but after 3 months he just disappeared. Won’t return calls or texts.
OK. One more. I interviewed several people recently for jobs. Most were young, but one was in his 50’s. He was the ONLY one who followed up with a simple “thank you” note via email.
What I see isn’t a culture that is lacking jobs or work or ways for the testosterone boys to burn off steam, but a lack of moral inculcation via their parents and schools. These “kids” seem smart and articulate, but there is NEARLY NOTHING below the surface. They can run rings around a computer, but, as JGM68 noted, they can’t operate a rake!
I registered just to reply to your post. There is a LOT of reasons why coming back from Europe and returning to functional society was easier than coming back from Iraq/Afghanistan.
1) Plane rides vs. boat rides. It took a soldier a week or two at best to get back to the USA, and more if he did not live on the coast to get home. Many have speculated that the boat ride, in the company of men who had a common experience is powerfully therapeutic. Now you can go from being shot at in Iraq to your home in the USA in less than 48 hours.
2) Widespread public support of the war, and returning as a hero vs. returning as just another person.
3) People come back from Iraq with much more serious wounds than came back from Europe, because battlefield medicine was very crude 70 years ago and there were no medivac choppers. So less of your buddies came back in horrific shape. Now you can lose multiple limbs in an IED blast and survive… which was possible during WW2 but highly unlikely.
But yes, I agree with the general degeneration of our culture and the disregard for people who perform the basic work of keeping civilization (or even just our lawns) running smoothly. One problem with the “everyone goes to college” mentality is that the trades have a disproportionate amount of fuckups, drug addicts and general losers because every 17 year old with half a brain got shipped to higher ed. There are smart, young tradespeople out there, but in my first contact with tradespeople as an engineer, I could not believe how dumb some of these people are. And what’s worse, the over 40 tradespeople were much more articulate and reasonable.
“…they offer what they consider the useless eaters MEN to be used only as cannon fodder in far away death pits.” — mastman
If they offer that to men, aren’t the men smart enough to turn down the offer? Who wants to become cannon fodder anyway?
Men have gotten a bad rap because they become a drain on society when they voluntarily enter the military, then they become a life-long drain on society when they come back from wars maimed, invalid, or so fucked-up mentally they cannot function.
The military is not an honorable institution. It promotes blind obedience to authority and complete dependence on federal government. When the thought of entering the military arises, just say no.
A government is an entity that has a monopoly on the use of force in a certain geographic area. Soldiers. policeman, guardsmen etc enforce that monopoly. Is that honorable? I’m not so sure anymore.
“The military is not an honorable institution.”
As an ex-member of the military I agree with this statement.
I’ve been thinking that the current fashionable disparagement and diminishment of men and their traditional roles in society is something that will end. Maybe it ends badly.
I would suggest that the avant garde that disdains men or the patriarchy or whatever term you want to use have limited exposure to the variety of cultures in the modern world. Never mind the avant garde. The mainstream of modern western women and men have very little clue.
What I mean is that if people don’t like the culture we have and the men we have and how these men behave, well, there are alternative cultures with alternative models of male behavior. Let’s say that these alternatives don’t devalue men.
Some of these cultures have taken root in North America and Europe. We’ve actively encouraged these alternatives to flourish. It was the well considered, progressive and enlightened thing to do. Different from and discordant with western values? No problem, this is something to be “celebrated”. But now, most ludicrously, we condemn the practitioners of these alternative behaviors when they act them out. I mean, what on earth did we think would happen?
No smirky, ironic, hip detachment for these guys, some go overseas to fight in defense of what they see, and what we’ve been telling them for two generations to see, as valid and acceptable values.
Well, some of the practitioners of these alternative cultures, with their alternative world views, are not shy about asserting what they see as their rightness, with divine inspiration, backed by sacred writings or their own interpretations of these sacred writings.
In their minds they are the future. In their own view there is no equivalence. There is one true way and any other way is falsehood. There is no relativity about rightness and wrongness to be endlessly studied and discussed and examined.
But all this is irrelevant. Just talk. Because while we debate and analyze, things are happening in the real world.
Others have said, and I would agree, that demography is destiny. Western women and men have taken a pass on procreation for many and varied reasons. But other peoples have not.
There is a process of population shifting and replacement underway. This is nothing new. It’s been happening as long as there have been people. Sometimes it’s a violent process, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes different tribes and clans blend and inter-marry. But, generally speaking, and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb, the people that pass on their values are the ones that reproduce. Especially if those reproducers are confident of those same values. And embedded in those values is how men are supposed to behave and are supposed to be treated.
JHK may be right, that there will be some pretty awful spasms of violence in our neck of the woods as young men with nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to look to make a mark on the world and maybe grab some of what they see as their right and their due. Many are military trained and armed to the teeth. That’s not to say they will prevail. Because there quite probably will be others that they will butt heads with, of different cultural origins, whose cultures have never disparaged men, who would see such an attitude as alien and absurd, that are confident of their destiny and place in the world. And that have the advantage of numbers.
The real horror is that Blacks and Hispanics, already violent and organized into gangs, will convert to Islam which will channel their violence against us – and by us I mean White Americans of course. It is already happening as the beheading in Oklahoma shows. It’s been happening for awhile: John Lee Malvo was a Black Jihadist whose racism and Islam blended together into a seamless garment.
People like Janos see a maniacal murder by a black Muslim as proof of the insanity of Islam, but fail to call out similar acts by Jews and Christians. It’s a garbage argument typical of american exceptionalism, people convinced of their own rightness (Yes I understand the irony of my statement).
From now on, whenever I hear about any violent crime, I”m going to say, “Well, it’s because he’s Christian and Christianity teaches violence and intolerance.”
The idea that Hispanics would reverse centuries of Christian conditioning to suddenly become Islamic street gangs is sheer paranoia with no factual, statistical or even sociological basis.
Janos–Please put the Internet down and go home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_State
Hopefully they’ll do something like this: http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014/06/a-time-for-wolves/
The System is utterly toxic and is best ignored and gotten away from before it falls. And then you have to be ready for what comes after – and that means being very self reliant and hard and being in community with others who are like that. Because the enemy will be coming to take everything you have: your food, you homes, your women, and your very self.
The Wolves are White and only for Whites. They don’t make a big deal about it since it is just natural that they would be. Why would you have Blacks or Hispanics in Odinism? Only fag Wicca like Odinism has non-Whites. And such a Tribe is no Tribe at all and has no future. Is this fair? Of course: Blacks and Hispanics have their own gigantic tribes. It’s only fair that Whites should too. Believe it or not, we used to even have our own nations.
Ludicrous.
He was the ONLY one who followed up with a simple “thank you” note via email.
Is this meant to be a joke? Someone actually thanked you for an interview? Good grief. That’s like thanking the dentist for drilling your tooth without Procaine.
Perhaps a new law should be enacted. Those who wish to work for someone else, male or female alike, should be prohibited from having children. Sycophants make terrible parents.
DI you ever stop to think that the younger ones you didn’t like were the progeny of the likes of the one you did like? Trained Poodles only know how to serve their masters.
No, thanking someone after an interview is both polite AND smart. Hey, I bet even crotchety ole’ Jim Kunstler thanks people at the end of a TV or print interview. Get the drift? I’m not asking for people to kiss my ass, just to show some basic smarts and intuition. If they can’t bother to follow up with me, then I’m going to guess that they’ll be just as clueless when it comes to dealing with the clients I am hiring them to work with… And you know what? I usually do thank the dentist or doctor, whether they drilled for two hours or stuck their finger up my butt.
Did you send an email thanking any of the interviewees? If not, why not? It goes both ways.
The dentist should be thanking the patient for paying exorbitantly for the dentist’s sadistic jollies, because as we all know, only sadists would aspire to dentistry.
Is It Safe?
IS/ISIS/ISIL is a relatively flat organizational structure making it extremely reflexive and flexible. It’s doesn’t concern itself with potential recruits sending thank you email follow-ups. If you want to compete, you must change your perspective and structure. It starts with expectations. I’d rather collaborate with effective versus nice. This is not a world where you can have your cake and eat it too.
I do love a good performance with real instruments, and real people playing them (even if the quality of playing isn’t flawless.) As a musical experience, it does beat listening to the DJs who will often pretend to mix their canned music for live audiences (because the software pretty much does it for you).
The young men I know are more into “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare” than Grand Theft Auto these days. I’m sure like many in our society, they cannot wait to commit their first legally sanctioned murder of a fellow human being, whether in combat or not.
Jim, I noticed that Russia is saying they discovered an oil field in the Arctic that is larger than that of the Gulf of Mexico. Will this cause you to re-evaluate your vision of how the long emergency will play out?
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/09/29/russia-exxon-oil/?__lsa=21f4-6d41
Shell called off further exploration of its Arctic oil prospects because they came to the conclusion that drilling offshore in those conditions would be too expensive and difficult. I believe Russia will reach the same conclusion. Meantime, it’s a useful dodge for them to wave this in the West’s face, given the current sanctions. — JHK
This is certainly possible; however, the fact that Putin won’t need to answer to stockholders (even with Exxon in tow) may give him the luxury of being able to invest in the Arctic project with longer term goals in mind.
“Also, just imagine for a moment the numbers of young men America has trained with military skills the past 20 years. Not all of them will be disabled with PTSD, or mollified with rinky-dink jobs at the Wal-Mart, or lost in the transports of heroin and methedrine.”
From the beginning of your story, it looks like young men will not be mollified by women, the traditional roll of a woman. They will feel challenged by them in the competition for rolls in society that do not require simple brute upper arm strength in order to succeed. They will feel pressured by them to start families and all the hard, unthankful work that comes with that. Let’s not forget most American men dream about fast cars… and fast women.
Dancing illustrates the beautiful balance of the traditional male and female rolls in a partnership or marriage. You can call it sexual tension but I like to call it something less magnetic and more mental since it is dominated by the mind coordinating and subjecting various body parts, even the personal EGO to do something else. The man’s position is not so much domineering her, it is supportive and guiding. Usually the man is taller but in the case of teenage girls…they are taller than boys and that just makes the whole thing more awkward for younguns. I think dances are more appropriate for older people who are physically ready and mentally attune to the traditional courting behaviors.
ISIS promotes a very dominate attitude towards family life to the point of criminality. That is one of the biggest reasons why they can not bear the western society in any form or fashion. Isn’t it true that they do not believe in dancing and playing music and that’s why a group of eastern young people who have done this on youtube are being jailed and prosecuted at the moment?
Filter this through the american situations in ferguson and penn at the moment, where young SINGLE men are going around challenging the legal authorities. Neither had women to push around. In fact, their mothers and sisters oversee the personal details and arrangements of their lives and also are the first to defend them. So, maybe they need relief from that kind of home life, in order to be REAL MEN, by enacting their fantasies in the real world. Being a “survivalist” – politically correct term for military wacko – and a heroic “civil rights activist” – another term to appease the black power mongers who are not shy about using violence and promoting race war.
The press is continually watering down the news to the point where they have diarrhea and the story looks nothing like what really happens.
Hey Karah last night on BBC America radio there were stories about what’s happening to Kurdish women (and girls) who get captured by ISIS.
Ne need to say any more, except they were hair raising, to say the least.
–brh
Jim, men are despondent because they are being told they are unnecessary, like bicycles for fish, or even worse, detrimental, with no right to become husbands and fathers, no right to become adults. Everything will get better if we affirm that men are indeed necessary and do have a right to marry and become husbands and fathers, and end same-sex marriage in America with a simple federal law that prohibits creating a human being except by joining a sperm of a man and an egg of a woman. It would rule out “postgenderism” which is same-sex reproduction using stem cell derived “female sperm” and “male eggs”, a form of transhumanism, and affirm that marriages have a right to conceive natural offspring together.
As long as people are going around saying that I have the same right to be a mother as I do a father, to marry a man as I do a woman, well, fuck it, I’m gonna sit it out and just watch sports and drink beer until I die I guess. I’m not needed for anything.
As is turns out marriage is more unpopular with gays than with evangelicals. Just 2% of homosexual men and 4% of homosexual women have gotten legally married. No flood of people at the courthouses around the country. It was a long divisive fundraising battle by both sides.
The real winners will be men who get divorced about 10 years in the future. When gays (esp. those with children) begin to duke out it in the courts with their former loves of their lives, it will force a rewrite of our child custody and alimony laws that strongly favor women and mothers.
A career as a carpenter or bricklayer simply isn’t glamorous enough; after all isn’t that what the Mexicans do for work? No, I’m not being racist with the previous statement, but have no doubt that is what many young white teenagers/adults believe.
After over twenty five years of carving wood and stone I get very few calls from young people seeking to apprentice. Again, I don’t think working in a solitary profession with an uncertain economic future has much appeal for most young people. To compound that dynamic, a large majority of the new architecture being built is hardly in need of architectural wood carvers or master carpenters capable of building a spiral stair case. Just look at JHK’s “Eyesore Of the Month” for a sampling of the current architectural aesthetic. Put another way, architecture these days is a reflection of those housed: Square boxes for square people who spend their lives typing into square computer screens. We have become a society of squares.
When I was starting out the great carpenter was a hero of mine and the great carver a superstar. I devoured books on Veit Stoss,Tilman Riemenschneider, Grinling Gibbons and Hector Guimard. I have read every treatise that John Ruskin has ever wrote on the architectural/building arts. I have carved fire surrounds for Ivy League President’s and furniture for Hall of Fame quarterbacks. I have also found myself, when the economy went south, standing atop Siberian Elms with a chainsaw in my hand sculpting those most silly,inane and cliche animal scenes you could ever envision. I have found myself trying to negotiate the flea market/garage sale mentality that has infected the most prominent ‘handmade’ internet sites all the while trying to retain a modicum of self respect. There are days when I very strongly doubt that I would do it all over again; I have no employer based retirement plan to compassionate the harsh edges of growing old. I guess I was born in the wrong century lol.
I suppose it sounds glamorous, the handmade thing. But in our current state of limbo I would hesitate to recommend such a path to a young person. On the other hand, I would never recommend the student loan debt path.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=the+miraculous+stair&qpvt=the+miraculous+stair&FORM=IGRE
Someday we will do carpentry with living trees as our Ancestors in Northern Europe did.
Even when some of these young “bucks” do get married, their wives are more like mothers than wives.
Jake…from State Farm
These game pieces have been crafted for this role. The messaging is reinforcement.
Seventy years ago this woman, if she tried something like that, would have been black & blue. Today, she’s given carte blanche. Apparently, there’s no in between.
My how times have changed — and they’ll change again as The Game keeps reinventing itself.
Yesterday at my job at the grocery store, I slipped on a little puddle of water on the floor and fell forward and banged my knee (again). I was on the floor struggling to get up, and these teenage boys saw me and just walked right on by. Nice. I’ve long wondered what the hell is wrong with teenage boys, but reading this blog-entry made me realize something. We’ve been increasingly infantilizing teenage boys for the past thirty or so years, and now we’re acting all surprised when they act like there’s something very seriously wrong with them. And these kids will grow up to be tomorrow’s adults. That would be bad enough by itself, but what about when the Long Emergency seriously kicks into high gear (which I’m starting to think will quite soon)?
Thought we were already in the long emergency. Gas went from 3$ to 3.18$ overnight for no apparent reason.
We had to fight to ban Chinese steel imports and will have to fight to ban cheap household tools next. The “margarine” metal JHK mentioned a month ago. We need tools that actually work if we haven’t inherited them from our fathers. I know people who have preserved their parents workshops in order to illustrate how far we have come in technology. On t.v. they showed how a guy made medieval armor in 2 hours using blow torches and electrified hammers.
He could do it the old fashioned way but it would not be as lucrative in the current economy. A full suit of armor costs as much as a small used car.
And as was brought out in the radio interviews lately…people are rejecting the illusions of prosperity that defined the 20th century.
There are a lot of people still holding onto their homes and two cars but it is becoming more and more precarious and difficult.
Most guys who want a car and or house/apartment are working all the time and laying down watching t.v., playing games or sleeping the rest of the time.
Karah
Don’t know if you’re a millenial. I’m on the cusp and many times despondent about what’s being handed down. I’ve looked into alternate ways to live, one such featured in Mother Earth news. Homestead Heritage, where labor is valued and people work in community. They grind their corn on a wheel with livestock, and the young men do haying together, etc. For much of human history people worked in cooperation. Maybe Homestead Heritage ( which originated on the streets of Manhattan) is cultish, but the way of oneupmanship seems to be getting a little hackneyed in my opinion. Heck, I should’ve just married amish.
Amish men are stealing all the good women away from normal American dudes! We won’t be able to progress as a society until this evil ends and all women are returned to the sanctity of suburban motherhood!
JK–Let’s raise a barn!
A millenial is a person who reaches adulthood around the year 2000 or
someone who becomes aware of the broader world around them and their place in it and steps up to the plate around the time that society is not really suffering from a lot of anxiety about the future and are investing in lots of different things in anticipation of the future.
I reached adulthood at about 13. I can say this because I started my period (physically mature) and knew what sex is really about, was not interested in pursuing what a majority of peers were pursuing (sex/relationships and alcohol and cigarettes-the appearance of adulthood) and had already started my own business babysitting for a neighbor (what my grandmother did in the late 30s early 40s at the same age and she looked sexier than me at that age!)
JHK is writing about young men and women that are NOT adult in the classical sense – fully developed, mature and sensible. What constitutes the youth factor in his group he considered teenagers. Half the group are over 40, I’m 38.
How I fit in the montage is someone who wants to be there because there are other older people. I’ve found I’m attracted to the 60 plus mentality for some reason…do not know why. Maybe it’s because I feel guys are fully developed at that age and so are their musical tastes; however, I can’t stand fiddles…give me an eric clapton wannabe, please.
It’s a shame that a lot of younger people than me will never experience what I have experienced to the degree I have when it comes to knowing the world…or what the world could be…or once was…time has a weird way of playing with us humans. I think what has defined our current age is more and more people are happier living in the moment than they ever have considering all the terrible things that could possible happen to them now that we are so well informed and connected…all…the…time.
Oh…and grinding mills ruin your teeth from the fine stone deposited during the process.
Eat whole grains…corn on the cob…whole wheat if you can find them and soak them to make them softer and easier to digest.
Only eat popcorn on rare occasions and not in old age EVER. Think about the toll on your teeth and whether or not you can afford the dental work. Modern dentistry as we have known it in the last 70 years is no longer practical. Keep your wisdom teeth and forget about perfection. I was very fortunate to live in a time where I could get good, practical, long term dental work done. I haven’t needed anything major for the last 20 years…and that will continue as long as I keep up my good habits.
