JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
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It must be exciting to wake up on a gilded bed somewhere in Riyadh and realize that you are Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, mover and shaker of Middle East order. Actually, exciting just to have woken up at all. Perhaps Prince MBS checks to make sure that there aren’t seventy-two virgins in the room before he rises to prayers, state business, and the prospect of World War Three.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has been a giant gasoline bomb waiting to explode for decades. It occupies one of the geographically least hospitable corners of the earth. Its existence as a modern (cough cough) state relies strictly on the reserves of oil discovered as recently as the late 1930s, that is, within the lifetime of people still reading this blog. The oil supply is in steep decline, and so, of course, is the stability of the kingdom.
Politically, it’s a super-medieval operation, an absolute monarchy tied to a severe religious order with the law floating precariously between the two, and old-fashioned customs such as the public beheading of criminals (for misdeeds such as “adultery,” “atheism,” and “sorcery”). The Saud clan has controlled the throne all these years, and its grip on power is slipping as the country itself slips into the prospective next era of its history, minus the endless gusher of oil that has made its existence possible — hence, a true existential crisis without the usual pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
How are they going to support the thirty or forty million people who will still be there when the oil exports dribble down? Most of the work done in the country is performed by foreign “guests.” The indigenous folk don’t even remember how to milk a camel, let alone run routine maintenance on a desalinization plant. (And what are you going to run the de-sal plant on when the oil runs down?) These are questions that must drive thoughtful Saudi royalty mad.
Hence, the Kingdom is going mad. The current king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, is the latest in a line of geriatric monarchs. His brother and predecessor, Abdullah, spent his last years in a limbo of medical life-support (virgins standing by), and Salman is reputed to be dotty. Crown Prince MBS has assumed more of the king’s duties by necessity, but the land is filled with thousands of other princes, many of them frustrated, angry, and jealous of the Crown Prince’s prerogatives.
One can only imagine the clouds of intrigue wafting through the ornate corridors of wealth and power. Crown Prince MBS is lately out to deprive his many royal rivals of those two critical assets, and a couple of said rival princes — Abdul Aziz bin Fahd and Mansour bin Muqrin — were offed altogether (gunfight, helicopter crash) two weeks back. A score of non-royal public officials and business poobahs have also been arrested, including top ministers (Finance, Economy & Planning), the former CEO of the national airline, and a brother of Osama bin Laden, whose family ran the country’s biggest construction company.
It really amounts to a nascent civil war and it comes around at exactly the moment that the Kingdom’s arch-enemy, Iran, is feeling comfortably aggressive. Iran, formerly known as Persia, is a much sturdier old polity that has been around long before there was much ado about oil. They were fighting the ancient Greeks and Romans back in the day, and won a few rounds. But, of course, Iran has a good deal of oil, too. And having pissed off the Americans not so long ago by overrunning the US embassy and all, our country has been striving to punish them ever since — especially making it difficult for them to sell oil to our “friends” in Europe. As it happens, there are plenty of customers elsewhere for Iran’s oil — and, yes, they will eventually face their own depletion problems, but they do have the world’s largest untapped reserve stash next door in Iraq, which they are steadily and increasingly coming to control. And they do have that millennium-and-a-half beef with Arabia’s Sunni branch of Islam headquartered in KSA.
Crown Prince MBS may see war as a unifying theme for his domestic difficulties. He has a fifty-plus years’ stock of American war toys that have hardly been used — except for turning neighboring Yemen into a landfill. The USA has been KSA’s staunch ally all these years, and MBS has every reason to believe we have his back, as Iran probably believes Russia has its back. And then there is Israel in the background with its nuclear-armed subs… Israel, which actually took seriously Iran’s declaration a few years ago to wipe it off the face of the earth — and which now much of the world castigates Israel for so doing.
And in the middle of all this, poor, feckless, Hezbollah-haunted Lebanon, and the boneyard formerly known as Syria. The region is seriously coming apart. Someone is going to make a dangerous misstep. The Golden Golem of Greatness has been off far away sampling General Tsao’s chicken and Singapore noodles. And this country is completely preoccupied with Sex Among the Stars. Thank goodness the stock market only goes up.
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Janos,
‘He was probably just trying to rile up the Whitey’s ego.
Since He KNEW EVERYTHING, he must have known the true lower status of Black.’
Mushida thinks that its to elevate Blacks.
Not seeing any Janos comment that you seem to be replying to. Does that mean that JHK has finally decided to censor racist nonsense from avowed fascists on his blog? Better late than never.
Looks like malthuss is picking at a loose thread from Friday’s post.
I don’t agree that JHK should be censoring people’s opinions. When he does censor or moderate he more often does so because of excessive stridency, not odious content — although he has banned Janos from the site at least once previously.
you are right.
miasma,
Malthuss expanding upon a thought proffered late in the day of the 12th….
Why are you offended by “fascist comment”? Rather than offering outrage, try argument…. What do you find abhorrent in Fascism as an economic model?
Fascist is like a 4 letter word. Nazi.
“Fascist is like a 4 letter word. Nazi.”
Malthuss,
Nazi’s? OK…there were excesses…rules were broken…but the pejorative “NAZI” should not be synonymous with the term “Fascist” in an attempt to insult.
It is that “Marxism” vs “Communism” thang…you know…theory improperly applied….
I said “racist nonsense,” not “fascist comment.” That is my main problem with fascists – They are racists. I’m happy to debate an economic argument as long as the basis of the argument is not “I don’t like black people.” That shit is a waste of time.
No, actually Mussolini disagreed with German National Socialism about race being important. Culture and Tradition are the focus on Fascism – with the economics being the handmaiden of those and not primary as in Communism and Capitalism. National Socialism agrees as far as that goes, but is more organic, adding Race as the essence of the People, and therefore of the Culture and Tradition.
I’ve just given you a semester’s worth of wisdom in a few lines. Actually more since they refuse to teach either system – as they make far more sense than dreary spectrum of man being crucified by Economics be they ultra left Communism, utra right Libertarianism, or the in betweens of Socialism and Capitalism.
Miasmo,,
I can tell you truthfully that I, at one time, disliked more than a few blacks…and I currently have nothing but contempt for the Black Lives Matter agenda, methods, and rationale. Does that make me a racist? I don’t think you would say that it does. I would go further in suggesting that most of our online community, if carefully questioned, would use a qualifier- some, many, or most, (but not all) blacks as those to be avoided.
If you have discovered any real racists on this site, point them out and lets find out exactly what their views on race are.
The waste of time in dealing with people who would suggest they don’t like all black people is that you or I would have to question why that would be, and then demand very concise definition of what they actually mean. No one on this site is so stupid to believe the overtly simplistic generalizations about blacks, nor would be prepared to defend those beliefs.
Careful questioning seems not the norm when suggesting people are either “Racist”, or “Nazi’s”…they are meant to diminish and destroy a commenter…and like ellipses are often misused….
miasmo,
Just for your edification. His shift doesn’t start until noon-ish.
His personal “Grover Dill” will have to do for distraction and misdirection until that time.
The thick socks you wear with your Birkenstocks aren’t entirely impractical, they can double as puppets or condoms as the need arises. But do they really cut the mustard in snow?
From my coming book, “Life Among the Berkies”.
Hope springs eternal in the shallow leftist breast. Your heart is black, just like that of an Orc.
Who is Mushida? And Mushida’s comment indicates he, she, or it agrees with me about Blacks.
The Sufi Order was started by MB or his acolytes.
Murshida Ivy Duce ran it.
Ah, that r makes all the difference. And it’s O’Duce, isn’t it?
And, so, by 2020 the world’s financial system will be in ruins and the mideast will be in flames. What could be more promising for our quadrennial exercise in democracy – or whatever we call it by then?
Speaking of democracy, let’s remember that the US essentially destroyed Iranian democracy in the early 1950s when we overthrew their elected leader and installed the Shaw. (We had help from the British in this matter,)
Yes, the US and UK robbed the Persian people of a functioning democracy so we could loot their oil.
Also worth noting: Iran never declared that it would wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. For one thing, that was their president who supposedly said that. When their president is moderate, US pundits never fail to point out that said moderate president has no actual power. When the president happens to be a conveniently (for US propaganda purposes) extremist boogieman like Ahmadinejad, that fact is reliably left out of the narrative. More importantly, that is not what Ahmadinejad said. A more accurate interpretation of his Farsi statement was that the Zionist government of Israel would be erased from the pages of time. Twisting that into a military threat takes some serious mental gymnastics, or simply lying about what he actually said.
We installed the Shaw. And then Warren Buffett took over.
Sheik Warren, head of Planned Parenthood [3? billion in donations].
Yup. It’s kinda like all of this is happening in an alternate universe while our fellow “Mericans are just obsessed with sex, sex and more sex. Just as we’ve discussed for several weeks now, far too many Americans just don’t get how what happens in that sandbox across the world has any impact on their lives. So long as they can get all of their Cable channels, watch “the game”, drink their brews, and tune into the latest sex scandal to emerge they are good.
It’s sort of a slow- mo disaster though. Far too many people living in an inhospitable area, many with no real livelihoods and an aging monarchy. We pal around with SA because what are our alternatives; Iran? It’s not a question of if it all implodes but when. Maybe that will dent the stock market and the insanely escalating home prices in this country? But maybe not. It doesn’t seem to bear much relation to the reality of ordinary people anyhow.
We pal around with SA because pixels and entertainment replaced concerns about injustice long ago and we like ‘our’ oil.
Exactly. It’s not like we’re gonna be able to buy Iranian oil any time soon so SA oil it is! Still remember that photo of Bush holding hands with the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. So sweet……..
And Bandar Bush is on the outs! How to hang all the headless Saudi Price Christmas tree ornaments. It is a dilemma.
Mountain Gal,
“Exactly. It’s not like we’re gonna be able to buy Iranian oil any time soon”
Silly goose! That oil is but one war away!
Someone is buying Iran’s oil. And things being what they are, some of the refined product may be in your car today. 🙂
Iran’s Crude-Oil Exports Increase to Level Last Seen in 1970s
And this country is completely preoccupied with Sex Among the Stars. Thank goodness the stock market only goes up.
I think you were on to something when you had Wayne Karp have ‘actors’ stand in for porn when it is world made by hand time. Your rational was that something woo-woo and strange will be going on with human sexuality and that people will have trouble having sex on their own. America the vicarious.
“Saudi Arabia is known for its huge oil reserves, for its super-rich elite who own palace-like mansions in the US, Spain and London.
But in terms of gross domestic product per capita ($52,300) the kingdom is not as rich as its neighbours, such as Qatar ($137,200), Kuwait ($70,700), or the United Arab Emirates ($66,300).
Income inequality is dramatic.
Saudi household income is around $3,800 per month and the average Saudi family comprises six members.”
my source
Us vs them, exactly the wrong demographics with which to endure collapse.
My old way of making links is not working so here is my source.
http://eaworldview.com/2016/03/saudi-arabia-feature-poverty-wealthy-land/
The Saudi advantage in children will be quickly erased by the tribal conflicts that emerge when modernity ceases there. They would be no threat to us in a World Made By Hand.
Iran’s much larger population and military, however, should give The Kingdom pause. Those two are bound for a smack-down that may well lead the rest of us, if we are lucky, to live in Karptown or similar.
Watching other people have sex!
Saudi Arabia/Yemen?!? Uncle!!!
If S.A. and Iran get into a shooting war the immediate impact will be sky rocketing oil prices . This will get everyone’s attention quickly. I just read a good summary of why the US and SA have been so cozy over the years. There has been a secret agreement going back to the Nixon years for the US to buy oil and then SA to recycle the petro dollars back to the US for military hardware. But that agreement is now breaking down. So SA is looking for other allies. And I believe that Trump has given SA the green light to go after Iran so that the US doesn’t have to do it. Following link does good job explaining it all.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/113426/if-saudi-arabia-situation-doesnt-worry-youre-not-paying-attention
That would be an interesting turn of events considering that KSA and Iran don’t have a shared border. I guess they could both “invade” Iraq and fight there. Or they could bomb each other into the stone age, not that air power has ever won a war on its own.
But if they decided to fight in Iraq and bombed each others oil facilities, it would bring the west its knees in a matter of days when, as you say, oil hits highs that make $147 a barrel look cheap.
Steve,
Do not forget our cannon fodder in the Levant…Israel…
KSA, and Israel, with the US as a supplier of kinetic hardware and real-time intelligence would certainly change the dynamic…yes?
Oil prices in the US are but a secondary or tertiary concern on the short term…the long game is being played.
The Israelis would sit back and make popcorn if war broke out between KSA and Iran.
At they’d put their nuclear weapons on high alert, but they would have no reason to intervene on either side. And I don’t think either Iran or KSA would attack Israel in fear that they would come in on the other side.
If anyone would try to intervene it would be the USA under the “Carter Doctrine”.
“The Israelis would sit back and make popcorn if war broke out between KSA and Iran.”
Steve,
Exactly…unless we told them to do otherwise….
Giving “Saudi Arabia the green light to go after Iran” is like sending a toy poodle to rip the hide off a pit bull.
At least, that’s the way Michael Vick described it to me.
Agreed. The Saudi army has already demonstrated how incompetent they are in Yemen. Iran still remembers the lessons of the Iraq war.
I read that article and was trying to figure out where Martenson was coming from with the “secret agreement” stuff. If I recall correctly the petro-dollar deal made the covers of Time and Newsweek at a minimum. If it was a secret no one seems to have realized that back then.
Those tribes of Arabia were much more colorful and interesting when they were killing Turks along with Peter O’Toole. I mean T.E. Lawrence.
That is where they’ll end up again, killing each other over rights to water-wells when the oil is gone and the region implodes; there are millions of idle young men in the region. What could possibly go wrong?
As for Iran, it has always been infinitely more advanced and urbane than the Gulf, as were Turkey and Syria. Do not mistake that civilization as being anything like Western Europe’s, however. As a Turk told me once, “let us handle those crazy Gulf Arabs. Until the Great War, it worked out fine. We know how to speak in a language they understand.”
He was not talking about Turkish or Arabic…
Yes, the people have far more White blood and are more intelligent and self controlled – and thus more dangerous as enemies.
Oh for Christ’s sake, give it a rest, will ya?
You truly are obsessed. And one sick f&*k.
He truly is. But he serves a useful purpose in some ways, not least when he suggests something as nonsensical as the idea that people in the Middle East have ‘more White blood’, an idea that a ten-year-old would see for what it is.
In general I think there’s a thin line between the harm and the usefulness done by Janos (or the Janosbot) and it depends on critical mass. On the one hand, he attracts kindred spirits who then find that their ideas feel normalised, much in the way that a paedophile network operates. But the good side is that only a few people on a site such as this could countenance either the puerile mystic nonsense that underlies his beliefs or the disgusting political and social views that have grown from it.
Janos claimed last week to believe in censorship, so he couldn’t really complain if that idea was turned on him. But mostly I think he functions as a warning of the level of ideological repulsiveness that still exists long after its day should have gone, which is an important reminder to decent people to stay ever vigilant. So that’s his main use and in that sense he remains ‘valuable’, somewhat paradoxically.
Janos, like evil generally, is what flourishes when good men do nothing.
No I said Porn shouldn’t be easily available to children (or perhaps anyone, ideally) and that Trannies shouldn’t be given access to kids. You evidently are in favor of these things since you equate them with Freedom of the Press.
There are no words….
“On the one hand, he attracts kindred spirits who then find that their ideas feel normalised, much in the way that a paedophile network operates.”
Green,
I have yet to applied for my NAMBLA card, even though I have watched Louis CK for years…Kevin Spacey, too.
80% of what Janos opines has some obvious merit…the 20% that may be questionable you fixate upon, and then casually dismiss the 100% with a curse and a snarl. He does say some things to incite comment, but then, again, don’t we all?
She’s a total Commie Creep who actually believes the excrement spewing out of her oral orifice.
GreenAlba: you have captured Janos accurately, but I do want to add nuance to your observation that he ‘can’t really complain if that idea [censorship] was turned on him].” The fact is, of course he can complain, because he has no standards. All he has is reactions.
When Janos denounces you as a Communist or me as a defender of pedophiles, the words he utters aren’t about their English meaning. Instead, what he says has the valence of a swear word, and should be understood that way. When someone says something he disagrees with, it causes him pain, and he lashes out just as someone hitting their thumb with a hammer might cry out a vulgarity.
Standards come from outside ourselves, and most of us recognize the fault in ourselves when we fail to meet them. Someone like Janos is a product of decades of rejecting that kind of emotional and intellectual growth in favour of defending one’s own prejudices against all comers.
@Janos
“No I said Porn shouldn’t be easily available to children (or perhaps anyone, ideally) and that Trannies shouldn’t be given access to kids. You evidently are in favor of these things since you equate them with Freedom of the Press.”
I find the existence of pornography in its current form offensive and degrading to adults as well as children. That reflects my age, sex and values and I fully recognise that it makes me an anomaly in the modern world. But I recognise that the vast majority of men will not fail to avail themselves of it while it’s only two clicks away. You will not take away their pornography at this stage in the game, until the servers stop working. And then they may take out their anger at their deprivation on real women (not that the women in pornography aren’t real women, obviously, but you know what I mean). So, no, it’s not possible to get rid of it democratically because men (and a growing number of women) democratically want it.
“There are no words….”
