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Driving south on I-5 into Seattle, the Cascadia Subduction Zone came to mind, especially when the highway dipped into a gloomy tunnel beneath Seattle’s relatively new skyscraper district. This fault line runs along the Pacific coast from north of Vancouver down into California. The western “plates” move implacably east and downward under the North American plate, building up massive tectonic forces that can produce some of the most violent megathrust earthquakes on the planet.

The zone also accounts for a chain of volcanoes that tend to produce titanic explosions rather than eruptions of lava and ash as seen in the hula movies. The most recent expression of this tendency was Mt. St. Helens in 1980, an impressive cataclysm by the standards of our fine-tuned complex civilization, but a junior event of its type compared to, say, the blow-off of Mt. Mazama 7,500 years ago, which left Crater Lake for the tourists. A publicity-shy correspondent writes:

By all acounts Mazama was floating upon a vast lake of steamy rhyolite. It was a structurally unstable stratovolcano the size of Mount Shasta with a net volume of 80 cubic miles. A 5 minute Triple Junction 9.3 Richter Scale shaker uncorked the Mount Mazama champagne bottle via massive lahars which removed the overpressure. Geologists estimate that the eruption lasted for about one day.

It’s only been in the last thirty years that Seattle hoisted up its tombstone cluster of several dozen office and condo towers. That’s what cities do these days to demonstrate their self-regard, and Seattle is perhaps America’s boomingest city, what with Microsoft’s and Amazon’s headquarters there — avatars of the digital economy. A megathrust earthquake there today would produce a scene that even the computer graphics artistes of Hollywood could not match for picturesque chaos. What were the city planners thinking when they signed off on those building plans?

I survived the journey through the Seattle tunnel, dogged by neurotic fantasies, and headed south to California’s Bay Area, another seismic doomer zone. For sure I am not the only casual observer who gets the doomish vibe out there on the Left Coast. Even if you are oblivious to the geology of the place, there’s plenty to suggest a sense of impossibility for business-as-usual continuing much longer. I got that end-of-an-era feeling in California traffic, specifically driving toward San Francisco on the I-80 freeway out in the suburban asteroid belt of Contra Costa County, past the sinister oil refineries of Mococo and the dormitory sprawl of Walnut Creek, Orinda, and Lafayette.

Things go on until they can’t, economist Herb Stein observed, back in the quaint old 20th century, as the USA revved up toward the final blowoff we’ve now entered. The shale oil “miracle” (so-called) has given even thoughtful adults the false impression that the California template for modern living will continue indefinitely. I’d give it less than five years now. The movers and shakers of that state dwell in an extra-special political bubble of their own that doesn’t accommodate much thought about the actual future in which all their recent investments in public infrastructure fail spectacularly.

There will be no Tesla utopia of self-driving electric cars to “solve” the dilemmas of internal combustion, despite the prototype demonstrations among status-seeking tech executive millionaires. From the Berkeley highlands at night, you could see across the fabled bay to the twinkling new skyscrapers of San Francisco — like Seattle’s, another expression of the inordinate riches spawned by computers. How was that a good idea, considering what happened there as recently as 1906?

What you see out there along the Pacific rim of the USA is a giant booby-trap of certain cataclysm. It’s part of the even greater tectonic phenomenon called the Ring of Fire, which circles the whole western ocean from the Aleutian Islands to Japan through Indonesia and up again along the western edge of South America. Things are livening up all over the darn thing right now, including the rumblings of a bunch of big volcanoes in the South Pacific and the Fuego volcano in Guatemala, uncorking lethally as I write. And, of course, none of the foregoing includes the giant magma dome of worthless stock and bond values swelling under the towers of Wall Street back east.


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

538 Responses to “A West Coast State of Mind”

  1. thenuttyneutron June 4, 2018 at 10:07 am #

    Don’t worry about the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Yellow Stone is over due for an eruption and will likely do more damage on a global scale.

    Why are you saying nothing about Rosanne? I never watched her show but I hate what the American thought police have done to her.

    • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:11 am #

      RosEanne.
      She is a strange one.

      And she compared the ugly muslim to an actor from POTA, not to an ape.

      • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 10:54 am #

        Which you know how? The tweet whereby Roseanne blew up her career read: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”. I don’t see James Franco or Charlton Heston anywhere in there.

        But then, the way you refer to Valerie Jarrett shows you’re pretty much wearing your agenda on your sleeve.

        • pequiste June 4, 2018 at 4:06 pm #

          Same would apply to comments regards the president’s daughter, Ivanka, wouldn’t it? The old agenda on the sleeve routine. Top bananas since Johnny Carson’s late night have employed the gag with guffaws and stale chuckles aplenty.

          Yes, another “star” individual with a TeeVee show casually referred to by the Media as a comedian, one Samantha Bee, called Ivanka Trump Kushner “…a feckless cunt…” Now contrast that comment with the other comedian’s comments and you have balance of a sort that sets the proper tone for political discourse in the U.S.A. A balance that infers the philosophy and praxis of right and wrong from fucking idiots on TeeVee. Smart.

          That Valerie Jarrett and her coterie had and still have an awful and terrifying agenda for the U.S.A. and the West, in general, is not salient when titans of political science and statecraft debate the course of the nation, does it?

          Frankly, Samantha Bee and Roseanne Barr are both as funny as cancer of the cervix.

          Fixed it for you Elrond.

          • hineshammer June 4, 2018 at 6:33 pm #

            But Ivanka is a feckless cunt.

    • Walter B June 5, 2018 at 12:00 am #

      We all have our own ways to look at this place we come to, to discuss our thoughts and share them and we are all free to have our opinions on how and why we do. Myself, I see our host as an artist who utilizes his skills and talents to offer our society a mirror in which to view its own image, from the events and concerns of the day to the very structures and architecture that it utilizes to make its mark on the landscape is an outward sign of the mindset, don’t you think? The idea that our “leaders” have so often chosen to stick their sailor’s salute skyscrapers up in places where they should probably not have been constructed in the first place for one reason or another is a great way to perform his self-imposed duties to us all. I appreciate Jim’s views on all of what he chooses to bring to our attention and I fault him not when he decides to veer away from entertainment issues because in the end, I am a function before form kind of guy. Thank you Jim.

  2. bukowskisghost June 4, 2018 at 10:08 am #

    Jim…. only you can make me laugh and shudder with fear at the same time

    • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:11 am #

      That is not a good response.

    • babbat June 4, 2018 at 11:08 am #

      Jim morrison once said:”the west is the best, come over here and we,’ll do the rest”.
      Jimbo I like how you compare the volcanoes of Atlantis with what’s happening now in the best coast. To paraphrase Jim Morrison again I’m going to party untill this shithouse comes burning down”.you got some smart dudes on your podcasts when are you going to get Elon Musk and Mark Besos. Haha.
      Probably when game of thrones admits that bringing down a wall that size with dragon that size is not probable. But seriously when are you going to get some logistics experts to analyze the coming next 5 years? I say handmaids tale sans the fertility crisis and left wing agenda!

  3. malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:09 am #

    PEAK WATER

    I found this somewhere–Surfing the Multiverse says- I’m a native California and it breaks my heart that I have to leave. The final straw was taking away my Daily shower.
    New law you can either wash your clothes or take a shower in one day but not both.
    Allocated 55 gallons of water per day per person when flushing the toilet takes 7 gallons.
    Starting in 2022 if you go over your water allotment you are fined $1000 per day.
    And all houses have to have their plumbing retrofitted at owner expense to be very narrow pipes by 2022. Anyone with any sort of means will be fleeing California. Why do they want us all to be dirty? Is that some sort of mind control thing?

    • DrTomSchmidt June 4, 2018 at 10:21 am #

      7 gallons to flush a toilet? Mine uses 1.6, as have pretty much all toilets since, uh, 1992.

      With 2.5 gallons per minute in one shower head, though, if you shower for 11minutes you’ve used half your water allotment. That’s not good.

      • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:40 am #

        10 minutes is a good shower.

        • Cavepainter June 4, 2018 at 1:01 pm #

          Ok, ok, but really, no matter how much “conservation” regulation is added continued growth in population “draws down” continuously in overall livability, whether the availability of wilderness experience or any other quality of life “resource”.

        • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 9:03 pm #

          10 minutes? That’s my water you’re wasting. You are clean if a few seconds. The rest is pure hedonism, a reversion to being in a lower stage of life, a hippo or a fish.

      • hmuller June 4, 2018 at 11:46 am #

        It takes no “water” to flush a toilet. Just save up your urine in a bucket and pour it violently into the bowl. Solid material goes down in a swirl. Your house will always smell of urine, but hey, that’s the price of living in paradise.

        A sponge bath once a week can be accomplished with under a gallon of water.

        You can encourage the poor to conserve water by allotting everyone a water quota. Whatever part of the quota you don’t use, you can sell on a website exchange to rich people who have landscaping needs, pools, et al. Of course, the authorities will see this as evidence the poor are allotted too much water, and may reduce our quotas.

        Welcome to the hunger-games, globalist world of tomorrow brought to you by those who see us as serfs, slaves, and useless eater scum.

        • pequiste June 4, 2018 at 4:08 pm #

          Still waiting for a replay of the good old 1860s:

          SERFS UP!

        • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 3:40 am #

          If you don’t live here, don’t serf here.

    • Laura Louzader June 4, 2018 at 10:32 am #

      California and other desert states have been living on stolen water for the past 100 years. CA has the first claim on Lake Mead water, and alone has over 1,400 dams. Lately, the state has been eyeing Columbia River with the notion of diverting water from ABOVE the Grand Coulee dam, a project that will no doubt meet with vehement resistance from Washington and Oregon, since the Grand Coulee is the largest electrical generating facility in the country, and needs as much “hydraulic head” as possible to generate its full 5 gigawatts capacity.

      Were it not for the diversion of water, and federal tax money, to build the dams of the West, the sand states wouldn’t be able to carry more than 10% of their current population.

      • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 2:43 pm #

        Between this and the topic of JHK’s post today, I’m almost feeling embarrassed at living where I do. Almost. The Canadian shield, a big solid slab of billion-year-old Silurian geology, is as close as it gets to an earthquake-proof zone on this planet; and on top of it sits endless primeval forest dotted with innumerable, nigh-inexhaustible freshwater lakes. And this is to say nothing of the natural wonder that is the Great Lakes.

        Abundant drinking water and hydro power, secure foundations under our feet, and access to 84% of the surface freshwater of North America — what’s not to like? Though I do envy southern Californians their climate.

        • Cavepainter June 4, 2018 at 3:52 pm #

          “Endless primeval forest”? So went the mammoth.

        • pequiste June 4, 2018 at 4:14 pm #

          A tremendous earthquake will hit Canada when the Parti Quebecois makes the third time a charm and win a referendum on separation. The Societe Distinct wishes to remain majority French-speaking and not Yzlamik at all. It interferes with gastronomie, le Societe des Alcools de Quebec’s vins et autre plaisirs liquid, and in general having everything named after a Catholic saints plus all those offensive crosses and crucifixes about the place.

          • jean.baptiste.moquelin June 5, 2018 at 11:46 pm #

            @péquiste
            you have lost touch with Québec. If in 1995 the ‘yes’ side came within a hair of winning, since then there have been nearly 60000 immigrants a year, and few of them care about the fate of the french-speaking society they joined – many barely tolerate it and wished they could just live in an English canadian province.

        • sophia June 4, 2018 at 9:19 pm #

          But colder weather is coming.

        • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:32 pm #

          Don’t worry E, we will be coming your way or “blasting you” as they used to say on the old show Major Mud.

        • Walter B June 5, 2018 at 3:59 pm #

          Hey Elrond don’t feel bad about being a Canuck for while you may indeed inhabit a huge amount of the Earth’s most beautiful places, you do pay a price with rather harsh Winter’s don’t you? I bet it’s worth it though.

          Hey I consider you a resident debunker with a good amount of skill at it so answer me a question if you care to. I have been seeing a lot of these homeless video footage supposedly of California….

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8fsfwo6R-Y

          What is your take on this? Think this is actually how it is there?

          • Elrond Hubbard June 6, 2018 at 7:52 pm #

            Walter B: The first thing that struck me looking at that clip is the tents set up on the sidewalks. Presumably those are people’s homes and castles. I got curious, so I loaded up Google Maps and found the corner of 6th and Crocker, then dropped into Street View. The most recent view I see for that corner is from October 2017. (You can see a sign reading “Film Here — Furnished office set”, plus a phone number. L.A. sure is a company town.) But the views go as far back in the past as 2007. The tents appear somewhere in the gap between March 2015 and August 2016. You have to wonder what changed in that time — the economy? Did the LAPD start letting people do that, or possibly push people into this area from somewhere else? I’m sure there’s a story there.

            Extremes of wealth and poverty are nothing new, but the extremes always feel extreme-ier to me in American cities. I lived a stone’s throw from Detroit for many years, after all, where it was particularly hard to miss — ever heard of the Heidelberg Project? Anyway, around 11 minutes into the video, he starts talking to a couple of guys who say they’re from Italy and have come to volunteer. Have you ever seen it this bad? he asks them, and they compare Skid Row to places in Brazil and in Africa. (“The local Third World’s kept on reservations you don’t see”, as a favourite singer of mine once put it.)

            In short, I see no reason to doubt what I see in the video is pretty representative. If it isn’t already, the USA is in the process of becoming the First World’s Third World country.

          • Walter B June 7, 2018 at 12:20 am #

            It is hard to tell here in Cyberspace who is what and what really is, but from what I can gather, you and I are very different and we have very different ideas on what we choose to like and believe. Yet somehow we are working together in what I feel is pretty good harmony and I find myself wondering what the World could be if this example could somehow be made to go mainstream.

            Thank you brother for your wise response. Perhaps I have grown too old, but I find myself seriously believing that it is far wiser to build bridges than to build walls.

            Peace.

      • LEP June 4, 2018 at 5:34 pm #

        Where it is true that in drier years the lower states (CA, NV, and AZ) have first claim on the river before the upper states can have theirs, and yes Calif.does use the giant portion of the lower states’ water, but it is impossible for California to ever get any water from the Columbia. Californians might wish that they could get that water, but it will never happen because the Federal Govt. wouldn’t sign off on such a thing if OR and WA didn’t agree.

        I teach Water Law and Water Resources courses so I can guarantee you California, greedy as it has been in the past, will not be able to get more water from anywhere other than building desalting plants. For an interesting history on how the Colorado River got divvied up so long ago, you can find many articles on the web about the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

        Californians will be in for quite a shock when they finally figure out that they will ALL be forced to live as though water is hard to come by on a permanent basis. In other words, Megadrought will be the new normal.

        • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 9:05 pm #

          What about bringing up icebergs from the South Pole on the cold current of the Pacific?

      • Newsletterguy June 5, 2018 at 9:26 am #

        Ssshhhh. We don’t want the sand staters to move this way. We want them to stay right where they are…

    • sophia June 4, 2018 at 11:03 am #

      I’m trying to figure out if you’re tongue in cheek. You can live well on a lot less water than that. And you ask why? Could it have something to do with a finite resource?

      • elysianfield June 4, 2018 at 11:26 am #

        “You can live well on a lot less water than that”

        Sophia,
        And, indeed, you will. Others, however, have “special circumstances”, and need not concern themselves with privation…the new law provides.

        I might live a normal life by current standards, while you and your family will live a life of relative sacrifice. Virtue is it’s own reward…(snicker)….

      • Farmer Joe June 4, 2018 at 11:40 am #

        One can live happily on fewer resources, if you dont mind one minute showers or bathing in a sink, and if you dont mind crapping in a bucket and composting your waste.

        As I see it there is no politically feasible solution to our collective dilemma. I know so many people whose dream it is to have a house in the suburbs with all the trappings. How can anyone convince them to abandon their mindset or, if they have already established themselves as a suburbanite, convince them to let go of what they have achieved? The only solution I see (informing the masses hasnt worked) is to let the system burn. Theres nothing like a long bout with hunger to convince a soccer mom that her loved ones would be safer on a farm.

        • Cavepainter June 4, 2018 at 1:28 pm #

          Live on a farm? Where? Our nation is, simply, over populated! We’ve screwed ourselves and through the Left’s witless “passive chauvinism” (belief that the US is somehow magically capable of taking in all the world’s desperate by simply limiting shower time) the situation is only going to worsen..

        • elysianfield June 4, 2018 at 7:34 pm #

          “One can live happily on fewer resources, if you dont mind one minute showers or bathing in a sink, and if you dont mind crapping in a bucket and composting your waste.

          Joe,

          Of course we can conserve, deny modern conveniences…in effect resort to the rural experience of the late 1800’s. The issue is being told by “competent authority” to do so if it is not of one’s choice (and resources being plentiful) coupled with the knowledge that there are others that are not so afflicted.

          I live on 100+ acres of forest and pasture…heating with biomass is not an issue, unless I am told I cannot use wood heat, due to CO2 concerns, when those who formulate the policy are at 40,000 feet in a jet burning in one trip my entire life’s footprint of carbon emissions. This scenario makes me “sad”.

          Going primitive does not make me sad…being told to do so might make me medieval….

      • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 12:51 pm #

        “You can live well on a lot less water than that. ”

        I remember listening to a radio programme about Spain and the water-stressed future that awaits it, along with the rest of southern Europe. The kids were being trained from a young age to treat water with more respect, e.g. when waiting for hot water to arrive at the tap, they collected the cold water that came first and it was used for watering plants or whatever else it could be used for. And toilet (WC) etiquette can be mildly tweaked within families!

        Urine used to be used as an antiseptic, after all. It’s good for the compost as well (male more than female, I think, but I may be mixing that up!).

        I remember reading at least a decade ago that WCs would soon be a thing of the past, out of necessity, and that we’d have to convert, large scale, to composting toilets. But here we still are, and beyond some eco-chic new builds of the kind you see on ‘grand designs’ programmes, we’re all still merrily flushing clean mains water down the loo. Even using grey water would be an improvement.

        The retired couple who live next door to me have loads of washing hanging out every day through the summer – clothes and multiple towels. There are only two of them and they must be 70. I sometime wonder if they go through their drawers and cupboards to look for clean stuff to re-wash, just for something to do.

        • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 1:35 pm #

          The urine of women on the pill is immensely destructive. They should not be allowed to urinate into public water supplies, but rather be required to bring it in as toxic waste.

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 2:03 pm #

            Fine – not a problem that concerns me personally, of course, but I look forward to this new world wherein men will take responsibility for contraception, instead of women having to ingest dubious chemicals. Including for that ‘necessary infidelity’ you were telling us about. Bring it on. Since other methods are less perfect, there will of course be more of those babes from ‘necessary infidelity’ that the Church Fathers told you was OK. Or maybe I misunderstood.

            Then we can deal with all those gym-loving men on steroids. They can relieve themselves somewhere else as well and pay for the de-tox. Whatever persuasion they are.

          • hineshammer June 4, 2018 at 6:40 pm #

            The resident Incel speaks

          • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 8:32 am #

            And talking of less perfect contraceptive methods, just for Q I’m going to introduce the ‘willy welly’ which I once heard from a colleague as a jokey term for what used to be called, archaically a ‘French letter’

            https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-French-call-a-French-letter

            You won’t even find ‘willy welly’ on Google, I think. I suspect it was a bit of personal humour, possibly suggested by the commonly expressed sentiment that wearing said ‘prophylactic’ (that’s one of yours, I believe) is, for the gentlemen, ‘like wearing your wellies in the bath’.

          • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm #

            Talking of water pollution, Janos:

            https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/24/why-there-are-more-gym-supplements-in-a-london-fatberg-than-cocaine-and-mdma

            “Why there are more gym supplements in a London fatberg than cocaine and MDMA”

            So, yeah, maybe have a word with the boys while you’re having one with the Pill-ingesting girls, who – believe it or not – are not taking the Pill to have sex with themselves, so it’s kind of a shared responsibility, unlike the steroids, cocaine and MDMA.

            But generally, I find the whole fatberg thing a pretty apposite metaphor for our effect on this lovely planet.

            Apparently ‘wet wipes’ (which should go in the bin if you HAVE to use them) are a major catalyst in the ‘fatbergisation’ process. A binder, if you will. Wet wipes, people, seriously?

            It’s like young people (primarily) in the UK being incapable, in 2018, of walking from A to B in the summer without bottled water hanging from their hand, as if they were traversing the Sahara or needed the comfort of a baby bottle.

            Get a grip, people. When was the last time you heard of someone in the UK actually ‘dehydrating’ unless someone shut them in a car in the sun for hours or they chose to BBQ themselves on a beach? Humans just don’t dehydrate that easily, so you can make it across London without any trouble – the Sahara, maybe not. Where you are headed there will be taps.

            Remember Ice Cold in Alex? It’ll be like that, only less dramatic. And in colour.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 11:30 am #

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouYKeeTz7Yw

            Worth waiting for…

        • michael June 4, 2018 at 3:42 pm #

          How about they get by on cold water in Spain of all places?
          It’s much healthier.

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 5:19 pm #

            I’m sure they will, in due course, when they need to, but for now I presume they like to wash their hands – or their smalls – in warm water.

          • Q. Shtik June 4, 2018 at 6:07 pm #

            to wash their hands – or their smalls – GA

            ==========

            This is so wonderful…another new Brit slang word.

            “Smalls” are underwear as in “Out for a walk, I was too far from any restroom and wound up crapping in my smalls.”

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 7:45 pm #

            Never heard it used in that way, Q. People talk about washing their smalls or hanging up their smalls (and it would tend to refer to women’s stuff, I think).

            But they crap in their pants. Standard idiom – I guess you have to live there.

            Pants not being trousers, obviously.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:30 pm #

            Q’s mind is in the – what’s the British slang for restroom? Water closet? Loo?

          • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 8:14 am #

            “Q’s mind is in the – what’s the British slang for restroom? Water closet? Loo?”

            Now there’s a sociolinguistic world to ponder…

            Well…

            ‘Restroom’ has really got to be THE example of American puritanico-linguistics. ‘Rest’ room. Seriously, guys? Are there armchairs? Daybeds?

            It reminds me of some of the men leading hill walks we used to go on with the Ramblers, who would point to some decent-sized bushes and suggest a ‘comfort stop’. Right.

            ‘Loo’ still has currency, but may be considered a bit twee now, so may be spoken tongue in cheek, but it does have historlcal Franco-Scots pedigree, as you will presumably know:

            https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/gardyloo-the-grim-story-of-unsanitary-edinburgh-1-4073295

            So, a bit of the Auld Alliance made flesh, as it were – and perhaps it should be kept so that generations of schoolchildren can be taught afresh what its origins are.

            Personally, I use ‘toilet’ for almost all situations. There was a time when one might have said “where’s the Ladies’ ” (or Gents’) in a restaurant, for instance, but now I think most people are happy to say ‘where’s the toilet’ and give the member of staff credit for knowing which one you’re looking for, should they be in a different place. Although I realise this is a bit of a hot potato over your way now 🙂 .

            WC, on the other hand, I have never heard anyone say in the UK, despite the letters still being on a few older doors, instead of a helpful – or sometimes quite confusing – symbol.

            You’d have to go to France for that, where people, in addition to using ‘les toilettes’, also say ‘les WC’, direct from the English, but without the ‘double’, hence ‘les vé-cé’. I have even heard the derivation ‘les waters’ (delightfully pronounced ‘les ‘ouatères!) but from someone of a certain age, it has to be said.

            Or, if they’re being course or just a bit everyday, they’ll just say ‘les chiottes’, which is even courser than our previously common ‘bog’, corresponding, as it does, to ‘sh*thouse

            Ah, the aroma of sociolinguistic rumination…

          • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 3:20 pm #

            There are no men or women, Alba, just people. Sounds like you are falling behind the Revolution and still want different gender toilets. Not good, not good at all. No one said it would be easy, did they?

            Thank for the info about the Loo and shit.

          • Q. Shtik June 5, 2018 at 6:07 pm #

            considered a bit twee now – GA

            ===========

            Keep’em commin’ Greenie. I assume this one originated from someone with a speech impediment like the character Barry Kripke on Big Bang Theory. (“I went behind a twee to take a week.”)

            Yes, restroom is a bit redic but not nearly as redic as defining a ‘bog’ as a bathroom. Ewwww!

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 6:23 am #

            I’ve checked it for you, Q, and it would appear that ‘twee’ (which isn’t slang as such, I believe) originally evolved from the assumed/observed childish pronunciation of ‘sweet’.

            It’s a bit like the name ‘Wendy’ in Peter Pan, which allegedly grew out of the expression ‘my fwendie-wendie’ used by the little girl who inspired the story.

            And I agree ‘bog’ is horrible. I don’t think it’s used as much these days and is, in any case, more of a boy word. Boys like boy words – what can you do?

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 6:29 am #

            “There are no men or women, Alba, just people. Sounds like you are falling behind the Revolution ”

            You assume too much, Janos. I’m far more socially conservative than you think. I just don’t impose my social conservatism on other people Their lives are their lives.

            The French, who have never had any trouble distinguishing men from women, have nevertheless had an untroubled history of unisex toilets, where these have been appropriate or necessary. I don’t recall any dramas related to that.

        • pequiste June 4, 2018 at 4:16 pm #

          The world is my urinal.

          What gender am I?

  4. Being There June 4, 2018 at 10:14 am #

    One of your best posts yet…making all our travails seem inconsequential. And has poetic tie-ins with our financial debacle.

    Nature is the big bomb awaiting and all our absolute power and hubris is trivial by comparison…..

    • ozone June 4, 2018 at 10:27 am #

      BT,
      I would agree.
      And I find the fact that Nature bats last (and with devastating consequence) vaguely comforting. Puts our ‘efforts’ at engineering our environment in perspective.

      BT, enjoy every day on this side of the turf and be kind to the helpless, no matter the species…

      • Being There June 4, 2018 at 10:52 am #

        Thanks O.
        Now that I’m semi-retired I have some more time to put into good works. I will try…..
        Better dying trying than idly watching as the water rises……:)

      • Loneranger June 4, 2018 at 11:35 am #

        Yes, nature bats last, with the bases loaded, knocking us humans out of the park. Nature takes the season pennant and we’re retired to the bullpen…err..the pigpen.

        Robert

      • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 1:36 pm #

        Yes as Poe said, The Play is the Comedy, “Man” and the Hero is the Conqueror Worm.

  5. malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:17 am #

    Marlin posted, muderered.

    Haha.
    So (((Starbux))) is educating YT [Whitey].

    Here, ponder on this;

    SBPDL.com;

    “In April, 3-year-old T’Rhigi Diggs was shot while he slept in the back of his mother’s car in Milwaukee. Police say he was killed by a teen that fired a handgun at people shooting paintballs”.

    T’Rhigi Diggs never even lived long enough to need to turn his life around or aspire to a career as a balla or in the rap game. That’s what these dirty paintball wars took away from our collective future.

    WEEKS LATER, ANOTHER DEATH, 19-YEAR-OLD ZYQUARIUS BRADLEY WHO WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN GREENSBORO. HIS BODY FOUND NEXT TO A CAR COVERED WITH PAINTBALLS.

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    • Q. Shtik June 4, 2018 at 12:34 pm #

      19-YEAR-OLD ZYQUARIUS BRADLEY – malth

      ===========

      Zyquarius?

      You have got to be kidding me!

      • Jigplate June 4, 2018 at 1:13 pm #

        “Zyquarius?

        You have got to be kidding me!”

        You have no idea. I have been living with the “creativity” of inner city names for more than 30 years. A few years back, I had a student show up on my roster with the name of “Joan”. Being the privileged white guy that I am , I pronounced it the way that most white people would. “Joan” took offence however, it seems it was supposed to be “Jo-an” Not only did I get the pronunciation wrong, I also got the wrong gender.

        • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 4:24 pm #

          Absolutely. Because no one ever, ever uses names that haven’t already been used for hundreds of years. Nothing ever changes with time.

          It was just the other day I was saying that very thing to my buddies, Beowulf and Leofric. Them and their lady friends, Godgifu and the Wyf of Bath.

          • Jigplate June 5, 2018 at 7:34 am #

            Thanks for the pedantry, Elrond. The “creativity” in question is just another example of a relatively recent construct based entirely on race – designed to separate a group of people from a common American culture. I find it interesting that your choice of old English names hails from a time when the British actually had a common culture that they admired and all agreed on, instead of the suicidal self loathing that is destroying it now.

          • Elrond Hubbard June 5, 2018 at 10:42 am #

            You’ve just illustrated one of the basic, basic, basic blind spots so many around here have.

            African Americans don’t design unique cultural traditions, like distinct names, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves from a common American culture. That gets the arrow of cause and effect exactly backwards.

            They are born into a society that was purpose-built at its foundations to exclude them from the white supremacist culture that you, and also JHK I might add, thoughtlessly refer to as the ‘common, American’ culture. The society has only fitfully and imperfectly been retrofitted over time to allow some inclusion. The written laws on the books may have changed, but the unwritten law is still inscribed in a lot of hearts (and no small number of Confederate flags and monuments).

            African Americans can see these facts plainly for themselves, and so can many others, whether you can see them or not.

          • Jigplate June 5, 2018 at 1:09 pm #

            “They are born into a society that was purpose-built at its foundations to exclude them from the white supremacist culture that you, and also JHK I might add, thoughtlessly refer to as the ‘common, American’ culture. The society has only fitfully and imperfectly been retrofitted over time to allow some inclusion. The written laws on the books may have changed, but the unwritten law is still inscribed in a lot of hearts (and no small number of Confederate flags and monuments).”

            Now that I am but days away from retiring from my inner-city “edumacation” career, I have been waxing philosophical regarding a great many of my experiences over the past 32 years. One of them is the dichotomy between the supervisory hierarchy that existed in my school district in 1986 when I started my career, and that which exists now. When I was a newly minted classroom teacher, every one of my supervisors, from vice principals , through Principals and district superintendents, assorted deputy chancellors up to the chancellor himself were all white. Now , 32 years later, as a veteran classroom teacher, the exact opposite is true. I like to think that these educators achieved their rank due to talent, drive and hard work. I get a solid chuckle from the “white supremacist” trope that so many neo-Marxist’s trot out to support the tired old shiboleths of the past. The only difference is that today, the “capitalist running dogs” have been replaced by the “privileged white cis-gendered male patriarchy” It’s as if Marx and Lenin were run through a slick Madison Ave. Cuisinart.

          • PeteAtomic June 5, 2018 at 7:06 pm #

            “They are born into a society that was purpose-built at its foundations to exclude them from the white supremacist culture that you, and also JHK I might add, thoughtlessly refer to as the ‘common, American’ culture.”