Now to address the kind of work that adults should be doing…
if you look carefully at the Amish you will find the current generation struggling like everyone else to feed their families.
There’s only so much you can get from a bubble. They have even been personally terrorized by gunmen.
Communities grow. You will run into the same problems with that as the rest of society.
So, you have to choose your associations wisely. Do you want to be a Target store “associate” or do you want to be part of your natural surroundings. My generation has been handed a story that we should leave our homesteads (before we marry) in order to set ourselves up in the broader economy where we can earn way more and live way better than our parents do. That’s assuming our parents are not already doing quite well! And my parents were and are. I was already set up, all I had to do was take advantage of the current local situation and connections. Do not think for an instant anyone on LinkedIn or Facebook cares about you or your future like your parents and long time friends. Support your communities by finding your place there or you could vie to be the 1 in ten people who are CEOs of global corporations…the 1%.
we need to imagine a life without cars. they ruin the environment and generally make people mean. what I mean by that is, the encounters you have with other drivers, would you say they are mostly positive or mostly negative? we are in love with our machines and it’s killing us. of course someone will point out that, “well you drive a car don’t you”. yes I do. if you want to eat you must drive. this system was set up before I got here but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about a radically different setup.
Usually, drivers do not encounter each other because all we see is a vehicle with tinted windows. In my area, it’s about 50/50 when it comes to aggressive drivers. There’s always someone who has to be in front and that someone is often times in a bigger vehicle (SUV, Truck). Then you have the sneaky ones in the sports cars weaving their way around everyone. Then you have the old fogies who can not get up to the speed limit and keep braking every 5 seconds because they’re half blind. Then you have all the stylish ones multitasking with their cellphones or lipsticks.
The city is working on their bus system and it’s awful. They run every 30 minutes and take twice as long to get anywhere in town.
It’s not entirely their fault since the city is not laid out in a way that makes sense for buses that are not school buses. There’s segregation to the extreme because certain neighborhoods do not want general busing. They think it will bring in the indigent and criminals. They are right, it will.
mass transit won’t catch on because people are paranoid especially of those who don’t look like them. but the more fundamental problem is our society is set up for vehicles not people. cars should be for recreational purposes only. millions of people commuting to work every day is wasteful and detrimental to our health.
I propose as an experiment: we take an area of a city(say one square mile) and make it vehicle free. don’t think of the logistics just yet only think of the end result. with no vehicles speeding around it would be safer. it would be quieter. I think we suffer from noise pollution as much as from any other pollution. maybe we could be happy with real food and real relationships and less stuff. imagine walking the earth as a free person. your persona in fact your very survival no longer bound to the 2-4 tons of metal, plastic and rubber parked outside your window. how much does your vehicle occupy your thought life? from gas prices to oil changes to tire rotations to expired inspection stickers. from how old it is to how many miles it has on it. from rust spots to should I buy or lease? from mufflers to brakes and rotors to wiper blades and washer fluid. from transmission fluid to anti-freeze. from synthetic or conventional to “you’ve got a headlight out”. not to mention the cost to the planet of procuring, transporting and using oil
I understand some people enjoy all that but I think most people would be happy to give it all up if only there was a way. we have to begin to dream of something far different if we want to be free because, let’s face it, right now we’re owned by our stuff not the other way around
chrissie hynd of the pretenders rock grpup left the usa for britain because she did not want to have to drive everywhere.
austin, tx should be the first downtown to ban vehicles especially during festivals…they have lots of street parties!
last time i was there a parking garage charged 15$ minimum.
i heard rumours some parking costs 100$ minimum.
curbside parking on residential roads by non residents should be outlawed, too.
there is a book describing what it was like to drive cross country during the dawn of the automobile…there were no paved roads but people were nicer back then and one could always hand crank it back to life. now we are racked with blood guilt and major lawsuits and recalls. coming down the line…automated cars that park themselves. taking the human factor out of life is not the answer.
maybe people will come to realize that all this “happy motoring”, as jim puts it, isn’t making us so happy. I’d like to know how they brought about such a change in Austin.
I think an awful lot of this is due to severely overprotective parents, especially mothers. There is of course a pedophile lurking behind every bush so the kids can’t leave the yard unless supervised by overburdened parents.
So they watch tv, play games and surf the internet. Mom’s precious ones are too good for things like sweeping, washing the dishes, laundering their one clothes, so she does all that (with some help from the husband). And we expect them to grow up?
Consider yourself lucky they didn’t steal your pocketbook, then give you a few kicks in the head while you were down, just for ha has.
Maybe a bit off topic, but this is an ADD forum, so let me unload. The preliminary report is in http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf
High energy projectiles entering from above? Pretty amazing feat for a BUK missile. Imagine the fallout if the truth is ever allowed to come out in the final report. The truth being that is was deliberately shot down in a deliberate act of terrorism to get heel dragging European dupes to jump on the US sanctions/demonize Russia bandwagon. 298 innocent souls, women and children amongst them. Every fucking one of you that bought into that trap deserve a life in hell. I hope and pray that pig faced fat bastard Poroshenko gets the Mussolini treatment he deserves for this and the shelling of civilian targets by his neo Nazi “right sector” thugs, with their cute little SS bands around their arms. Your tax dollars in action. Pissed off yet?
Getting pissed doesn’t help matters.
but it’s a good start
“A government is an entity that has a monopoly on the use of force in a certain geographic area. Soldiers. policeman, guardsmen etc enforce that monopoly.” — seawolf77
What the federal military does, specifically, is to break down young men in basic training and train them to obey orders to kill humans and destroy property. That includes the property the air force is destroying today in Iraq and Syria and the people they are killing today. But it happens every day.
On the home front, some people, like Clyde Bundy, think the only legitimate use of force is by the country sheriff… and, of course, by themselves as part of the sheriff’s posse. Here’s the fancy words they use: posse comitatus.
–Wikipedia
PK — Seawolf77 was alluding to Doug Casey’s libertarian views, which are likely very close to those of Cliven Bundy. Certainly closer than to the snarky elitism implied by “fancy words,” or the polite dismissal of the Wikipedia entry. Casey is a true idealist, believing in an ideal world where like-minded intelligent people can create collectives unimpeded by the depredations of The State. It would seem you believe since State violence happens every day that confers legitimacy. It is not clear from your words, but if so this is the same sort of Realpolitik morality exemplified by the neo-conservatives who promote war in Syria and Iraq. On the home front the militarized domestic federal agencies and local police departments extend the Realpolitik thinking and find themselves blundering into confrontations with idealists or simple folk, whether at the Bundy ranch or in Ferguson, who have not yet got the word that might makes right.
High fructose corn syrup. Yummy. Make ’em fat and sick. Should be banned, along with triclosan in anti-bacterial handsoaps and dishwashing liquid, which now they have proves causes Myasthenia Gravis or muscle weakness. Increase in heart disease anyone? Haven’t used it for decades. What is marketed isn’t necessarily good. Many grew up without anti-bacterial soap and lived to tell it!!!
Additional about Homestead Heritage. Their children even play games like “Duck, duck goose” together. Duck, duck what. No video games. You may even be able to grow up normal in that kind of situation. And the adults even play music together. I looked into 100 acres of farmland in VA for something like it. I’m a little shy of 1 mil and a quarter. And try to get 10 or 15 young families interested in something different, or to understand that things may be changing GL with that. Last I heard the 100 acres of farmland had sold to Asians. The way of one upmanship goes on.
From my experience with Muslim friends and time in the Middle East, I believe that The US lacks the social cohesion necessary for a unified insurgent movement..
As much as society in the ME has been obliterated, Muslim culture (again, imo) is extremely family oriented and tribal, whereas American society has sought endlessly to detach the individual from their familial and social connections, as an extension of the western capitalist agenda via individualistic ideology.
Who, among an army of First-Person-Shooters, will lead an armed youth insurrection and what will be its agenda? Maybe Reddit and net neutrality? ISIL had it easy: with decades of western policy failures and hate directed directly at Muslims, the US practically stitched the ISIL flag themselves.
What JHK is talking about isn’t something that’s coming down the pipe, it’s been here for decades and it looks like a kid in a trench coat mowing down fellow students in the locker rooms and movie theaters of America.
Now, I would propose that the most likely evolution of this will be increased gang and organized crime activity. Any ideology, aside from the profit motive, will be insufficient for creating a true movement in this country. The US will look more like Central America in the upcoming decades: pockets of paradise, surrounded by chaotic hellholes and sacrifice zones.
sethinthebox- “Any ideology, aside from the profit motive, will be insufficient for creating a true movement in this country”. – nailed it!
America spells Competition. Join us in our blind ambition, get yourself a brand new motor car. Now about that barn building thing.
“Casey is a true idealist, believing in an ideal world where like-minded intelligent people can create collectives unimpeded by the depredations of The State.” — FloridaPower
FP, I thought Casey was more of an anarcho-capitalist, a believer in free market without government interference. No government regulation. You know, like neutralizing government regulators through “regulatory capture” … a practice perfected by Goldman Sachs that led directly to the Crash of 2007-2008.
Libertarianism is impractical. Pie in the sky for dreamers. Or more to the point: a way to allow capitalists to loot and steal without interference from government. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and libertarianism is the enabler.
PK –
The anarcho-capitalist ideal – like an ideal anything – conjures up images of largely self-sufficient individuals bartering among each other for mutual gain in self-organizing collectives. The quintessential win-win. Introducing a disinterested third party as arbiter in this exchange may be required owing to increased scale and complexity but ideally creates no fundamental alteration in the win-win equation.
The reality is that human beings are corruptible and will sell out – will void the social compact – resulting in predatory monopolies or regulatory capture. From Win-Win to Zero-Sum (my gain is your loss). In the final stage of moral devolution government itself becomes an interested party, far removed from “the consent of the governed.” To answer Ben Franklin: “No, we could not keep the republic” just as Rome could not. The anomie of young men is symptomatic.
Howdy JHK, I just got back from a trip into your stomping grounds, on the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake, It’s beautiful up there this time of year. I always went to the northern tip of Lake George by Rogers Rock , but from what I saw today Sacandaga Lake has lake George beat. Crossed the rebuilt bridge. I went to buy 125ft. of cast iron hydronic baseboard off craigslist. 2000 lbs. in the Suburban Plow mobile. Well there goes the oil surplus!
In other words you found a deal on radiators.
Seth wins Monday’s keenest post award with this:
“…The US lacks the social cohesion necessary for a unified insurgent movement..” -SITB
At least as long as the social engineers can keep imagining ways to assert the petro-dollar, bloat the markets (and consumers)… yes, this atomized culture of inter-webbed, know it all and do nothing dociles will endure.
We saw direct evidence of this with the rise and fall of the grass roots components of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements. Co-opt and or dismantle is the name of that game. And it’s easy to do, we witnessed. Not before or since those two basic non-events in contemporary U.S. society has even the slightest threat of an armed or violent uprising been seen, despite all easy justifications for at least one unified move.
If anything, whether we speak of gaming distractions, blog griping clubs, or any iteration of banality TV, it ought to be clear that this culture has nothing left in it regarding viable social outburst. And you pathetic fuckers need to stop blaming so called internet trolls for the failures of your own grace and grit.
Anyone who can afford to spend YEARS commenting DAILY in blog spaces yet have produced no meaningful local social networks to remark of or report about only betray the fact that they’re just personally comfortable enough to let shit slide. Time to look in the mirror to spot the real trolls.
“Who, among an army of First-Person-Shooters, will lead an armed youth insurrection and what will be its agenda?” -SITB
Well, certainly none of the elder bellyachers who’ve become too soft and wise while professorially bantering on the internet year in and year out have it in them to lead such an army. They’ve neither the spine or the intellectual honesty to admit shame for perpetuating this bullshit for a lifetime. Let’s just place anyone who has voted twice for the same president (or any single prez) over the last 40 years into this category, perhaps longer.
In fact, while not doubting that things will get much worse in the U.S. sooner rather than later, I believe that most of the older, very astute, and utterly ineffectual observers of the early stages of the American collapse will simply die-out or switch off their own lights before shit really gets good in the neighborhood. Most of them even callously admit their desire to be get to see it, cowering in safety, hidden in the background no doubt.
Let’s not forget that those who have the luxury of bitching without action have just enough of a nest egg to forgo the deep personal risk that true revolt would bring.
“ISIL had it easy: with decades of western policy failures and hate directed directly at Muslims, the US practically stitched the ISIL flag themselves.” -SITB
Meanwhile; Americans had it even easier, reasons to rise that is. With all the partisan bickering to expose the egregious crimes of the political elite time and again, not to mention an unsurpassed access and depth of media to clarify the injustices: mainstream, alternative, and so proclaimed civic journalism thoroughly outlined idea after idea – problems, sources, causes, and once viable solutions – yet few of even the self-described educated citizenry could muster little more than scholastic witticisms and shallow lectures to the youth. Fuck off.
What’s more likely than near-term collapse, and far more karmic and tragic, is that those of us young men who see what’s truly coming will have to make the sad decision to do what’s necessary to keep this ship afloat, because the pain and suffering to come to the already useless Boomers and innocent little ones if we don’t try to do so will be too much to bare.
****************************************************************************
“Now, I would propose that the most likely evolution of this will be increased gang and organized crime activity. Any ideology, aside from the profit motive, will be insufficient for creating a true movement in this country.” -SITB describing when Collapse does come.
This is exactly the case now, only the scale of criminality and profit motive is righteously grand; this culture sold out to such a motive a long, long time ago. The two-tier structure that was always intended to be is here.
Yes, Collapse would surely bring about the reversion to smaller scale gangsterism but would pale in comparison to what’s presently occurring via Elite rule. IF we’re truly motivated to fight for something better, then brave that paradigm we should, at least it’s brutally honest.
Instead, this society and its people have changed to the point that they simply could not go backward, in that the people couldn’t cope with a world made by hand. Too corrupt and weak? Obviously.
Cormack McCarthy should probably rename his famous novel – No Country for Young Men (instead of Old).
Very interesting insight on the problem of displaced youth in America(s?). Working for a minimal wage just because you can’t pay your college has become a harsh reality many individuals must face. The best solution? Become a soldier. You will travel to foreign countries, be praised by the media and society, and eventually receive better pension (if you manage to keep both of your legs) and healthcare. . The best thing you can do is to go out and have some fun before it’s too late.
Women are smarter than men. They can join the military if they desire but are not obliged to register for the draft like my two sons.
Plus, when a war starts, just prior to being deployed they can get knocked up and stay stateside. Not a bad deal.
It is interesting to come and go, and come back yet again.
As Ecclesiastics (Solomon) said, there is nothing new under the sun.
Everything you were ever taught is wrong.
Everything you were ever told is wrong.
Everything you ever believed is wrong.
Everything you ever “learned” was from your own experience.
You know nothing more than that.
End nostalgia, it’s a lie, Maya.
Once again, JHK demonstrates that his mastery of our domestic malaise is unmatched … and, of course, that his superficial perusal of cable news truthiness leads to severely disconnected visions about global affairs.
Nevertheless, the observation about idle male hands is a good one.
But – ISIS in America? Not with the reliable standards of cool-ranch doritos, sanctioned TV violence, and free online porn! Most of the sheep will go to Denver for a toke before they’ll pick up arms to toss off the yoke.
If only there was some precedent for a widespread work program; you know, something that would result in an infrastructure build-out, pay enough to save a little, provide a healthy work outlet for those able-bodied citizens … oh well!
This enterovirus 68 might be more serious than we are being told, causing polio like paralysis in children in Colorado and Mass.
Why all these communicable diseases suddenly in our public schools in 2014, TB, Scabies, Meningitis as well as this respiratory virus? What’s different this year?
Its a mystery.
–brh
Well, morons refusing to vaccinate their kids might have something to do with it.
“Of course, the idea that higher education can lift a population out of this vortex of anomie is a cruel joke, especially now with the college loan racket parasitizing that flickering wish to succeed, turning young people into debt donkeys.”
Very true! As an older student who wnet back after a lay off to ‘better myself’, I am now stuck with loans and no promise at all of that bettering myself with that higher paying job, so f*** it. I walked on my loans as many of us are. Bring this student loan debt bubble crashing down. What are the gonna do; reposess my education? You can have it!!
Here’s what the young men of America are up to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9bqA3JfSBc
Presenting this without comment:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-09-30/ukrainians-gear-up-for-winter-without-russian-gas
“Ukrainians are rushing to insulate their walls, seal up drafty windows and snap up heating equipment as the possibility sets in that they may be about to experience their first winter without Russian gas.”
;]
Cheers!
Thinking of typical american Petite bourgeoisie
Detroit: No Money, No Water (and that’s good)
The judge overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy refused Monday to stop the city from shutting off water if people can’t pay their bill, saying there’s no right to water and the law doesn’t give him the power to keep the taps open anyway.
Judge Steven Rhodes gave critics of the shutoffs a two-day hearing last week. He said their arguments were “interesting and creative” but couldn’t trump the legal standard under bankruptcy law or constitutional law — or the potential harm to Detroit’s perilous finances.
Next, author states:
“He’s right. (the judge)
Never mind that there is plenty of water within walking distance of most residents of Detroit.
There is a very large river that runs right next to it, remember?
Oh, you want that water filtered, chlorinated and pumped to you, and then you want your dirty water (particularly the water you took a crap into) handled and properly sanitized?
That all costs money.”
What the idiot judge and the idiot author would say if the next Ebola outbreak would start precisely in Detroit due to anti-sanitary conditions?
Here is the link to the article above:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229457
I was banned from that site after a heated discussion over US border fence when I asked where do they think the machine guns should be pointed to – outward, to keep Mexicans from jumping in or inward, to keep Americans in “Free Market Paradise”
Water bills need to be paid.
Actually I’m surprised there isn’t a federal program like foodstamps (free food) and section 8 (free rent) to pay peoples water bill, too. Everything needs to be free. Its only fair.
I was wondering if Obama, Holder, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be getting involved in the missing coed at Univ. of Virginia seeing as how they like to insert themselves in local law enforcement incidents? Here we have another Gentle Giant, 300lb 6’2″ Jesse Mathew, only this time he is a suspect, not a victim. Also, I’ve yet to hear Obama (or Holder) comment on that poor working woman beheaded in OK city. He is, after all, president for everybody, not just the black ‘community’. And Mathew is a suspect in the murder of another pretty white coed about 5 years ago. I doubt there are too many coeds on a site like this, but I would say to them learn to take care of yourself. And for God sake don’t drink yourself stupid and stagger around the streets at night by yourself. This place is filled with monsters and predators.
