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Remember that one from 1996? Funny, that was the American mainstream media bragging, after the fact, about our own meddling in another nation’s election.
WASHINGTON — A team of American political strategists who helped [California] Gov. Pete Wilson with his abortive presidential bid earlier this year said this week that they served as Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s secret campaign weapon in his comeback win over a Communist challenge.
—The Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1996
The beauty in Robert Mueller’s indictment of thirteen Russian Facebook trolls is that they’ll never face trial, so Mr. Mueller will never have to prove his case. In the new misrule of law made popular by the #Me Too movement, accusations suffice to convict the target of an investigation. Kind of sounds like going medieval to me, but that’s how we roll now in the Land of the Free.
Readers know, of course, that I’m not a Trump supporter, that I regard him as a national embarrassment, but I’m much more disturbed by the mindless hysteria ginned up among Washington’s permanent bureaucracy in collusion with half a dozen major newspapers and cable news networks, who have run a psy-ops campaign to shove the country into a war mentality.
The New York Times published a doozy of a lead story on Saturday, the day after the indictments were announced. The headline said: Trump’s Conspicuous Silence Leaves a Struggle Against Russia Without a Leader. Dean Baquet and his editorial board are apparently seeking an American Napoleon who will mount a white horse and take our legions into Moscow to teach these rascals a lesson — or something like that.
I’m surely not the only one to notice how this hysteria is designed to distract the public attention from the documented misconduct among FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department officials and the leaders of the #Resistance itself: the Democratic National Committee, its nominee in the 2016 election, HRC, and Barack Obama’s White House inner circle. You would think that at least some of this mischief would have come to Robert Mueller’s attention, since the paper trail of evidence is as broad and cluttered as the DC Beltway itself. It actually looks like the greatest act of bureaucratic ass-covering in US history.
Of course, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was quick to qualify the announced indictments by saying that Russian trolling on Facebook had no effect on the 2016 election, and that the Trump campaign was not implicated in it. Maybe the indictments were just a table-setter for something more potent to come out of Mueller’s office. But what if it’s not. What if this is all he has to show for a year and a half of the most scrupulous delving into this “narrative?”
Meanwhile, the damage done among America’s former thinking class essentially leaves this polity like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz: without a brain. I doubt they will be satisfied by Mueller’s indictment of the thirteen Russian trolls. Rather, it may tempt them to even more violent hysterics and greater acts of lawlessness. The only thing that will stop this nonsense is Big Trouble in the financial system — which the news media and most of the public are ignoring at their peril. It is coming at us good and hard and it will feel like a two-by-four to nation’s skull when it gets here.
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Well, I think Time magazine may have been able to boast about what those American political strategists did because we Americans were glad the Cold War was over (in large part because we won hands down and by far and away), and we didn’t want it to start up again, which is what a Communist Party victory in that particular election might have meant.
Of course, then we decided to gin up the Cold War again eighteen years later, so as they say in the working-class neighborhood in which I live, “Whaddya gonna do?” {/shrug}
Let us all be thankful that we now have an all volunteer force for the military.
The cynic in me says that the legislature will simply change those policies when they need more warm bodies to act as ordnance absorbers. Included in these policy changes will be methods to get out of a draft that only the privileged few can use. Nothing to fear if your family has money or political connections.
The funny part about all of this is that many of the non-privileged people could never meet the current physical requirements at MEPS to voluntarily join or be conscripted by a draft.
Nutty, the ones that are fit enough to meet physical requirements are not sure if they have a dick, or if it’s okay to say they have one. Or they might demand gender mutilation surgery to cut it off.
@Neutron,
Be thankful for the all-volunteer military all you want, but leave me out of it. The US Empire could never have waged endless war since GHWB’s Gulf War I if we still had a draftee army. Start drafting middle class kids, (and they would no doubt have to include girls, ‘er, women’, this time), and watch the zombies get off their couches and take to the streets in protest. A citizen-soldier army is much needed today to counteract a mercenary military, and an out-of-control psychopathic deep state that must be reigned in.
BTW, I speak as a Vietnam-era vet who would have not have served if not for the draft.
A lot has changed since the Vietnam era. The zombies could get up and protest all they want and it would make no difference.
Remember what happened to the #OWS movement? The police showed up in riot gear with lots of “toys” that were gifted to them from the MIC. These peace officers are not like the peace officers of the Vietnam war. Imagine Kent state all over the place if enough of these zombies take to the streets.
Funny how a peace officer is able to get an assault rifle but civilians are not unless they get real lucky and find someone to sell them a pre-1986 NFA assault rifle and successfully get the tax stamp from the ATF. This assumes that you live in a state that has not outlawed NFA items. The best that a civilian could do without triggering the NFA process is to put a binary trigger in a modern sporting rifle and upgrade it to a heavier caliber like the 300 AAC or 6.5 Grendel. Any zombies that get up off their asses to protest will be met with swift violence by the state and there is nothing that the zombies will be able to do about it.
“A citizen-soldier army is much needed today to counteract a mercenary military, and an out-of-control psychopathic deep state that must be reigned in.”
Agree. And an obligation for the Commander in Chief to send his own children. That would go some way to curing itchy trigger fingers.
“A lot has changed since the Vietnam era. The zombies could get up and protest all they want and it would make no difference.”
True – an awful lot of people here protested in the street against the Iraq War and they might as well have stayed home and played video games for all the good it did.
I would hate to see a draft come again and under current circumstances I would advise my grandchildren not to comply. I would rather them take up arms to avoid it than to kowtow to the ptb. That said, I believe that a draft is the only way to get quality people in the military. The all volunteer service for the most part attracts the dregs of society. People that are out of options as far as making a living any other way. There are some who are honest, sincere and want to make a difference. I almost used the word patriotic but in my opinion, blind patriotism is an idiotic concept. All of the wars and conflicts that the U.S. is currently involved in, besides being unconstitutional and undeclared, make no sense whatsoever. We need a higher class of politicians, soldiers, and we need to make some changes in who is allowed to vote.
GA,
It appears that you and I are simpatico on this. But as for large street protests against W and Blair’s Iraq War, are you perhaps only speaking for the Brits? As far as I could tell at the time, either the US protests were puny and not well organized (9/11 was still too recent and raw for most), or the mass media chose not to cover them (probably more the latter). But stay home and stay quiet and all hope is lost – even if all it does is save your soul.
outsider
I don’t remember the situation in the US, but you’re probably right that the street protests were mostly here. That was fuelled by the perception by many that Blair’s war was primarily due to his man-crush on Bush and his wish to be ‘somebody’ on the world stage.
The only thing I really remember about the US reaction was the treatment the Dixie Chicks got for one of them castigating Bush on British soil! So yes, there seemed to be support for the war in the US. But what a feat was that to convince the US electorate to conflate the attack on the Twin Towers with Saddam when the two things were unconnected? Baby Bush just wanted to finish Daddy Bush’s ‘unfinished business’?
There were extensive protests in the weeks and months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, both in the United States and around the world. So much so that Wikipedia has multiple articles covering them all.
Here is the general article covering the topic of anti-Iraq war protests. This article is 9,445 words long by my count.
And this article focuses on the coordinated worldwide protests held on February 15, 2003. Word count: 8,632. (For reference, the average Wikipedia article is 620 words long.)
Man, that war was unpopular. But at any rate, while there’s ample indication that there was serious and sustained protest in the U.S.A., I’m with outsider on this: it was simply ignored.
Thank you Elrond. I stand corrected – I mainly remember what happened here and how utterly contemptuous was the political response.
An awful lot of awful people showed up to protest at Occupy Wall Street. Colorful they were and they showed their true colors with the so called “progressive stack” where White Men only got to speak last, and begrudgingly at that. And White women constantly had to trash themselves and White Men to stay on good terms with “the community”. Many of the shooting victims seem intent on making bank on their misfortune and morphing into people like this. Thank God, since the American People have no interest and their campaign will go nowhere.
An irresponsible people breeds a vicious police force. And that’s not to let individual policemen off the hook either.
I see that this site still caters to racist propaganda.
How Janos still has an account here says volumes about you Jim. Too bad. I actually like the Geography of Nowhere update.
But this blog always disappoints me.
It has become unreadable.
A cesspool, basically.
I really think the only reason the “gay-ban” ended was because if they ever decided to reinstate the draft, “gaying” your way out of it would be too easy because being gay or lesbian simply doesn’t have the very deep stigma it once had.
…in large part because we won hands down and by far and away…
That was the short run view anyway. Unfortunately, history plays out in the long run.
That’s right, we did not win, we just haven’t lost yet.
Wow!
Election interference to keep communists out of power
Everyone is doing it!
“Whether any of that violated federal law is the weightiest question facing Mr. Mueller, and Friday’s indictment did not answer it. But it painted a picture of a Russian operation that was multipronged, well financed and relentless.”
“;multipronged, well financed and relentless.” <= In other words bullshit. Having people paid to investigate when no actual laws have been broken is nothing less than irresponsible.
How convenient to indict people you can’t cross-examine.
As for the lunatic left here’s a good one:
https://www.wired.com/story/russian-trolls-identity-theft-mueller-indictment/
I think the real point of this exercise is internet control. Remember ProporNot? Remember John Kerry’s famous line:
“Well, folks…Ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tampered down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year.”
When the election was happening the FBI was probably spending more money in a single day spying on American dogs illegally than all the Russians spent to influence the election legally over months. I also suspect the Russian effort is dwarfed by the ongoing American effort to have the news spun the way they TPTB wish.
Never has their been a blacker pot for a kettle to bitch about.
Lurch Kerry: a study in ironic cognitive dissonance. A prominent protestor of Vietnam after the fact who now’s a cog the very regime on steroids that he once resisted. Sad horse face aside, you have to wonder how a fool this transparent can look himself in the mirror every morning.
Kerry – A clear example of how the brain shrinks with age. Of course, we can say the same about Trump, who plays with Twitter like a child plays with ducks in the bath tub.
It is not easy to defend Mr. Trump’s not too smooth use of Twitter, but there are two things that many of us like about it. One is that it bypasses the sold-out, propaganda “media” (which pisses them off, but they are on someone else’s payroll so WTF). The second is that it is different. Human being’s crave “Little Different” even though they hate “Big Different”, but very few if them are smart enough to realize that when you keep on doing they same old tired bullshit, nothing ever changes, things only degrade. Will change be better or will it be worse? I don’t know about you, but I could care less. Maybe I was beaten down by the last 28 years of garbage presidencies.
His whole life is hypocrisy and deception – a Bonesman who married the heiress widow of another Bonesman as if to keep it all in the family. Did he love her? Is that even a question these people ask?
And guess what? Kerry isn’t a real Irish name and he’s not Irish – that’s just a guise.
The rulers are oblivious to their ridiculousness. Dave Barry has John Kerry’s number (when he was mock-campaigning):
‘If we in the news media don’t do all we can to promote this man’s campaign, we are even stupider than I thought. In conclusion, I want to extend my sincere best wishes to all of my opponents, Republican and Democrat, and to state that, in the unlikely event I am not elected, I will support whoever is, even if it is Sen. John Kerry, who once came, with his entourage, into a ski-rental shop in Ketchum, Idaho, where I was waiting patiently with my family to rent snowboards, and Sen. Kerry used one of his lackeys to flagrantly barge in line ahead of us and everybody else, as if he had some urgent senatorial NEED for a snowboard, like there was about to be an emergency meeting, out on the slopes, of the Joint Halfpipe Committee. I say it’s time for us, as a nation, to put this unpleasant incident behind us. I know that I, for one, have forgotten all about it. That is how fair and balanced I am.’
I’ve been critical of Kunstler setting timelines for disaster to happen, but I join him now in wondering how much longer before all the bad credit must disappear in a black hole. When it happens, and we appear to be getting close (witness the tremendous collapse in tax revenues associated with a massive spending spree), Russian policies will seem like a walk in the park.
Further to JHK’s point, here’s a video from this week:
https://twitter.com/schwarz/status/964985192896221189
Jon Schwarz comments: “It’s well, well worth watching all of this exchange between Laura Ingraham and former CIA director James Woolsey. Woolsey acknowledges that the US has meddled in other countries’ elections in the past and is doing so now, and both he and Ingraham find this laudable and funny.”
And journalist Glenn Greenwood adds: “This 30-second clip is one of the most vivid distillations of American Exceptionalism ever: the US has the full, unfettered right to do exactly what we demand other nations don’t do because – unlike them – we’re Good, so it’s done for Good ends, not Bad ones.”
Hypocrisy, thy name is Uncle Sam.
Oh for God’s sake, autocorrect! It’s Glenn Greenwald. (And it just did it again. Why couldn’t this guy be the journalist instead?)
Yeah, that Russian auto-correction software always messes with me too. We should indict it.
‘That guy’ should be president not a journalist. The precedent for a TPTB president originating from the entertainment industry is well established. The precedent for people who make their living pretending to be other people becoming journalists in a second career breaks altogether new ground.
“Yeah, that Russian auto-correction software always messes with me too. We should indict it.”
Along with whoever invented the QUERTY keyboard. Which has led me to type The Shite House by a slip of the finger on more than one occasion.
QWERTY, even (see what I mean…)
Bruce Greenwood, the actor, already played John F. Kennedy in the movie Thirteen Days, about the Cuban missile crisis. Hey, wait: thirteen days, thirteen indicted Russians. It all fits. We’re through the looking glass now… Connect the dots, people!
And all without the least little bit of shame either. Oh well, that’s how The Big Lie works. You have to remain committed to the official storyline no matter what. 9-11 redux.
Despite all contradictory evidence the big lie must be maintained. Reality is to be ignored as needed.
It is a simple rule and our political leadership is up to the task. Despising the American public makes the job far easier so we can expect the leadership of both our major political parties to remain solidly committed to their lies.
Like him or loathe him, Noam Chomsky, has been educating people to this for a long time. The US does not believe in universality, because being superior, and good, and fair, and just, it is infallible.
This unfettered meddling is a reason for nuclear arms proliferation. The US only picks on weak targets, as its track record, all jingoism aside, against tougher opponents is incredibly dismal. A cache of nuclear weapons keeps the US away. Everyone knows it. Can you blame N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, etc.?
People smile at Noam, listen to him intently, and then forget everything he says. Noam is an official critic, a critic who can say anything he wants to because TPTB knows he will be ignored.
If you label someone a Lefty in the US, you have total dispensation to ignore everything they say and not tire your brain. Or so it seems. And he’s a Jewish Lefty too. Say no more – the man must be a Judeo-Bolshevik. Or something.
And politics is just a side thing for him. Chomsky’s day job is studying and teaching linguistics, where he’s one of the most important people in the field.
Years back I came across a web posting by someone ragging on Chomsky as a post-modernist. I’m like, uhh, whut? This post included an extract from Chomsky discussing some linguistic theory using very dense, technical language. The poster couldn’t understand a word of it, so he assumed it was standard-issue postmodernist bafflegab and devoted considerable energy to railing against it. I felt embarrassed on his behalf — he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Chomsky’s linguistic theories may be correct, incorrect or somewhere in between, but he is very much a scientist, not an obscurantist.
Funny, GA, but I’d say the same about Rightists. Aren’t they all just racist, white supremacist, deplorable, gun loving Christian fundamentalists who are preparing for the coming race war? Hillary said so anyway, as has the mass media since the day that Trump was elected.
outsider
Not to me – I read what you all say and respond accordingly. If I agree with the actual point you’re making, I say so.
For comparison, I’d refer you to Elrond’s posting (JHK’s previous post) of the video of the girl talking about gun control. Janos dismissed her arguments with ‘the bald dyke – who cares what people like that say?’.
That’s the kind of attitude I’m talking about.
I can understand that, Elrond. I have a brother who taught Computational Linguistics for many years. It’s not for the fainthearted. 🙂
Yup. The more they deny their overwhelming role in the so called Russian Revolution, the more we will shout it to the skies. The rocks and stones will begin to shout it back, like tuning forks that respond to their tuning brother.
Of course you will, Janos.
Judeo-bolshevism:
“Jewish Bolshevism, also known as Judeo-Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist canard which alleges that the Jews were at the origin of the Russian Revolution and held the primary power among Bolsheviks. Similarly, the Jewish Communism theory implies that Jews have been dominating the Communist movements in the world. It is similar to the ZOG conspiracy theory, which asserts that Jews control world politics.”
Alderman, G. (1983). The Jewish Community in British Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press
“The theory was later propagated by the Nazi Party and their American sympathizers.” Well, knock me down with a feather…
Your hero Churchill said the same thing – back when he was a Man and not a kept dog. Famous article. I’ll send you a link if you don’t know about it. So did Solzhenitsyn – read his “Two Hundred Years Together” – not published in the United States. You might be able to get it over there, don’t know.
As Napoleon said after leaving the Vatican Library, his countenance drawn and pale, History is a lie agreed upon. Well we don’t agree and we aint gonna.
Uncle Google came through in two minutes. The Solzhenitsyn book is available as a free download. Here’s the .pdf version:
https://ia600301.us.archive.org/32/items/Solzhenitsyn200YearsTogether/Solzhenitsyn-200%20Years%20Together.pdf
Thank you, indeed you are a veritable Mercury, faster than a speeding BB pellet.
Incredible. Not the facts but the way they say it without irony (or shame, as Scratch says). Laughing self-indulgently isn’t irony, it’s a lack of insight so deep there’s no cure). I wonder if they would call the assassination of Allende ‘electoral interference’ with that same self-indulgent laugh. After all, they were the cavalry riding in to save a nation from itself, weren’t they? With nothing in mind but the greater good…
Me? I want D. Trump to stay right where he is – because nations have to learn from their own mistakes. No assassinations, even metaphorical ones. No cavalry. As long as there are enough grown-ups in the White House to keep his fingers off that button.
Meanwhile… the US (like the UK) is expediently hanging onto the coat tails of Saudi Arabia, which is run by a bunch of corrupt royal jihadist thugs who have used their phenomenal wealth to export their jihadist thuggery throughout the world.