            Holy fuck. I thought Janos said some batshit stuff sometimes, but I guess I was wrong.

          • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 10:58 am #

            > African Americans… are born into a society that was purpose-built at its foundations to exclude them…

            @Elrond Hubbard

            Spoken like a true libtard.

            Blacks owe their current socioeconomic standards entirely to themselves, and to liberals like you, who continue to make excuses for them at every opportunity, and encourage them to blame invisible systems of oppression that simply don’t exist.

            Your theory is that blacks secretly yearn to read Shakespeare and Chaucer whilst a spirited rendition of the Brandenburg Concertos plays in the background? But the white man forces them to embrace gangster rap, shoot hoops, and watch BET instead?

            No one is stopping inner-city black youth from learning, from studying, from getting good grades and becoming productive members of society—except for blacks themselves. The biggest killer of blacks in the USA and the world at large is not whites but other blacks.

            NYC has lots of poor blacks and Asians. The Asians are doing just fine. They’re kicking ass, in fact. They’re even exceeding wealthier whites. Asians don’t need Affirmative Action or any liberal excuses. And the reason is that Asian culture is superior to black culture. It produces smart and successful Asians that rise out of poverty at a far greater rate. Queue your liberal bullshit excuses for why poor Asians living mere miles away from poor blacks are succeeding whereas blacks are not.

            Is there a cyclical system of poverty and welfarism? Absolutely. And who is responsible for that? Tell us about this mysterious army of whites who force black welfare moms to engage in numerous extramarital liaisons with their “baby-daddies” and give birth to more children whilst in poverty? Tell us which political party wants to reward all these extramarital miracles with additional welfare payments? Which political party and ideology is demanding that welfare be continuously expanded? California even wants taxpayers to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants!

            It is liberals like yourself who have make welfarism a lifestyle choice—just as you’re trying to make gender a choice, and culture a choice, and language a choice, and morality a choice, and generally just break down any sense of coherence in these polities we call nations. It is liberals like yourself who want to eviscerate all personal responsibility. YOU are the reason why blacks are not succeeding.

          • Elrond Hubbard June 7, 2018 at 1:07 pm #

            *I* am the reason? Well, phooey. The priests and nuns used to assure me in the gravest tones that I was personally responsible for the agonies of Christ as well. Might as well pile on the blame for the Star Wars prequels and mixing stripes and plaids while you’re at it.

          • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 3:37 pm #

            > The priests and nuns used to assure me in the gravest tones that I was personally responsible for the agonies of Christ as well.

            As someone who apparently grew up with Christian cultural orthodoxy, it’s no wonder you’ve embraced concepts like “white privilege” without question. What do you imagine white privilege is except a race-based secular liberal version of Original Sin?

          • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 6:22 pm #

            Yes, the dullness of the Liberals never ceases to amaze. It’s Faith – which they “think” (they don’t) they hate.

        • Q. Shtik June 4, 2018 at 4:52 pm #

          I have been living with the “creativity” of inner city names for more than 30 years. – Jig

          ==========

          42+ years ago my wife was pregnant with our first baby. As the due date approached we made various arrangements with our local Catholic Church concerning baptism and what have you. The young priest, Father Vernon, was very serious about the religion and delivered excellent homilies in perfectly grammatical English while another priest at the church was not only obese but woeful as a speaker. Coincidentally, Fr Vernon died some years later in a car crash on Christmas Eve…but I digress.

          You would think arranging for a baptism would be something you could do on the phone in under 10 minutes but, no. We found out we would need to meet with Fr V to receive certain religious instructions. So, one evening we gathered with this priest and two other pregnant couples in the rectory.

          We were informed in no uncertain terms that the naming of children was to be taken very seriously. It was a good idea to use the names of saints or at a minimum some highly moral and respected ancestor or relative, like an uncle or grandparent. Discouraged was the use of sports figures or Hollywood celebrities for no good reason other than you happened to like them.

          These lessons wore on for more than an hour and we left kind of shaking our heads at the comprehensiveness and the audacity of the Church in trying to influence what we would name our own child.

          Years later I read how O.J. Simpson came to be named Orenthal J. Simpson. There was a matriarchal figure within OJ’s extended family (an aunt, I believe) who had become the maker-up-of new baby names. She conceived the name Orenthal. Whether there was ever any other person named Orenthal in the family or for that matter in the entire United States, I don’t know but I don’t think so. I doubt there was ever a Saint Orenthal.

          Although every name that has ever existed was originally dreamed up by somebody, Black folks seem, within the past 50 years, to avoid common names used by ‘Whitey’ (such as Tom, Dick and Harry) and go for laughable constructions like, well, Zyquarious.

          I really liked the way in which one pregnant black woman came up with her baby’s name. She was sitting on the front stoop mulling over names when a truck came down the block with the name Peerless Furniture on it. Her baby became the football star, Peerless Price.

          • hmuller June 4, 2018 at 5:35 pm #

            Oprah Winfrey received her name due to a dyslexia issue. A relative looked in the Bible’s book of Ruth and saw the name of Ruth’s sister-in-law – “Orpah”. Somehow the “p” and “r” got turned around and the rest is history.

        • elysianfield June 4, 2018 at 7:39 pm #

          JP,
          I always thought a good “ghetto” name for a female child would be…”Chlorine”….

      • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 1:37 pm #

        It’s the Age of Zyquarius.

        • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:15 pm #

          gawd

  6. Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 10:21 am #

    Nice travelogue observations this morning Jim. I remember back in the late 70’s and early 80’s I got into reading all the “new age” stuff, including the writings of Edgar Cayce, who had came to minor fame with his hypnotic trance “readings” earlier in the century. He turned out to be wrong about the west coast disaster scenarios he predicted unfolding in the 80’s (other than St. Helens), but I never doubted that he was still correct in the longer term, although most now would simply say that’s common sense due to our exponential advances in computerized prognostication capabilities. At any rate, building urban megacities with increasingly integrated and fragile infrastructure systems in such zones would have seemed to be foolhardy to even the simplest of minds back in Cayce’s days, which is apparently why our self-appointed masters of the universe don’t get it; but greed and arrogance rules the world these days, so go figure.

    One final thing, Cayce also predicted major quakes along the New Madrid fault, which runs approximately along the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. There’s been some minor activity there too in recent years, but nothing of significant note just yet. Such an event would certainly ring up some significant economic disruption were it to occur, since contrary to popular belief, Mississippi barge traffic is still a significant source of commerce and wealth to those in the area and beyond.

    • Laura Louzader June 4, 2018 at 10:27 am #

      The last major quake on the New Madrid was in 1812, when St Louis was still a small French village. That quake rolled across Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tenessee, and the aftershocks lasted for months. Naturalist John James Audabon, who was traveling through the area at the time, reported that the ground just kept rolling. If a similar quake happened now, St Louis as it is at this time, with its predominately brick homes and buildings, would be nearly leveled, and there would likely be quakes along the Wabash fault, which connects to the New Madrid fault and extends to the Chicago area.

      • Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 11:00 am #

        The Wabash fault had a 5.4 in 2008, quite a shock for that part of the country. Memphis would be the primary large city victim of a direct New Madrid zone quake.

        • Laura Louzader June 4, 2018 at 11:55 am #

          I remember that little quake. I live in Chicago, and some structures in our far south suburbs sustained minor damage.

      • Q. Shtik June 4, 2018 at 12:43 pm #

        when St Louis was still a small French village. – LL

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

        Would the Arch fall over or did the engineers take the quake possibility into account?

      • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 4:27 pm #

        Here’s a good read, if you can find it:

        https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271167.The_Rift

        Walter Jon Williams is a crackerjack storyteller.

      • hmuller June 4, 2018 at 5:23 pm #

        I live in central Illinois and I don’t like those “earth changes maps” which show much of Illinois becoming an extension of Lake Michigan.

        But if the Great Lakes do reverse course, will they drain from Chicago southward to the Wabash or flow down the Illinois River to St Louis? If the latter, I’m screwed.

    • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:39 am #

      Ed C also recommended –in a reading–to put kerosene on skin, for healing.

      • Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 10:55 am #

        LOL!. Yep, he wasn’t always spot on, to say the least.

        • sophia June 4, 2018 at 11:12 am #

          That’s interesting because I recently came across that kerosine was a significant home remedy and effective against many ills.

        • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:16 pm #

          and it was to cure piles—kerosene on the bottom–I read the book, ‘Health n Diet’ by E C.

      • draupnir June 4, 2018 at 12:42 pm #

        Kerosene was used a lot in folk medicine in those days. My great grandmother said they’d gargle with it to treat diphtheria.

        • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:17 pm #

          It may have been a different strength. As in Turpentine for medicine and turp for paint thinner.
          One cures, one kills.

        • aibohphobia June 4, 2018 at 7:10 pm #

          Radiation had unusual uses too–
          An old guy told me once that, when he was a small child in the 1920’s he was dying of spinal meningitis. There were no antibiotics then.

          At the hospital, they clamped him to a table, lined his spinal column into a straight line (very painful!) and shot X-rays down the spinal column.
          This killed enough of the microbes to save his life, but gave him lasting neurological problems.

    • tahoe1780 June 4, 2018 at 10:46 am #

      Overview, including Hawaii https://youtu.be/l0o6ibma19o

      • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:18 pm #

        I know someone who’s cousin built a house in Pahoa.
        Thats a jog from the epicenter of the fissures.

    • sprawlcapital June 4, 2018 at 10:49 am #

      The only earthquake I have experienced was probably centered in the New Madrid Fault. It happened in the early 1980s, when I was living in Iowa City, home of the university of Iowa. I estimate this was a magnitude 2, very weak.

      There was a perceptible side-to-side motion to the house. A ceiling light fixture I had recently installed was still hanging by its wires and swung like a pendulum.

      It could have been just a heavy truck driving by, but I later learned from the news that, yes, Iowa had been hit by an actual earthquake. There was no damage to buildings. I hope this is the only time I will ever be in a place where there is an earthquake.

      Magnitude 2 was perceptible. Magnitude 9.3 would be beyond imagining.

      • Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 11:06 am #

        I was north of Lancaster CA approximately 90 miles from the epicenter of the Northridge quake (only 6.7) in the mid 90’s. Close as I ever want to get to one of those bad boys!

      • harryflashmanhigson June 4, 2018 at 11:07 am #

        I felt 9 in Japan, it actually wasn’t that big a deal. I was a long way from the Epicentre and the Focus was pretty deep(in the south suburbs of Tokyo). I was a bit disappointed to be honest.

        Had the Focus been shallower it might of been a different story. Apparently Odawara is the worst place in the world to be in the case of a major earthquake, it’s at the boundary of 3 tectonic plates and the crust there is very thin. An almost certain seismic apocalypse.

        • Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 11:22 am #

          True. Depth and soil composition influence the impact significantly.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 1:46 pm #

            Cayce said Japan is slated to sink beneath the waves. Perhaps that’s for the best since they are all racists.

    • michael June 4, 2018 at 3:50 pm #

      The Mississippi has been wanting to reroute itself for quite some time now. Periodically it gnaws on the great locks and one day will sweep them way. No earthquake needed, just a decent size flood. After that New Orleans will be useless as a harbor.

  7. Laura Louzader June 4, 2018 at 10:22 am #

    “considering what happened as recently as 1906”

    What about the 6.7M Loma Prieta quake of 1989, that leveled sections of San Francisco as well as downtown Santa Cruz, collapsed the upper deck of the Bay Bridge,and killed over 200 people? Or the 1994 Northridge earthquake, also 6.7M, further south in the Los Angeles- San Fernando Valley area, that, according to one observer, left major malls looking “like they were hit by a cruise missile”?

    • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 4:35 pm #

      The 1906 earthquake was a 7.9, considerably more powerful, and there were no skyscrapers around. Hopefully the ones that do exist today have columns that go all the way down to bedrock.

  8. sprawlcapital June 4, 2018 at 10:24 am #

    I’m still what you would call a leftist–I support labor unions and Medicare for all–but I am utterly amazed at how many on the left believe that our present abundance will continue indefinitely. They foolishly think we can continue adding to our population by leaving our southern border open; that the very concept of a secure border is somehow archaic.

    Of course, that’s not the only foolishness on the left. There’s the inventing of new pronouns to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings by the horror of being called “he” or “she”. To cite just one example.

  9. volodya June 4, 2018 at 10:25 am #

    “Pah”, said the Roman senator, recovering from a late night of debauchery at his Pompeii villa, “nothing to worry about. The mountain always rumbles.”

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  10. K-Dog June 4, 2018 at 10:32 am #

    The big one to fear is the subduction zone quake.

    “Much larger and more deadly quakes, like those triggered on the massive fault off the Northwest coast, are less frequent. Vidale said there is a 10 to 15 percent chance for a magnitude 9 quake along that subduction zone fault over the next 50 years. Put another way, the chances are one in 300 for such a quake each year’.

    What? Should we worry. One in 300. There is a greater chance the economy will crater by the end of the year and while probable I think SHTF day will come before a quake. Alternatively Seattle can have a killer quake which will trigger economic collapse and then all the fat cats who own everything can say the collapse was caused by the quake and they had nothing to do with it.

    As to Seattle booming, it is and that along with Chinese investors choosing the Seattle housing market to drive up among others has birthed tent cities and a lot of homelessness.

    Did you see the tent cities along I-5 or had they been moved when you went by? The encampments come and go with police sweeps which make them to relocate. I don’t know where they were when you drove south. Lazy bums who can’t come up with $2000 a month for a one bedroom apartment. I’m kidding.

    Seattle has retrofitted a lot of old buildings and I’m pretty sure the earthquake risk has given us some pretty good building codes. If the rest of the country spent as much time planning for our future and figuring out how to get through the debut of the long emergency on a only a trickle of oil, there is a ghost of a chance America could endure to the next century.

    As it is our politicians spend the stratospheric taxes they are getting from our housing bubble like there is no tomorrow. Even the socialist. Perhaps it is appropriate considering our nation has no future. If Seattle shakes we just may be the first casualties in a long litany of pain. In a future time perhaps some poor starving soul in Indiana may wonder over their meal of dead rat that the people who died quick in Seattle were lucky. If they think of Seattle at all, which I doubt.

    • elysianfield June 4, 2018 at 11:36 am #

      “meal of dead rat ”

      Dog,
      …”Roof Rabbit”, please….

      • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:19 pm #

        Do not laugh. Read Catherine Boos book about the poorest of the poor.

    • draupnir June 4, 2018 at 12:56 pm #

      When the state did some work on a highway a few years back (not even an interstate) in my neck of the woods They put up noise barriers and to make them look nice they were faced in brick, which I thought was an excellent use of our tax dollars. The area wasn’t even residential, it was commercial. I’m sure my fellow tax payers enjoy that brick as much as I do and wouldn’t rather have had that money in their pockets.

  11. pricer509 June 4, 2018 at 10:36 am #

    Hi Jim,
    Very interesting to get your take on my former city. I endured years of feeling like my skin was crawling until I could escape Seattle for Spokane. The flat denial of reality that happens in that city is amazing, and it was difficult for me to endure the generally accepted idea that 2 hours of commute time per day to have a shitty tract house in the burbs was a normal state of affairs.
    I am very grateful for your blog, opinions, and every one of your books. I now get to live in a rail connected city with good water, a great growing season, the best farmland on planet earth right down the road, a slower pace of life, and cost of living less that half that of Seattle. I moved in to a 100 year old brick building and I walk almost everywhere I go. You have been instrumental in the changes in my life. Thank you.
    I hope you see this among the inane and sometimes oddly racist chatter that seems to fill the comments section…..

    • K-Dog June 4, 2018 at 10:53 am #

      Two hour commute. You must have been way out in Auburn or Federal way. Our traffic sucks because our geography but we don’t have ‘sprawl’ the way other cities do. Another fact caused by our bottleneck geography which makes a classic road grid impossible here. Travel is easier north and south than east and west because that is the direction the glaciers moved when they dug out our hills lakes and valleys. I can get to work in half an hour. A more typical commute would be longer here especially if you are along a high traffic route where road building has not kept up with development. The only places you get a two hour commute is along the traffic bottlenecks.

      Land is too valuable here for classic sprawl but I am not making the claim Seattle has made superior use of their land. It was not foresight and we are still very much car dependent. We have next to no public transportation though big light rail projects are in the works. They routes seem poorly planned to me and the rail will do few people any good IMHO. It does seem to be a way to spend huge amounts of money and some people benefit from that no doubt. Will it serve the ‘people’, I doubt it.

      Spokane sucks. I’l take Coeur d’Alene over Spokane any day of the week.

      • pricer509 June 5, 2018 at 10:10 am #

        Nope, Lake Forest Park.
        A two hour total commute per day during the week was a normal occurrence. Right along the “easy” north-south route.
        Thanks for the geography lesson….. Born at Swedish Hospital, lived in Seattle for 38 years, family has been there for over 100 years.

        Yeah, Spokane sucks. Nice to be trolled on my first post ever on the forum.

        • K-Dog June 7, 2018 at 10:36 am #

          People from Spokane love to say how overcrowded we are. They insult us all the time and if you are one of them you know that. Sorry your skin in so thin. But you did troll Seattle “The flat denial of reality that happens in that city is amazing”. So take what you dish out. It is interesting you took offense since Coeur d’Alene and Spokane are contiguous like Renton and Seattle are. One runs into another and somebody in Spokane would have seen my joke right away.

          Maybe you don’t need a geography lesson but other people could easily get the impression that Seattle has classic sprawl. That is what a two hour commute usually suggests. Since you are from here you know lack of road building on the east side in the seventies combined with challenging geography gives us huge traffic bottlenecks which the constant growth we have experienced only makes worse. A two hour commute in Texas from city to ranch at 75 miles and hour is not the same thing as a commute from Lynnwood to Downtown Seattle at 10 miles an hour all the way. Fact is a commute from Lynnwood to Downtown at 10 miles an hour will only take and hour and a half since Lynnwood borders Seattle and the city centers are only 16 miles apart.

          Your ‘Two hour commute’ gives an erroneous impression and trolls never clarify a situation. They muddle it, that is why they are trolls. I did get you to clarify if you came from the north or the south. That is really all I was doing. Trying to get you to write more because I really am here. Calling me a troll makes me wonder where you really are but wherever you are I don’t care.

  12. Dumbedup June 4, 2018 at 10:52 am #

    Beautiful metaphor for our current political and social predicament. The blow-off of unsustainable progressive policies (made unsustainable by cutting taxes and spending more on weapons) will be followed by shrewd hucksters selling the idea that the way to save everything is to stop anything the least bit progressive. A return to the “old days” is the best way to prevent the “end of days.” They foist upon an unsuspecting public the idea that austerity and simplicity, couched in “nationalism”, will restore the status quo ante. The problem with all this wonkish policy-making is that it isn’t what it seems. There is no return to anything. It is just a change in the agenda based on who is in charge. Underneath it all are zealots who, following the direction of their masters, are changing the rules to benefit only a few so they can scrape off whatever froth is left until they can’t. Then they hunker down in a fortress or slink off to Uruguay only to re-emerge after the apocalypse.

    • SpeedyBB June 4, 2018 at 1:06 pm #

      I frankly find the rich bums’ fantasy of boltholes to be grimly amusing. Like the Bush Criminal Family purchasing a vast finca in Paraguay, a sad nation whose history is stained by curtains of blood, strife and relentless dictatorship.

      USA goes fizzle-pop, Bushes vamoose snickering in their opulent jet… so what kind of welcome to fleeing rich yanqui putos do you imagine the Paraguayans will present? How long before all those festering old resentments about El Coloso del Norte boil over?

      Not to mention the little matter of how the Bushes (along with the rest of the fleeing rich crooks) plan to buy vittles and pay off their hired goons, local politicos and support staff. Are those hapless innocent natives supposed to accept worthless American Pesos in payment? And if the prudent Bush clan plans to support their fine lifestyle with gold bullion then how long before some local alcalde, accompanied by his armed posse, drops by to relieve the gringos of their precious metal? Temporarily, for safekeeping, of course (the same way Uncle made off with the tons & tons of Libyan gold).

      OK, then New Zealand, where decent Brit stock run a tight ship. What happens when little Richie Rich comes down with some exotic cancer occasioned by all that dreadful nuclear disturbance up north? Is that bucolic paradise of 4 million going to have all the chemo and radiation therapy the kid needs? Like, forever?

      So much for the luxury boltholes, you evil rich fuckers. You’ll die along with the rest of us. Think 1950s fallout shelter-fantasy.

      • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 2:23 pm #

        “OK, then New Zealand, where decent Brit stock run a tight ship. What happens when little Richie Rich comes down with some exotic cancer occasioned by all that dreadful nuclear disturbance up north? Is that bucolic paradise of 4 million going to have all the chemo and radiation therapy the kid needs? Like, forever?”

        There wouldn’t be a ‘forever’. Probably more like Nevil Shute’s ‘On the Beach’, where the survivors in Oz didn’t live long enough to get cancer. Those winds from the north gave them radiation sickness and they took suicide pills before it got really bad. There will be no north and south – just now and a bit later. ‘Now’ is often better if it’s quick.

  13. harryflashmanhigson June 4, 2018 at 11:00 am #

    Geologically accurate, Jim, I commend you. You’re the first non-geologist I’ve ever heard mention Rhyolite(everybody knows Basalt, but it’s more acid and viscous cousins? Not so much). A nice round-up of the possible geological catastrophes of the left coast.

  14. sophia June 4, 2018 at 11:05 am #

    Jim asks what they were thinking by approving those buildings. But my understanding is that they didn’t even know about the Cascadia fault at the time.

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    • K-Dog June 4, 2018 at 11:28 am #

      No the earthquake risk has been known for decades. Forty years ago there were only a few skyscrapers. One is very old and has been retrofitted with steel supports. The other big old one built in the 70’s who a visiting Frenchman referred to as being ‘Tres Phallic‘ to me I’m sure was been built to withstand reasonable quakes without any damage as well as a 500 a mile an hour wind.

      Little quakes we get rather frequently. Ones big enough to feel not so much. Though I have experienced a few. I was here for the 2001 Nisqually quake. That was a 6.8 trembler. Not much damage. It was weird watching a whole parking lot of cars move back and forth without drivers. There was little damage considering the strength of the quake. All I saw were a few old brick buildings that dumped bricks all over the sidewalk in downtown Renton. I would not have wanted to be on that sidewalk when they were coming down. Renton is a contiguous city at the south end of Lake Washington.

      • Farmer Joe June 4, 2018 at 11:53 am #

        I was around for the Nisqually quake too. I’ll never forget watching the streetlight poles rocking back and forth like a metronome.

        • K-Dog June 4, 2018 at 12:54 pm #

          I was at work in an office park. I figured out what was happening as soon as the glass in the windows began to rattle. I ran outside being close to a door. As I bounded through the door the ground dropped away from my lead paw. I twisted my ankle and almost fell on the concrete. Fortunately the twist was painful but not damaging and I regained my balance. Then I watched the cars.

          My commute into Seattle today was 45 minutes. I only go about 15 miles but two accidents made me enjoy German luxury for a bit longer than usual today.

        • sophia June 4, 2018 at 9:42 pm #

          OK, but isn’t the Cascadia fault the one that they only figured out relatively recently?

    • michael June 4, 2018 at 4:02 pm #

      Don’t forget about Mt Rainier and mud flows.

  15. Paul Ford O'Neil June 4, 2018 at 11:14 am #

    Hello James,

    Volcano-tectonic hell this Monday no?

    Your description of my childhood stomping grounds in Seattle are bang-on! I too used to get the hee-bee-gee-bees driving through the tunnel under downtown, only to gaze wistfully at Mt. Rainier filling the southern skyline as one emerges from the same tunnel.

    Meanwhile a tsunami of PRC non-balance of trade dollars is eating anything nailed down to that shaky town volcanic earth – causing spiraling real-estate tectonic explosions that are wiping out the natives through higher taxes and inflation.

    Whodahthunkit?

    For some reason volcano-tectonic hell has suddenly snapped into the minds of many of the WEB writers I read. Your neighbor – three rivers and two counties removed – Elain Meinel Supkis is also penning lines about this phenomenon today and youse guys live in the faultless quiet zone of Eastern New York state!

    As I posted on her site 5 minutes ago:

    I fear the HILINA SLUMP is the real cause of the current volcanic activity in Hawaii and it’s ripping open lava tubes and chambers as it goes.

    IF HILINA belly-flops into the Pacific – say goodbye west coast:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOoIJocJSio
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMUJKFjAiA
    http://seismo.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/05/07/a-slow-emergency-and-a-sudden-slump.html

    Regards,
    PFO

    PS Family & friends used to call me neurotic when I expressed the thoughts in your column today – back in the 1970s! Gee, I feel better for all the wrong reasons.

    • draupnir June 4, 2018 at 1:13 pm #

      A large portion of Hawaii belly flopped into the Pacific in the geologic past. The east coast would have an immediate and substantial problem if Cumbra Vieja in the Canaries lets loose and dumps half its mass into the Atlantic, and it is due. The tsunami would hit about 8 hours later. Nobody ever mentions the Fukashima problem anymore, but that monster is going to be spewing radiation long past the projected end of the universe. I tend to think it was an extinction level event.

      • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:21 pm #

        Some of the BIG Isle is on a plate so thin, that part could collapse.
        No, not by being sawed in half like Manhattan was [not] to be sawed.

  16. Luhrenloup June 4, 2018 at 11:23 am #

    the world’s fifth largest economy:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk

    California, the land of milk and honey.

    • elysianfield June 4, 2018 at 11:43 am #

      “California, the land of milk and honey.”

      Luhren,
      Now referred to as the “land of fruits and nuts”….

      • daveed June 5, 2018 at 12:08 am #

        “land of fruits and nuts”

        Har! Pretty funny, the first time I heard it, about 40 years ago (yawn).

        All y’all can stay where you are, for my money. I’ll take earthquakes, fires, and mudslides, and short sleeve shirts. You can keep your hurricanes, tornadoes, frigid winters, and (Harry) Lyme disease. And over-populated East Coast.

  17. Paul Ford O'Neil June 4, 2018 at 11:26 am #

    Pardon Jim,

    I forgot to mention Dutchsince – a carpenter from Missouri – who has studied earthquakes for the past decade and come up with an “earthquake forecasting theory” that is making monkeys-uncles outta the professionals:

    https://www.youtube.com/user/dutchsinse

    Regards,
    PFO

    • ozone June 4, 2018 at 12:38 pm #

      PFO,
      Most interesting!
      Thanks for the link, I’ll look closer at the modeling and the forecasts; seems very sound, plus the USGS will be studying this for 8 more years giving a huge library of data to sift through. Wow.

  18. akmofo June 4, 2018 at 11:35 am #

    @ GreenAlba

    Cannabis in the Old Testament:
    Kanei Bosm (hebrew: cane of aromaticity/perfume)

    https://youtu.be/s27QLmdhxKM
    https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/1996/05/01/1090

    • akmofo June 4, 2018 at 11:55 am #

      THEN GOD SAID,
      I GIVE YOU EVERY SEED-BEARING
      PLANT ON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE
      EARTH, AND EVERY TREE THAT
      HAS FRUIT IN IT.”
      GENESIS 1:29-30

      Those words seem straightforward enough, and yet cannabis and most other psychoactive medicine plants are outlawed in our society. Those who use these plant as gateways to other states of consciousness are jailed for doing so.

      • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 12:24 pm #

        I think they’re more outlawed in my society than in the US (overall), akmofo. I presume you’re saying they’re outlawed in Israel, but maybe I misunderstand.

        I don’t have any problem with medicinal cannabis, although I know very little about the detail. Many people with chronic pain swear by it. I’d let them have it in a minute, rather than have them faff about with clandestine tents in their bedroom.

        I just saw very recently that the UK grows half of the world’s medicinal cannabis – who knew? But it’s illegal to use it medicinally in the UK. I think we agree on the idiocy and hypocrisy of that.

        Re recreational use, I have read this and that over the years, but I’m no expert. I gather in some already vulnerable people it can lead to mental health problems, but so can a lot of other things that may do no long-term harm to most people, so I have no views one way or the other. (The Voice of British Reason, as some might say!).

        The Nazi witch doctor in my house used to grow it in his youth in the family garden. Told his mother it was tomatoes.

        For his chronic back pain, though (from the car accident that broke his neck) he swears by Voltarol suppositories! Cannabis wouldn’t be good for his mental health, if used over such a long time period, think. And being struck off the medical register for illegal drug use would imperil our already imperilled retirement finances 🙂 . Also turning up to work with an Illegal Smile might cause problems.

        But, yes, otherwise I’m all good with the medicinal greenery.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmjnQjRvPUQ

        • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 12:27 pm #

          As long as they don’t drive or use heavy machinery, as the contra-indication goes…

        • akmofo June 4, 2018 at 12:43 pm #

          THE ENDOCANNABINOID SYSTEM

          https://youtu.be/Z-OEpwgv6aM

        • Q. Shtik June 4, 2018 at 2:17 pm #

          rather than have them faff about – GA

          ===========

          You are my new/best source for unusual and, to me, never before heard British slang. In addition to faff (see def below)

          faff (plural faffs) (Britain, slang) An overcomplicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time. Adjusting this television is a bit of a faff. (typically in the phrase ‘in a faff’) a state of confused or frantic activity; a flap.

          I love “struck off” which you have used previously as well as further down in your current comment.

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 2:48 pm #

            Just means struck off the Medical Register, Q, so very literal and not at all slang. You’re not legally allowed to practise if you’re not on the register. and the GMC is the Inquisition. So you’d literally have had a line scored through your name in times past.

            So, like being defrocked.

            Re ‘faff about’, ‘fart about’ is quite popular too, but ruder. As is ‘fanny about’. Typical British rear-end-based slang of a previously repressed nation 🙂 .

          • daveed June 5, 2018 at 12:11 am #

            Well, there you have it.
            And Bob’s your uncle.

          • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 10:32 am #

            Bob too is a historical character 🙂

            It’s all about nepotism…

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s_your_uncle

          • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 10:33 am #

            Or so goes the theory…

        • Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2018 at 4:51 pm #

          How about recreational cannabis, GreenAlba? Here in Canada, we are within a few days of possibly, maybe, giving the go-ahead:

          https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/marijuana-bill-faces-critical-vote-at-last-step-ahead-of-legalization-1.3958662

          There’s still legislative wrangling to get through, though. But there’s a fair chance I could buy some legal weed to celebrate my next birthday with, should I feel like it.

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 8:39 pm #

            I may be wrong, Elrond, but I don’t think anyone’s been pursued for using recreational cannabis for a long time in the UK.