–brh
Of course bills need to be paid. Water utility have their own bills to pay.
Detroit should be declared a National Labor Disaster Area – America is at risk of permanently loosing highly skilled machine-tools workers and engineers. Find promising projects for import-replacement and use FED printed money to build/equip production facilities in Detroit to make them. Then, erect a protective tariffs against those products to protect businesses against unfair foreign competition.
FDR: The Economic Bill of Rights
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
And god damn it, DEFINITELY THE RIGHT TO CLEAN RUNNING WATER
You need a complete overhaul of the monetary system. Once you research this as long as I have, it is the only logical conclusion. We need real money, not currency. If there is only so much money, would you buy a plow or a gun. There was never a world war until the Federal Reserve was established. Then there was 2, and we’re headed for #3. The military is so wasteful now it is laughable. I worked on the F-22 20 years ago. It flew operationally last week for the first time. It took 20 years to bring it to combat. 20 years of employment by the people who worked on it. 50 more if it lasts as long as the F-15,16, and 18. What good did all that money get us? 20 freakin years. If you had told me that 20 years ago, I would have laughed my ass off.
Hey Seawolf the US didn’t get into the World Wars until long after they started. WW1 began August 1914 and the AEFs first combat on the western front wasn’t until April 1918. WW2 was raging for almost 3 full years before US Marines began engaging Japanese Imperial Troops in the spring of 1942.
brh
Yes, we were lied into both wars by Wilson and Roosevelt respectively. Americans used to be a far more peaceful people. WW2 propaganda and its ongoing aftermath have changed us fundamentally. Now just play a little patriotic music at a funeral and you guys are foaming at the mouth. A totally maladapted culture has been created.
There were huge anti-war movements before both wars. All of this has been x’ed out of our History.
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.
That’s Nazi talk. The Banks know what’s best for us. That’s why they put In God We Trust on the bills. What are you some kinda of Atheist or something?
You know I am beginning to understand the hold the Catholic Church and the banks have on us. It is God. God this, God that, God God God.
The traditional economics endorsed by the Church was Distributism, an artful mixture of small Capitalism and Socialism where issues are dealt with as locally as possible. The Vatican Two Church is Globalist monstrosity – Pope Benedict even came out in favor of a World Bank. So you’re right about the latter but not the former.
“You need a complete overhaul of the monetary system.”
Not really, it’s already in the Constitution, ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 5 “The Congress shall have Power To…coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin”
All you have to do is to elect somebody with balls, like FDR, take possession of FED, turn it into National Bank and use it as tool for National Project Financing, even if you have to send in some Marines.
FDR didn’t nationalize FED probably because he was afraid of going through dysfunctional Federal Congress, he used “FED independence” to the Nation’s advantage.
Just don’t say anything about “gold standard” or “competitive currencies”.
However, the foreign trade should be based on EQUAL EXCHANGE, most likely settling trade deficits not with paper, but with some real stuff – like gold or something of real value.
I agree the Fed is unconstitutional, but that didn’t stop them. No the first thing you have to do is to reveal the true owners of the Fed. That is the key. Once you crack that nut, then you can see who is to blame, and once you see that, then you know why.
Whoever they are, they definitely do not work in the interests of American people – so it is interesting, but not that important.
Good President with balls would put some Security Agency to investigate who those people are, we can’t do that and it is useless to speculate.
What IS important is the POLICIES of the FED and how they distribute the monetized National Credit and who gets the first shot at it.
Now it is done for the benefit of few privileged banks from The Cartel.
It should be done for the benefit of the Nation to build things of real value and provide high-paying jobs.
Basically the current debt-based monetary system should be replaced with credit-based monetary system – yes, money are still printed, but distributed according to National Priority Real Economy projects, like transportation, power, water, education, medical care, scientific research.
Such Bills of Credit should be Bills of Congress signed by President – total transparency, vs secretive, cabalistic mambo-jumbo ramblings of the current FED.
Stop giving money to the banks for speculating, start buying Michigan’s infrastructure bonds – 100 year maturity, 1% interest rate or less – put people back to meaningful work.
Look at what Detroit used to make, especially in the area of machine tools and now is outsourced to China and slap a 30 – 50 – 100% import duty on it, “free Market” be damned.
Does anyone remember “the giant sucking sound of jobs leaving America,” line by presidential candidate Ross Perot. He made this comment while debating then VP Al Gore. He was not alone. Sir James Goldsmith, the Sir Lawrence Wildman character in the movie “Wall Street,” wrote a book about it. He said GATT and NAFTA were the single most important event/law/treaty in the average man’s life and yet no one was talking about it. Why? Because tariffs are erected to protect a country’s jobs from unfair competition. If you can hire 50 Vietnamese or 1 American, I mean c’mon, if you owned a company what would you do? Today Americans are looking around saying “What happened to all the jobs?” They left, went overseas, and are never coming back. The East is ascending, the West is descending. The world is getting flatter.
Seems so, and they’re buying up our arable farm land.
@ufia:
So to war on Ukraine, Syria, ISIS, etc., we now add war between the generations. You gotta blame someone for your tough times.
Look, I can only speak for myself, not for my own age group. For various reasons, I grew up not trusting people and being cynical. The result for me has always been to go my own way. I let others do their own thing, and I don’t feel any obligation to help others straighten out their messes. I’ll always help if someone in need asks me to, but I won’t insert myself on my own. I believe I have to live with reality, even if reality is not the way I’d prefer it to be.
It’s all about will. If society wants change, change will happen; if not it won’t. Why fight life? Why not just do your best to prepare for what might occur? Live life and seek peace of mind. You or I aren’t important in the scheme of things; no one is. Everything ends. Do you think the universe cares? It does not. Get over yourself.
“Everything ends.” Yes, but the question is how does it end? America turning into ISIS with 30,000 nuclear warheads and supersonic means of delivery? I sort of doubt that America will go quietly into the night like the Soviet Union did.
That’s the 64 trillion dollar question. How does it end?
It ends quicker than you can say Clusterfuck. . My Buddie hit a moose Sunday and it took the top off his Tacoma. If he didn’t duck down it would have taken his head also. The moose survived but had broken legs and pelvis and was euthanized by the MEP.
just a quick click to show what a moose will do to your truck.
http://treeofmamre.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/dead-moose.jpg
http://www.ontario-outfitters.ca/moose-car/moose1.jpg
I always think about this crap when I am doing 65 or 75 on the interstate. I killed a deer in ’83 with my motorcycle. Unfortunately for you CF’s I am still here to tell the story., as much as it will bore you.
The 64 billion dollar question. How does it all end. We’ll bludgeon eachother to death at the gas pump, Ebola coming to town, and the rest, who knows. But those who are doing well can drive to Target indefinitely. And why all the women bashing. Proven fact, matriarchal societies are happier. Hope for Ms.Clinton,here I come to save the day. Yowsa.
“So to war on Ukraine, Syria, ISIS, etc., we now add war between the generations. You gotta blame someone for your tough times.” -Drunk Typin’ Bill
Yes, yesss, Beanzie. I absolutely blame You (general subjective) for the messes that you created, which I had nothing to do with. My own learning curve is pretty steep when I’m not motivated to climb, but it took me no time to put together the rudiments of these predicaments and spot the hypocrisies of the various “premonitory” announcers when I was even younger.
In my early youth I was absolutely the opposite of you. I was completely trusting, yet I was smart enough to listen & watch not only what people said but also what they did. And as far as this war between generations thingy goes, no, not war, just callin’ it like I see it. You clowns fucked up, and big time. Most of you either acquiesced to the travesties commited during your watch, or simply opted to sweep ’em under the rug until your careers were over. You don’t have anything to say about that, do ya.
I do get angry when I hear some busted and disgusted old man lament the current political and social environment in one breath (the idiosyncrasies of my generation included), and then seek sympathy for his own ailing health in another, something you’ve done and do here quite frequently. You aside, I’ve noticed this runs rampant in your age group.
Soggy, broken old men, not from lives of back breaking hard work, but decrepit from modern convenience and complacency, who secretly hate themselves and feel the need to finger point and hand wave at everyone else; men who won’t hesitate to approach me in my daily life and try to assert themselves unsolicited. I used to be willing to entertain these random tidbits of “wisdom”, now I just recognize that this is what a defeated generation looks like. Losers of every recent military incursion, save a bombing campaign or two, since the last great war, and they now want a new class of men to be what they failed to be. Ironic.
And though I can’t prove this, I suspect your occasionally drunken ass visits here from time to time to express your personal angst, albeit apologetically, and in your usually genial way, with little reprisal. Now you think you have credibility and can scold me for expressing the same while sober. Not today, bud. Eat shit, sir – a mighty heaping helping of it.
I find you to be a generally amiable guy, Bill. I don’t nitpick your biased assertions on all of the above named issues, so what makes you think you’re in any position to lend advice.
When you first started posting here I thought you were pretty smart. Alas, you’ve turned into just another smarmy kid with decent grammar.
Genial, me? That’s just my default nature; I can mix it up with the nastiest when provoked.
If you read my posting, I was saying, in my nice, default manner, tough shit, kid. Life happens. You don’t get to choose when you come into this world. You don’t realize it, but you came into being at a very propitious time. Why – I’ll leave that up to you to figure out – if you can.
No one person or generation is responsible for the way the world is.
It’s the cumulative effect of decisions made by life forms since the dawn of time.
As far as me being broken down: Hah! Yeah, at my age gravity has created some rust in me, but I’m in good shape. You show your smarminess by calling me a drunk, in so many words, yet you never met me, or probably anyone who knows me. Very poor reasoning on your part. I still have most of a twelve-pack in my refrigerator from 6 months ago. That’s the extent of my drinking. I always said prejudiced people aren’t too smart, and you sure have a warped picture of older people. Grow up, sonny, or some day a real soggy, broken-down old man might whoop yo’ ass and not out of geniality.
@ RT:
I hear you. I once almost nailed a deer on the interstate outside of Denver, going 80. Very close shave that shook me up.
Grow up, sonny, or some day a real soggy, broken-down old man might whoop yo’ ass and not out of geniality.
Shiver Me Timbers!
Hell’s Grannies
Great point Alphie, about a world without cars! A point I was trying to make about Homestead Heritage. They don’t have many. It’s quite lovely to see their children playing together, and people actually working together for something important. The ground corn on a wheel may damage your teeth, but it sure beats Walmart! And, it could even be more sustainable.
The U.S. has denied a business visa to Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili
http://www.azernews.az/region/71383.html
The veracity of the information will soon be cleared. Supporters of the ex-president’s party are disappointed. The U.S. political elite is disillusioned with Saakashvili, he has, in fact, no support at the White House anymore.
US is not so kind with the used-up material, he failed at war of 8.8.8 with Russia, now he failed in Ukraine.
Looser was so afraid of Russian tanks entering capital of Georgia, he chew on his necktie on camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kid379OjuC0
Ukraine’s Poroshenko next?
In a meantime more dead bodies – total count is now above 400 – turn out in mass graves near Donetsk. Civilians, women, children were executed by Ukrainian National Guard, a lot of them after torture.
Our democracy-loving Western “partners” of course don’t give a flying f*ck, it’s just some bunch of stinkin “russkies”.
http://rt.com/news/191364-new-mass-grave-ukraine/
“Very poor reasoning on your part.” -BTB
As though your remarks to me today and the CFN archives don’t directly make my points for me. *sigh*
To your point, just how much do you think you know about my station and day to day prospects, anyhow? I’m as entitled to as many different states and traits as you believe yourself to be… so where do you come off givin’ me the life’s tuff speech? It seems your real problem is with receiving a counter to the theme of this week’s topic. Side-step, jest and jig, eh brother? Fine, back at you. Life’s a bitch, don’t be one. Sorry for not fully partaking of the Kool Aid this week.
“You don’t realize it, but you came into being at a very propitious time.” -BTB
Fading into and out of obscurity, waxing philosophic, and feigning self-actualization is exactly what I’ve always perceived of you. Here’s to staying true to form. Of course you won’t bother to substantiate the above, you don’t have the capacity. Carry on you squishy, leathery old fart.
“The authorities will have no way to understand what is happening and we are certain to endure a long season of violence and social chaos as a result. The re-set from that will be an economy and a society that few now yammering in the HuffPo or the Tea Party will recognize….”
– jhk –
Yeah, JHK, you’re right again. And you’re attracting some really good commentary this week. Things will go on until that can’t. Although we seem to be going into stupid-mode with afterburners blazing.
Ebola is here in the US, since Monday’s post. The whole massive apparatus of the CDC swings into operation. No one stops to ask WHY a young man from Liberia is flying around the globe and into the US, seeming on personal business. No one asks why recent Liberian emigres are living in Texas, either.
Speaking of the CDC – did you see that a man with three convictions was in an elevator with Obama @ that CDC. The man was a “security guard” at the CDC. The Secret Service became aware of this man because he was filming the Pres. on his personal cell phone and REFUSED to stop when the SS requested. No one asks why security at the CDC was privatized – let alone why and when it was privatized in such an inept manner. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/armed-former-convict-was-on-elevator-with-obama-in-atlanta/2014/09/30/76d7da24-48e3-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html
And did you see where 1,000 armed government employees are searching for ONE (count him, one!) civilian killer of a State Trooper in Pennsylvania? Hell, all around. No one has asked how many suicidal Muslims it would take to tie up the entire law enforcement apparatus of the US into a convulsing jumpy mass. I would guess that about 150 ought to just about do it.
Whatever happened to those streecorner preachers, holding up those signs that said, “THE END IS NEAR!!”
It would be a good time for those guys to reappear.
I think they only existed in cartoons.
To Beantown Bill:
What I like about you is that you are NOT a whiny antisemitic complainer with a foul mouth. You have a good head and an open mind.
You make more balanced and sane comments than many others, though far too infrequently. You and Contrahend are at least open to possibilities of technological progress, and don’t get sucked into conspiracy theories for which no evidence is produced.
But mostly you do not allow yourself to become ill-tempered and do not engage in personal attack, though you do defend your Jewishness when attacked. You are a gentleman, and probably a scholar, who casts pearls before the CFN … [*]
“In my experience, clueless means conservative and white. So does we just want to be left alone. This is conservative speak at its finest.”
– seawolf directly, mikecarrick, no1kiwi, alphie, etc, by paraphrase –
Wow boys, stereotype much?
And anyway – if one is going to take peak resources and societal collapse seriously – then one needs to take it seriously. None of you seem to have any intention of doing that.
One of the grand gifts of freedom is the freedom to be left alone.
That’s dead right now in the US.
Guys like you killed it.
“BTW, what makes the religious folk of this country any less susceptible to bringing correction-by-extreme-violence/terror than anywhere else? …Don’t answer that, history is not our friend in this regard.”
– ozone –
Last week you expressed your fear of “xtians,” specifically by name.
This week you’re more generic, but the meaning still stands.
Tell you what, O3, let’s put 100 ACLU atheist lawyers on one side of your property; and let’s put 100 country bred Southern Baptists on the other side. And then let’s arrange for all of you to give up electricity and food for just one week.
My money’s on you throwing in with those Baptists pretty quickly.
Although I would like video of “ACLU Meets Lord of Flies.”
Would not be pretty, I’ll guarantee.
@pkrugman:
I appreciate the comments. Thank you.
Romance finally comes to the JHK site. Krugie and Beanie are an item……..
And they’ve traded pearl necklaces in gratitude and open mindedness for us all to learn from.
Isn’t it nice when you show your true level of maturity?
Funny, I thought we already had a CFN romance – between you and your hand.
Have you two lovebirds set a date yet? Where do you plan to honeymoon…..possibly Wash DC so you can be near your maximum leader, O’Bomber?
Speaking of young American men, a certain type of mental illness must have taken hold of those who play and listen to the booming bass crap. It’s by far one of the most hideous sounds known and people (mostly young men) willingly subject themselves to it. And to amplify an insolent belligerence, everybody else with a pair of ears. From a mile away a person can hear this repetitive ‘boom-boom-boom puke like an aural hydra that simply won’t die.
Yes, you have to be one fucked up asshole to listen to this Lucifer pounding the bongos of the underworld shit.
Why men like bass so much?
“It allows the driver to experience a return to his maternal womb, where he once was carried around in blissful anonymity and remote mobility. And perhaps the loud pounding bass heard from the “boom machines” as they drive around neighborhood streets, reminds the driver of the thumping sound of a motherly heartbeat.”
http://netage.org/2010/03/01/swollen-unsustainable-vehicles-suvs/
===============
And btw, JHK, thanks for the week’s work.
=================
And q, if that was really you, welcome back.
And good luck getting on again. You are probably blocked by IP address. Try leaving your modem turned off for 24 hours. (Just unplug it) When you plug it back in, your ISP might supply you with a new IP address. Anybody else have other ideas?
Prog:
Interesting theory and somewhat similar to Micky Hart’s thought in “Planet Drum”. I have noticed that many of the violent video games are accompanied by this garbage as well. And as you infer via the linked post, the sound of the drum beat is deep and visceral. But it doesn’t have to be so utterly demonic and dehumanizing. For instance, this incredible work of true ART:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw
But the insipid repetitiveness of American culture is mirrored by the generic perception of it’s inhabitants. All politicians are the same regardless of party and too many people seem incapable of distinguishing real policy differences between the parties that have significant consequences for society. For instance every single GOP Supreme Court nominee voted in favor of ‘Corporations Are Persons” and every single Dem appointee in opposition. Moreover, when the Senate sought to visit the issue every single Republican voted against doing so.
And yet the ‘not a dimes worth of difference between the parties mantra’ beats on; THUD, THUD, THUD, with otherwise intelligent minds pounding the drum sticks of a generic beat.
That’s strange because the Democrats get even more millionaires and billionaires contributing to them than the Republicans do. But the show must go on and the ordinary party members fooled – thus votes like this. Both Parties are certainly in agreement on the seminal issue of our day – Immigration.
Oh I must have missed your response last week to our questions. Now how many more immigrants do you think are acceptable? Do you want to stop when America’s population is 400 million or do you want to keep going until a we reach a billion or so? Remember their high birthrate: 400 million will get us to a billion in and of itself. You reply: people have fewer children when they reach the middle class. Check your assumption: do you really think all of these people are going to reach the middle class? So far they have more kids here than in Mexico. The Central Americans will be no different. We are far more likely to become like India than a new version of America or Europe as they used to be.
just in time for Halloween. they’re coming for you janos. they don’t look like you. they don’t act like you, they don’t talk like you(thank god). they’re…they’re….they’re the non-whites and they’re multiplying exponentially! resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. sleep tight Janos OWOOOooooo!