Yes there are. ‘Stupid’ is the one that mostly comes to mind when you make comments that are utter non-sequiturs and ridiculous nonsense.
@Elrond
Thank you for your comment, which I have only just seen almost two weeks after the event as I don’t often return to the scene of the crime (whoever’s crime it is!).
Yes, I realise that insults from Janos should not be taken seriously and that he does indeed spit venom without much thought to the actual meaning of the words he uses.
I studied politics for several years in my youth and also taught a foreign language for many years. I now work in publishing. So words and their meanings matter to me and I find it frustrating when those meanings are take with so little seriousness.
Anyone who thinks anything I have said equates to ‘communism’ is either sadly under-educated about either politics or history – or, like Janos, responds like a child with silly insults when they are challenged.
So when Janos, who likes to think he’s an intellectual, comes out with something as truly pathetic as ‘She’s a total Commie Creep who actually believes the excrement spewing out of her oral orifice’, my reaction now is to giggle inwardly, rather the way one might guiltily smile on hearing a toddler say a rude word.
Basically I feel sorry for Janos as a human being. We only have one short life, so to waste it in the obsessive nonsense that consumes him is a personal tragedy. But the other side of it is that he is dangerous to social peace. And that isn’t funny at all.
Why? Because I believe in real diversity? Diversity for you just means everyone is the same. The Rainbow belongs to me since the colors are separate and not all smooshed together to create brown or black as you desire.
As I recall, it was after the oil price quadrupled in 1973-74 that Saudi Arabia and neighbors found themselves awash in petrodollars. They spent much on infrastructure development projects. They spent much on sending their young men abroad to be educated. They spent much on lethal toys – including high-tech weaponry they still don’t have the skills to properly use. They hire foreign contractors (mercenaries) for that.
After more than 40 years it’s still foreigners running their clinics and oil fields, building structures, repairing roads, etc. In short, the Gulf Arabs still have not mastered the mechanics of running a modern society. They just know how to enjoy it’s fruits. This makes them the only people on earth with a bleaker future than Americans.
When the time comes Americans will find they no little about creating a world made my hand. The foreign skills you describe all depend on fossil fuels and modern life has fully adapted to that dependency. This is an exaggeration but makes my point. Take a nail gun away from a American carpenter and hand him a hammer. He won’t know what to do.
” Take a nail gun away from a American carpenter and hand him a hammer. He won’t know what to do.”
Aww, c’mon Dog….
You beat me to it. That’s just ridiculous.
Now, take a cell phone away from a virtualized Millennial and try to get some workout of him might work. That ignores the steampunk and maker movements amongst that crowd.
My handyman – maestro with a circular saw – said that trying to put up anything without a nailgun would take minimum 5 times the time and 10 times the effort. Using those little brads to put up the moulding around a door frame without the nailgun causes bang marks by even the most delicate operator.
Do they still make those canvas belly pouches for nails?
Of course they do, and they hold nails, plumb bobs, small levels, speed squares, chisels, nail punches, pencils, magic markers, etc. The ‘nail guns’ actually shoots brads and use rechargeable batteries to create the pressure to shoot the brad. However, when there is no money for new tool toys, the older fashion way is drilling a small hole and using a nail punch and #6 finish nail or a larger nail cut down to size with a pair of Kleins. Bang marks are due to haste. Haste is due to trying to make a greater $ per hour. If one has more time than money and is working around their own property, it is amazing what you can get done with fewer tool toys and more ‘hand power’ if you are not prone to immediate gratification…..
I primarily use a hammer to fix screw ups from the nail gun, or to adjust stuff….and the classic hammer toss for when the idiots start talking politics. Not really talking. It is more parroting, like well trained counting dogs. Just ring the bell and off they go. Ya, kinda like the comments here.
“Take a nail gun away from a American carpenter and hand him a hammer. He won’t know what to do.”
Unless he’s over 50. Suddenly the old knowledge becomes valuable again.
“The Golden Golem of Greatness” WTH!
Let us never forget The Shuck n Jive Prince of Halfrica, one smooth talking MoFo,,,,,,,,,,,,
Later,
-Moe
You mean “Bowing” Barry Soetoro O. don’t you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WlqW6UCeaY
Yeah, that guy.
Time will show he wasn’t even qualified to be president – a convenient fact for future historians to mark as the beginning of the end.
No one is qualified to be POTUS. The job has become far too big for any one person. I can’t understand why this country doesn’t have both a president for domestic affairs, and a prime minister for foreign ones. Trump is good at the former while he’s in over his head on the latter.
Interesting concept. Obviously it is too complicated now, especially since the States are now all so dependent on the Feds for almost everything.
Actually I meant Obama wasn’t a citizen and wasn’t qualified in the legal sense.
“Obama wasn’t a citizen and wasn’t qualified in the legal sense.”
Proof?
Link to a RELIABLE source?
Outsider,
What of that “Secretary of State” thang?
elysian,
I was thinking of both being elected positions, each with their separate areas of responsibility. The Sec of State is appointed and serves at the pleasure of his boss – the president.
Another option would be a three person panel – like county commissioners in my home state. What we have just isn’t working anymore.
A war between Iran and the KSA would just be the black flag event to tank the world’s economy and crash the current industrial ecomomy.
There is no way it would be limited to those two countries. Russia and China would have Iran’s back, while the US/Israel/and NATO would be backing the KSA. In other words, WWIII.
Let them nuke each other and be done with it.
Honestly, all this doom and gloom gets tiresome. Despite the prognostications by every blogger on the interwebs nothing has happened on the domestic front in 10 years to trigger a collapse so now the metaphorical shoe will have to drop elsewhere. Yet, history demonstrates that things were more dire in 1958, 1967, and 1975. (Vietnam, W. Germany, Lebanon, & Israel.)
Is it possible that a late stage Middle Ages monarchy might believe it can perpetuate itself by all out warfare? Sure it is, but what would they gain? Sunnis are not going to wipe out Shias so they will be defending themselves in perpetuity. Wars are now fought electronically with only occasional skirmishes and small regional conflicts. They can spin out of control, but even murders (like Archduke Ferdinand) do not seem to trigger major conflict and nobody is going to send a fleet to wipe out Pearl Harbor.
I may be naive, but I continue to believe that all these things will smolder, with an occasional flame, for decades. The lights will grow more dim as central government fails, and then one day the lights will go out at the White House. By then, no one will have the resources or the will to fight a major conflict.
Then the rebuilding will start on the local level. Those places that can manage resources and deliver services will do better than than those who cannot or will not. But everyone here will be gone by then. Our grandchildren, or great grandchildren, will be the ones to rebuild.
The collapse may be happening slowly at the moment. You don’t see it but others do.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The dialogue above is from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises.
So it is with collapse.
Greer had an interesting take on this in his old blog.
To paraphrase, his theory is that when each of these modern economic crashes happens (1978, 1989, 2001, 2008) we don’t come all the way back to the standard of living we had before. Over time we will “step” down to a low energy, localized, standard of living. Each time the system breaks, it recovers as far as it can given the available fossil energy inputs.
A ratchet theory, or a ball bouncing but never as high as the last ascent.
Nothing gets clicks like an “It’s The End of the World as We Know It!” headline.
Yes, the wages of British and American imperialism will be epic blow back from all corners of the middle east and beyond. Even their “little proxy state that could” Israel won’t be able to save them from what’s coming this time. Might take a while to fully unfold, but events are definitely driving relentlessly toward a conclusion of sorts that will end the US dollar’s reserve petro-currency status, and all sorts of unpleasant things will unfold in the wake of that.
I have a different take.
Most of “Iran” is not Iranian. It is much more likely to fracture. It is Iran that is acting impulsively. It has overextended its influence in the region. Its hostile imperialist intentions are now clear for all.
Who will fight for Iran? It has alienated its youth.
Who will fight for Iran? Hezbollah? Syria? Russia?
Saudia is on the right track. It is exercising efficiency in its economic, social, and political matters, and it will be better for it.
As for Israel, there was a huge international air drill performed over Israel. All models of western air fighters participated.
Nothing happens as coincidence.
“Who will fight for Iran?”
Mofo,
Who will fight for Iran’s resources?
That’s not the same question.
Iran is a fake construct, same as Iraq, same as Syria, same as Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, etc. Today they exist, tomorrow they don’t. Lots of peoples are waiting to replace these fake constructs with their authentic nationhood.
As to your question, the only player of consequence is Russia. And the way I see it, the less oil from Iran competing with Russian exports, the better for Russia.
Classic Neo-Con construction. Project for a New American Century stuff. Securing the Realm the Israeli equivalent. But both written by the same dual citizens with single loyalty. These are the people who are hell bent of getting America into WW3.
Yes, we know Yan. American interests must be those of Nazi Germany. Israeli and American interests can never coalesce. Anything else?
Why should American foreign policy be for Israel’s benefit? Israel, a state founded thru force and fraud, is not the Israel of God as Rabbi Dov Baer (the real Bear Jew) teaches.
It should be for America’s benefit. Where we differ is in your automatic wailing where the two interests meet. As if somehow the two’s interests are mutually exclusive. They are not.
Well they are in this case. Israel has no oil for us and we don’t appreciate their attempts to get us into wars in the Middle East while at the same time bringing the SAME enemies into our Lands. Obviously there’s much blame to go around: the Bush and Cheney warmonger, Skull % Bone types are right up there beside their Zionist brothers. And the Churches never saw a 3rd World wretch they didn’t want to use our taxes to take care of.
I feel like I’m talking to an aspergern kid. You do realize we’re talking about Iran?
Janos,
You are right this time. The Middle East has been in flames ever since Israel illegally took over Palestine.
Outsider, send your lawyers to my lawyers, I’m sure they’ll work it out.
Sure Akmo, just Iran. That’s why you said:
Iran is a fake construct, same as Iraq, same as Syria, same as Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, etc. Today they exist, tomorrow they don’t. Lots of peoples are waiting to replace these fake constructs with their authentic nationhood.
Yup, just Iran. The whole conversation was and is in reference to Iran. But your bullshit nonsense are so pretzel twisted you completely lost yourself in it.
Mofo,
Who will fight for the construct that is Iran? Why the millions of conscripted, disaffected youth…just like in the Iran/Iraq conflict. Russia, China, none have a 100% volunteer army…don’t even ask about Israel.
Sorry, but you don’t win wars with millions of conscripted, disaffected youth. Iran will lose. In my eyes, Iran already lost. Saudia has the technological edge, the geopolitical edge, and the emotional edge (the Saudis feel backed to a corner). I wasn’t impressed with the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and now the Iranian military is even more antiquated and disadvantaged. Iranian kids walking on landmines are not going to save the day for Iran. If anyone is going to walk on landmines this time it will be the mullahs.
“Sorry, but you don’t win wars with millions of conscripted, disaffected youth’
Mofo,
Arguable, but winning or losing is a different question than who will fight….
Very true. Though the questions are very much related.
Iran, should it come to it, will lose to Saudia. Having been militarily, economically, and politically humiliated and exhausted, Iran will then lose its empire along with the territories and peoples it is currently holding captive.
“The essence of this [Nixon-Faisal] deal is pretty simple. KSA wanted to be able to sell its oil to its then largest buyer, the USA, while also having a safe place to park the funds, plus receive military protection to boot. But it didn’t want anybody else, especially its Arab neighbors, to know that it was partnering so intimately with the US who, in turn, would be supporting Israel. That would have been politically incendiary in the Middle East region, coming as it did right on the heels of the Yom Kipper War (1973).
As for the US, it got the oil it wanted and – double bonus time here – got KSA to recycle the very same dollars used to buy that oil back into Treasuries and contracts for US military equipment and training.
Sweet deal.
Note that this is yet another secret world-shaping deal successfully kept out of the media for over four decades. Yes Virginia, conspiracies do happen. Secrets can be (and are routinely) kept by hundreds, even thousands, of people over long stretches of time.*
Since that key deal was struck back in the early 1970s, the KSA has remained a steadfast supporter of the US and vice versa. In return, the US has never said anything substantive about KSA’s alleged involvement in 9/11 or its grotesque human and women’s rights violations. Not a peep.
Until recently.” — Chris Martenson
*Miss Gulled, take a memo to be distributed to all believers in the sweetness and purity of their ‘state-secrecy’ agencies. …Then take the rest of the afternoon — and your life — off.
OK. I’ll take a stab at the question being posed.
It starts with an I.S.I.S. next iteration: a metamorphosed Wahabi fundamentalist coup during, let us say the Haj, with lots (millions) of visitors now in-country, especially in and around Mecca.
Add a pretty well equipt Saudi military and an American trained cadre of Arabian Army or Air Force officers who think that the family bidness has run its course.
Then throw in a Yemeni Houthi incursion from the south flank to spice things up. Sort of like last week’s IRBM that was intercepted on its way to Riyadh.
Finally, the end of the Petro-dollar scheme, with the Chinese oil-yuan-gold exchange mechanism working and stable.
And voila! A perfect shit storm for the House of Saud. And Unkle Sam.
The Iranians need do nothing but sit back and enjoy the show.
And then there is Israel in the background with its nuclear-armed subs… Israel, which actually took seriously Iran’s declaration a few years ago to wipe it off the face of the earth — and which now much of the world castigates Israel for so doing.
For one thing, this infamous phrase was mistranslated to make it sound more violent than it really was. For another, the Iranian president who uttered was largely regarded as a major cuckoo-banana even in Iran. I doubt the guy will ever occupy that office again.
He is a devotee of the Hidden Imam, the Coming King who will plant the Flag of Jihad in Palestine. The materialists who don’t like him? What do they matter? Every Nation has such riff raff.
The US media does not say a single word about the gas deal between the US and China, despite the fact that this is certainly a blow to Russian Gazprom and to Russian Federation, and they just keep repeating the same incantation: “Russia is not our friend.”
But this deal makes Trump a good negotiator, and media now hates Trump more than Russia.
And on Solovyov’s talk-show in the “American segment” talked only about American-Chinese gas deal.
It would seem that the position is the opposite, but experts unanimously insisted that there was no harm to Russia from the US-China gas deal, which, of course, is ridiculous.
Indeed, if you listen to the arguments of Soloviev’s experts, it turns out that they too received the instruction “Trump is the enemy of progressive humanity – take him down!”
Saudi Prince Christmas Tree Ornaments.
1) Buy out a supply of Jesus figurines at a religious shop (we have one in Seattle named Kaufer’s) or at a drugstore near you if they have any. About fifty Jesuses should do, or is it Jesusi? What is plural?
2) Cut or break off all the heads.
3) Spray-paint them all white. Jesus usually comes with a brown robe.
4) Hand decorate all the gold and black belts with a small artist’s brush and model paint.
5) Apply a small dollop of epoxy glue between the shoulder blades of each figurine and push the end of a 12 inch length of thread into the glue. Let it harden.
6) Use the glued on threads to hang the ornaments on your tree.
Sit back and admire your work and wish you were Trump . He has that awesome golden ceremonial sword the royal house gave him on his first visit. The perfect ornament for the top of the tree.
You’re projecting your own hatred of Jesus onto Islam. In fact, he is revered by them as a great Prophet.
When did you star revering the son of god or caring about Islam?
Ever since I’ve been here, at least about Christ. Memory there again, Dog.
Rules with JC are you don’t go halfway. You walk with him all the way or you don’t walk at all. JC is funny that way and when you decide most of humanity is a different species as you have you lose your membership card. You can however be forgiven.
And my memory is fine. I knew he was in N.J. all along. That was a test.
Who do you believe him to be?
That is the question which is always preeminent. Many traditions mention Jesus and he is even mentioned in the Dead Sea scrolls. That they think him a great prophet is inconsequential and even irreverent as it represents an apostate view much like Arianism and Nestorianism. He is either who he said he was or he was a madman. That is, the Creator of the Universe incarnate. Emmanuel. The ancient creed says, “neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” when describing the Trinity and the nature of Jesus.
The Iranians do not believe this (indeed, no Arab Muslim does believe it), and that they call him a prophet cannot be credited to them.
Nothing has changed since the beginning of recorded history (14,00 years ago I think). Human behaviour has not changed. We know what to expect as mankind muddles through the ages. The only real variable that can act as a catalyst or a inhibitor is technology. No one knows where we’re going until after we get there. Most every thing happens at a gradual, almost glacial pace. Not much will happen in our lifetime.
There are more important things to spend one’s time on. Focus on yourself. Make yourself a better person, evolve. The best way to “change” the world.
Recorded history’s extreme limit is Ancient Egypt, 3000 BC (Before Christ), and maybe some vaguer records of the Sumerians and Chinese. So 5000 years, tops.
If you’d like to view the House of Saud as “the good guys”, well you go right ahead, but let’s get into whose interests are served by that conventional wisdom.
“It all began with the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in the Saudi city of Khobar, which killed 19 U.S. military, who worked at the Dharan air base three miles away.
That incident became the lynchpin of the accusation by the Saudi royal family, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA, that Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism. ” — Eric Zuesse
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-12/why-robert-muller-was-selected-be-special-prosecutor
Look carefully at the title of the article. Up to their necks in blood and oil. I do not recommend this article to the many (could we say, countless?) victims of manufactured consent; for one, it’s too long, and secondly, the cognitive dissonance could cause strokes or psychosis.