            Dealing’s still dealt with, so to speak, but I think it’s semi-official (from the horse’s mouth) that the police have better things to do than worry about individual recreational pot smokers, although it’s still on the statute books. So it’s de facto legalisation for the little guys – and gals.

            I think people who use it medicinally just have to grow their own and keep a low profile. They can’t get it from an official source, though, which would make their lives easier.

            Sometimes laws just don’t get updated… There’s an English medieval law that’s never been repealed that says men have to keep up their archery practice on a regular basis – they could combine that with a bit of semi-official cannabis to spice things up on a Sunday afternoon.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 2:54 pm #

        Jehovah was just an old pothead, with white hair and wearing a rasta beret.

        • akmofo June 4, 2018 at 6:54 pm #

          Not YeHeVeH, but Moses and Aaron and every Prophet and King of Israel anointed with the sacred oil and incense. They all spoke with my God and my God spoke to them.

          Your gay god cultivated a gay mustache and shot coke and heroin, then he run away to Argentina to practice his fascist salute when hiding in his bunker was no longer an safe option.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:06 pm #

            Is He still alive? I will go to Him!

            All the Prophets were potheads then? Including Velikovsky?

        • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 8:45 pm #

          Now, now, boys.

          Play nice or there’ll be some smiting.

        • sophia June 4, 2018 at 9:52 pm #

          Thus he is referred to as “The Most High.”

        • SpeedyBB June 8, 2018 at 1:22 am #

          He allegedly hung out at the Aloha Snackbar.

          Thus the chant.

  19. erik June 4, 2018 at 12:06 pm #

    The New Yorker did an excellent article on the Cascadia subduction zone a few years back. The inspiration was the Fukashima quake. While the Cascadia (or Juan de Fuca) subduction zone has been known about for decades, knowledge of it’s history of major mega thrust quakes is of recent provenance and the story is disturbing. Big quakes up to and above 9.0 have happened repeatedly at intervals of roughly 300 years. the last one was in 1700 and resulted in documented Tsunami damage on Japan’s east coast. This is the “big one” to worry about. The California faults are strike slip faults and they are pretty much limited to maybe mid 7s which are orders of magnitude less than a 9.
    When the next mega thrust quake happens with its attendant east-west jump of 60+ feet, all the coastal lowland will abruptly drop several feet and be followed by a Fukashima scale Tsunami. Thousands will drown and coastal infrastructure will be ravaged. Since the area is more populous than the Fukashima area, hundreds of thousands will be displaced as refugees. Such an event could be the Black Swan trigger for the sort of economic collapse Jim has talked about for so long.

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  20. Pxztwy June 4, 2018 at 12:06 pm #

    JHK,

    Please stop putting a date on when you think things might happen (“…California template for modern living will continue indefinitely. I’d give it less than five years now.”) As always, there will be those that discount your whole point because your timeline was off. Then the flame wars begin, clogging up the works.

    Thanks,
    Pxztwy

    • lostinspace June 4, 2018 at 12:34 pm #

      I remember Jim’s claim that the airline industry would fail in three years, that was well over five years ago. I’m not being critical here because I believe the day will arrive for sure and the powers that be will do everything they can to prolong business as usual. The thing that dazzles me is the latest expansion of Salt Lake International airport like there is no limit to fuel supplies. All of us here wonder where it will end and natural disaster will rob us of justice and public hangings.

      • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:25 pm #

        Its in his book, circa 2004?

      • K-Dog June 4, 2018 at 3:27 pm #

        Expansion of the airport. Don’t most collapsed civilizations have some unfinished projects? I think so!

        The last people who can appreciate collapse are politicians. Politicians are about getting re-elected and worrying about the future does not get one re-elected much less get elected in the first place. Put on a happy face or don’t be a politician.

        Predictions have been wrong not just by Jim but by others also because the ability of financial duct tape to hold things together was underestimated. Who would have guessed that the shale industry could exist with negative cash flow. That was hard to predict and it will end once investors understand that more money is being pumped into the ground than what comes out. We party on a little longer.

      • BackRowHeckler June 4, 2018 at 8:34 pm #

        the airport is being expanded here in Hartford, too, at tremendous public expense.

        All kinds of plans and grandiose predictions are being made, as if it will all last forever.

        brh

  21. wm5135 June 4, 2018 at 1:08 pm #

    Boom! Gene pool cleansed.

    Walkoff home run.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 1:56 pm #

      Are you being serious? If so, there may be hope for you after all.

      Is this why rich people live on hills? With the hospitals?

  22. chipshot June 4, 2018 at 2:03 pm #

    Gotta think there’s going to be a whole lot of displaced people (refugees) in the coming years. From Miami (too much water) to the West Coast and Southwest (too little water)–that’s millions of people just in the US alone! Then there’s Bangladesh, the Middle East, Africa, and the list keeps growing. Where are they going to go??!!

    • Jigplate June 4, 2018 at 2:42 pm #

      “Where are they going to go??!”

      – Arizona

      https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/Arizona-Planning-Exodus-California-Quake-483043701.html

      • chipshot June 4, 2018 at 4:25 pm #

        And when AZ runs out of water? Or gets too hot to live?

        • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 8:54 pm #

          “Or gets too hot to live?”

          Australia too, I’m afraid.

          • GreenAlba June 4, 2018 at 9:05 pm #

            Not yet, of course, but climate models suggest Oz will be uninhabitable by the end of the century.

            We’ll take a quota of refugees, obviously, but we don’t want the misogynist ones. You can have the Tony Abbott types.

      • daveed June 5, 2018 at 12:14 am #

        Yep. They’re all moving in with Tucson Spur.

  23. amb June 4, 2018 at 2:39 pm #

    Every once in a while Earth heaves or shifts or transforms in some way. Get over it. Do good works and have fun while you can, never know when your end may come. Yet, don’t worry… we all come back.

  24. Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 2:55 pm #

    Supreme Court ruled in favor of Christian baker who refused to bake gay cake. A sign of resurgent sanity? They declined to rule on the larger principle, but perhaps a precedent was set in any case.

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    • malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:23 pm #

      Cayce said Japan is slated to sink beneath the waves. Perhaps that’s for the best since they are all racists.
      / you are irascible..

      • SpeedyBB June 8, 2018 at 1:36 am #

        Having studied, lived and worked in Japan many years, since 1962, I would suggest that Japan is the most xenophobic, and racist, nation on earth.

        All the modernity is just skin-deep.

  25. Walter B June 4, 2018 at 3:17 pm #

    Had a busy morning today Jim, what with the primary being tomorrow and all so I am just getting on here now. Yes Volcanic/Earthquake Doom THE most violent and fearsome of all of Nature’s events yet also the ones most scoffed at by Mankind, especially the most narcissistic of it’s ranks. We build cities, population centers and even nuclear power stations right on top of volcanoes and fault line as though nothing will ever happen on them, even when the facts point to the certainty of something going South sooner or later. Then of course they sneer and deride those of us that question such poor planning as “Conspiracy Theorists” and “Prophets of Doom”, heck you were even labelled one officially weren’t you:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3ROkFoVMM

    You da man Jim, you da man! Keep up the great work!

  26. malthuss June 4, 2018 at 3:24 pm #

    baker who refused to bake gay cake
    THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GAY CAKE. Not even a fruitcake. Not even hot cross buns.

    • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 10:36 am #

      “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GAY CAKE. Not even a fruitcake. Not even hot cross buns. ”

      Malthuss,
      …Spotted dick you cannot deny….

  27. DocBerg June 4, 2018 at 3:36 pm #

    I took some geology courses in my junior college days. I recall one instance of an overthrust fault quake in the Pacific Northwest, where the earth moved about 40 miles, and this supposedly happened in one quake.

    I have spent some time in St. Louis, and since most of that city is built with bricks, when the next New Madrid quake happens, all that will be left is rubble. My late cousin lived there for some years, in a brick house, and she had to keep patching the plaster in the walls due to all the micro-quakes.

    I went through a minor earthquake centered about 20 miles away in Maple Park, Illinois. I thought it was a large snow plow, but it was an earthquake. A lot of stuff on shelves in my garage, got tossed onto the floor. Then, there was my experience of being way too close to a B-52 drop zone in Vietnam!

  28. michael June 4, 2018 at 4:15 pm #

    You forgot oceanic landslides. These are a whole lot more fun, like a big tsunami and destabilized methane hydrate. The biggest known landslides to have occurred are under water (near Norway).

    I think we’ll have to wait for the ice to melt off of Iceland until things get real interesting. When that weight is gone, the crust will surely move a bit. I don’t think I’ll live to see it though.

    • beantownbill. June 4, 2018 at 7:44 pm #

      Jim also forgot to mention asteroid strikes. A 10 km rock collision would be an extinction level event.

      As far as global warming goes, it was 52 degrees today in the Boston area. I understand it’s the measurements of the entire Earth’s surface that counts, not local variations, but it has sure felt like global cooling around here since December.

      • sophia June 4, 2018 at 10:01 pm #

        I sometimes get surprised that people still take global warming seriously. I guess you have to live in a news bubble.

        There are hundreds and hundreds, thousands of new cold and snow and ice records that have been set in several of the last few years, all around the world.

        How come you never hear about them?

        • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:10 pm #

          I shove you back and you trip over a raccoon who just “happened” to be there at that exact moment. Bigfoot in the bushes laughs with glee. He knows the Ice is coming….

          • sophia June 5, 2018 at 8:36 am #

            Bigfoot will move with the trees.

        • mercpl June 6, 2018 at 7:29 pm #

          There are not hundreds and thousands of new cold records. that’s just plain wrong. Any new low temp records are overwhelmed by the new high temp records.

          Only long term (30 year averaged) global averages count, anything less is just weather. we will always have short term weather fluctuations. Global warming cause climate change. Sometimes, in a few spots here and there, local climate will cool rather than warm, but globally, on an average, the climate is warming.

          Increased cold and snow in the North East US states is caused by disturbance of the Arctic jet stream. As the Arctic warms the jet stream wobbles and cold Arctic air is no longer contained. the Arctic warms over a much greater area than and by a much greater extent than the nort-east cooling.

          Sea-ice is area and extent are declining for the Arctic. That’s is a well measured fact.
          https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

          What’s going on in the Antarctic is all about the land-based fresh water ice. In fact Antarctic floating sea-ice could increase because of global warming. That’s because the sea water is salty, so it freezes at a lower temperature than the 0C (or 32F). 0F is defined by the freezing point of brine. Anyway, as ice melts off the Antarctic continent (at 0C of course) it flows down onto the sea which is at about -2C (or about 28F). But it doesn’t mix immediately, instead it refreezes. So warming of the Antarctic ice sheet causes fresh water melt which causes more sea-ice.

      • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 10:38 am #

        ” I understand it’s the measurements of the entire Earth’s surface that counts,”

        Bean,
        No, what counts is the political viability of the concept….

  29. pequiste June 4, 2018 at 4:25 pm #

    T’was the third earthquake in wonderous Santa Barbara, Ca. that finally had me move from the once Golden State. No warning, no sirens, no nothing; just dogs and other creatures acting weird as a brief prelude — then BOOM. Nothing grabs the undivided attention like the whole house and street shaking violently for 30 seconds. Glass flying everywhere and debris falling where it may.

    Jerry Brown, the Titans of Tech, and the illegal aliens are welcome to it.

    Just don’t ever say you weren’t fully aware of the pre-existing conditions.

    Although what will happen when the world center for porn gets hit by such a devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami?

    (Stormi Daniels might ask: “was it good for you?”)

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  30. 100th Avatar June 4, 2018 at 4:30 pm #

    Ultimately, the cataclysms themselves are not staggeringly annihilating, but the inadvisable exertions of ample humanity in their quarters make it so.

    Vertically arranged hives on a precipice.
    Megalopolises in the driest reaches.
    Lanais perched on a volcano.
    Reactors on the shore.

    Too many people in the too dangerous of places.
    They’ll have to live with it, or not..

  31. janet June 4, 2018 at 6:17 pm #

    COLLAPSE IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

    Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life — not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense — you name it. — JHK in 2005

    FACT: “most immediately” no such thing happened. There has been no “end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era.”

    There is currently a lot of hoopla over shale gas in the USA, but I think that will disappoint us, since it requires gigantic ongoing capital investment, and capital will be in ever-shorter supply. And this is not to mention the other problems and hazards associated with shale gas “fracking,” such as the extreme forms of groundwater pollution and cancer clusters.

    Bottom line: in ten years or fewer the USA will be starved for energy resources and probably on its ass in one way or another. JHK in 2010

    FACT: It has been nearly ten years and the USA is nowhere near being “starved for energy”

    Here’s why the shale oil story is not the “game changer” that the wishful claim it is: the price required to get it out of the ground (between $80-90 a barrel) will crush the US economy. Since prices are already in that range, the economy is already being crushed. JHK in 2012

    FACT: North American shale can be produced for somewhere between $30 and $50 per barrel.

    Shale oil production turned down in 2015 and the money will not be there to get the production back to where it was before the price crash. Ever. JHK in 2015

    FACT: U.S. oil production continues to hit new record highs. U.S. shale oil output will hit nearly 7 million barrels a day next month.
    Output from seven shale regions will grow by 131,000 barrels a day, driven by gains in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. (CNBC, March 13, 2018)

    The shale oil “miracle” (so-called) has given even thoughtful adults the false impression that the California template for modern living will continue indefinitely. I’d give it less than five years now. –JHK in 2018

    Looking at the predictions of the last thirteen years, five years will become ten, and ten will become fifteen, and the definition of “around the corner” loses any meaning whatsoever.

    • Ol' Scratch June 4, 2018 at 6:32 pm #

      Why do you feel the need to preach your nonsense to this rather sleepy and secluded corner of the blogosphere, and not simply ignore it and go elsewhere like most mainstream “happy Americans” do?

      FACT: Lil’ J-Bot’s lonely and scared stiff that what Jim has to say here just might be true.

      I believe the term for what we’re doing now is “consuming our seed corn.”

      • janet June 4, 2018 at 7:44 pm #

        I believe the term for what we’re doing now is “consuming our seed corn. — Ol Scratch

        You seem to have a true believer state of mind. How long will the seed corn last, since the predictions started decades ago? And of what importance is it that we ate our seed corn, since we have other more nutritious crops thriving? Besides, we don’t need corn. What we do with corn now is make unnecessary products like starch, sugar, and whiskey, none of which are essential to human survival.

        In a 100 gram serving corn is seen to be inferior to soybeans.

        147 calories in soybeans … 72 calories in corn

        4 grams dietary fiber in soybeans … 1 gram fiber in corn

        13 grams protein in soybeans … 2 grams in corn

        Good riddance to corn! Eat the seed corn now and we will thrive with other crops. Likewise, we will survive with other sources of energy besides oil.

        Catastrophists are losing. Cornucopians are winning. Malthus (1766-1834) was wrong then, just as catastrophists are wrong now.

        Cornucopian Julian Simon was right in his famous wager with Ehrlich. Prices of all five metals dropped after ten years, but Ehrlich continued to be a true believer, like you.

        Human ingenuity and adaptation through technological and social responses set the boundaries of human wealth and well-being, not natural limits. There is no resource shortage or pollution problem with which society cannot cope. Three hundred years of evidence since Malthus is the proof.

        In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus famously predicted that short-term gains in living standards would inevitably be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production, and thereby drive living standards back toward subsistence. He predicted the geometric rate of population growth would be catastrophic. He was wrong. Malthus did not foresee that pesticides, machines, refrigeration, and other technical advances would make it possible to feed enormous numbers of people very well.

        • beantownbill. June 4, 2018 at 8:00 pm #

          It’s good To see someone else here can look at reality without a doomer’s pessimism. But unfortunately, the doomers will ultimately be proven correct because in 300 or 400 million years the sun, as a result of stellar evolution, will heat up enough to boil off our atmosphere and oceans, leaving the Earth a sterile lump of rock. For some strange reason I’m not concerned about it, though.

          • janet June 4, 2018 at 8:13 pm #

            You are rushing things a little. We have about 4 or 5 billion years before the sun heats up and ends life on earth. By then we will have left the earth for other goldilocks planets. So even the earth becoming a rock in space is not a tragic occurrence.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:36 pm #

            I only found out recently that the Bozo the Clown show was produced in Boston. My Father always swore that after one episode was over the camera showed Bozo with his head in hands saying, “I hate those fucking kids”.

          • K-Dog June 5, 2018 at 12:41 am #

            Bozo the clown. At least something was true in this corny shit. Thanks.

          • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 10:43 am #

            ” in 300 or 400 million years the sun, as a result of stellar evolution, will heat up enough to boil off our atmosphere and oceans, leaving the Earth a sterile lump of rock. .”

            Bill,
            Holy Christ! We gotta tell somebody….

          • K-Dog June 6, 2018 at 12:43 am #

            Nobody cares.

        • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 7:46 am #

          FACT: Lil’ J-Bot responds again with more sophistry. History’s not written yet Lil’ Bot. Better close that book now. I promise you won’t like the ending.

        • ozone June 5, 2018 at 6:22 pm #

          “You seem to have a true believer state of mind.”

          Rule #27 of The Disinformationist’s Handbook:

          Always ascribe our own mindsets to the enemy.
          (Cross-reference with chapter headings: “Hiding in Plain Sight” and “The Best Cover”)

      • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 7:47 am #

        Meet the New Republic, same as the Old Republic.

        • 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 9:09 am #

          It’s the cyberspace equivalent of the lunatic passing out flyers from under a sandwich board proclaiming salvation.

          The New crazy, same as the old crazy

        • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:31 am #

          I like your new, edgier style of late, 100th! You’re easily a 101 or 102 now in my book!

    • Walter B June 5, 2018 at 12:09 am #

      I understand that we have not apparently run out of oil yet and such a possibility may not even be anywhere on anyone’s radar either. However, I cannot understand why if running out is not an issue, why are the armed forces of the Unites States of America so hell bent on invading every single country in the world that has vast oil reserves?

      Sometimes a question is not best answered by an answer, but by another question, don’t you think?

    • DrGonzo June 5, 2018 at 9:18 am #

      Thanks Janet. I’ve often toyed with the idea of going back and highlighting two decades of failed “doom is right around the corner” predictions by Kunstler, but what’s the point? His True Believers will never be persuaded that he’s so frequently wrong, wrong, wrong.

      So thanks for doing some of that homework for me & us.

      I think my favorite trope of JHK’s is that when oil prices go down, it’s an indicator that the global economy is about to implode. And when oil prices go up, it’s an indicator that the global economy is about to implode. Right.

      All that said, I do see the US and global economy as on a collision course with economic realities and ecological limits. But probably on time frames that will play out long after JHK pens his last doomsday screed. Things are never as rosy as the cornucopians will have us believe, but rarely are they as immediately dire as the doomers insist. At least, not in timeframes of months and years. Decades? Maybe. so.

      • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 4:12 pm #

        I think my favorite trope of JHK’s is that when oil prices go down, it’s an indicator that the global economy is about to implode. And when oil prices go up, it’s an indicator that the global economy is about to implode. Right.

        They might not be an indicator that implosion is nigh, but they definitely are an indicator of the underlying effect of dwindling and harder to recover oil supplies. Prices go down as consumers are priced out of the market at peak and demand falls, after which prices go back up again due to resurgent demand at the trough. The underlying conundrum is that at the lower prices consumers can support, investments in production are not profitable and/or investment operations fail, while at the higher prices that producers demand to consistently bring new sources online, consumers are increasingly priced out of the market and turn to whatever alternatives they can find. Neither alternative is good for the economy as a whole, as secondary effects (primary and secondary job and debt destruction) continue throughout the cycle.

        Jim is spot on about the effects of Peak Oil, if not the immediate effects to the economy as a whole. Besides which, all economic implosion is local. If you and yours are crushed by its effects then they are very real to you, regardless of what the stock market indices are at any particular moment.

  32. FincaInTheMountains June 4, 2018 at 6:19 pm #

    Three Trump’s strikes and the Adam, full of Schiff

    The civil war in the United States finally came to the surface, and although the shootings are still occasional, and they mostly manifest in the delivery of lawsuits and subpoenas to each other, most Americans already understand that this is really a civil war.

    Trump, in the year and a half of his presidency, managed to completely discredit what special prosecutor Mueller is doing, and the absolute majority of voters are convinced that Mueller is not interested in the official topic of the investigation and he, at the government expense, is looking for at least something remotely illegal that Trump has ever done in order to subject him to impeachment.

    But the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and the Republican leader in Congress, Paul Ryan, have been discredited so much over the past year and a half that they are not in a position to provide a vote on the impeachment of Trump, and only Democrats are not enough for this.

    Meanwhile, a year ago they forced the Republicans to vote on a law that deprived the republican president of the right to abolish anti-Russian sanctions on his birthday 7 hours after the shooting of his closest friend and a Whip of the Republican Party in Congress.

    Impossibility of Trump’s impeachment within such Congressional composition was recognized even by one of Trump’s main persecutors, Democrat Adam Schiff, a prominent member of the congressional intelligence committee, whose Trump supporters are calling Adam full of Schiff </b

    He called on his party members to concentrate on the November elections, but they are still elbowing each other and 56 Democrats are applying for 14 seats.

    To get the majority seats in the Senate, the Democrats have very few chances and impeachment has chances only if the Democrats get 11 of the 14 seats in the Congress, which are at play in the midterm elections.

    And then Trump dealt them three blows:

    1. He introduced tariffs against the EU, Canada and Mexico to protect American workers in the steel and aluminum industries. And if you follow the link below, you will learn how these tariffs are related to Russia, which makes it even more meaningful that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed all the assumptions made there yesterday in an interview with Sunday's "Meet the press"

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/notes-heartache-chaos/#comment-354915

    2. Republicans conduct their primaries on the eve of the mid-term congressional elections under the slogan "Who votes for Democrats, votes for Hillary Clinton" that guarantees turnout at polling stations of a record number of registered Republicans. Moreover, they use Bastinda as a scarecrow in the primaries, which in this way have transformed into the competition of loyalty to Trump, and the elections themselves are likely to turn into the good old campaign "Donald vs Killary", the results of which are known.

    And no matter how much the Democrats protest about this, saying "what Hillary Clinton? There is no more of her in a Democratic Party, and have never been and such a tactic is unethical," but the Republicans just laugh in response: “it’s our Primaries, we say what we want!”.

    And this means that Democrats can win only if they bring to the polling stations those people who usually do not vote in midterm elections, and if they fail, the number of Republicans in the Congress will increase, up to the Republicans gaining a constitutional majority.

    3. Trump on Thursday said that June 12 will only be the beginning of negotiations with Kim Jong-un, which can last up to six months, which means that the final of these negotiations and the conclusion of peace with North Korea will most likely occur just before the November elections. The comments are superfluous, especially when you consider that North Korea has been at war with the United States since 1950, and recently this war has taken the form of a conflict between nuclear powers. And the Americans are afraid of this war – they probably remember at the genetic level how the Koreans beat them up without any atomic bomb, and the MIG alley showed that even the nuclear bomb will not save the White Massah.

    • FincaInTheMountains June 4, 2018 at 6:50 pm #

      The official soundtrack of John McCain:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEXb6nP_peY

    • FincaInTheMountains June 4, 2018 at 8:39 pm #

      The street song of my youth – 16 tons. American music, Russian lyrics.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCwhYWO7rhA

      We are sitting in the bar, late hour,
      Fly order from the boss,
      Fly brothers to the East, bomb the Soviet town.

      ….

      The first rocket hit the cockpit, John’s balls were squashed.
      The second rocket hit the toilet, there were three, now there are none ….

  33. Pucker June 4, 2018 at 7:33 pm #

    Are you a Man haunted by the demons of his past who has wandered out into the wasteland?

    If so, you could be exactly the kinda bloke that they’re looking for? Call 1 800 Shahid. Call Now!

  34. BackRowHeckler June 4, 2018 at 8:26 pm #

    “The movers and shakers of that state dwell in an extra special political bubble of their own that doesn’t accomodate much thought about the actual future …” — JHK

    Ironically the policies they pursue in Cal. ($50 billion highspeed rail projects, mandating electric cars, sanctuary state for illegals etc.) is in their opinion all about securing the future, and the people who oppose these measures are themselves backward looking, atavistic, and retrograde.

    the best writing about the current condition of California I’ve read of late are essays by Victor Davis Hanson, farmer and classical scholar.

    With a total popuation of 50 million, legal and illegal, if California goes down it will be spectacular.

    But I doubt that it will. My guess is in Silicon Valley and Hollywood there will exist relatively small populations of superwealthy whites and Chinese living inside walled and highly secure estates, surrounded by barbed wire, armed security details and sophisticated electronic surveillance … and in the rest of the state there will be 100 million Latin Americans speaking Spanish and eeking out a living the best they can. At some point these Hispanics may decide they are tired of these rich gringos in their midst, and move to crush them.

    brh

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    • tucsonspur June 4, 2018 at 9:13 pm #

      An article in the NYT says that California may soon set the national agenda. “On all sorts of big issues that matter now and will in the future, California is already in the game”.

      “In the Trump era, the state is reinventing itself as the country’s moral center”.

      Frightening.

  35. tucsonspur June 4, 2018 at 9:01 pm #

    I experienced a quake in NYC a number of decades ago, on a lower floor in a high rise, and some people got more rattled than the dinnerware. About a 5, I think.

    I was in Palm Springs once when one rocked through, when its undulations converted my mattress into a bed of gentle massage.

    The Earth sleeps and then awakens. We are often frightened by its power, and rightly so. But be thankful for earthquakes, because they’ve given us warning, and made us prepare. As Pele has, breathing her fire.

    We now have shock absorbers, levitating foundations, tuned mass dampers, and seismic invisibility cloaks, etc. Yes, plate tectonics could make all of these look like a band aid on a beheading.

    There’s not much more we can do outside of relocation and abandonment, and that’s not about to happen. Those quakes are just another strong reminder that Coyote is always waiting. So just roll with the rocking. All you can do.

    The Earth buries you sooner rather than later.

    • BackRowHeckler June 4, 2018 at 9:07 pm #

      What do you make of the volcanic eruptions in Central America and Hawaii occuring at the same time? Just a coincidence? Or is something bigger going on in that Pacific Rim?

      brh

      • tucsonspur June 4, 2018 at 9:20 pm #

        Who knows, but you always wonder about something really, really big setting itself up.

      • Pucker June 5, 2018 at 12:06 am #

        I don’t know. Beats me….

      • sophia June 5, 2018 at 9:33 am #

        It’s worth looking into. There are some other events that have become more common, such as sinkholes. I think these things do come in waves at times. It might be a slight perturbation in the earth’s spin. Even very slight, it causes the earth to settle. It may also be associated with changes such as little ice ages, which is happening now.

  36. FincaInTheMountains June 4, 2018 at 9:36 pm #

    So, it seems to me that it can be considered proven that the novel “The Master and Margarita” is not “Gothic”, but an allegorical story about the mystical essence of those events, which Mikhail Bulgakov witnessed throughout his life. For example, a number of details about the story of Pilate and Yeshua-Ha-Nozri clearly refer us not only to the Talmud, but also to the apocryphal “Gospel of Nicodemus”, which became the main source of information about Joseph of Arimathea, the founder of the oldest on the globe Church of England.

    I’m not going to give a full transcript of the allegories and allusions of the novel “The Master and Margarita”, which is impossible in principle, but it seems to me that from the above-mentioned circumstances, and from the place in the novel “The Master and Margarita” of Yeshua-Ha-Nozri, it’s hard not to conclude that he considered the history of the Church as the sacred history of saving mankind from metaphysical evil and the driving force of all those changes that occurred in Russia and around the world in the early 20th century.

    And the biggest event in the history of the Church at the turn of the century was the failure or rather the incompleteness of the negotiations on the unification of the Church of England and the Russian Orthodox Church, and it is quite natural to assume that Bulgakov believed this in 1935 to be the cause of both World War I and the Russian Revolutions, and a world-wide fire which began in 1941, but flashes of which Mikhail Afanasyevich saw in the glare of the lights of the famous globe of William Bullitt in Spaso House in 1935.

    And this assumption becomes almost a certainty if one recalls that the decisive role in the negotiations between the Church of England and the Russian Orthodox Church was played by the works of his father, Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, and at the ball at Spaso House Mikhail Afanasyevich most likely saw the creator of the Thule Society Professor Karl Haushofer and commandant of Bremen Wilhelm Keitel.

    • Eoin June 4, 2018 at 11:18 pm #

      Yes Finca,
      But what about the end of the story?
      The part where Pontius Pilate, blind and with only the company of his hound, was liberated?
      Weren’t all of the possible political ramifications buried in that scene?
      Was that not the real point of the work?
      I came upon that book late in life, but I am so glad to have it with me.
      Thank you for bringing it up, hopefully someone will seek it out and understand that the “doom and gloom” that besets them is simply a passing contemporary vanity of little import.
      Having said that, I do make it a point to avoid conversations with foreigners in the company of large black cats and tall men wearing jockey uniforms looking through broken monocles.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:41 pm #

        The Coptic Church has Pilate on its list of martyrs.

    • daveed June 5, 2018 at 12:50 am #

      How, exactly, does your masterpiece above relate to earthquakes or tectonic plates (or reality)? Have you been posting on this blog all this time by mistake, thinking it was the Mystics and Mesmerists site?

  37. malthuss June 4, 2018 at 10:12 pm #

    Ingestion of kerosene is harmful or fatal. Kerosene is sometimes recommended as a folk remedy for killing head lice, but health agencies warn against this as it can cause burns and serious illness. A kerosene shampoo can even be fatal if fumes are inhaled.[48][49]

    People can be exposed to kerosene in the workplace by breathing it in, swallowing it, skin contact, and eye contact. The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit of 100 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday.[50]

    • sophia June 5, 2018 at 9:35 am #

      Maybe it was turpentine that they used to sell in the little country store up the street from me. Something like that. It was definitely used as a remedy.

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 3:37 pm #

      I used to swim in that stuff in my first job as an over the road semi-truck shop boy. Must have washed my hands in the parts washer fluid a half dozen times a day at least. Must explain why I went so far off the rails in my later years. Those were the days!

      • PeteAtomic June 5, 2018 at 7:28 pm #

        it wasn’t the booze & drugs?

        🙂

  38. sophia June 4, 2018 at 10:15 pm #

    Janos,

    I’m not clear why you think the alien interventionist theory lacks spirituality? It seems to me that the alien presence, the “gods” of old, has messed up spirituality in the minds of humans because they confused a kind of worship of the gods with the true ineffable divinity. Especially after they left and left us with confused and doubtful memories.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:17 pm #

      Well you answered your own question. That’s exactly how I see it as well if indeed contact occurred. People will invent gods too – that’s what comics books superheroes are. Our brain desire this kind of thing – even if we don’t believe in it!