I thought I replied to your post on Sunday because I was out of town for a few days but if I did not apologies.
My point was generic thinking in general. Of course there will always be central Venn overlap but that doesn’t mean not to look right or left for the divergence. It seems many are just looking straight ahead.
No comment on the music? And what a beautiful blend of the sexes; the first woman up in that clip is beautifully mesmerizing.
You’re not going to get an argument from me that grinding poverty doesn’t facilitate overpopulation as humans will anesthetize their suffering via sex. When the economics of life don’t allow a vision beyond this week’s food and next month’s rent then why should the consequences of sex be any different? And the poor are still people who also gain joy, however temporary, from that magical period of pregnancy and birth.
“remember their high birth rate”… no, I’d rather not be a xenophobe thank you. but I do recall the native americans, when they saw how the white settlers were coming in such great numbers compared them to locusts. well, the whites have done a pretty good job ravaging the landscape. an apt analogy I’d say
Yeah, it’s really me.
When I get back home from FL I’ll give that (unplugging the modem) a try. There is so much to do here…I just picked up my brother’s ashes and Death Certs from the Funeral Home today. Also met with the detective who entered his home and found him dead on the floor for several days.
War Drums. And as Mr Kunstler said, for a war yet to come against Whites. The White kids listen too: which side will they fight on?
Mosquito Virus That Walloped Caribbean Spreads in U.S.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/mosquito-virus-spreading-in-u-s-that-walloped-caribbean.html
A mosquito-borne virus that can cause debilitating joint pain lasting for years has spread to the continental U.S. after infecting hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean and Central America.
The virus is called Chikungunya, an African name meaning “to become contorted.” While the illness, first identified in Tanzania in 1952, has long bedeviled Africa and Asia, the only recorded cases in the U.S. before July involved patients who contracted the virus abroad.
My whole family got the friggin thing, I am still suffering from lower back pain. Two workers on the farm got it, had to hire temporary replacement.
According to Wikipedia, “Chikungunya was one of more than a dozen agents the United States researched as potential biological weapons”
“That’s the 64 trillion dollar question. How does it end”
First Ebola Case Is Diagnosed in the U.S., CDC Reports
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/first-ebola-case-is-diagnosed-in-the-u-s-cdc-reports.html
CDC’s Frieden: `No Doubt’ Ebola Will Be Contained in U.S.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/cdc-s-frieden-no-doubt-ebola-will-be-contained-in-u-s-V~Z2LwndQDWRd9S0P6oTzg.html
Wouldn’t clean running water be sort of precondition to fight any infectious decease?
re | “Wouldn’t clean running water be sort of precondition to fight any infectious decease?”-FitM.
Yes, it would. Unfortunately there wasn’t much investment in basic survival infrastructure in the past 40 years of ‘development’ in the Global South. Vanity projects that were good political PR came first. The same thing happened in the USA.
So now the bill is due, and there is a price to be paid. A lot of nations that thought that they were getting somewhere, will not. And that will have knock-on effects for the rest of the world… After all, 1Billion+ people on the move is not trivial.
I’ll just go ahead an repost these, now that Ebola has made landfall on North America.
AirTravel + Ebola = ?
http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/files/2014/08/ebolatrafficconnections4.png
This is why India doesn’t *have* a way to stop a pandemic:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/india-600-000-die-annually-from-50-open-defecation-rate/article/394639#ixzz39wmxH4E9
PS., The ebola issue was totally avoidable – and yet it was allowed to turn into a game-destabilizer… It’s stuff like this that make me lose interest when I see people discussing “TPTB” as if they were highly competent oligarchic masterminds.
Real masterminds control Risk. They like Risk but they know how to manage it. There is *NO* evidence that the American PTB knew a thing about Risk Management. At all. Ever.
If you actually think that there’s some ‘master plan’ behind what’s been allowed to happen geopolitically, you are a novice.
Naturally FitM I don’t mean *you* in particular. I am being rhetorical.
“If you actually think that there’s some ‘master plan’ behind what’s been allowed to happen geopolitically, you are a novice.”
Yes, I am. I do not have any “inside info”, but cant help thinking that “they” just throw sh*t on the World Globe and see what sticks.
So you assume for some reason that the Elite are only going to use “nice” methods? Why wouldn’t they use Ebola? How we know? Maybe they have already been inoculated? Or maybe they want to create a need to sell their vaccine.
Do you “*have*” a problem with the concept of a predatory elite?
Janos, you make an excellent point. An analogy: the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan not to stop the war in the Pacific (which was essentially already over) but to make a point to the Soviets. So the we already have evidence just how far the “elite” will go if they think it suits their plan. OK, you might say, but that was the “other side” being killed, not our own. “They” would never do that to “us”. Problem is, the elite’s “us” and our “us” is not the same set of people.
UKRAINE 2.0 – Hong Kong’s Color Revolution
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2014/09/ukraine-20-hong-kongs-color-revolution
The State Department is creating as second front in the Color Revolution war, away from Ukraine, this time in Hong Kong.
September 30, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – LD) – The “Occupy Central” protests in Hong Kong continue on – destabilizing the small southern Chinese island famous as an international hub for corporate-financier interests, and before that, the colonial ambitions of the British Empire. Those interests have been conspiring for years to peel the island away from Beijing after it was begrudgingly returned to China in the late 1990’s, and use it as a springboard to further destabilize mainland China.
Anybody else have other ideas?
He could just get a life instead. Why encourage embittered futility?
Unless it’s about getting your kicks on Route 666 — then, by all means, carry on old man.
With everything going on in the world these days it might be described as a perilous time, wouldn’t you agree? Times that might require the full attention of the White House? How is it then that Obama’s chief advisor and confidant, Valerie Jarrett, found time to appear on the TV show ‘The Good Wife’, this week, playing herself? I heard about it the same day I learned about Ebola in Texas, and that this enterovirus 68, which appeared magically and was not bought in by illegals from Central America dropped into our public schools, resembles polio and is causing paralysis in American children in Colorado and Mass.
Also, the bodies are piling up out there. Ever hear the phrase, ‘War on Women’? Here’s the war on women. The body of a realtor, an attractive white woman, was found the other nite in a shallow grave in Arkansas. The guy arrested was black, who said she appeared wealthy and robbery was the motive. This isn’t race baiting. Holder and Sharpton in Ferguson, and Obama’s speech the other nite to the black caucus was race baiting. The coeds in Virginia, the woman decapitated in OK city, this woman in Arkansas … I’m waiting for Holder to show up at least at one of these places like he did in Ferguson, and be Attorney General for everybody, not just the ‘community’. And oh ya. where are all the professional feminists out there in cases like this? I haven’t heard from one.
–brh
Modern city of Kharkov is being patrolled by battalion “Azov” wearing emblems of SS Division “Das Reich”
http://el-murid.livejournal.com/2018463.html
Third day mass beatings and murders of citizens of Kharkov (SE Ukraine, still under Kiev’s control).
Slogans in center of city calls for “toasted Russian chickens” and “roasted colorado bugs” (the way Kiev Nazis are referring to resistance fighters).
In Kharkov, a man was found impaled on a church fence, his body attached with electrician’s tape to the fence. Medical gloves were found on the site. According to witnesses, he was killed by Right Sector activists on suspicion of being a sympathizer of Novorussia. According to official police reports, this man impaled himself and, presumably, having done that, found the time and energy to securely attach himself to the fence with tape.
Here is link to the picture:
http://cs623823.vk.me/v623823909/3085/FHusJnkVt_s.jpg
If by any chance you give a shit, Kharkov is the city I was born.
Hey Fincain I hear on BBC this morning fighting has broken out again on the Ukraine-Russia border. I guess the cease fire is at an end.
brh
Actually, it never stopped. Kiev central government appears to not have total control over different military units, oligarch-sponsored militia and (mostly polish)mercenaries fighting under its flag.
The biggest problematic area is airport in the city of Donetsk, still under Kiev’s forces and still shelling some districts of Donetsk with heavy artillery – every day 8 to 10 people get blown to bits, school repairs that started for new school year are in jeopardy.
But generally speaking, very tense ceasefire is still holding up.
But I have a feeling that Kiev under US pressure will make another attempt soon at finishing up resistance in Novorussia. I also have a feeling they will get their asses wiped with crude sandpaper yet again.
The feelings in Russia are that Novorussia is fighting the continuation of anti-Nazi war of 1941 – 1945. Under those motivations Russians are the best fighters in the world and undefeatable.
“The Russians are the best fighters in the world and undefeatable” — Fincain
Here’s the thing about Russia (and China)
Apparently the Russian Army has not yet gone thru the Gay and Feminist PC enlightenment that the US Army has. These young tough peasant soldier-killers, raised up and trained in brutal physical circumstances, will be going to war for the Motherland with an Orthodox Bible and photo of Commissar Putin in their kit, not an EEOC manual and a picture of Lady GaGa.
[[brh
Yeah, that’s not a pretty sight. Condolences for your hometown, FitM.
I can not read Your language. However, we all speak and write “human”. Vice news is the only way I know or understand anything that is going on over there. There is nothing on mainstream media anymore…they talk about war and refugees but have little explaination for who is doing what to whom and why. Wikipedia is the only other news source I trust because it has a basic set of definitions for things.
It is truly embarassing how the govt has three different designations for the same group of crazy middle easterners/fanatic muslims and how nobody can identify the terrorists/soldiers/private armies/gangsters in Ukraine. To me, Ukraine sealed its fate when mr. chocolate factory shook hands with putin.
Just saw a Khorasan on a map last night – it’s on the border with Iran. Thus they move closer towards their true objective. Meanwhile “moderate rebels” refuse to attack ISIS in Syria. The real goal is Assad anyway.
The shelf-life of that particular set of lies and swindles will hit its sell-by date soon in a massive debt repudiation – JHK
Yeah, that’s obvious, as there’s no way for a barrista to repay tens of thousands in loans.
And even if there was a way, for example, if it involves scratching by on meager, inadequate food, no dental care, wearing threadbare clothes, living in bug infested rooming houses, in other words, existing in dire poverty because you bought into multiple lines of bullshit, the owners of this debt will be selling it for a small fraction of its face value to other racketeers, those being debt collectors. Why? Because those under or unemployed former students will realize they were lied to.
One particularly nasty lie was this notion that as entire industries upped sticks to China, there would be higher value lines of work that would take shape as a replacement for all the illustriously degreed college grads to move into, lines of work we mouth-breathers couldn’t yet envision. And so college degrees were an absolute necessity, all the charts showed it, there was all this data and evidence in support.
What shit that was. Who was it that refered to these employees of the future as “symbolic” workers? I know that academics are all into abstractions. It’s what academics do. And abstractions are fine and dandy for college seminars. Students puzzle over highly learned writings, all highly abstract stuff, complete with abstract terminology. And then they go to seminar meeting rooms not having understood one fucking thing they’ve read and listen in utter despair, not having any earthly idea what the fuck anybody is talking about.
So abstractions are great. They’re good for establishing the intellectual grandiosity of the perfessers. But this is the real world. People have to earn a living. You can’t eat abstractions. “Symbolic” workers my ass.
Hello V,
re | “One particularly nasty lie was this notion that as entire industries upped sticks to China, there would be higher value lines of work that would take shape as a replacement for all the illustriously degreed college grads to move into, lines of work we mouth-breathers couldn’t yet envision. And so college degrees were an absolute necessity, all the charts showed it, there was all this data and evidence in support [it].”-volodya.
One of the ways that I know who I’m dealing with and how much they know is whether they trot out a story like: “when automobiles came in, sure it was bad for blacksmiths and wagon-wheel makers. Those thousands of jobs were lost, but *millions* more jobs were gained…”
I’m fond of that one because it’s been bouncing around the halls of marketing and government policy for decades – so the teller just told me what level of person is loading their lips. Secondly, I like it (and it’s companion ‘word-tracks’) because it tells me the teller is an intellectual lightweight… After all, the *Labor* in that scenario is not the blacksmith, its all the horses he supported. The advent of the automobile sent most working horses to the glue-factory, not to new jobs.
The entire edifice of job-market ‘Ephemeralization’ is based on that sort of duplicitous, falsely equivalent & ridiculous b-s. And yet, the public shelled out million$ for the privilege of being comforted by that rubbish…
There’s one born ‘every minute’.
😉
MD
Blacksmiths!
My great uncle was one. He died around 1920. Here’s the thing. After he died his shop was just closed up and forgotten about. Decades later me and my cousins discovered it, found all kinds of cool stuff in there. I still have some of it, an anvil, tongs, bunch of hammers. The building itself, free standing near the Farmington River, was built seemingly with local materials harvested right off the property where it stood. Its still there, 130 years old.
–brh
‘-Smithing was a fine trade to have, for thousands of years…
Who knows? Maybe we’ll see a resurgence – depending on how fast things crumble.
Cheers!
Something maybe to look forward to, MD.
Even an event like TLE will have its compensations.
We aren’t needed anymore. Machines and Coolies have taken our job and function. Our duty now is only to die.
Our whole culture was based on a false and pernicious premise that a Man’s worth was his Job. Thus now that he has none he has no worth. That being said, it is natural to work and we should have chosen another path, one that didn’t eliminate our natural ways of life. The reset to a world made by hand can’t come a minute too soon.
re | “Our duty now is only to die.”-Janos.
Yes, this is what the vast majority of humanity in the developed world is being told – in so many words.
A lot of techies arrogantly expect to see the blue-collar ‘element’ quietly crawl off in the bushes and die out of their problems, just like ancient feral cats.
It’s typical for tech’s to breezily ignore spillover, knock-on effects, externalities…
Tsk, tsk.
I enjoyed, as always, the comments to dancing. I do a lot of English and contra dancing, so I know the music and dancing. It’s lots of fun, and a shame it’s not more popular. Maybe it needs a version of ‘Dirty Dancing’ onscreen to get the word out.
I also notice at my dances, it’s mostly people over forty, and a lot of girls will show up at times. A problem too, is you have to have lessons. People don’t want that. They want to learn it now.
As for an American ISIS, I go along with the general collapse theory. There really isn’t any unity, and I note the recent arrival of Ebola in America. An invasion along the border isn’t even challenged, and is encouraged. Meanwhile, we go on fighting overseas because war is the one thing we seem to be able to do well…not that we win anything, but we’re good at blowing up stuff. Like Putin said, anything the US touches turns to Libya or Iraq.
I feel like it’s 400 AD, and we’re in Rome.
Yet, everyone is not aware, or simply ignore things, right as well as left. I went to a dance several years ago, and everyone at the dance (except me) had an Obama button or T shirt. I’ll be as polite as I can, and say Obama is indifferent and incompetent. I see him and
America and am reminded of the movie Nicholas and Alexandra.
I’ll spare you elaborate political theory, but since Reagan left, we’ve been taken over by a corporate system that has a lock on government, and they have their own agenda. It’s almost a replay of the struggle between the Church and secular rule during the 16th century. I don’t see any Martin Luthers.
What will only work, JHK seems to say and imply, is our own local sources. Everyone is in their own Union Grove.
Hi,
re | “It’s almost a replay of the struggle between the Church and secular rule during the 16th century. I don’t see any Martin Luthers.”-meargen.
This is an interesting way to put it. The neocons and objectivists *do* seem to have a ‘religion’; they firmly believe in the Infallibility of ‘The Market’ & ‘Enlightened Self-Interest’… To place that in medieval terms, they are the dutiful worshippers of Mammon.
Perhaps ‘Mammonite’ is an appropriate appellation for them…
😉
Cheers!
Reagan, who’s that? Is that a full-time actor who part-time played the President of United States?
Reagan: Our best known ‘Zoolander’ president… ;]
Yes the realm of Folk Dancing is comprised of far Left retards by and large. Thus it doesn’t represent the real people anymore – who have no wholesome culture at all anymore. So as they lost their culture, it was appropriated by the “new real people” – the upper middle class.
Yes, teenage girls are great though. That’s when women should be marrying – at their peak. Instead you have hefty 40+ cougar cows on the prowl at these dances.
“…hefty 40+ cougar cows on the prowl …” Hilarious. Wonderful imagery.
“union grove for everyone”
that is not possible in real life. the novels are excercises in imagination, they are fictional and do not need to be accurate.
thats why works of fiction have disclaimers that state any resemblance to actual people or places or circumstances is entirely coincidental.
readers of jhk made by hand series are foolish to use it as a handbook or model to tackle real world problems…it is cultush to do so and will become a major disappointment. if you look for parallels to bullock, job or heil dolly, you will find them but they are not doing as well as their fictional counterparts.
our world will always have a functioning justice system and fed govt and it is dangerous for citizens to promote life without their involvement in our daily affairs. most of criticisms of govt have been about their failure to do more than what they were initially designed to do – maintain stable currency for trade between large distances, defend against tyranny and provide a commom framework for governance or democracy with three destinct arms for making laws, interpreting them and enforcing laws. without that framework you have anarchy. the novels are set in a future anarchy where regions have to figure it out all over again complete with civil wars and wild west domination. thise days are gone forever. you can dream about if you want.
I detect a little bitterness in your post, V.
Well said!
Little girl in RI died today from enterovirus 68.
Already the disinformation scumbags are out saying this is an outlier and the virus isn’t really deadly. And we don’t know where it came from.
brh
LOL.
The Russians upthread hate Reagan. I guess I don’t blame them. He did kick their ass and rub their face in the dirt under his heel, so it’s no wonder they hold a grudge. They don’t make them like Ronnie any more, that’s for sure. He was the last of his kind.
[One of the ways that I know who I’m dealing with and how much they know is whether they trot out a story like: “when automobiles came in, sure it was bad for blacksmiths and wagon-wheel makers. Those thousands of jobs were lost, but *millions* more jobs were gained…”]-MD
Nice set up. I was instantly captivated by the stature of witty superiority being leveled in the “gotcha” context. My interest was surely piqued. But then came this:
“After all, the *Labor* in that scenario is not the blacksmith, its all the horses he supported. The advent of the automobile sent most working horses to the glue-factory, not to new jobs.” -MD
Clever writing, but still mostly nonsense and misleading. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc? No wait, maybe post hoc ergo propter hoc? Nah, the argument wasn’t nearly that sophisticated. Only Yanko Skuzzinsky tries to dazzle CFNers with those types of flighty rhetorical tricks.
Hmm, I think this was simply a fallacy of deception by way of distraction, or simple sleight of hand reasoning. Unconscious, perhaps.