In order to understand the troubled times we find ourselves in, it’s instructive to reflect on just how we got here. (Lessons of history and all that other useless stuff.) …Or, we could just make shit up; we make our own reality now, hadn’t you heard?
Re: “In order to understand the troubled times we find ourselves in…”
I recommend “Lawrence in Arabia” by Scott Anderson. It is an in-depth look at the Middle East about a century ago.
See Drudge.com, today.
MILITARY LOWERS STANDARDS,
Accepting recruits with poor qualifications can cause problems. In 2006, for example, an Iraqi girl was raped and her family killed by U.S. soldiers, one of whom required waivers for minor criminal activity and poor educational background to join the Army….
I would not like to see it happen, but a military draft is the only way to get quality people in the service. The all volunteer arrangement guarantees people enlisting that have no other options in life. There are some good apples in the barrel but for the most part they attract the dregs of society. Anyone who joins the military in todays political climate comes from one of two groups. The smaller of which are honest, dedicated, patriotic young people who want to make things better. The larger group due to low intelligence or some who have watched too many Hollywood versions of war are the ones who make up the largest part of the enlistees.
Beard,
Universal conscription benefits society in many ways. Two years, right out of high school…no deferments. Many youth that do not understand their responsibility to authority, society and country will be…straightened out. Those whose lives were one of unquestioned privilege might gain empathy, in living with those without.
JHK predicted DOW 4000, back years ago.
Well look how the DOW has flown.
When does it collapse?
“When does it collapse?”
Not until there is a serious war with WMD that cuts world population.
This is not to say that there will be no bear markets, but until the above War does its work there will not be the cascading bankruptcies associated with the word collapse.
Any threat of cascading bankruptcies will be met with floods of fiat money and the invocation of Emergency powers.
The bulk of the US economy is us “servicing” each other. As long as the money flows we will continue to do so.
[The now-detained] Bandar Bush sez:
“Ah, yes, my dearest Condi; the King and your sweet self may get a bit of this French tongue-kissing from our Georgie, but I enjoy more with him… much, much more…”
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/11/07/bandar%202.jpg
I expect W will dust off his sword, strap himself into his F-102, and fly to the aid of his fallen comrade (Bandar Bush). Any day now. He’s family, fer cryin’ out loud!
LOL!
daveed, I’d say it’s an absolute certainty! (Of course, if he paints a portrait of ol’ Bandy, you can assume that the subject has shuffled off his mortal coil…)
Listening and watching Americans you can guess at some of the inter-locking wheels turning in the collective psyche. Some of that mechanism doesn’t work, for example, you hear the wheels generating paranoia grinding their gears against those powering grandeur. The mal-function manifests itself in delusion which itself affects the behavior of US foreign policy and military elites.
For instance, this absurd Iranian nuclear deal: who was at the table across from Iran? The US was there, the UK, Russia, France, China and Germany.
Who SHOULD have been at the table? It’s very simple, the countries in closest geographic proximity to Iran, for example, the Turks, Egyptians, Iraqis, Saudis, Syrians, Israelis, Lebanese, Russians.
As JHK pointed out, Iran has been military power and imperial aggressor for going on three thousand years. A long, long time IOW, long before either the US or its empire-building mother-country (Britain). And who would have suffered from Iranian mis-behavior? Its immediate neighbors, that’s who.
Could it possibly be that Americans mis-read the goings-on in the middle-east? Is it possible that what powers the place has nothing to do with the US? Could it be that what Iranians do, what they think, how they behave, is all rooted in their own age-old collective interests and habits that far pre-date the age of oil and gas?
As JHK sez, there’s shit that’s been festering for 14 centuries, ever since the inception of Islam. The middle-east is an old, old place with ancient animosities and rivalries. There’s even Chaldeans and Assyrians still kicking around.
That place is ten thousand years deep. There’s mounds covering ruins of cities that date back to the ice-age. Does anyone think that Americans really have “influence” in that place? This is a fantasy. The best thing the US can do is to leave the middle-east to middle easterners to sort out.
And the US and Europe are full of leftist liberal do-gooders who all believe they “know” what is happening in the ME and are determined to wedge their notion of a peace plan down their throats. It as you note a rather complex issue with a very long history that is truly not understood by those who approach the issues with simple-minded zeal. Many of the fights that are going on there now are rooted in history going back thousands of years. These people don’t forget…… and we don’t at all understand Arabs (or Persians).
So we should just let them conquer us since we don’t understand them, right?
Remember MG, they attacked us first. The Crusades were a Counter-Attack. And the current Jihad was inevitable no matter what we did or didn’t do in Syria and other places. For the record, I would never have put American troops in any of those places nor would I have bombed Serbia in order to set up another Muslim nation in the Holy Land of Europe.
Holy Land of Europe? This is from the same guy accusing American Jews of dual loyalties over their concerns for their brothers in Israel. The fscking hypocrisy.
Why shouldn’t we have a Holy Land too – the Hypocrisy of you all beggars the imagination!
The fscking hypocrisy. – akmofo
=============
ak, what was your previous screen name? I recognize the spelling of fuck, using an s rather than a u as if you would get your mouth washed out with soap by your mom. And then of course there’s the CIA, Jesuit, mafia obsession. That’s still there too.
Europe is 50 countries. Your hypocrisy and duplicity is a multitude of 50. But you would deny Jews their single homeland, Israel. That’s what beggars the imagination!
==
I don’t remember, Q.
Jews and Liberals won’t even grant Whites even ONE State to call their own. ALL White nations are being invaded by mass 3rd World immigration.
Oh, shut up already. The only reason there are Muzzies in Europe is because you invited them there as slaves to lord over and do the work that you don’t want to do. You had it good with the Jews there. You stole from them for 2,000 years. And then you decided to murder them all. Now they’re gone. Suffer the consequences of your new slaves.
Oh now the truth comes out: Europe really belongs to the Jews. You see this is the attitude that gets you into trouble. You don’t play well with others.
In your demented head.
More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issue ‘warning to humanity’
A similar warning was first issued by scientists in 1992
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/15000-scientists-warning-to-humanity-1.4395767
“More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning: there needs to be change in order to save Earth.
“It comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning.
“This new cautioning — which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity — garnered more than 15,000 signatures. …
“[William Ripple of Oregon State University’s College of Forestry] found:
– A decline in freshwater availability.
– Unsustainable marine fisheries.
– Ocean dead zones.
– Forest losses.
– Dwindling biodiversity.
– Climate change.
– Population growth.
“There was one positive outcome, however: a rapid decline in ozone depletion.”
“‘The trends are alarming, and they speak for themselves,’ Ripple said, though he notes the improvement in the ozone hole illustrates that humanity can make change when needed.”
And those 15,000 humans can kill themselves.
IMO, the most ecological way to do that is deep sea drowning.
Less human footprint that way.
Things dont look good and I dont know whats up ahead.
A scientist found Population growth.
wow.
Re: 15,000 scientists.
A tale told by fools, full of virtue signalling, and dissembling, signifying nothing. They understand everything but human nature. The ones who do have an “education” about human nature are consumed with denial as the truth is too hard to face.
If they wanted to be honest they would tell people that they would do well to prepare themselves for the approaching storm. Instead they continue with the pleas that we should all be reasonable and do what they say in order to prevent the storm – which ain’t going to happen.
Nature bats last and Nature swings a big bat.
“The world’s God is treacherous and full of
unreason; a torturer, but also
The only foundation and the only fountain.
Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes
of hunger;” – Robinson Jeffers
I know a guy [not that well] and ZI explained the 3 survival groups,
preppers, killers, cannibals.
He said only the killers will survive.
Hobbesian?
Who survives, and how, depends on where they are.
I don’t think it will be that horrible for the US and Canada unless there is an all-out nuclear exchange. Most of the dying will be in Africa, Latin America, and South & Southeast Asia.
The major nuclear powers have too much to lose to launch nukes at each other.
Migration of refugees will destroy countries?
@ malthuss
“Migration of refugees will destroy countries?”
It will certainly cause radical, painful, changes, as it has for thousands of years. Stability is a dream and desire of men, Nature has no interest in it.
Aren’t the cannibals killers too? Or do they only eat the living and the already dead?
“The world’s God is treacherous and full of
unreason; a torturer, but also…”
When speaking of the world’s g-o-d, capitalization will cause confusion, which is, of course, the reason it is done.
“When speaking of the world’s g-o-d, capitalization will cause confusion, which is, of course, the reason it is done.”
That’s the way it is in the poem (Birth Dues), you can look it up.
I am not critiquing your stenography.
Mr. Jeffers is confusing blame with responsibility.
https://gods-kingdom-ministries.net/teachings/books/creations-jubilee/chapter-13-the-tension-in-creation/
‘Nothing can be done! Why? Because human nature!’
Phooey on the counsel of despair. Phooey on paralysis in the face of species suicide. Shut up and act.
“Nature bats last and Nature swings a big bat.”
Epicur,
Yes indeed, and consider, even more importantly, that Nature understands the rules, even rewrites them during the game, and the other players can only guess as to the rules, and can only offer conjecture as to if we are winning, and why….
We/They
Give it 1 million years and no trace of it will be left.
This is what most of the truly successful believe.
The competitors winning at life by almost every metric.
Wealth
Health
Fame
Succeed
Education
Breeeding
Finishing
Everything on this planet is competing in a zero-sum game in a brief window of time, until that window does, and must, close on life, humanity, Earth.
This is truly living in the moment.
Save that “for the future generation” BS for the losers.
The losers that don’t have religion but must find succor.
Somewhere, but surely not the present.
Obviously there is going to be a huge die off of humans. The question is which ones. The Ecofreak Communists want it to be their own people, the Whites How is that for being organic and close to Nature! Normal Whites want it to be other peoples who die off and not their own people.
What to do? Arm the Camp of the Saints. Build the Walls high and strong. And be willing to go on the offensive if need be. Otherwise just wait, and Nature will do what must needs be done.
A wall? To keep us here? When we are already a minority.
Whites Christians > 50% of USA population.
I mean <
Yes, the only problem with cavalierly counting on a massive die-off of humans to right the ship is that one cannot at all control just who gets taken out. I’d guess that the most affluent of any country have means to relocate, shelter safely or whatever no matter what happens. As for the rest of us, it’s pretty well out of our control. I suspect many Americans(well white ones) just sort of assume that massive die-offs will involve brown people who live in other places and not their own loved ones. We also mostly assume that wars will be fought in other places and by other people’s children.
Personally, I expect biological weapons to be used against farms and people. The high tech nations may well be able to create vaccines in fairly short order.
Plagues will start and go through our most vulnerable populations (crowded poor and isolated poor), but defenses will be raised.
We’ve had hundreds of megatons of nukes detonated in the atmosphere from ’45 ’til the test ban with very little effect. If some of the minor players go at it (India, Pakistan, Israel, ++) it won’t be a good thing, but it won’t be a catastrophe for the rest of the world.
When the credit bubble bursts the US will stop playing “World Police” some of these guys are liable to go at it. Our job will be to avoid an exchange with Russia or China.
It’s not enough to assume MG, we have to make sure. But you’re right: it’s not your job. It’s the work of Men.
Do you really want to share your bathroom with street people? That’s essentially what you’re saying. And I’ve never known a woman who really wanted to do that, despite what was coming out of her mouth. Try to know what you are saying in terms of the implications of your ideology.
Read “Camp of Saints” to get started. Switzerland has nuclear war shelters for all its millions of people – with plans in place to for its people’s army to go out and defeat any invader. That’s the true Democratic Ideal, destroyed in America after the Kennedy Assassination coup. Short thereafter, people with air raid shelters and provision began to be mocked to scorn, even as the Elite continued to prep. And of course, all public programs ceased.
The Dome in New Orleans.
Chaos.
nuclear war shelters?
Rich people can buy land way out in the country.
And buy guns.
That are their advantages.
I suspect many Americans(well white ones) just sort of assume that massive die-offs will involve brown people who live in other places and not their own loved ones
You think most Whites expect a die off, in the next 10 years?
‘You think most Whites expect a die off, in the next 10 years?’
I don’t think the bacteria currently developing resistance to our last useful antibiotics. through our own idiocy, will remotely care about the skin colour of their hosts, although Janos may croak begging them desperately to recognise his specialness, as a black doctor sympathises with his plight and explains to him how little the universe actually cares about the ideas he tragically wasted his life on.
Actually the races differ in their resistance to different diseases – with Whites for example being stronger against AIDS than most others. Blacks and East Asians stronger against Malaria, etc. Likewise, some drugs work well on Blacks and not Whites and vice versa. Just another thing you don’t know much about. Talk to some doctors.
Your desire that I get a Black Doctor is cruel indeed – a step up from the usual Black nurse who holds my hand as I die, perhaps helping me with a pillow over my face like Judge Scalia got.
Seriously now: I’ve seen people sleeping on their backs, but I’ve never seen one with doing so with a pillow over their face, have you?
I was responding to MG.
“I’ve seen people sleeping on their backs, but I’ve never seen one with doing so with a pillow over their face, have you?”
Janos,
I sleep with my bedroom windows open in the winter…when the temperature drops below, say 35F, I will put a pillow over my head, as much heat loss occurs from the scalp…warms me up immediately. If I were so fortunate to die in my sleep, the pillow arrangement would seem odd.
Over your head (strange enough!) or over your face – as in are you sleeping on your back when you do it? I can’t see how that would work breath wise. But for that matter, I don’t see how a pillow over your head wouldn’t wake you up either. For that matter, why do you keep the window open? Aren’t you losing heat and wasting energy? Or are you sleeping in a room with a fireplace?
Janos,
Ahhh, the simple pleasures of a very heavy quilt…warm bed, cold ambient temp allows for better sleep…on my back, pillow over my face and head, proboscis with a small tunnel for air…the rest of the house is buttoned up…just not my bedroom/bath.
Pacific Northwest near the Ocean (20 miles inland) rarely freezes hard…wood heat, forced air furnace in the basement.
Remember the scene in “The Lion in Winter”? King arises from a bed of animal furs, walks to a table, breaks the ice in the bowl (the water having frozen overnight) and then splashes his face….
Who knows…maybe Scalia and I were kindred spirits…or, or maybe King Henry…yeah….
I think most don’t think period.
” Arm the Camp of the Saints. Build the Walls high and strong. And be willing to go on the offensive if need be. ”
Janos,
History has affirmed, and reaffirmed, your comment.
They understand everything but human nature. The ones who do have an “education” about human nature are consumed with denial as the truth is too hard to face. –epicur
There seems to be an antiquated notion among several posters here that “human nature” cannot be changed, but science is telling us that human nature is not fixed.
I don’t know if continuing to insist on an unchanging “human nature” is the result of denial of science, or just ignorance of the latest scientific research, or perhaps simply laziness: “That’s human nature; nothing to be done!”
If you look into the latest research findings on brain neuroplasticity and epigenetics, you will see that not only is individual transformation possible, cultural change is also possible… because human nature is not fixed, it is malleable and subject to change.
I keep up a fair amount on the subject. The latest book I bought was “The Archaeology of Mind” by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven. I also read Sciencedaily.com almost every day and several other blogs like Jon Haidt, Sam Harris, and Edge.
I follow youtube recordings of Sapolsky’s class lectures and a site called CARTA from the UC San Diego.
The Panksepp book is good, you should try it.
What would you suggest I need to read in order not to be so “antiquated”?
Chételat, G., Mézenge, F., Tomadesso, C., Landeau, B., Arenaza-Urquijo, E., Rauchs, G., … Lutz, A. (2017). Reduced age-associated brain changes in expert meditators: a multimodal neuroimaging pilot study. Scientific Reports, 7, 10160.
McCall, C., Steinbeis, N., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2014). Compassion meditators show less anger, less punishment, and more compensation of victims in response to fairness violations. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 424.
RICARD, MATTHIEU. ALTRUISM: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World. ATLANTIC BOOKS, 2018.
Sorry to be so long in getting to this. It is a little more complex than Elrond’s. I did not read all of your references, but did look at abstracts and reviews.
With reference to my reply to Elrond I will repeat that the human brain works by balancing various impulses (notable is “fight and flight”) and much of this balancing is done by the neocortex (the “thinking part” of the brain). The references you cite are not about changing innate human nature but about the role of learning in modulating that nature.
There is a brief exchange at the link below that is germane (at 1:15 to approx 3:30 minutes). The exchange is between V. S. Ramachandran and Jonathan Haidt and while not exactly about your references, but is about similar aspects of learning and behavior. Briefly Dr. Haidt remarks that cognitive therapy is a difficult, time consuming path while moral impulses are based deeper in the brain and are like a six-lane highway going in the opposite direction. I contend that meditation is parallel to cognitive therapy and moral behavior is parallel to human nature in this instance.
It is worth mentioning that when Dr. Haidt discusses “moral behavior” he is talking about the deep-seated “natural” basis for morals – that is (one of) his areas of specialization. I would also add that he is far more optimistic than I, naively so, IMO, but that would be another discussion.
The link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAjFC9agnd0
The following sentence: “The references you cite are not about changing innate human nature but about the role of learning in modulating that nature.”
Would be better expressed by substituting “learning/conditioning” for the single word “learning”. The two words have similar aspects but are not completely interchangeable.
I have two reading suggestions, just to provoke conversation.