      Of course the gods may be real and not be aliens. The worst theory is the classic Christian one – Augustine’s “All the gods of the pagans are devils”. How that’s as a prescription not for peace?

      • sophia June 5, 2018 at 9:51 am #

        Definitely something weird happened in the past. There is just too much evidence for it. It’s all through the Tanakh, too. Especially Genesis. The other possibility is that there was very high human civilization before the end of the last ice age and which was somewhat separated from the tribal masses, and at some point, probably after the catastrophe 11,500 years ago, they moved around and instigated all the early civilizations that we know about.
        ******
        Now there is the thing I find intriguing – why do our brains desire this sort of thing? What strange and malfunctioning creature is the human being? How is it that imagination has become more important to this creature than reality?
        Sadly, the silly and immature atheists are just as imagination-filled as the rest, and more delusional in that they have added another layer of blinder.
        **************
        As to the gods being demons, that is my opinion of most UFO phenomena, and of course there may be that as well in other occult arenas. There are those who think the various super elite, deep state types for whom this world is their chessboard are indeed getting power from and giving satisfaction to evil demonic entities. Surely it is intriguing that when Jesus went out to fast and be tempted he was offered worldly power by Satan. And so those who think that rulers are given their power by God are wrong only in that it actually comes from the power of darkness, not the true God, to wit, another sad theme of mine – most of the people of the world, including most Christians, do not worship the true ineffable divinity but some power of darkness, whom they call god.

        It’s a free choice because the Good is an acquired taste and it really is that simple.

        • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 10:50 am #

          “The other possibility is that there was very high human civilization before the end of the last ice age and which was somewhat separated from the tribal masses, and at some point, probably after the catastrophe 11,500 years ago, they moved around and instigated all the early civilizations that we know about.”

          #Wakanda

        • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 3:41 pm #

          The good Aliens are the Nordics. The bad one are the Reptilians and most of the Greys. Some of the latter may be neutral. Hopefully the Nordics will intervene on our behalf or airlift us out of here before things get too bad. But of course, they may be at War with the Greys and not be able to help as much as they’d like.

          I met some of the Hale Bopp Cult before they killed themselves. They felt the bad aliens had ruined “the garden” (the Earth) long ago. They thought a person should just be able to eat an apple and be all set for the day. That that’s no enough was just proof that the soil had been corrupted. There was no answer except to get out of here and up to the Ship. Note the complete conflation of the physical and the non-physical.

          Ever read the Shikasta novels of Doris Lessing? I usually hate female novelists but her ideas as so extraordinary that I can overlook “the feminine voice” in this case. Three advanced Civilizations fight over their rights to the primitive Earth. One is very spiritual, the other neutral but very technologically powerful, the third Evil – just wanting to use humans as psychic batteries so to speak. The conflation between the subtle and physical is shown with finesse: One of the agents sent from the Spirituals become corrupted and fails in his mission, seduced by the heavy psychic atmosphere of the fallen Earth. The agent of the technical civilization says she will help him get back home. He says, No need. I will return another way. He walks out into the snow naked, intending to die and return to his home world thru the subtle, whether thru reincarnation or some other way isn’t specified.

  39. Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2018 at 11:21 pm #

    http://www.businessinsider.com/former-music-exec-describes-the-scary-meeting-that-resulted-in-todays-violent-rap-music-2012-5

    Everything changed because of rap. As Plato said long ago, you can’t change the music of a society without changing the society. Somebody changed us – much for the worst.

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  40. janet June 5, 2018 at 12:34 am #

    why are the armed forces of the Unites States of America so hell bent on invading every single country in the world that has vast oil reserves? Sometimes a question is not best answered by an answer, but by another question, don’t you think? — Walter B

    Sometimes a question can be downright misleading, planting false ideas in peoples’ heads, don’t you think?

    Just look at these countries with large proven oil reserves. We have not invaded any of them:

    1) Venezuela

    2) Saudi Arabia

    3) Canada

    4) Iran

    5) Kuwait

    6) United Arab Emirates

    7) Russia

    Maybe our armed forces do not care about oil at all, given that they have not invaded or occupied these countries which have large proven oil reserves.

    • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 2:59 am #

      In the ME anyway we’ve picked up the baton from Great Britain beginning with Suez in 1956. As far as oil from the ME goes, in WW2 the allies used up about 7 billion barrels of oil, 6.5 billion of that coming from the continental United States. Our reserves depleted, Roosevelt looked around the world for what had become the one essential commodity, and found it on the Arabian peninsula. We’ve never invaded any nation and conficated petroleum; we always paid for what we got.

      brh

    • chipshot June 5, 2018 at 7:53 am #

      “Maybe our armed forces do not care about oil at all”. C’mon, Janet.

      We’re itching to invade Iran and Russia, we’re going out of our way to make things bad in Venezuela (see Abby Martin reports on the chaos there), and if any of the other countries you listed threatened to abandon the petro-dollar we’d be knocking loudly on their door.

      You can do a better job of connecting the dots. It’s more accurate to say all our armed forces care about it oil.

      • SpeedyBB June 8, 2018 at 2:27 am #

        My understanding is that the fatal ‘blunder’ (not really) of Saddam and Khaddafi was to threaten the primacy of the petro-dollar.

        For that matter a couple of years back I read that even the Energy Minister of Norway was whining about having to deal in dollars.

    • Walter B June 5, 2018 at 8:59 am #

      Duh, uh America has been waging economic war with Venezuela for decades now and Iran as well. The war with Russia has been underway for quite a while and even you have had much to say about the “Russian Connection”, and what about our meddling in the Ukraine? The other countries that you mention all have sweetheart deals with US so I am quite nonplussed by your sad and inaccurate comment.

      • ozone June 5, 2018 at 10:37 am #

        Walter,
        lol Don’t be bewildered by someone who excretes the State Dept.’s daily propaganda and misdirection diktats!
        Take it as the norm and you can discern what’s *really* going on (geopolitically) by the unsaid and sometimes exact opposite of what’s expounded.

        Read this bit of Orwellian-art-made-reality as a pointer:

        https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-04/department-homeland-security-compiles-list-all-bloggers-journalists-social-media

        “If you find yourself skeptical of this proposal of mass state monitoring of the press, consider yourself a bonafide member of the “tinfoil hat wearing, black helicopter conspiracy theorists,” DHS representative Tyler Houlton said Friday. It’s all very routine, he argued, casting the project as an innocent means of “monitoring current events.” Just shut up and let us do this, crackpots.”

        Consider The Jan’s as the gentle persuasion cadre of the authoritarian big-stick wielders, coming soon to all websites near you! …The fun’s just begun…

    • sophia June 5, 2018 at 9:56 am #

      Indeed it is almost as if Janet was trying to prove the point in a back handed kind of way. We set up the House of Saud and the petrodollar and did not need to invade them. For one example.

      • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 11:41 am #

        Forgive her. She knows not what she does.

  41. K-Dog June 5, 2018 at 1:07 am #

    Maybe he is saying that everybody has a West Coast kind of mind. Fire and brimstone from above or a shakedown from below. The end being the same.

    Choosing Seattle is appropriate enough. It grows and the new towers touch the face of god. A way to say we are heading for a fall without saying it.

    We have quakes and are certainly closer to NK than New York is but Manhattan still has higher grocery prices. The sin of inequality is alive and well in Manhattan. I learned today that Seattle is number 2 which might make Seattle a lead in a dumpster diving competition. Neglect for the poor, a contender for sure. Homeless have to eat and grocery stores are not for them.

    Perhaps Seattle will shake for its sins. Perhaps Saratoga Springs will have fire, brimstone and killer bees for snootiness.

    Good times for all.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 3:45 pm #

      The Salish Indians are pretty mediocre and boring, both the Coastal and the Inland. They lack the dash of the Plains Indians or the Nez Perce or the material power of the coastal Indians to the north. But Chief Seattle was an extraordinary speaker and visionary despite all that.

      • K-Dog June 7, 2018 at 9:58 am #

        I read what you just wrote somewhere but I can’t remember where.

  42. trypillian June 5, 2018 at 1:14 am #

    Diablo Canyon, north of LA, has 2 spent fuel pools suspended over the 2 reactors. Each one contains the equivalent of 30,000 Hiroshima bombs. These attributes are never discussed, I wonder why? The estimates are based on Arnie Gunderson’s estimate of Fukushima Unit 4 spent fuel pool. Earthquake faults are one and three miles away.

    San Onofre, near San Diego, has 2 spent fuel pools, with fault line vulnerability.

    The deaths from ionizing radiation would far exceed those who would perish in an earthquake. You could kiss the lower 48 goodbye as well.

    • Georges1202 June 5, 2018 at 2:13 am #

      Always amusing to see a reference to the Hiroshima bomb (which, if I recall was a bit of a dud – only something like 20% of its potential went off). The US never brought to trial for these hideous war crimes. Now we settle for it as a metric nobody really understands.

      Our epitaph might read “They wanted more stuff”

      • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 3:11 am #

        Brought to trial by whom? The UN? Comrade Stalin? Chairman Mao? Its too late to go after President Truman or General Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ Lemay; maybe their great granchildren can be rounded up and put on the docket for crimes against humanity. You can hold the trial at Berkeley.

        brh

        • Georges1202 June 5, 2018 at 3:30 am #

          The classic response – perfectly ok to drop that monstrosity on a non-military target at 8 in the morning on a workday – lots of targets milling about, right?

          The US stands tall. Then does the same thing 3 days later.

          It’s fine – we live in the Untied States of Amnesia. All horrors fade over time. The Indispensable Nation lumbers on like that Orange Godzilla keeping the seat warm at 1600 Penn. Historians will marvel at it all.

          • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:17 am #

            Can you imagine the self-righteous indignation if something like that happened right here in the USA? Oh… but wait a minute… forgot about 9-11. Too bad the “enemies” we projected all of our hatred on in the aftermath weren’t the actual culprits. We Americans are funny that way. All the world’s an enemy/infidel deserving to be punished and we are [fill in the deity here]’s holy warriors destined to do the dirty/sacred deed. “Shining city on a hill” and all that brain rot.

          • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 11:09 am #

            “morning on a workday – lots of targets milling about, right”

            Georges,
            Yes, and they were untermenschen….little yellow devils…hardly even human….

            The then-projected casualties for a land invasion of the Japanese mainland was…one million casualties….

          • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 11:53 am #

            US projections (or because we said so). Or, could it have been that Russia was a threat to invade from the west and impose their own terms on Japan, thus denying them from the post-war US orbit? The bomb was thus doubly effective, in that it terrorized Japan and Russia directly, and the rest of the world indirectly. Oppenheimer tried to tell the little weasel Truman that US superiority wouldn’t last, and that the best bet was to contain the madness while it could still be contained. But Truman wouldn’t hear of it and had poor Oppy banned from the WH, and soon thereafter his clearance revoked and his reputation ruined within the scientific community. It’s been all hardline and belligerence ever since. And that, as Paul Harvey used to famously intone, is the rest of the story.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 3:48 pm #

            Yes, the Powers that Be tried to use the Bomb to get us to disarm and turn everything over to the UN. Thus the Global State and its horrors would have been on us even earlier. At least we had the wisdom to resist back then.

        • 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 9:05 am #

          New seawolf, same disjointed non sequiturs

      • Pucker June 5, 2018 at 3:24 am #

        Mo’ Stuff….

        • Georges1202 June 5, 2018 at 3:33 am #

          “Got to get paid”

          – Mookie – Do the Right Thing

      • Jigplate June 5, 2018 at 8:02 am #

        “Hideous war crimes”? An invasion of Mainland Japan would have given us hundreds of thousands of casualties, and would have likely resulted in far more deaths of the Japanese people then were caused by the Atomic bombs. The armistice of 1918 led to Hitler. An armistice in 1945 would have given us something similar in the 1960’s.

        • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:19 am #

          That’s the culturally accepted myth anyway. Truth is, once the bombs were built, there was simply no way they were not going to be used.

      • Walter B June 5, 2018 at 9:04 am #

        Or how about “Here lies proof that those who cannot get enough stuff eventually get more stuff than they can handle” Georges?

      • trypillian June 5, 2018 at 11:30 pm #

        Allow me to rephrase the analogy. The Hiroshima bomb had the power of 15 kilotons of explosives; ie 15,000 tons. Those spent fuel pools each contain a multiplier of 30,000 x 15,000 tons yielding 450,000,000 kilotons or 450 megatons ( 1 megatons equals 1,000,000 kilotons ). Each spent fuel pool contains 450 Million Tons explosives equivalent.

        The average nuclear warhead nowadays weighs in at about 3 megatons more or less. The upshot is your friendly neighbourhood nuclear power plant contains 150 warheads per reactor. The 4 California reactors then have a grand total of about 600 badass warheads equivalent.

        The power companies are now moving the spent fuel rods to dry cast storage. Final placement is decades away. The rods are placed in zirconium cladding encased in concrete. The problem is; concrete provides compression strength whereas earthquakes are tensile mechanisms.The earthquakes would win, given the vast intrinsic energy released.

    • elysianfield June 5, 2018 at 10:57 am #

      “Diablo Canyon, north of LA, has 2 spent fuel pools suspended over the 2 reactors. Each one contains the equivalent of 30,000 Hiroshima bombs. These attributes are never discussed, I wonder why? The estimates are based on Arnie Gunderson’s estimate of Fukushima Unit 4 spent fuel pool. Earthquake faults are one and three miles away.

      tryp,
      Big deal…did you hear the Sun is going to boil the Earth? Supposed to happen next month, when Saturn aligns with Uranus….

  43. jloughrey June 5, 2018 at 4:15 am #

    I live in Portland, and we are well aware that the Cascadia Subduction Zone could cause a major earthquake at any minute, as it did 400 years ago. Or it may not. I was here when Mt. St. Helens blew, and survived.

    Quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed at the doom-and-gloom perspective here in regards to the West Coast. We have our problems, but also have much to be thankful for, such as a moderate climate, incredible scenery and many cultural amenities. Our booming economy is no less susceptible to decline than other parts of the country such as NYC. It’s not like Manhattan isn’t going to sink into the ocean as the polar ice caps further melt.

    As someone who grew up in New York, I’ll take the West Coast any day.

    • sophia June 5, 2018 at 10:01 am #

      318 years ago.
      The lovely attributes you mention will still be there for the survivors after recovery.

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:21 am #

      It is a beautiful climate and region, which is the best reason for limiting human development there now, while we still can.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 4:09 pm #

        Yes, before it becomes another California, awash in Hispanic ignorance, poverty, gangs, and crime. But since they are already awash with California White Liberals who have fled from the results of their choices without learning anything – that seems unlikely.

  44. FincaInTheMountains June 5, 2018 at 5:44 am #

    How, exactly, does your masterpiece above relate to earthquakes or tectonic plates (or reality)? Have you been posting on this blog all this time by mistake, thinking it was the Mystics and Mesmerists site? == daveed

    reality

    You are right, of course, it doesn’t.

    It is just that sometimes I can’t help thinking that the “Time of Troubles” that descended over humanity spiritual plane has something to do with increased seismic activity.

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    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:24 am #

      I, for one, sometimes enjoy your sometimes rational posts, Finc, so by all means keep them coming. It’s no trouble to scroll past them when you’re in one of your more… esoteric… moods.

      Now janet on the other hand…

  45. FincaInTheMountains June 5, 2018 at 6:33 am #

    In addition to specific events, history has a spiritual, and I would even say religious inlay.

    For example, there is a lot of speculation on the topic of what would have happened if Nicholas II did not declare a general mobilization in response to the quite reasonable requirement of Austria-Hungary to allow Austrian police to investigate the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

    In fact, in the situation when absolutely everybody wanted that war, it could only be a matter of postponement, with very little delay, especially since behind the back of Gavrilo Princip loomed not only and even not so much the “black hand of Apis” as the Theosophists Wagner society and the Balfour’s cabinet in England.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia)

    But the transition to Orthodoxy of the Church of England, headed by Queen Victoria, and then the founder of the Windsor dynasty, Edward VII, would undoubtedly change the very essence of world politics. At least (at least!) traditional English support for Muslim services in Hagia Sophia would have evaporated without a trace, and Goeben and Breslau would hardly have broken through to Istanbul in August of 1914.

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

    Moreover, the interests of the great powers would radically change – those that replace the Nations their friends.

    Indeed, if you look retrospectively at the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, it is difficult to get rid of the impression that all this time the “history” worked tirelessly to destroy the monotheistic Empires: Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish.

    In the Russian Empire, the “history” created what I call the crisis of articulation, depriving the Orthodox Empire of the language for an adequate to its time expression of its most sacred part, and tried to put in its place an alien to Russians great-power chauvinism, at times resembling Nazism, the reverse side of which in the multinational Empire turned out to be a very bizarre mixture of all kinds of nationalisms and the most rampant internationalism.

    In Germany, the “history” destroyed the heritage of Bismarck – Kulturkampf, replacing Protestantism not with Catholicism, but with all kinds of Gnostic sects, and in Austro-Hungary it with the hands of the anti-Orthodox atheistic “Mladá Bosna” and the Hungarians in the person of Archduke Franz Ferdinand killed the Empire, in which the Slavs and The Czechs would receive equality, but Catholicism would retain its influence.

    And in Turkey “history” dealt harshly with traditional Islam in the form of tarrikats, for example, Bektashi Order, and planted openly Masonic lodges, Arab nationalism and carefully cultivated Wahhabism in Qatar.

    The last example demonstrates especially vividly why this mysterious force of “history” is often called an Englishwoman.

    In fact, it was about the destruction of any organized form of people’s association based on the monotheistic worldview of the Abrahamic religions.

    But the preponderance in the balance of power between the Englishwoman and all these Empires was very unstable, since all these countries were then at the final stage of getting out of the crisis the spiritual foundations of their statehood and if they succeeded, they would not necessarily have pounced at each other throat.

    And Russia could become a leader, as a state having the experience of coexistence of at least two such religions, since I, unlike Solzhenitsyn, can not consider the Russian experience of coexistence with Judaism successful.

    And imagine that at the moment when this mysterious Englishwoman already celebrates a complete victory, she receives a crushing blow right at home, in the only Empire that has been gaining strength all this time: the Church of England begins to transition into Orthodoxy, the Anglo-Orthodox Oxford Movement and the Society of Zealots of Unity of the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican Churches, under the auspices of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, whose transition to Orthodoxy was supported by Queen Victoria herself.

    But the miracle did not happen: in the Church of England the old anti-Byzantine tendencies became more active, and the Russian Church could not make a step forward and step over purely political and procedural issues. The Oxford movement from the Anglo-Orthodox turned Anglo-Catholic, and with a distinct flavor of Cistercianism – the everlasting enemy of Orthodoxy. Of course, the dialogue continued, but it was too late: Europe entered the tailspin of the World War, as if the notorious Englishwoman had said to herself: “That’s enough – tomorrow will be too late”.

    The reason that the two great Churches could not understand each other were in different interpretations of the relationship between Christ and Pilate, and as a consequence the relationship between Church and Empire, whose roots in the “Acts of Pilate” – the main part of the apocryphal “Gospel of Nicodemus”, which became the main source of information about Joseph of Arimathea – the founder of Church of England.

    It is these interpretations that are devoted to the work of Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov “On the legality and reality of the Anglican hierarchy from the point of view of the Orthodox Church.” 1906, and the novel of the Master “The Gospel of Voland” in the novel “Master and Margarita”, which 30 years later created his son Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov.

    • ozone June 5, 2018 at 10:50 am #

      Fink,
      If all that shit had not proceeded as it did, the 1906 San Francisco ‘quake never would have happened. Believe me. (…’cause I say so, it is therefor true.)

    • sophia June 5, 2018 at 11:03 am #

      Finca,

      This is a most interesting take on things. I have a few questions.

      First, I consider it a real possibility that the overall emotional and spiritual state of mankind could have an impact on the safety and peacefulness of the forces of nature.

      1. How and why did history work to remove the major empires, and how does the empire of England fit into this? And what do you make of the fact that the old empires of the east, China and Japan have also been removed?

      2.When you say that in Russia was implemented a great chauvinistic power, are you referring to the Soviet state, and if so, wasn’t that more a consequence of this history you refer to?

      3. What sort of Gnostic sects in Germany are you referring to?

      4. How do you find it that at the same time these regrettable things were going on, that ‘history’ as you call it also caused Wahhabism and other degenerations in Islam?

      5. Okay, I’m going through methodically and there is a partial answer to #4 in that yo say it was an organized destruction of all Abrahamic faiths and cultures of those faiths. But I am confused about who is this Englishwoman since it was not Queen Victoria.

      6. What is the crisis of the foundations of the statehood of those countries you mention?

      7. I wonder about the way that England seems the perpetual enemy of Russia. Explain how the interpretation of Pilate made such a difference.

      8. I thought you said somewhere you were Jewish. Maybe it was someone else. Where do your sympathies lie? Are you Orthodox?

      • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 4:44 pm #

        He said he was Tribe at one point. And he used to have the usual liberal indifference to Orthodoxy, seeing as just superstition. But then one day he came in as you now see him: the Defender of Orthodoxy and the Promulagator of the Conflict between the two Churches. Interesting “conversion”, eh?

        Ask him about the Tsar whom all real Orthodox see as a Martyr. You will be amazed.

        Ask him about Solzhenitsyn. He doesn’t like him because he criticized Communism and had the temerity to point out the Tribe’s big role in it. Finc’s dad worked for Stalin so Communism and Stalin are great! And of course so is the Tribe…

      • FincaInTheMountains June 5, 2018 at 6:05 pm #

        Sorry, Sophia, today was a busy day in the non-virtual world, will try answering you tomorrow.

  46. Chris at Fernglade Farm June 5, 2018 at 8:04 am #

    Hi Jim,

    Whilst living in a remote spot, I make a habit of regularly taking a long walk through the nearest big city, which in this case is Melbourne (Australia) and only an hours train ride away. The sights, smells, and sounds are remarkable and they’re quite the assault on the senses for one who lives surrounded by tall forest along with all the denizens that accompanies such a place.

    I’m rabbiting on a bit, anyway, I too look at the city and wonder at the sheer unsustainability of everything there – it is quite astounding really. And I hear you about the ‘boomingest city’, because I distinctly recall the last serious drought when dam levels reached into the mid-teens. Water generally isn’t drinkable in the low-teens because it is stagnant, or has low oxygen levels or something like that – whatever the case, it’s not good. And yet, we’ve added a million additional inhabitants since then. That is even more astounding, and I do wonder whatever were the politicians thinking that encouraged the situation. It is a good question that you have raised.

    Chris

    PS: GreenAlba. Thank you so much for the kind words. And I’ll tell you a little secret – it is a labour of love this place. :-)!

  47. Chris at Fernglade Farm June 5, 2018 at 8:08 am #

    Hi Jim,

    Almost forgot to mention that I enjoyed your joke in the title!

    Chris

  48. wm5135 June 5, 2018 at 8:28 am #

    Janos we are more similar than most here might see. My guess is that you experienced something as a young person between the age of five and six that left you with a certain clairity about existence. My experience was that of the complete corruption and dishonesty that permeates society. The church, the political system and interpersonal relationships. The common thought among western culture is that a child of such a young age is not capable of understanding such things. This is where our true similarity comes in.
    Everyone who reads your posts must admit that you have looked deeply into the nature of existence and have incorporated quite a lot of knowledge into your being. What I perceive is the difference between us is our individual reaction to our insights into the world.
    From where I stand it appears that you wish to remain in the world and believe that justice can be attained through stricture.
    My path has been to accept solitude and exclusion rather than to participate in such a cruel and demeaning game. I choose not to play.

    Our main agreement it seems is that we both believe that justice is an integral part of this experience.

    The only value anything, and this is word I want to use, has in this cosmos is the value assigned by existence itself. There is nothing one can do to increase or decrease the assigned value. One can be part of the Way and experience the joy and beauty or they can choose not to be on the Way and experience and pay the associated costs. Neither path changes the value or worth of an individual.

    It is difficult for me to read much of what you write but I appreciate your clarity. There is no hope for me taking a place in the parade.
    wm

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:27 am #

      I think janos can be fairly characterized as “scratchy” at heart. I think of him as a tonic; not usually very tasty, but most times good for what ails you, even if only due to secondary effects.

    • K-Dog June 5, 2018 at 11:20 am #

      Five and six that left him with a certain clarity about existence. That or buggered up for good.

      Some children of a certain age do pass through a window where their minds function as reason machines and while in this window of clarity they rise above the crazy reason destroying captive algorithms of social constraint and the bands of social madness which puberty brings on. I agree. But is Janos one of them or is he damaged goods?

      After apprehending the horror a person can seize upon the path of the way with a life affirming cry for existence or one can reject the way and curse existence as a cheat.

      Which way do eight in ten go? If the horror is strong they march with the parade.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 4:29 pm #

      Well said. But how far do you take it? A complete hermit? Chastity? These are legitimate paths, though hard to do on one’s own without religious support – and of course the Church has fallen to the Dark Power as well. Pope Francis is going after the contemplative orders of Nuns now, particularly the justly famous Carmelites.

      You are right I think, but I never had your inner clarity about myself and my place in the world, and have found myself stuck between the two worlds, even as they move further and further apart, both in the macrocosm (the outer world) and the microcosm or within myself. In other words, I’m being forced to come to your level of understanding in my own person and in terms of my own case.

      Of course my desire to resist is also legitimate. Think how much worse things would be if people never had fought. But as the Neo-Traditionalists say along with the Orthodox Religionists (and along with you), the Times are bad and getting worse. Darkness has triumphed and only an intervention from the Vertical Dimension is going to save Humanity now. For our technological reach has far exceeded our moral grasp

  49. pequiste June 5, 2018 at 8:56 am #

    Jerry Brown, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris were overheard recently at a whine and cheese social in Sacramento; they are going to move legislatively to rename the infamous San Andreas Fault —

    and call it Trump’s Fault.

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    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 10:24 am #

      Very nice!

      • K-Dog June 5, 2018 at 10:40 am #

        West Coast state of mind!

    • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 11:59 am #

      > and call it Trump’s Fault.

      Funny!

      It’s entirely consistent with what the Left has been doing to Trump nonstop for two years now. Attack, impede, smear, blame, etc. It wouldn’t surprise me if CA had an earthquake and tried to blame it on oil drilling in Texas, as meanwhile CA pumps all the water out of its aquifers resulting in routine subsidences.

  50. janet June 5, 2018 at 11:32 am #

    “We’ve never invaded any nation and conficated petroleum; we always paid for what we got.” –brh

    Wait… buying is not the same as invading and confiscating, is it?

    Let Walter B know.

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 11:39 am #

      Imposing terms at the point of a gun. There you go.

  51. volodya June 5, 2018 at 11:36 am #

    There’s a lot of walking-dead-ness in the financial system. Only academics and experts think this is work-able.

    The Chinese apparently aren’t that nuts and so are deploying assets either privately through the purchase of real estate outside China, or via government directed investment in places you normally wouldn’t think of going. I guess they think the world’s piss-holes are more viable than the present-day arrangements with the US.

    Established institutions and the insiders running them are so invested in the status quo that they’ll ride the sucker down to zero. Who’s the fool running the Fed? I forgot his name. Anyway, they think he’ll do something.

    • SpeedyBB June 8, 2018 at 8:37 am #

      Boy it’s amazing. To read about Chinese companies (directed by the Party, for certain) pouring good money into bad countries – think central Africa, Pakistan or Argentina, for instance – aware that they are going for broke with shaky, unpopular authoritarian regimes; they are clearly bent on unloading as many of those trillions of American Pesos as they can, before the crash. At least with the investment they are buying a little good will in faraway shitholes – until somebody with military muscle moves in and murders the recipients. At which point it has to start all over again.

      That many Americans are grateful for being “rescued” by Chinese buyers for domestic firms in a death spiral is also quite astonishing. But there you go. The vagaries of Empire.

  52. janet June 5, 2018 at 11:47 am #

    “Everything changed because of rap.” –janos

    Indirectly. Everything changed because of hip hop. Rap was the precursor. Rap arose from musical experimentation with rhyming, rhythmic speech.

    Golden age hip hop (the mid-1980s to early ’90s) invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop which spread all over the world to cultures as diverse as German, French, Navajo and the Sami people of Northern Europe. Hip hop artists are the true poet laureates of the working class, those who elected DJT.

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 12:28 pm #

      Tell us more Ms. Science! Somehow I can’t imagine a whole lotta hip-hop goin on at Trump rallies or in the homes of the working class who support him.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 4:35 pm #

      It is the sound track of Kali Yuga and Hatred of Whitey and Western Civilization. Even if they lyrics are somewhat “positive” (as if love and unity between races is automatically a good thing) the BEAT is still angry and aggressive – and hypersexual. It all comes down to Blacks getting White women. And White women have been shown this is a normal and good thing. I mean if it wasn’t, why is it on all the wavelengths and medias? This is how Women “think”…

      I mean once there are no White people then the race problem is solved, right? That’s how you people “think”….

      • 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 6:49 pm #

        I mean, like sirrusslee… what are these ladies uh, thinking? Hello?

        Ohmawgawd, why go with a black guy when you have like a total catch with a nebbish bookworm cat fancying hate peddler like Janos. Uh, like, virility unchained ladies!

        • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 8:06 pm #

          So you’re on board with Rap and its war against the West, yet you have the gall to call me a hater? What a shmuck!

          • 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 9:47 pm #

            No, you’re the power:

            Elvis was a hero to most
            But he never meant shit to me you see
            Straight up racist that sucker was
            Simple and plain
            Mother f*** him and John Wayne
            ‘Cause I’m Black and I’m proud
            I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped
            Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps
            Sample a look back you look and find
            Nothing but rednecks for four hundred years if you check

            We’ve got to fight the powers that be

          • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 11:33 pm #

            Um, that contradicts you’re previous post. Try and make up your mind whether I’m a Nebbish or a Nazi.

            People are so shut down and confused, they can’t even hate properly anymore. And if you can’t hate, how can you love?

          • 100th Avatar June 6, 2018 at 9:00 am #

            No it doesn’t. Mengele was an egghead.
            And SS
            And definitely a hater
            You’re the (white) power.

  53. Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 12:25 pm #

    In the bonus points for creativity department…

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/nashville-cops-manhunt-fired-gym-worker-allegedly-killed/story?id=55633538

    I could definitely see hatchets making a comeback. All the blood and gore of an axe in a much more compact, concealable, and portable instrument of mass mayhem.