The idea that both blacksmiths and horses became obsolete with the advent of automobiles is inseparably true via hard fact.
The truth that this particular obsolescence then led to an increase of jobs for humans, not horses, during the industrial revolution is inarguable. Though we now know how long that would last.
Fine motor skills such that only human dexterity could provide was necessary to construct the little machines that made big machines work. This was the sweet spot of perceived benefit of the early industrial period that made humans temporarily important. Not so today, just like ‘dem horses – to the Alpo pits we go.
Techno-evolution/triumphalism has once again made just a wider swath of human laborers (life in general) obsolete, as machines are now capable of building other machines. And this should frighten us.
MD has unusually shit the bed on this one, though I don’t think this speaks to intellect as much as to ego.
Great writing, btw!
*************************************************
To another point,
As to the “religion” which drives the decision making of The Power Elite. In my studies I’m required, forced, to examine more social theory than I care to, but one I’ve in recent years come across, Cybernetics, seems to inform much more of the social organizational thinking of TPTB than I first suspected.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/
Cybernetics seems to me a weird compilation of social psychology/philosophy, electronic theory, and biologic science. The documentary above is mostly aimless but provides plenty of intriguing, if not well argued, insight into the potential “belief system” used by top decision makers today.
Side note: awhile ago I happened across an interview with genetics mad scientist, Craig Venter, who is apparently very partial to some variation of cybernetics theory and views the process of Evolution in such light, as do the likes of Kurzweil and a myriad of other AI researchers. People like this are at the top of the intellectual food chain and do in fact drive social narratives for the masses.
Those people are not dumb or even incompetent, but the rest of “we” are. Such guiding theories taken to logical ends surely do spell an end to whatever we currently consider to be an untainted/charted course for natural life. We should all be very afraid, but only if we agree that what exists now is genuinely “pure” and needs to be left unaltered. Good luck with that.
Beers!
Good one, dead on! Already have one of the largest prison populations where it can gel.
In addition to the garden variety assortment of politically correct biases and hates (anti-Christian, anti-conservative, anti-white, anti-male, etc) that some CFN posters never tire of expressing
A couple of you are beginning to express bias against older people, especially those always-evil “boomers.”
You can spend your whole lifetime decrying Christians, or hating on whiteness, or maleness, or whatever –
But eventually you will get old – guaranteed.
Or maybe you’d rather die first?
This is an interesting piece, from an ACA author, no less.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
“A couple of you are beginning to express bias against older people, especially those always-evil “boomers.” -Old Pro
No worries their*, Pro. I recognize that broad generalities are just part of the game here, so I present a few of my own to help refine my own thinking. I don’t give a damn about PC or feelings anymore. Everyone needs a hobby, eh.
Actually, I beat my last video game the other day and am waitin’ for my copy of GTA 5 to arrive from AMAZON. Finally dropped to $30 bones. Between those shits, homework, and work, I’m content as the rest of ya’ll. Smoke ’em if ya got ’em. Fuckin’ around here is just about killin’ break time.
“You can spend your whole lifetime decrying Christians, or hating on whiteness, or maleness, or whatever –” -Ptoo
None of my gripes… you and your cohort toss those footballs round and round to whatever ends you seek, I don’t.
“But eventually you will get old – guaranteed.” -Pthrice
Yeah, ya think? Hmm, what crystal ball are you using here? And how can you make such a guarantee?
Baked in the cake: 2 degrees centigrade converts to roughly 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, this is only a global average… it’s still gonna snow, but shit ain’t gonna grow right. Survivable, yes, but a significant die out of many, many things is “guaranteed.” Non-doomers acknowledge this readily. Time to start prayin’ at the base of volcanoes again.
“Or maybe you’d rather die first?” -PS4
Nope, no death wish.
nite, dude.
This guy is the author of the death panels. Q also subscribes to both this viewpoint and this magazine. Could Q be Zeke Emanuel?
http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/02/ezekiel-emanuel-and-the-skeletal-grin-of-collectivism/
In any case, it’s a monstrous viewpoint, You should be trying to live to at least a hundred. Let the other guy balance out the curve by dying before 75.
Oh Hello UFIA,
re | “Clever writing, but still mostly nonsense and misleading. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc? No wait, maybe post hoc ergo propter hoc? Nah, the argument wasn’t nearly that sophisticated. Only Yanko Skuzzinsky tries to dazzle CFNers with those types of flighty rhetorical tricks… Hmm, I think this was simply a fallacy of deception by way of distraction, or simple sleight of hand reasoning. Unconscious, perhaps.”-u.
And your critique is based on what exactly? *Straw man* argument, with a side-order of “red herring*?
Let me help you, UFIA. I was expanding on Volodya’s comment(s) regarding the lie that off-shoring or obsolescing entire job-fields ‘naturally’ results in more and better job creation. I was examining a palliative ploy used to keep victim populations docile. No rhetorical tricks involved.
I was not however making any statements about __causation__. So there’s little point in joshing about “Cum hoc ergo propter hoc?… post hoc ergo propter hoc?” [*]
[Speaking of a “distraction”… ;]
But… You know all this, surely? Don’t you? What was the matter? Didn’t like my tone?
[chuckle]
By the way: “Yanko Skuzzinsky”? Was that really necessary?
Well, I will say this: if I am going to get harassed about something I write here, let the harassment be at least that articulate.
😉
UFIA, the reason I chose to amplify Volodya’s post is that there are still people who do not get that labor arbitrage and automation don’t exist for the benefit of humanity’s cultural uplift and evolution, and don’t increase prosperity in general. They exist solely as a way to cut labor costs and increase (job) scarcity, so that labor costs can be cut again… ideally ad ‘infinitum’, but actually until they can’t be anymore, and the cost-cutters themselves experience a final cut of their own.
I really love it when a line about “freeing up” workers so that they can go and do better things is used.
This is only as true the losing tribe of a nigh-genocidal war on the steppe was ‘freed up’ of their ‘work’ – ie., the territory they relied upon for survival – so that they could then ‘explore’ newer and better ‘opportunities’ elsewhere.
Cheers!
— — —
[*] From The Latin: “With this, therefore because of this? / after this, therefore on account of this?”
{I was not however making any statements about __causation__. So there’s little point in joshing about “Cum hoc ergo propter hoc?… post hoc ergo propter hoc?” [*] }
Agreed. I wondered at first what type of fallacy was being employed in your initial remark…process of elimination… Settled on sleight of hand… but now that you mention it – straw man or red herring work better. You know, that bit about horse labor… yada yada.
My point being that your initial set up and dismissal of an otherwise valid premise was spurious. Uncharacteristic of you. Please do point out my own straw man and or red herring statements thereafter. Sincerely, I’m open to correction.
“By the way: “Yanko Skuzzinsky”? Was that really necessary?”-MD
No, no it was not. The boaster known as janos skoRzeny was nicknamed that by me awhile back. Sorry, that was definitely left field. Old grudge. He pulls the kind of stuff you did in the aforementioned statement. All.The.Time. Few people call him on it, because they’re more mature than me ;>)
“…there are still people who do not get that labor arbitrage and automation don’t exist for the benefit of humanity’s cultural uplift and evolution, and don’t increase prosperity in general.They exist solely as a way to cut labor costs and increase (job) scarcity, so that labor costs can be cut again…”
We’re mostly in alignment from here. Although, automation held much more promise for enabling freedom from simple line labor than many are willing to give credit. But to argue this to any degree only gets one labelled a techno-utopian, Marxist, and so on. Either way, there’s no turning back to the original idea now.
“I really love it when a line about “freeing up” workers so that they can go and do better things is used.”
Yes, workers were surely duped out of surpluses and profits generated by their own hand. The owners hoarded it all. But this is old news by now. The shitizens, instead, through Democracy and freedom of choice *smirk*, opted for “fair pay” and shrinking vacations. Blaming the Elite for arranging this state of affairs has run its course.
In other words, the people are dupes? So why do you still want everyone to be able to vote? You’re a dupe too if you can’t see the consequences of your own ideology. As the Comedian said the movie The Watchman, “What happened to the American Dream? It cam true. You’re looking at it.”
You must be happy about Ebola coming to America. It’s only fair right?
I think you’re wrong about calling me Yanko before. This is the first time. You’re basically wrong about everything. And that’s not easy, so Congrats rat.
Heeeerrrre’s Yanko! Right on cue I see.
Once again leading an army of Straw White Men.
You would make a good straw dog – in the ancient Chinese sense.
Hello UFIA,
So nice to exchange views with a civilized adult – I do not take that for granted these days.
re | “Please do point out my own straw man and or red herring statements thereafter. Sincerely, I’m open to correction.”-u.
If; as we’ve agreed – I was not trying to establish a causal connection, but that I was making an observation about what gets said and sold to the folks of the wrong end of the zero-sum transaction,
Then; presenting it as such (ie., setting up the ‘straw man’) and then proclaiming it nonsensical (b/c it would be, wouldn’t it?), and throwing in a comment about ‘horse-labor’ (this is the ‘red herring’, detail that isn’t a structural component) can be assessed as: building a critique involving a ‘straw man’ and a ‘red herring’…
But hey, we’ve all been there. Mid-Terms are a b*tch and they blow-up a lot of time. We’ve all gotten a little testy under those conditions… If that’s your environmental constraint, then it’s *u n d e r s t o o d*.
re | “Although, automation held much more promise for enabling freedom from simple line labor than many are willing to give credit. But to argue this to any degree only gets one labelled a techno-utopian, Marxist, and so on. Either way, there’s no turning back to the original idea now.”-u.
Actually, we are in alignment here. Our civilization (of which we are both products) was building on five-centuries of economic growth, with everything splendid and horrible that entailed.
In order to have maintained that momentum this civilization needed to make certain (entirely plausible and popular) investments back in the late-70’s and early-80’s… And instead of achieving escape-velocity, the old demons asserted themselves, the momentum stalled and now we’re looking at the ground instead of the figurative ‘sky’…
I am by no means a luddite. But I’ve seen which projects got the ca$h and which didn’t and I have to live in the present. I applaud whatever can be saved and sustained from this civilization.
re | “Blaming the Elite for arranging this state of affairs has run its course.”-u.
The “shitizens” (as you call them) are merely buffoons in this bacchanalia of b-s. The folks at the top of the economic food-chain held the most sway.
I recall a conversation that I had with a NASA Program Director not long ago; I asked him what NASA might’ve been able to do with a check for 700 Billion USD (merely the initial payment on TARP) and he answered: “we’d be popping corks in condos on Saturn’s Rings right now!” [he said, laughingly].
There’s a culprit when you get mugged. Likewise, there’s clearly a set of culprits when the course of a civilization gets derailed.
— — —
[*] Actually, draft-animals were providing the heaviest labor in the pre-fossil fuel world, though we take them for granted (seeing them as ‘pets’ perhaps) and don’t perceive them as such.
I brought up the ‘blacksmith-automobile’ analogy because it’s so overused and bizarre… But this stuff keeps happening.
The latest version of this phenomenon is Google et al. going after commercial transportation by automating the human element out. . . With no acknowledgment that 4 million jobs will be directly effected and another 10+ million will be wiped out indirectly. . . In a nation that can’t be bothered to find jobs for it’s college-grads.
And yet Google – which depends on 1) Advertising revenue to mass-market stuff to ‘consumers’ getting broker by the day and 2) Providing Surveillance-as-a-Service to various ‘marketing’/ governmental and crime-orgs – doesn’t seem to make the connection with how that will further cavitate it’s own enterprise of selling to and spying on the techno-helots.
P4W, thanks for the link to The Atlantic article. I would like to quote from it. I am in agreement with everything except his opposition to antibiotics. I also have written a DNR order and advance directives.
“After 75, if I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment. Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.
What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs. A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.
Obviously, a do-not-resuscitate order and a complete advance directive indicating no ventilators, dialysis, surgery, antibiotics, or any other medication—nothing except palliative care even if I am conscious but not mentally competent—have been written and recorded. In short, no life-sustaining interventions. I will die when whatever comes first takes me.”
Age 75… Free at last! (to let nature take its course)
No more advanced medicine interventions.
If more people decided at age 75 to live out their lives without accepting expensive life-extending treatments, think of how many families would not have the financial burdens of chronic medical care. Think of how many families would not have the experience of medical bankruptcy.
I thought medical care was supposed to be free for everyone. Leftism seems to be rapidly reneging upon its promises. The horizon of paradise does flee quickly from the sunlight of reality.
On Hong Kong, China Tells Key Senator to Butt Out
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/10/01/on_hong_kong_china_tells_key_senator_to_butt_out
The Chinese government rebuked the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, instructing New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez to keep his opinions about Hong Kong’s democratic unrest to himself. On Tuesday, Menendez had sent a letter to Hong Kong’s chief executive, urging him to respect the democratic rights of Hong Kong’s people.
I wish Melendez had stood up for the Occupy movement, which also faced pepper spray and arrests, not to mention prisoners at Guantanamo. It’s hard to understand how any member of the American government has the chutzpah to protest how other governments treat their people. Talk about pots and kettles!
Obama makes a royal present to Russian Federation
Exxon Halts Oil Drilling in Russia’s Arctic Over U.S. Sanctions
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/exxon-still-drilling-in-russia-s-arctic-despite-sanctions-minister-says/507446.html
New treasure-trove of light sweet oil discovered in Russian Arctic in Cara Sea would not have to be shared with American Exxon Mobil due to US-imposed sanctions.
Exxon Mobile was forced by Obama administration to halt drilling in the “Victory Well”. Total reserves of very high quality oil discovered in Arctic may be comparable or exceed those of Saudi Arabia.
Obama administration probably counted on Russia’s technological backwardness and inability to develop the newly discovered oil field.
However, it turned out that the Kremlin, as usual, had plan B. According to http://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/47540 Russia already have 8 drilling platforms suitable to work in the Arctic conditions.
Thank you, Obama.
Russia already have 8 drilling platforms suitable to work in the Arctic conditions.
The Russian propaganda strategy utilized in Western spaces has been to appeal to both the far “Left” and far “Right,” and this coverage of Russian Arctic drilling is an example of a complete fail in that regard. It’s a contradiction that forces the far “Left” into stark hypocrisy. They must trade principle for power — something the far “Left” and “Right” are guilty of historically.
Drilling the Arctic, if it even happens on a scalable basis, will be an environmental nightmare of astronomical proportions. Think Deepwater Horizon on steroids, and consider it was the best technology money could buy. Russia’s go-it-alone drilling of the Arctic will be substandard compared to the catastrophe that was Deepwater Horizon.
If this isn’t clear proof and evidence that the far “Left” doesn’t give a shit about principle and will side with power over principle every time any time, then no proof could dissuade you from your delusions.
The recent Climate March was a crock and environmentalists, most of them at least and especially the more radical ones, are hypocrites. Where are all the protests against Russian Arctic drilling? Here was a chance to be critical of both East & West in its pillaging of the planet, but instead, once again, the unprincipled far “Left” gives the egregious Russia a get-out-of-jail card.
Do you think it is really going to be as bad an environmental nightmare as fracking? At least much more efficient and economic
Hey Cole the environmental record of Russia (and China) is pretty bad.
I get the feeling that the leadership of those 2 nations could give a sh-t less about the precious obsessions of the leftists in the USA and Western Europe, gay issues and climate change above all.
No doubt they got a good belly laugh when they watched video of that fatuous march in NYC last week.
–brh
“The Russians upthread hate Reagan. I guess I don’t blame them. He did kick their ass and rub their face in the dirt” Cold N. Holefield
Contrary to popular theories about the demise of the Soviet Union caused by some US Policies of increased military-technological confrontation, or popular “Collapse Theories” of Dmitry Orlov, the real reason was the giant betrayal of people by Soviet Elites, and personally Michael Gorbachev – the Great Judas of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Elites were driven by old desires to make their positional privileges hereditary, while not assuming any responsibilities before the Soviet people. So they desired to adopt Western Economic Model.
Why Michael Gorbachev during his Reykjavík Summit gave out everything to the West without even attempt to negotiate is still a mystery. Most popular theory in Russia that he was always under the influence of British Intelligence that helped him to come to power in Kremlin.
Now we see the same betrayal of American people by American Elites.
I am in agreement with everything except his opposition to antibiotics
There are two major problems with antibiotics. One, they’re over-prescribed and thus this window of respite against perfidious infectious diseases will be significantly shortened. It was a window that would have allowed us to evolve socially if we had the temerity. But we didn’t.
Two, very early on medical scientists knew antibiotics would only work for so long until they didn’t. They’re starting not to work as effectively. Infectious disease is closing the window as medical scientists predicted sixty years ago. Instead of using this miracle breakthrough in medical science judiciously, the medical establishment irresponsibly handed the miracle out like it was candy.
Pharma companies are not investing in the latest and greatest antibiotics to the extent and degree they did in the early years of the miracle. Instead, they’re rolling out new & improved drugs for flaccid dicks and twitchy legs. Meanwhile, Ebola knocks at the door, and no amount of boner drugs can overcome the boner kill of Ebola. We’re going to need those restless legs to run as fast as we can from Ebola.
Why Michael Gorbachev during his Reykjavík Summit gave out everything to the West without even attempt to negotiate is still a mystery.
An even greater mystery is how The West failed to negotiate Russia’s nukes out of existence in the process. It’s as though they intended all along (the PTB) to save them for a rainy day faux Cold War redux.
Not all is lost. Some youngsters are exploring their creative talents. Like these barely-graduated rugrats. This tune is just what the doctor ordered for a really quiet evening sitting on what remains of your torched porch, sipping back some fine, irradiated Scotch whiskey as you gaze out over the denuded, apocalyptic nuclear wasteland and wonder where it all went wrong — or right. Isn’t it music to your ears?
Carrying The Flame Of Old Man Gloom
And by the way, when I said “old man” above, I meant it in a British way. “I say old man, would you happen to have an extra fag you could spare?”
Petroleum is getting cheaper, and it might be getting cheaper still in the near future.
Right now worldwide demand is at 91 million bpd. It seems like there is enough supply on hand to meet this demand, as well as fill up SPRs of China and India.
Question:
What is the price point at which fracked oil from NDakota and Texas is no longer profitable? I know it takes much energy, labor, water and cash to mine petroleum in that manner. If that point is reached, will these wells be abandoned, or will they be operated at a loss (for awhile anyway)?
–brh
“What is the price point at which fracked oil from NDakota and Texas is no longer profitable?”-brh.
That is a valuable question. . .