The first is the infamous Cornerstone Speech delivered by Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the short-lived Confederate States of America, in 1861. It reads in part: “Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
The second is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Here’s an excerpt: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
Now here are some provocative questions. First, which one of the above is true, if by ‘true’ one means ‘in accord with human nature’? Since they so clearly contradict each other, I don’t see how it can be both. Or does that question have an answer at all?
Second: if human nature pre-determines everything, how can both of the above ideas exist in the same universe? Did human nature change somehow in the 87 years that elapsed between #1 and #2? Or is it just possible that human nature is actually spacious enough that both are expressions of it, and it’s up to us to choose?
Third and finally, which one do you prefer personally? If you had to choose, I mean.
Addendum: you referred above to ‘virtue signalling’. To my mind, that’s a fifty-cent way to express a two-cent accusation, namely “You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” When people are morally bankrupt, they often react that way to people who aren’t.
I’m tied up with other duties at the moment – I will get to this.
that the negro is not equal to the white man; – Elrond quoting
===========
It is absolutely true that blacks and whites are not equal. This is obvious to anyone who watches pro and college football and basketball.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration – Elrond quoting
=============
This declaring of entitlements is a grand attempt by the UN at social engineering which has mostly failed…or we wouldn’t be discussing it all these many years later.
declaring of entitlements ???
In it Declaration of Human Rights, the UN drones on and on about this freedom and that. But at the end it says, all of the forgoing rights are subject to review and convenience as per their particular context.
What is granted can be taken away. In contrast, the Bill of Rights doesn’t grant us our rights – but merely recognizes their existence a priori. Thus if the Feds outlaws the 2nd Amendment, nothing changes for true patriots who understand the Constitution. The 2nd Amendment didn’t grant us our right to bear arms and it cannot take it away. Nor does it protect it – the guns themselves do in the right hands.
“This declaring of entitlements is a grand attempt by the UN at social engineering which has mostly failed…or we wouldn’t be discussing it all these many years later.”
Yeah, what he said….
@ Elrond:
I will address your second question first as my reply will make more sense that way.
The human brain (and way more than just ours) operates by balancing signals or impulses. Some of these are innate, like hunger and the sexual drive, and some are learned. Learning has a great deal to do with the “balancing” part and is very flexible, especially in the young, while the innate part, in a healthy, intact brain is essentially fixed, although individually variable (e.g. one man or woman may have a stronger sex drive than another)
I will digress to note that Panksepp calls the (so far identified) innate impulses as SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY, and to note that his is a very good book and even if wrong in some details is, I believe, on the right track. If the subject interests you I highly recommend that you read some articles about his views.
Given that the brain works by balancing impulses your proposal that human nature is spacious enough for both ideas is true. Just exactly what “choose” means is hotly debated. I believe your first question is answered with the second.
As regards the morality of such questions and my bankruptcy I would refer you to an essay by Stephen Pinker at the EDGE site.
https://www.edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection
The essay is about “group selection”, but addresses morality as one of the devices that induce an individual to act against his own survival (e.g. getting soldiers to charge machine guns in WWI) for the sake of the group.
I was raised in the Christian Church and take very seriously Christ’s admonition that we are not “good”, and I recognize that when I do “good” I am doing so for my own benefit to fit into the morals of my society. However my desire to fit in does not extend to agreeing with falsehood, which is what I see in the arguments of the 15,000 scientists.
For another way of looking at the problem (I believe a more honest way) you might look at the article written by Garrett Hardin in 1974. Hardin did argue strongly for measures within the US, but had little hope for “saving the world”.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
I have no shame in disparaging the 15,000 scientists. In my opinion they are not radically different from General Haig sending thousands to their deaths in WWI. In my opinion, young people should be told how likely it is that we are about to enter a population collapse – not the “end of the world”, and not “every man for himself”, but a time to take great care for one’s own survival.
@ Elrond:
Your third question is not very meaningful to me. I was raised to treat all men (and women) with equal regard as persons, but have no illusions about my ability to affect the world. I would much rather live at peace with all mankind but have no hope for seeing that.
The Romans said “only the dead have seen the end of war.” I actually think that war in the formal sense may one day end, but that will require a common set of values for all the world. We are nowhere near that, and if history is any guide will not get there peacefully.
We are an evolved and evolving species and will continue to evolve as long as there are challenges to survival.
Epicur: To my mind, the recommendations of the 15,000 (and counting) signatories of the ‘warning to humanity’ letter represent the best capabilities of humanity, being put to their best use. Can 15,000 scientists be wrong? Certainly, but that’s a high bar to clear. Can it be right to do nothing in the face of unprecedented catastrophe? If so, how? Shrugging rejection seems to me a trivial reaction, and one that’s hard for me to understand, particularly from a thoughtful individual as you appear to be.
What’s more, I can’t quite tell whether you disagree with the letter, or whether you agree with it and simply maintain there’s no point trying to do anything about it except for protecting your own. Perhaps you could clarify that for me.
In either case, as you are one who takes Christ’s admonitions seriously, I ask you this equally seriously: do you remember Matthew 25, verses 31-46? When comes the day that Christ separates the sheep from the goats; when he asks you, “What did you do for the least of these? When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? Naked, clothe me? Homeless, shelter me? Sick and in prison, come to visit me?” If and when a true catastrophe comes, and your reaction is to watch in silence and congratulate yourself for seeing it coming — in the end, will you number among the sheep, or the goats?
Elrond: Be sure to check back here later if you want to see my reply. Busy now, but I will reply
You have my attention, Epicur.
Tell them about the Rights of the Child, Elrond. Including perhaps, the right to choose their own gender? And if that is granted, why not choose their own lover as well? That is SMALL compared to choosing gender, isn’t it? Thus the Pedophile Agenda advances. And you will “find” yourself on the right side of it, eh? You always do somehow…..
I agree about slavery btw. It corrupts both the slave and the owner. We don’t need it anymore if we ever did. And Blacks made very poor slaves in any case. And beyond that, their presence was hard on White working people.
Some people are natural slaves as Aristotle said. But they have to be worth their keep AND to volunteer to be slaves in some kind of contract, perhaps to be renewed every so many years. The way forward in Africa is for Blacks to admit they are inferior and have made a hash of it – and to accept White Colonialism again, willingly and peacefully. And Whites should also benefit from the natural resources of Africa. If we don’t, the Chinese will.
Janos,
What’s happened to the whites in South Africa since the end of apartheid, and to the country as a whole with the black majority now in charge, is an excellent case in point. If the US is to admit any refugees, it should be the SA whites, who’s farmers are being hacked to death as they are facing genocide.
https://www.healthnutnews.com/
abc-homeland-security-releasing-chemicals-into-air-for-terror-attack-test-even-politicians-are-concerned/
let me k now your thoughts.
@ malthuss
If that was directed at me, I did not see anything at your link about DHS releasing chemicals. I did see this at Zerohedge.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-12/dhs-prepares-biological-attack-drill-infrastructure-oklahoma
They would be irresponsible if they did not prepare. My beef is that they are not open about the danger. Maybe after these tests they will come out with some recommendations.
I’m an old fart, but I do try to get my kids to prepare.
” cultural change is also possible”
Yes, in only a few generations.
Because human nature is not fixed, it is malleable and subject to change.Latest scientific research? I scoff.
Saudi Arabia minus oil is irrelevant. Given its current population and its complete lack of essential resources (besides oil) like farmland, water, timber, it won’t matter. Its thirty two million people are rounding error in a world of 7.6 billion and will die pretty much un-mourned. Everyone else will have their own troubles, and aside from the entertainment value of the dramas playing out, nobody will give a shit.
What may matter is that giant latrine we call India given that its population is well over a billion. Why does it matter? Well, its massive population and its nukes. India’s neighbors may start looking nervously at it if problems like lack of food and water make the Indian people restive.
Same with Pakistan. It’s as bad a shit-hole as India, in fact, it used to be a part of India until the British decided to calve it off thereby creating two adversaries at daggers-drawn in perpetuity. Did I say daggers? Actually, Pakistan is nuclear armed too.
It will be interesting to see whether the politicians of Pakistan and India do what politicians have done since the dawn of time when faced with intractable domestic problems: blame the foreigner.
It will be interesting to see what use the Iranians make of their shiny new nukes. It’s just a matter of time given that nobody at the nuclear negotiating table had as much to fear as all those NOT at the negotiating table. Can’t help thinking that the deal with Iran was a whole lot more loosey-goosey as a result. Would Israel or Saudi Arabia made such a deal with Iran? I seriously doubt it.
So who gets it in the kisser first? Saudi Arabia? Israel? Or Iran itself from the Israelis? Somebody’s gonna get it. Don’t count on “rationality”. It doesn’t exist.
Saudia and Yemen controls the Red Sea. Most of the trade to and from Europe and the Far East is routed thru that sea. You don’t want Russia or Iran sitting there.
Nor China. China held its first live-fire exercises on the African coast near the end of the Red Sea, an energy choke point. This is while everyone was excited about what NFL player was talking the knee and who wasn’t.
In any case would the Saudis without oil have the military capacity to control the Red Sea? Or would the area fall prey to a stronger power. When Saudi oil runs dry how high will the price of a barrel go and how much would world-trade decline as a result and how relevant would the Red Sea be?
Well, my point was that even without oil it is still a geostrategic country. China is mainly interested in land based trade via rail. Maritime shipping as far as I know is much more efficient.
Same with Pakistan. It’s as bad a shit-hole as India,
MUCH WORSE.
It is majority Muslim. Check Karachi.Population, QOL.
@volodya
Exactly. So when Netanyahu came to the US Congress and absolutely begged them to not pass the Iran “deal” as written he was thoroughly castigated by the liberals. Far too many of our elected officials skipped his talk. Some such as Pelosi made a point of talking to her neighbors and being disrespectful. How would we feel if our US President was treated this way while giving a talk in another country? And he was invited by the speaker of the house and he had good things to say. He knows what the Iranians are like.
Those that are right there in the neighborhood with Iran such as Israel and SA were thrown under the bus by Obama. It’s so easy for the liberals in the US to do this; they figure they are a long way from being vaporized by Iran in their homes in LA, DC, NYC etc.
I am not well versed in the economy of liquefied gas plants in Alaska and I can not judge how much this US-Chinese memorandum of intents is hitting Russia’s ability to receive hard currency from China if the gas market in Europe will be closed for Russia as a result of all sorts of energy packages coming from Brussels.
But I see how Trump’s supporters in disputes with the Clintonoids use this deal as an argument that refutes the Clintonoids thesis that Trump puts first not America, but China or Russia, and Russia in that context is remembered only as a proof of Trump’s ability to put pressure on Putin and “conquer” him.
I do not know if this argument corresponds to reality, but I know that it is not an anti-Russian propaganda and is intended purely for internal use.
But my main difference is that I consider today’s politics as the result of centuries of history and I see how the chain of events that began in the 12th century has a decisive influence on the events of today.
For example, when I read about the US-China gas memorandum, I immediately recall the Boston Tea Party, as a result of which the North American colonies gained independence and for the first time became an ally of Russia of Catherine the Great.
I know that the tea drowned in the Boston harbor was brought from China by the East India Company that staged Opium Wars in China and these wars produced such an impression that the Genghis Khan and Boxer Rebellion were forgotten by the Chinese, but they remember the Opium Wars as if they were yesterday.
And those who drowned tea in Boston harbor were employees of the West India Company, which competed on the battlefields of the Albigensian Crusade with the East India Company long before it was given that name.
And Catherine the Great responded to the Pugachev’s Rebellion in Russia with Armed Neutrality off the coasts of North America and all this has a direct bearing on today US-China gas memorandum.
clintonoids? ha ha, I like that one 🙂
The US bipartisan political system is gone, finished off by Hillary Clinton. We need a new political language to describe the current situation.
yeah, I sure hope you are right.
Screwed? is that the right political language? 🙂
“Screwed” is OK, I guess, but lacks specifics – too generic
IMO Since the late ’60s the only thing “bipartisan” about US politics is that both parties had their noses so deep in the pig trough that they did not have time to really contest issues. Now that the debt burden is getting onerous and threatens their well being the differences are getting more contentious.
As long as credit could grow continuously it was all Kabuki theater.
By credit I mean total credit, “TCMDO”, at the St. Louis Fed “FRED” site. Jimmy Carter (through Paul Volker) was the only POTUS who made a legitimate attempt to rein in credit growth – and it didn’t take long for that to be rejected.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=TCMDO,
In my opinion, the destruction of bipartisan system started in 1992 with an introduction into election of Ross Perot by always scheming Hillary to screw Bush out of 20% of his voter base.
That broke all kinds of gentlemen agreement and made republicans so mad, that the kept attacking Clintons during all 8 years of their presidency.
Interestingly enough, but I am still convinced that Hillary actually tried to repeat that trick in 2016 and ordered Trump to run to screw Jeff, like she ordered him into a “birther” attack on President Obama.
Could you imagine how she’s pissed off now?!
As a point of historical interest, it should be noted that the Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam, otherwise known as New York, City of Superlatives. MPOB.
It was also the time of the Romanov ascent in Russia.
One can go back to the time of the Greeks, Assyrians, or Babylonians and in some distant sense say that events then had “a decisive influence on the events of today”.
Relating today’s politics to events in the twelfth century seems extremely tenuous at best.
How about the big bang?
How does Pugachev figure in when his rebellion was in the 1770’s and the use of gas was hardly known?
Alan Ginsburg, notorious pedophile and NAMBLA member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg#Association_with_NAMBLA
For decades now, Gays could do no wrong. And many of us suffered from their unspeakable arrogance and aggression. But now the worm turns, eh?
You who gave them this privilege, will you not repent as well? No? Then you turn will come as well. So mote it be.
Jack Kerouac, a straight Catholic, made a mistake in getting involved with pervs like Ginsberg. Still, Jack’s “On the Road” remains an American classic. It’s a shame that the booze destroyed him, took away his great talent, and killed him before age 50.
‘On the Road’ still sells about 100,000 copies a year.
‘The Sun also Rises’ sells about the same.
Kind of amazing when you think about it.
brh
In those days he really didn’t know what he was talking about; that is to say, he was a young jailkid all hung-up on the wonderful possibilities of becoming a real intellectual, and he liked to talk in the tone and using the words, but in a jumbled way, that he had heard from “real intellectuals” – although, mind you, he wasn’t so naive as that in all other things, and it took him just a few months with Carlo Marx to become completely in there with all the terms and jargon.
Avatar,
Isn’t that paragraph about Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise’s best bud? In real life – Neal Cassidy & Jack. What I love about the novel is the lust for life, tinged with loneliness and sadness. A nearly free America that will never exist again.
Carlo Marx is Ginsberg.
was AG that bad?
He made a pass at Patti Smith, thinking she was a boy or young man.
‘The Tits, Allan.’
Considering our good host decries the excessive attention to sexual preoccupations at the moment, he seems rather over preoccupied himself with the idea of the 72 virgins. However, the Muslim princes need to do more than just die to avail themselves of these young women – they need to be martyrs.
In any case, it would appear that aspiring winners of virgins ave been chasing the gold at the end of this particular rainbow somewhat pointlessly anyway, since they are just as likely to earn a bowl of raisins for their pains, the virgins possibly being lost in translation…
http://www.wnd.com/2016/05/quran-scholar-martyrs-get-raisins-not-virgins/
The virgins are a mistranslation? Oh really! Well then I’m not going to convert to Islam then. I wanted the Virgins since I can’t find any down here….
Raisins are good but no replacement. But then against, you get the Virgins after death not in this world. And not for scholarship in any case.
But you don’t have to die as a martyr to get them. You can die of natural causes and still win Paradise, Alby, Spirit of Confusion and Dissent.
So if the Saudis blow up, I guess that means the Bakken heats up again, right?
Obviously there is going to be a huge die off of humans. The question is which ones. == Janos
You still do not believe that we are talking about the prevention of nuclear war, which quite deliberately for religious reasons attempting to provoke a fairly influential group of people.
And compared to this, everything else is trifles, trivia and this is the result of what started in the 12th century.
LOL, I’m sure in Herr Janos’s bizarro world, he’d love all the ovens to be full of all the ‘undermen’ his types didn’t kill off in the 40s. Hopefully when they attack Poland and Russia again, Richard Spencer & Janos will be in the lead panzers.
What a stupid thing to say. You are terrified that we are better than many and you want us to die to so that is no longer the case. I’m comfortable with being higher than some, the same level as other, and beneath a few (in some ways not all), both racially and personally.
You cling to the wreckage of the sunken Titanic Doctrine of Equality, a wretch waxing eloquent as the rats listen with erect ears.
? ROFL
Maybe you need a nice damp bridge to hang out under. Better yet– while you’re there, I’ll give you an old TV so that you can watch reruns of Hogan’s Heroes on, and a copy of Mein Kampf you can wipe your ass with.
Sound like a good deal?
🙂
As long as I can run the extension cord to your house, why not?
Mein Kampf is very widely read in the Muslim world. And since you like Muslims – you are in contradiction again. And Muslim Europe will ban Gay Bars too. And make women covert their heads. Are you comfortable with all that? So why do you support them attaining power in the West?
Think Pete. Or can the Petes not think?
“a wretch waxing eloquent as the rats listen with erect ears.”
I love that comment…you have made my day….
Ah, a fan! Support me on Hatreon. If you send 10 bucks a month, you’ll a brick with your name on it in the Compound I’m a few doors down from you on the South Oregon Coast.