    • capt spaulding June 5, 2018 at 8:30 pm #

      Take a tip from the Chinese, just like they use acupuncture, the Tongs have been using hatchets forever. Thus the expression “Hatchet Man”.

  54. 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 2:29 pm #

    As I said, happy motoring going way of subscription.
    Ultimately, all will be automated.

    You are all just renters for the ownership class.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/mercedes-benz-starts-car-subscription-pilot-from-1-095-a-month

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    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 3:32 pm #

      Other than the ubiquitous obscene markups, this might not be such a bad deal for those wishing to sample a car(s) rather than being saddled with owning them. Having bought a house just over a year ago, I’ve never appreciated the joys of renting so much. Getting ahead in the “ownership economy” is a threadbare 20th century myth.

      • 100th Avatar June 5, 2018 at 5:00 pm #

        Plenty of upsides until you consider the amount of people that reside in places utterly dependent on personally owned vehicles. Their freedom ends where their driveways meet the road. They, quite literally, do not hold the keys to their freedom.
        This is where authoritarianism begins to cast its shadow. Where you begin to see the potential for behavioral controls. They know where you’re going and when. You better not be in arrears. You better be on good behavior. You’re not allowed in that part of town, sorry. You are not allowed to leave at this time of day, sorry. Better yet, who populates the suburbs? The people that you need to control the most. The middle class. The rules don’t apply on the far reaches of the wealth spectrum. The rich, well, they can get away with things through money and connections and the poor, well, they often do not have a choice but to live outside the rules, but the middle classes? The laws and rules, those written and those expected and those dreamed (that allow them to tick the boxes and pass into the elite class) are designed for them. But there is nothing to worry about because driving a car and vehicle ownership are privileges not rights. There are no protections and no expectations. No rights to surrender. Make it a lot easier when the rights are amended, are taken.

        • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:21 am #

          Plenty of upsides until you consider the amount of people that reside in places utterly dependent on personally owned vehicles. Their freedom ends where their driveways meet the road. They, quite literally, do not hold the keys to their freedom.

          Very true. I’ve pondered that fact long and hard in my life. But once again, this is also a product of overpopulation. Many, if not most of us, live in places humans have no business living simply because we have to due to population pressures. The middle and lower classes are for the most part priced out of living in the few nice, sustainable places, due to lack of money or the pressures of finding a J-O-B to hopefully provide them money eventually (yeah right!) to move to that mythical better place. Gentrification has now gone global on steroids.

    • PeteAtomic June 6, 2018 at 3:57 pm #

      wow

      “To get started, customers download the app, take a photo of their driver’s license and enter credit card information for the $495 activation fee. Subscribers can choose any vehicle within their tier with no mileage limitations. The monthly fee covers insurance, vehicle maintenance and 24-hour roadside assistance.”

      a fool and their money are soon parted.

  55. Sean Coleman June 5, 2018 at 3:19 pm #

    Just back from ten days holiday in Portugal. Hope everyone has been behaving himself (or rather herself).

    • Ol' Scratch June 5, 2018 at 3:25 pm #

      Country dropper.

    • janet June 5, 2018 at 3:28 pm #

      Welcome back. Did you visit Mooji in the hilly region of Alentejo in southern Portugal?

      • malthuss June 5, 2018 at 6:03 pm #

        Mooji????

    • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 4:39 pm #

      In fact, No. Alba said the football Over There increases the amount of violence against women. That after a game, men beat up their wives and girlfriends to make themselves feel better about losing or as part of the celebration of winning. Is there any Truth to this slander of the Male Race in the case Airstrip One? I told her it was proven to be nonsense over here and even big Feminists have distanced themselves from it.

      • janet June 5, 2018 at 5:05 pm #

        Trump had a contract for us to pay $24 for two refrigerators, until the Air Force was alerted by a Connecticut congressman who said the purchase “just didn’t pass the smell test.”

        “The Air Force and the White House Military Office have cancelled a $24 million order for two refrigerators made by Boeing and intended for Air Force One. Courtney said a $24 million sole-source contract “just didn’t pass the smell test.”

        • janet June 5, 2018 at 5:07 pm #

          ^$24 million^ for two refrigerators. Sole source contract. Doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks. Trump is corrupt.

          • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 7:26 pm #

            I think you’re corrupt, Little Jane.

          • janet June 5, 2018 at 7:28 pm #

            How so, brh? I am a very frugal conservative person. I would never spend more than ten million dollars for a refrigerator.

      • malthuss June 5, 2018 at 5:57 pm #

        Yes, the Powers that Be tried to use the Bomb to get us to disarm and turn everything over to the UN.
        Thus the Global State and its horrors would have been on us even earlier. At least we had the wisdom to resist back then.

        / What was the ‘Manhattan Project’ really about?
        And was the Bomb dropped directly over a Christian Cathedral, in the most Christian city in Japan?

        • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 7:58 pm #

          Well, seeing as how the UN was partly the creation of Alger Hiss, noted GRU (Red Army) spy and traitor, are you surprised at the plan to disarm us?

          brh

      • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 8:25 pm #

        What I actually did, Janos, was to provide you with a link reporting the increase in violence during football tournaments.

        Here’s a different one:

        http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed117172

        There are provisos which you can read for yourself regarding correlation/causation.

        • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 11:13 pm #

          We’ll see what friend Coleman has to say about this. In the meantime, don’t get your smalls in a bunch.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 6:59 am #

            Janos, two points…

            (1) I am not interested in what your ‘friend Coleman’ has to say about this. You have statistics – you may make of them what you will but if you need ‘friend Coleman’ to interpret them for you, you are in a bad way. And you might possibly be as well going straight to Peter Hitchens’ blog yourself for an answer. Monkeys and organ grinders…

            (2) Mr C and I have agreed to revert to our ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to ignore each other’s posts. You cause enough problems without stirring up trouble by trying to create mischief doing what you have just done, so please stop it.

        • Sean Coleman June 7, 2018 at 12:22 pm #

          ‘GreenAlba’

          So this is what you were up to while my back was turned:

          “sophia

          “Mr C has a number of agendas. Q-shtik mentioned another one. Mr C starts with his agenda, then looks for people who share it and reads them dililgently (we all suffer from confirmation bias, but Mr C’s is a bit obvious). And anyone reading his posts will realise how dependent he is on Peter Hitchens for his thoughts. Sometimes PH shows wisdom – I liked his post on relations with Russia, which made sense. But sometimes PH also has agendas.

          “My husband never mentions his dyslexia – he mentioned it a couple of times when we first met. Like your daughter he is intelligent and not lazy. No-one who has spent the years that doctors spend working through nights and days with no sleep, can be accused of being lazy. But he can’t remember whether ‘Alison’ has one ‘l’ or two. As my kids used to say in their teens ‘big wow’. He could read Mr Coleman under the table, but Mr Coleman doesn’t really know what dyslexia is or that it can manifest itself in different ways.

          “In addition to a decade of studying medicine and 40 years of practising it, my husband also has two law degrees. Mr Coleman feels the need to try to point out to you that he went to the ‘London Institute of Education’ and that ‘Margaret Meek [he thinks it was] didn’t believe dyslexia existed’ as if that somehow proved his point.

          “That’s supposed to impress you. Note that Mr Coleman didn’t say he went to the London Institute of Neurology or the London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

          “That’s because Mr Coleman wasn’t very good at science at school, so he reads every book he can find now to prove that it is science that is lacking and not Mr Coleman. He once explained to us that he saw a science programme on TV which featured some young people doing an experiment, including two skinny young women with lanky hair whom he clearly didn’t fancy. He said he thought this is what thereafter made him unable to take science programmes seriously.

          “I kid you not. Do not worry, sophia. Your daughter is neither lazy nor stupid. Mr Coleman can be a bit of a tit.”

          I found it by searching for the words ‘my husband’.

          It raises some questions.

          Does your husband (the doctor) know you do this?

          Leaving aside your husband (the doctor) and his new friend ‘the brilliant medical author’, don’t you think you need a bit of help yourself?

          What kind of dyslexia is it that allows a person to read everyone else in the world ‘under the table’? Do you realize how funny that is?

          Who is ‘sophia’? She has children?

          Do you realize that, logically, saying that your husband (the doctor) has dyslexia does not necessarily mean it exists?

          Why is the Institute of Education is something to boast of? I’ll see if it impresses my colleagues. (Just tried it: ‘The what?’)

          Why would I say I went to the London Institute of Neurology (or whatever) if I didn’t actually go there?

          How do you know Mr Coleman was no good at science? Three ‘A’s, in biology, chemistry and physics at o level, prize in chemistry (which Mr Coleman had forgotten about till he came across the awards leaflet in the loft – chemistry of all things!), 11% clear of my grammar school year in physics. No science cup – must have been the maths, the high B was the only exception in a string of 11 straight As and a shiny trophy for the mantelpiece, and six prizes that year (half the total if you include woodwork, I imagine, but then again that was the story every year). I had to choose between arts and science in the sixth form and I didn’t want to give up History or Latin. I wasn’t that keen on science anyway as it struck me as quite intolerant of independent thought. I had read Dunn’s classic An Experiment With Time using my mother’s library card and kept a diary of predictive dreams, so I had personal empirical evidence. By coincidence, in o level Eng Lit we went on to study Priestley’s Time And The Conways, which was inspired by that book. On to university next, prize in history, the course including the history of science. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to boast, today on my sixtieth birthday! (I don’t get many such excuses.)

          Now. What kind of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ is it that has such one-sided provisions? What exactly is in it for ‘moi’? (My understanding was that you would leave me alone and the other readers would have to put up with you, thus maximizing my spare time.)

          Here is a tip, for free. If you can ignore this gentle mockery and resist the urge to inflict immediate further distress on your keyboard you can come out of this if not exactly winning, then not losing either. But will you? You have a nice hole dug there.

          • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 3:09 pm #

            Hello SC and Happy Birthday.

            And I’m glad you were afforded the opportunity to boast. You can have that as my birthday present 🙂 . I can see that it is appreciated. One likes to have ones presents appreciated.

            I totally accept your right of reply. I would have expected no less. It was I who directed you to the material to which your are replying. You threw your last post in with a flourish and shot off on holiday. Excellent tactic. (I hadn’t actually read you previous post at that point which suggested reviving the gentleman’s agreement – I only read it yesterday).

            But I make my own choices, thanks. I will reply, in a gentlemanly a manner as possible.

            In random order:

            “and the other readers would have to put up with you, thus maximizing my spare time”

            Funny. I am reminded of the ‘other readers’ who patiently put up with you and your repeated ‘do you mind if I ask?’

            ‘Do you mind if I ask if you’re bipolar?’
            ‘I find that people who think like this are usually x, y, z – do you mind if I ask if that’s the case with you?’
            ‘Do you mind if I ask if he’s black?’.

            They seem to mind, I’d say, because they don’t reply – or they tell you to stop stalking them.

            “Does your husband (the doctor) know you do this?”

            Sorry, this question makes no sense to me. Are you suggesting my husband and I need each other’s permission to write on blogs? Or something else?

            “Leaving aside your husband (the doctor) and his new friend.. the brilliant [your word, not mine] medical author…”

            My husband has never met the medical author, who lives in Carolina. The medical author worked with me. His expertise does not derive from his authorship, but from a lifetime of scientific and clinical experience which you do not have.

            Clearly I would be more impressed with your ‘views’ on various neurological conditions if you had attended, say, the University College of London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience’, rather than the London Institute of Education. You seem to have got my point backward by asking round your friends, but never mind.

            The point is that your opinions are opinions (and all too often they seem to be Peter Hitchens’ opinions). They are not the result of clinical research or basic scientific research. Anyone can have an opinion. Mine has no more value than yours, which is why I prefer to rely on those who have done the scientific and clinical research. I am perfectly aware of the role of drug companies, by the way, but scientific research and the study of basic science by doctors is not without value just because you do not value it.

            “Who is ‘sophia’? She has children?”

            Sophia is the person, as you see from the post you pasted, to whom I was responding. Therefore, unsurprisingly, her post was immediately above the one you have just pasted. (Q’s further comments on your position are just above as well.)

            I will, in my turn, re-paste hers for you, so that you can see, since you claim not to have seen it, what she said (about your comments on dyslexia). But I’ll do it separately.

            Dyslexia manifests itself in different ways. It is possible to be a prolific reader and still be dyslexic. I would not expect you to know that – you are not a neuroscientist and you do not have dyslexia. Your position that dyslexics are basically lazy is not backed up by any evidence that you have provided.

            Evidence that some children are lazy and consequently end up not reading well is not evidence that dyslexia does not exist, any more than the fact that 20 people who claim to have flu actually have a bad cold means that flu does not exist.

            HOWEVER, you may remember that in the previous comment I actually made to you, I didn’t mention dyslexia at all – it was you who brought that up, despite its irrelevance to the matter in hand.

            We (on the thread generally) were actually discussing depression and bipolar disorder, which you also claimed did not exist.

            The gentleman I mentioned, who does actually have a lifetime of medical experience, unlike yourself, suffers from bipolar disorder (which exists). His situation is not the same as that of any number of random people who are described – or even diagnosed – with the umbrella term of ‘depression’ for various other reasons we might discuss – reactive depression, you might say, following either harrowing life events, or just a reaction to living in a society we have made dysfunctional in all the ways that we know.

            That you do not recognise the difference between these two neurological states, one of them amenable to absolutely nothing other than medication because it does not have an environmental origin, is your problem, not that of medical science. (You may wish to review Q’s later comments here).

            Leaving aside the bipolar question to make a general point, though, you are fond of using the term ‘fantasy’ to describe other people’s views, knowledge and experience. But yours, for some reason, we are to suppose are ‘real’.

            Hence you can come out with:

            “You make statements, such as about religion being an invention for social control as if they were self-evidently true” (which, as you know, was not even what I said).

            And some little time previously, to another reader:

            ‘Of course I believe in the supernatural’.

            Not ‘I believe in the supernatural BECAUSE…” but ‘Of course’, as in ‘self-evidently’.

            I find your application of different standards to yourself and to other people problematic.

          • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 3:12 pm #

            And for the sake of context, sophia’s comments to you, as you dashed off on holiday, and on which I commented:

            ” Hmm, I didn’t read your linked article and I am always willing to hear an idea, but this sort of pisses me off. Especially when you say lazy. I had 3 children and one of them was dyslexic. She isn’t lazy. She’s quite a go-getter actually. She could have had an IEP but didn’t and she now has a master’s degree. We all tried to get her ready for her weekly torture known as the spelling test but even if we got her to spell them right on Thursday evening, she would miss them the next day.

            “She also had trouble reading accurately and it seems the dyslexia involves not coping well with sequence. Like, you see the sequence of letters in order but the dyslexic sees them kind of scrambled. In compensation, she learned to listen really well. She couldn’t process written information at a normal speed, and so what questions she missed on tests were almost all because she could not finish the test on time.

            “It seems a bit rich for a man of Hitchens’ intelligence and wit to doubt that other people could have a problem.”

            You can see Q’s further comments just above this on the other thread. Likewise on your dismissal of women’s testimony in general, on which I did not comment.

            But as I said, my own point wasn’t about dyslexia, it was about bipolar disorder.

    • pequiste June 5, 2018 at 8:38 pm #

      I hope you had your fill of Bifanas and Sagres (or are you a Super Bock kind of person?)

    • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 8:40 pm #

      I hope you had a good holiday, Mr C. and that Mrs C is now enjoying a well-earned rest.

      You are, of course at liberty to catch up with intervening threads. I am not the only one who questions your agendas.

      But I agree, the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ should be reinstated.

      After all, if I write the sentence:

      “But it’s not saying anything other than that religious belief can be useful in controlling behaviour.”

      …and you write:

      “You make statements, such as about religion being an invention for social control as if they were self-evidently true. ”

      …and you are so clueless you think those two sentences mean the same thing, why would a person even bother?

      Grade D. I wouldn’t have let a 14-year-old away with that.

      • GreenAlba June 5, 2018 at 8:44 pm #

        In case that’s too complicated for you, I hope this helps:

        (1) My mother found old tights useful for controlling rose bushes.

        (2) Tights were not invented for rose bush control.

    • PeteAtomic June 6, 2018 at 3:58 pm #

      “Hope everyone has been behaving himself (or rather herself).”

      that’s zeself & hirself, you fascist!

      lol 🙂

  56. malthuss June 5, 2018 at 6:03 pm #

    He said he was Tribe at one point.
    Who is ‘he?’

    • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 6:37 pm #

      Finc

      • malthuss June 5, 2018 at 11:06 pm #

        / What was the ‘Manhattan Project’ really about?
        And was the Bomb dropped directly over a Christian Cathedral, in the most Christian city in Japan?

  57. Tate June 5, 2018 at 7:27 pm #

    west coast

    • Tate June 5, 2018 at 7:34 pm #

      That was a test. Not replying to anyone.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2018 at 8:07 pm #

        What are you testing for?

        • Tate June 5, 2018 at 8:30 pm #

          Yesterday my comments got ‘vanished.’

  58. BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 7:49 pm #

    Green Alba …

    if you’re looking in

    News from Jolly Old England, formerly known as the Christian Kingdom, now increasingly known as the New Caliphate.

    In a town called Oxfordshire, in the midlands (where ever they are) the local school system has decreed the boys can no longer wear shorts in warm weather; no, they are now to wear skirts. Skirts! so as to align themselves with the new tranny demographic. It didn’t say whether or not Burkhas are required as of yet for these boys. (and these are the people who won the Battle of Britain?)

    Am i remiss in asking, what the hell kind of people are you English? Its pretty clear why the Muzzies are having their way with you.

    Also news from SAfrica. The confiscation of 40,000 white owned farms without compensation (plans drawn up by a white British marxist woman named Ann Hall) is moving ahead as planned. But there’s a twist. ALL white owned property, including suburban houses, apartments, automobiles and bank accounts are up for grabs. The plan is for total dispossession. There’s only one more step after these boers are dispossessed, my friends. Do I have to spell it out for you? Look at events in the Ukraine 1931-1933, you’ll find your answer.

    brh

    • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 8:48 am #

      brh

      Oh, dear. Here we go again. I’m going to answer this one but after this I’m not going to bother. There’s only so much dim-wittedness and agenda-driven nonsense a person can try to help with.

      An initial point, though. I don’t hypothesise about what goes on in Hartford, Connecticut. I’m happy to take your word for it, despite some of the utter nonsense you write about other things, such as the imminent implementation of Sharia law in the UK (please refresh your memory from the previous thread). However, brh, I know that Hartford is a town and Connecticut a state and I know where Connecticut is on a map. Were I going to make a point about where you live, I wouldn’t advertise my ignorance by referring to a ‘town called Connecticut, in blah blah blah, wherever that is’.

      But let’s not dwell on the legendary reputation of *some* Americans when it comes to geography. Or the dismissive arrogance that says ‘wherever that is’ instead of looking at a bl**dy map before opening one’s mouth.

      Moving on…

      (1) As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, and as you could not fail to realise if you read a reasonable number of my posts, I am not one of ‘you English’. There is therefore little point in you asking me, endlessly, what I think of x, y, z as an English person. I am not an English person. I really don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.

      (2) “Am i remiss in asking…” So, yes. Next…

      (3) “Its pretty clear why the Muzzies are having their way with you.”

      Too stupid to respond to. Next…

      (4) “now increasingly known as the New Caliphate.” Only to bellends. See my most recent response to your most recent ridiculous post.

      (5) “In a town called Oxfordshire, in the midlands (where ever they are)” Where to start? With the nature of shires? Or did you think that was just in Hobbitland?

      A town called Oxfordshire… 🙂 As I said, let’s not dwell, it’s too depressing. We might end up in a town called Yorkshire, or a town called Lancashire, or even A Town called Alice (in brh-land). Next…

      (6) I checked out the story. And yes it’s pretty stupid isn’t it? We’re almost in the silly season (if that’s a cultural reference not used in the US, I will leave you to look it up after you’ve acquainted yourself with the amazing resource that is Google Maps).

      (7) “Skirts! so as to align themselves with the new tranny demographic.”

      Now, it seems what started all this off is that they’ve removed shorts from the list of permissible school uniform items because they’re not considered smart enough. Parts of leafy Oxfordshire are very posh. Ask David Cameron, who lives in Chipping Norton. That leaves trousers or skirts.

      That would normally mean trousers for the boys and trousers or skirts for the girls (yes, I know, life is sometimes unfair). So the girls chose skirts in the hot weather and the boys got miffed because they didn’t have the option of not-very-smart shorts. I don’t know if boys get to wear shorts to school in the US. Nor would it occur to me to wonder. Very much your business, I’d say.

      Now, I don’t have a view one way or the other on boys wearing shorts to school, so I’m not going to get into that per se. Shorts were not an item of permissible school uniform at my daughters’ school (for either the boys or the girls), even back in the 90s. The options were a black skirt or black trousers. My daughters chose chino-like black trousers, much like the boys’ ones, which I approved of much more than the current seemingly favoured option (at the same school) of a scrap of lycra, jokingly referred to as a skirt, that hardly covers their arse and which makes the wearer look as if she’s on her way to audition for a website for pervy middle-aged men with a schoolgirl fetish. But that’s just me – I’m quite socially conservative when it comes to these things and it’s, you know, school.

      In the Oxfordshire case, I strongly suspect that someone somewhere said, re the miffed boys, ‘well they can wear skirts’ with a snigger, in a ‘let them eat cake’ kind of way, but that’s just me. I wasn’t there and neither were you. And we know what the MSM are like, don’t we brh? I mean you keep telling us. So just because they didn’t report the snigger doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, does it? If it was said with a straight face, on the other hand, I can only assume that senior management or their spokespersons in leafy Oxfordshire have less of a sense of humour than we have up here in not-England.

      So when you insert ‘so as to align them with the new tranny demographic’, that reasoning came from you. Not from anyone in Oxfordshire. Or in Oxford. Or in the Midlands, which is somewhere else entirely. (Again, I refer you to that wonderful invention called THE MAP.)

      I do remember a related story a year or two ago, though. I this case, the boys again only had the option of wearing trousers in hot weather and were similarly miffed. However, in this case a number of them arranged among themselves to arrive at school, en masse, wearing skirts. They did it as a laugh and as a protest against the perceived unfairness of the fact that the girls could wear cooler attire in summer and they couldn’t. Perhaps they were sent home – I don’t remember. It got lots of publicity as well, as you can image, and there were lots of laughs. Nobody mentioned ‘trannies’, though, because that would have been observably stupid.

      BTW, brh, this guy isn’t a ‘tranny’ either. Suggest it to him and my money’s on him.

      http://www.scotclans.com/tossing-the-caber-too-easy/

      • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 8:59 am #

        And I repeat, I’m not responding to any more of your silly posts about ‘Muzzies’, ‘trannies’ or ‘Jolly Old England’, where I do not live.

        And I’m of an age where ‘trannies’ will aways, sadly, mean transistor radios. Remember them? The people you are referring to are transsexuals. There are a lot fewer of them than there were transistor radios, so I would advise doing your blood pressure a favour and not worrying about them too much.

        I’d guess that pervasive public expression of hitherto quietly expressed sexual identity will turn out to be a self-limiting condition. So, rather like not bothering the doctor with a cold or a sore throat, I’d recommend a few drinks of nice hot tea and just thinking about something else until it passes. Because there will be real things to worry about then.

        • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:12 am #

          Don’t let the idiots get you down, O’Greeny.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 1:50 pm #

            Trying, Scratch 🙂

        • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 12:52 pm #

          Really? Many children express gender confusion at some point. Best ignored, right? But now more and more idiot mothers rush out to buy whole new wardrobes for their ambiguous child, rejoicing exceedingly all the way. Points!

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 1:49 pm #

            “Many children express gender confusion at some point. Best ignored, right?”

            Best ignored by you, I’d say, Janos, since you are not the parent of one of those children.

            There are all sorts of idiot mothers and fathers around, sadly. You can give points to whomever you wish. I have no personal experience of having a sexually confused child in my care and nor do I personally know anyone who has. So I’ll mind my own business, thanks.

            I did work on a gender confirmation surgery book once and learned quite a bit, but I didn’t absorb any expertise from it, so I’ll leave you to discuss the topic with the other obsessives.

      • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 10:14 am #

        as you can *imagine*…

      • Tate June 6, 2018 at 11:16 am #

        GA, just because a middle-aged man likes the young ones, doesn’t make him a “pervie”. Look at Mohammed, for gosh sakes, he married a nine-year old! Married! I would imagine that a lot of your muzzie neighbors heartily approve of marrying child brides. They certainly see nothing wrong in the white slavery of young British girls. And if you tried to argue with some of them (not all) that Mohammed was a “pervie,” you wouldn’t get very far with that line of talk. In fact, you might receive a ‘Charlie Hebdoe’ type of visit.

        • Tate June 6, 2018 at 11:17 am #

          “[that] doesn’t make him a “pervie.”

        • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 12:23 pm #

          “GA, just because a middle-aged man likes the young ones, doesn’t make him a “pervie”.”

          For me that would depend how young they were, Tate. If you are into 13-year-old schoolgirls, I’m happy not to judge – I’ll leave any discussions on the matter to yourself and Mrs T, and any daughters you may have. None of my business.

          “I would imagine that a lot of your muzzie neighbors heartily approve of marrying child brides. ”

          I would imagine that you haven’t the slightest idea of what my Muslim (grow up, Tate) neighbours approve of.

          I think Berengaria was supposed to be nine when she was married off to Richard Coeur de Lion. I don’t take from that that all my non-Muslim neighbours would approve of the marriage of nine-year-olds. Even within royalty.

          And over here the noun is ‘a perv’.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 12:49 pm #

            Well it does depend on when the marriage was consummated. Mohammad married Aisha when she was six and consummated with her when she was nine.

            The Hindus declare the female body to be at its peak of attractiveness at age 16. Obviously a man pretending that a woman only becomes attractive when she becomes legal is absurd. And obviously there’s a big difference between 6 and 16, despite calling both attractions “pedophilia”. In the old days, 16 was not too young to marry. Not at all. But of course, they are not prepared to be wives in today’s world at that age. Back then, they were raised to be ready. And no family either back then or now wants to see some stranger come and ruin their daughter and then disappear.

          • Tate June 6, 2018 at 12:54 pm #

            It’s not perverted to have an appreciation of the budding female form, no matter one’s age. But it’s extremely stupid to act upon such an appreciation. Men who do this are what are called DFBs (Dick for brains). Of all the fools in the world, these men are the greatest fools.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 1:07 pm #

            Like I said, Tate, I don’t want to discuss your appreciation of pubescent girls. I’m not going there.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 1:13 pm #

            A preference for 16-year-olds is called ephebophilia (15-19-year olds), not paedophilia. A preference for 11-14-year-olds is called hebephilia.

            And I’m not getting drawn into a discussion about your sexual preferences or Tate’s, thanks. Have it with someone else. So to speak.

          • Tate June 6, 2018 at 1:53 pm #

            I wasn’t intending for it to develop into a discussion. And I don’t have a PREFERENCE for underage girls. I’m happily married for over 35 years to the same woman.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 4:07 pm #

            Tate

            The reference to preferences (hebephilia/ephepophilia) was in response to Janos and his complaint about such philias being subsumed under the term ‘paedophilia’, which, as I agreed, is inaccurate.

            I did not mean to suggest anything about your ‘preferences’. You were the one who indicated your ‘appreciation’ of pubescent girls (budding, as you put it), regardless of how long you’ve been married. As I said, not something I’d like to think about, thanks.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 4:47 pm #

            So you wouldn’t support a million young East Asian women refugees marching into Europe, wearing shorts to show off their lovely tanned legs?

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 5:50 pm #

            I don’t care who shows off their lovely tanned legs. I just don’t think 10 inches of lycra plus black tights whose crotch seam is visible is entirely suitable for the classroom.

            What they wear when they go out on a Saturday night is up to them.

            What they wear to school is nothing to do with me either – I’m only expressing a slightly flippant opinion that I liked it better in the 90s when school fashion was for trousers schoolkids didn’t need to be poured into and Doc Martens or similar. Practical, you might say, for getting on with what you’re at school for.

            And no mobile phones either – bliss, it was.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 12:55 pm #

        Where are you in regards to charging ministers and priests who preach against Homosexuality (as they must!) with Hate Crimes? It must be done! The two systems cannot coexist. Don’t kid yourself. And we will respond by charging Mullahs and Rabbis with the same – and then the shit will hit the fan indeed, eh?

        • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 1:42 pm #

          Homosexuality is not a ‘system’. It’s a biological reality and has been since time immemorial. Before there were libruls. (Have you been getting the BBC’s production of ‘Versailles’ over your way? It would make your eyes bleed.)

          I recall there was a charming gay Rabbi called Lionel Blue, who regaled BBC radio listeners on the Thought for the Day programme for 30 years. He was much loved, by Jewish and non-Jewish listeners alike. So one presumes he didn’t preach against homosexuality.

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/19/rabbi-lionel-blue-gay-liberal-thought-for-day-star-dies-86

          And he’s described as ‘the UK’s *first* openly gay rabbi, so one assumes there are many more, as there would be, statistically.

          Islamic men and women unfortunately don’t have the luxury of openness at this juncture, but hopefully their time will come.

          And then we can all stop wasting time and energy talking about such things and concentrate on things of some actual import.

          I have nothing more to say on the matter, thanks.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 2:18 pm #

            It sounds like you do support hate legislation against Christian minister and priests.

            I can’t imagine anything that matters more except for Race. So of course you don’t want to talk about it.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 4:15 pm #

            “It sounds like you do support hate legislation against Christian minister and priests.”

            Just as there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip, there also seems to be many a slip twixt utterance and its interpretation. A problem I will leave to you to resolve.

            Saying you don’t approve of homosexuality for religious reasons, even from the pulpit, is not construed as hate speech, as far as I’m aware.

            Suggesting to your flock that they should verbally abuse any gay people they meet on the way home would be, I presume.

        • Tate June 6, 2018 at 2:09 pm #

          Some people want to pretend that homosexuals don’t recruit from the straight ranks. Just like with race, they want to claim that it’s either/or. That race, for example, is strictly a cultural invention, that it can’t have a real core truth AND at the same time be a cultural construct.

          Similarly, they insist that homosexuality is an either/or proposition, that homosexuals are born, not made. What a subversive doctrine! Anyone can see the harm it’s already caused, and one can only shudder at the damage it will inflict on our culture going forward.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 2:19 pm #

            Yes, it’s how they reproduce – like Vampires making another one.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 2:20 pm #

            Shudder away, Tate, I’ve got better (or rather worse) things to worry about.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 4:16 pm #

            Janos, you really need to get out of that room.