Over in ‘Orlovia’ the author had this to say about ‘ISIS/ISIL/IS’:
“ISIS/ISIL/IS/Islamic Caliphate are a bunch of postmodern hipsters redefining what it means to be a “state.” Their version of “state” has nothing to do with public welfare; it’s all about the hip new style with which you (a member of a global human population in extreme overshoot) get dispatched to hell. This is what post-peak-oil governance may look like.”
😉 LOL
I find that rather witty, in a gallows-ey humor sort of way.
Cheers!
“Oil Schmoil., Can I eat it ? NO. Can I drink it? yes and die.” — StElmosFire
Will your grandchildren be going to war for it? Probably.
Did anyone notice Obama formally committed the United States to 10 more years of war in Afghanistan this week? And you can be sure toward the end of those 10 years, we will re-up for another 10. We have already been there 14 years, so we are looking at a 34-year war, the longest war in United States history. They ought to take away Obama’s “peace prize”…
But we have a volunteer mercenary military, so the public is insulated and apathetic. I have not heard of any protest from anyone: Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, etc.
I realize Yom Kippur is a solemn Day of Intonement and it is not appropriate to say happy Yom Kippur, but for the Jewish CFNers here I would like to recognize the holiday anyway.
–brh
When the explosion of youthful male wrath occurs in the USA, it will come along at exactly the same time as all the other benchmarks of order become unmoored — especially the ones in money and politics — which will shatter the faith of the non-young and the non-male, too.
wow, yet *another* kunstler prognostication – he’s always telling us the united states americans are *close* to rising up and revolting, taking to the streets.
now it’s the young men, and it will happen *exactly* at the same time as money and politics blow up as well….
jimmy, stick to energy, your predictions never pan out, and it’s tiresome having to go back and harvest all the things you’ve been wrong about, in order to quote them here.
yep, i hate the fucking ‘wow i’m a girl and boy am i powerful’ nonsense in the untied states too. but ain’t no young man revolution gonna happen.
it’s a slow demise, is all.
ISIS will be exterminated, ho hum, give ’em a few months.
kontrahend
Contrahend, you sound like you have a severe case of “apocalypse fatigue” … are you now not fearful? … Of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, fracking, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, climate catastrophes, DDT, CFCs, acid rain, bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease, Al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, GWOT, and what will surely appear as the next threat, to be explained to us on tonight’s news.
C’mon, Contrahend, get with the program. Start watching FoxNews and you will be convinced. A Black man is president and we are going downhill as a nation … straight to hell. You just have to watch FoxNews.
ISIS used to be just a regular part of Al Qaida operating in Iraq. They conducted classical terrorist operations against Shiite population of Iraq, government forces and structural objects. They weren’t pursuing any specific goals, the point was in the process, not result.
Generally speaking, when US were creating Terror International of the Middle East they meant exactly that. For US the atmosphere of total terror, war everyone against everybody was important because it makes impossible creation of the strong state capable of defending its own interests.
Support of Nouri Al-Maliki was justified. His radical views, suppressing of Sunni population, policy of segregation created perfect conditions in Iraq for permanent chaos and violence.
Even Al-Maliki’s friendly relationship with Iran played into the hand of US interested in Iran involvement into the conflicts of the region that will make Iran weaker and less concentrated on internal development and more on liquidating permanent threats arising from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain. ISIS was an important component to support the state of permanent chaos in the region.
However, everything changed in 2010 when a large group of former Saddam Hussein’s military officers of middle rank were released from American prisons in Iraq and joined the ISIS. Was it planned by US or not is not really important.
What is important that the former military commanders quickly took the ISIS into their hands and started to reformat it’s structure and goals.
At that moment almost everybody in ISIS high command were killed. Out of about 40 managers, financial specialists, couriers and moderators they had only 8 left. 2 Key leaders – Abu Omar al Bagdadi and Abu Ayub Al Masri were killed as well.
Saddam’s military officers arrived just in time to occupy high and middle (territorial) commanding positions in hierarchy of ISIS. Their leader, Hadji Bakr swiftly and ruthlessly reorganized the disconnected groups that were operating in the Sunni areas, creating an “umbrella-like” structure of command and control with a single center that was played by “Shura” – the Council of Commanders.
The majority of position in Shura were taken by Saddam officers and Hadji Bakr managed to appoint Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi as a supreme commander(he used to lead one of the regional unit).
Absolutely pragmatic and ruthless officers, not being Islamists, very rationally used religious factor as ideological cover-up of the main goal – creation of “ethnically clean” state on the territory of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. The group for the first time had a clear goal, nothing abstract like “worldwide caliphate” that allowed to conduct war for the war sake.
The clarity of the vision and coordinated and energetic actions of new leadership immediately yielded results. The war in Syria ISIS now was fighting not against Asad, but for creation of the strong state.
On the newly occupied territories immediately appeared institutions of governance, the common rules of civilian conduct were set in place, population disloyal to new government was exterminated. The competing terrorist organizations were either brought into fold or exterminated as well. The economy of occupied territories was put to work in the interests of new government.
That approach of new ISIS leadership contradicted the goals of US. Instead of senseless total war of everybody against everybody the fight was started to show some organizational strength. What was more troublesome for US is the level of independence in financing of ISIS operations and their tendency to become self-sustainable.
The year 2014 became a year of final transformation. The occupation of city of Mosul and 8 Iraqi provinces turned ISIS into the richest terrorist organization in the world. According to specialists from American Rand Corporation, only 5% of its budget comes from outside as donations, the rest is income from governing occupied territories: collection of taxes, selling of oil, slave trade.
That ISIS was not something US would appreciate. After all, the whole thing was not setup to have one important region in some state of order.
The task of the United States to destroy ISIS became practically unachievable. The military defeat could be dealt only by employing a full scale, “proper” military ground operation.
Turkey voted today to take the fight to ISIS.
Turks are no pushovers, as the British and French found out at Gallipoli.
–brh
Sir Larry pushed them over and then some
ISIS, at least for now, is a better alternative to chaos created by US. Three foreign journalists beheaded by ISIS (?) in very Hollywood-like settings can’t be compared by hundreds of thousands killed by Iraq war and ensuing chaos and terrorism.
We won’t become ISIS… not even close… because there is no “we”. When you look across today’s America who do you identify with? Who and what is there worth fighting for? Join the military and fight a war on foreign soil to protect 1%ers, illegal alien hordes and work-visa winners taking the middle-class jobs? There’s less and less worth protecting. No culture, no future, no shared ethnicity… The military leaders know this. In fact they have reports about the future inability to get people to rally around the flag, to rally around an America that doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing here and nobody worth fighting for, like corporations and our immigrant ancestors we can just set sail for better horizons; the sun has set here.
Black Beast kicks cat after calling it over.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-york-man-who-kicked-a-cat-is-dogged-by-animal-rights-campaigners–and-the-citys-pet-welfare-squad-9765765.html
“So nice to exchange views with a civilized adult – I do not take that for granted these days.” -MD
Cheers! And thank you for requiring this tone.
My earlier gripe (misunderstanding?) had to do with your comment that horsepower was the true element of lost employment with the advent of autos, and line labor in general. While I took your meaning, I didn’t think it invalidated the common view, which you characterized as intellectually inferior. It seemed you were wrongly dismissing the idea that early industrialization created millions of human jobs where hundreds of Smithing (and other generic professions) successively went extinct. Needless to say, the real numbers do justify that idea, that humans benefited greatly from industry, at first.
As to this:
“Then; presenting it as such (ie., setting up the ‘straw man’) and then proclaiming it nonsensical (b/c it would be, wouldn’t it?), and throwing in a comment about ‘horse-labor’ (this is the ‘red herring’, detail that isn’t a structural component) can be assessed as: building a critique involving a ‘straw man’ and a ‘red herring’…” -MD restating my boring little quibble.
Again, to my understanding, a less efficient labor practice (animal husbandry) was replaced with an arguably more efficient one (complex machines). Humans become more important, for a time, insofar as engineering, maintenance, operation, and assembly were concerned; hence, your jest that those who hold the *weak* common view about this, seemed erroneous. If this is somehow where I introduced a straw man or red herring, then my mistake.
Ironically, now even those tedious early manufacturing jobs are extinct, as impractical as it is for human sake. Surplus, as you stated, was instead used to create scarcity, as backward as that is. This is the the stupidity of the scientific labor management and marketplace paradigm that I specifically find fault in – “We” allowed the “efficient market mindset” to push ourselves out of subsistence labor, as well as the right to own the product of such.
However, I do think that there’s something useful to R. “Bucky” Fuller’s theory of ephemeralization, yet it smacks firmly against Malthusianism, in which I also find much merit. The system in place ensures the worst case outcomes of both.
Where a society of Polymaths may have found happy medium between the two ideas, instead our society of consumer soCial philosOphers stand not a chance in hell for survival in either scenario.
I’ve taken too much of your time, but you’ve offered much food for thought. You busted some doctorate level knowledge on my head and it was pure joy for this Asperger’s sufferer. Thanks, now on to GTA 5 for me!
“No culture, no future, no shared ethnicity…” — Franktiti
“No culture, no future, no shared ethnicity…” — Frankiti
I guess it can seem that way… until you leave American culture and travel. I went to Japan recently and walked to tourist sites… like a stranger in a strange land, who did not understand the language, the food, the customs, etc. But I immediately recognized a Black family as American. I made a crack: “We aren’t in Kansas anymore” and they laughed, immediately picking up on the reference to a shared cultural experience of the Wizard of Oz.
We are a nation. Even though we have different races and ethnicities we share a common culture. I love the fact that America is, and the American armed forces are, multicultural and multiracial. I love that America is multicultural and multiracial. I love that the NFL respects the Muslim football players and grants them the right to pray in the end zone after a touchdown, as Christians have always done.
Beyond our superficial differences we share a similar cultural experience, even though it ordinarily goes unspoken. Christians, Muslims, and Jews all share the same middle eastern religious roots. They are all monotheists, people who live by a holy book (Torah, Koran, Bible). They share the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses.
Yet, though we have different skin colors, different ethnic backgrounds, and different beliefs, we immediately recognize each other when we find ourselves as strangers in a strange land like Japan. Because we all do share a common culture, common educational curriculum, common customs, common political dyad (red/blue) arguments, and a common fast food/soda pop upbringing.
And when we are threatened (think 9/11)… 99% of us find all our “differences” disappear and we are united as Americans. You may remember feeling that way on 9/12/2001.
America has not fundamentally changed in the last fifteen years. The Walmart parking lots are still full. Families still take their kids to Little League games. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines Day, etc. etc. is shared common culture. Life goes on in 2014 much as it did in 2000.
One ISIS attack on American soil or one beheading on American soil, and you will see that your “No culture, no future, no shared ethnicity…” comment is overruled by “United we stand” and “In God we trust.” The military recruiters will be turning kids away who want to die for their country.
All middle eastern religions are insane.
We need to go back to the western philosophical tradition.
We need a Julian.
We had a beheading on American soil last week… by a Muslim no less… we were treated to photos of a Clooney wedding.
Nobody cares. The media told us not to.
You may remember feeling that way on 9/12/2001.
Hell yeah, I remember feeling that way The Day After. I took the day off and played patriotic music all day long and watched reruns of Patton and Birth of a Nation. And from what I hear, Michelle and Barack, for the fist time in their lives, were finally proud to be Americans.
Pearl Harbor With Land Sharks Has Long Met Its Expiration Date
Really? I watched the news.
New Russian sea based cruise missiles could tilt the balance of power on vast territories from Warsaw to Kabul and from Rome to Bagdad
http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/750841
NOVOROSSIYSK, September 23. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk will accommodate submarines carrying missiles with a range of more than 1,500 kilometres, Black Sea Fleet commander Aleksandr Vitko has said.
The treaty of 1987 between Moscow and Washington prohibits Russia to deploy long-range LAND-based cruise missiles, but nothing in the treaty covers the sea-based missiles.
That means that the Russians managed to squeeze long-range cruise missile into 533-mm torpedo tube of diesel submarine which is remarkable achievement of Russian military industry.
Now any military ship, submarine or surface, could be turned into a strategic warship with remarkable firepower that could reach American 6th fleet in Mediterranean.
That means that the Russians managed to squeeze long-range cruise missile into 533-mm torpedo tube of diesel submarine which is remarkable achievement of Russian military industry.
Wow, we’re all so impressed with Russia’s industrial might. Russia sounds oddly like America — forgoing essential infrastructure improvements and instead opting to spend its filthy lucre on weapons. Yet another contradiction of the far “Left.” They’re all for military spending at the expense of basic standard of living needs of the population when it’s their kind of power. Power is power, people. The only difference is the shade of lipstick and the wardrobe.
The Russia Left Behind
It looks like they’ve taken me seriously and are implementing my plan to bring Putin’s Russia to its knees. The greatest sanction of all, and the only one that matters, is low oil prices. It’s the final straw that broke Russia’s back in the 80’s and it will be what breaks Russia’s back in the next several years. Russia can’t build or buy these impressive weapons without oil profits from price gouging.
Thanks for posting that, CH.
A few other books I’ve read lately like ‘Fragile Empire’ by Ben Judah pretty much back up what that article says.
How about this for an idea. Right now in South Africa there are almost a million White former farmers and ranchers, dispossessed, languishing in squatter and refugee camps living in the worst conditions imaginable. Tens of thousands are the children of Ranchers who have been terrorized and murdered on isolated farms. The west has turned their backs on these people and will not let them immigrate under any circumstances. The policy toward these people in the US, Britain and Holland (their ancestral homeland, being overrun by Muslims) is particularly reprehensible. These are resourceful, skilled, hardworking people, being murdered where they stand at the rate of anywhere from 2 dozen to about 50 people per day. These are people who built a nation from nothing, like the Jews in Israel and the Mormons in Utah, and would make fine citizens if given a chance. My idea then is for Putin to bring these people into Russia, repopulate those villages, and give them new life.
I know it sounds crazy, but vast swaths of the US are being repopulated right now by people who don’t speak English and know very little about the America, and don’t much care. Same goes with Europe.
–brh
I think it’s a great plan. I mean, why not?
The only way they would be granted refugee status and welcomed with open arms to America is if they invested in some shoe polish and ebola. I’m not sure if you can purchase ebola on the “Black” Market yet, but if not it won’t be long before you can. Imagine ISIS with ebola as a weapon. Such fun awaits.
Do you really imagine anyone on the left sympathizes with Russia nowadays?
http://clashdaily.com/2014/10/barack-ebola-2010-obama-admin-scrapped-cdc-quarantine-regulations-aimed-ebola/
Was this a long term plan to introduce this disease onto American soil? Or just more of Obama’s general hatred for America?
You know Vlad I’m more worried about this entorovirus 68 in the schools, killing and paralyzing American kids, than I am about Ebola.
What kind of leadership would drop tens of thousands of unscreened 3rd world illegals, unannounced, into the public school system? And then count on suck ups and sycophants in the US media to cover up, play stupid, ignore the cause altogether.
I hope you white libs who voted for this guy are happy. Ideology and guilt trump everything, even the health and lives of your own children.
As far as that Liberian with Ebola goes, his treatment is costing $100,000 per day. Is he insured? Does he have the $$$ to pay for it? My guess is he knew he was infected and came to see uncle sucker for some free medical care.
–brh
Yes BHR, we should go back to that fantastic system of medical care –the “best in the world” as the right wingers like to crow–before the advent of Obamacare. Under that system, people unable to afford outrageous insurance plans due to pre-existing condition clauses etc, were be far less likely to go to a doctor when fledging disease is in a far more manageable state or before many others have been infected, whatever the case happens to be.
I’m sure Ebola or entorovirus 68 would be far less likely to spread if exclusionary pre-existing condition clauses are in effect to prevent the dilution of maximum medical insurance industry profit: What the hell are Obama and the ‘white libs’ thinking?!
Love your humor BRH but your vision is simply too selective and myopic.
Ebola is Captain Trips if you have ever watched or read Stephen King’s “The Stand”.
Ebola tourism has already started. The gentleman you refer is to merely the first or “patient zero”. Many more are lining up in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. We can’t say no because of slavery one, official explained. Somehow even senile Great Britain has closed its borders to these diseased criminals.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/10/ebola-fears-increase-pressure-to-restrict-flights-from-africa/
Hey Vlad, I am not a huge Stephen King fan but I did read “The Stand”. I enjoyed it. The last SK book I read before that was “The Shining”. I read it in 1978 while living in the high plains of the central Wyoming oil patch with just my girl and dog and it scared the living bejesus out of me. I wouldn’t leave the van at night without the dog to stand guard while I took a leak. . I was such a pussy. “Captain Trips” is a good analogy. I really don’t think Ebola is gonna’ run rampant around these parts however. In the good ol’ USA we have better sanitation, better health care, more clear thinkers (not the government), etc.etc. Something else could come down the road any time though when least expected. If or probably when it happens, hunker down and keep yer’ powder dry!. Later RT
Maybe, but remember no one seems to know what is going on. The CDC is talking out of both sides of its mouth. In its early stages, Ebola is flu like. So do the water droplets from a sneeze carry it or not? I’ve heard both yes and no. And more: our infrastructure can only help us if it used and if commonsense is in control. The cleaners and sheriffs who went into the Ebola infected apartment in Dallas weren’t wearing protective gear. The quarantined family also has broken the quarantine and gone out. They wont stay in unless made to and no one will make them because they’re Black and you know, slavery and shit.
As you know, all this is not how you stop a new and dangerous infectious disease that you don’t want to spread. And don’t kid yourself: we don’t have a deep infrastructure of isolated medical facilities designed to do that. No one does. I heard that we have just nineteen. So we stop it now, or it gains a foothold in North America. Judging from the official behavior so far, I see no evidence that they want to stop it.
Britain and France have stopped allowing flights from that part of Africa. Why haven’t we?
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/weve-got-our-top-men-on-it-top-men/
I hope you white libs who voted for this guy are happy. Ideology and guilt trump everything, even the health and lives of your own children.
Ebola is way cooler and it fits nicely with the incessant and ubiquitous zombie theme mainstream entertainment’s been doling out.
What’s next? Maitreya makes his debut to save the world from a pandemic and nuclear armageddon? At this rate, it’s a distinct possibility, as is an alien invasion — and people will believe it.
There’s no need to get high — reality is already now salaciously stoned. How much weirder can it get? Never ask that question. It can always get much weirder. Bring it on, I say. I’m hooked — I can’t get enough.
“It looks like they’ve taken me seriously and are implementing my plan to bring Putin’s Russia to its knees. The greatest sanction of all, and the only one that matters, is low oil prices. It’s the final straw that broke Russia’s back in the 80’s and it will be what breaks Russia’s back in the next several years. Russia can’t build or buy these impressive weapons without oil profits from price gouging.” Cold N. Holefield
We are not in Kansas anymore, Cold, and not in 80’s when 150-year old Brezhnev ran Russia from his death bed.