This…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=runYPf4Q2g8
… is your president standing up to the men who gave you the attack on the Twin Towers. So don’t ask me to look at him as any kind of swamp drainer either.
One of the comments to that Ingraham-Woolsey interview was quite penetrating:
“The thing that I find most interesting about some of these interviews lately is, if these people think they should be choosing other countries leaders, why wouldn’t we think, as Americans, they’re attempting to choose ours?”
By the way, I want to thank Mr. Kunstler for hosting this blog and cultivating an intelligent comments section [read: not severely moderated.] I have been lurking here off and on for about a year. Only commented a few times before since I don’t really know other commenters that well. Several times challenging the Gracenphil entity on the subject of corporations and then last post to you, Elrond, on the gun issue (and you didn’t change my mind one molecule as I’m sure I didn’t change yours).
People rarely change their minds in the middle of a debate.
https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list
I guess we can now add the good old USA to that list!
Uncle Shamuel. Tear off the mask. Look behind the curtain. I really identify with the Sick Guy in Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. But I’d rather be the guy with immunity who runs the cart and gets to yell, “Bring out your dead.”
Enjoying watching the mortgage rates rise. Low rates only allow home owners to extract more wealth from the property. They do not make real estate more affordable. Future debt of another to create personal present profit. The prices rarely reflect low rates, instead the low rates inflate prices. This extraction scheme has been in ramp-up mode since at least 2012. Again, people caught up purchasing homes at very inflated values. Now they are stuck sitting on them. Perhaps this will cut down on the corporate itinerant class. Not easy to unload a home overvalued by a few hundred K when your employer is not buying it. Of course this does have repercussions, particularly since this country has increasingly used, and depended upon, real estate since at least the early 00’s, to increase personal wealth. When people see that they’re setting on a mortgage time-bomb, panic ensues. I’m sure the banks have a plan…
And that’s just one of the scams. Throw in dodgy car loans, student loans, personal and credit card loans and you have one bloody mess.
Municipal debt interest rates will be the real shocker, especially in places like New Jersey. I will update this fact in the Spring when our notes go out for bid. According to the State legislature, all of our municipal debt is now considered “dangerous”.
Yeah, that is coming. As rates ris, anyone who bought during the bubble is trapped. Has no freedom to take a position against his employer, and will work 50,60,70 hours a week so as not to be cut off from salary.
A debt jubilee is the only way out of the corner we have painted ourselves into.
“I’m sure the banks have a plan…”
The “plan” is in the Defense Production Act of 1950 and hundreds of laws passed since then with required “Emergency” provisions and Executive Orders issued by every President as required by the Act.
The banks didn’t (directly) make that plan, but I, for one, am confident they know what’s in it.
The headline said: Trump’s Conspicuous Silence Leaves a Struggle Against Russia Without a Leader
In other words, what they want from Trump is to say what none of US Presidents can say to a major nuclear power without readiness to back up his words with the full Faith and Credit of American Nuclear Triad.
You on the left gave over your thinking to young women or your thinking to appease the high time preference of young spoiled white women, thank Bill Clinton and his “I feel your pain.”
So now what, double down on the hysteria to keep your base in a state of spittle spewing madness?
“I feel your pain” murmured Bill pulling out of 12 yo “Lolita”.
Yes Jim, your slow motion train wreck, is well underway and the actual killing has started….
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/02/13/us-drone-destroys-russian-made-tank-in-syria-in-self-defense-officials-say.html
Of course in the new Not So Normal, right is wrong, up is down, and lie is now truth. News has been replaced with propaganda and whoever makes the initial accusation holds the Public’s high ground making them impervious to attack or even, apparently, justice for their own crimes. What makes this all possible is the large number of Common American Idiots that buy into the lies and are not really even capable anymore of caring to search for facts or truth. These Idiots take everything in like a quick text while driving to the office in rush hour traffic. LOL, WTF, ROLF, ugg, fart, burp. They even “communicate” openly as the simpletons that they are and woe to those that prefer to compose a wall of text to convey a point.
The saddest part is not that the Common American Idiot has degraded themselves into such a sad state of ability, but that they really do not care. Nope, they do not give a damn about anything, their nation, their communities, not even their own children. They are the centers of their own universes and nothing, and I mean NOTHING else matters but them and their feelings. It cannot end well, but will it ever end at all? Aye there’s the question.
That’s what happens when man replaces God with him(her) self.
Walter,
I often ruminate on exactly who convinced the self-absorbed lumps that they had suddenly morphed into the most important beings on the face of the planet? Do you suppose the convincers might have been interested in *making money* off of the whole exercise?? (Okay, that was overly rhetorical, but you get where I’m going, I’d presume.)
As an aside, I find your concise writings both clear and illuminating. I don’t think that would come across in modern tweetery/Imogery form.
Thank you ozone, thank you. There have certainly been those such as Mr. Facebook himself that have been able to profit from providing the self-absorbed with a venue to pursue these needs, but the original idea, at least IMHO (see I can do it too) came from C.S. Lewis in “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”…
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/screwtape-proposes-a-toast-SEP.pdf
The true and absolute value in promoting the “I am the center of my universe” mentality, however, is that as it spreads and becomes not only popular but socially accepted, it fragments the society, eliminating the abilities of those within the society to compare notes or pull together and form resistance to a greater adversary, such as a corrupt government. Those at the top of any hill generally do whatever it is that it takes to remain at the top, don’t they?
A final state of perfection will be reached when people can no longer bear to hear somebody else speak and each has his (her, respectively
unknown personal pronoun) blog on which no comments are allowed.
People will retire into complete isolation unaware of the fact since each
believes him(her / X)self to be the center of general attention.
It will become increasingly difficult and finally impossible to organize any division of labor or organized social life. At that point the end is at hand as human nature as a social creature has been extinguished.
And in fact if I were a proud fiend of humanity I could not imagine any triumph more complete nor would I settle for anything less.
Such a fiend seems now at work with some success to steer the evolution of the species along this course.
There was once a Michael that battled such a fiend and in the end, cast him out. Perhaps it is the same One who works to corrupt mankind as revenge for his prior loss. The next defeat is said to be the last. Sounds like a plan to me.
A question for the group
The Russians messed with our election process or better yet our electorate.
So?
Who is allowed to try to influence each individual voter in our “free elections”? Seriously, who can participate in the propaganda mill that election season provides. These people did not reset voting machines! They tried to convince individual voters how to vote. This begs a question, who IS allowed to try to influence us? I heard that Mueller’s investigation was going to look at influence from Soros and then Canada, yes Canada. WTF? Who is going to be able to define who is able to try to influence our votes? This has all the implications of a future government limiting the freedom of a “free” election. Slowly but surely, we are losing our freedoms. And note, I haven’t even mentioned a political party!
You have been thinking. The short answer to your question is that we have a very democratic system. Anyone is allowed to lie and present fake news to prop up our existing status-quo. As long as you lie to maintain the existing power structure and increase American inequality you are golden. Nothing to worry about at all.
Our elections are not free but they are highly profitable for those getting elected, as well as being very expensive for those of us that have to pay the price for the resulting collection of sellouts and incompetents that they install into office. You are right, nobody pushed our fingers on the “wrong” button or changed the tallies on the machines. This issue is not about interference, it is about distraction from what is going on, specifically in Syria and the rest of the Middle East. America has been pretty much able to do anything and everything it wants to do to every other country in the world, though Russia and China are resisting and maybe even planning on a New Future without Uncle Sam’s boot on their necks, but until someone is willing and able to stand up against the Global Bully that we have become, this kind of distraction and diversion will continue. Personally, I preferred the idea of Capitalism where we made deals and worked out mutually beneficial trade agreements with other nations and foreign corporation around the globe, rather than simply move in and take them over.
@Walter,
That was the OLD capitalism where goods were actually manufactured for sale to consumers. The NEW and IMPROVED capitalism is all financial speculation, accomplished with a few well-timed computer keystrokes, made easy by undecipherable algorisms that only the rich have access to. Trump’s Casino Capitalism at its finest. Add in the most powerful military the world has ever seen (and no fear of using it), and who, or what, can stop us?
What can stop us you ask? How about Too Much Magic or maybe a Long Emergency…..
That is a very fruitful line of thought that I try to promote at every opportunity. Early and Mid stage Capitalism promoted individualism and the American dream. Late Stage or Corporate Capitalism does not. Rather it unites very well with Marxist Socialism or even Communism, one system for the Elite and the other for the hoi polloi. The Ideologues were amazed at how little Capitalism helped Communist China. It was late stage, so it wouldn’t.
Exactly JS. Note how the government has been saying that all we need to do is give more money to corporations and they will give us more jobs. They never say that they need to give more money to small entrepreneurs so that they may start their own small corporate enterprises, do they? You know, those little businesses that used to be the backbone of the US economy, the ones that the Big Box stores put out of business when they took over the neighborhoods! Wouldn’t want anybody chipping into Big Corporate profits. That might reduce their desires to pay off politicians to keep them on top. Yup we are now living with Cancerous Capitalism aren’t we?
Conspiracy and Survivalist Expert, Joel Skousen, says that each of the Big Three: Oceania, East Asia, and Eurasia, has its own Globalist agenda and project. We could even say that Oceania has two, the Neo Cons and the Green or Communist United Nations.
As Kuntsler pointed out in his last paragraph, the Global Bully will soon have enough distractions in its financial system to pry its gaze from international issues. Unless, of course, those woes lead to military distractions to take our minds off collapsed standards of living.
I’d bet on the latter, shotho. Not much can be done about the former, and the hegemon has more that ample military resources to sustain the latter until it is stopped. Like a pesky rat driven into the corner, it’s only instinct is to charge.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the 2016 Trump campaign was a Canadian psy-op. I also cannot comment on allegations that Melania is a highly-trained operative originally from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I stress that these are merely rumours, for which absolutely no evidence has been presented.
I think Melania is really Natasha Fatale!
I can affirm that she is one of the Living Dead. I was watching “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” last night, and she fits right in. The whole South was ruled by Vampire Families. The Slavery angle was just a cover to help people keep their sanity. They had to be destroyed in order to save the human race.
The South will rise again! Well, at least, Arkansas. Bill Clinton told us so.
https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/does-mueller-indictment-mean-clinton-campaign-can-be-indicted-for-chris-steele/
“Mueller’s unprecedented prosecution raises three novel arguments: first, that speaking out about American politics requires a foreign citizen to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act; second, that speaking out about American politics requires a foreign citizen list their source and expenditure of funding to the Federal Election Commission; and third, that mistakes on visa applications constitute “fraud” on the State Department”.
I saw that. Nice.
These prosecutions are nothing more than a face-saving gambit on Mueller’s part. Nothing more will come of it. I’m 100% convinced of it.
Why? Because none of them can be turned as a state’s witness since they cannot be extradited. Little fish argument doesn’t hold water here.
What about World Government and Interpol? They got that Serbian guy, Milosevitch (sp?). Why not just take them? What is Putin going to do? Blow us up?
Sometimes people getting mugged (especially women) say to armed assailants, “What are you going to do now, shoot me?” This isn’t a good idea….
What is Putin going to do? Blow us up?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, he’s just not going to allow extradition.
The ham sandwich however, has plenty to worry about.
Not to mention that if they either could be, or were to be, renditioned, then they wouldn’t have been indicted. Think about it.
To have collusion, you must collude with someone. Now we have 13 someones. Look for the next shoe. U.S. Citizens who actually helped these 13.
I remain mystified by JHK’s relaxed attitude toward the pathological lying, narcissism, and criminality of the Trump Administration.
Mueller just needs to continue following the money. There’s a reason Trump doesn’t want his tax returns to see the light of day, and it’s likely because it shows he and his crime family are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to Russian oligarchs and various Putin pals who can, and do, take advantage of his family’s deeply compromised position.
I mean, really — is there any other POSSIBLE explanation for Trump’s unwillingness to support ANY aspect of the investigations to date? If I were innocent of collusion and conspiring with our enemies, and cared about the integrity of American electoral process, I would be going out of my way to provide as much information and support as possible to Mueller and his team, to clear my name and to rid my administration of the bad eggs.
Instead, Trump fumes, twits, obsfucates, whines, blames Hillary, hides tax records, calls people childish names, and treats every revelation of facts as a personal attack and insult. After his own political appointees point out the obvious meddling of Russians in our elections, as the 2018 elections loom, his response is — instinctively all about himself, nothing about what’s good and apppropriate for our nation.
Could there be anyone less suited to occupy the Oval Office in such times, when we watch what little remains of our democracy slipping away? The Koch Brothers and Mark Zuckerberg’s and the gun manufacturers are doing pretty damn well right now. The rest of us, not so much.
calls people childish names
like Bonzo Dr. Gonzo?
is there any other POSSIBLE explanation for Trump’s unwillingness to support ANY aspect of the investigations
Respect for the rule of law and knowing that the Russians broke no laws perhaps? Allowing our laws to be used in capricious investigation shows no respect for the rule of law and opens the door to its endless abuse. Trump is not giving the investigation any respect. Then he is behaving appropriately.
“I remain mystified by JHK’s relaxed attitude toward the pathological lying, narcissism, and criminality of the Trump Administration.”
If he is like me in this regard it is because he knows that our fate has long been sealed and all we are seeing now is just the particular random details of the wreck.
I remain mystified by people who do not understand that.
No, Epicur, I do not think that “our fate is sealed.” I have explicitly said I regard Trump as a national embarrassment. My point — which should be abundantly clear — is that the intellectual class of this nation has disgraced itself with its Russia narrative. A nation with a non-functioning thinking class is in big trouble. We have so many issues to attend to and the hysteria of the left and its media handmaidens makes it impossible to attend to them. That’s my beef. — JHK
JHK–Thanks, as always, for another essay that cuts through the groupthink that passes for media these days!
I’m not sure that the thinking class still exists in the US– at least, not in any position of power. I think JM Greer may be onto something when he describes a power structure with no head–just interest groups protecting their own turf and veto-ing the national interest into gridlock.(1)
Ugo Bardi’s thought experiment on what would have happened to a sage who tried to warn the Roman Government of the impending collapse of their empire (2) still rings true to me– That, even if anyone were able to deliver a convincing and correct message to the top dogs, and even if these dogs were inclined to follow that good advice, the vested interests would bring out the long knives and dispatch ’em…
So… yes, there is nearly universal stupidity and disgrace at the top, but I also suspect that Epicur may be correct about our fate being sealed at this point.
(1) https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Democracy-Century-America/dp/0865717648
(2) https://www.financialsense.com/contributors/ugo-bardi/peak-civilization
JHK–Thanks, as always, for another essay that cuts through the groupthink that passes for media these days!
I’m not sure that the thinking class still exists in the US– at least, not in any position of power. I think JM Greer may be onto something when he describes a power structure with no head–just interest groups protecting their own turf and veto-ing the national interest into gridlock.(1)
Ugo Bardi’s thought experiment on what would have happened to a sage who tried to warn the Roman Government of the impending collapse of their empire (2) still rings true to me– That, even if anyone were able to deliver a convincing and correct message to the top dogs, and even if these dogs were inclined to follow that good advice, the vested interests would bring out the long knives and dispatch ’em…
So… yes, there is nearly universal stupidity and disgrace at the top, but I also suspect that Epicur may be correct about our fate being sealed at this point.
(1) https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Democracy-Century-America/dp/0865717648
(2) https://www.financialsense.com/contributors/ugo-bardi/peak-civilization
Trump’s pathological lying, narcissism, and criminality are different from Obama, Bush, Clinton (I mean, really), HW Bush, and Reagan how, exactly? Just by being more obvious? That strikes me as at least more honest than the oily Clinton, the less Bush, and the smarmy Clinton.
The last President I can credit with honesty would have to be Carter. Also, I think he and Reagan weren’t narcissists.
You can be glad to Trump for one thing: he seems to have woken you to the reality we face.
“are different … how, exactly? Just by being more obvious?”
No, Trump is really different… for example, he is the only president who has refused transparency, is more secretive, has not released his tax returns, does not hold regular press conferences, violates the emoluments clause with impunity, appoints unqualified family members to government positions without a security clearance, etc.
There is no comparison with previous presidents.
Ah, the Village Idiot is awake.
Now, now. She’s used to universal agreement. I bet she feels the same embarrassment we all do at DJT. Having to back up her words with actual facts is an insult.
Why village idiot? Just doesn’t drone on with the rest of you on here? This Trumper cabal is unbelievable. What does she say that isn’t true?
Yes, one of Kunstler’s ‘handmaidens’.
Well tdar1234 her remark at the bottom of this response area suggesting that children should be allowed to vote is a nice piece of evidence to support my theory…
The only President who has refused transparency is self-refuting.
More secretive? Than President Obama, whose Affordable Care Act was the one that we had to pass to find out what was in it? Whose legislative director admitted that the actual effects were intended?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-gruber-obamacare-pelosi-obama-edit-1114-20141113-story.html
MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of the act, repeatedly gloated — in video-recorded appearances — that the sponsors lied. One passage from an October 2013 conference at the University of Pennsylvania: “(L)ack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting this thing (Obamacare) to pass.”
Who held more Press Conferences: Trump in 2017,or Clinton in 2000? Bush in 1992?
Any monies received before someone was a member of the Federal Government would not be covered by emoluments. I wonder if you could give a link to violations? It’d be a good way to get rid of the man JHK calls an embarrassment.
Unqualified family members? We have a history of that as a country, of course. Violating security could be prosecuted. Got a link? Meanwhile, Hillary running Clinton’s healthcare initiative? Neil Bush? RFK as attorney general?
No comparison with past presidents? Links, so we can check for ourselves.
Thanks, DrTom, I was going to post something similar.
Most of the folks asserting that Trump is simply unprecedented and qualitatively unlike all his (apparently saintly) predecessors are either (1) people who voted for the 1st time in 2016, and had their adolescent fantasies of democracy crushed, or (2) the folks who gave Clinton, Obama, and all other Democrats passing grades for doing the same things that earned straight Fs for their Republican counterparts.