          • Tate June 6, 2018 at 5:13 pm #

            There’s something very unwholesome & un-American about vampires. Gays & vampires have this natural affinity. They both have atavistic oral fixations. They are both always on the prowl for new enthusiasts for their sick twisted propensities. They both shun the daylight. They both have multiple “partners”. They both like to play dress-up, capes & suchlike garb. It’s obvious that vampirism is a metaphor for the gay culture.

            There’s nothing productive & wholesome about a vampire.

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 5:56 pm #

            “There’s nothing productive & wholesome about a vampire.”

            Tate, you do realise that vampires aren’t, you know, real…?

          • GreenAlba June 6, 2018 at 5:57 pm #

            And I don’t need a lecture on bats, thanks.

  59. janet June 5, 2018 at 8:01 pm #

    I think you’re corrupt, Little Jane.

    That is not a nice thing to say, brh, but it is a baseless accusation, your opinion, and has nothing to do with who I am.

    Trump wanted to spend $24 million of taxpayer money for two refrigerators. I am a very frugal conservative person. I would never spend more than ten million dollars for a refrigerator.

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    • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 8:51 pm #

      Your hatred for the President is astonishing.

      Where’s it come from?

      brh

      • janet June 5, 2018 at 9:09 pm #

        Disapproval of irresponsible use of taxpayer money is not hatred. My disapproval comes from applying my responsible fiscally conservative values to Trump’s behavior.

      • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:11 am #

        It’s just the flip side of her love for HRC.

      • malthuss June 6, 2018 at 8:49 pm #

        FILM Your Marxist Professors – FYMP facebook April 29 ·

        Resident Assistance training at UCONN requires you to take classes about white privilege and “smashing” white patriarchy
        It is MANDATORY that they select two of these courses for the training.

  60. Valevapor June 5, 2018 at 9:12 pm #

    I lived in southern Oregon for many years and traveled extensively around the region. I posit with absolute faith that those dwelling in the Pac NW, despite its geologic dangers, will fare far better in the coming techno-industrial contractions than those living in almost any other sector of this globe. James, your precious NE is utterly screwed by the simple tragic math of population density. Maybe not Maine, I suppose, but winters are far harsher than the temperate NW. There are yet recondite places there where a strong sense of community and connection to land still prevail. Yes, the bigger cities are gonna face the same woes as all of their ilk, but there is land and space and far fewer mongoloids. I will be returning to the Pac NW soon.

    • Cavepainter June 5, 2018 at 10:16 pm #

      You think? Oregon, especially its eastern part (considered by the 40% of those inhabiting the west side of the Cascade mountains — and only having arrived in the last 20 years — to be “high desert”) has been discovered by such as the Rainbow Family people and other such rag-tag spoor, so now they are pouring in bearing all the trappings of inner-city dysfunction with the most air-head misconceptions of “returning to nature”. Oh God!

    • Tate June 6, 2018 at 10:56 am #

      What do you mean by “mongoloids”?

      • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 7:25 pm #

        Maybe he meant mongreloids, or mixed race people. Or perhaps he meant Hispanics, who are both mixed And part Indian and thus related to the Mongoloid race.

  61. Cavepainter June 5, 2018 at 9:14 pm #

    Anyone have an answer as to why today (June 5, 2018, approximately 10:00 AM) at about 30,000′ above eastern Oregon six fighter jets were visible headed northwest in chevron formation flanking a larger lead plane, presumably of passenger type. That formation followed at a distance of about 10 miles four more fighter jets in a staggered formation. With such escort I presumed it to be a presidential flight.

  62. Tate June 5, 2018 at 9:24 pm #

    Ron Unz has posted his latest entry in his “American Pravda” series. Definitely worth a read. It’s about a book over twenty years old written by a former Soviet intelligence officer (Suvorov) who claims that Stalin was planning to invade Europe in 1939 before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa & preempted him by invading the Soviet Union. Ron read the book & was convinced it’s likely true of Stalin’s plans for the conquest of Europe in order to fulfill Lenin’s original goal.

    As with all his other pieces on the biased coverage of world events by the English-language news media, what Ron finds astonishing but by this point not surprising is that this theory is well-known & hotly-debated in all of the non-English-speaking world. In other words, our ‘responsible media’ elite have imposed an almost-total blackout on an important reinterpretation of WWII.

    • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 10:10 pm #

      New info coming out all the time about the Soviet Union.

      For example, its now known the Soviets had set up crematoria in at least 200 of their camps across Russia and Ukraine by 1938, years before the Nazis built theirs in Poland in 1942. In Spain during the Spanish Civil War they built 2 crematoria in NKVD detention camps. Now we know where the dead bodies of the liquidated went.

      also it turns out Gulag had their own special medical department to experiment on condemned prisoners and camp inmates, similar to the Nazis at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Their main task was to find a way to murder people without it being detected, also, on how little food you could feed a prisoner before he was worked to death. There were also mass experiments on the affect of arctic cold on the human body.

      any of this sound familiar?

      Its hard to believe there are persons on this site who identify themselves as Communists.

      brh

      • PeteAtomic June 5, 2018 at 10:42 pm #

        My family– the ones who hadn’t got to Saskatchewan or North Dakota– were put in cattle cars and shipped from farms around Odessa to Kazakhstan; of course, before all our properties, equipment, animals & livestock– were confiscated by the Soviet government.

        None of it exists today. It was either destroyed by the Soviets, or the Nazi invasion.

        Our only crime was that we were prosperous, and one of our family had been awarded by the Tsar.

        • BackRowHeckler June 5, 2018 at 11:44 pm #

          Glad yours made it out, Pete.

          That’s quite a story.

          brh

          • PeteAtomic June 6, 2018 at 3:54 pm #

            yeah, there are many similar ones out there that’s for sure.

            I’m sure people who have been able to escape from North Korea, for example, have some similar stories.

        • K-Dog June 6, 2018 at 10:49 am #

          No burning their crops to deprive the cities of food?

          • PeteAtomic June 6, 2018 at 3:53 pm #

            no, I don’t think they had time for any thing like that. The only way I’m alive today in the good ole USA is my family running away from barbed wire encircled detention camps the communists put them into.

      • malthuss June 5, 2018 at 11:21 pm #

        Evene the (((media))) cannot suppress all the truth.

      • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:09 am #

        And its equally hard to believe that your “analysis” here could be so utterly fatuous.

  63. Pucker June 5, 2018 at 10:29 pm #

    Is Collapse expressed as Randomness?

    50% of American marriages end in divorce. I wonder why the statistical probability of a successful American marriage is exactly the same as a flip of a coin? I wonder what law of nature determines that American marriage success is basically random? Why not 100% success? Or 100% failure? Or 80% success and 20% failure?

    • janet June 5, 2018 at 10:58 pm #

      Either everything is random, or everything is predestined. Either way you have no control.

    • Tate June 6, 2018 at 10:51 am #

      If one digs deeper, it’s not random.

    • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:07 am #

      The fact that it seems random is itself just a random result, with 100% either way of course being extreme outliers that do not exist naturally.

    • elysianfield June 6, 2018 at 11:14 am #

      ” I wonder what law of nature determines that American marriage success is basically random? Why not 100% success? Or 100% failure? Or 80% success and 20% failure?

      Puck,

      Culture

      Culture

      Culture

  64. Tate June 6, 2018 at 2:13 am #

    How has this not been banned by youtube?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8toW3eCN0Vg

    It’s hate speech according to Facebook:

    http://takimag.com/article/goin_ape_over_racism_david_cole#axzz5HcgU9ief

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  65. janet June 6, 2018 at 9:01 am #

    brh, we have witnessed the acid thrown in the face of American democracy and it is very, very Republican to steer the blame to Democrats, to the Deep State, to Hillary, to George Soros, to Robert Mueller, to witches, to the Philadelphia Eagles, to pardons and powers and aliens, etc, etc, but never, EVER to Donald J. Trump, AKA Escaped Research Monkey High on Cocaine.

    • Cavepainter June 6, 2018 at 9:53 am #

      This tit-for-tat is taking the public nowhere toward correcting the historical distortions that have been nurtured in the public mind by partisanship, splintering the nation into a bunch of unfounded hissy-fits. Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is no longer read to children by many parents because it has the word ‘nigger’ in it, yet without exposure to such works its impossible to reckon the difficulty of navigating societal reality and the political issues of the era before all the scholastic bridging provided by the human sciences — all having emerged since. Black Lives Matter and PC are roughly the equivalent today for damaging the prospect for Negros as was Jim Crow laws in yesteryears. Contemporary dramatizations of Negros of past eras by actors/actresses whose English is that of college graduates — not that of the broad range of period vernaculars and dialects — is a hideous misrepresentation of how difficult was social/cultural amalgamation of the time.

      • elysianfield June 6, 2018 at 11:16 am #

        “I has a Masters Degree…”

      • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 12:35 pm #

        I was once at a Science Fiction convention and was approached by a lovely young lady. Things quickly went south because she hated Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and wanted it banned. I tried to explain to her that the Negroes had triumphed in one of the stories, escaping their White tormentors by going to Mars. But she couldn’t get past the word, “nigger”. I tried to explain about colloquial usage, but she wasn’t having any, thank you. I mean if the novel is just going to be all omniscient narration, why even bother? Luckily a friend of hers came over and she made a point of not introducing me, so I made myself scarce.

        • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 1:44 pm #

          If liberals have their way, all “hate speech” will be banned. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be banned because of the term: Oompa Loompa.

          • capt spaulding June 6, 2018 at 9:02 pm #

            Liberals and Conservatives would both like to control how you act and what you say. That’s the whole thing about political correctness, sometimes referred to as friendly fascism. It’s just as bad as “Newspeak”. A pox on both their houses.

          • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 10:30 pm #

            > Liberals and Conservatives would both like to control how you act and what you say.

            While you’re fundamentally right, the reality is a false equivalence. If you have any doubts, just try to wear a MAGA hat on any random college campus. Try to wear the hat in any minority-dominated neighborhood.

            Now find the most conservative place you can think of and wear a Hillary “It’s Her Turn” T-Shirt. You will soon enough understand the difference. Incidentally, conservatives will likely come up to you and agree with you. “Yes it certainly is her turn. Her turn to go to JAIL!”

          • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 12:57 pm #

            “Now find the most conservative place you can think of and wear a Hillary “It’s Her Turn” T-Shirt. ”

            If you hadn’t said that and I saw someone wearing an “It’s her Turn” T-Shirt, I’d have presumed they were a Trump voter. But we’re more into irony over here. ‘It’s her turn’ is hardly an election slogan. It’s a hereditary monarchy slogan.

    • Ol' Scratch June 6, 2018 at 11:05 am #

      Well, you’re halfway there anyway, Lil’ J-Bot. Now if you could just let go of this Dems are a better alternative meme…

      Maybe this can help: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/05/102634/

  66. janet June 6, 2018 at 11:47 am #

    “This tit-for-tat is taking the public nowhere toward correcting the historical distortions that have been nurtured in the public mind by partisanship” — cavepainter

    It is taking the public to a more responsive government. It is taking back the government from a billionaire kleptocracy. It is taking the public to a government more reflective of the working class in all its diversity.

    Case in point: Democrats won a Missouri state Senate seat yesterday. That makes it their 42nd red-to-blue flip since the vulgar authoritarian Trump took office. And they did it in style: a 20+ point win in a district that backed both Trump in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

    The swing is significant given the seat’s previous Republican representative won re-election in 2016 by 20 percentage points. That’s a 40 point swing. Thank you, Mr. Trump!

    You can go on saying the real power is held by an invisible fictitious elite that is never named, TPTB. Have fun, cavepainter!

    Meanwhile we, especially women, are taking control in local, state, and federal races to institute more compassionate, inclusive, and responsive government, while you continue to concern yourself with fictions.

    • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 12:21 pm #

      @janet

      Translations for those who don’t speak libtard…

      billionaire kleptocracy: any Republican rule; any non-progressive-liberal or non-socialist ideology. Millionaire Democratic kleptocracies are OK (they represent the working class in all its diversity) . Top three richest Senators…

      John Kerry, D-Mass. Average net worth: $238,812,296
      Mark Warner, D-Va. Average net worth: $174,385,102
      Herb Kohl, D-Wis. Average net worth: $160,302,011

      working class in all its diversity: immigrants who vote democrat.

      authoritarian: any Republican rule; any non-progressive-liberal or non-socialist ideology.

      swing is significant: unqualified belief in our own liberal dogma, and in the same stats and analysis that predicted Trump had no chance of winning in 2016.

      compassionate, inclusive, and responsive government: redistributing wealth from from hard-working Americans to immigrants and minorities on welfare for their democratic votes.

    • Cavepainter June 6, 2018 at 2:01 pm #

      No Janet, the innate tension between the two (there’s only two) gender agendas is a dynamic programmed into the architecture of our psyche so that in response to circumstantial pressure one can “flex” into preeminence over the other as appropriate to manage crises or for avoidance of same. As history attests, flexing inappropriately leaves one society at disadvantage to advantage of another — not all things are equal in nature contrary to contention by cultural relativists. So,….certainly nature doesn’t work according to Utopian idealism. Neither matriarchy or patriarchy to exclusion of the other but, rather, a dynamic and ongoing tug-of-war out of which societal survival (or that of a family unit) might survive if the consensus flexes appropriately.

      • janet June 6, 2018 at 2:36 pm #

        “(there’s only two)” –cavepainter

        You have outed yourself as a cisgender AMAB binarist. There are dozens of sexual orientations on the gender spectrum. Have fun, cavepainter. Your gender, Trump’s gender, is having its 15 minutes of fame.

        An analysis of 2,475 Trump appointees shows the White House has named twice as many men as women to administration positions. This gender skew is both broad and deep: In no department do female appointees outnumber male appointees, and in some cases men outnumber women four or five to one. Moreover, men significantly outnumber women in low-level positions as well as in high-level ones, with Trump’s Cabinet currently composed of 19 men and five women. Overall, 33 percent of Trump’s appointees are women, compared to 47 percent of the national workforce and 43 percent of the 2 million workers across the executive branch.

        • Cavepainter June 6, 2018 at 5:21 pm #

          Again Janet, nature isn’t concerned about parity in numbers, On the matter of sexual alignment, you being a “bot”, aren’t qualified to offer opinion. Abstract political dictum about reverse engineering of nature’s plan, yes, but not on how “norms” are drawn regarding sexual roles and identity by societies/cultures for purpose of survival. “Norms” = consensus.

        • elysianfield June 6, 2018 at 7:58 pm #

          “You have outed yourself as a cisgender AMAB binarist”

          Yeah…me too…(I think)….

  67. Elrond Hubbard June 6, 2018 at 2:29 pm #

    America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization
    Forget retaliating against America; retaliate against something Trump cares about: his money.

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/5/17422492/sanction-trump-organization

    “Our trade partners are planning to respond to President Donald Trump’s imposition of new taxes on steel and aluminum imported from those countries by hitting back with tariffs of their own — attempting to inflict economic harm on American companies and mobilize political pressure on Trump to relent.

    “This is a fine idea. (It’s conventional for a reason.) But it does tend to founder on a few problems. One is that it’s simply not clear whether Trump cares about the welfare of American citizens or even thinks about the potential political ramifications in a normal way. …

    “When China wanted to get Trump to let the Chinese tech conglomerate ZTE off the hook for repeatedly violating sanctions against North Korea, it didn’t try to make concessions to the American people. It had a Chinese state-owned enterprise approve a huge loan to an Indonesian real estate project that will feature Trump-branded hotels, condos, and a golf course.

    “America’s democratic allies probably can’t (and certainly shouldn’t) bribe Trump and his family in this way, but they both can and should do the opposite: work together on a package of targeted sanctions narrowly designed to inflict pain specifically on the Trump Organization.”

    I could get behind this idea — we have little to lose and much to gain. If the USA can pass the Magnitsky Act to target Russia’s oligarchs, America’s own oligarchs can hardly complain when their abused trading partners do the same.

    • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 2:54 pm #

      @Elrond Hubbtard

      Yes, clearly USA’s trading partners are “abused”…

      1 China – $636 billion traded with a $375 billion deficit.
      2 Canada – $582 billion traded with an $18 billion deficit.
      3 Mexico – $557 billion traded with a $71 billion deficit.
      4 Japan – $204 billion traded with a $69 billion deficit.
      5 Germany – $171 billion traded with a $65 billion deficit.

      If any of our trading partners would like to reverse this “abuse”, by swapping our deficit for their surplus, I think the USA can arrange that.

      Meanwhile, Canada remains a NATO freeloader who relies on the USA for national security while spending the savings on social welfare (and then criticizing the USA for not doing the same).

      • PeteAtomic June 6, 2018 at 4:00 pm #

        wow, shot through the heart brother. Great post

      • Elrond Hubbard June 6, 2018 at 5:28 pm #

        Dude, I don’t have the time or energy to get into it with you about how balance of trade actually works. Suffice to say, Exscotticus, your answer indicates you don’t have a clue. So let me just point out two things:

        1. All those values are denominated in U.S. dollars. At least, so I surmise. (If you meant Australian $, I presume you’d have said so.)

        2. As JHK and many others ceaselessly point out, over and over again ad nauseam, the U.S. dollar is a fiat currency. That means it’s a paper promise, not redeemable in gold or in any other commodity of determinate value. Its value floats based on demand, i.e. based on the willingness of people and countries around the world to accept paper promises in return for the tangible goods and services they provide. Go that?

        So to use the China example, a $375 billion trade deficit means China got busy manufacturing and shipping stuff to the United States: furniture, TVs, can openers, and almost certainly the computer, phone, tablet or whatever you’re using to read this right this minute. In exchange for all that stuff, the Chinese accepted… paper promises. Three hundred and seventy-five billion of them, once everything nets out.

        When (I say when, not if) the U.S. is no longer capable of honouring those promises, some or all of the value of those three hundred and seventy-five billion pieces of paper will vanish into thin air. And you’ll still have all the stuff. Feeling exploited yet?

        • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 7:35 pm #

          @Elrond Hubbtard

          Putting aside your usual ad hominems, you’re trying to deflect from your original position, which is that the USA is somehow “abusing” its trading partners by asking for a correction to a trade imbalance that’s existed for over 40 years.

          Sorry but Trump was elected and the free lunch is over.

          No matter what metric you want to use, whether it’s by weight, by volume, or the value of said goods in any medium of exchange you care to name, the USA’s trading partners are exporting far more to the USA than they import.

          Therefore, the USA’s trading partners are benefiting far more from current trade arrangements. And if there’s a race to the bottom in a trade war, such that ALL trade is ended, it will hurt the USA’s trading partners more—precisely because of the imbalance.

          If any of the USA’s trading partners believe the current arrangement is unfair, they are free to end it—all of it.

          Finally, your idiotic statements about American debt ignore the fact that all nations have debt. China has staggering amounts of foreign debt, as does Canada. So don’t act like the USA is doing something that every other nation isn’t. The only difference is that if Canada defaults, it won’t have any semblance of a military to protect itself from its creditors. But at least Canada can brag to its new overlords how wonderful its social welfare system is. I’m sure they’ll be duly impressed.

          • Elrond Hubbard June 6, 2018 at 8:51 pm #

            Explain to me what I wrote that is ad hominem. Please note that observing you don’t have a clue is not ad hominem. It’s an evidence-based statement reflecting my view of the quality of your argument, not of yourself as an individual.

            Next, the USA isn’t asking for anything; it’s imposing tariffs unilaterally. Please use words with more care — people notice these things.

            Third: whose ‘free lunch’? You dismiss my statements as idiotic, but here’s what you say in response: “The USA’s trading partners are exporting far more to the USA than they import”. And this is bad for the USA how exactly?

            It is bad for U.S. workers, that’s for sure. But Donald Trump doesn’t give a shit about workers. He only said he did to get elected. For the U.S. as a whole, importing more than it exports is a bang-up deal, because the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. That means everyone else needs to get hold of U.S. dollars in order to do business with each other, whereas the U.S. faces no such constraint — it’s the currency issuer, and can create as many dollars as it feels like (i.e. ‘running the printing press’). Therefore the debt is a nothingburger. The real constraint is whether, or when, the U.S. feels ready to accept the consequences of blowing off its creditors. If Donald Trump weren’t an idiot, he would understand and appreciate this — blowing off people he owes money to is exactly how he has done business his entire life. He even bragged about exactly that during his campaign. Instead, what he’s doing demonstrates that he simply doesn’t have a clue either.

            All of this is why I consider your proclamation that “all nations have debt” to be missing the point. All nations do indeed have debt, but that’s a fact that constrains everyone except the USA. Google exorbitant privilege sometime, and ponder how to square your ‘free lunch’ with the fact that the U.S. remains cash-positive despite what is, on paper, a huge debt burden. (The hint is in the words ‘on paper’.) You can resist it all you want, but it’s a fact.

            Finally, there’s your snide reference to Canada’s military. Why should Canada fear an invasion? We have oceans on three sides of us, and you guys on the fourth. What’s more, like all your neighbours, we understand that the Monroe Doctrine applies to us. The USA would no more tolerate another country invading Canada than it tolerated Cuba doing business with the Soviet Union back in the day. History and geography have conspired to make Canada a military protectorate of the USA, and trust me on this, we understand that better than you do. And how are we supposed to stop you spending money on defending the entire hemisphere? You can’t even stop yourselves!

            Personally, I wish Canada did have a bigger military, and the ability to chart a course independent of the USA. I also wish I could fly, and make sweet love with Salma Hayek. In any case, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. But here’s the thing: to do what it’s doing, the Trump administration is citing a national-security justification for tariffs that in Canada’s case in particular is clearly horseshit. And your nyah-nyahing about our military simply demonstrates what horseshit it is.

          • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 9:38 pm #

            > Next, the USA isn’t asking for anything; it’s imposing tariffs unilaterally. Please use words with more care — people notice these things.

            Wow you are so dumb. To quote a wise man: “Please note that observing you don’t have a clue is not ad hominem.”

            Trump’s tariffs are a response to the practice of dumping. The tariffs also allow Trump to negotiate new trade deals from a position of strength. And since Trump is a billionaire and you’re not, I think he knows more about negotiating than you do.

            > And this is bad for the USA how exactly?

            Honestly if you have to ask, you’ll never know.

            > All nations do indeed have debt, but that’s a fact that constrains everyone except the USA

            Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 90%. You call that constraint? Canada continues to circle the debt hole trying to keep their bankrupt version of liberalism alive. But I guess that influx of Haitian immigrants is really putting the zap on Canada’s already overwhelmed social services.

            Don’t think the USA hasn’t noticed Canada’s sudden change of heart with regard to immigrants. The usual kumbaya rhetoric has been really subdued if not outright reversed these past few years as Canada finally gets a taste of what the USA has been going through for decades. I don’t think most Canadians want Canada to become New Haiti. But feel free to correct me. After all, you’re the authority on everything.

            > we understand that the Monroe Doctrine applies to us

            Canada is hardly a USA vassal state.
            Americans love Canada.
            Canada’s worst enemies are libtards from within. Know anyone like that?

          • Tate June 6, 2018 at 9:54 pm #

            When you owe the bank ten million dollars, you have a problem. When you owe the bank 100 million dollars, the bank has a problem.

            All of these exporting countries that run chronic trade surpluses with the U.S. indeed do have a problem. They have been engaged in cheap vendor financing for decades to sell us their products. The international fiat monetary system is a giant Ponzi that will implode some day.

        • malthuss June 7, 2018 at 1:35 pm #

          Suffice to say, Exscotticus, your answer indicates you don’t have a clue.
          Ad h……[fill it in].

  68. janet June 6, 2018 at 2:43 pm #

    To quote George W. Bush: “This sucker could go down.”

    The list of products that Mexican is imposing tariffs specifically includes Tennessee whiskey, as well as bourbon.

    The threat of retaliatory tariffs by US trading partners is a major reason that the US Chamber of Commerce says that 2.6 million jobs are threatened by the Trump administration’s hardline stance on imports.

    According to a survey of US CEOs, many are scaling back their hiring and spending plans due to fears of a trade war.

    How does crashing the economy benefit the deplorables who voted for Trump?

    • Exscotticus June 6, 2018 at 3:04 pm #

      Irony: when liberals cite pro-business anti-union lobbyists like the US Chamber of Commerce to make a point.

      The USCC has never met a pro business law they didn’t like. Had they existed during slavery, they would have argued that the end of slavery was bad for business.

      Libtards have been doing amazing mental gymnastics to defy any and all Trump policies. My favorite is their rousing defense of MS-13 animals.

      Ode to MS-13, by Nancy Pelosi

      When you bite your bottom lip I wanna do back flips
      Kiss your belly button
      and show you some… good lovin’
      It wouldn’t matter if we got arrested
      Our love is time proven and perfected
      I like it when you show me
      The endurance of a tantric yogi
      You got your chocolate in my peanut butter
      Spreading love with your eyelash flutter

      • Tate June 6, 2018 at 3:24 pm #

        Well said, Exscotticus.

      • janet June 6, 2018 at 3:35 pm #

        I salute Trump for letting Alice Marie Johnson out of jail. I understand Trump intends to free a whole passle of prisoners.

        This is good, compassionate behavior. I support Trump freeing the prisoners. We need to reduce our prison population.

        Besides, Alice Marie Johnson has already served 21 years of a life sentence. She was convicted on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine and attempted possession of cocaine. Both nonviolent charges… if she was even guilty. No white person would have gotten a life sentence for “attempted possession.”

      • 100th Avatar June 6, 2018 at 3:37 pm #

        For brevity’s sake, you can address your replies to the one-and-the-same WPAJanetElrond.

        • janet June 6, 2018 at 4:13 pm #

          Wait, isn’t Elrond a man? Who is WPA? Who are you? The 100th monkey? Don’t mind me. I’m in a West Coast state of mind.

          Women are on the move. In California, Young Kim — the first Korean-American Republican woman to become a state lawmaker there is on the move.

          In South Dakota, Republican Rep. Kristi Noem won the primary and is now likely to become the state’s first female governor. She is on the move.

          In Iowa, Democrats Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer could become the state’s first female House members. They are on the move.

          And in New Mexico, Democrat Deb Haaland’s win puts her on track to become the nation’s first Native American congresswoman. She is moving up.

          • Cavepainter June 6, 2018 at 8:20 pm #

            Oh wait Janet, the triumph is not yet realized; they remain sexually bi-nary. Too soon to build the triumphal arch.

          • janet June 7, 2018 at 10:28 am #

            The solid footings and foundation are being built, by all genders, as we speak.

  69. janet June 6, 2018 at 4:31 pm #

    A new study in the journal Nature, published last month, has put a price tag on global warming. The study concludes that it will cost about $20 trillion less to work toward mitigating global warming ahead of time—for example, by providing incentives to sell electric cars and solar installations—than it will to adapt to the effects of global warming later.

    The study modeled the impact of historical temperature changes on GDP in 165 countries from 1960 to 2010, and extrapolated the results out to 2100, and found that the more temperature changes can be limited, the greater the economic benefits will be.

    If your president believes global warming is a hoax, all bets are off. You will pay dearly out of your wallet. The cost of a GOP presidency.

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    • Epicur June 7, 2018 at 11:50 am #

      “CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance –against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred.

      Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven –a judgment that would be entirely conclusive is Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.”

      Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  70. janet June 6, 2018 at 4:40 pm #

    Here is a prisoner, a veteran, Trump should pardon immediately.

    Reality Leigh Winner is a whistleblower who has been jailed without bail since June 3, 2017 for helping expose Russian hacking efforts leading up to the 2016 US election.

    Charged under the Espionage Act for sending a classified document to the media, she faces 10 years in prison. She is the first victim of the Trump Administration’s “war on leakers.”

    Her trial is expect to begin late 2018 or early 2019 in Augusta, Georgia. Please donate to her defense, write her a letter, and sign the petition!

    https://standwithreality.org

    • capt spaulding June 6, 2018 at 9:09 pm #

      Anybody named Reality Winner should be convicted just for having a name like that.

  71. FincaInTheMountains June 6, 2018 at 4:54 pm #

    1991-1999-2018

    Today I will try to answer Sophia’s questions, but there are circumstances that I want to present in a separate post so that you can digest this information before I describe the subtleties of the midterm elections in the United States, on which really this time war and peace depend on. In any case, it took me a day to digest this information.

    The fact is that the flu has obviously affected my eyes (something like conjunctivitis) and yesterday I was forced to go to the doctor, whom I met back in 1991. I called his home phone and it looked like he was really glad to hear me, because he arranged for me a VIP visit, where I was surrounded by millionaires, and possibly even billionaires.

    On the walls of the waiting room, in the surrounding of engravings of Rembrandt and Picasso, hung a few fairly large TV sets, through which were broadcasts for housewives, which I normally do not watch, as usually I try to watch something more intelligent.

    And oh boy, was I wrong!

    One of the TVs had the Whoopi Goldberg’s show, who is a fanatical supporter of Hillary Clinton. Fanatical to put it mildly.

    So, Whoopi Goldberg invited to her talk show Newt Gingrich, who was the main organizer of the so-called republican revolution of 1994, when Republicans won 54 seats in the House of Representatives and 8 seats in the Senate after the 1992 elections.

    And on the next TV, there was a soundless transmission on which was shown how George Bush Sr. vomits on the Japanese premiere, vomit which played a part in Bill Clinton’s incredible victory in 1992. Up to the point that knowledgeable people said that Bush Sr. was poisoned.

    And then came the chronicle – Russia of the 90s, the shooting of the Moscow’s White House, MMM pyramid scheme, Jeffrey Sachs and Chubais, the laughing Bill Clinton next to Yeltsin, the bombing of Belgrade, Khattab and Yeltsin in Beijing, reminding Clinton about Russia’s nuclear triad.

    And then – the nuclear mushroom, short and savory.

    And down at the bottom the running line about a record Republican turnout in the primaries in 8 states.

    In my opinion, the meaning of this show was that Hillary Clinton removed Bush the Elder from power, who led America to victory in the Cold War (III World War), then he lost his plan for Russia’s integration into the world capitalist economy and, during the eight years of her husband’s presidency, arranged for the damned 1990s, which turned Russia into an enemy of America, much more dangerous than the USSR ever was.

    And at the same time, Gingrich broadcasted the inevitable victory of the Republican Party in midterm elections in connection with the economic successes of the United States, in particular the lowest black unemployment since 1968, to which one Goldberg woman with foam at her mouth began to prove that it was Obama’s credit, not Trump. And some guy next to me, about 75 years of age and apparently of a billionaire kind, first began to demand that they turn on the sound on the second TV set, and then grabbed the phone and began to give orders to sell one and a half million shares of something.