” I’m a few doors down from you on the South Oregon Coast”
Metaphorically?
I blew that post by leaving out the word “building” after Compound. Remember, the benefits will be eternal. You will have a stone in the house of gold.
Saudi Arabia minus oil is irrelevant. Given its current population and its complete lack of essential resources (besides oil) like farmland, water, timber, it won’t matter. Its thirty two million people are rounding error in a world of 7.6 billion and will die pretty much un-mourned. –Volodya
Volodya, you are burying the Saudis too soon! Oil is not the only energy resource the Saudis have. Saudi Arabia does not import or export natural gas and therefore they have not established themselves as a global natural gas supplier even though they produce significant amounts of it. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has been able to achieve important energy security of supply due to the fact that they only rely on themselves to meet their natural gas consumption. Are these facts not available to you up there in Canada, Volodya?
Janos,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism_Reoriented
Are you a member? You’ve mentioned Baba before. He seem to be your main or only spiritual influence. I’ve read God Speaks among other writings, including his book about the Masts or God Intoxicated.
I have met many and read many. In several countries.
Everyone I met who actually met MB spoke very well of him.
The others, even Krishnamurti, not so.
The scandals about Krishnamurti surfaced.
One sage spent 60 years in isolation in Tibet. He is concerned
about Pakistan nuking India.
Prabupad is said to predict the same. WW3 will be out of Pakistan.
Yes, the Mahdi is supposed to arise in the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And yes, Krishnamurti had a horrible personality, very arrogant and even worse, an ingrate who was always trying to “trade up”, ignoring old friends and devotees in favor of richer ones.
A book published 10-15? years ago got to the truth.
K had an affair w his best friends wife and she went in for 2 abortions.
He lived in Ojai, California and elsewhere? had a school somewhere. I met someone who attended his kids school.
One of the more interesting articles the past week:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-10/debunking-two-american-myths
Debunking the myths of American military supremacy and American invulnerability. With the present Russia mania in vogue and talk of population die-off we might be surprised to learn that if we poke the Russian Bear enough the die-off may just be in our own backyard. Jim Rickards believes we may have a secret weapon (and maybe we do… as he points out the atomic bomb was secret. So secret we had to use it twice to convince the unbelieving Japanese). But what if there is no secret weapon powerful enough to bring the world to its knees? The Russians as well as others are prepared for nuclear exchange. We stopped prepping long ago as Janos points out. Remember those yellow fallout shelter signs? They can be had on EBay for those suffering from nostalgia.
No matter who has advantage in this or that military technology, one thing is for certain: any nuclear conflict between US and Russia will cause catastrophic death and destructions to both Nations and will take both countries out of geopolitical game for long time.
I wonder who’s going to benefit from that?
Interesting article.
But how about some interesting comments? It’s been a bit slow here on the comments section for awhile. I mean we had ol’ Graycenphil driving some of the old crawlers here crazy with his Ward Cleaver like witticisms.
And Thwack? Where’s Thwack? It’s been awhile.
Squeeky Fromme girl reporter?
Onehunglo?
At the mention of these names, however, let an old favorite commence…over to you, Good Captain (and good morning)
Thwack is taking a knee.
“Thwack is taking a knee.”
Billy,
Excellent comment.
ah, articulate, many people run for cover out of shear panic….
many, like cap’n stubing, suffer from total lack of spiritual connection to Creator and as result have never known joy or peace…..
that ok.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
-onehunglo
some wondered why you were absent.
“Stop trying to give your words depth and gravitas by attributing them to a faraway old civilization.”—ancient Chinese proverb.
The Fu Man Fortune Cookie
Former President Jimmy Carter did a damn good job brokering peace in the Middle East at Camp David. I enjoyed learning that he took Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to Gettysburg as a way of emphasizing his points. I remember feeling a lot of hope at that time. I believed the peace process would continue to spread through the Middle East. Unfortunately we had Yasser Arrafat encouraging terror and uncooperation with any agreements, blowing up athletes in Munich and buses carrying children in Israel. It’s been lather, rinse repeat ever since, breaking eveyone’s heart on all sides. Those Accords and the ones to follow went nowhere.
Now we have the incompetent twit Jared Kushner, charged with brokering peace in the Middle East. He sure as hell ain’t no Jimmy Carter. Kushner with a $2 million dollar degree from Harvard paid for by his father, is a major New Jersey slumlord, who can claim destruction of the once respected New York Observer. Carter, an electrical engineer, Naval lieutentant, peanut farmer, creator of Habitat for Humanity can claim a Nobel Peace Prize, Kushner take a f’n seat! Instead, he jets off to Saudia Arabia to meet with an equally entitled incompetent twit and the next thing we know war with Iran is imminent.
We are on the brink of war because that is the intention of the players. There’s money to be made. Just looking for their Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin or 9/11 incident.
What now? I know the crowd here Is otherwise inclined, but a prayer would not hurt. Peace out.
“…hence, a true existential crisis without the usual pseudo-intellectual bullshit.”
Now that’s rich. Even for this blog. One I hasten to remind has a yearly doom prediction forecast.
Then again most of the posts on here are just the garden variety straight-up BS ones (see Finca, WPA, Janos, et al.). Most not even with the dull sheen of pseudo-intellectualism.
Woody Allen makes a dig at pseudo-intellectuals in nearly every one of his films.
He does it for the irony.
I suppose we should laugh.
Frankiti, is that you?
NutjobInaTrailer, you a wise one indeed. Not really.
But there is no you
You being me
As sure as you hijack this blog with largely ignored diarrhea of Russian yarns we the 100th Avatar hydra sprout new head.
May not your cut and paste operation be troubled
May Pravda be with you
OneLongBlo
I thought so! Nice seeing you again.
And we thought once ISIS was suppressed the situation in the Middle East would begin to stabilize.
But now there’s a whole new set of troubles even more daunting than ISIS fanatics severing a few heads and broadcasting it across the world. KSA may have 75 years worth of military hardware but its population is only about 1/3 of Persia’s. A direct war, not a proxy war, with Iran would be a disaster for Saudi Arabia. And once the Straits of Hormuz are closed on day one rest assured the US Navy would be engaged, and so might the Russian Navy on the other side. This indeed could lead to a much larger conflict.
One question I have is we are led to believe petroleum from Saudi Arabia and western Asia is no longer that vital to US and Europe, that don’t really need it. Is this the case, or just more BS?
brh
Don’t forget the Iraqi puppet state which the Iranians exercise control over, too. A war between SA and Iran would be a definite disaster for the Saudis. I don’t see how they could pray to survive without US intervention.
Ya Pete, and I think the first thing the Iranians would hit is KSAs oil producing infrastructure. Just like we bombed the Polesti oil fields in WW2. (at great cost, incidentally)
brh
“And in the middle of all this, poor, feckless, Hezbollah-haunted Lebanon, and the boneyard formerly known as Syria. The region is seriously coming apart.”
It has never been together.
Not even under the Ottomans.
There is no monolithic mideast, as there is no EU.
Europe has been at each other’s throats before, during, and ever more since the fall of Rome.
Bureaucratic tape and the low hovering stick of austerity holds it together. Barely. For now.
Not even retrograde interpretations of an extremely authoritarian religion can unite the NE/ME.
Feudal allegiances and ancient kinships divide them all.
Blood is thicker than bullshit.
Yup, especially Sykes–Picot bullshit.
The Arabs got their first taste of the congenital unabashed treachery of the Anglo-Saxon.
And a big spoonful at that.
I wouldn’t worry about the treachery of the Anglo-Saxon towards the Arabs. The Arabs did very well by the Anglo-Saxon. They got everyone in the MIddle East to be called Arabs, even when the majority is not.
Correct, but I refer to the Arabs themselves.
Sold out in Arabia.
” I do find your comments interesting, for the most part, but sometimes a bit disjointed. ” — elysianfield
This guy ( I forget his name. I’ve been trying to remember it for three hours. no luck ) was being interviewed , and the interviewer asked , in puzzlement , ” you are one of the most notable * thinkers of the current era ,
So why are you so rarely invited to speak on TV , and when you are invited , nine times out of ten , you decline the invitation ? ”
And the guy replied , ” On TV , you have a maximum of TWO MINUTES to explain yourself sandwiched between commercial breaks. The only thoughts that can be expressed in two minutes are conventional , already well-known , what has already been repeated ten thousand times.
If what you have to say is not conventional , is not well – known , is obscure , then to try and explain it in two minutes ends up sounding like gibberish . ”
You would think the largely text – dependent internet would be a bit different ?
Not really.
it is the difference between prison and the country club ;
Prison is full of INEPT dangerous people. The country club is full of ADEPT dangerous people .
Or the difference between East Germany and the United States ; East Germany was full of lousy actors. The USA is home to Hollywood.
That the average internet loiterer tends to have read a few more , or even a lot more , books , doesn’t really alter the equation much.
” disjointed. ” ?
You are almost certainly CORRECT.
On even , ostensibly , the smallest of points , I need to write a book .
I cannot write a book .
Certainly not on every little point.
The VERY BEST I can do is a very poor compromise.
On the other hand , even Janos has been accused of being a bot , an agent provocateur , or a paid empty suit propagandist.
SO FAR AT LEAST , I have not.
Who would I be working for ? A hidden Holy Roman Emperor ?
The super – secret cabal of the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece ?
I suppose that is sort of , kind of , a compliment.
“Prison is full of INEPT dangerous people. The country club is full of ADEPT dangerous people .”
Bingo!
One can also say a similar thing about the strata of society, except I would add the word “ambitious” to the upper echelons as that aspect has a deciding role for who crawls to the top of the heap (discounting inherited wealth).
And I would add that prisons and the lower echelons of society are peopled by those with poor impulse control, which is correlated with intelligence, but then this comment would start to look too much like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch.
Poor impulse control correlates with intelligence? Not that I’ve ever heard. It correlates with high testosterone and low IQ – thus Black Male criminality. They are much worse than Black women and tend to be worse than White males of similar IQ. Of course that are White Males who have the same profile, but a much lower average.
There are women who have it, but I’m not as sure of the profile. Does it correlate with Testosterone in them? Not sure.
Guess you changed your tune on abortion? Or how can you believe what you posted?
“Poor impulse control correlates with intelligence? Not that I’ve ever heard.”
correlates inversely
/brain fart
Ah! There is a Beast in Man – and it takes a strong hand and mind to handle it. That being said, be sure to take it out for a walk now and then. It is to be exercised not exorcised. You may need Him some day – the You that is covered with hair so thick that it is fur.
Hello Kesha Anna,
With all due respect, I would say I agree here with Elysian. I also find many of your remarks interesting, but they aren’t organized into complete thoughts, i.e. paragraphs. Your overuse of the hard return, is creating this disjointed quality. It really is hard to read.
I say this with sincerity. What you have to say is worth far more than the constant drone of ad hominem attacks of the trolls here. Damn, but they are legion. They make themselves quite obvious when the content of their comments makes not other point than the trashing others.
Your point about television appearances being largely meaningless to public thinkers is well taken. i know folks who have had that experience and were very frustrated by it. This when they take the time to book hotels and catch a plane.
Please take no offense. Very best regards, Cat.
Sorry for typos. The font is quite small in the comment window and with no serifs makes it hard to read. Times Roman it ain’t.
Hello [Kesha] Anna,
The font is quite small in the comment window and with no serifs makes it hard to read. – Cat
================
1. Is it really so hard to get a person’s screen name right?
2. If the font is too small press Ctrl +. Each time you do so will enlarge the font.
Well hello Q Shtik,
1. Your comment on not getting Kesa Anna’s name right is an absolutley perfect example of why in all the years of reading Mr. Kunstler’s blog, I never felt inclined to register. Too much troll like behavior here constantly derailing the conversation.
2. The autofill on IOS systems is quite aggressive and changed the spelling of Kesa Anna’s name after it was typed. I failed to notice. Predictive text can sometimes change what is typed completely. At least this was just missing an ‘h’.
3. The Control + does not work to enlarge font on iPhones or IPads. You can enlarge the font in settings or use the dynamic feature to enlarge it. However I often lose my typed comment completely while typing ,so avoid any additional adjustments I leave the comment window as I find it. Using the dynamic enlarging feature would make it impossible to read the comment I am replying to.
4. I hope this answers your question. I also hope Kesa is not in any way offended by my actual comment to her. I do find her thoughts quite interesting. Unlike yours,
5. Research has shown that people who nitpick such as you have done here are essentially jerks and very disagreeable people in general.
6. Based on the focus of your comment the research goes on to suggest that you are essentially an introverted bully. The type of person I avoid IRL.
Sincerely yours,
Cat
#This is why we can’t have nice things.
Dear Kat,
Since there is no REPLY button below your response to my comment, my response to YOUR comment will appear above it.
First, if you haven’t already read it, I recommend you read How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Or, better yet, take the whole public speaking course. I think it runs about 13 weeks, or use to.
One of the first things you learn (it may have been in the very first evening’s class) is how important people’s names are to them. You are taught techniques so that by the end of a two hour session you know and remember the names of 40 classmates you never met before.
There is nothing more flattering than to walk up to an acquaintance from yesteryear, reach out your hand and correctly recall their name. To say “I remember your face but I can’t remember your name” just doesn’t cut it. You might as well say “I remember your name but I can’t remember your face.”
My college year book had my last name spelled wrong. The brochure handed out at my 50th year High School Reunion contained that same misspelling. Such carelessness is offensive and speaks ill of the perpetrator.
Another trait I’d like to point out is your sycophantic groveling in the thrall of your fellow female, ‘Kesha’, as is evident in this series of lines:
. With all due respect
. I say this with sincerity (really? should we have expected insincerity?)
. the constant drone of ad hominem attacks of the trolls here. (I’d have to go back to see if anyone called Kesa a moron or a fucktard without providing rationale but I don’t recall any such name-calling.)
. Please take no offense. Very best regards, Cat. (Aww, that’s so sweeet.)
. Sorry for typos. (Why are you sorry? Very few here give a shit about ‘typos’. It is simply uncool to give a shit. If you give a shit you’re a troll.)
Squeezed in amongst your apologies is your honest opinion of Kesa’s writing, viz. “I also find many of your remarks interesting, but they aren’t organized into complete thoughts, i.e. paragraphs. Your overuse of the hard return, is creating this disjointed quality. It really is hard to read.” (But God forbid that Kat should appear too harsh.)
P.S. You left out the period following Q in my screen name.
Best post by Q ever. IMHO
How dare you talk to Cat this way! You are a big meenie.
Dale was tormented as a boy on what he would talk to a new wife about on the carriage ride home from the church. What would I say? What would I say?!
I serve the Order of the Garter. We seek to carry our Lady’s inner garment to new heights: Mountains, Sky Scrapers, Mars – you name it!
How do I combine this new “gee whiz” persona to my idea fixay (sic), Race? I’m stuck…..
Got it. New Narrative in Place: The Order of the Garter began when a lady lost her garter at a Ball while dancing. A noble Knight knelt down, picked up the garter and replaced it back onto her thigh. Everything stopped. The room was aghast at what was going on. You could her a pin drop. The young Knight looked up, and broke the stultifying silence by saying, “Evil to those who think evil”.
Thus we have fought Evil ever since since Evil always outs itself by criticism of others, no matter how innocent they are and how unjustified the criticism is. Now they criticize all of Traditional Society and indeed the very biological existence of the White Race and the Male Sex. We will fight them until the hills ring with our horns and the blood runs in rivers down those same hills, yea even up to our horse’s bridles. And all the while, we will be thinking of our Lady, with her garter close to our hearts.
Note: Yes, we have had pervs who try to wear their lady’s garter AS a garter. They get the bum’s rush. There are rules about how to honor your lady’s garment, how to wear it if you choose to do so.
Even now Lenin is more alive than all the living!
Woke up in the middle of the night, sorry for the details, to take a piss. Pleasantly relieved in half-sleep, went to the sleeping computer, and without looking clicked the mouse.
And suddenly I see on the screen a Twitter of Vladimir Lenin:
“Tell Putin that if you can’t bury me, then at least turn me on the other side, will ya?! Are you human or what?!”
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/mt/international/lenin%20june15%20t.jpg
Cheers! 🙂
” I have two reading suggestions, just to provoke conversation.
The first is the infamous Cornerstone Speech delivered by Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the short-lived Confederate States of America, … ”
if your suggestion had been , for example , the memoirs of John Bell Hood , or Rafael Semmes , a dozen , or a hundred , others , I might raise an eyebrow.
But Alexander Stephens has been cited ad naseum by those who want to gloss over —
–aggressive war ,
— scorched earth
— Union prisoners starving to death — because the Confederates couldn’t feed themselves , much less prisoners — because Lincoln ordered scorched earth and the destruction of Southern infrastructure that made feeding people , like prisoners possible — because Lincoln refused prisoner exchanges , a common and accepted practice at the time BECAUSE few nations could afford to keep prisoners humanely and honorably
— when it came to racism , Abraham Lincoln absolutely made Robert E Lee or Stonewall Jackson look like waffling milquetoasts.
” … Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the short-lived Confederate States of America, … ”
The Vice – Presidency , in the Confederate States , would most likely have been like unto the Vice – Presidency in the United States ; Many monuments have been built to honor Presidents , even Presidents almost forgotten .
But how many monuments have you seen to Vice – presidents ?