Amazing how in one decade the arguments made by the sides have almost completely reversed. Also amazing that anyone who takes the Russian conspiracy narrative seriously can write anyone else off as a “conspiracy theorist” with a straight face. Words mean nothing anymore. Ideas mean nothing anymore. Nothing means anything anymore. Just a steel fist in a velvet glove. Thank you sir, may I have another.
Glad to help, Laging. My guess is society is headed to a place where people who try to understand the arguments of others will be seen as traitors. It happened under Justinian with the greens and the blues.
My shock has been to see the Left rehabilitate George W Bush, my epitome of a bad President, so that they view him as better than Trump. That simply doesn’t compute in current political calculus, to be someone not reflexively foaming at the mouth at the other side.i don’t think the most ardent Trump supporter would argue that Trump is boorish and Obama was pleasant, but apparently we will all have to applaud all the party lines.
Who knows what JHK really believes? I think he writes his provocative pieces to stir up the cowpokes at the Kunstler Korral. And it works like a charm. Twice weekly, this crowd gets its knickers in a twist. He does write well, though, and has a wickedly funny sense of humor. And, as a bonus, one can learn a new word every week, thanks to his wordsmithery. Does it get any better than that?
“…pathological lying, narcissism, and criminality of the Trump Administration.” So you were ok with the same characteristics of the Obama administration or have you simply forgotten that already?
Yes, no real difference between most of these leaders. The good thing about Trump is that is it all out in the open. No sugar coating like Obama.
Yes, perhaps those that hate him do so because he actually acts and speaks like a human being and they prefer to be lied to and cheated by someone that is prettier and more polished.
Obama was articulate and sounded nice, which made his pathological lies, narcissism, and criminality A-OK. Some Americans like that pillow talk while they’re getting fucked, what can I say?
Dr. Gonzo. people might actually listen to you if you had your facts straight..
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/12/news/companies/remington-bankruptcy-plans/index.html
“I mean, really — is there any other POSSIBLE explanation for Trump’s unwillingness to support ANY aspect of the investigations to date? If I were innocent….
DrGonzo,
Perhaps I can help…explore this scenario…;
Your neighbor(who you detest) has lost his stash of crack…and he thinks you took it. He wants to search your premises for the crack, and further will demand an anal probing to determine if you have his stash on your intimate person. But you did not steal the crack…you have nothing to hide….
Trump knows that the investigation is a fishing expedition conducted by his enemies…He is unhelpful, and he avoids the anal probing….
Perhaps I can help. He is guilty and is trying desperately to close this investigation down, before they find out most of his wealth comes from money laundering. And you will have to come to the realization you voted for a traitor.
And, how do you know this? Sorry, not helpful.
“Readers know, of course, that I’m not an Obama supporter, that I regarded him as a national embarrassment…”
A little clarity,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
later,
-Moe
Cornpone, expanding on your opinion a little bit, our government’s domestic and foreign policies based on deception and violence are a national embarassment (not to mention being crimes against humanity).
Could there be anyone less suited?
Yes, HRC and her band of corrupted leftovers from the previous administration. The Democrats have created their own monster with the on-going investigations, as the depth of corruption becomes evident in the Deep State. Talk about the best plans backfiring!
Probably so. We have an entire country in denial and finding another cheerleader for endless growth would not be so difficult. Asking if anyone is suited at all might be a better question because not a single American politician now looks to our countries future. Our politicians, to the last man and woman, think a new source of oil will surly replace our dying fields and ‘technology’ will surly ride to the rescue on a white horse at the last minute.
Nobody looks at the mile long oil trains which did not even exist ten years ago and wonder what this all means. Everybody is too busy being entertained to death to care. Nobody does a back of an envelope calculation to figure out how much land has to be farmed to support our still growing American population. That calculation is very scary. Don’t do it.
If there is a future we will be seen as idiots. We are living in a world where everything goes and nothing matters except for caring about the future. Caring about the future is a total party-pooper so it is not allowed at all and if you do you will be labeled as a doomer.
Care at your peril.
Nobody does a back of an envelope calculation to figure out how much land has to be farmed to support our still growing American population.
Good news:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
“The great indoors provides optimal growing conditions for lettuce and other leafy greens at Siberia B.V. Each acre in the greenhouse yields as much lettuce as 10 outdoor acres and cuts the need for chemicals by 97 percent.”
That article will lift you worries, a bit.
Not to be a naysayer, but I, for one, cannot survive — let alone thrive — on lettuce and other greens.
Ah, but my Jersey cows could (make it grass, not lettuce)! And from them I get the high quality protein and fats upon which I do indeed thrive — not just survive.
Salad is for ruminants.
“Ah, but my Jersey cows could (make it grass, not lettuce)! And from them I get the high quality protein and fats upon which I do indeed thrive — not just survive.”
Except that it is 8 times more efficient to eat vegetable matter (including cereals) directly than to eat it processed through a cow. Lots of places in the future won’t have the necessary water supplies to meet the needs of livestock farming so they’ll have to do what’s most sustainable (and I don’t mean ‘sustainable’ in an airy-fairy-greeny way, I just mean physically sustainable).
We only need a fraction of the animal protein that many people currently eat (and dare I say it, especially in the US). The rest is self-indulgence and -particularly in the case of red meat – leads to increased incidence of cancer and heart disease. And I say that as a meat eater (who nevertheless is very fond of fish, but you can’t empty the seas either).
But we still need the cows for Milk and their Shit for fertilizer to grown the greens that the Green people eat.
The Mongol Army lived on dried yogurt and the blood they drew from their horses.
I prefer running grass through a cow first, too. The point of the article is, with proper stewardship we can achieve much higher yields. Lettuce, yes, but also any number of other crops. In much less arable land. Oh, and needing a lot less stoop labor.
That’s good news, and that is the agricultural revolution that the West, the Dutch specifically, can bring to the rest of the world. No more plowing marginal lands for the two years before they become desert for thousands of years.
My guess is, you can also grow silage like grass more efficiently.
Are you familiar with Polyface farm, by any chance? Also, do you drink your milk raw?
DrTom
I don’t eat pre-cow grass either. 🙂
I hadn’t heard of Polyface Farm, but I’ve just looked it up and it sounds really interesting, so thanks for the tip. I’m interested in anything that’s not factory farming and that gives the animals a decent life. If that can be done without making products that ordinary people can’t afford, so much the better.
I normally drink milk pasteurised (certainly not sterilised, which is vile), although I only use it for tea anyway. I used to buy ‘lait cru’ in France (from Brittany I think, but available in my local Carrefour at the time) when it was the only option if you didn’t want the awful sterilised stuff.
More from the article:
“One more reason to marvel: The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass.”
Stuff in there about integrating fish and greenhouses. I’d be fascinated to get your response to the whole article.
By coincidence I saw the fish and greenhouses on TV just the other night – I don’t remember where it was but presumably it was this?
I’ll try to look at the article tomorrow, thanks.
GA: the best tale of Polyface Farm is the middle section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The owner is a Christian libertarian radical antigovernment type who happens to be beloved by liberal/Progressive foodies. His ideas follow along with those of Sir Albert Howard, and Donella Meadows, of Systems thinking fame.
As the long emergency removes fossil fuels from the farm, it’s his methods, or the Dutch ones, that will keep us all from killing other people for food, or starving.
Well worth a read.
DrTom
OK, I’ve now read the article (and found a PDF online of ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ which I’ll take a look at when I can).
Very interesting – I particularly like the reduction of water consumption, pesticides and antibiotics, which ticks various boxes.
The Netherlands are going to have their work cut out managing their flood defences for the next century – I ended up reading about their efforts in that direction as well.
Reading very briefly about The Polyface Farm, one criticism of the ‘local food only’ approach (while we still have options, obviously) which I’ve read before is that it’s been demonstrated that it can use more energy to rear e.g. sheep in the UK than to rear them in New Zealand and ship them to the UK. Same with some crops, e.g. apples. We have to do what works best in a variety of ways, until we are physically constrained to reduce our options. Although, on the very rare occasions that we treat ourselves to lamb, it does tend to be British – mea culpa…
You’re not eating Fuji apples from New Zealand in preference to locally-grown Cox’ Orange Pippins, I hope, GA?
Your last comment captures the conflict between efficiency and robustness. Your next book ought to be Taleb’s Antifragile, which also takes up the idea of resiliency and local usage.
Be careful: you’re at the precipice of a rabbit hole. Or a looking glass. There’s a lot of interesting stuff down there, but you, as presently constituted, will never return from there.
Salad is for ruminants.
That is very funny. But I feel better when I eat veggies and greens. I do eat meat but try to consume small amounts because red meat is not good for the colon, the heart or the brain so I try to eat organic chicken and Alaskan fish.
I also try to consume small amounts of grain because the wheat supply is tainted with glyphosate. And most meat is grain based so it too is glyphosate contaminated. I do need a good burger or some ribs now and then so I do consume things that are not so healthy.
I buy European based products like 00 flour, Italian pasta and cheese because they do not contaminate their food the way Americans do. I try to eat as organic as possible and strive to buy Non-GMO products.
I am an organic gardener and grow veggies in raised beds that I freeze or can when there is too much. I give away a lot of my garden goods. People are very happy to receive them. Sometimes I use fish kelp but generally do not use any additional nutrients. My soil is full of worms and I expect to lose some crops to the bugs and birds because they have to eat too. I am now looking at vertical planters because you can grow 100 plants in a very small space and I don’t have to bend over.
I think if people started growing even a little of their own food then they will learn respect for the planet and gain tranquility since gardening is one of the healthiest hobbies anyone can have. You don’t need a big space and I remember the Italians and the Asians in the city who had beautiful abundant gardens.
Animals are great companions and it is good that you take care of them. Let them eat grass. I would like some chickens but I think that my cats would eat them. I would also like to keep bees because they are endangered. I grow lots of flowers for them so my garden can be pollinated.
Our disconnection from nature is making us crazy.
Dr Tom
Haha – I’m not sure how I’m ‘presently constituted’ – you’ll have to clarify!
I don’t eat apples from New Zealand – I just said I’ve read about the energy dilemmas. My preference is Pink Lady from as near to me as possible. And, naturally, Bramleys for cooking. The worst apples I ever tasted were from Canada decades ago. Some family friends sent a huge box of them as a gift – Red Delicious, probably – shiny as if they’d been waxed and tasted of nothing.
And my lamb is local too – the NZ lamb is often (or always?) frozen, rather than fresh. There is plenty of Scottish lamb.
Talking of rabbit holes, I’m very partial to rabbit too. A la Dijonnaise, preferably. And pheasant. I don’t have to shoot them myself as there is an excellent game supplier a bus ride away!
It is impossible to care about the future for those that are robbing from it to live the high life today. How many people do you know that say that it will be ok for them but that they feel sorry for their children and their grandchildren? That translates into “Hey I don’t give a damn about the future or those I leave behind. I only care about me and NOW!” I have actually been able to apply that line on people that I caught saying so and you should see the looks on their faces. Not that it will change anything of course….
“Except that it is 8 times more efficient to eat vegetable matter (including cereals) directly than to eat it processed through a cow. “ — @GreenAlba
Dude, nearly everything you state in your reply is upside-down.
The human gut (having only one stomach and a short bowel) is far and away more suited to digesting animal protein and fat than it is vegetable fiber. Cows have a four-stomach system in order to do that.
You are correct that most of us don’t need as much protein, but we certainly need good animal-based saturated fats to achieve optimal health.
You do a good job of parroting the current PC dietary dictates (including that business about water) but it suggests that you’ve never really studied into for yourself. Look into the excellent work of Dr. Weston A. Price for a great start:
I was once in small town and the rural Mid-West. The people were huge, and not just in a good way, but bloated from meat three times a day. Didn’t see a good looking woman the three days I was there.
One teenager was kind of sexy in a cheap way, her bloating not begun yet.
Google “Blue Zones” about where people live the longest. Okinawa, parts of Greece, Costa Rica, etc. Lots of vegetables and fruits. Or consider our closest relatives, the Apes. They are vegetarians, only taking meat as an occasional delicacy in the case of Chimps.
We are omnivores, Janos. We have two predator eyes in the middle of our heads. We can certainly do with less meat in our diets.
“Chimpanzees are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals.
In fact, Dr. Jane Goodall was the first person to observe chimpanzees eating other animals when she saw them using sticks to extract termites and also hunting smaller mammals such as monkeys. Until then, chimpanzees were believed to be herbivores, like other great apes.
While most of a chimpanzee’s diet is made up of fruits, seeds, nuts, leaves, flowers and insects…”
Insects being animals, of course.
Wrong Janos. You say:
“I was once in small town and the rural Mid-West. The people were huge, and not just in a good way, but bloated from meat three times a day. “
The typical midwestern diet after WWII shifted AWAY from meat (these were mostly grain farmers, afterall) to carbohydrates. Not meat but BREAD three times a day as well as for snacks in between. Starchy foods like pototoes, corn, carrots, etc. in some form in nearly every meal. And sugar flowed freely and constantly in drinks and desserts. Always had to have dessert. Couple this with the fact that the nature of work on the farm went from hard physical labor to sitting on your fat arse on a tractor.
They would have been better off if they’d filled up on meat three times a day instead of carbs.
Well, lots of corn syrup aint gonna help neither. Let’s meet in the middle: McDonald’s! You can get lots of both Meat and Sugar there.
@Farmer McGregor
Animal meat triggers inflammation, dis-ease, and premature aging. It also shrinks the brain. Modern science has shown this to be proven facts.
The ancients knew this and ate meat on very rare occasions. Most of the time they fasted on fat, mainly olive oil. Animals were domesticated for their milk (cheese, kefir) and for their hide, not for their meat. The meat was burned as an offering to God.
Agriculture introduced poisonous grains to some cultures (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greek/Roman). The Hebrews strongly resisted this. The story of Cain & Abel is a cautionary tale against agriculture, the malnourishment and criminal behavior associated with it. Same with the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Grains, like meat, are a poison. They are highly inflammatory and cause criminally insane behavior in people.
Farmer McGregor
I wasn’t talking about the efficiency of the human gut – I was talking about the efficiency of land and water use. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
@K-Dog,
I think that most of us DO CARE about the future. But actually doing anything about it – NOT so much!
Unfortunately my friend, caring without action has zero value. I understand from taking the actions that I am silly enough to undertake that victory is not a potential outcome, but for me it beats the heck out of planting myself on a couch with a clicker and a beer. Quit ye like men they say and I have taken it seriously. I hope others will as well.
@GreenAlba replied:
I wasn’t talking about the efficiency of the human gut – I was talking about the efficiency of land and water use. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
Got it. Though I still disagree.
A full explanation is way beyond the scope of this little discussion, so in a nutshell: Annual tillage crops (grains, vegetables, etc.) invariably destroy topsoil, are labor, energy, fertilizer, and water intensive; history proves they often lead to the collapse of civilizations via resource (topsoil and fertility) depletion.
Well managed grazers (herbivores) build topsoil with significantly lower labor, energy, or other inputs. The water requirements are nothing like the ridiculously over-exaggerated claims you’ll get from the militant vegetarian sects. Properly managed grass is the most efficient converter of solar energy into biomass while sequestering atmospheric carbon during the process of growing/shedding/growing root mass while being repeatedly grazed.
I can produce more high quality food (milk with its associated cultured byproducts — and meat) from a few acres of pasture than I can using the same land to grow grain. All without picking up a shovel, firing up a tractor, applying any chemicals or tearing up the land to destroy the topsoil which actually only gets better each year. Grass is King.
I’m healthier for it. So is the earth.
Look into the work of Allan Savory reversing desertification using the managed grazing of herbivores.
“The water requirements are nothing like the ridiculously over-exaggerated claims you’ll get from the militant vegetarian sects.”
Actually, I’m sure they’re correct in the case of grain-fed meat. That has little to no relation to grazing animals, especially when you do intense management of fields to graze at the appropriate point in the S-curve of growth.
I hope everyone clicks your link. I’d read before and watched the Ted Talk.
Farmer McGregor
Thanks for the explanation – I do like to hear from actual farmers.
I totally accept your points about well-managed grazers and topsoil. And I’m not vegetarian, militant or otherwise. However we do need to eat less meat and more vegetables for our own health. How we do that without degrading the soil any further I don’t now (leaving aside the techniques DrTom linked to).
Scientists have suggested the world only has 60 more harvests left, because of the state of our depleted soils, and some have suggested the UK has even less.
Also, while I appreciate that your methods are infinitely better than rearing animals on grain, we still have the methane problem – and methane is something like 26 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.
But all power to your elbow with your own enterprise, which definitely sounds like a positive compared to other methods of livestock rearing.
“I remain mystified…” —Dr. Gonzo
Everything will be cleared up and the truth will be known … as soon as the IRS finishes its audit and Trump relases all his tax returns. That will happen after the Wall is finished … and Mexico pays for it … and those laid off at Carrier … and the coal miners … get their jobs back. /s
and Rodham is sent to prison
“In the new misrule of law made popular by the #Me Too movement, accusations suffice to convict the target of an investigation. Kind of sounds like going medieval to me…”
Time to drop the fascination with “The Spanish Inquisition,” ginned up by perfidious English propagandists to justify their seizure of Church lands, and recognize that ‘medieval’ would be a big improvement over the current situation. Largely decentralized, with true checks and balances. Lordship had its privileges, but also its obligations, JHK. Our current elite sees NO obligations to the little people; they got where they are on “merit.”
“Largely decentralized, with true checks and balances.” –DrTomSchmidt
The economic system of the High Middle Ages limited population growth. Feudal lords and landlords controlled most of Europe’s land; they could charge high enough rents or demand a large enough percentage of peasants’ profit that peasants on these lands were forced to survive at subsistence levels. With any surplus of food, labor, and income absorbed by the landowners, the peasants did not have enough capital to invest in their farms or enough incentive to increase the productivity of their land.
As a result, on account of the social and economic system, the size of Europe’s population was limited; the existing agricultural system and technology could not support a population beyond a certain size. When the population of Europe surpassed the threshold that the existing economic structure permitted: population loss, social instability, and famine could result. Only through modifying the existing social structure of land ownership and distribution could Europe’s population surpass early 14th century levels.
Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe by Robert Brenner
Past & Present, No. 70 (Feb., 1976), pp. 30-75
Sorry, try again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography
“Demographic history of Europe Edit
The population levels of Europe during the Middle Ages can be roughly categorized:[1]
200–600 (Late Antiquity): population decline[citation needed]
600–1000 (Early Middle Ages): stable at a low level, with intermittent growth.
1000–1250 (High Middle Ages): population boom and expansion.
1250–1348 (Late Middle Ages): stable or intermittently rising at a high level, with fall in 1315–17 in England.”
More:
“In 1328, France is believed to have supported between 13.4 million people (in a smaller geographical area than today’s)[7] and 18 to 20 million people (in the present-day area), the latter not reached again until the early modern period.[1]”
JHK,
Great missive on this day of genuflection to the Office of the President. Why it’s, “Jingoistic Redefinitions Day”! Hurrah! (Apologies, sat through some very selective presidential history from NPR this morning, but that certainly doesn’t blunt your message.)
Richard Moser’s thinking is in the same direction as yours. Yes, Virginia, there are some awakenings. They’ll probably be washed out to sea by a financial tsunami, but for now, the criminality of our “duly elected” overlords needs some examination. Motives need uncovering.
“Mueller’s recent move [indictment of 13 untouchables] covers himself, hides the investigation’s lack of substance and lays the ground work for more. Mueller is achieving the true goals of an inquisition: enforcing political discipline and conformity at home and promoting war preparations abroad. This inquisition diverts us from a terrible truth: American democracy was destroyed by our own hands. The corporate empire killed American democracy.” — RM
This will be the Forever Investigation by UberState bagman Mueller. After all, just like the Global War of Terror, it’s not meant to end, it’s meant to divide and distract the lumpen. Hint: It’s working. Moser goes on from there to talk of election fraud and neo-con chicanery. (Let us not forget *what* Mueller was and is.)
“Why would Mueller attack a system that he is so much a part of? Mueller has been a loyal member of the machine enabling wars, silencing whistleblowers and permitting torture since he was appointed to head the FBI by George W. Bush. Mueller dutifully repeated lies that bought us the war in Iraq.
So the inquisition will roll on as it is intended to do. How else can we explain that a year’s worth of investigation has produced no electronic evidence of collusion despite having the world’s largest surveillance system at its disposal? The scene of the alleged crime — the DNC computers and servers — have yet to be inspected; Seth Rich’s computers — the same; two key witness, Julian Assange and Craig Murray have never been interviewed by the investigation. The inquisition is not interested in evidence it is not interested in!” –RM
“Our job however is to resist being drawn into the bottomless pit of palace politics and to organize a real resistance to empire, war and corporate power. For that we obviously cannot rely upon Mueller, the FBI or any political elites. Either we the people do it or it doesn’t get done.” –RM
By the lights of that last paragraph (though it be a too-late and futile indictment and warning) you can be assured that the authoritarian Uber State is not your (or the entire world’s) friend — and neither are those who promote and defend It. Some can be found right here on this comment section, so you can guess why I’m highly suspicious of their motives.
“Nothing to fear if your family has money or political connections.” —thenuttyneutron
Money and connections are not necessary. A simple lie about a bone spur will suffice to avoid serving your country.
“Time to drop the fascination with “The Spanish Inquisition,” ginned up by perfidious English propagandists to justify their seizure of Church lands…”
We forget the Spanish inquisition at our peril. And all other inquisitions, including the one Arthur Koestler fictionalised in Darkness at Noon.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries resulted from Henry VIII’s declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England, which originated from his (perfidious?) wish to marry again while he still had a wife. Nothing to do with the Spanish inquisitors.
“Nothing to do with the Spanish inquisitors.” —GA
GA, you are ruining ozone’s fantastic story by bringing in facts.
It was DrTom, though, not Ozone. 🙂
“So the inquisition will roll on as it is intended to do.”
–ozone, February 19, 2018 at 11:38 am #
I guess I confused them because ozone made reference to “the inquisition” … thanks for the correction. 🙂
Wow. The janet “person” pulled that slur straight out of “her” ass, then twisted and tortured it. Probably tore the cloacal obverse distraction tendon in the process. As is so often sadly and tenderly offered: “Sea kelp”.
What’s intriguing though, aside from the misplacement, is that this bafflegab [tm Elrond] comment was shat out by an avowed Uber Statist defender of the status quo.
LOL!
I am using my brain, ozone, to do critical thinking. It is an untruthful comparison to compare the Mueller investigation to the Spanish inquisition.
One is being conducted nonviolently by a Republican-appointed counsel to arrive at the truth. The other was conducted violently by torturers of both bodies and truth.
Yours, ozone, is a false comparison. Poor choice of words.
Right. Torture is for use on Arabs. NOT Americans. Yet.
The Spanish Inquisition was used to enforce conformity to a particular creed. The Special Counsel is apparently doing the same thing, but this time the creed is perpetual power to the elites.
Again, the janet “person” addresses the wrong party. They might want to direct their distractions to Dr. Tom.
Without the “Spanish”, the word inquisition is perfectly applicable to the Mueller proddings, pokings, general time-and-resource wasting and consensus manufacturing.
Inquisition: noun
“A period of prolonged and intensive questioning or investigation.”
That is most decidedly, all from here on the subject (it’s wasting time and space)…
“That is most decidedly, all from here on the subject (it’s wasting time and space)…” –ozone
Indeed. Thank you.
And Catholicism was ultimately declared illegal, with priests literally being “drawn and quartered” or castrated and torn apart. Yes, let us not forget the Demonic aspects of the Protestant Revolution which lead us to wretched modernity and the top hat – an imitation smoke stack.
No need to forget the Spanish Inquisition. Total death toll: maybe 3500 in 350 years.
Contrast England:
http://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/henry-viiis-savage-reformation/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11976813/Forget-the-Guy-Fawkes-propaganda-the-English-Reformation-was-a-violent-catastrophe.html
Penalty for being a Catholic Priest in England in the 16th century? Hanged, drawn, and quartered. Penalty for being a Jew or Muslim cleric in 16th century Spain? Expulsion. Both not nice. One of these things is worse than the other, however. Can you tell?
I really hope one day you fully experience the kind of terror you so casually and callously dismiss. I’ve encountered many dumb asses on this blog, but you and your romanticism towards medieval catholic barbarism are probably the top the heap.
Medieval? From 1478 to the 19th century? Do check and cite a few facts.
If you’d like to learn something about a period you seem brainwashed to disparage, you might consult Regine Pernoud’s Those Terrible Middle Ages, written in the 1970s. You’ll find that the modern era, starting roughly about the time of the Spanish Inquisition, is the era of cruel and unusual punishments. I don’t blame you for absorbing the propaganda. I’ve just offered you a guided tour out of the Hall of Mirrors that Enlightenment propaganda has imprisoned you in.
If you wanted to make a list, as we moderns do, of relative horror, counting deaths directly caused by government policy towards those of a different religion than the elite, then you’d probably have the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis at the top, followed by the murder of Christian Armenians by the Turks. Maybe the Atheist persecution of Russian Orthodox faithful by the Bolsheviks also tops a million. In the hundreds of thousands you’d have deaths of Muslims at the hands of US bombing, Irish Catholics targeted under the Englishman Cromwell, maybe 220k killed by the French Revolution in the Frond, hundreds of thousands killed in Germany in the 16th century, along with the 30years war killing off, I don’t know how many. Then we get to (tens of?) thousands of Catholics killed by very modern English 16th century methods, and then to the under-10,000 (modern estimate) killed by the Spanish Inquisition.
A medieval man would mourn any man killed by the state, especially if he had not had time to ask forgiveness of sin. A modern man, by contrast, would tell you that the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic. By modern methods, you can barely see the tiny pile of bodies that shocks you so much more than my other examples.
I think your sympathies are more medieval than modern. Read Pernoud and find out.
I have only one sympathy and it is ancient of ancient — Freedom and truth and those that promote it.
I don’t care for your moral equivalency, nor would I ever mourn any slave masters, their institutions, or their supporters overthrown.
Catholism is Roman Paganism mixed with Flavian scripted Feudalism. It is institutionalized slavery, theft, ignorance, terror, war, genocide, and never ending subversion against enlightenment. The modern horrors you allude to were all spawned and sponsored by the Vatican.
akmofo
Where did you learn your history? On the internet? The horrors you yourself allude to belong more to the Enlightenment than anything else.
I’m glad to see another advocate of Freedom, capitalized, and truth, lower case, here. Some questions on Freedom:
Does it include freedom of association, so that I can freely associate with and form groups with whomever I choose?
Is it inherent in human beings, or does one only acquire it through struggle? Does an infant possess it?
Do I possess the freedom to sell myself into slavery?
You ought to mourn the slave master.you cannot hold another in bondage without living in continual fear yourself. Freedom for slaves also frees masters.
Is debt slavery, by the way?
Might I also point out that you forgot to mention misogyny (not important?) and racism in your litany of charges.
I hope you will continue to pursue Truth. Would love to talk with you in 20 years.
Truth can be turned on its head. Truth can be subtracted from, added to, hidden, exposed, discovered, imagined, derived at, and if you use statistics you can even falsify truth.
Honesty is not as tricky or slippery as truth. Your dishonesty is galling. You might think sophistry and rhetorical quagmire is clever, it is not. It’s a put off. Trying to snarl the gullible and ignorant with Vatican propaganda goes a step even further, it is evil.
As for Freedom, a good start is not having to kiss the gold ring of a dressed up pompous fat ass thieve an entitled mafia kingpin and a con-artist liar calling himself the vicar of god, for the supposed salvation and well-being of my body and soul, and this based on some Roman scripture scribed by “Josephus Flavius” for his Emperor Vespesian that ordinary people were then forbidden to even read.
This is the shit you champion. And that’s why you’re an idiot.
Ok, good start. You have a definition of Freedom. It’s entirely negative, in that you don’t have to kiss the ring of the Vicar of Christ, whom you generously call god. That faith there would have kept quite a few Arians alive. Too bad you weren’t around then.
Negative rights are interesting things. Based in what sort of legal tradition, do you think? Try comparing the French legal code with the Anglo-Saxon one. Then go back a little further. I’m sure the results will outrage.
Now, as to your argument style: it needs a little work. For a person to know enough to write “Flavius Josephus” (close enough) and then argue like a chimpanzee flinging poo indicates a waste of what could be quite a talent.
You’ve let emotion override reason. As Jonathan Haidt wrote, the human mind is like a (rational) rider on top of an (emotional) elephant. Once the rider has lost control of the elephant, it will go off charging where it wants to, flinging scatological words and charges, to use one example.
You’d greatly benefit from reading the book Switch, by Dan and Chip Heath. Keep pursuing Truth, akmofo, or shall we call you
Siegfried? And be careful who tries to take advantage of your untrained mind: listen well to Fafner’s dying words.
My mind is just fine. It knows to recognize the slavemasters’ shit and the dumb ass snakes that peddle it.
You do know that slaves in the Roman Empire often served as tutors, right? Mathematics, foreign languages, etc. There were areas of learning forbidden to slaves; most prominently, rhetoric.
Your inability to read correctly, frame an argument, and respond within the bounds of rhetoric suggest you were denied training in the area. An “ancient” logic suggests, then, that either you ARE a slave because TPTB have kept rhetoric from you, or you have, despite being a free man, decided to adopt the education of a slave.
Do keep working towards Freedom, ak. When your rhetoric reflects a man who won’t go off like a loose cannon and expose the rest of us to enemy fire, those of us in the Freedom-loving fort will open the gates to you. Until then, may you not suffer in your wandering in the wilderness.
many dumb asses on this blog,???
I really hope one day you fully experience the kind of terror–nasty.
I’m sorry, malthus, but I just can’t stand these “learned” idiots. Describing Romanism and its terrors as some kind of a romantic ideal really drew my ire.
Use Taleb’s term: intellectuals yet idiots. It’s a good one.
Btw, if you can point me to where I made some sort of “ideal” out of torture, I’ll be happy to correct that comment and misconception.
You can start with your “checks and balances” statement as it concerns medieval Romanism. Start with claifrying the checks and balances on the Pope, his Kings, his Lords, their wars, their thievery, or their illiterate kept serfs who for millennia had no say no rights and no future other than being butchered en mass during the constant land grab conflicts of their Lords.
That’s interesting. Not a direct answer to my question, but we will work with it.
So, you skipped the part about decentralized, which is also important. But, as to checks and balances in the Medieval order, I offer, for example, the Magna Charta of 1215. There was a king (n idea if he was the Pope’s), and there were barons. I’ll assume (unwise, I know) you consider the actions of the barons in checking the unbridled power of King John a good thing.
Romanism is not tied up with “medieval,” in the way you seem to think it is. You might read David Graeber’s book Debt, and find out about the medieval period in India, almost completely untouched by Romanism at the time.
You might also examine Visigothic law, which was certainly in use in the medieval period. Was that also as centralized as, say, the code,of Justinian? Islamic law?
Now, are you going to continue to blindly and in contravention to what you already know and believe (unless habeas corpus and all that isn’t part of freedom, sorry Freedom) fulminate against this medieval period? Regine Pernoud: Those Terrible Middle Ages. Learn something before you embarrass yourself with adults again.
The Roman Empire was decentralized?!!
Vatican Romanism is decentralized?!!
This is what passes for learned intellectualism? Keep it!
Enjoy your upside down world and don’t bother me with it.
Ok, now, what was the event that initiated the medieval period in the West? People put the date at different times, but it was fundamentally the collapse of centralized political rule, caused by, well, there are hundreds of theories. The fact remains: after AD (oh, sorry: CE) 400,centralized political authority collapsed in the West, restored briefly over about half the territory by Charlemagne, and not reappearing until, perhaps, Napoleon. Then Hitler, in both cases for only a few years. We call this a feature, not a bug.
The Roman Empire is called ANTIQUITY.
As to the Church in the West, I’ll ask you Stalin’s question: how many divisions does the Pope have? Could he exert direct political pressure over rulers outside Italy to force them to come to heel? If not, then you’ve yet to show a central political authority (which is where, US Constitution and all that, the phrase checks and balances applies) that exerted power over the West.
Again, the medieval period was a decentralized order. We are heading towards another, as JHK writes, due to the collapse of centralized authority and its inability to get anything worthwhile to the people done.
Do you at least see this? You’re going to live it for the next 50years,and your descendants for the next 500or so.
Medievalism was an integral part of the Roman Empire. It was institutionalized by Flavius Constantine. When Constantine institutionalized Vatican Romanism, he also institutionalized Slavery/Feudalism. He calcified the Feudal Society by feudal decrees, cementing the socioeconomic status for the Aristocracy and all the rest. The Dark Ages were soon to follow.
Even after the split, the Church of the East and Church of the West did not change any of that. There was no difference between East and West in that regard. Orthodox Czarist Russia was as much a Feudal Roman society as any in Catholic Western Europe.
What finally exhausted this Medievalism/Feudalism was the Muslim invasions of Europe and the Classical Greek knowledge/ideas they reintroduced to Europe by way of Jewish interpreters. The invention of the printing press democratized this knowledge and made it available for all.
I’m not comparing, DrTom. I merely pointed out that we forget ALL inquisitions at our peril. And by extension, all totalitarianisms, wherever and whenever they existed and exist.
I don’t see any value in comparing a Catholic being hanged, drawn and quartered with a Cathar being burned alive.
“Penalty for being a Jew or Muslim cleric in 16th century Spain? Expulsion. ”
Penalty for being a Jew in York in 1190?
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/cliffords-tower-york/history-and-stories/jewish-massacre/
I don’t care where things happen – I’m not in some kind of chauvinistic competition and I’m not English anyway. It’s a warning against bigotry of all kinds – that’s ‘all’.
That’s right, GA. One hopes we in the West have grown out of torturing people for their faith, and that we have the strength as a civilization to get the rest of the world to accept this too. I always take up a cudgel against arguments about the Spanish Inquisition and/or “getting medieval”on people because it strikes me as projection. The English, as you point out about York, have any number of horrific crimes in their past. Pointing them out is an attempt to get past an idea of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism. We have met the torturer, and he is us.
In the USA, this is literally true since W, to our shame.
Read some of the comments made on this blog about Muslims, DrTom, and you may despair that we in the West have “grown out” of anything, sad to say. There are those posting here who are straining at the leash with all their strength. Meanwhile they bark incessantly.
Trump’s path to power in 2016 shows there is real gain to be had from throwing red meat to these baying dogs. And since, as you note, today’s United States is a torture state (one where torture suborned in high places goes unpunished, and hence qualifies as a policy choice rather than an unspeakable crime), many other scapegoats are liable to get bitten should they get access to real power.
Well, it’s understandable, Elrond. Assuming that 19 Muslim hijackers pulled off 9/11, it makes sense why people might be mad. Proper statecraft is about tracking down the specific Muslims who funded the event, and also trying to prevent future events. Calling your war a crusade while simultaneously increasing Muslim immigration is unwise. It leads to general disgust with TPTB, and you get Trump. As JHK implies, if Trump doesn’t relieve the pressure, the next guy is going to be even worse.
As for torture, it’s pretty sad when a Nazi is morally superior to us on this question. And more effective:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff
Perhaps ethical interrogation is Nazi now?
Henry didn’t get the benefit of robbing the monasteries. That went to people like Thomas Cromwell and the cronies around the king. They looted a LOT of wealth from the Church, which owned 1/5th to 1/3rd of the land in Europe (citing Belloc, How the Reformation Happened here) at the time of the Reformation.
If the Catholics had regained power, with or without the support of Catholic Spain, all that wealth would have to have been disgorged. So they drummed up a propaganda campaign against Spain and Catholics. You might read a bit on The Myth of the Black Spaniard.
That’s where the focus on the Spanish Inquisitioncomes from. In modern terms, given what the “civilised” English did to priests like Edmund Campion, we would call it projection.
There was enough atrocity in the Wars of Religion (Thirty Years War) to go around. One of the shames of Christianity, fostered by those who apparently did not understand the Gospel.