Low oil prices will spell low demand for green toilet paper that passes for money in good ol’ U.S of A. And to add insult to the injury it’ll ruin the American fracking scheme and Canadian oil sands industry.
When the next credit crunch worse than 2008 hits, I don’t think FED will be able to repeat its trick by flooding the banks with liquidity.
re | “We are not in Kansas anymore, Cold, and not in 80’s when 150-year old Brezhnev ran Russia from his death bed.”-FitM.
A lot of folks do not keep up.
A drop in global oil prices is not a good thing for the US. Why? B/c it indicates a drop in aggregate Global Demand… And that means that there less financial ‘water’ to float The Fed’s financial shell game. We’re closing in on another margin-call moment. And this time we’ll be facing it without the dregs of a once robust market to crash-land onto.
Without that card to play, The Oligarchy fallback will need to manufacture another expandable-crisis to lock things down (why, *hello* Ebola!) and buy enough time to figure out their next tweety-bird move.
B t w, Putin’s regime already has a fallback:
http://www.businessinsider.com/arms-sales-by-the-us-and-russia-2014-8
When you see that map and the comparison, it explains a lot.
EDIT(s):
“that means that there is less financial…”
“The Oligarchy ___ will need to…”
A lot of stuff going on, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the head cracking — and maybe worse — commences pretty soon in Hong Kong. And if the Police cannot get the job done then the People’s Army or even Chinese Elite Marine Units are standing by to help out in a pinch, and not in a good way.
Its remarkable to see how orderly, well groomed and disciplined these young protesters are, cleaning up after themselves, policing the area, sharing what they have with each other. I remember the squalor and what a goddam mess it was at the OWS encampments in Hartford and New Haven, so bad that the squalid conditions were used by the authorities to shut them down and clear everybody out.
–brh
May be the People’s Bank Of China could do a better job than People’s Army by threatening to dump US T-Bills? That should calm the Americans down, democracy be damned.
One tactic the authority is using — quite effectively — is sending street gangs called Triads in amongst the largely peaceful student protesters, armed with clubs and knives, picking fights, and beating the shit out of them.
Brilliant! Simply brilliant! What a strategy!
–brh
Hey Back Row,
I’m starting to lose track…are you the former “Marlin?” And are you monitoring CFN today? If yes, I’ll post a gun question for you?
Q.
That’s me Q.
And welcome back.
I can’t understand why the hell Jim would ban you.
–brg
Did you unplug to get a new IP?
I have an observation about guns. They’re nice and all, but they’re completely ineffective against Ebola. Your only chance against Ebola is to descend into your secretly-located underground bus for a couple of years until the stench of 5 billion rotting corpses clears from the air. Then you can hook up with Ted Turner and his friends in Patagonia and sit back and misanthropically enjoy your depopulated paradise.
One tactic the authority is using — quite effectively — is sending street gangs called Triads in amongst the largely peaceful student protesters, armed with clubs and knives, picking fights, and beating the shit out of them.
Yes, but who’s the “authority?” It makes no sense for the Government to do this when the protests are largely peaceful and losing momentum. Why start a fire where there wasn’t even smoke? It’s the last thing you’d want to do.
Probably you’re right CH. The thing will just die out by itself.
The Chinese don’t want another event like in 1989. Many things are just forgot about, but that’s not one of them.
Are you a Salinger fan?
Just a few weeks ago I met a guy in a bookstore down in Niantic who lived in Salinger’s town in N Vermont, said he was reclusive to a certain extent but a good neighbor, you’d see him around, was friendly to the townspeople and was generous when the town was in need of anything. A good guy.
–brh
I’m not a fan of anything or anyone.
Salinger is an interesting story and he did develop a cult following — some real weirdos who would search him out because his writing touched them deeply in some way. People are bizarre in this way. Actually, people are bizarre in many ways and this stalking of celebrity is just one of those ways.
What I like about Salinger is how he thumbed his nose at the publishing establishment and writer’s gild couple with his predilection to sneer at publicity and the publicity hounds.
Have you seen the PBS documentary about him called Salinger? If not, here’s a link. I highly suggest it.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/jd-salinger/film-salinger/2642/
What I respect about him is, despite his idiosyncratic peculiarities that I find intriguing by the way, he was his own man. He wrote free of encumbrances with no audience in mind. That’s True Writing — something of a rarity these days. He eschewed celebrity and maintained his outside-looking-in perspective for all his born days. Was that hurtful to those who tried to breach his formidable personal boundaries? Sure it was, but that fortress of his wasn’t a secret — he wore it on his sleeve. Those who chose to ignore it, did so at the risk of being emotionally and psychically devastated.
I also respected how he would take other writers of the gild to which he refused to belong to task and knocked them down a few, or more, notches. Writers are assholes and deserve to have their asses handed to them every now and then. Salinger knew that. He was a writer’s writer who could and would deliciously pop the big heads when he was so inclined.
Pretty good analysis of JD Salinger, I must say.
When you mention 5 billion corpses from Ebola is that just hyperbole on your part or do you think it could get that bad? The Government is assuring everybody right now that everything is under control, not to worry.
In TLE, there’s a section about these catastrophic infectious diseases coming out of Africa, just like what’s happening now, pretty prescient in a book written a decade ago.
–brh
If I had to guess about Ebola, I’d say it will be old news a year from now. A year from now it will have run its course and we won’t hear or see any mention of it until it flares up again in another decade or so.
However, if I’m wrong and it turns into an out-of-control pandemic that spreads to every corner of the planet, using the statistics of mortality currently available, only 25% of the human population would survive so that means approximately 5 billion will perish, and perish rather agonizingly and quickly. A world less 5 billion people will make some people very happy campers — Ted Turner being one of those people. Who knows, maybe they already have the vaccine for the special ones. For the rest of us, it’s a roll of the dice with the odds not in our favor.
That is prescient about TLE mentioning infectious diseases Out of Africa. Africa, from whence life sprang and maybe from whence death sprang. It giveth and it taketh away.
You are a fan of Salinger and in true Salingerian fashion have to deny it. Unconsciously, you have adopted his gruff persona to augment your own. If only you could attain his wisdom thereby!
Salinger was involved at a high level in the destruction and de-Germanification of Germany. He was made sick by it. Evidently he repudiated his Jewish upbringing and turned to the East to find peace as so many have, both Jew and Non-Jew. This was made easier by the fact that he wasn’t technically a Jew since his mother wasn’t.
http://disinfo.com/2010/07/j-d-salinger-with-love-and-squalor-for-esme/
Hey Vlad, did you see the next mayor of Berlin is likely to be a Palestinian?
–brh
What do you expect BRH? You people broke the Germans and destroyed their culture and pride. Now you want them to be German again? It doesn’t work that way.
Face it: you were programmed and it was wrong. All those John Wayne and WW2 movies destroyed any chance of you ever being able or wanting to see the Truth.
Ukrainian – is not nationality, but psychiatric diagnosis
It is funny to read Ukrainian posting in social media: they are convinced that Russia is starving due to American and European sanctions.
Mister D
I’ve been watching the to and fro-ing
You said;
The entire edifice of job-market ‘Ephemeralization’ is based on that sort of duplicitous, falsely equivalent & ridiculous b-s. And yet, the public shelled out million$ for the privilege of being comforted by that rubbish…
And that’s the thing, as you say, duplicitous, falsely equivalent and ridiculous bs. A “palliative ploy” as you say to maybe buy some time
Funny, all the political shit-fits over these absurd “tax inversions”. But, when entire sections of the country were collapsing from off-shoring factory production, hardly a peep.
Factories and jobs packed up. Bye-bye factories, bye-bye communities, bye-bye jobs, bye-bye savings, bye-bye houses, bye-bye marriages, bye-bye family life, bye-bye health care, bye-bye pensions. Was Congress going to take action? No chance. Was there outrage coming from the White House? None to be heard. But, boy oh boy, these tax inversions, watch out, there’ll be hell to pay.
As the collapse was proceeding, the only peeps we DID hear were from highly confident economics practitioners that assured us that the job food-chain extended in all its splendor out in front of all those newly unemployed factory workers and their now income-less families.
The free market would work its magic, technology would march ahead, as it had done in previous decades. Electrical motors, the internal combustion engine and let’s not forget those fantastical flying machines. Marvels of invention weren’t they?
It was a question of retraining and acquiring the requisite skills you see. Guys that worked for 25 years as tool and die makers or fork-lift operators or sweepers were going to go back to school and become um, well, they couldn’t tell exactly WHAT they would study or HOW they would make a living and just well, there were skills to acquire and um well sign up for courses and ah get to it. And then what? Beats me, find that no-pay internship?
“Green” energy? Yeah, they would grow fuel in the fields, yeah, that would work. And solar panels, yeah, that’s the ticket. Wind-farms! Wow! And service industries and the medical field. Medical field? Yeah, out of work welders would retrain as, what, nursing assistants?
In the end, there were no higher value added lines of work to move into. No new technologies in the pipeline. Er, what about all that high tech IT stuff? Where’s that stuff made? In China? By sweat shop labor? You don’t say.
All the talkers were all talking out their asses. All of them. Making it all up. All bollocks. All lies. Really, the only thing the great thinkers could think of was to print money and pound down interest rates and artificially inflate the housing market and the construction industry. And then, all that too fell apart as all debt-bubbled industries do. And now what? More of the same. If what didn’t work before never worked, well, do more of it.
And when none of the various QE-ing and assorted frauds work, and they won’t, what will they do? They’ll do like Romney did in front of his monied friends at that fund raiser, they’ll pour scorn on the people they fucked out of their livelihoods. All that wreck and ruin and their answer will be the finger.
Hello V.,
re | “Factories and jobs packed up. Bye-bye factories, bye-bye communities, bye-bye jobs, bye-bye savings, bye-bye houses, bye-bye marriages, bye-bye family life, bye-bye health care, bye-bye pensions.”-volodya.
Good-bye family life, indeed. Not many people acknowledge disintegrating household income and disintegrating household life.
The past thirty years we’ve been swimming in cowardly superstitious rationalizations. . . Oh ‘Rapture’? Where Art Thou?
/s
“All that wreck and ruin and their answer will be the finger.”-volodya.
Hey, that’s just what predators do. They can’t help it.
The sad things is that most of their victims will keep telling themselves “they didn’t really mean __that__” and like-such rubbish.
And that’s just what the prey does. They can’t help it either.
Rapture bunnies! If only giant Raptors would whisk them away – to that Heavenly eyrie in the sky to become food for the “angels” (young Rappies playing Rap)
It is said that the snake and the frog stare into each other’s eyes until the frog gives up and jumps into the snake’s mouth. Jack Abbot saw the same thing in prison where one man would order another man to lower his arms so he could stab him to death. None of this is true mysticism but only its reflection in Nature – illicit for man who was meant for the real thing not the mere reflection.
Be neither the frog nor the snake, nor the scorpion nor the maiden whose breast is punctured.
EDIT:
“disintegrating household income = …”
Yes, the economy is the body of the nation. You can’t like someone and abuse his or her body. Thus anyone who offshores in any sense, be it financial or in terms of the actual means of production is a traitor and should be treated as such. Ditto for the use or importation of foreign labor be they “legal or illegal. Such a thing must be outlawed and the companies who practice it, ruined, and the executives jailed.
What an illusion to have ever thought that treason was just a matter of political intrigue or “public” as opposed to “private”.
Companies would be given a grace period to get right or get out. No doubt the latter would have to sell of much of their capital at low rates thus enabling new individuals to step up and take their place.
Vote for me as Dictator. America first, last, and always Free.
I realize Eid al-Adha is a contemplative Day of Sacrifice and it is not appropriate to say happy Eid al-Adha, but for the Muslim CFNers here I would like to recognize the holiday anyway.
Putin is such a party pooper.
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/10/04/yes-moscow-bans-islamic-sacrifice-of-fully-conscious-animals-for-upcoming-muslim-holiday-of-eid/
“Petroleum is getting cheaper, and it might be getting cheaper still in the near future.” — BRH
Hey, BRH, I tanked up today for some happy motoring and a gallon of unleaded cost $2 and change. Now that is change I can believe in!
a gallon of unleaded cost
Did you happen to notice the price of leaded?
Where you at?
I gotta wheel my F250 down there and fill up.
Only $50, will get me about 400 miles.
brh
Hey Marlin, My GMC suburban has a 43 Gallon tank ! A fill-up from near empty will only set me back about $145.00. Then again I can make it to Florida stopping only once for fuel. Gas at $3.39 is still cheap. Look at the small peckered “F-350″ crowd ( women included) cruising around in pretty boy trucks. I’ve had people ask to borrow my trailer to pick up mulch or loam because, ” I can’t put that shit in my truck”. Pitiful.
Stel,
I hate to tell you this buddy, but your gas guzzling GMC Suburban with a 43 Gallon gas tank. puts you square in the middle of the middle of the small peckered “F-350” crowd.
“Driving to Florida” in this monstrosity of a vehicle is the problem asshole. You just don’t get it!
America = 3% of World population, use 25% of fossil fuel.
PS..how much mulch or loam can you get in your Suburban? Isn’t a Suburban an SUV, without an actual truck bed?
Yes, you are pitiful.
How many Black and/or Hispanic kids are you supporting in your home? Zero? Hypocrite Physician, heal thy demented self.
“I guess it can seem that way… until you leave American culture and travel. I went to Japan recently and walked to tourist sites… like a stranger in a strange land, who did not understand the language, the food, the customs, etc. But I immediately recognized a Black family as American. I made a crack: “We aren’t in Kansas anymore” and they laughed, immediately picking up on the reference to a shared cultural experience of the Wizard of Oz.”
– pkrugman, ironically, proves franktiti’s point –
That’s amazing, pk! Not only did you get out of your stereotypical mud hut long enough to fly to Japan for a social visit, but you burned up several years worth of carbon for your average third-worlder family in that single jaunt. And you met an African-American who had somehow managed to escape his stereotypical tarpaper shack to do the same. And there you used words from a 1939 film classic as a secret code to identify one another as “American.” Amazing.
Maybe the US peaked after the release of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, as a cohesive society – which gives a date to Franktiti’s larger message. Doubtless – a wandering krugman-american meeting a wondering African-American would be quick to acknowledge that one state over from Kansas, in Ferguson, things are so bad that it’s like 1964 and the Civil Rights Act never happened. Sure you’ll want to get back home to resume being victim-americans, ASAP.
And anyway, didn’t the two of you meet a illegal-immigrant-Section 8-Liberian-Muslim-American while you were sojourning in Japan. That’s what I heard. Makes as much sense as the rest of your story, at any rate.
And the Liberian objected to being called a Liberian-American, and didn’t want to be called a Liberian-African, so you had to call him an African-African. Which seemed redundant, even at the time.
And then the African-African announced that Allah would protect him from disease, before coughing into his hand, just before shaking yours and boarding his aircraft to the States.
Good luck with all this, by the way.
“No worries their*, Pro. I recognize that broad generalities are just part of the game here, so I present a few of my own to help refine my own thinking. I don’t give a damn about PC or feelings anymore. Everyone needs a hobby, eh.” – ufia –
Well good for you, ufia! And thanks for the shoutback. Looked like my shotgun blast of anti-age-discrimination only hit a couple of CFNers, judging by the responses. And I do enjoy pointing out bias in posts. And since seemingly everybody and his liberal sister seems to enjoy pointing out Janos’s many foibles – I try to go after less obvious quarry.
And I think the Zeke Emmanuel idea of refusing ALL life-enhancing and life-extending medical treatments after age 75 – is another one of those pre-peak-everything ideas that will seem monumentally stupid in a few more years. (maybe a few more months if this Ebola thing really gets rolling)
IOW, the idea that one should clock-out at age 75 to stop being a “useless eater” etc, is only possible for one who has lived most of his life as a useless eater already. 75 is arbitrary, anyway. Why not make it 35, instead. Useless is useless, right. I mean, if you’ve never grown a stalk of food, and if you have no TRULY useful skills or knowledge to attempt to pass into the future, why bother living anymore at all; even 25 may be too old, depending on criteria.
“And anyway, didn’t the two of you meet a illegal-immigrant-Section 8-Liberian-Muslim-American while you were sojourning in Japan. That’s what I heard. Makes as much sense as the rest of your story, at any rate.”
P4W, you seem to be the victim here… a victim of your own racism that causes you to hallucinate hatefully about “illegal-immigrant-Section 8-Liberian-Muslim-American” ghosts. Stereotypes much. Oh, you were just joking, right? Even so, your racism is showing.
“Even so, your racism is showing.”
– pk –
OK, that’s one more “racist” accusation.
Just a few more, and I’ll be immune.
Thanks!
And, btw, the apartment complex in Dallas, TX is mostly Section 8.
Part of the problem with quarantine compliance is a language “barrier.”
You can continue your “racist” accusations, PK, and you will.
But what did I post that isn’t based on a factual premise?
OK – now begin to obfuscate.
You stand revealed.
Too bad you two couldn’t settle your differences in a duel. Is it not written, “Good shall conquer Evil?”
Indeed some of the fiercest fights are between individuals or groups who share the same religion but differ in their interpretation of scripture. Both of you accept Howard Zinn to be the Prophet through which the scripture, “A People’s History of the United States” was received.
“the idea that one should clock-out at age 75 to stop being a “useless eater” etc, is only possible for one who has lived most of his life as a useless eater already.” -Pro
I’m pretty much with ya on this, Pro, as I understand the feeling that there are so many social degenerates out there to point fingers at and begrudgingly wish away. It’s quite a convenient, simpleton sort of outlook though, isn’t it. Understandably so. For me, it’s been the result of working in retail sales.
But I wonder if, for all your dissatisfaction with the PC crowd, you’d dare venture a solid criteria for placing one into the ‘useless eater’ category? Careful. Moral platitudes and slippery slopes abound.
The thought is kinda funny from my perspective, however. I’m thinking of Neanderthal Man, who was amazingly successful at simply surviving on what was immediately available. Creative AND hardy was he with that little ol’ brain, which likely never would have endangered the entire biosphere as we the anatomic superiors have.
Myth: Nature and the Theory of Evolution reflect a planned march toward higher and higher forms. Nope. Any qualification of life in such terms is a fool’s game, in my view. Now watch some ignorant vamPire rail about the lib-ruhl myth of equality in society; a claim NOT being made here.