    And then I was called to the doctor.

    https://s00.yaplakal.com/pics/pics_preview/4/8/2/6030284.jpg

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eiIMZQWkdQ

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZw7g9jUbK4

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhkqz7JE4E

  72. Tate June 6, 2018 at 4:55 pm #

    Ho-hum. Just another day in the good ole USSA, where we now learn of the tender concerns of Melinda Gates for the welfare of women & minority applicants for venture capital funds. She says she wants to set up a VC fund for women & minorities & intentionally “over-index” for them. Over-index is business jargon for Affirmative Action in the business arena.

    It’s okay in the current year to discriminate against white hetero males IOW. Haha. Best wishes wasting Bill’s Windows $$$ for her pets.

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/05/melinda-gates-bashes-white-guys-says-shell-discriminate/

    • malthuss June 6, 2018 at 5:19 pm #

      She went to africa and ‘had to do something.’

    • Tate June 6, 2018 at 11:36 pm #

      And of course, women entrepreneurs are so discriminated against. Just look at poor Elizabeth Holmes — the female Steve Jobs don’t laugh she wore the black turtlenecks — with her change-the-world blood testing system. Couldn’t get a dime in venture capital…

      oh, well, the laugh’s on her backers.

  73. Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 5:08 pm #

    Whoever you are, whatever you believe, and whatever you’ve done, you need to know about the dancing Black Dermatologist. One women went in for a tummy tuck and came out brain dead. Beware moor. Beware the bog. Beware the dark. Beware the Black.

    https://www.amren.com/news/2018/06/dermatologist-videos-herself-singing-and-dancing-during-surgery/

    • malthuss June 6, 2018 at 5:20 pm #

      You mentioned ISHKON…please buy and read :’Monkey on a Stick.’

    • Tate June 6, 2018 at 9:26 pm #

      I’ve heard but don’t know this for a fact that most blacks will not go to see black doctors. They don’t trust their own with life-or-death matters, they know them too well.

      Only white people are so stupid & trusting that they will consult with a black physician, as a general rule.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 10:30 pm #

        I don’t know but I’ve been told,
        Air Force Wings are made of gold.
        I don’t know but it’s been said,
        Navy Wings are made of lead.

        • elysianfield June 7, 2018 at 10:42 am #

          I don’t know, but I’ve been told,
          Eskimo c*** is mighty cold….

      • Tate June 7, 2018 at 1:51 am #

        I wouldn’t put too much faith in that doggerel. Only the Navy & Corps pilots land on the carriers — at night.

        There are only four kinds of knowledge: 1. what we know from direct experience 2. what we know from authority 3. what we can deduce 4. what we know from the heart. They’re not mutually exclusive. I’d have to exclude no. 1 from my knowledge of black habits of seeking medical advice.

      • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 1:00 pm #

        “I’ve heard but don’t know this for a fact…”

        I don’t think that’s stopped many blog comments 🙂 .

        • Tate June 7, 2018 at 1:28 pm #

          No, but that one’s gonna really increase the confidence level, LOL. Have you seen the video?

  74. Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 5:16 pm #

    Miss America Pageant falls to the Darkness. The contestants will no longer strut in bikinis or twirl in gowns – it’s all about how smart and social aware they are from now on. Oh the pain. The best part was when they used to ask them questions and watching them try to answer. If they had only had combined that with wearing bikinis….

    No doubt they will soon be wearing burquas. But in the meantime, the pageant will prove to be a fantastic flop and financial disaster. That will be fun too: Watching their Denouement. Oh the Lulz!

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    • malthuss June 6, 2018 at 8:57 pm #

      Long ago, the Ms Universe pageant was on TV.
      Ms Philippines won.
      My mom said, ‘she didnt deserve it, it must be some form of diplomacy.’

      Funny–that was before AA was much in force.

      • Tate June 6, 2018 at 9:36 pm #

        Filipinos are not very attractive as a general rule. That’s true for most Southeast Asians. The Northeast Asians including the Chinese can be very attractive.

        The African wimmins can also be attractive but you have to use a very different standard of beauty.

        The highest standard of beauty throughout the world bar none are the Nordics — long-legged & blonde & blue-eyed.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX-0X603CEI

        • elysianfield June 7, 2018 at 10:44 am #

          Tate,

          Culture

          Culture

          Culture

          • Tate June 7, 2018 at 5:28 pm #

            But I don’t know what you mean, EF when you say culture, culture, culture. What I always say is that culture is both pervasive & persistent. It would take such a radical reorganization of society to homogenize it that no one in his right mind would want to attempt it. What would it take? I think it would take the complete & total destruction of the family, more complete than Chairman Mao ever tried.

            If you’re saying that I’m influenced by my culture to prefer tall leggy Norwegians, then you’d be correct. But then how do you explain the preference among the darker races for tall leggy Norwegians?

          • elysianfield June 7, 2018 at 6:25 pm #

            “If you’re saying that I’m influenced by my culture to prefer tall leggy Norwegians, then you’d be correct”

            Tate,
            The culture in which you were raised reflected the then current concept of beauty, which women of that period emulated. Different cultures can see beauty in others but their standards reflect their own tastes on a more-absolute level.

            I reached puberty overseas…on Okinawa…. Don’t ask….

        • malthuss June 7, 2018 at 1:33 pm #

          Lean, with high IQs.

          The noted WSJ had an article, Why are Finnish students [or ‘kids’] so smart?

          WSJ, its their race.

    • elysianfield June 7, 2018 at 10:56 am #

      Janos,
      The contestants do not have to dress up for the talent competition….

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ohc28G41ys

  75. janet June 6, 2018 at 5:17 pm #

    Everyone constantly talks about this presidency as ‘unique’, ‘unconventional’; one that drains swamps, builds walls and praises Nazis. This is, too be sure, a different kind of presidency, one that defies decency and political ‘norms’ and one, and this is the important one, that cons people out of everything they used to trust; the FBI (w/caveats), the CIA (w/caveats), the Justice Department.

    Instead they substitute gibberish about illegal immigrants, the Paris Accords, the Iran Deal, and ‘Spygate’, knowing that they can ‘shoot the American electorate in the face on 5th Ave.’ and get re-elected by a landslide.

    They truly hope they can get away with it and, thus far, they have, but only because the Republican Congress has been looking for the way out of the cowardly maze they have made for themselves instead of facing down the monster they created. They are shooting craps while babies are ripped from their mothers arms at the Border and back slapping all around as oil wells sprout around Chaco Canyon, eating the spirit, throwing salt on history.

    Evidence abounds regarding corruption, collusion with Russia, and the subsequent cover-up and obstruction of justice. It is now an end game of diversion, division, and deception by everyone shielding Trump. To try and get some love from culprits who have plead guilty, Trump is throwing pardons around like candy from a Mardi Gras float. None of this in the end will spare him. He has dined with snakes never realizing he was dessert.

  76. Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 5:35 pm #

    https://www.rt.com/uk/428749-trans-lgbt-nhs-increase-gender/

    NHS Tranny Chief says to expect a huge increase in trannies. Maybe up to 3% of the population in the future. It’s a good (add italics) thing!

    All industries, be they NGO or GO, desire to grow, just like a cancer. Whether they need to grow or even deserve to exist isn’t even a question anymore. This could be even bigger than the Diversity industry.

    All of this just shows that the Centre has not held and that the Falcon can no longer hear the Falconer as Yeats put it.

    • sophia June 6, 2018 at 10:27 pm #

      Many years back I heard the saying, whose exact words I have forgotten but to the effect that “All generations decry the folly of prior eras, but remain blind to their own.” I found that intriguing and began a mental exploration to not be blind to what follies of my time would make future generations aghast. It went slowly at first but picked up speed and in a way is an exercise in horror. It is indeed rather Buddhistic in nature, like searching the meaning of emptiness or trying to understand the self. That is, Buddhism at its best is largely about seeing through illusions. It is kind of pitiless like the Sphinx.

      The horror of the Inquisition, the burnings at the stake, the lobotomies, the persecution of voices of reason in this era and that – if only we could somehow halt the idiocy that thinks things are different this time. That there is such a thing as modern.

      And even at my modest age I begin to see patters that a younger person cannot see, although a really good professor, someone like Jordan Peterson, could probably get them to see it.

      I see on youtube these young university agitators with their behaviors that are so full of hatred and the urge to power over – full of passionate intensity and I see that they are just insertable cogs that do the same work in different eras and situations.

      I watch the slow motion nightmare and there is nothing one can say.

      I must be The Fool On The Hill.

      • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 1:06 am #

        The best fruit of this Wisdom is Humility, to know that we are a deeply fallen species. To know one is fallen doesn’t automatically cure it, but it is a first step perhaps, if it can be “remembered” often, daily, hourly, moment to moment as in “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner” or some such thing.

        • janet June 7, 2018 at 10:23 am #

          We are not sinners. We are not fallen. We are just asleep to our essential nature: sat-chit-ananda. Instead of having some kind of innate fatal flaw, all we need do is awaken to who we innately are.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 12:51 pm #

            Sin is exactly just this forgetting, but focused on the action. To do is to be after all. And to be is to do. If you can’t see that the arrow of causality points in both directions, you are still partially asleep and partially a sinner.

            Here’s a mediation: do be do be do be do be…. Now reverse it and start with be: be do be do be do be do…. See the difference? Now imagine the above in a circle and realize you can start with either one, with no beginning and no end as long as you are on the plane of the circle.

            The Indo-Aryan religion focus on being. The Semitic religions, including Christianity, focus on doing. But the former acknowledges sin. And the latter acknowledges being.

        • sophia June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm #

          Hmm, but do you think we are fallen, and if so, what can that mean?

  77. janet June 6, 2018 at 6:18 pm #

    “If you are denying a charge of alienage, the burden is on you to prove you’re not an alien,” Freehold Borough immigration attorney John Leschak said.

    But problems for citizens can still arise:

    A Colorado man alleges in a lawsuit that he was wrongly detained by ICE after an agent said he “didn’t look like (he) was born” there. According to news reports, ICE officials insisted the man told them he lacked legal status.

    A naturalized citizen in New York was put into deportation proceedings after serving a prison sentence on drug charges. In news accounts, he said ICE officers never thoroughly investigated his proof of citizenship, obtained when his parents naturalized from Jamaica.

    A Los Angeles man was put into detention for months after police officers mistakenly wrote that he was born in Mexico, according to a civil lawsuit.

    As he was leaving jail on a drunken driving charge, a Texas man said he was born in Mexico but became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was then held on an ICE detainer while agents investigated.
    Trump’s new enforcement measures are blurring the lines between lawfully detaining immigrants and unlawfully detaining citizens and legal residents.

  78. Elrond Hubbard June 6, 2018 at 9:00 pm #

    ‘Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?’ Trump uses War of 1812 to justify Canada as security threat
    Some men from Canada did burn down the presidential mansion in 1814, but they were all technically British

    http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/didnt-you-guys-burn-down-the-white-house-trump-uses-war-of-1812-to-justify-canada-as-security-threat

    “During a testy phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. president Donald Trump reportedly cited the War of 1812 in order to justify seeing Canada as a security threat.

    “‘Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?’ he told Trudeau, according to sources cited by CNN.”

    Yes. Yes we did.

    • janet June 6, 2018 at 9:08 pm #

      According to Walter B the USA armed forces invade every country with oil. What is Canada doing with our oil? Maybe Trump is setting up the the pretext for invading Canada to get the oil.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 6, 2018 at 10:32 pm #

      Want a rematch?

    • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 11:46 am #

      @Elrond Hubbtard

      > to justify Canada as security threat

      Canada is not a security threat, but its steel and aluminum exports to the USA are.

      Trump did not put tariffs on Canadian whiskey and moose meat. He very specifically put tariffs on steel and aluminum. These commodities are essential for national defense. It is in America’s national security interests—and the interests of all its allies, including Canada—to ensure that America’s steel and aluminum production remains viable if not vibrant.

      As you reside in a country that depends on others for its security, I understand why these concepts are difficult for you to grasp.

      • Elrond Hubbard June 7, 2018 at 1:34 pm #

        Exscotticus, you should try your hand at thriller writing. Page one: the USA faces annihilation at the hands of an international cartel of Islamic pope-abusers, yet strategic defense is threatened by a shortage of steel and aluminum — all because those pesky Canadians seem reluctant to give it up. If that particular plot thread isn’t wound up by page three, you risk seeing your readers laugh and walk away from the sheer implausibility.

        Here’s something I don’t say lightly: Janos and his ilk will see their white-supremacist ethno-state become a reality long, long before you see a Canadian government or economy unwilling to do business with the USA on steel, aluminum, cars, widgets, jackhammers or flimsy negligées. You think I’m not aware that my country relies on others for security? Dude, that just makes my point for me. If you want what we have, you all can damn well take it from us whether you pay us or not, and both of us know it. Therefore, the idea of U.S. being threatened by its reliance on Canadian steel and aluminum is a pitiful joke. You say both these things, yet somehow they don’t connect inside your head. So now I will say something ad hominem (yet evidence-supported): the longer you carry on like this, the more you show that you’re a cruel idiot and a bully.

        I’m done with you.

        • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 4:06 pm #

          @Elrond Hubbtard

          > all because those pesky Canadians seem reluctant to give it up

          This has nothing specifically to do with Canada. The tariffs apply to ALL steel and aluminum imports from ALL nations.

          Trump has the legal authority to exempt nations. That’s his leverage to negotiate better trade deals.

          Canada has every right to fight back and to retaliate with its own tariffs. But, as I have already explained, a race to the bottom will mean no trade at all, at which point Canada loses far more, commensurate with their trade surplus.

          At a time when Canada’s economy is already under stress from illegal Haitian and Nigerian immigrants (qurestion: is Canada going to rename itself New Haiti or New Nigeria?), I don’t think Canada wants to see who blinks first, and will agree to a more equitable trading arrangement. How ironic that liberals are attacking Trump for wanting equality…

          > Janos and his ilk

          Trying to paint USA conservatives with the same “deplorables” brush is what cost liberals the election. For you, anything to the right of libtard is neo-Nazi territory. Meanwhile, I’d wager that “Janos and his ilk” are far more open to civilized discourse and debate than the average liberal.

          > I’m done with you.

          Exactly my point. Janus is not shutting down debate; you are.

  79. Pucker June 6, 2018 at 10:31 pm #

    Jim Rogers is propagating the common sensical idea that our Congressmen should work and vote in their respective Congressional districts close to the people rather than rubbing shoulders with lobbyists in Washington DC.

    Is his website now blocked?

    http://www.GovAtHome.com

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  80. 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 8:47 am #

    Byung-Chul Han (university of Kunste, not Kunstler, Berlin)

    Han’s current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.

    In Fatigue Society (original German title: Die Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), Han characterizes today’s society as a pathological landscape of neuronal disorders such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality and burnout. He claims that they are not “infections” but “infarcts”, which are not caused by the negativity of people’s immunology, but by an excess of positivity.

    Others: This is central to Han’s most recent reflections. “The greater the similarity between people, the greater the production, this is the current logic. Capitalism needs all of us to be the same, including tourists. Neoliberalism would not work if people were different.” To recover our differences, Han suggests “returning to the inner animal, which doesn’t consume or communicate unfortunately. I don’t have concrete solutions. In the end the system might implode by itself… In whatever case, we are living in a radically conformist time… the world is at the limit of its capacities, perhaps it will short circuit and we will recover this inner animal.”

    • Tate June 7, 2018 at 10:13 am #

      Darkness, Darkness

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRLU-EvW-gM

    • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 10:17 am #

      I may be barking entirely up the wrong tree here (more than likely…) as I’m not sure what ‘negativity of immunology’ means exactly. Are we talking about the relationship between negative/positive outlook and physical/mental health?

      If so, I have been interested in this in the past. There seems to be a positive effect from a positive outlook when minor crises occur in people’s lives but a negative effect from a positive outlook when major crises occur. Pollyanna types cope well with mild problems but not with really difficult ones which shake the foundations of their overall positive approach to life.

      One might suggest that the very idea of The American Dream is setting people up for a fall.

      On the general topic of positivity, I enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich’s ‘Smile or Die: how positive thinking fooled America and the world’, which deals with everything from deluded financial traders in 2007/8 to people telling you to ‘think positive’ when you’ve got cancer (which Ehrenreich did – have cancer, I mean, not think positive).

      She reserves particular venom for arch-quack Deepak Chopra, who would tell cancer sufferers (who had eschewed standard treatments) the reason their cancer wasn’t disappearing was that they weren’t thinking sufficiently positively.

      Somewhat ironically, the co-founder of the Chopra Institute then proceeded to die of cancer. Oops.

      I also enjoyed Oliver Burkeman’s little book ‘The Antidote’, which is a surprisingly positive look at the usefulness of negativity (or just realism, perhaps) in approaching life’s vicissitudes, including the ‘OK, what’s the worst that could happen?’ approach (not taken by the Masters of the Universe in 2008, clearly). Having faced ‘the worst’ in you mind, you can then make a decision and get on with things. But if the worst really does happen, you’ll be better prepared mentally than the Pollyannas.

      I think Orlov made a similar point, that people who are mentally prepared for a collapse, regardless of their actual circumstances, will be more mentally resilient if/when it happens.

      • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 10:19 am #

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948078/

        “Optimism and immunity: Do positive thoughts always lead to positive effects?”

        Conclusion:

        “As in many topic areas within psychoneuroimmunology, links among optimism, immunity, and health remain to be clearly drawn.

        “However, it is clear that to the question of whether optimism is good or bad for immunity: The answer is ‘yes.” 🙂

      • beantownbill. June 7, 2018 at 12:10 pm #

        Life is what you make of it. When something bad happens to me, after the shock, if any, I automatically think about how I can get something positive from the negative situation, even if it’s just gaining a bit of knowledge. I learned this from my late cat, who shrugged off bad things and went on with his life without brooding about what already happened. BTW, cats are remarkable creatures we could learn a lot from.

        • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 1:09 pm #

          That’s the best kind of ‘positive thinking’, btb, making the best of any situation, not the silly idea that if you visualise something it will happen etc.

          And I agree cats are great. I miss mine. Although I have a friend who has two who says, cynically, that they only sit on your lap so that they know when you’ve gone cold 🙂 .

          They’re immeasurably cleverer than dogs, but less loyal. The same friend had one go missing for a year and it turned out it was going to the local taxi firm at night where they were feeding it. Then it must have been appropriated, but it eventually found its way home.

        • malthuss June 7, 2018 at 1:37 pm #

          Define, ‘You’….not so easy to do.
          And are all yous the same?

  81. janet June 7, 2018 at 10:32 am #

    Anybody named Reality Winner should be convicted just for having a name like that. –capt spaulding

    And not for having killed hundreds of enemy combatants? Click on the link below and see her innocent face.

    “Before she became the first person prosecuted by the Trump administration for leaking documents, Reality Leigh Winner received a military commendation for assisting in overseas airstrikes that killed hundreds of enemy combatants.

    Winner, an Air Force senior airman, was a linguist proficient in Farsi, Dari and Pashto, languages spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. She served with the 94th Intelligence Squadron, 707th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing, at Fort Meade, Md.”

    June 07, 2017
    By Johnny Edwards, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    https://www.ajc.com/news/national/air-force-commended-reality-winner-for-taking-out-enemy-combatants/XoEbupm6P318Eun9ZGOo1O/

  82. K-Dog June 7, 2018 at 11:17 am #

    We interrupt this regularly scheduled troll broadcast to bring you the following news bulletin. Real people with real stuff to say! You can get the whole interview here.

    Dark Green Mountain Survival Research Centre

    An excerpt:

    “The only reason I have anything to teach you is because fucked up shit happened. I fell through the cracks of our society. I got first hand, SHTF experience. Farmgal has had fucked up shit happen. Most likely, more than me. She didn’t become a food expert because its nice to be nice and gardening makes happy tie died rainbows. I’ll only share one line from her intimately shared response.

    “I remember my mother sitting at the table crying because she was so happy that she found a case of kidney beans that she had bought and tucked behind the stairs and she had found them. It meant protein for the table.. That was the year I added in a small snare trap line of my own to look after..”

    There are many kinds of minds. Even many kinds of West Coast minds. Too often we are trapped in our own minds. I want to get into a:

    Lets not be toast kind of mind.

    • Tate June 7, 2018 at 11:47 am #

      There’s a lot still to learn about lectins, found in high concentrations in legumes such as kidney beans, but it’s established that they compromise the immune system. Lectins are known ‘anti-nutrients.’

      • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 1:22 pm #

        Is that not the toxin that you boil out?

        I used to follow the instruction that, after you soaked the beans, you should boil them vigorously for 10 minutes before continuing to boil for the rest of the time at a normal rate (although boiling is boiling, surely?). Or do them in the pressure cooker.

        Anyway, decades ago before I read that they contained a toxin, I used to soak them then nibble some of them uncooked because they tasted lovely and nutty, like sprouting chickpeas. So in a just world I should have been made ill. But I do tend to have a resilient metabolism 🙂 .

        • Tate June 7, 2018 at 1:34 pm #

          Right, you can boil most of them out. Loren Cordain at Colorado State wrote the book, the Paleo Diet, and in it claims they compromise the immune system, I forget exactly how but it has to do with penetrating the gut wall. That was over ten years ago. I’m sure with the pace of research, lots more is known today.

          • malthuss June 7, 2018 at 1:41 pm #

            Foods often contain toxins.
            Beans wont kill you [except the poisonous ones].
            Paleo is another ‘thing for sale.’
            Cereals also have leptins, yes?

          • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 3:23 pm #

            OK, thanks. Our current love affair is with chickpeas, so I hope they’re OK.

          • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 3:47 pm #

            That was meant for Tate… sorry, should have said.

  83. janet June 7, 2018 at 12:09 pm #

    “Libtards have been doing amazing mental gymnastics to defy any and all Trump policies. My favorite is their rousing defense of MS-13 animals.” –Exscotticus

    Nobody is defending MS-13. To point out Trump’s lies about MS-13 is not to defend MS-13. Trump blames MS-13 on former President Obama, when he should have pointed the finger at Ronald Reagan. The MS13 and Barrio 18 street gangs were established in the 1980s in Los Angeles.

    “It is a serious problem and we never did anything about it, and now we’re doing something about it,” President Trump told Fox News.

    This is false. In addition to several FBI operations, local police forces and attorneys from counties across the states of Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and California carried out several law enforcement actions against MS13 members during the previous decade.

    In a tweet, Trump said that “we are removing [gang members] fast.” Yet there is no data to support this claim.

    Trump says sanctuary cities are more hospitable to the MS13, and the gang can operate freely in them. This is false. There is no evidence that the “sanctuary” status of certain cities — those that refuse to allow local police to assist ICE in locating and deporting undocumented migrants — has any effect on their crime rates. Evidence indicates that, as in much of the United States, crime rates in sanctuary cities have been decreasing for years. In fact, some studies suggest that crime indicators are actually lower in migrant communities.

    Attorney General Sessions compared the MS13 to Colombian cartels. This is false. In contrast to the old Colombian cartels, their modern Mexican counterparts or intermediary criminal organizations, neither the MS13 nor Barrio 18 have ever had the economic or political power to obtain the protection needed to run large-scale drug trafficking activities in Central America.

    Both Trump and Sessions resorted to repeating misinformation that other officials — including Central American presidents, ministers and police chiefs — have used to justify heavy-handed anti-gang policies, which have only helped the MS13 and Barrio 18 to become more sophisticated as their members have been stuffed into prisons. A law enforcement solution alone is adequate to solve this problem.

    Trump is making false statements about MS13. What he is trying to do, since his ride down the escalator, is to criminalize migration and the Latino community in the United States.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 12:45 pm #

      Yeah let’s not put them in jail since that only helps them. False statements? Why don’t you teach us about them then? Just social athletic clubs I assume?

    • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 4:16 pm #

      @janet

      > Nobody is defending MS-13

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BTkMt_RL68

  84. janet June 7, 2018 at 1:28 pm #

    “Yeah let’s not put them in jail since that only helps them.” –janos

    Trump promised to decimate MS-13 if we would only elect him president. He said he alone could get the job done. He said he would eradicate MS-13 “very soon.” He promised to “restore law and order” for all Americans. He said we already have MS-13 members identified, we know where they are, and we know what they do. After creating fear, he asked for our votes. Just elect me, he said.

    But after electing him president and watching him play golf for 500 days, MS-13 is still not decimated.

    Now Trump is continuing to use MS-13 in campaign speeches, using MS-13 to vilify Pelosi and the Democrats, falsely calling them “lovers of MS-13″… even though he was the one who made promises to eradicate MS-13 members and has not done so.

    MS-13 is useful to Trump in his campaign appearances. Presumably Trump will eliminate MS-13 after he is re-elected in the 2020 election, if people are stupid enough to vote for him again.

    Instead of saying we know where they are and I will eradicate them “very soon,” we’ll start hearing excuses like “these things take time.” He still needs them to create fear and to continue to promise to “restore law and order” for all Americans. 500 days of failure. He will not eradicate MS13.

    Pelosi did not endorse the MS-13. She criticized Trump’s rhetoric, saying, “Calling people animals is not a good thing.”

    Pelosi responded on Twitter: “Tough talk from a man separating innocent children from their parents.”

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  85. Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 2:11 pm #

    American Science is being destroyed by the Lysenkoists and their URM running dog lackeys. URM – Under Represented Minority. Down with the URMS!

    https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-identity-politics-harming-sciences-15826.html

    • janet June 7, 2018 at 3:30 pm #

      janos, do you attend the University of Hate Whitey? URM in STEM may save your life one day. Unless your racism condemns you first.

      • janet June 7, 2018 at 3:36 pm #

        “Down with the URMS!” –janos

        URMs in STEM save white lives. Your opposition condemns whites.

    • janet June 7, 2018 at 3:57 pm #

      It is time that steps are taken to get African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans to succeed in STEM majors, graduate with STEM degrees, and take their places in/or at workplaces where their expertise is needed.

      Most of these students who enter undergraduate STEM majors have a desire to be successful. Higher education needs professors and mentors who can and are willing to keep these students motivated. Most have worked hard, and have overcome many odds in order to get to college.

      Up with URMs!

      • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 4:47 pm #

        @janet

        Translations for those who don’t speak libtard…

        It is time that steps are taken to get African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans to succeed in STEM

        We’ve been taxing hard-working white families for decades trying to raise minority test scores. But it’s been a total abject failure. Our new strategy is not to raise the bottom but to lower the top. We will dumb down STEM for minorities just as we have dumbed down all other aspects of education. We will impose racioethnic quotas on all STEM admissions to ensure that less qualified minorities succeed. We will also replace White and Asian STEM professors and leaders by adding “diversity” requirements. We’ll replace academic merit with racioethnic merit. Your race becomes your passport to a better future!

        See also: https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-identity-politics-harming-sciences-15826.html

        • janet June 7, 2018 at 5:27 pm #

          Libtard is a portmanteu of “liberal” and “retard”. From a reading of the comments section, it can be safely said that no one on CFN is a libtard.

          • janet June 7, 2018 at 5:28 pm #

            ^portmanteau^

      • sophia June 7, 2018 at 6:03 pm #

        How much coddling do these groups require? Isn’t it at some point critical that everyone be allowed to compete for spots in these courses? If you insist on admission by numbers, then of course American achievement will be dumbed down. This is truly despicable.
        There is a place for removing barriers – but to erect new barriers? This is why you lefties are such utter hypocrites.

        • Exscotticus June 8, 2018 at 12:40 am #

          The only difference between Janet and white supremacists is that they’re honest about their racism, and she hides hers behind delusions of social justice.

          She claims that if whites or males were suddenly in the minority, she would be helping them. Meanwhile, whites are a minority in Asia and Africa. Let’s hear her publicly advocate for race-based policies that favor whites in those continents. Women make up the vast overwhelming majority of librarians. Yet we don’t hear Janet arguing that we need male quotas in the library sciences. Blacks dominate many sports. Again—not a peep from Janet. She doesn’t dare say anything that might make waves with her Democratic party coffee klatch.

  86. janet June 7, 2018 at 4:53 pm #

    URMs save white lives. We need more URMs in STEM. When whites become a minority, we will need more whites in STEM. Right now whites are 60% of the population and 95% of medical students. The few minorities who have made it into STEM careers have advanced knowledge and made discoveries which save white lives.

    Charles Drew, African-American physician, surgeon and medical researcher known as the inventor of the blood bank.

    Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, African American physician who performed the first prototype open-heart surgery.

    Ernest Everett Just, African American biologist and author known for his work on egg fertilization and the structure of the cell.

    Garrett Morgan, African American inventor who made both the first traffic signal invention and the first patented gas mask.

    George Washington Carver, American scientist and inventor and an extraordinary explorer and innovator of agricultural science.

    James West, African-American inventor who developed the mic in the 1960s; holds 47 U.S. and more than 200 foreign patents on microphones and techniques for making polymer foil-electrets.

    Percy Lavon Julian, African American researcher known for being a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants.

  87. janet June 7, 2018 at 4:56 pm #

    Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, says people in the porn business are not credible. Trump has appeared in three porn videos. Ipso facto, Trump is not credible.

  88. janet June 7, 2018 at 5:21 pm #

    I’m in a West Coast state of mind. West Coast Democrats prevailed in California’s open primary system. Tuesday was a banner night for female candidates everywhere, Republicans and Democrats. In New Jersey, the GOP could lose control of key House seats. Democrats flipped another seat in a special election. Everything points to a blue wave in November. Pelosi’s base is activated and cannot be stopped, not even by Trump’s false statements on MS-13. Is the bone-spur-five-time-draft-dodger playing golf today?

  89. 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 5:37 pm #

    “The movers and shakers of that state dwell in an extra-special political bubble of their own that doesn’t accommodate much thought about the actual future…”

    On the one hand, Zygmunt Bauman saw modern society as being largely characterized by a need for order—a need to domesticate, categorize, and rationalize the world so it would be controllable, predictable, and understandable. It is this ordering, rationalizing tendency that Max Weber saw as the characteristic force of modernization. But, on the other hand, modernity was also always characterized by radical change, by a constant overthrowing of tradition and traditional forms of economy, culture, and relationship—“all that is solid melts into air,” as Marx characterized this aspect of modern society. For Bauman, postmodernity is the result of modernity’s failure to rationalize the world and the amplification of its capacity for constant change.

    In later years, Bauman felt that the term “postmodern” was problematic and started using the term liquid modernity to better describe the condition of constant mobility and change he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society. Instead of referring to modernity and postmodernity, Bauman writes of a transition from solid modernity to a more liquid form of social life.