Yeah, that’s the shock of it. The iconoclasm, the destruction of centuries of art, the murder of hundreds of thousands, and by people of whom Tertullian once said “see how these Christians love one another.”
That having been said, the fervor of a new faith is well felt. Anglican High Mass is still prettier than most anything in a Catholic Church, and the music of Praetorius encapsulates the vigor,of the new Lutheran faith. If you find a CD of his Mass for Christmas Morning, make it part of your life, whatever your faith or none. read the liner notes!
Quite so. All I mentioned was that what started it off was Henry’s wish to dispose of Catherine of Aragon as his wife. The dissolution of the monasteries wasn’t an inevitable consequence of him declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, just a consequence. And yes, it was Thomas Cromwell that saw an opportunity – as was his way.
Yeah, and people forget that Catherine’s nephew had quite a bit of power to bend the pope to his will, if the pope should rule against Catherine and grant the divorce.
If you watched The Borgias, you get to see Julius II, before becoming pope, scheming against the corrupt Borgia pope. Of course, Julius II really made a mess of things for the Church.
The Protestant Reformation did not come from nothing; there was plenty of rottenness needing to be purged. The Church did not do so before Luther opened the opportunity to grab that sizable chunk of land held by the Church for the state powers that be, setting off the modern era of absolutist states, from which we are hopefully, slowly retreating at the moment.
Much of that land, of course, was dedicated to charitable causes, even if the profits were skimmed off by lay people to run things. In short: theGerman Princes, and the men around Henry who plotted to seize Church lands so they could benefit from them were the precursors of our rapacious modern elites, seizing control of public assets to benefit themselves and impoverishing the people generally.
The peasant revolts this time may be even worse.
Dr, I give my analysis further down the blog. From the little I know I would agree with you about the English black propaganda. This is a point made by revisionist Spanish historian Pio Moa (Rodriguez). (I believe the Inquisition was far less murderous than other institutions of the time and indeed that the northern secular courts were far more bloody.) Pio Moa’s special subject is the Spanish Civil War and the extraordinary mythology that everyone now believes (a case where the losers wrote the history) that the insane utopian socialists (of all stripes: communist, socialist (PSOE) and anarchist) who caused the conflict are depicted as the victims. The only thing which the republicans had in common appears to have been a hatred of Catholicism. (I was going to say that they also all, unlike the Right, had contempt for the rule of law, but the more centrist republican parties, small as they were, seem to have been law abiding even if they wanted to ‘modernize’ Spain out of its Christian heritage.) Another parallel with our contemporary secularist and ‘rational’ utopians, the Resistance and the rest of them, is that they were liars.
Have you read The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Sean? It’s a similar exercise in de-propagandizing. Again, English projection was used to tar Catholic Spain with anti-enlightenment brushes. The truth is more interesting. The author takes pains to show that Jews supported the Muslim conquest (one reason that the Crown later expelled them) but also points out why they had a grudge against the Visigoth kings. Beyond that, you get a real sense for the life of the dhimmi in Spain, and some fairer sense of Islamic law. The author seems not be anti-Islam, but anti-Saudi-sponsored-Al-Andalus propaganda.
Well worth a read.
What? Muslim Spain wasn’t a wonderful place?
It sounds like a very good book. I read Don Quixote for the first time only a couple of years ago and I was amazed how modern it felt. I suppose modern as in what it was like before we lost our mind and went post-modern. (By the way I happened upon an interesting YT video last night, with old people talking to the camera in 1929, in America. Two of them had fought in the same army in the Civil War. I was struck by how clear, sensible, sober and well-spoken they all were and it saddened me that this has all passed. Some clown in the comments said that they were all racists – “I’m only making a statement of fact”.)
In Don Quixote, one of the stories, which divert from the narrative throughout, was set when the Moors were expelled from the country. The Muslims featured accepted it as reasonable enough as they were seen as potential fifth columnists (a term which dates from the Civil War). DQ is one of the funniest books I have ever read and it compares well with Huckleberry Finn.
Another excellent book was La Sublime Porta (or something like that), a fairly recent yarn about a young Spanish minor nobleman who was captured in battle and who ended up as a slave in Istanbul. It was an refreshing change from the pc clichés.
Pio Moa argues that the Guernica myth (little more than a hundred lost their lives and the town was very close to the front line and militarily important) and another creation of British propaganda. The Civil War was a huge myth where the aggressors (the Left) are painted as victims (now official thanks to the fairly recent Law of Historical Memory) and containing many lesser myths: Guernica, Bajados (an American reporter I think) and many others.
On the Enlightenment the French writer (like Moa, dismissed as not being a proper professional historian) Marian Sigaud is caustic, especially about Voltaire, the creation of whose own myth she discusses. All the same, she is a little bit daft because she accepts all these mass child abuse stories.
The more I look into history the more I see it as almost entirely mythical. It is as if we need to start writing it all over again.
Sean,
I just read Don Quixote within the past 6 months. I mention this because I was also struck with hw modern it felt, this for a book more than 400 years old. What people remember from it (tilting at windmills) so unjustly reduces it. It’s written by a man looking back to a past of chivalry and knighthood now completely supplanted, and adrift in the new world. I found it fascinating.
Muslim Spain wasn’t horrible, at least compared to Taliban Afghanistan. Once you probe the reason for the propaganda you understand. Modern academics are Court eunuchs, paid to do their masters’ bidding. Many departments of Arab Studies are paid for by Saudi Dollars.
One assumes you are familiar with the idea of the Dark Enlightenment. There’s a rabbit hole for you. I won’t refer you, but cerca, trove.
Here’s one you will enjoy:
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/renaissance.html
If you have the law, pound the law. If you have the facts, pound the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.
JHK is again on the money about Russia-gate. And he’s also on the money when it comes to that very subject; namely, the economy and the looming downturn following a feeble recovery from recession. But what I don’t sense he fully understands (as the vast majority of pundits, however sharp, do not) is how the American economy actually operates and how that looming downturn might be avoided. Here’s a clear presentation of the essential information that opened my eyes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPupNqVNdS0
Did you notice what happened 2 weeks ago? Our central bank turned off the printing presses. And the Dow collapsed. And panic and “recession” scares went across the airwaves.
Then the Central Bank spoke: Leave us alone while we complete our looting of what’s left of the middle class. In return, you will have a bit longer of “normalcy”. Stay pre-occupied with what our media puppets feed your gullets: porn, Russia bogeymen, 84 genders and all the other mindless nonsense we stuff you with. Yes, we can’t hold back reality forever, but we aren’t satisfied yet with what we’ve looted. Just a little bit more, and then we shut you down.
That’s how thin the line is between our fantasy world and reality. Mad Max is far closer than 99.9% realize. 2 weeks ago was just a softly managed preview. Then the cargo ships stop hauling crap from China, and then the trucks shut down, and where will you be without your perverted porn and anti-depressants?
84 genders and all the other mindless nonsense
Dog,
They’re just fucking with you, didn’t you get the message? Making sure you’ll stand on your hind legs and salivate for the next treat.
Progressives ought to do some soul searching as to whether they want to wipe out the human race in a US-Russia thermonuclear war simply because they are pissed off about losing an election.
Trump did not win the election in popular votes. Trump did not even win the electoral college in a landslide (his victory ranks 46th out of 58 elections in American history), and there is no proof of even limited voter fraud.
Ms. Clinton received nearly three million more individual votes than Trump (65.8 million votes versus 62.9 million). If you include other non-Trump votes for other candidates, Trump lost the popular vote by 10 million votes.
I was going to comment about Janet’s latest delusion about the election. But then I thought, why bother?
What I have posted about the popular vote, electoral vote, and absence of voter fraud is all factual. Mr. Trump created a commission to investigate voter fraud. When no voter fraud could be found, Mr. Trump ignominiously and quietly disbanded the commission.
“On January 3, 2018, two weeks after the court order instructing the commission to share its working documents with its Democratic members, the Trump administration disbanded the commission.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Advisory_Commission_on_Election_Integrity
Truth. He cannot handle the truth.
Nothing worse than a sore loser is there? Perhaps it is a side effect of the penicillin.
Here in the United States we elect the president based on electoral votes. And electoral ranking is inconsequential.
Janet, apparently Trump is not the only person who has trouble handling the truth.
The truth is that in the US the presidential elections are determined by the electoral college, and not the popular vote. Period.
For those of us who like direct democracies more than representative republics, this certainly sucks (and we should work to amend the Constitution accordingly, which won’t happen in a polity this divided, but at least *feels* like meaningful action) but it is no more the fault of Trump than it was of the Cubs for winning the most games in the 2016 World Series… even if they scored fewer runs over the whole Series.
Sore loser sounds more accurate than political analyst, alas.
I am glad however that this board is diverse enough to offer many points of view including the leftist kool aid talking points regurgitated on our behalf by Janet.
I agree. I enjoy reading all the diverse conspiracy theories, 9/11 redux, false flag claims, black swans. etc.
Janet – serious question. How can anyone with a *theory* about the election that involves a *conspiracy* EVER use the phrase “conspiracy theories” in a disparaging tone?
It is like a Mormon writing off a Muslim as a “religious whacko.”
Doesn’t the cognitive dissonance hurt? I seriously wonder, because whenever I feel it, something has to give.
To my knowledge, no other commenters here today have mentioned the insensitive timing of these latest anti-Russian slanders from the corrupt Mueller witch hunt – coming as they did two days after the horrific killing of 17 children at the Florida high school. The timing appeared to be designed to take the press and the public’s attention away from the FBI’s corruption and incompetence in not following up on several allegations against the deranged 19 year-old assassin.
On top of that, they buried their meager findings on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend (if you can call Presidents Day a holiday). Per the FBI motto, people DID see something – and DID say something. But what good did it do? And we are supposed to have respect for the FBI?
Yes, if they want our respect again, they’ll have to go after organized crime again: this time the Clinton Crime Family. Rico Act. Rico Act. Rico act. Not all Italians were or are bad. One remember Rico Petrocelli, a fine 3rd basemen for the Boston Red Sox.
To Janet
By the US Constitution’s rules, HRC lost the election. Not because of the Russians but because she did not work as hard as Trump did to win. Trump was the underdog throughout the entire election process and he worked his butt off to win at all level. PERIOD! It makes no difference that California’s looney liberals allowed the popular vote to move to Clinton, or that many of the votes may have been cast by illegals. That is why the Founding Fathers introduced the electoral college , to ensure that a few extremist states do not dominate the vast majority of states. It makes not a whit how much Trump won by, he won by the rules. Quit crying and get to work trying to create a new image for the Democratic Party to improve this country, not tear it apart. If you want to win elections, win them by being better and working harder than your opponents. And by the way, do not take any election for granted again.
Thank you for your advice. I am going to register as many voters as I can for upcoming elections. Where I live that means they will be non-white voters. I will impress upon them their constitutional duty to vote their conscience and that you said not to take any election for granted.
Thanks for the inspiration. Fortunately, Trump is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the Democrats.
“Voters in the key swing state that Trump unexpectedly won in 2016 now overwhelmingly disapprove of his performance after his first year in office, according to a new poll.
The survey … found that Trump’s approval rating in the Great Lakes State has dropped to 39.5 percent, while his disapproval rating has risen to 54 percent. Women in Michigan voiced the loudest opposition, with 66 percent saying they “strongly” disapprove of Trump and 39 percent giving his first year in office an F grade.
“His approval ratings are terrible; it’s that simple,” Rich Czuba, who completed the study, … told The Detroit News. “We are the bellwether state at this point. Michigan is going to reflect what is occurring nationally.”
The poll follows a national trend of Trump’s approval ratings plummeting as he starts his second year in office. A USC-Dornsife/Los Angeles Times nationwide poll released earlier this week found the president’s approval rating at a historically low 32 percent, with 55 percent of respondents disapproving of his performance. An October survey also found Trump’s approval numbers at a net negative in other crucial swing states he won, such as Wisconsin, where 53 percent of voters disapproved of his performance, and Pennsylvania, where 51 percent disapproved.
“Thanks for the inspiration. Fortunately, Trump is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the Democrats.”
That’s true. They might even take back the Senate, despite the odds. Trump is the best draw the Democrats have. The only way the R’s can possibly win is Democratic overconfidence, assuming the election is in the bag. That would never happen, though.
We lost a decent, moderate Republican leader here recently, to be replaced by a decent, moderate Democrat. The R won easily in 2013, and had a better record this time. Distaste with the national figurehead took him out in 2017. I expect a lot of Republicans in blue states to lose this year.
“Trump is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the Democrats.”
That is why a lot of left-liberals I know voted for him. Voting for Democrats almost always yield betrayal of the core voters’ values, as they are called to make excuses in order to keep their candidates “electable” or to prevent interference from the other side of the aisle. Having a Republican as president tends to remind these folks of the values that they water-down or dispose of entirely when their guy is in charge.
@JohnAZ,
Perhaps few know it, but, California aside, Mr. Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 million. How could Hillary receive 70% of the California vote when 60% is considered a landslide? Sounds extremely shady to me. If Jill Stein was serious about challenging illegal voting (which obviously she was not), she should have asked for a California recount.
Janet,
Clinton could have won easily if she had made a deal with Bernie, instead of reprehensibly conspiring to lock him out.
Fact: Bernie had a large popular following. If Clinton had made him her VP, most of those votes would have followed Bernie into the Clinton column. Instead, she alienated millions from the Dems. She probably believed Stephen Colbert’s ‘Death Taxes and Hillary’ — Maybe she still does…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVU7DoM6f4
Thirteen Russians and a ham sandwich indicted. A ham sandwich has never entered a guilty plea. Several people have pleaded guilty as a result of Mueller’s investigation.
The investigation is not anywhere close to ending. Mueller just spent 20 hours interviewing Bannon. The wagons are circling around Mr. Trump.
guilty of what?
Whoever this “ Janet” is, she needs to take her( his??) head out of its ass. Maybe we need to fix her up with that unfunny jackass Chris rock
Mr. Kuntsler is trying to refute the Russian meddling story with logic – evidently he’s unaware that logic is a tool of the toxic western patriarchy, that promotes colonialism, misogyny, transphobia, Islamophobia, and racism.
Logic may very well be outdated, but what I have not heard our host ever speak about in regards to any of these issues are two old organized crime tactics from days gone by called deny and ignore. You are caught in the act of murder by hundreds of witnesses? Deny it. Deny it the day you are caught, deny it throughout your trial, deny it every day you spend in the can.. People being who they are, eventually everyone will grow so tired of hearing your denials that in the end pretty much all of them will realize that they were wrong, and you certainly are innocent.
The other is to ignore accusations altogether. They say selling uranium to Russians is a crime, ignore the accusation and make one of your own that simply talking to Russians is the treasonous act. Ignore and attack and in the end, your opponent will either shut up and go away or find something else to do rather than put up with the frustration and anger that comes from being ignored and counter-attacked. When you take a long and hard look at our government these days, it is very easy to make a case that those who ran organized crime finally made enough illicit profits to purchase and move directly into the US government. Throw in legalizing drugs, gambling and even prostitution in some places and I say my case has merit. Don’t you think so?
“When you take a long and hard look at our government these days, it is very easy to make a case that those who ran organized crime finally made enough illicit profits to purchase and move directly into the US government.”
“Finally” as in the election of JFK to the presidency, right? Wasn’t Papa Joe a liquor runner during Prohibition?
Yes Joe was and he dealt with the mob, and even Al Capone himself, if I remember “Sins of the Father” correctly. However he not only shielded his sons from such bad associations but he had no influence over them to stop them when they were taking on the mob, which contributed to their death. I would speculate that the first time that organized crime got a serious foothold in the White House it was during Bill Clinton’s reign, though the association began with Allen Dulles in the 1950’s.
Good points, Walter, as always!
Do you prefer a coin toss?
The Dissolution of the Monasteries resulted from Henry VIII’s declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England, which originated from his (perfidious?) wish to marry again while he still had a wife. Nothing to do with the Spanish inquisitors. == GA
After the conquest of England by the illegitimate William the Conqueror, also known as Wilhelm-the-Bastard, the Church of England fell into spiritual slavery to Rome.
Trauma from this spiritual slavery has deeply settled in the subconscious of the British and in their truly great culture, periodically breaking through into politics.
And then, just 450 years after the Battle of Hastings, Henry the VIII, a zealous Catholic, a man well educated and almost genius, a real Norman in spirit, sat on the throne of England.
And so he met Anne Boleyn, and he wanted her so much, that he completely lost it. And she does not let him – “I do not want adultery. If you want me – divorce, but otherwise – go away.”
Well, the real Norman can not rape his beloved woman! A Roman Pope climbed into the proverbial bottle and did not give a divorce, no matter what. And so the zealous Catholic Henry the VIII, the writer of theological and philosophical treatises, could not endure these torments, splintered with Rome, hanged half of the hierarchs and pro-Catholic politicians high and short, demolished the Catholic monasteries to the ground, and sent the monks to soldiers.
And he changed the religion in the country, practically restoring the Orthodox Church of England, which from the joy of it divorced him from Catherine of Aragon.
And he, finally, legally dragged Anna Boleyn into bed.
British must be grateful to Henry the VIII for the Brexit, if not for him England would still be in the clutches of the Reich.
The Church of England is still the closest sister-church in Europe of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Finca
‘Well, the real Norman can not rape his beloved woman!’
Well, I doubt his sensibilities were that great, to be honest. As king he could have whoever he wished and he was indeed shagging Anne Boleyn’s sister while married to Catherine and may even have fathered her children.
But Anne was ambitious (as was her father) and wanted to be Queen, so she held out. And Catherine didn’t give Henry the son he wanted. So he married Anne. And still didn’t get a son…
‘and he wanted her so much, that he completely lost it.’
Well, I think Anne lost most, didn’t she? Her head, in fact, after a mere three years of wedded bliss. Do not mess with absolute monarchs. They will tire of you (especially if you don’t produce a son) and it will not end well.
“British must be grateful to Henry the VIII for the Brexit, if not for him England would still be in the clutches of the Reich.”