But here , in this case , the possessor of what is the consolation prize , the Vice – Presidency , presumably speaks for a whole nation !
If a Vice – President is the best you can do , I don’t think you have done much.
And , like I said, he has been cited ad naseum by American imperialist apologists .
So you can shove your canted reading suggestion up your ass.
” The second is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,… ”
I don’t have to read it to predict that my reaction would be ;
” In it Declaration of Human Rights, the UN drones on and on about this freedom and that. But at the end it says, all of the forgoing rights are subject to review and convenience as per their particular context.
What is granted can be taken away. ”
— As an apostle of force , Janos would instantly intuit that. And no reason to doubt him on that score.
So , in that , his reply would serve as well for mine.
” Third and finally, which one do you PREFER personally? ”
Which fucking would I PREFER ? Such wonderful choices !
” If you HAD TO CHOOSE , I mean. ”
( emphasis added . ) Interesting that you , yourself , point out the coercive aspect .
Why not dwell on the moral ambiguities unavoidably inherent in coercive circumstances.
” Addendum: you referred above to ‘virtue signalling’. To my mind, that’s a fifty-cent way to express a two-cent accusation, namely “You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” When people are morally bankrupt, they often react that way to people who aren’t. ”
With 20 , 000 + federal laws , not including state and local laws , and not including the laws of countries you have never even set foot in , but which you MIGHT BE subject to ,
How does one avoid moral equivocation , when certainly the idea of 20,000 + laws is to preclude anything but moral equivocation ?
By the way , to my mind , fifty – cent words to express two-cent ideas describes you to a “T”.
Jesus Christ get to a point. Stream of consciousness posting is unbearable
Jesus Christ get to a point. Stream of consciousness posting is unbearable – Avatar
============
Avatar, I understand your frustration completely. I made a similar remark about Kesa’s writing some weeks or months ago and she took great offense.
What you must understand is that Kesa’s way of writing is NOT a style CHOICE (as if one day she said to herself “I think today I will start writing like James Joyce”), rather, it is precisely the disorganized jumble in her head that you see on the monitor.
Please-“Finnegans Wake” is the best book ever!
Jen in San Jose
(Currently training for the sarcasm Olympics.)
I had a girlfriend once who if you interrupted one of her stories, she had to start back at the beginning – like it was a tape in her ‘ead or Gulliver.
Janos, while I don’t agree with some of your views, I consider you to be smart. Why would you date someone with a lower IQ? My theory is that it’s hard to have an interesting conversation with a person that has a significantly lower IQ (20 points lower.)
Jen
“One time, when I was in Hitler Youth Camp, I was like… uh, where was I? Awmawgawd! Anyway, one time I was at Hitler Youth Camp, and like…”
I agree. IQ is hugely important when it comes to friendships and love. People twenty points apart live in different worlds. This women was very smart. As you know (or should), women are far more verbal than men. Their verbal center is much stronger and they routinely “run over” men. You may well do it yourself. With men, they typically do 90% of the talking. I resent when they try to deny me my 10%.
A women once complained to C.S Lewis that sometimes her husband didn’t listen to her. Lewis responded, Who could listen to you all of the time?
One of the problems is that smart women typically only use their intelligence on the job. Their conversation is often no more enlightened than dumb women – strictly personal, grievance, etc. And of course their politics are sheer idiocy: Racism, Hillary, You Go Girl, etc. Women fell further in the Garden, Jen.
“— Union prisoners starving to death — because the Confederates couldn’t feed themselves ”
Yes,
This also happened to the Germans in WWII when their infrastructure had been bombed into the stone age….
Janos notes otherwise.
What are you trying to say? Germans starved as did the inmates, both Jews and others. Obviously if they had any food, they ate it instead of giving it to the Prisoners. If the Allies didn’t want the prisoners to starve, they shouldn’t have bombed the rail lines leading to the Camps.
Anne Frank’s father chose to flee with the Germans ahead of the approach of the Russian forces from the East – who were raping, killing, and pillaging to beat the band. The Allies were bad enough but the “Russians” had them beat. The worst offenders were the Central Asian savages not the White Russians.
Google the Greatest Story Never Told if you want to know our perspective. History is written the Victors – the same people who signed Europe over to Islam and signed the long term kill order on the White Race. Sheesh.
I don’t understand your abortion reference above btw.
If Black women are more moral than Black men, what about their high abortion rates?
Don’t think you can bait me into an argument over the conduct of the U.S. civil war, KesaAnna, or about other wars for that matter.
My position on this is clear, and I have stated it before. The slave power was an ongoing atrocity, and to end it as an urgent moral imperative. War wasn’t the right way to do it, however. The right way to do it was for the slavemasters to release the people they had held as slaves, apologize to them and provide compensation — either voluntarily or under law. The atrocities of the war that actually ensued don’t change the fundamental rights and wrongs of the case.
I don’t know much about the law, but these accusations against Judge Moore concerning events that allegedly happened 40 years ago just one month before the election … It looks like he’s already been convicted, by Republican Senators no less. Is there still such a thing as due process, confronting your accuser, hard evidence? Or is it you just accuse somebody of anything in your head and its accepted at face value? No need for any kind of inquest, investigation or trial before your peers, just level an accusation, the more salacious and disturbing the better it is.
brh
Idiocracy indeed!
There’s some kind of a disconnect when we are reduced to arguing whether a Senate candidate is a pedophile or not. What happened to normal?
There’s some kind of disconnect when hysterical bitches can just make wild public accusations 40 years after the fact and anyone in their right mind would actually pay attention to them. We’re in bizarro world now. The American sheeple are so ever-loving stupid that they’ll listen to anything, provided it’s tawdry enough. They have courts of law for these kinds of things, although no one bothers or can afford to use them anymore.
Spoken like Humbert Humbert himself! So what if Judge Moore likes ’em young? Did not Mohammad like them even younger? And you love him…..
Augmenting the ZH article I linked above is today’s
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-13/ominous-russophobia-america
Focused on Bernie Sanders’ embrace of the current Russo-phobic group-think, implying if Sanders has been taken in then all hope of rationality is lost. Maybe he knows we have a secret weapon that will render inoperable Russian hypersonic missiles — thus preserving our aircraft carriers for their apparent mission of providing close air support for attacks on small, relatively defenseless nations. Or for that matter, large ones with nuclear-armed weapons.
Conclusion: “Anything remotely connected to Russia is toxic. Failing to be Russophobic in Washington is a likely career-ender, much like what happens to Israeli critics.”
As I said:
You still do not believe that we are talking about the prevention of nuclear war, which quite deliberately for religious reasons attempting to provoke a fairly influential group of people.
I think after Trump’s victory, they hate America even more than they hate Russia.
The Zionist Jews? Perhaps. White Liberals? Definitely. They Always hate their won most – thus is their evolutionary failure. They win the group Darwin award, just barely edging out White Christians who adopt Black kids.
The crypto-fascist Partido Popular, or PP, of Spain is now blaming the Russians for Puigdemont’s secession results.
Redscare en vogue.
Fashion is indeed cyclical
Using hybrid wars and Russian hackers, Putin without declaring war intervenes in the internal affairs of the free world. Now it’s time for Spain, in which Putin’s magician Churov held a referendum in Catalonia.
The results were astounding – forty-seven percent supported Catalonia’s independence, two percent for Spain and fifty-one percent for United Russia.
Separatists already have T-90 tanks (supposedly kept by players at the Camp Nou) and a Russian military uniform now can be bought at any Eurobowl Barcelona sports shop.
In other news, Donald Trump deprived those three African American basketball players, who shoplifted with impunity, the right to a fair trial in China.
Jen in San Jose
There’s no such thing as a fair trial in China. They don’t even go through the motions.
Looks like those three are already on a flight on their way to LA.
Trump could have scored big points with his constituents by not intervening in the thug basketball player fiasco. He should have let things run their course through whatever passes for law in China. If I or any other American were arrested in China for whatever reason, it would probably mean time in jail. I don’t understand the idol worship of sports personalities, especially ones that are so stupid.
Yo, they be givvenna newz confrince when dey land in da U.S.S.A.- cause dey be superstar jungleball playas.
Translation:
They aforementioned afroletes should have absolutely been tried in a Chinese court then, and only then, released to return the U.S.A. for some lucrative modelling, TeeVee, film and professional sports contracts. Plus they could have a shot at a successful hip-hop career to boot: call them The Five Finger Discount.
“Is there still such a thing as due process, confronting your accuser, hard evidence?” –brh
In a court of law, yes. In a political club called the Senate, no. If the people of Alabama elect Roy Moore, the Senate will expel him post haste, with a vote of 68 or more senators to throw child molesting rapist out.
He could actually sue you for alleging that with no proof or conviction. Although, I’m not sure mere internet troll bots have legal standing, so you might be OK after all.
“He could actually sue you…” –Ol’ Scratch
LOL! Bring it on! Ol’ Roy will be lucky to avoid jail time… or worse.
“Redscare en vogue. Fashion is indeed cyclical.” –100th Avatar
Yes, Putin already said he is innocent. There is a lot of evidence that says Putin is not innocent of messing with elections in many countries.
Should we just take the word of the perpetrator over the evidence?
US Presidential elections are for sale anyway yet no one seems to mention this lest the air be let out of scheduled programming featuring Russia.
Look, we can see some of the money coming from the usual brand names hidden behind the PACs – Goldman, JP Morgan, US Army and so on. SuperPACs and Citizens United place no limit on the size of the billions coming through the spigot and from where it comes no one may really know. In magic-land USA, we refuse to see that the whole show is bought and paid for, instead, we fret that said billions through the spigot might not be candidate independent. The hallucination remains as strong as ever: catabolic Americans actually believe there is a competition that they’re invited. We’re invited of course, our consent is necessary. Faith in such an obvious ruse leads the blissful lemmings into their sacred referendum rituals each November.
The entertainment isn’t bad, I can barely wait for Mark Warner’s next lines as he courageously takes on the abominable CCCP.
Should we just take the word of the perpetrator over the evidence?
More than that, we should mind our own business. The US has more than enough problems domestically, without vainly searching for a Russian boogeyman under every bed. “Russian meddling” is nothing more than a HillaryBot bait and switch campaign. “Look, ever there!”
“Hillarybot bait”
Hillary won the popular vote.
Clinton … 65,844,610
Trump … 62,979,636
Hillary beat Donald by 2,864,974 votes.
Rush: 77% of College Educated Democrats DON’T believe that sex is assigned at birth. It’s a boy! – nonsense! Gender has nothing to do with physical sex. No doctor can tell anyone what they are, right Alby?
This is learned ignorance. Close the Universities and the people will benefit a hundred fold.
Iran is moving west along Saudi Arabia’s northern border, in Iraq and Syria, and on the southern border in Yemen, while also trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Naturally, this makes Saudi Arabia very nervous. They appear to be being encircled by a hostile power.
At the same time, Iran’s dismal TFR (fertility rate) makes it certain that in another few decades they will have become a geriatric nation surrounded by much younger and hostile Sunni hordes. At about the same time, their gas fields are going to run dry (barring new discoveries or technological advances). For that reason, they are trying to gain both nuclear weapons (to hold back a Sunni invasion) and nuclear power (to replace the natural gas).
Israel is just being used as an excuse by Iran, to fog things up and free them up to pursue those goals without triggering a preemptive war by the Sunnis. It is unlikely they would launch an all-out war on Israel, despite the rhetoric, because even if they won they would have lost as far as their real goals are concerned.
With regards to Iran’s fertility rate, they just need to let it soak longer.
With the extreme lack of information on the KSA, it is almost impossible to make any sort of speculation on the near political and social future of the place.
I always have this question in the back of my mind regarding the strict parochial nature of the Wahabi’s: will Arabia, ever again, have a church or synagogue on the sacred sands or will hardcore Yzlam always be in fashion there, even after a monumental change in the government or a revolution?
What now for Saudoil Arabia, the indispensable kingdom?
Nobody has yet let me in on the secret plans, so I don’t have many clues to work with, but this should help their status and integrity quotient a yuge bunch!
“America’s Syrian adventure went from public declarations of “we’re staying out” to “just some logistical aid to rebels” to “okay, some mere light arms to fight the evil dictator” to “well, a few anti-tank missiles wouldn’t hurt” to “we gotta bomb the new super-bad terror group that emerged!” to “ah but no boots on the ground!” to “alright kinetic strikes as a deterrent” to “but special forces aren’t really boots on the ground per se, right?” to yesterday’s Mattis declaration of an open-ended commitment. And on and on it goes.”
Who did we figger was trying to destabilize every hill and dale (are there dales in the blasted desert?) of Shia-dom (and other sects of god-fearin’ god worshippers) in the benighted land of the scimitar (besides the neo-con meddlers)? Uh, that would be the prime supporters of ter’rsm and cold murder, suppliers of 9-11 flyboy stripclub haunters, our good buddies, the House of Saud… and their super-puritan, Sunnified controllers of the restive mobs, the Wahabb-bob-bob-bobbis.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-14/bombshell-report-confirms-us-coalition-struck-deal-isis
Not to worry though, the Klingon-dom of Saudi is not a member of that coalition of shit-stirrers… oh, but that’s okay; let not your farts be bubbled.
This little revelation should be a large help to “the cause”, whatever TF that might be.
These boots aren’t made for walking.
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2017/11/14/mccain-and-hillary-are-proven-isis-supporters-have-the-two-been-indicted/
[ could be bunk, who knows? ]
My understanding is that the Russians have wiped out ISIS. Probably true since nothing is being reported from there.
911 Solved:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I-6sN7x_tsU
Pucker,
Reasonably reasoned.
If we extend those “co-incidences” out a bit, we find ourselves in the current cesspit of blood and oil. …….Well, whad’d’ya know!?!
https://dailystormer.hk/thotpatrolled/
Guy breaks up with his girlfriend when he finds out she once went to bed with a Black. She said she used protection and for that she caught hell from her fellow travelers. He still broke up with her too.
Any Irish Travelers up your way?
vladdie “responds” again. This time with boilerplate psychopathic troll shit. Anytime his trollery bullshit is called out, it gives the go ahead for more “free speech” wasting of time, space, keystrokes and (best of all) distasteful blog pollution.
Okay then, since according to the posting volume, this appears to be a neo-nazi/kkk/total fascism satellite site, let’s hear some more about the niggers, lefties, jews, and how we’re too deficient (in all ways) to live. Get to work — daylight’s burnin’ and your masters want production (since they’re too emotionally crippled to find other employment).
I simply want to know if these shitheads are as ugly outside as inside.
BTW, he/she/it/they can go fuck themselves if this be their only “skill”. (Both ‘jan’s thanks.)
So you admit to being in one of those categories? A Lefty of course.
Sooooooo, why oh why (FFS) does vladdie barge in with a non-response to a credible speculation concerning 9/11/01, with some stupid drivel about his mummy and daddy’s relationship ruined by niggers? That dog don’t hunt and shows nothing less than a hot-button diversionary tactic (and a very crude one, at that). When did vladdie stop torturing small animals? (I insert my own non sequitur here, just for “balance” and “fairness”.)
……..Oooooo, *somebody* doesn’t like this post!!
That’s what I wanted you to think, Pete. And you fell right into it; walked right into the Gaslight pole. You are so predictable sometimes I can’t resist.
I’m down with Conspiracy, seeing it as the very nature of life. Pick any group of three, and each pair will be conspiring against the third. 9/11? Of course it was a Conspiracy of some kind. The Feds seem to have known something was coming. Ditto the Israelis. The PNAC said they needed a new Pearl Harbor after all.
Hail Trump! Hail our People!
Glory to the Race!
Service to the State (that serves the Race).
https://www.amren.com/news/2017/11/trump-nominating-white-men-judges-highest-rate-30-years/
Yeah! That’s right! ‘murica! We need dem white men judges, who got us to where we is at today to… waiterminute.. I din’t thank that through
Yeah, good thinking. We should have nothing but women and minorities who end up sending us to the FEMA Gulags.
Like Clarence, the only diehard conservative upholdin’ murica on his high court bench. What your white boys doin?
You sure pretty-up your talk a lot, but it’s all stupid.
All
‘Cause nothin’ sits worse than an ignorant racist.
So we got ourselves the 2.0 variety.
He’s articulate as all got out.
Makes that racism, sexism, and general misogyny go down easy.
Or at least provides old fashun entertainment value.
No price on that.
Yup. Just like fine Whiskey. You gettin’ drunk you just don’t know it yet, boy. As Paul Atreides said to his mother, “The Spice is changing me.”
I’m changing you. And yes, Kalki is coming on a White Horse and He is pissed.
Talked to a man – a black American who understands the Russian fleet better than I do, although I try to follow these questions. I really did not understand who he is by profession – it is quite possible that he trades in naval painting. Paintings, by the way, are of very high-quality – warships in a storm. Imagine who his clients are, but as I understood his main trade is in England and Sweden.
He is probably the first American I know who understands how close Russia and the United States have come to the edge of the nuclear abyss, but considers it inevitable.
And he knows about the Status-6 and agreed with me that US needed Crimea to prepare a nuclear attack on Russia, but from his point of view talking about the US aggressiveness is meaningless because once pressure on Russia is loosened, it will begin to prepare a nuclear missile attack on the US – such a missile-nuclear Satanism. I must say that he started to carry some kind of nonsense about 20 completely invisible nuclear cruisers that will be built in the next 30 years and coming close to the US shores they will simply shoot them with flying time of 3-4 minutes.