Lastly, reconcile for me the highly specialized stupidity of a creature that mythologized a “god-like” intellect only to see how far it could hurtle limited resources into inhospitably vast space, while filling it’s own domicile with oceans of excrement BEFORE being able to safely leave. Genius.
Exactly. There is no “meaning” but only adaption to conditions. Thus soiling our planet was not wrong either. You are a partially adapted to this new shit filled environment. Your kind will soon be supplanted by better shit eaters and survive only as their dhimmi slaves.
Who said there is no such thing as meaning? Oh, you did. Just you could set up the rest of your little ad hominem.
Watch- tomorrow you’ll accuse someone else who refuses to talk to you of resorting to name calling. Well, sometimes you get it right they say.
*huggs*
Neanderthal had a larger brain than Homo Sapiens (so called) does.
Why are you studying such a useless subject? The stores are going to close. You obviously aren’t getting the message of A World Made by Hand. You need to learn to make soap or beer or something.
The Neaderthals did have bigger brains, but they also had Big Dicks that would get stuck between rocks and get caught up in vines when they were being chased by saber toothed tigers.
Their Big Dicks would also throw the Neanderthals off balance in hand-to-hand combat with Homo Sapiens.
“…when entire sections of the country were collapsing from off-shoring factory production, hardly a peep.”-V on the collapse ramp up
I remember as I was learning about how all these events transpired, all the different legal decisions through subsequent decades and administrations, 40-years of voting behavior. Realizing that the fat-n-happies simply weren’t paying attention. Seeing the documentation in textbooks completely changed my outlook for the future and diminished my respect for authority, what little there was anyhow. It was all right there.
“Factories and jobs packed up. Bye-bye factories, bye-bye communities, bye-bye jobs, bye-bye savings, bye-bye houses, bye-bye marriages, bye-bye family life, bye-bye health care, bye-bye pensions. Was Congress going to take action? No chance. Was there outrage coming from the White House? None to be heard.”-V
More importantly, perhaps, where was the outrage of the upper middle class intelligentsia? Sincerely, let’s not excuse it away somehow. Let’s not just point to a book a bleeding heart wrote. At some point the victim has to get mad and kick, yell, and claw, no?
We know essentially how and why the lower middle classes were duped by the “Bacchanalia of BS,”- infotainment to numb out while the client gets a nut – but where were all the other intelligent, informed citizens?
And I’m not talking about the dime a dozen news consumers; the fuckwits who hear a scandalous headline and soil themselves with righteous indignation while barely shifting their bodies for a fart in their chairs. What about this Class of Responsible Men I hear so much about, where the fuck were they? Yanko Skuzzinsky has a chest as puffed as a marshmallow and an ass as hard as gummy bear, I’m certain. Follow that? Hell no. Who else?
*************************************************
“It was a question of retraining and acquiring the requisite skills you see. Guys that worked for 25 years as tool and die makers or fork-lift operators or sweepers were going to go back to school and become um, well, they couldn’t tell exactly WHAT they would study or HOW they would make a living and just well, there were skills to acquire and um well sign up for courses and ah get to it. And then what?”
V pretty much kills it with little room for divergence. However, technology DID advance WHILE requiring fewer bodies and broader skill sets to function. But since profitability, efficiency, and growth are the actual and only values of the system, then who gives a fuck about anything else? That’s the Faustian bargain this culture made with social philosophy, instead of choosing/refining the many well articulated organizing alternatives for applying our technical science; we were asked to become polymaths; we chose to remain “Americans.”
I’m presently studying Human Resource Management… my prof raises virtually every issue the smarter poster’s on CFN discuss, but he’s much more “optimistically reserved”… Younger Boomers, Xers, and Millenials are currently being stuffed into Universities in yet another profit scheme. We’re essentially being pitted against one another for remaining scraps. You’re witnessing the final solidification of the two-tiered society now. The losers will be cast into the wasteland.
Funny thing is, it’s mostly social science courses from MBA to English Lit. programs we’re attending.The population, myself included, is too stoopid/lazy to enter the STEM programs, the skill sets pertaining to all the new tech jobs, which due to very nature are necessarily few in number. We’re just too good at making shit these days. High quality or low. And we’ll buy it regardless.
For too long workers believed it was their right to receive a paycheck instead of their product. We haven’t caught on that the monetary and market paradigm is completely defunct; one dies a social death for so saying; this culture doesn’t have the balls to actually create a new one. We’re leaving that to the Elite.
Back to charting my battle legacy across the galaxy on Destiny!
“Yeah, out of work welders would retrain as, what, nursing assistants?” — Volodya
What do you think they should retrain as? Some other extinct occupational relic of the now obsolete industrial age? Anchorsmiths? Archil makers? Ulnagers? White coopers?
Your romantic 19th century view of the “working man” who built civilization no longer applies in the 21st century. We have a new world now. Computer controlled, instead of mechanically controlled. Or do you think we need more batt makers, bowdlers, and blentonists?
The mouth breathing factory workers of the 1950s were not smart enough to listen to Eisenhower and reject militarism. As a result the world has been crucified on a cross of iron. We now have perpetual war to benefit the oligarchy. And we still sacrifice cannon fodder, those same selfish and idiotic workers who have stupidly joined the military to support the oligarchy.
US Vice President Joseph Biden has — for reasons still being clarified — just dished up a large portion of truth about recent events in Syria. Biden’s revelation came during an October 3 speech to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Biden was responding to a question about US policy regarding Syria.
http://tarpley.net/
“Our allies in the region were our biggest problem in Syria,” Biden said. “The Turks are great friends and I have a great relationship with Erdogan. The Saudis, the Emiratis,etc. But what were they doing? They were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war that they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except the people being supplied were Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. We couldn’t convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”
Biden added that these countries had “awakened” to the threat from IS and other militants: “It took a while for Turkey, a Sunni nation, to figure out that ISIL was a direct and immediate threat to their well-being,” Biden commented.
Biden also claimed that Erdogan had confessed his own mistakes directly to the Vice President. “He said, ?You were right. We let too many people through.? Now they?re trying to seal their border,” the Vice President said.
Apoplectic over Biden’s speech was by contrast Turkey’s megalomaniac neo-Ottoman strongman Erdogan, whose main divergence from ISIS is that Erdogan wants the post of Sultan and Caliph for himself, and not for the upstart Ibrahim backed by Senator McCain.
“No one can accuse Turkey of having supported any terrorist organisation in Syria, including IS,” railed the aspiring neo-Ottoman Erdogan, attempting to deny what is common knowledge in the Middle East and worldwide. “If Biden told these words, then he will be history to me. I never uttered such remarks.” Erdogan advanced the grotesque claim that his government had not provided “even the smallest amount of support” to IS or any other terrorists: “Nobody can prove it. Foreign fighters never crossed from Turkey to Syria. There were people coming to Turkey as tourists and went to Syria, but nobody can suggest that they were armed while crossing the border.” These absurd statements refute themselves.
Erdogan continued: “I view [Biden’s statement] with regret. I never admitted any mistake, nor did we tell them that they ‘were right’ during my visit to the US. If Mr. Biden uttered these remarks at Harvard, he should apologize. I’m saying this clearly. And we won’t accept slender, indirect explanations.”
Congressman Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, calls for insubordination, mutiny in the time of war against “Muslim Brotherhood in the White House”
http://www.newsweek.com/seditious-words-colorado-congressman-doug-lamborn-273985
Obama’s first State visit after November elections will be to China
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20141003000042&cid=1101
My assumption that Obama will try to keep dollar as a bilateral trade instrument in US-China heavy imbalanced trade (almost 400 billion a year in a hole).
China most likely to drive a hard bargain requesting ease in restrictions for Chinese businesses to acquire hard american assets on US soil in exchange for dollars.
Can you spell “Currency Reset”?
“But I wonder if, for all your dissatisfaction with the PC crowd, you’d dare venture a solid criteria for placing one into the ‘useless eater’ category? Careful. Moral platitudes and slippery slopes abound.”
– ufia –
I may have erred in using the term “useless eater,” which comes loaded with political baggage these days. I’ll retract the term, although I’m not sure what to replace it with, that won’t also be loaded in some way.
It’s the bizarre tone of moral certainty in Emaunel’s post that I’m reacting to. Because it’s based on an idea that the past (represented by the elderly, here) has nothing to offer the future. I find this to be part of the “religion of progress” idea – and I find that unacceptable.
Again, I’ve seen family done correctly. So I KNOW the past has things to offer the future, especially if progress reverses. And part of this has to do with the fact that older people had (or have now, and in my own case, with luck, in another two decades or so) the vitality and mental energy to survive into old age, retaining memories and family history along the way. I’ve heard it said that when an elderly person dies, that it’s like a library burning. I’ve lived that.
There’s this meme in internet land that we whose ancestors are responsible for Western Civilization are somehow too soft and spoiled and decadent and whatever to go on living except in our pampered cocoons. Well, I’ll call Bull Shit on that idea.
My own family history is of sacrifice, privation, tragedy, hardship; but above all of persistence and perseverance. I may be a cosseted Baby Boomer by an accident of fate, but nobody’s going to write me off because of that.
Before God, the blood of tough survivors flows in my veins, and the genes for that toughness are already making their way into the future. That’s one thing I will attempt to honor until my dying day – which death will be in bed at age 100 after a good day’s work, if I get to call it!
Zeke Emanuel needs to ponder that and go screw himself.
IMO, he’s spent a lifetime doing that very thing, already.
Screwing himself, not pondering – I mean.
Everybody have a great Sunday.
Gotta’ go to church.
Bravo, well said. Now if you could just take this attitude about your family and extend it to your greater family – the White Race. Then you’d be operating with all jets burning.
I would urge you to reread your PC Bible (Zinn’s People’s History) that meant so much to you as a youth and refute it point by point now as an adult. It is nothing but five hundred pages of Asokaism.
Ann Barnhardt has come to the Light about Negroes. I may have had some small part in that as I wrote her a number of times about this very subject.
http://www.barnhardt.biz/2014/10/02/important-ebola-note/
We didn’t get to this sorry state overnight, but rather from a thousand cuts. Without ceasing they chipped away at our cultural pride and self respect. Zinn was merely one, though a big one. Now there has arisen a whole army of defenders. We will reverse this fall with the same tenacity with which it was effected – and take the battle to the destroyers, be they of our own people or aliens like Zinn. Join us once free, to set others free…
Janos
Are you sure your really white? I mean have you had your DNA tested, you know just to make sure? A lot of people who have had theirs tested end up very very surprised. There have been a number of DNA paternity studies done at hospitals with the results reaching up to 10% of men are not the baby’s daddy. Who knows how many white women harbor jungle fever fantasies? Hell I know I do. Statistically speaking what are the chances that none of your maternal ancestors ever fucked around? You should get one of them DNA kits from national geographic just to make sure. This way you will be 100% certain (either way) that all your race fantasy efforts are not in vain. How you’ll square that 3% Neanderthal DNA you share with Jews and Asians is something you’ll have to take up with the kkk. I do not know what to say about that, but I’m sure they have real interesting explanation.
Considering the success of IS/ISIS/ISIL in recruiting poodles from Europe and America, perhaps it’s time to put an end to Muslim immigration and consider Muslim detention camps until the “War on Terror” is over. If the Muslims can’t police themselves and control their youth from joining these forces of darkness, then the state will have to step in and do it for them. These Muslim parents aren’t fit to be parents if their children are running off waging war against American and European interests in the Levant.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/04/world/europe/uk-jihadis-isis-penhaul/
Is that draconian? Yes, it is, but IS/ISIS/ISIL is as draconian as it gets. You fight fire with fire, just as you fight draconian with draconian. It’s time Islam was put in its place once and for all. If you want to be Muslim, move to the Middle East. There is no place for it in The West. The West and Islam cannot ever peacefully coexist in the same physical space. One or the other must go. That’s the way Islam thinks, so The West better wake up soon to that reality before it (The West) is no more.
I suspect that we are ill-formed for the path we have chosen. Ill-formed and ill-prepared. We would like to draw a veil over all the blood and terror that have brought us to this place. It is our faintness of heart that would close our eyes to all of that, but in so doing it makes of it our destiny… But nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.
~Malkina
Can you spell “Currency Reset”?
I can. It’s spelled
D r e a m O n
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” Sir Winston Churchill.
Really? I watched the news.
Of course you did as did most trained poodles that day. Tell us, what did you learn from the 1,001 replays of the planes hitting towers and them subsequently collapsing? It reminds of the fateful day Buckwheat was shot and they replayed his slaying ad nauseum ’til we were numb with shock and despair.
https://screen.yahoo.com/buckwheat-buys-farm-000000954.html
The day after the day after, prior to the best president in American history ever to hold the office exhorted Americans should “go shopping,” I went shopping. Several days later, my family and I traveled to Disney World and road the It’s A Small World ride over and over until we passed out from exhaustion and dehydration.
“The West and Islam cannot ever peacefully coexist in the same physical space. One or the other must go.” — Cold N. Holefield
Except they are, every day, in many major metropolitan areas. No beheadings. No bombs. Just the majority of Christians, Jews, and Muslims getting along together in places like Toronto, Melbourne, New York, Vancouver, etc.
Historically, for more than 700 years, Jews, Muslims and Christians thrived, flowered, and excelled while living well together in the West, in Spain. Phenomena like ISIL are insignificant small splinter groups (A measly 30,000… there are 1.5 Billion Muslims) not representing Islam. Islam is a religion of peace.
No beheadings.
http://www.people.com/article/oklahoma-beheading-fired-employee-tried-converting-coworkers-to-islam
Correct. As I said, no beheadings (plural).
http://www.independent.ie/life/lifting-the-veil-on-irelands-fastestgrowing-religion-30600549.html
Yes, it’s only one now but with any luck, it will soon be two, three and many more.
One Is The Loneliest Number
You are barking up the wrong tree. You cannot indict Islam for idiots who do beheadings any more than you can indict Christianity because so-called Christians do horrific things.
“Largely ignored by the media, the Army general who called Islam a false religion and said of his encounter with a Somali warlord that he knew “my god was a real god and his was an idol” has retired.
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an fundamentalist evangelical Christian, made his bigoted remarks in churches wearing his uniform. He also opened a military facility for a special event for conservative Christian clergy.
Boykin was responsible for commando type actions against militant Islamist leaders in Yemen, the Phllipines and Somalia. Some of the attacks claimed civilian lives, making enemies for the United States, according to the magazine.
Boykin capped off his career by preaching in uniform at a Christian school in North Carolina.”
Is beheading worse than the death by snipers, drones, or aerial bombardment committed daily by “Christian” members of the American military?
Or are you just so impressed by the barbarity of beheading (by a few non-state actors who call themselves Muslims) that you are led to condemn 1.5 Billion good Muslims? Or are you an Islamophobe who looks the other way and ignores official state supported Christian atrocities?
Hello UFIA,
re | “We know essentially how and why the lower middle classes were duped by the “Bacchanalia of BS,”- infotainment to numb out while the client gets a nut – but where were all the other intelligent, informed citizens?” -UFIA.
They kid themselves about not being next on the hit list – until it’s too late.
We’ve seen several iterations of this already: the ‘intelligentsia’ shook their heads the blue-collar job losses in the Steel Belt, and the first wave of finance-driven lay-offs back in the 80’s… Until it was middle-managements turn in the early 90’s.
Now it’s people in the tech industry acting as if they are immune – while H1-B visa people displace every viable position in sight, industry leaders get (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc.) get caught red-handed wage-fixing and the DoD puts out a $5M RfP to produce a system to automate sys-admin positions.
The writing is on the wall in 16pt Blue Helvetica.
There are historical precedents for this sort of thing…
😉
A good rule to follow……when dealing with a christian, moslem, or jew….make sure you get it in writing.
Janos,
re | “Companies would be given a grace period to get right or get out. No doubt the latter would have to sell of much of their capital at low rates thus enabling new individuals to step up and take their place.”-j.
Yes, we agree on this. This seems like the sensible start of a program scoping statement.
In a better world it would be half of a two-part national revitalization plan, the other half being letting the FDIC *liquidate* the parasitic financial criminal organizations currently doing business as ‘banks’ in the country.
Flensed of their tax-payer provided fat, their ‘assets’ rendered and repurposed into resources to be fed to a wide-array of well-regulated and localized small banks, thrifts, credit unions and micro-lending operations, they’d be the foundation of explosion of profitably adaptive entrepreneurial activity.
Perhaps this is a plan to be used, if and when there’s a chance to pick-up-the pieces. . .
Cheers!
I was chugging around town today on my MC, enjoying the beautiful autumn weather, and what do I see in a field along the river but a massive US Army Buffalo M Rap armored vehicle, the 1st one I’ve seen close up. It is massive, Upon closer examination it was marked with the logo of our local police department.
I follow local news pretty close and I didn’t know about it. Then again, i had no idea that local PD had fully automatic weapons until last summer when we bought a house near the police shooting range and I heard for myself the long strings of automatic rifle fire.
–brh
Mornin’ Marlin. Keep puttn’ on the ol’ Enfield. As far as the fully auto coppers go, it only takes one aimed hit from a 1917 Enfield to take care of that. Why would the police need full auto? Fully auto is a waste of brass ;o). Spray the prey as they say!
“A good rule to follow……when dealing with a christian, moslem, or jew….make sure you get it in writing.” — nsa
We have invaded or bombed seven (7) Muslim countries now. Seems we are the aggressors attacking their territory, not the other way around. And we do our war making without congressional debate, without financial or legal authorization. We do it in violation of national and international laws.
In other words, we don’t bother putting it in writing.
It’s unfortunate they reside atop our oil, and it is our oil. For thousands of years they had no use for the gooey, black substance that oozed from their desert’s surface on occasion. It was more of a nuisance than anything. They are free to live the Bedouin existence that suits them perfectly. They evolved to that form of existence, not the abominable conditions the discovery of oil under their sands has engendered. They are ill-formed and ill-fit for the Western way of life that evolved around the discovery of oil and its many uses. They cannot be brought along, so they have a choice; Return to a peaceful, non-threatening Bedouin existence and allow the oil to flow freely and unimpeded into Western hands, or get in the game, at which point their only option upon entry is to play the perpetual loser in constant conflict who still keeps on trying. I think the former is a better option, and thankfully there are some, albeit a few, in the Middle East who have chosen that path of wisdom and have maintained their Bedouin roots. They’re an example for all Arabs, and Persians, to follow. They are the Amish of the desert. They are the future of the Levant. Resistance to that destiny is futile and the suffering that manifests from that resistance is regrettably unnecessary.