Sadly the country is riven in two by the question, which should not have been posed. You don’t deal with hugely complicated constitutional questions with simplistic, binary referenda. As the lacklustre and mediocre Theresa May is finding out as she takes us deeper and deeper into the quagmire of constitutional and economic ‘May’hem.
“British must be grateful to Henry the VIII for the Brexit, if not for him England would still be in the clutches of the Reich.”
Well I’m not over the moon that ‘England’ is going to be in the clutches of the globalists who wanted Brexit. I’m especially not over the moon that Scotland and Northern Ireland, which both voted against it, will be pulled over the cliff with England, which voted for its own self-destruction. I’m not looking forward to a trade deal dictated by Trump, the probable collapse of our agricultural sector, or chaos over the Irish border and the peace process, or the damage that will be done to the economy of our nearest neighbour, the Republic of Ireland (to which we have done enough damage in the past), or the demise of the NHS, with the American healthcare ‘industry’ sucking its bones.
And personally I’d have thought the Catholic church was nearer in most things to the Orthodox church, given the shared stance on e.g. the ordination of women, but I don’t have any strong opinions on the matter.
But we’re way, way off topic…
Yep. The book The Other Boleyn Girl was interesting in this light. What little suckups to power the Boleyn’s were, and what it cost them: two bastard children by Mary, dead daughter, dead son. Their grandchild, Elizabeth, never propagated a Boleyn progeny to rule England.
One wonders what might have happened if Henry Fitzroy had lived…
I think I posted the following here a few years ago.
From memory Raymond Crotty’s analysis goes like this:
The century and a half following the Black Death was a golden period where population fell by half but accumulated capital (agricultural stock, building and tools) remained untouched. Incomes effectively doubled and this was reflected in a steep fall in corn prices relative to wool.
The period saw a steep demand for scarce labour which helped to break down feudal ties, but the main change was driven by high wool prices (for transport to Europe for manufacture), a huge switch from tillage to pasture (‘up horn, down corn’), England being climactically on the margin of western European capitalism (seen as a distinctive method of food production) where this switch was always a possibility. (Ireland was always outside this region because of its weather.) The nobility were able to make serious profits from the land and, with feudal ties breaking down, they acquired sole proprietorship. (Profit from tillage had always been fairly marginal.) With sheep requiring far less labour than tillage we see the first appearance of a propertied-propertyless division – ‘when sheep do eat up men’ in More’s description.
A strong state, headed by a strong monarchy, was necessary to secure these shaky rights, and land tenure could never be fully secure while there was any possibility of a veto from Rome. A break with Rome also ensured that there would be no threat to title resulting from an uncertain succession. With a very high proportion of land (a third) held by the monasteries, probably a sign of relative backwardness, there was big incentive for the crown to seize it, allowing it to live off its own means and not infringe through taxation on the newly created property in land. (In fact, that wealth was lost in the campaign of conquest in the bogs and woods of Ireland.)
Crotty argued that these circumstances were unique to England and explain Macauley’s puzzlement over the existence of an over-mighty monarchy while the religious opposition parties were feeble compared to the continent.
I would write it a little differently now.
Elrond, I gratefully accept your challenge. I further would accept stelmo’s suggestion that Q’s good offices should be the arbiter of the effort, should he accept. I have a specific political organization in mind for the donation….
I should mention that at the time of my earlier post, I had not seen the speech in it’s entirety, but rather snippets on various news channels. I was unable to access your link due to both download speed deficiencies and the requirement that I upgrade my operating system to Windows 10…I did, however, read the transcript of the entire speech.
Little Emma Gonzalez wrote a rather snide, almost insulting speech invoking most all of Big Gun Control’s bullet points…and while I certainly empathize with her angst, I have to say that, if I were a connoisseur of whine, her speech was of fine quality and admirable portion.
From her 17-odd years of perspective, she was able to denounce 200+ years of privilege…a basic right that defines and protects that privilege. She suggests that guns have advanced in killing power, but laws have not maintained that pace…not considering 10,000+ laws currently on the books of Federal, State, and local agencies. She suggests that Automatic weapons are easily available, not considering the 1934NFA…the National Firearms Act. She implies that efficiency is evil…although she fails to mention that 2000+ Americans were killed in an event enabled by a box cutter.
She makes other errors regarding gun laws, laws of which she is understandably unaware, considering her age…the legalities of concealed carry, Federal requirements in all states to Complete FFL form 4473, questions that must be successfully answered before a purchase…A legal purchase, I should mention. Consider that the criminal element will find illegal methods to acquire weapons…this she did not mention.
She discusses political action, as if their student debates on guns will have any more effect on us then the shaving of her head…it is a personal choice. She rails against the NRA, doing a bit of high school math to generate a dollars per death and then invoking a diminishing return scenario where Trump considers their lives worth nothing.
Little Emma then expounds upon mental health, specifically the mental health of the shooter…a person she personally knew. She is of the opinion that the victims are being blamed for the issue…well, maybe here she has a point. Perhaps Cruz was driven mad by a sense of alienation, a lack of human connection…perhaps little Emma could have mitigated the outrage…perhaps.
Then Emma calls BS! BS on the Bill of Rights! BS on America’s 200+ history of responsible gun ownership! BS on the fact that high school students do not know their ass from a hole in the ground, that they are too young to understand the realpolitik of government…this she also calls BS, but I do not.
I would like to see your donation in the form of an honorarium given to our host…James Howard Kunstler…the titular head of the ClusterFuckNation…or do you not consider our CFN as worthy?
It has been earlier established that I am a sad, scared little man with my surrogate penises close at hand…this I can accept and hope my manhood will not be further degraded by your challenge, and my answer.
I remain;
Elysianfield
No need for Q’s intervention, elysianfield. Here is your link.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kEhcOaHDSbH5JdcpdZrZyxJviHCHdnN5
As the actual payment will not go through till March 1st, I can follow up then if you like.
Please consider making the effort to watch the video, not just read the transcript. I still think you would benefit from engaging with her position, not passing judgement on it from a position of self-assurance. You should have clearly in mind that she was speaking mere days after actually surviving an actual school shooting that took the lives of her peers. I certainly had that in mind reading your response.
A look at the following photograph might be a fair start on the journey you still need to make. The bandwidth requirements are much lower, too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/7yjpep/this_is_anthony_borges_15_he_used_his_body_to/
“Snide” and “insulting” cut both ways, my good friend. Cheers.
Elrond,
I will try to see the entire speech. However, please understand my position. Wisdom does not come from the mouths of children. They know and can parrot only what they have been told. Sweet little Emma was an ignorant teen before the incident, and remains so, save as a witness. There is nothing other than an emotional tirade she has to offer.
The discussion regarding Gun Control is entirely too complex to produce anything but a short term superficial attempt at a political fix. It is our culture…middle class culture, that is under assault, and those of us in the culture understand that any surrender to the gun control elements will never be enough. Surrender semi-automatics, and later we will hear “we should get rid of single-shot rifles…why they can fire as fast as you can load and pull the trigger”…put a scope on a rifle and it becomes a sniper’s weapon, capable of killing police at 1000 yards(…you don’t need a 1000 yard capable rifle to kill Bambi…etc).
The only real solution to the problem of criminals having guns is total confiscation…and this is Gun Control’s endgame. Consider that any weapon…no matter how closely guarded, can be stolen and used in a crime…stolen from police custody, from the military, or from the licensed and heavily monitored civilian…consider Britain as an example of that slippery slope.
Sooo… the next time some young twisted product of our “advanced culture” has an opinion regarding gun control…please tell them to have a Coke, and a smile, and shut the fuck up (Credit to Richard Prior).
“Consider that any weapon…no matter how closely guarded, can be stolen and used in a crime…stolen from police custody, from the military, or from the licensed and heavily monitored civilian…consider Britain as an example of that slippery slope.”
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, elysianfield. I hope you’re not suggesting we Brits are looking on in admiration at the carnage that goes on in the US because of your love affair with guns?
“Sooo… the next time some young twisted product of our “advanced culture” has an opinion regarding gun control…please tell them to have a Coke, and a smile, and shut the fuck up'”
?????
Some of them have just been made to shut the fuck up permanently.
I would just like to hear the gun lobby stop implying their real position, but come out and actually say it: their pet theory that guns are the solution, not the problem, is more important to them than children’s lives. Or your life, or mine.
That’s not hyperbole; that’s not slander; that’s not satire; that’s their actual position. They aren’t forthright enough to come out and just say it, though, because they realize doing so isn’t in their interest. Instead they dance and spin, do backflips and cartwheels as close to the line as they feel like.
Last night, elysianfield came as close as I’ve seen in a while to just owning it: “Their lives are expendable? Well Elrond, understand that we ALL are expendable.” Follow the link for the full context, and you will see clearly he’s arguing that school shootings are a price he’s willing to pay — which is to say, he’s willing to impose a blood price on kids, their families, and society in general in order to get his way. There is no case for the gun culture that doesn’t entail swallowing that camel whole.
JHK talks about the psychology of previous investment, otherwise known as the sunk-cost fallacy. This drives our current society to continue doubling down on previous bad decisions, because changing course would mean admitting error and accepting responsibility for the bad outcomes. I see adherents of gun culture as being trapped in a similar bind. Admitting that their paranoid political narcissism exacts such a cost is a high moral barrier to overcome, even if someone like elysianfield should want to change his mind (which he should). With this latest atrocity, though, it seems like resistance to this ongoing horror may actually, finally be gaining traction.
May god have mercy on a society so lost that its own children have to rise up and protect themselves from it.
In Switzerland, men sometimes go to vote with their military rifle slung over their soldier. Why? Because they CAN. Rights: use them or lose them. They embody the very ideal of the Citizen Solider – what America was supposed to be. Gas in every tank and a Tank in every garage.
What you want to do is reverse the Magna Carta and disarm the People so that only the elite have access to weapons. No doubt those above you smile your work to see. Any totalitarian regime would be eager to have you on their propaganda team.
“…what America was supposed to be. Gas in every tank and a Tank in every garage”
If that’s your ideal, I think you may be in for a disappointment in due course. And possibly on the wrong website.
More like ‘Twilight of the Gods’.
https://ghostgunner.net/
The problem with “reasonable gun control” is that it is only reasonable to a few people.
Does it make sense that I can be a law abiding citizen that crosses a state line and suddenly becomes a felon because of my legally obtained property? I believe that ALL state mandated gun control is illegal due to the 14th Amendment.
I will not entertain any new forms of gun control because of the situation that we have now. The court case of Miller vs USA had some interesting twists. The USA lawyers made a few interesting arguments. One of them was that the the Second Amendment protects only the ownership of military-type weapons appropriate for use in an organized militia.
Interesting! The AR-15 uses the same magazines as the M-16 or M-4. They all usually fire the same caliber (5.56×45) and handle the same way. The major differences between them are;
-AR-15 is a semi-auto rifle that has a different bolt carrier
-different fire control group
-a different buffer spring
I will also note that the modified bolt carrier makes it difficult to modify an AR-15 into a fully automatic firearm.
The AR-15 is the perfect firearm for a militia member to own if they are not allowed to own the M-16 or the M-4.
I will also point out that when I use the term militia, I am talking about the kind that is trained & regulated by congress and is under the command of the Commander & Chief a.k.a President of the USA. It is all well described in the US Constitution.
“Why do those calling for more gun control remain silent when armed federal agents raid Amish farms to stop them from selling raw milk? This shows the hypocrisy of those who call for restrictions on private firearms ownership while supporting the use of government violence as a means of controlling our lives.”
I0W – Stop being a tool.
No need for Q’s intervention, elysianfield. Here is your link. – Elrond
=============
I thought the stake here was a one shot $100 but I see you have committed to $100 per month (if I haven’t misread the link). The economy in ON, CA must be better than I thought.
Too bad you conceded so quickly. I was going to declare elysian the loser for misuse of then where than belongs… “as if their student debates on guns will have any more effect on us then the shaving of her head..” 😉
Come on Q’ . E kicked A$$ with his response. I concede the “than vs. then” mistake but why nitpick?. He rose to the challenge and won.! When’s the bike trip?
Come on Q’ . E kicked A$$ with his response.
=============
Agreed. Didn’t you see the winking smiley face?
I have several bike trips in the planning stage but all must wait for warmer weather.
Today was as high as 53 degrees so I made a 37 mile practice run during which it rained for half the trip…but the wind shield made it no problem.
Tomorrow it will be in the 60s and Wednesday in the 70s so I’m looking forward to longer and longer practice runs.
Yes Q, I also read that post as $100 US dollars a month. I seriously doubt if the Elrond will honor his word.” If a man has no honor what is his word worth?”.
Stelmo,
Well, I have to say I am humbled by his response. He obviously was in a state of high emotion when he made the challenge…he actually found meaning in the speech, and I took some delight in responding. I should have done otherwise. I know that Elrond believes with all his being that gun control would be a solution to the ills of our society. I believe that school shootings are not the problem, but a symptom of some greater ill. Elrond and I must agree to disagree.
Patreon offers no means for a one-time donation, so I did as they recommend and signed up for recurring at the appropriate level. All Patreon payments go through on the first of the month. After March 1st, we’ll see what happens — but no, I can’t afford US$1,200 a year even for someone as sexy and attractive as JHK.
stelmosfire: “I seriously doubt if the Elrond will honor his word.”
The Elrond will honour his word. I don’t engage in empty gestures.
“It is coming at us good and hard and it will feel like a two-by-four to nation’s skull when it gets here.” I think the financial crash will feel more like a two-by-six coming at the nation’s skull. I got hit by one once and I know what it feels like, with a broken nose to boot… I kinda think it will coincide with the peak followed by an abrupt decline in shale/tight oil output in about 2 years from now, give or take a few months.
To Janet (addendum)
The Democrats need to do some things in order to get themselves credible again.
Find some legitimate issues to contest, such as how to clean up the swamp in Washington, DC, or how to force the Deep State to take ownership for their own actions or inactions. How to expand the scope of economic opportunity for the people without causing an expansion of dependency, see also Stockton, CA.
Quit using Trump as their only issue, more people than not like his approach of kicking butt in DC. Trump thrives on this, he is a street fighter and he knows as long as he can keep the political focus on himself, the Democrats are not working on the issues they should be. I do not think he loses sleep over the propoganda that is used against him. And the Mueller investigation is about to become a gigantic boomerang.
Your getting folks to vote is admirable, but the Democratic Party getting its act together is more important. You said you would get people of color to vote is great, however the lack of support from the Left for people of color is becoming more and more apparent. The Democrats had better find a better growth base for their future than just pumping more folks through the Border as that is going to dry up.
One more thing, the Democrats need some new blood. The old guard is getting ridiculous, and the Democrats are starting to look ludicrous with them as their spokesmen.
Turkey renames US Embassy street after Syria offensive
Turkish authorities on Monday renamed a street where the U.S. Embassy is located with the name of Turkey’s military offensive in Syria that had led to tensions between the allies.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Turkey-renames-US-Embassy-street-after-Syria-12624484.php
Well, you have seen nothing yet. Muscovites demand renaming the Bolshoy Devyatinsky Lane, were the US Embassy is located in Moscow, to American Dead End
Hey Finca when I asked if you were one of the Rooskis who got indicted I was just busting your balls, adding a little levity to a pathetic, misconstrued, politicized abuse of the American legal system, that’s all.
No offense intended.
brh
I’m sure everyone has been over to Moon of Alabama for perpsective.
(in large part because we won hands down and by far and away)
Face, palm. Watched one too many episodes of “Victory at Sea” as a youth?
Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 – May 14, 1998) was an American journalist, author, women’s suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades [ the swamp ] against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development.
Florida school shooting: Nikolas Cruz starred in NRA-funded air rifle team
https://globalnews.ca/news/4031129/florida-school-shooting-nikolas-cruz-nra-foundation/
“The troubled teen authorities say killed 17 people at a Florida high school excelled in an air-rifle marksmanship program supported by a grant from the National Rifle Association Foundation, part of a multimillion-dollar effort by the gun group to support youth shooting clubs.
“Nikolas Cruz, 19, was wearing a maroon shirt with the logo from the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when he was arrested Wednesday shortly after the shooting. Former JROTC cadets told The Associated Press that Cruz was a member of the small varsity marksmanship team that trained together after class and traveled to other area schools to compete.
“‘He was a very good shot,’ said Aaron Diener, 20, who gave Cruz a ride to shooting competitions when they were part of the same four-member team in 2016. ‘He had an AR-15 he talked about, and pistols.’
“The JROTC marksmanship program used air rifles special-made for target shooting, typically on indoor ranges at targets the size of a small coin. Records show that the Stoneman Douglas JROTC program received $10,827 in non-cash assistance from the NRA’s fundraising and charitable arm in 2016, when Cruz was on the squad.”
—
When an athlete is using performance-enhancement methods, you can’t say that any particular record, or home run, or goal scored, or whatever was “because of” doping or steroids; that’s not how it works. Nevertheless it’s obvious that doing so helps them run up their numbers, often to great effect; that’s why they do it.
Up above, elysianfield denounced one of the survivors of last week’s mass murder for “fail[ing] to mention that 2000+ Americans were killed in an event enabled by a box cutter.” So I’m wondering, what does he have to say about the 17 Americans (mostly children) just killed in an event enabled in part by the National Rifle Association?
It’s true that JROTC isn’t identical to the flight training the 9/11 hijackers received, aside from both happening in Florida. After all, the flight training money didn’t come out of the pockets of life-long NRA members — the hijackers paid for it themselves. Likewise, of the 17 murders allegedly committed by Nikolas Cruz, you can’t attribute any one in particular to funding from the NRA.
So let’s just say: elysianfield‘s money helped him run up his numbers. Now, class: are there any questions? Comments?
It is about time that somebody somewhere came out and took on the root cause of the problem instead of dealing with the end result. In the 1950’s and ’60’s television and the movies had lots of shootings and the bad guy who was shot would always covered the spot where the bullet hit, there was no gore, and zero excessive violence. Motorcycle gangs were the bad guys, and cops were the guys you went to for help not to use as target practice. Yes we played with our toy guns which had percussion caps and smoked up the room, but the play we enjoyed was so far removed from what the kids are subjected to today that it almost seems pre-historic.