I could not find any traces of these cruisers on the Internet – obviously not only the cruisers themselves are invisible, but also the shipyards on which they are built.
But in support of this delusion, he unfolded before me a really stunning picture of the change in the geopolitical balance as a result of Russia’s construction of small missile ships that can cross from the Caspian Sea to the Black, Baltic and White Seas, and the construction of nuclear icebreakers and the opening of the Northern Sea Route allows them to take aim beyond the Arctic, which was already under Russian control, at the northern part of the Pacific, the Persian Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic and Northern seas, while not directly coming into contact with the American fleet.
Naturally I asked him about the Buyans-M of project 21631, about which I wrote a couple of years ago. These ships really changed the geopolitical situation in 2015 by shooting at Syrian targets from the Caspian Sea, but they have a draft of only 2.6 meters and with such a draft in the oceans, you will not sail very far.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyan-class_corvette
And it turned out that he was referring to the Karakurta project 22800, which have a draft of 4 m, a speed of 30 knots and are armed with 8 P-800 “Onyx” and “Caliber-NK” launchers. The first two Karakurtas should be put into operation in the coming year, another 10 are under construction and six are being prepared for construction on the Amur Shipyard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakurt-class_corvette
But the most interesting thing is that in the four years that passed after Russians very politely asked the Fourth Reich Bastinda (Hillary) and Gingema (Merkel) to get out of the Crimea together with their flying monkeys, Russia completed the construction of the joint deepwater system in its European part, which allows the Karakurts to jump from sea to sea, bypassing the barriers of the NATO fleets, attacking them in the most unexpected places of the World Ocean.
Unified Deep Water System of European Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Deep_Water_System_of_European_Russia
Gee, there are only 3 exit points. Way too many to cover.
And there are these things called satellites that provide livetime coverage… hard to miss a flotilla… and they can even see in the 15 feet deep water covering them tiny subs. Jus’ sayin’ brah.
When I’m a spinster, I want to be that guy, just sitting around in my boxers, postin’ all sorts of stuff on the interwebs, just me and Toonces and fancy feast man, that’s the life. you’ve come along way baba.
Gee, even I could count at least 4: Baltic, Arctic Ocean, Black and Caspian sea.
If you wanna run the world, buy yourself a decent-size globus.
You got me
Boy
You got me
The “win” in the Cold War followed by the looting of Russia in the 90s by the Clinton cabal – both American and Russian – apparently was the costliest mistake United States could’ve done during its relatively short existence.
No complaints from the English Premier League or European yacht builders.
Good article, Jim.
Aside from the part about Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map (that never happened):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#Translation
Still, I can forgive you your one blind spot, since you have been spot-on about more or less everything that does not involve Israel.
Peal oil? Infrastructure crumbling? Economic collapse?
2018 Dodge Demon, $85,000 base price, 0-60 in 2 seconds flat, 6 speed on the floor, 830 horses of pure Detroit power, pops wheelies out of the box, 4 mpg … they say you can fell it coming at you from a mile away, in your chest.
brh
BRH,
Winsted cop shop can afford them* for unmarked, all-black “chase vehicles”, so all the vacant shop fronts don’t mean nuthin’ — and “it’s all good”!
*Or are they Dodge Chargers? It’s difficult to find this information; wonder why?
Best post by Q ever. IMHO – Avatar
===========
Thanks for the kind words Avatar. Personally, I felt my best comment was a spoof I wrote many years ago that involved some commenters who no longer post here: Trip Ticket, Wage Laborer, and others. If memory serves, Janos was Jaego and janet was Asoka back in those days.
Wage Laborer was interesting, a self admitted, full fledged communist, an admirer of Stalin and Mao.
I believe she was an RN in a hospital outside of Chicago.
If I can recall correctly, Jim finally had to give her the boot as she was also, beside an America hating Red, a 911 conspiracy theorist.
One thing that was surprising is how cordial she was to Janos, and how well they got along. There were some compelling conversations between those two.
brh
For some reason I saw her an incarnation of Mother Russia and I wanted to fuck her in worst possible way. My desire translated thru the screen into her brain. So I penetrated her in that sense as least.
You, a consummate traditional gentleman, were simply a White Devil for her to hate. My Caveman desire circumvented that happening to me as it would have otherwise.
Mister Darling was congenial. There was Piltdownsomethingorother… Janos was Jagov, more or less still a Jagov, and Q without the . and
Wage Laborer began hating me when I mentioned my father was in the Korean War, and was severely wounded in Korea in 1951. Naturally, she backed the NKoreans and Communist Chinese; US Army personnel were invaders and imperialists and deserved what they got (according to Comrade Wage Laborer)
brh
https://dailystormer.hk/the-atlantic-blows-the-truth-of-andrew-anglin-wide-open-hes-such-a-loser-they-had-to-put-him-on-the-cover/
Why are they trying to silence this man, one of the greatest living Americans? What are they afraid of?
To recite the old advertising/public relations apothegm: there is not such thing as bad publicity. Good or bad he gets a cover. Notorious is known. Like him or hate him, he has entered the conscience of the “Cloud People.”
So, yes, Janos; good question: “What are they afraid of?”
Yes, “they” – the evil fuckers who control the media (and plenty else) in America – are trying much too hard to make ANglin go away. So they do quite the opposite by giving him an in-depth investigative piece in a national publication.
Those lovers of “Free Speech.” Voltaire, they are not.
It’s not like he gave State secrets to the enemy, raped any children or
murdered tens of thousands (or more) of innocent civilians in the name of Empire. Is it?
If Andrew Anglin and his ilk get their way, the number of people who die violent and unnecessary deaths in this world is only liable to increase, possibly drastically. That’s reason enough to oppose his program, without getting any deeper into the merits (def. 1.3) of his views.
By the way, here’s a link to the actual Atlantic article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/the-making-of-an-american-nazi/544119/
Are you in the USA?
Violent death ie murder is often done by one group, and this Anglin is not in it.
Every second a new sucker is born – especially in Europe
Such a conclusion arises from the recently published information that US tankers deliver fuel to the terminal of liquefied gas in Belgian Antwerp, which is purchased in Russia.
That is, despite all the European mantras of recent years about the need to reduce “gas dependence” from Russia, it not only does not decrease, but, on the contrary, increases, moreover in the most sensitive and expensive sphere – the sphere of LNG supplies.
That is, instead of buying cheap Russian gas via a pipe, Europe buys it in liquefied form, at least 15-20% more expensive. And given the information about the cost of the trial delivery of the “American” LNG to Poland, which is higher than the Qatari LNG supplies, by 40%, not to mention the price of pipeline gas from Russia, there is no doubt that this is an excellent business. For Russia. But the most important thing is that it involves Americans, who introduced anti-Russian sanctions.
Thank you, Americans!
As the investigation of the activities of offshore companies, commissioned by Soros Paradise Papers, showed, that the liquefied gas arriving to Antwerp is delivered by four tankers that belong to the Navigator Holdings registered in the Marshall Islands. Almost one third (31%) of Navigator Holdings shares belong to US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. At the same time, the company buys gas from the Russian Sibur in the port of Ust-Luga.
That is, Moscow and Washington have found another way of peaceful and absolutely legitimate way of separating European suckers from their money. This story once again confirms the profitability of anti-Russian sanctions, since otherwise the same gas would go to Europe via pipes cheaply, and now it enters the LNG-form a hell of a more expensive.
Europe pays well for American anti-Russian sanctions, and Russia and the United States make excellent money on this.
Thank you, Europe!
It’s interesting that the majority of al-Nusra terrorists kettled in Idlib near the Turkish border are from Chechnya, Dagestan, and other areas of the Russian Federation. Also interesting that the Syrian al-Assad is not asking questions about that. The US and Russia now agree that Idlib should be cleared of al-Nusra. I wonder where al-Nusra will be going next.
Minneapolis?
Could be.
I’m thinking Canada would be perfect. Maybe Castro’s child Prime Minister Justin will do them justice and greet them with flowers at Pearson Airport as is his custom.
A fool and their money soon part is what Ol’ Gran’ Pappy Scratch used to say.
Ol’ Gran’ Pappy needs to get his singulars and plurals in sync. The biblical expression is “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
how you know what t Ol’ Gran’ Pappy Scratch said?
A fool is he who reads a bible.
A detestable fool is he who reads it literally.
The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.
He didn’t say that, he just doesn’t like people reading bibles.
LOL! Q being Q again – priceless! Ol’ Gran’ Pappy was the smartest demon to ever come down the pike. Couldn’t even spell edumacated!
http://www.aggiecatholicblog.org/2012/04/top-15-phrases-not-found-in-the-bible/
This is one of them.
Meanwhile,THIS IS NOT THE OJ SIMPSON CASE.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5079295/Ex-NFL-player-murdered-wife-slitting-throat.html
Yesterday, the main news on the Russian Net was the fake from Russian Defense Ministry, which used the screen shot from the computer game as evidence of how Yankees helped the ISIS to leave Abu Kemal.
The whole Net roared with laughter. Even put forward a version of the internal political struggle between the Kremlin Towers (they say, this is a knife in Shoigu’s back)
I think it’s nothing like that.
Between Moscow and Washington was concluded and now gradually getting realized the so-called “Big Deal”, part of which are the agreements on Syria. The departure of the ISIS fighters from Abu-Kemal is within the framework of these arrangements (such things are not the first). However, it’s just impossible to close the eyes to this situation (it became media front lines and even the BBC made a report about this), so Comrade Konashenkov was tasked: put together, dear Igor Evgenevich, some indignation about the release of ISIS from the city in US zone of responsibility.
Well, he screwd up.
https://dailystormer.hk/rand-paul-has-five-broken-ribs-yard-tackler-neighbor-revealed-to-be-leftist/
Neighbor is a doctor and medical inventor – yet still a Leftist thug. Will you people please get some morality?
Tackling someone and breaking five of their ribs is a serious crime. I trust that justice will be done in this case, as I do in all cases.
Apropos of nothing, Heather Heyer is still dead, isn’t she?.
California State Assembly Seeks to Stifle Debate on Israel
California passes resolution defining criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism
So now its a crime to speak against other crimes…
In America, we can criticize our own government (for the time being), but we cant criticize the government of a foreign state???
The control and influence of Israel in the US has to stop. These elected officials are supposed to be representing Americans. Clearly they are more loyal to a foreign nation. Last time I checked, that was a form of treason…
I hope this is challenged in court. Clearly, this is a violation of the First Amendment and freedom in general.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this thread is accused of “antisemitism” simply because it draws attention to this issue. This is how bizarre things have gotten in America../ above top secret.com
California is not America.
America is not America.
It is gone bro.
You’re crying over ashes in an urn.
Let the urn go.
Scattered.
wow–an existentialist poet.
do you have YOUR OWN BLOG?
yeah, real original stuff.
i never agreed with Frost, I like the trampled roads.
easy under foot
Ashes in an urn? Or poo is a chamber pot? Many can’t tell the difference.
Famous internet personality and transsexual activist, Blaire White, was attacked by a Leftist thug wearing a pussy hat – guilty of the crime of wearing a MAGA hat in Hollywood. A Tranny, Elrond. Is nothing sacred to you people?
Is there anything lower than a guy wearing a Pussy hat? A guy who would do that is capable of anything. Do you wear one Elrond?
https://www.infowars.com/trans-activist-assaulted-in-hollywood-for-wearing-maga-hat/
Heyer died because of her weight and poor health in general. She wasn’t the fatty sliding of the car hood either. We never learned her name or condition, did we Elrond?
Rand Paul was probably mowing his lawn, rather passive aggressively, during his neighbor’s $100 a plate garden party (all proceeds going to the DNC and Asylees without Borders).
asylees?
yes, ayslees, they no longer need borders, contiguous safe havens, they can land where they want, transit through, and claim asylum where they want to hang their hat. It’s the new thing.
I already wrote that the presidential campaign of 2016, which is still going on, on the intellectual front turned into a struggle between two publications: the Trumpist National Interest and the Clintonoid Foreign Affairs, which are personally useful to me for understanding the events more than all other publications combined.
There’s also Breitbart, but it’s a bit of a different kind of sport.
And yesterday I read an article about Buratino (Pinocchio) in the National Interest, which is called Russia Has One Weapon the U.S. Army Fears (And Has No Way to Match)
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-has-one-weapon-the-us-army-fears-has-no-way-match-23186
The article itself is interesting, but in it I suddenly come across a reference to those most invisible missile cruisers that the black American dealing in Naval Arts told me couple of days ago, and I did not believe him. This turns out to be the Lider-class destroyer of project 23560:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lider-class_destroyer
August 23, 2017 it became known that the draft design of a prospective destroyer was approved by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The control and influence of Israel in the US has to stop. == malthuss
If I were you, malthus, I’d worry more about the control and influence of Chinese Diaspora in the US.
That is, of course, if you you are OK with scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
We shall trap them in their gebbeth form.
https://dailystormer.hk/new-ai-app-removes-womens-makeup-thots-on-suicide-watch/
Makeup is a lie. A form of violence against men. The time for lies is ova “ladies”. The Age of Truth is dawning, an Age of Men, White Men.
HOW YOU CAN HELP STOP TRUMP’S WALL
Cards Against Humanity, an irreverent card game company known for its attention-seeking pranks, says it bought land on the U.S.-Mexico border to block President Trump from building his wall.
The Chicago company said on its website that this was part of a holiday promotion, for which customers could contribute to the wall-blocking project with $15 purchases for surprise gift packages.
On Wednesday morning, just a few hours after the launching the program on Tuesday, Cards Against Humanity said it was sold out.
“Donald Trump is a preposterous golem who is afraid of Mexicans,” said Cards Against Humanity on its web site. “He is so afraid that he wants to build a twenty-billion dollar wall that everyone knows will accomplish nothing. So we’ve purchased a plot of vacant land on the border and retained a law firm specializing in eminent domain to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for the wall to get built.”
The Hitler painting comments have piqued my interest. The splendid landscape I posted last week by Hitler didn’t receive much commentary probably because not many enjoy painting. Nonetheless, it’s obvious to my eyes that Adolph was probably too sensitive for this world and so he cracked like a egg hatching a demon for lack of nurturing patronage.
This image once again shows sensitivity and emotional insight…anatomically the hand is the hand of a man so to be sure we’re not talking about Raphael but still this give’s one pause and befuddlement:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b8d8b0abb571fd101ad4095e73f0f89a-c
Famous German romanticism in combination with maniacal homicidality…
Too cool! I’ve always suspected that Hitler’s personal story would be a lot more nuanced than the official “demonic” version.” No person, no matter how “evil” their deeds, views themselves in that light. They always have rational reasons for what they do, which they believe are somehow “morally right,” no matter how twisted their thinking.
To my mind, Hitler’s way of hyper-idealistic thinking is now prevalent in the world again, albeit under a far more beneficent guise, of course. Just substitute ‘master race’ with ‘master way of life’ (global capitalism) and final solution by way of concentration camps to final solution by way of economic starvation and/or becoming a casualty of the Global War of Terror and it’s the exact same thing. And it’s likely going to end just as badly for the perpetrators of this fraudulent scheme.
Buck,
I would love to have your facility to see meaning in art…I still have my old copy of Jansen’s History of Art…I do scan it occasionally, but as has been said…I mark my place with bookmarkers to measure what I’ve lost….
Hitler’s painting? It is a nice picture.
Marcel Dushan argued with Joseph Stella that in America even a urinal can be sold for several million dollars as a brilliant work of art.
That one, actually, was:
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T07/T07573_10.jpg
Glorious. He was ever an Artist, his canvas being human history and his medium being the pure blood of the German people.
US has one too.
His lame puddle paintings where the last that I’ve seen, while ago.
This is A BIG improvement, even though I hate the man.
http://www.bushcenter.org/exhibits-and-events/exhibits/2017/portraits-of-courage-exhibit.html
Surprisingly good. Bush was truly an “honest” man to the core. Yes, he was an inveterate liar when circumstances called for it (in his mind, at least), but you got the sense that he just figured everyone else who needed to know the truth knew that as well, and that it was all for the “greater good.” In the end, he was simply an unvarnished, unsophisticated, and a completely unapologetic product of his patrician upbringing; no more or less.
Ol’ Scratch,
There’s an artwork that’s pitch perfect for that! 😉
http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/banksy-the-banality-of-the-banality-of-evil/
Nice!
A case of cognitive dissonance when on one side one hears:
‘internets’, terrrists’, ‘bring them to justice’ (for millionth time), and all other ‘bushisms’ and looking into this this brave bold colors and strokes. Ay.
Bush was more ‘spokesmodel’ and ‘frontman’, than ‘president.’ Credit where credit is due: the Repubes were smart enough to cash in on the Bush family brand, which was little more than a bait and switch operation to get the real operators – Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld – in office. Hey, that’s what brands are for!
Memoirs of Russian student of Art in Pratt:
The last two years in Pratt, I was called “notorious Ivan” because I specifically brought the teachers to a nervous breakdown.
The first time I did this, when I brought into the classroom to the teacher of marketing of contemporary art a book telling how Marcel Duchamp argued with Joseph Stella that in America even a urinal can be sold for several million dollars as a brilliant work of art.