    For Bauman, the consequences of this move to a liquid modernity can most easily be seen in contemporary approaches to self-identity. In liquid modernity, constructing a durable identity that coheres over time and space becomes increasingly impossible, according to Bauman. We have moved from a period where we understood ourselves as “pilgrims” in search of deeper meaning to one where we act as “tourists” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences.

    Giving some thought to the current state of affairs around the world may heighten your anxiety levels. So many displaced and deceased around the world, and a constant circulation of less than reliable information, all contribute to a sense of imminent, random danger that might come to your door. This fear is also heightened by political agendas that turn it into the dominant social currency. One contemporary philosopher thought this anxiety was not a passing phase but rather a defining feature of the times we live in.

    Rejecting the notion of post-modernity, Bauman argued we are nowhere near being done with modernity. He instead proposed we have moved away from a solid modernity towards a liquid one. In other words, he believed that we are in a state of permanent uncertainty which subsequently creates a lot of fear for the ordinary citizen.

    The solid modernity, to Bauman, was a time when the world was relatively stable, and when power and politics resided in the same hands. As we move into the contemporary age of liquid modernity he saw power as moving away from politics, meaning the nation states were put into the hands of those who control the global trade of weapons, drugs and criminality – forces beyond the nation state. In an interview with the Guardian, he likened this realization to being on an airplane and suddenly being informed that there is no pilot in the cabin and no airport to land in.

    Modernity thrived on two industries – economic progress and order – Bauman argued. The industry of economic growth signified society’s aim to produce the same materials it produced yesterday but with a lower cost of production. Modernization therefore deems many people economically redundant. Many people’s personal capital, Bauman says, is no longer useful, so they have to find new ways to make themselves useful again in order to survive. As for the industry of order, it deems itself useful in creating the need for purging. Anyone breaking that order is to be gotten rid of. This could be based on one’s identity, or politics, or as explained economics.

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  90. Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 5:44 pm #

    No Blacks, Know Peace.
    Know Blacks, No Peace.

    King believed in all kinds of affirmative action and special treatment for Blacks. He’d be right at home with Obama, Eric Holder, and Black Lives Matter. There’s no question about that. The real question is when you folks are going to stop embarrassing yourselves by lauding a man who hated everything you stand for.

  91. elysianfield June 7, 2018 at 6:12 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs,

    The BBC site, this PM has indicated that a Canadian Company has found a radical new method of removing CO2 from our atmosphere, bringing the price of recovery down to $100 per ton. This is exciting, considering that there is approximately 40 billion tons of CO2 generated from various sources EACH YEAR…

    What this means is that a paltry 4 trillion dollars per year will mitigate any human caused perturbations… we are, as a species, saved…and by Canadians, of all people

    Let’s make Mexico pay for it….

  92. Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 6:28 pm #

    https://heartiste.wordpress.com/diversity-proximity-war-the-reference-list/

    Diversity+Proximity=War

    There are certain equations which define our existence. The above is just such a one, just as fundamental to Reality as E=MC squared and of course more important on this level.

    The entire Swedish Home Guard is mobilizing. Any one know why? Muslim gangs? As part of a NATO invasion of Russia? Or are they just going to turn the guns on each other and get the inevitable over with as quickly as possible?

    • Exscotticus June 7, 2018 at 7:27 pm #

      > The entire Swedish Home Guard is mobilizing. Any one know why?

      No cause for concern. The entire Swedish military was hired as extras to film the next season of Okkupert.

  93. ozone June 7, 2018 at 7:08 pm #

    K-dog,
    “There are many kinds of minds. Even many kinds of West Coast minds. Too often we are trapped in our own minds. I want to get into a:

    Lets not be toast kind of mind.”

    Yep, me too, and time, space and energy wasted on trollery and full-of-shitness is counterproductive. Thanks for the link.
    …And thanks to the rest of you (although vanishingly few) who can retain some focus amongst all the concerted efforts to change the narrative and topic at hand.

    Free speech? Uh-huh; don’t you mean freedom to make damn sure that chaos, violence and desperation reigns because everyone has been distracted by utter bullshit for far too long? (Sure makes it easy to walk in and enforce “law’n’order” at bayonet-point where no one has been paying attention.)

    100th,
    Thanks for the intriguing perspectives in the midst of a whirlwind of craven bullshittery. There are still a few posters left to glean some grist for consideration from. …But I guess we can just call Kunstler’s blog essentially shouted-to-death by proxy (for the most part).

  94. FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 7:20 pm #

    2.When you say that in Russia was implemented a great chauvinistic power, are you referring to the Soviet state, and if so, wasn’t that more a consequence of this history you refer to? == Sophia

    Nationalism appeared in Russia in the second half of the XVIII century, in connection with the interest of educated circles of high society in the currents of Western European philosophy and political thought.

    Initially, the “nation” was understood as a cultural and intellectual elite (mainly the nobility) within the existing order. For example, in his preface to the tragedy “Dmitri the Pretender” (1771) A. Sumarokov calls the basis of the Russian nation that the fate of surfs is obedience, the tsar is power, and “the sons of the fatherland” (that is, the elite) is taking care of the state. Nationalism was treated in the spirit of primordialism, which stimulated interest in the origins of Russia and its culture.

    Due to the absence of the exact equivalent of concepts related to nationalism in Russian, French terms have long been used, although attempts at translation have been made several times. So, Vyazemsky translated the French nationalitéas a “peoplehood”.

    Although the word “nation” is found already in Theophanes Prokopovich and official documents of the era of Peter the Great, the first Russian who began to use the word “nationalism” was Herzen, who wrote in a diary of 1844: “… Western liberal heads consider nationalism as pillar of the government”

    During the reign of Peter the Great, Russia’s achievements were admired in the world, and the Tsar’s companions also kindly looked at Europeans as equals. As N. Karamzin wrote in 1791:

    Who in the world and love knows how to live with himself,
    That joy and love in all countries will find

    However, by the end of the 18th century, disagreements arose over the attitude towards the West. The deficit of equality, freedom and respect for the individual at home compared with Western countries caused a feeling of shame among Russian patriots. This blow to national pride led to the emergence of two opposing groups.

    The Westerners (beginning with Radishchev) believed that Russia should follow progressive and liberal forces along the path of Western Europe and the United States.

    Slavophiles did not agree to see the leader in the West, and even more so a role model. They believed that Russia has a special way in connection with its geographical location, authoritarian and Orthodox history.

    The uprising of the Decembrists of 1825, which called for the abolition of the monarchy, shocked the higher society, and the majority saw a direct threat to Russia in Western values. This led to an even greater polarization of Westerners and Slavophiles. The Polish uprising of 1830 and developments in Europe also confirmed fears about the destructive consequences of the new Western trends. In 1833, Count Uvarov tried to unite Russian nationalism with the idea of preserving the empire and official traditions, putting forward the thesis that “Russia’s own beginnings are Orthodoxy, Autocracy and the Peoplehood”

    It should be noted that it was the Slavophils who made the main contribution to the development of Russian national self-consciousness in the 19th century. However, according to some researchers, the result of painful comparisons between Russia and the West was the resentment (the psychological state of impotent envy).

    Some argued that Russia’s backwardness is illusory and that external differences in customs and culture hide the same reality, including the lack of real freedom and equality. Others insisted that the West had gone on a fundamentally wrong path and that Russia would on the contrary save the West from liberalism. From their point of view, the Russian nation was primarily the opposite of the Western model.

    Slavophiles attributed to Russian character tolerance, the thirst for truth, spontaneity, cordiality, sincerity, generosity, dimensionlessness, sobornost (the inclination to make decisions collectively).

    This was contrasted with the generalized Western character, which was allegedly endowed with greed, deceit, egoism, cold prudence.

    Many also attributed negative features to Russians: laziness, drunkenness, Oblomovism, devotion to the master, disrespect for oneself and others. “Russian soul” tied with Russian blood and soil, so it was assumed that its carrier in its pure form is peasants.

    https://www.britannica.com/topic/What-Is-Oblomovism

    The intellectual elite saw its mission in reproducing mass stereotypes, constructing on their basis new ideas and imposing them on the masses. However, Russian nationalism remained an ideology of the elite until the appearance of mass social movements in the early twentieth century.

    Since Russia was an empire, the government was hostile to nationalism of minority and was afraid to rely on the ethnonationalism of the Russian majority because of its spontaneity. At the same time, it tried to use the nationalism of minorities in other states in foreign policy interests. Thus, it supported pan-Slavism in Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, despite a countered or hostile attitude. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the decline of absolutism began in Russia, the authorities began resorting to the services of the Black Hundreds and provoking ethnic tensions in the empire itself.

    Dostoevsky, the Russian writer, philosopher and publicist, singling out the Russian people from all other terrestrial peoples, emphasized the special mission of the Russian soul as the bearer of the “true Christian faith”: “the denying nationality denies faith. It is precisely with us that this is so, for we all have a nationality based on Christianity “(a letter to Blagonravov dated December 19, 1880).

    Dostoevsky is convinced that Russia “bears within itself a treasure that is nowhere to be found,” Orthodoxy, that it is the guardian of Christ’s truth, but of the true truth, of the true Christ of the image that was darkened in all other faiths and in all other nations “(Diary of the writer. 1876).

    Hence the highest destiny of the Russian people as a truly Orthodox one is the non-violent reconciliation of all peoples in the right faith, and with the preservation of the spiritual identity, the language of each people: “… this role and role do not resemble those of other peoples, for there every person lives only for themselves and within themselves, and we will begin now, when the time has come, precisely with the fact that we will become all servants, for general reconciliation. And this is not at all disgraceful, on the contrary – in this is our greatness … Who wants to be the highest in the Kingdom of God – become the servant to everyone” (Diary of the writer, 1876.). This thought will be loved by Dostoevsky and will be fully developed in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1880.

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    • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 8:49 pm #

      Traditionally, no people on Earth were more Jew wise than the Russians. And Dostoevsky was a true son of Russia in this regard as in so many others.

      https://www.counter-currents.com/2011/11/dostoyevsky-on-the-jews/

      In other words, he wasn’t a fan. Quite the contrary. There’s a reason why his Siberian or Prison diary isn’t easily available in the United States.

  95. FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 7:37 pm #

    5. But I am confused about who is this Englishwoman since it was not Queen Victoria.

    I am referring to the Russian analogue of the English expression “Perfidious Albion” which in Russian sounds “Englishwoman does in the eye”

    The English lords will not rest. They are crazy. An Englishman is an orphan pederast who came out of a shelter to take revenge on the world. He was taken away from his parents, put in a barracks. In the barracks he was raped, they gave him a bedside table.

    He put an apple in his bedside table, a T-shirt. A neighbor ate the apple, put his shirt in a potty pot. When he will grow up – he will take revenge.

    H. Wetzel, 1902

    • GreenAlba June 7, 2018 at 8:49 pm #

      The English aristocracy were always nuts, Finca – blame the public schools where the poor boys were taken from their families when they were tiny. (A flippant generalisation, in case any purists’ hackles are rising…)

      Stay friends with the Scots 🙂 .

      Burns is very popular in Russia because of his Brotherhood of Man sentiments.

      Elites are elites. The people in Russia and the UK (especially Scotland) have longstanding cultural ties.

      https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/09/22/russias_greatest_scots_men_who_left_their_mark_on_moscow_40017.html

      • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 9:02 pm #

        The King of England was related to Czar Nicholas. Finc won’t tell you that, nor will Alba. That England fought on the same side as the butchers of the Czar is an abomination, simply unacceptable to true lovers of England or Russia or Orthodoxy.

        • GreenAlba June 8, 2018 at 4:40 am #

          Alba, who is perfectly aware of European royal inbreeding, won’t mention it in this instance because it’s nothing whatever to do with the point she made, which was about (a) elites and (b) Scots (ordinary ones).. Nor is she English, as you know. Nor does she equate the royalty of any country with its people or imagine that those people who fought on behalf of that royalty had much real choice in the matter.

  96. 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 7:37 pm #

    Alexander Dugin’s identification of an “eschatological tension” leading to the “coming arrival of the End of Days” is a point of key significance to understanding his ideology. “Eschatology,” according to the Greek words from which it is derived, always deals with the study of last things. Thus, for example, in Christian terms, eschatology centers in the study of the second coming of Jesus and the Judgment. Ideologies have often been obsessed with eschatological concerns, such as Marxism’s final stage of Communism, Naziism’s millennialist “thousand year reich,” and Neoconservatism’s “end of history.” A carefully crafted eschatology is a fundamental aspect of the nature of an ideology because ideologies imagine an “end point” for their labors to reform humanity. As Russell Kirk observed in 1988, “Ideology, I venture to remind you, is political fanaticism: at best it is the substitution of slogans for real political thought.”

    Dugin appears obsessed with the eschatological aspects of his ideology. Near the end of The Fourth Political Theory, Dugin declares:

    The end times and the eschatological meaning of politics will not realise themselves on their own. We will wait for the end in vain. The end will never come if we wait for it, and it will never come if we do not. This is essential because history, time, and reality have special strategies to avoid Judgment Day, or rather, they have a special strategy of a reversionary manoeuvre that will create the impression that everyone has come to a realisation and an understanding.… If the Fourth Political Practice is not able to realise the end of times, then it would be invalid. The end of days should come; but it will not come by itself. This is a task, it is not a certainty. It is active metaphysics. It is a practice.

    Dugin also calls upon his readers to embrace chaos in rejection of logos: “Chaos can think. We should ask her how she does this. We have asked logos. Now it is the turn of chaos. We must learn to think with chaos and within the chaos.… To make an appeal to chaos is the only way to save logos.

    All content of Modernity – is Satanism and degeneration. Nothing is worth, everything is to be cleansed off. The Modernity is absolutely wrong — science, values, philosophy, art, society, modes, patterns, “truths”, understanding of Being, time and space. All is dead with Modernity. So it should end. We are going to end it.”

    • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 7:44 pm #

      Kate Soper: Consumerism is the major cause of global warming and wrecking the planet for future generations. It is driven by a growth economy that favors the ever-expanding consumption of the already very affluent and has allowed the gap between the richest and poorest to grow to inflammatory proportions, both within the nation-state and globally. Today 16 percent of the global population consumes 80 percent of its resources. Americans alone are responsible for around 25 percent of global carbon emissions, and their ecological footprint is five times the global capacity of 1.8 hectares per capita.

      But the shopping-mall culture is also in many ways bad even for those who live in affluent societies. What the economist, John Maynard Keynes, condemned as the pathology of monetary greed is now not only regarded as a normal response to our times but also an essential driver of national well-being. Its effect is to subordinate everyone to a time economy and work ethic that sees free time as a threat to human prosperity rather than a form in which it can be realized. Despite the huge gains in productivity, time scarcity, stress at work, and insecurity remain the dominant life experience of huge numbers of people. An existence devoted to the creation of ever more stuff, most of it unneeded other than to enhance corporate profits or to secure the reproduction of the consumerist economic infrastructure, leaves all too little time and energy for actually having a life. Indeed, it functions as a major constraint on the self-development and political awareness required to enjoy a fuller and freer life. Everything that should be central to human pleasure and well-being has become marginal, whether it be convivial time with family or friends, engagement in civic and political projects, the enjoyment of hobbies and educational activities, making music, reading, gardening, being in nature, or just idling. The hedonist deprivation of consumer culture is further compounded by an unhealthy reliance on fast food and very swift forms of transport, notably air flight and automobile. Environments free of the noise, stench, light pollution, and congestion of our high-speed existence are now increasingly difficult to find. The constantly expanding supply of commodities requires methods of production and distribution that destroy both the ecological viability and the aesthetic appearance of the environment. They also involve much animal suffering and wildlife extinction, and create a legacy of often toxic waste. One in ten US households now rents a storage space for their excess clutter, while the junk resulting from domestic consumption is also mountainous and well-nigh uncontainable. Although promoted by corporate power and its advertising industry as the model of the “good life” to which everyone should aspire, in reality there is all too much that is dystopian about the consumerist way of living and it is beginning now to be recognized as such. Indeed, the consumerist way of life should now be seen for what it has mainly become: a means of further enhancing the global reach and command of corporate power at the expense of the health and well-being of both the planet and the majority of its inhabitants.

      Perhaps the time has come, then, for America, the nation that has exercised the most influence on the formation of the shopping-mall culture, to rethink the commitment to it: to begin the transition to a more sustainable and more sensually, spiritually, and aesthetically rewarding way of living? Can Americans now respond more publicly to what many have always privately sensed—that the passion for ever more consuming is neither really much of a passion nor a very worthy ideal in life? Can they now lead the way in overcoming the obsession with cumbrously materialist acquisition? Can they convert to a slower-paced, more time-enriched existence and a more reproductive manner of meeting their daily needs? Surveys have suggested that 80 percent of Americans agree that protecting the environment will require most of them to make major changes in the way they live. Can they now act on that consensus and adopt “one planet” living?

      In this paper, I first expand on the more negative aspects of consumer culture, and explain why it needs to change and why many Americans themselves might want now to do that. In the second part, I point to the advantages of moving beyond the consumerist system, and argue for an “alternative hedonist” approach to thinking about human well-being, consumption, and the politics of prosperity. Part three outlines some of the measures already advocated or enacted with a view to curbing the hold of consumer culture on our life experience and imagination, and then moves into a discussion in part four and the final section of the cultural revolution and more systemic socioeconomic changes that will be needed to bring about a post-consumerist order. Some examples in this context are provided of the form that would be taken by a slower-paced, less time-scarce existence and of the benefits it can provide.

      Overall I argue for a profound revision in the ways in which we think about the nature and conditions of human flourishing. This will be comparable, in its scope and radicalism, to the socioeconomic reorganization argued for in other Next System Project papers. Indeed, it will be a condition of creating the necessary support for any such practical changes, and hence an essential cultural dimension of them. We have to break with the social and environmental exploitations of money-driven, high-speed ideas of progress and instead promote the means to allow for creative and non-repetitive lives without social injustice and without environmental damage. This means challenging the monopoly of advertising over the depiction of the “good life” (and especially its manipulation of children). It means opening ourselves to new forms of ownership and control over the means of provision for consumption; to hybrid ways of making and doing that draw on traditional methods alongside newly emerging green technologies; and to a revised aesthetic of material culture for which commodities once perceived as enticingly glamorous lose their appeal by virtue of their profligate resource use and legacy of unrecyclable waste.

      A cultural revolution along these lines will be comparable in the forms of social transformation and personal epiphany it will demand to those brought about through the feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonialist movements of recent history. It will not be easy to mount, and will be fiercely opposed by those currently in power. But the gains it promises will be immense (indeed, without it the long-term future is bleak for everyone). Those who commit to a renaissance movement of this kind are not likely ever to regret it, nor will those who come after them.

    • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 8:17 pm #

      Yes, diversity is the essence of modernism, of its chaos, rejection of community, place, race, and nation. Dugin eagerly embraces diversity, desiring to see Russians swamped and absorbed by the Muslim and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia and Siberia. So he’s for what he says he’s against. I can see why you like him….

      • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 8:45 pm #

        Yes, but no.
        You have to see it through. Think it through to the end.
        More precisely, an appeal to diversity is an essential component within the convention of modernism.

        Diversity is merely an antecedent to homogenization.
        It’s an input for a desired output.

        There is no respect or embrace for diversity in the modern world.
        It’s a ploy.
        A bait for the conformity trap

        • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 8:53 pm #

          Exactly. If you mix all your diversity of water colors together, you no longer have a diversity of colors – but only mud. Would you be a lover of mud? No? Good, then separation is the Way, the guarantor of Diversity, real Diversity, not the cognitive trick which is its murderer.

        • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 8:55 pm #

          The flaw in your thinking, but most importantly in your appeals, is that this will, primarily, and most importantly, spell doom for one particular group of people you desire to prescribe protections.

          Diversity is the end of individuality.
          For everyone everywhere ultimately.

          When we are all the same, we can move on.

          • Janos Skorenzy June 7, 2018 at 9:09 pm #

            I thought you were in favor of diversity! Now the truth comes out – it was all just a fraud, a trick on the dumbed down masses of liberalism, the white sheep, the goyim…..
            Your real intention was always to breed them out of existence with alien races. A real lover cherishes the uniqueness of his or her lover – just as a patriot loves the uniqueness of his land and his people, their culture, history, and tradition. And of course, their unique appearance, color and race.

            Read his last sentence and feel the chill. When we are all the same, we can move on? When we are all the same, there is no we anymore. This is the moral of an amoeba who lives by swallowing up others.

          • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 9:28 pm #

            As I quoted from Byung Chul Han above:

            “This is central to Han’s most recent reflections. “The greater the similarity between people, the greater the production, this is the current logic. Capitalism needs all of us to be the same, including tourists. “

            I never posited what you allege. You always speak and never listen.

            Humanity has embraced suicide.
            I would say this is a constant theme.
            Everything more are your projections.

  97. FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 8:55 pm #

    7. I wonder about the way that England seems the perpetual enemy of Russia. == Sophia

    I wouldn’t necessarily agree.

    First off, I do not consider England as something 100% monolithic. English working class may have different views than England of Theresa May and City of London.

    However, during the most fateful times, England and Russia almost always find themselves on the same side of the barricades.

    And I think that during the life of our generation we shall see another example of that.

  98. 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 9:20 pm #

    Cutural Homogenization

    Consumption of media and technology play a role in this process. Due to the connectivity available today, companies can cultivate a standardized consumer, globally, via social media.

    It seeks to reduce cultural differences, differences in equity or social equality so as to create a standardized end consumer.

    The goal is to reduce cultural diversity, which functions as a barrier to standardized tastes, desires, and behaviors.

  99. FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 9:25 pm #

    We are all hit by an incredible amount of information noise, different, contradictory, poorly developed, and absolutely meaningless.

    For example, Dugin, without knowing it himself, clearly takes not a last place in this pandemonium.

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    • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 9:30 pm #

      Yes indeed, but mostly your posts.

      • FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 9:39 pm #

        Dugin is certainly a very interesting and original thinker who swallowed a huge amount of Western literature, with which I (in comparison with him) only superficially familiar.

        The problem is that he positions himself as a Russian and Orthodox person, while he is, by virtue of his interests, a Western thinker and even a Western philosopher to the bone, and he is simply not familiar with the Eastern Christian religious philosophy and does not even seem to know that it exists.

        Moreover, he is in some ways is right, since the method of Greek pagan philosophy and the Western scientific method based on it are alien to Eastern Christianity.

        • 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 9:55 pm #

          He at times reads like this blog’s most prolific poster:

          Dugin manages to sound somewhat progressive even when discussing issues like gender — at least when he’s not showing off his flagrant homophobia and transphobia. He declares that “behind modernity’s conception of gender, is Western or global patriarchy” and that the “most ‘male-affirming’ [ideology] is the theory of liberalism, as it considers this figure of the rational, rich, adult White male as the norm and as a natural phenomenon.”

          Then not at all:

          Dugin similarly advocates a form of cultural relativism, which is associated more with contemporary progressives and leftists than with those on the right. “Societies can be compared, but we cannot state any one of them is objectively better than the others,” he explains, while proposing international relations based on “multipolarity” rather than the current unipolar status quo, with the United States (and its Western allies) as the world’s dominant superpower. In this multipolar world, different “civilizations” (including Russia, or “Eurasia”) would essentially be separate but equal (in theory), while liberal and humanist values would remain strictly Western. According to Dugin, concepts like democracy, human rights, individualism and so on are not universal but uniquely Western values and should not be encouraged or pushed on other cultures, civilizations or societies.

          • FincaInTheMountains June 7, 2018 at 10:08 pm #

            Dugin, like Baron Munchausen, who pulled himself out of the swamp by his own collar, tries, with the help of Western philosophy, to pull himself out of the crisis of the Western scientific method, the reason of which is precisely that all Western science, whether it wants it or not, is based on the heresy of Catholicism. All of them without exception – and Heidegger, and Kant, Mircea Eliade and Hegel and his faithful follower Ivan Ilyin, and I, the sinful one – use the Western scientific method based on the heresy of Catholicism.

            In particular, the crisis of this method consists in the fact that the very concept of reality is disintegrating, as an object of study by the scientific method. The fact is that in Orthodoxy the concept of reality is conditioned by the fact that something is created by the Creator, and all the remaining “realities” are derived from this “ontological reality”, and within the framework of the Western tradition reality is due to the Latin term “res”, which is best is disclosed in another western term “res publica”, which in turn is translated into Russian as “the common cause of the public.”

            This is precisely what constitutes the main philosophical achievement of Marxism-Leninism, which was a kind of top of the development of Western scientific method when it argued that the criterion of truth is “public practice” (society here is not a very successful translation into Russian of the word public.)

            And Dugin in this sense is a loyal follower of V. Lenin, or rather Bogdanov, who, apparently, was the real author of “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.”

            He showed with rare frankness and clarity in his lecture by arranging the deconstruction of the concept of reality. Everything else is attempts by Dugin and many other people to utilize the results of this deconstruction to build an analogue of the Hegelian “national spirit” for the Russian people.

            Unfortunately such an attempt was already made at the beginning of the 20th century, the result of which was the appearance of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in one set with “Notes of Motovilov”

            And in this sense, Sergei Nilus, using the blessing to publish the “Notes of Motovilov” for the propaganda of the “Protocols”, involuntarily became the reason for the emergence of the ideology of Nazism and as a consequence of this collapse of the entire European civilization, both western and eastern, whose remains are now more or less successfully consumed by the Hillary Clinton axis, while Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are trying to resuscitate it with artificial respiration and direct heart massage.

  100. 100th Avatar June 7, 2018 at 9:47 pm #

    The human march to modernity is the surrender of what makes one human.

    The embracing of diversity and the exhortations towards tolerance are the rubrics.

    The cloying egalitarian sentiment is just that.

    It is the respect of the blindfold.
    So as not to see the shooters take their aim.

    But even that is being usurped. Overtaken in the race to dehumanize by the technological frontiers: Gene therapy, human modification, designer embryos, AI human interfacing, etc.

    Evolution demands an eulogy, one that never ends.

    • janet June 7, 2018 at 10:58 pm #

      “The embracing of diversity and the exhortations towards tolerance are the rubrics.”

      Would you prefer intolerance, destruction of the other, genocide for those different from you? Avoidance in the global village is not possible. Pluralism is the reality of the modern world.

  101. FincaInTheMountains June 8, 2018 at 8:08 am #

    Amalek in History

    Clearly explaining what the Western color projects are, without bringing up such a topic as Amalek, is simply impossible.

    I’ll start with the epigraph:

    Your father is a devil, and you want to fulfill your father’s lusts. He was a murderer from the beginning and could not stand the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he says a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies

    to the famous book by Sergei Nilus “The Antichrist coming and the kingdom of the devil on earth is near”, which is cited constantly, and thanks to the publisher always in connection with the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

    It should be especially noted that Sergei Nilus, publishing this book, whether inadvertently, or maliciously, but created the impression that on the publication of this book is extended to the blessing of St. John of Kronstadt, while in fact it was given only for the publication of “Notes of Motovilov” .

    Should it then be surprising that the notes of Motovilov in the Orthodox Church are considered a rather dubious source of information about St. Seraphim of Sarov, and the real author of the Church legend of St. Seraphim of Sarov and the initiator of his glorification is the Priest-martyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) who drove Sergei Nilus from Optina desert.

    And since there are still voices saying that the priest acted so at the instigation of those Petersburg circles who were particularly unhappy with the publication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, I allow myself to draw your attention to the contrast of the tragic fate of the holy martyr Serafim to the fate of Sergei Nilus, whom the CheKa repeatedly arrested, but some mysterious, powerful force, really making us remember Amalek, took him from the hands of the CheKa who at the time, really mercilessly shot all notorious anti-Semites of the Russian Empire.

    In this regard, it will be appropriate to reference the Jewish sources, since contrary to popular belief, it is the spiritual struggle with Amalek that is the number one priority for religious Jews, the axis and meaning of Israel’s history, and the struggle against Christianity is a lot of liberal Jews who consider Judaism an ethnographic heritage of dark and ignorant ancestors.

    It is another matter that Christians and religious Jews periodically call each other Amalek, but religious Jews do not throw such accusations easily, keeping them in reserve, in case of emergency.

    The only time this type of accusation was formulated by a truly great religious authority occurred when Ephraim of Bonn called a Cisterian monk Radulphe Haman, and the fact that this case is directly related to the author of racial hatred of Jews “holy” Bernard of Clairvaux, makes us treat it will all seriousness.

    Hasidim generally display an outstanding knowledge of Christian theology, making such accusations only toward the Catholics. In particular, Rabbi Menachem-Mendel Schneerson in this respect explained the difference between Judaism and the religious philosophy of Judaism, that from the point of view of religious philosophy, Orthodox Christianity is closer to Hasidism than reform-Judaism.

    The reluctance of the Jews to discuss the role of Amalek in the modern world is due to the fact that the Old Testament requires them to completely destroy the Amalekites, and the inability or unwillingness of Jews to fulfill this requirement is considered a grave sin.

    Therefore, Haman is considered the last Amalek and the need to recognize the fact of the existence of Amalek in later times is extremely painful for religious Jews. It was considered before the Second World War, as the “final solution to the Jewish question” of course forced to reconsider this statement, which caused a terrible split among Jews, and this split represents an iceberg whose surface part was in the form of battles between Jews, supporters of Israel in Crimea and Jews, supporters of Israel in Israel.

    Indeed, this issue in Judaism before Christ and in the history of Western Europe after Christ, played a colossal role, not comparable to the role that it played in Eastern Christianity. King Saul lost his anointing to the Kingdom after he refused to kill the Amalekites king of Agag and this had a tremendous impact on the formation of such an important concept in the history of Western Europe as the “Divine Right of Kings”.

    Moreover, this episode is of fundamental importance for understanding the continuity of the New and Old Testament, the negation of which is called Gnosticism.

    But after the February Revolution, during which the Romanovs allegedly lost their anointing and the role played in it by the books of Nilus, as well as of the Great Patriotic War and the formation of the state of Israel as a result of the enormous willful effort of Joseph Stalin, this situation has changed.

    The question of the existence of Amalek in our time is of great importance primarily for Eastern Christianity, since this is the stance that Eastern Christianity will have to take in relation to the colored projects of the West, whose struggle, without exaggeration, is about to acquire Apocalyptic character.

    Particular urgency to this issue is given by the historic meeting at the Havana airport of the Patriarch of Moscow and the Pope, and the quasi-religious significance that the Neocons of the United States attach to the support of Israel, as well as the symbolism of the fact that creation of Israel by Stalin combined with his attempt to find a footing in Orthodox policy.

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

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