Nobody has the balls or brains to take on Hollywood, the music industry of those who program our kids to kill mass quantities in video games. Nobody, because so much money is made selling violence to our children that those who profit from it have more than enough power to squelch any assaults upon them and their cash flow. I don not know how it is around the country, but here in Western New Jersey the US Army sends tractor trailers to all of the county fairs that open up into video arcades with Call of Duty and other mass murder video “games”. They actually will ask the kids who are good if they can have contact information and actually recruit through this process. I suppose it is a good way to staff your drone operator positions.
America is being played, and parents that sell out to make more money, have bigger houses and more expensive vacations by sacrificing their children giving them little to no attention or parenting as they grow up are another sad key to this problem. Personally I do not see this getting better, but only worse. Money brings power, people don’t care, and what appears to be the easy way out will always be chosen by the Common American Idiot.
“Nobody has the balls or brains to take on Hollywood, the music industry of those who program our kids to kill mass quantities in video games. Nobody, because so much money is made selling violence to our children that those who profit from it have more than enough power to squelch any assaults upon them and their cash flow.”
America is addicted to play. You are correct. The constant barrage of violence without any counterbalance brutalizes and makes ghouls of weak minds. America has a love affair with violent acting out of emotion and now that we are an empire in decline without any social compass there is nothing to reign in the depravity of the damaged.
Expect much more of the same. Harvey Weinstein is a pig because of his penis but he should be a pig for the pig product he pushed and the pig celebration of inequality and pig fantasies he promulgated. But that is not the way it is in America where a constant non-stop barrage of violent images is viewed as harmless from sea to sea. We are the jejune childish creatures we once though our ‘ignorant’ ancestors to be for we have regressed. They would see us as the callow foolish and flatitious people we have become in a heartbeat.
Very well stated Walter, I have a new acronym in my magazine. CAI, the common American idiot.
I love it how arguments are twisted and presented. I can twist things up as well to make a compelling argument.
We all like to talk about rights and defend “our rights” when ever we can at the ballot box or soap box. You want to talk about numbers in terms of death count? I think that is a fair request.
I support gun rights as well as abortion rights. How do these two rights compare in terms of the number of deaths of a fetus vs deaths of a person? Keep in mind only one of these rights are protected by the US Constitution in the form of the 2nd Amendment.
As far as I can tell, not all guns end up killing people but all abortions end up killing a fetus. The number of people that are killed by guns pale in comparison to the abortion death count. All abortions end in the death of a fetus. The death rate of an abortion in America is two orders of magnitude higher than that of a firearm.
Now why do I bring this up? I accept that death is part of these rights. This is no different to my views on driving privileges. The real fight is over the social understanding that we all risk death when others around us exercise their rights and what rights you value.
If I were a person that did not own a car, I would go after banning cars before I would push for a ban of firearms. If I really cared about human lives, banning cars would save more people than banning guns. Like all the debates and arguments over our rights, I think it has more to do with people exercising political power over other people.
If you want to bring death rates and death counts into the political discussions, you had better be prepared to first address the issues that far deadlier and worst than firearms.
Do you favor immigration to First World nations?
Why are you bringing up immigration to first world nations?
I have never had a strong opinion on immigration but I have always had a strong opinion in upholding the law.
I do have an opinion on DACA. Give them legal status to stay but never a path to citizenship. If they fail to pay taxes or are convicted of a felony, deport them.
I would add to this that the 13th Amendment needs to be clarified either through an amendment or a SCOTUS decision. My interpretation of the 13th Amendment was to give citizenship to freed slaves and was never meant to give citizenship just for being born here. This is not the legal interpretation that the US currently has.
I do have an opinion on DACA. Give them legal status to stay but never a path to citizenship. If they fail to pay taxes or are convicted of a felony, deport them.
Nutty,
As an incentive to citizenship, charge illegals a surtax…10% or more on their payroll tax…offer a rebate of a certain percentage if and when they become citizens…you know…membership has its privileges….
You’re still not Home, but have miles to go before you sleep. Still suffering from “Nice Guy It is”, the bane of our Civilization. Look: Their presence wrongs US. Oh yeah, them (you too). A Nation doesn’t exist as a charity ward for aliens or alien children. The alien children were wronged? Ok, they were – but not by us. By Obama. By his enablers. By Mexico. And most of all by their parents. Let the children go after them for a redress of their wrongs. Why are you so eager to take the sins of others upon yourself – and your brothers? The latter you have no right to do, none at all….
Nutty,
I would not trust SCOTUS to come down on the correct side. They are as afraid of the Mass Media bullies as anyone else, and don’t want to live with the death threats coming from the Dreamers. The safe vote is to vote for birthright citizenship, even though it will spell the death of the USA. Who was it that said the Constitution is not a Suicide Pact?
“Why are you so eager to take the sins of others upon yourself …”
Janos,
I still suffer from a sense of human decency…I have not yet had it beaten out of me. There is still, at least at this time, the luxury of compassion…but who is to say what the morrow might bring?
“I still suffer from a sense of human decency…”
Really Elysianfield?
“Sooo… the next time some young twisted product of our “advanced culture” has an opinion regarding gun control…please tell them to have a Coke, and a smile, and shut the fuck up ”
That’s to the kids whose classmates have just been murdered.
I wouldn’t like to hear what you’d say when your sense of human decency is having an off day.
Alba,
Understand that compassion does not give license to act-out on the political stage. You might feel joy when someone scores a goal in a soccer game you are watching…but when the goal-scoring player grabs a mike on the sidelines and suggests that the Queen Mother eat shit and die? Perhaps a bit of license? Too much license?
elysianfield
I just don’t get your analogy (besides which the Queen Mother is long dead – and had a colostomy bag, so perhaps not the best image).
But seriously, would you say ‘shut the fuck up’ to the siblings or parents of a murdered child, to their face, because they thought the right to assault weapons was a right too far?
And why is someone ‘twisted’ just because they don’t see things the way you do?
There goes elysianfield again. Is it any wonder that I call the gun culture political narcissists?
Recall that narcissism entails the inability to understand anything, except as it pertains to oneself. Narcissists endlessly hunger for validation, while deflecting all blame with a sense of grievance and a taste for retaliation. Infamously, such a creature is currently occupying the Oval Office. A true narcissist can see people treated like garbage all the live-long day, and shrug. But if you so much as brush away an eyelash that they shed, then god help you if the narcissist is feeling possessive that day — you’ll never hear the end of it.
And now we see that if children — children, for Christ’s sake! — have the nerve to speak up in defense of their own lives, the narcissist will dismiss them as ‘acting out’. The narcissist is perfectly capable of ignoring the real lives that have been, are, and will continue to be at stake, and portraying the object of their derision as a ‘goal-scoring player’.
Such people deserve a modicum of pity, but more blame. At a certain point in life, you’re responsible for the kind of person you turned out to be.
Another good point, well said. Hey, will Hollywood give up its guns, it’s violent death and destruction and mass murdering films and television series if I give up my firearm? I would gladly consider it if they will lead the way. And what do you think will happen if our firearms are taken away and they still pander murder, violence and death to our youth for profit? Anybody think THAT will turn out well? Are there even enough sedatives in production to deal with that scenario? Oh yes, the video game manufacturers have to kick in and promise to disarm as well or the deal is off.
How can people fail to even consider these, the greatest purveyors of death and destruction by lead poisoning as the biggest part of the problem? Perhaps they find value in letting their children lock themselves in their rooms all day playing at violence so they do not have to deal with them. Now that sounds like an intelligent life choice. Wake up America or shut up. Please.
thenuttyneutron: “If you want to bring death rates and death counts into the political discussions, you had better be prepared to first address the issues that far deadlier and worst than firearms.”
I call BS. Gun deaths aren’t abortions. They are’t car crash deaths. Stop trying to change the subject.
“I call BS. Gun deaths aren’t abortions. They aren’t car crash deaths. Stop trying to change the subject.
Elrond,
It is no more a false equivalency than is the metric you pose regarding gun ownership and children’s deaths.
The issue of dehumanization through violent video game exposure poses a valid argument…the USMC takes apple-cheeked youth and by that method turns them into warriors…their business is killing, and business is good….
“…I think it has more to do with people exercising political power over other people.” …while pretending they are not.
Now, class: are there any questions? Comments?
============
Yes. Should the Olympics biathlon be done away with? Whut’s up with all this skiing and shooting?
” Whut’s up with all this skiing and shooting?”
Q,
Of that you might ask the Finns…winners of the Winter Games of 1939….
Good one ,EL I for one enjoy the biathlon! Ski and shoot, ski and shoot, ski and shoot. Sounds like a good tactic to me.
“So let’s just say: elysianfield‘s money helped him run up his numbers. Now, class: are there any questions
The Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM) was created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act. … From 1916 until 1996 the CMP was administered by the U.S. Army~Google search
It was in the best interest of our government to have a citizenry of competent rifle,,,persons….. The NRA, as a patriotic organization, aided in this effort.
Janos Skorenzy February 19, 2018 at 9:38 pm #
In Switzerland, men sometimes go to vote with their military rifle slung over their soldier. Why? Because they CAN.
–That is White Privilege.
The penis mightier than the sword
Thwack,
Dirk or…Claymore?
Not that it matters….
Blame it on autocorrect.
Elrond and Green Alba seem to have a problem with our (US) gun culture and the 2nd amendment.
Am I remiss in asking, why do they care? Green Alba, by all means, stay in Londonistan, where you most likely won’t be shot but by all accounts may be mowed down on a public street by a muzzy driving a stolen truck. Perhaps you would like that better, who knows? And Elrond, stay the hell in Canada, we already have too many people like yourself here, causing mischief and trying to undermine our Bill of Rights. We won’t miss you.
It occurs to me, in Europe, gun laws are so restrictive a citizen of say France or Germany can’t go down to the local Walmart or Dick’s and buy himself a Mossberg 500, Remington 870 or a Henry single shot just because he wants one (like we can here) … but Mustafa seems to have no problem at all procuring all the Kalashnikovs he can use, plenty of 7.62X39 ammo, and 30 round magazines, and spraying bullets around Paris and Brussels. (After the carnage the sheep usually stage a dance party, a rock concert, lay wreaths, light candles, give hugs, and proclaim universal love for the muzzies who wiped them out just the day before)
brh
I can stay in Canada and still run my mouth, BRH. We have the Internet now.
Eh?
Brh
There are a few issues to unpack here, for the sake of clarity.
“ Elrond and Green Alba seem to have a problem with our (US) gun culture and the 2nd amendment.”
Wrong, brh. I don’t have a problem with your (US) gun culture. You do. The other day you had 17 tragic problems with it. I don’t live there – you do. If you have children, they do.
“Am I remiss in asking, why do they care?”
Not remiss, I think, just lacking in insight, empathy, sympathy, and concepts of that ilk. Why does anyone ‘care’ about anything? Because they’re human? And because, being a parent and grandparent themselves (in my case) they can immediately imagine what it would be like if their child or grandchild had just been murdered with an assault rifle in their classroom, the ‘place of safety’ that is second only to their home (in loco parentis…)?
And logic, of course. When you asked this exact question before, I already hypothesised a failure of logic, since you have an obsessive interest in what goes on in Europe (but only in things which pertain to your more particular obsession), and I wondered why you would think it odd that other people would be similarly interested in what happens in other countries, including yours. I hope we’ve cleared that particular one up, since I’ve now answered it twice. (And, talking of logic, you still haven’t adequately explained why London deserves to be described as ‘Londonistan’ when 87.6% of its population is non-Muslim. That still confuses me, but not enough to keep me awake at night.)
Now, in addition to this, I get that you’d like us to go away. But this is not your site. And it is not a site restricted to US citizens unless its host decides it should be (American readership seems to hover around 52%, as I mentioned previously). My converted dollars being as good as yours, and our host’s books being for sale to anyone anywhere, I’ll take my chances on that one until I hear to the contrary.
But the reason you’d like us to go away isn’t just that we’re not US citizens but that you don’t like our views. Now that sounds particularly snowflake-y in my view, but maybe that’s just me. If I can tolerate rude and ignorant questions like ‘asking’ me about the ‘Muzzie Mayor of Londonistan’ I’m sure you can cope with less rude questions or comments from your fellow Anglo-Saxons/Celts/whatever… But maybe you can’t – maybe your psyche is more fragile than your blustering would suggest.
“It occurs to me, in Europe, gun laws are so restrictive a citizen of say France or Germany can’t go down to the local Walmart or Dick’s and buy himself a Mossberg 500, Remington 870 or a Henry single shot just because he wants one (like we can here) …”
Well, thank God for that. People in France, Germany and the UK just don’t want to be able to do that. It’s not that anyone’s stopping us – if we all voted for the ‘Let’s Introduce American Gun Slaughter to the UK’ party, then we could have guns. But so far there’s no demand. Sanity prevails, although one should never be complacent.
But I hope it makes you feel better to know that farmers can get a rifle with no trouble – they just need a GP to sign a certificate saying there’s no medical reason why they shouldn’t have one. And there are shooting clubs. And grouse shoots, and clay pigeon shoots. But I’m still happy to know, when I’m walking home on my own at night, that there’s an infinitesimal chance of my coming across someone with a gun in their pocket. A number of your own citizens have come over here with their families to join us for that very reason.
“but Mustafa seems to have no problem at all procuring all the Kalashnikovs he can use, plenty of 7.62X39 ammo, and 30 round magazines, and spraying bullets around Paris and Brussels.”
No he doesn’t, does he? It’s always the way – the IRA had no trouble procuring guns and the wherewithal to make bombs either (with ‘your’ help, obviously, in financial terms – I realise it wasn’t you personally who donated to Noraid, but you do seem rather wedded to the idea of guilt by tenuous association, don’t you?). They were particularly fond of Semtex procured from our then Czechoslovakian neighbours for messing with human body parts. But that didn’t make any of us want our own Semtex cache or bomb manufacturing kit. Or indeed AK47s and Kalashnikovs. We left it to the police and the army to deal with them, and eventually the politicians too, that being what we pay them all for.
Whatever?
Yeah, whatever…
” the IRA had no trouble procuring guns and the wherewithal to make bombs either”
Alba,
Thus our stance on gun control….
There is no logic there at all, elysianfield. The IRA knocked on people’s doors and shot them in front of their own children. Most people don’t answer the door with a gun in their hand, even if they own a gun. Often it was a child who answered the door and they shot the father in front of the child. Other times they put bombs under people’s cars.
Other times again they left a bomb in a shop or a pub and gave notice it was there, but not necessarily enough. Sometimes they figured out which way people would run from the explosion and had another bomb waiting for them. Having a gun wouldn’t have helped in any way. Weapon inflation makes no sense – it just makes more dead people.
Hey Finca when I asked if you were one of the Rooskis who got indicted I was just busting your balls, adding a little levity to a pathetic, misconstrued, politicized abuse of the American legal system, that’s all. == brh
This is not a laughing matter, brh.
LiberNazis – the American franchise of the NSDAP – are now trying to compare the Russian trolling operation with Pearl Harbor and are putting a pressure on Trump to invoke a full Faith and Credit of the American Nuclear Triad.
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s all just to help MIC to make a few (gazillion) bucks – they’re trying to clash against each other major powers that defeated the Third Reich, and, while they’re at it to destroy Israel and Jews for the good measure.
https://youtu.be/nxBotw7tiJs?t=268
I’m much more disturbed by the mindless hysteria ginned up Washington’s permanent bureaucracy in collusion with half a dozen major newspapers and cable news networks, who have run a psy-ops campaign to shove the country into a war mentality.
At last, JHK is starting to get it.
Its a dangerous game, provoking the Russian Bear just because you lost an election and are looking for a scapegoat, which the Dems have bee doing for 18 months now.
specially when 26 million dead in your Great Patriotic war is within living memory, and you have 5000 nuclear warheads in your arsenal pointed straight at us.
brh
Provoking the Bear is a centuries-old tradition of the Reich, my friend, beginning with the Northern Crusades of the Teutonic Order and ending with the Hitler’ Barbarossa plan.
Now they want to do it with help of gullible Yanks, who stubbornly refuse to learn the History.
BRH, The Russian role in WW2 is definitely worth mentioning–
My Dad was in WW2, stationed in what is now Pakistan. He always said that the reason he was spared going to Europe was the Russians taking the starch out of Germany in Leningrad, and the reason he was spared having to invade Japan was the atomic bomb. I don’t know about the A-bomb part of it, but if I ever get to St. Petersburg, I plan to buy the biggest flower arrangement I can afford and lay it on their monument to the St. P-burg defenders. Its likely some of us owe our lives to their sacrifice.
The only time I feel like I have a chance of getting shot is when I come down here into the city at night to work, where shooting each other down on the streets seems to be a way of life (and death) for the Blacks and Puerto Ricans who dominate Hartford. Literally, its an everyday occurrence, and if guns are not available they seem to have no problem of resorting to the blade, knifing each other, and arson as well. On the other hand, myself and a few relatives have been making the rounds of the Easter ham shoots held in rural NW CT (near Ozones place) where a cool atmosphere prevails, safety is paramount, and fun is at a premium. 50 or 60 guys (and gals) with their personal shotguns and not one problem that I’ve seen.
In other news, a new course at Yale in New Haven ‘Deconstructing Whiteness’, not mandatory yet, but an elective, seems to be designed to stir up resentment amongst non whites and at the same time frighten whitey. (but whitey may not frighten so easily) At best a course like this might result in some street muggings, home invasions in the suburbs, and a few cases of the ‘knockout game’. You know that is, I don’t have to spell it out for you. Unfortunately, victims of the ‘knockout game’ seem to be young coeds in a bus station, elderly white people on a street corner, or people physically or mentally handicapped (that is, the weakest among us) And I’ll tell you brother when these unfortunate targets get sucker punched, they stay sucker punched … for the rest of their lives.
brh
See ‘EMS News-Culture of Life’ blog, todays SJW post.