And my conflict with this teacher, who developed theories very similar to that of Cantor, began with the fact that he took us to the Rockefeller Hall of the Metropolitan Museum and, pointing to the asmat tribal idols that the Michael Rockefeller collected for the museum, licking his lips pronounced: “Look at the this art, don’t Raphael’s paintings seem bland after looking at these idols?”
Like Cantor, he certainly means that the Christian art, whose peak he considers the art of the Renaissance, lacks energy and emotionality, with which the idols of the cannibals of Oceania are abundantly endowed. He even took us immediately afterwards to the Italian Renaissance Hall and I had to agree with him.
But still my fighting instincts worked, and I, clapping my blue, naive eyes, asked whether it is necessary to eat some of the Rockefellers to achieve such results, or you can dispense with an ordinary humanoid: the collector of these idols, Michael Rockefeller, was eaten by tribesmen and his father, Nelson Rockefeller, in gratitude for this, provided them with an early meeting with their gods.
And a month after this, the Greek banks and the National Endowment for Humanities staged the exhibition “The Glory of Byzantium” in the Metropolitan Museum and I insisted that we go to it with the whole class. And, when we entered the hall and all the power and energy of the 5 meter icons of Byzantium fell upon us (and several walls with frescos from Greek museums were dragged to this exhibition), I turned to him and sarcastically asked: “Does this also seems insipid and not enough energetic to you? “.
It was necessary to see his face and most importantly the faces of students. Believe me, after a collision with these icons, it’s simply impossible to look at Michael Rockefeller’s favorite art – all their energy disappears, or rather the ability to feel this energy disappears not for hours, but for weeks.
The new App that takes off women’s makeup is a gift from the Russian people to a debauched America. Far more than just a token of freedom like the Statue of Liberty, this is an actual tool and enabler of it.
https://dailystormer.hk/ill-give-you-three-guesses-who-is-behind-makeapp-the-app-that-is-destroying-sluts/
“This morning one of Israel’s largest international news broadcasters broke an explosive yet not entirely surprising story that Israel would take the unprecedented step of sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia as both countries continue to ramp up efforts to curb what they perceive as Iranian expansion in the region.”
Shall we say: The enemy of my Shia enemy is an idiotic (but useful), temporary, Sunni bludgeon, proxy-type “friend”? Hey, I nearly forgot, they’ve also got massive piles of U.S. weaponry and treaty assurances of same. (Can’t wait for the giant sitting ducks to come steaming in, can you?)
What could go wrong? It’s a win win. It’s a slam dunk. It’s in the bag.
“**On Sunday, just after Lebanese PM Hariri’s shocking resignation, Israel sent a cable to all of its embassies with the request that its diplomats do everything possible to ramp up diplomatic pressure against Hezbollah and Iran.
**The cable urged support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
**The cable stressed that Iran was engaged in “regional subversion”.
**Israeli diplomats were urged to appeal to the “highest officials” within their host countries to attempt to expel Hezbollah from Lebanese government and politics.”
Don’t worry your device-bedazzled head about it though; this will be eeeeasily contained to the eradication of Hezbollah. (Yeah, right.)
What now?
Interesting how everyone has access to Israeli diplomatic cables. And in real time no less.
Contemporary Armenian Anecdote:
Ashot wakes up at night, goes to the kitchen and sleepily snaps the switch. The kitchen lights up! He turns the tap – hot water comes out, pushes a button – the gas is lit.
Karen – Ashot shouts, – get up, the Communists are back!
P.S. In general, judging by how the Medvev’s people met the centennial anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, secret opinion polls showed that there is a revolutionary situation in the country and they are mortally afraid of the repetition of the year 1917.
That may be (however much I might think you’re just making shit up), but the far clearer existential threat lies in the SURROUNDING neighborhood. Some of the ‘stans provide a bit of a buffer, but losing Iran (for the future projection of the Imperial Coalition) would be truly catastrophic. It seems you’re loving to attribute present geopolitical realities to arcane occultisms of the past, but I don’t think your long-term foresight is very good.
It seems you’re loving to attribute present geopolitical realities to arcane occultisms of the past
So for you, the Great Schism of 1054 or sacking of Christian Constantinople by Western “Crusaders” are arcane occultisms of the past?
For me, it’s like happened yesterday!
You wanna stick to Communism-Capitalism paradigm explaining today animosity of the Western Civilization to Russia? Does it make better sense to you?
Nope, that doesn’t get it either. Just more nonsense and short-sightedness by relating everything to a human time scale and loyalties to whom/what-ever can erase the fear of death, the great resuscitator. (Oh yes, there’s life after death, but it isn’t *ours* and the remnants aren’t going *anywhere*. Deal with it.)
Humans have got to get a true knowledge and respect of Earth and the unbending processes of Nature.
Your particular stark dualities and afterdeath occultist fantasies are part of the problem in recognizing that.
“You wanna stick to Communism-Capitalism paradigm explaining today animosity of the Western Civilization to Russia? Does it make better sense to you?”
Addressing that in particular: Nope, that’s just a cover too. It’s all about who gets the power to control the resources of the entire world and all those in it. This road surely leads to an orgy of violence, ultimately leading to madness and death. There is no “good” in those who feel they can (or “should”) seize and control all and everything. (Just my personal opinion you understand, but this film is on a continuous loop in the museum of history.)
Yes, Communism was funded by the Western (Jewish) Bankers in order to destroy the Monarchies and “open” them up for exploitation.
“What now?”
ozone
Someone’s children will meet an unkind and untimely death.
wm
wm,
I fear so.
And in that lies the largest of obscenities. (Anyone who utters the words, ‘collateral damage’ in this regard should be suspected of obfuscation… at the very least!)
“Someone’s children will meet an unkind and untimely death.”
Wm,
As they always have, and always will….
Someone’s children will meet an unkind and untimely death.
wm
Everyone’s children will meet an unkind and untimely death.
. . . there, fixed it for you.
Mohammed Bin Salman is known as MBS
Reports out of the U.K. have MBS taking over as king next week.
Israel recently said they may share intel on Iran with SA
Nostredamus predicts the beginning of WWIII with MaBuS’s assassination.
Many people want MBS dead.
Tinfoil hat time is upon us.
Nostredamus predicts the beginning of WWIII with MaBuS’s assassination.
Have you figured out who’s gonna fight whom? I bet it’ll be one heck of a surprise to everybody!
And don’t you worry ’bout those chicken coops and tomato gardens – Russia will open a Lend-Lease in the opposite direction, just keep up a good fight!
Mohammed Bin Salman is known as MBS – Avatar
===========
I knew the letters MBS rang a bell somehow……mortgage backed securities.
So Nostradamus predicts the beginning of WW3 as a result of the death of mortgage backed securities?
You becha abacus on that!
D’uh!
No, obviously.
Mortgage Backed Securities never die.
In waging battle there is bliss,
As on the edge of an abyss,
And in the ocean’s angry flowing,
Amidst its dark and stormy swell,
And in the tempest’s mighty blowing,
And in the whiff of plague as well!
All, all that threatens and destroys
Conceals untold and boundless joys;
For mortal souls, perhaps this token:
A pledge of immortality!
And he who finds that pledge unspoken
There midst the storm shall happy be.
So plague, our praise upon you here!
Your gloomy grave brings us no fear;
Your call does not disturb our leisure!
We raise our bubbling glasses high,
Drink in the fragrant wine with pleasure,
And maybe there the plague may lie!
A.Pushkin, Walsingham’s Hymn
One Tin Soldier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6itauSnrSZA
One Tin Soldier:
Listen people to a story
That was written long ago,
’bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folks below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Hidden deep beneath a stone,
And the valley people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came the answer from the kingdom,
With our brothers we will share,
All the riches of the mountain,
All the treasure buried there.
Now the valley cried with anger,
Mount your horses, draw your swords
And they killed the mountain people,
So they won their just rewards
Now they stood before the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
Peace on earth, was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat and friend,
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.
It’s all about who gets the power to control the resources of the entire world and all those in it. == Ozone
The greatest resource of this world is a creative ability of humans – every single one of them – in the Image of God.
Sorry, Finc; not every single one is in the Image of God.
Feast your eyes on the creative “up-and-coming rapper” the mass media wants/wanted kids to look up to and idolize:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/lil-peep-died-from-suspected-xanax-overdose-police-say/ar-BBF3yhP?li=BBnbfcL
Puke.
At what point does the degradation of humanity stop? Particularly when it is being promoted by the Evil Fuckers as something desirable. When the entire face and body is covered with tattoos? Branding? Cannibalism? Genocide?
We are surely getting there (not completely arrived but the avant-garde has certainly arrived: see mass murder events and child abuse as flashing signals among many others) and it has nothing to do with God, but everything to do with the Devil, I think (Ol’ Scratch, qu’est-ce que tu pense?)
Check out the legendary Tom Waits, he has a quite an insightful take on the God aspect of the equation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9mhsW5aWJM
Everyone has a potential and a free will to fuck it up.
God? You’re living on it. You’re part of it. Life on this planet is god, and we kill it and deny it at our own peril..
Dr William Rees on Peak Prosperity podcast:
Those are things that humans – again, those are unique human attributes that we can experience nature in a spiritual way far above and beyond that of any – that any other species can do. But again, if we slip into this blind dedication to the growth imperative, then we foreclose the option and the opportunity for people to experience nature in a way that you’re just describing. You know, you’re right, humans will not protect anything that they do not love, and the more we alienate ourselves from the beauty of nature, the more we alienate ourselves from the absolutely exquisite ways in which ecosystems self-maintain and self-produce – I mean, the world is producing itself. An amazing thing.
Earth isn’t just a planet that happens to be a great place for life. Life has created the planet on which we live. Not the rocks, but the living film over the surface of the Earth is a creation of life itself and needs an abundance of life to keep self-producing. It has made possible most of the things that we require. The oceans, the compositions of the ocean, preindustrial were a product of living processes – the chemical composition. The atmosphere, all of the oxygen is a product of photosynthesis, and the existence of photosynthesis made possible the existence of air breathing animals such as you and I. And so this system is a self-producing system that needs a very wide selection of its components to continue doing that.
It is a miracle. It is something to be absolutely mind blown about. And as a kid, I’m just like you. I’m growing up on a farm, and then doing my PhD work in the artic north. I used to almost weep – well, I did weep on a couple of occasions at beautiful things that I saw. It is an inspiration, but it’s an inspiration for the very few who have access to it any longer. In many respects urbanization is a terrible thing because what urbanization has done is alienate people both spatially and psychologically from the wonders that can be found in the natural environment. Fewer and fewer people are able to experience anything like I did on a farm in Southern Ontario. It gave me my academic life. And today people grow up in cities devoid of nature and the rest of the possibility even of experiencing the kind of emotive response I did, and realizing that I’m made out of the planet through the food I helped to grow on my plate. It sounds trite, I suppose, but to me it was an epiphany in my life just to recognize as a ten-year-old boy that I am of the Earth. That I am a product of the very food that I have grown with the soil and sun that we had on that farm.
Chris Martenson:
At the dawn of agriculture, just ten thousand years ago, human beings accounted for less than 1% of the total mammalian biomass on the planet. Today, there’s been a sevenfold increase, roughly speaking, in the biomass of vertebra species on the planet — but most of that is human-induced. Today, human beings account for about 32 – 35%of the total biomass of mammals, a much greater biomass than at the dawn of agriculture. But when we throw in our domesticated animals and our pets, humans and their domesticated animals amount to 98.5% of the total weight of mammals on planet Earth.
So we’re engaged here, through sheer growth, in the scale of the human enterprise in what ecologists refer to as “competitive displacement”. This is a finite planet. There’s a finite flow, a limited flow, of photosynthetic energy through the planet which we share with millions of other species. Now, on a finite planet with limited energy flow, the more any one species takes the less is available for everything else. So as humans have gone from less than 1% of the total biomass to over 98.5% of an increased biomass, it means that almost all other species with which we share that photosynthetic flow have been pushed off the planet.
So we’ve gone from millions to a few thousand elephants. We’ve gone from hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of tigers to a handful. And so on. Wildlife on the planet today is clinging to the edges of existence. They may not have gone extinct, but their populations have been reduced to a tiny fraction — a few percent at best — of what used to be.
North America used to have 40 to 60 million bison regularly migrating north and south through our great plains. Well, today there’s only a few thousand bison on domesticated farms or in a couple of parks — they’ve been replaced utterly by the food crops that we grow to feed humans or to support our domestic animals.
Competitive displacement has revealed humans to be the fiercest competitors on Earth for the planet’s living resources, forcing nearly all other species to essentially disappear.
Peak Oil, finance, Trumps, cars, sprawl.
All symptoms
Humans are destroying the petri dish.
LOL! Ahh, the ol’ human exceptionalism myth.
Here’s a hint: it ain’t true and silly humans’ idea of *GOD* and their supposed place at the center of his/her universe is all a lie they use to justify their rape of the natural environment they inhabit and the fellow species they share it with.
I have to say I find Kunstler is losing his grip on reality. The greatest existential threat we face is climate change and the man doing the most to expedite our spiral into oblivion is Trump, aided and abetted by Scott Pruitt, mainly, but also the entire cabinet of renegade contrarians and diehard pyschopaths with deathwishes. Sometimes you need to look closer to home to find the real problem, and in this case Kunstler should be looking at the US administration and its dangerous, irresponsible and malevolent actions.
Sure, Saudi Arabia is going to run out of oil, but unless we keep 80% of the existing known reserves in the ground we are facing wipeout, for the human race and virtually all life on Earth, well before Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or anyone, runs out of oil.
Yeah Trump is responsible!
Real deep thinking here.
But in all serious. Coilin, open up Google Earth.
Zoom out
Turn the globe to North America
See that brown ooze melting from central Canada into the central United States widening as it expands southward?
That’s farmland
Too feed humans.
Look at the areas that appear green
VA
NC
Look closer, even closer
More farms
Sprawl
Forests afar are merely hedgerows
Zoom out
Repeat in South America
Africa
China
No forests
No canopies
Farmland and sprawl
Trump didn’t do this
You did this
All of you.
Sometimes I have to relook at Brazil
The Amazon forest has virtually been erased from its borders
Barely clinging on in the northwest
But we can feed people
And more people
People
That’s what it’s all about.
ozone, thank you for your measured response.
100th Avatar, yes the will to life that is our being.
CancelMyCard
Your insight is every bit as deep as The Great Salt Lake. You can fix that too.
The Tao is impartial, it stays with good men all of the time.
Lao Tzu
A pretty good narrative of the basic facts of the Great Schism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_s9Rcsg5UI
The great schism is between primitive resource-based economies and advanced value-added economies. As long as Russia allows Putin and his KGB clique to stay in power, Russia will continue to live out the 1950s.
Here is one beautiful value-add coming to an ocean near you:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Mock_Leader_class_destroyer_on_%C2%ABArmy_2015%C2%BB_1.JPG
Nice. But I’d like to see Russian fashion, Russian art, Russian automobiles, Russian trains, Russian consumer electronics, Russian software and computer design, Russian medicines, Russian foods and beverages, Russian architecture, and generally very capable Russian design and engineering prowess less concentrated in the military and more in the civilian sectors, and especially exports.
Planes first, girls – later..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LZAHhBIf6c
devushki patom = denushki nekakda
🙂
A major victory in the world civil war: Trump outwitted everyone, again
By the will of fate I found myself talking to an American who understands the Russian Navy better than I do at the very moment when Trump secretly prepared the encirclement and the destruction of a large group of Clintonoids in US Congress and Senate.
And a week ago I had no idea either about the United Deep Water System of the European part of the Russian Federation, or about the “invisible missile cruisers” changing the geostrategic balance, and when I just began to understand the meaning of what my black acquaintance told me about the missile cruisers that happened to be destroyers, Trump puts a dagger in the back of the leaders of the republicans in Congress and the Senate, who under the threat of impeachment forced him to sign the anti-Trump and anti-Russian law.
Trump has not enacted this law yet, since it is a declaration of a full-scale trade war, which with a high degree of probability will grow into a real cold war, and one can only guess what kind of pressure he has to withstand for this.
The fact is that the sad fate of the USSR has clearly shown – the cold war is still a war and it is necessary to respond to it very hotly. And the above-mentioned “invisible missile cruisers with an atomic power plant” as far as I understand are quite adequate hot response to the threat of the Cold War, taking into account the sad experience of the USSR.
And the blow to the Clintonoid Republicans is that Trump forced the Republicans to vote on his new tax code, in which the health insurance reform, previously stuck by Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan, was hidden. By this he practically dragged Republicans to his side, depriving the biggest Clintonoid in the Congress – Paul Ryan – of his influence.
And if he manages to pass a new tax code through the US Senate, Hillary will have to forget about impeachment and seriously think about the electric chair in New York City, and taking into account the influence of the invisible Leader missile cruisers on world politics, about electricity-deprived stool in Nuremberg.
One would at least hope they televise the execution if/when it finally comes to pass! The ratings would be off the charts!
Soldiers for one day
Elderly Ethiopian parents experience a day in the IDF, bringing them closer to understanding the experience of their children, general Israeli society, and belonging to their country.
https://youtu.be/ljZeX7RIDC0
Challenged kids that fail the IDF admission standards due to physical, mental, or medical limitation, are not required to serve in the IDF. Still, many of them choose and insist that they be permitted to serve their country.
https://youtu.be/WDu7oDcdiH4?t=22s