“Why? Because they CAN. Rights: use them or lose them.” –janos
To those who support open carry, I ask this: should it be permissible to carry AR-15s or machine guns or hand grenades in the following places: courtroom, judges’ chambers, witness rooms, jury deliberation rooms, attorney conference rooms, prisoner holding cells, offices of the court clerks, the United States attorney, and the United States marshal, probation, parole offices, post office buildings, federal prisons, national cemeteries, commercial airplanes (first class and economy class seats), the US Congressional buildings, White House tours?
What about rocket launchers, if I feel safer carrying one? Bazookas? Flamethrowers?
Should I be able to buy and use these: Tanks? Stingers, MANPADS, SAMs, rocket powered grenades, land mines?
Under the sacred second amendment, shouldn’t I be able to buy any kind of weapon I want to protect myself from roaming gangs in the coming apocalypse? Or from the evil government? (Especially a government that currently has laws prohibiting me as a private citizen from owning and defending myself with nuclear weapons.) /s
What will stop the Cat Ladies? Or are they unstoppable?
Every man who can afford it should own a tank. Special license needed of course before you can drive it down the street. And of course no blowing up buildings for no reason. Think of the possibilities: tank races! tank wrestling. tank demolition derbies. Think of the millions of new jobs as tank mechanics and tank grease monkeys!
Two Afghan commanders got into a Tank battle over a dancing boy. Surely we can do better than these low IQ perverts.
“Every man who can afford it should own a tank”
Janos,
I tried to buy one once…an old M2 “Stewart”…company decided not to sell….
Yes, any weapon anywhere anytime…but no smoking in a public building.
Any thoughts on how we can stop the massive number of black gun deaths in Chicago Janet?
…Crickets….
Support the Black Lives Matter movement. Blacks killing Blacks is just as odious as whites killing Blacks … because Black lives matter.
I don’t know Jan they look a bit shaky to me….
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-matter-cashes-100-million-liberal-foun/
Janet,
You can, indeed, legally purchase tanks, mortars and rpgs…it is very expensive and difficult, however. You have to be of demonstrable good character, and that “stolen valor” thing might become an issue….
How do anthropologists determine that a particular culture is a “Shit Culture”?
Get Rich and then flaunt it on Facebook….
It’s a bit of a Shit Culture?
Isn’t this just all political football? Fiddling while the swamp burns? Trump thrashed #myturnHRC, and now angry Obama installed bureaucrats & liberal MSM types are gonna stick it to Trump until at least 2020.
This is all about power & control. HRC is a creature of bureaucracy. If she would have won the election, there wouldn’t have been any hiccups in the agendas being progressed, like making the world safe for multi-national corporations through the alphabet soup trade agreements.
The Swamp doesn’t give a shit about Trump grabbing pussy 20 years ago. Bill Clinton was grabbing pussy and soiling dresses in the closets & bathrooms of the Oval office years ago.
Maybe the Mueller investigation will find that Trump did an unethical business deal 10 years ago. Whatever it will be it is going to be used as ammo by the Dems to go for impeachment. I think the bureaucracy will use anything short of assassination to get rid of Trump. Or, maybe not…
The Unique Horror of a Bulletproof Backpack
Sales surge after a mass shooting.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/bulletproof-backpacks-kids-florida-shooting.html
“In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas high-school shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday — the seventh deadly school shooting in the U.S. this year and the third deadliest ever behind the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook massacres — Sarah Pampillonia noticed an ad on Facebook for a product she’d never heard of before: a kids’ backpack that, in addition to carrying books and pencils and snacks, doubles as a shield from bullets. It took a moment for the 33-year-old mom and fifth-grade teacher to process what was she was looking at, how such a thing could even exist. Then she clicked on the link and considered buying one for her 4-year-old son.
“‘I imagine that I would use a superhero like Captain America, who he loves, to explain it,’ she says. ‘I’d leave guns out of our conversation maybe and would just say that he has a magic backpack like a superhero shield, and if he ever needs to hide from the bad guys he can hide behind his bag.’ She pauses. ‘It makes me sick to even think about saying that.’
“As cell-phone videos surfaced on Wednesday and Thursday of students crouched on a classroom floor, the sound of gunshots echoing in the background, parents across the country have found themselves asking what can they do to protect their kids. There are practical, long-term answers of course, including voting for lawmakers who back sensible gun restrictions, which most Americans support to a degree. (A recent Pew poll found that the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans are in favor of preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns, as well as background checks for private and gun-show sales.) But for moms and dads glued to news stories wondering, What if it were my kid texting me good-bye from a classroom, buying a bulletproof backpack provides an immediate point of action, a grab at any sense of control over the insanity we’re living in.”
—
One of the grand topics of JHK’s blog is magical thinking: the delusion that by doing the right things, making the right invocations, or purchasing the right consumer product, you have done something real that makes a difference.
In place of the Tesla, I nominate the child’s bulletproof backpack as the ultimate expression of magical thinking in America. No grownup can possibly believe that such a token gesture as buying one of these for their four-year-old will possibly make the child more safe. Yet so impoverished is our vision, now at the end of the American century, and so closed up and fenced off is even a thought of any possible alternative, that grownups reach for magic in the clear knowledge of its uselessness.
This is pathetic, in both the positive and negative senses of the term. My heart goes out to that mother. How badly her country has failed her.
“One of the grand topics of JHK’s blog is magical thinking: the delusion that by doing the right things, making the right invocations, or purchasing the right consumer product, you have done something real that makes a difference.”
If you think these are the ‘grand topics’ of JHK’s blog then you’ve completely and utterly missed the point. You’ve learned nothing.
I think you need to look again, PeteAtomic. I’m not saying that JHK promotes magical thinking; I’m saying that he diagnoses it as one of the root causes of America’s inability to deal with its problems. If it help, magical thinking also goes by the name wishful thinking.
What was the title of his blog post just over a week ago? Oh yeah, it was Yet Another Year of Magical Thinking.
When resilience.org interviewed JHK, what did they title the interview? Our Years of Magical Thinking: Interview with James Kunstler.
Oh, and you may have noticed he wrote an entire non-fiction book on the subject. I would have thought the title Too Much Magic was a dead giveaway, but whatever.
Magical thinking is one of the root causes of America’s inability to deal with its problems. I agree.
“the delusion that by doing the right things, making the right invocations, or purchasing the right consumer product, you have done something real that makes a difference.”
Are you saying that JHK is promoting this? By the way you write that sentence, it seems that you are. That’s what I have trouble with. I don’t believe that JHK is promoting “the delusion that by doing the right things, making the right invocations, or purchasing the right consumer product, you have done something real that makes a difference.”
make sense?
‘…the delusion etc…’ follows a colon. That indicates that ‘the delusion etc…’ is clarifying ‘magical thinking’, i.e. they are one and the same.
“I don’t believe that JHK is promoting “the delusion that by doing the right things, making the right invocations, or purchasing the right consumer product, you have done something real that makes a difference.”
And neither, clearly, does Elrond.
Makes perfect sense, except the part where I have mistaken JHK as promoting this view. The answer is no, I am not saying that JHK is promoting that idea; I am saying that JHK is criticizing that idea. Your objection is a simple misreading, as best I can tell. Shit happens. *shrug*
For my part, I consider the gun culture to be also a species of magical thinking. Allow me to explain why. I’ll start by defining magic. Magic is when our desires or our intentions become reality, without (and this is crucial) our having to take responsibility for how that happens.
– Harry Potter waves his wand and utters a spell, and something happens as a result. How? Because he’s a wizard, that’s how. There’s no need for further explanation — it’s magic!
– The Secret tells us that we only need to visualize ourselves in the state we want to achieve, and we will achieve it. There’s no need to spell out concrete steps for getting there — it’s magic!
– We’ve burned all the petroleum we can afford to suck out of the ground, yet somehow society can carry on without any changes or anyone missing any trips to Wal-mart. How does that work? Too Much Magic!
And so on. The important thing about magic is that it isn’t necessarily driven by mystical mumbo-jumbo. A belief in magic can be found in people who consider themselves, and to a great extent are, entirely rational. That’s because what’s fundamental to magic isn’t believing in fairies or the like; it’s the lack of responsibility taken for what connects A (our desires or intentions) to B (the outcome). The point of JHK’s book is that our society no longer takes responsibility for how our lifestyle, political, or other expectations are supposed to be realized. “They’ll come up with something” is the universal expectation. That’s magical thinking.
Now, as to the gun culture. Estimates vary as to how many guns there are in the United States, but in terms of households, as few as one-third have any guns in them. What’s more, the ownership is extremely lopsided. Estimates are that more than half of all guns are in the hands of just 3% of Americans — ‘super owners’ — who own an average of 17 guns apiece.
But this small and unrepresentative sample of Americans are very loud, very paranoid, and very fond of their pet theories. They see their hobby of collecting and shooting guns as necessary to the safety and functioning of society. Like any delusion, this false belief is held not only without evidence, but in spite of copious evidence to the contrary. The U.S. is an extreme outlier among developed nations in the number of suicides, homicides and mass shootings committed with guns. The simple equation, more guns equals more deaths, eludes them. Rather, like techno-narcissists who insist that problems caused by technology can only be solved by more technology, gun narcissists insist that problems caused by guns can only ever be solved with more guns. Hence, magical thinking.
OK, thanks Elrond. I don’t wanna mischaracterize somebody else’s arguments, so thanks for the clarification there.
That statistic of 3% of gun owners having 50% of all the firearms is pretty staggering.
Your failure to respond to the role played by violence in movies, TV, video games and the “pop” culture has me wondering Elrond. Surely you have an opinion and you have never been shy about sharing your opinions before. Tell us what you feel about Violence For Profit programming the youth into becoming the angry, violent, unsuccessfully medicated losers that they are. Please.
Indeed, Walter.
Elrond and just about everyone else would benefit from a read of Sissela Bok’s “Mayhem: Violence As Public Entertainment” and Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”
The media created Death cult in this country is terrifying (and fascinating) and evil fuckers from Hollyweird to Wall Street have profited handsomely from it.
Pequiste,
Do not forget, on your reading list “On Killing” by Grossman.
Thank you for that Elysian,
I found this about it.
‘Drawing from interviews, personal accounts, and academic studies, On Killing is an important look at the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.
‘
I’ll speak for everybody here on this. A look at the techniques the military uses would be fascinating.
Thank you for the Sissela Bok reference. I have read ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. In it Postman is clear in describing fundamental differences between video and other forms of entertainment and communications, particularly the difference between it and reading.
Some things should be obvious to us but we are so immersed in our own culture that we don’t see it. A review of Bok’s book put it this way.
“Do we want four-year-olds watching slasher films? Who should decide?”
I’ll say anybody who cares about the long term prosperity of four year olds, that is who. Yet that stupid question at the end cleverly suggests we are mired in false dilemmas concerning this subject. Four year olds are going to incorporate slasher values. What else could happen. Is it a hard question? Why did you have to think about it. Damaged seventeen-year-olds are going to commit mayhem 13 years after they were four is what is going to happen.
I read Postman’s book about three years ago. I have it in another room but I googled it to refresh my memory before I began my pontification here. Wikipaedia has an interesting and artfully biased article about Postman’s book. Big money and time spent some serious time polishing Postman’s point of view there to make him seem a creator of science fiction, and not someone who was actually engineering scientific and moral knowledge for the public good in a book. It is something only someone who read Postman would see.
Hey now, Walter B, I only have so much time (and I really should be doing other things right now). But I’ll address your comment from above, where you say: “Nobody has the balls or brains to take on Hollywood, the music industry of those who program our kids to kill mass quantities in video games.”
First, please re-read my post that you were replying to and point out where I referred to those things? I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘nowhere’, so I’m afraid you’re criticizing a straw man. I really was referring directly and specifically to the fact that the accused Florida shooter received training in the very school where the massacre occurred, and that training was subsidized by the NRA. Hollywood, the music industry and video games are extraneous elements that you somehow read into what I said.
On the subject of video games, elysianfield also mentioned “On Killing” by Dave Grossman. As it happens, I read that book from cover to cover around the time it came out. Grossman noted that when U.S. military studied what causes soldiers to actually pull the trigger, they were surprised to learn how often they just don’t — or how often they deliberately miss. Most people, it seems, don’t really want to kill other human beings. That’s why the military developed new training regimens to overcome this resistance by drilling mindless compliance and instant trigger reflexes. At the end of the book, Grossman claims that video games essentially cause the same kind of training in those who play them. To my knowledge, this has never been established in any scientific way — it’s just a claim by Grossman.
Here’s an article with a basic overview of violent crime in the USA in the past six decades or so:
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/dueling-claims-on-crime-trend/
From around 170 violent crimes per person in the early 1960s, the violent crime rate increased pretty steadily until it maxed out at 758.2 per 100,000 around 1992, then declined again. There’s a similar story for the murder rate specifically. It’s hard to see how video games could be the cause of a trend that began over a decade before even the most primitive Pong game was released. Also, somehow violent crime has decreased over the past 25 years even as video games have become ever more of a cultural force. Nor does Japan, a country awash in video games, have anything comparable to even the greatly reduced level of violent crime in the U.S.A.
The real reasons have to be somewhere else. Perhaps I’ll have more to pontificate about later.
We are both reasonable men and certainly not stupid, so I would say that we are entitled to our own opinions, or better yet, theories. Both of us can quote and reference many a sturdy, more than enough professional testimony, and probably even sufficient statistics to support our theories, but in the end theories they remain. Why anyone would continue to support violence in any form especially when it is perpetrated on children for profit, to me at least is inconceivable. Only those who profit from it have valid reasons though immoral ones, IMHO. Disarm citizens or stop promoting violence and murder to children, which to choose? Why should this question be so hard to answer? Maybe I have finally lived too long. Perhaps it is time to seek out my lost cousin the T Rex……
Nikolas Cruz = Lee Harvey Oswald?
Even the cursory examination of the details of the Florida school shooting reveals many strange details – Cruz wearing a gas mask during the shooting and later identified by clothing, his weird behavior after the shooting as if he was waiting for someone in the shopping mall (his handler?).
But most of all inexplicable behavior by the FBI field office, as if, after receiving a warning call about Cruz preparing himself to become a school shooter, perhaps after consulting some patsy database dropping the case.
It is very plausible that the shooting was done by a professional killer from the squad of the Flying Monkeys to send Trump a message after he few days ago replaced a head of the NSA.
FEBRUARY 14, 2018 : A wrong turn may have led three men to drive onto the campus of the U.S. National Security Agency near Washington on Wednesday, sparking a scare that drew gunfire from guards and sent three to the hospital, FBI officials said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maryland-security-incident/wrong-turn-could-have-sparked-security-scare-at-u-s-spy-agency-fbi-idUSKCN1FY1WK
The head of the NSA is the most crucial position in the US intelligence community – it controls ALL financial transactions in US, and perhaps, the world, and knows where the Monkeys are hiding their stash.
I wonder if special counsel Mueller will have his investigation* continue up until the election in Nov 2018?
You can bet it will and in October there shall come a “surprise” that will shock the lumpen-electorate from their NFL and Holloween somnambulations to vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats in a welcomed return to Two Party gridlock and mutual recriminations as to why nothing ever gets done in Baghdad-on-the-Potomac. Well other than waste taxpayer money and spend it on frivolous military adventures plus taunting the Russians.
soto voce *(U.S. Postal Service inspectors would do a much faster and more efficient investigation than those madcap kops at the F.B.I.)
It’s a bullshit story – you just don’t make such career ending mistakes working for the FBI.
“I wonder if special counsel Mueller will have his investigation* continue up until the election in Nov 2018?” —pequiste
Since Mueller just interviewed Bannon for 20 hours, there is a good chance his work will go into 2019… but not for nefarious political purposes… it’s just that there is a lot of crime among the political class.
We have never had a golden shower loving president who is subject to blackmail, who works in the White House as an agent of Russia, who secretly pays off porn stars and playmates, who doesn’t even pretend to work for our best interests… it’s all about him … all the time. Trump has played more golf in his first year than Obama did in eight years. I remember your constant criticism of Obama for playing golf, but crickets for Trump.
Might I suggest you find another “trump”et to blow and maybe even another tune. You are riding this guy harder than any of Bill Clinton’s girls ever rode him. You keep it up and you might earn an unannounced visit from a couple of guys with suits and sunglasses.
And all posters who pontificate here about introducing of gun control laws to stop the school shootings just exercise in self-gratification.
Was it as good for you as for your typing hand?
From Florida’s Teacher of the Year:
“Until we, as a country, are willing to get serious and talk about mental health issues, lack of available care for the mental health issues, lack of discipline in the home, horrendous lack of parental support when the schools are trying to control horrible behavior at school (oh no! Not MY KID. What did YOU do to cause my kid to react that way?), lack of moral values, and yes, I’ll say it-violent video games that take away all sensitivity to ANY compassion for others’ lives, as well as reality TV that makes it commonplace for people to constantly scream up in each others’ faces and not value any other person but themselves, we will have a gun problem in school. Our kids don’t understand the permanency of death anymore!!!”
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/02/20/floridas-teacher-of-the-year-bluntly-writes-why-school-violence-is-out-of-control/#more-170970
I have to ask: since when have kids ever understood the permanency of death? Seriously, name a time.
There’s a reason why every society since the dawn of history has sent its youngest, not its eldest, when there’s a need to go killing people in foreign lands: they’re the easiest to mold, the most likely to mistake their vigor for invulnerability and their youth for immortality. The permanency of death is something people only learn with time and experience. If they’re fortunate, the experience is not that of seeing their fellow children massacred all around them.
With all due respect to Florida’s Teacher of the Year, this is yet another variety of missing the point. The point is, American has too many guns that are too powerful and are too easily available. It’s long past time for America to change its mind about them — to choose love and mercy over yet more American carnage.
“… to choose love and mercy over yet more American carnage.”
Fine words and sentiments ignored by the lawless and reprobate. Making new rules will not change this by putting more people at risk.
I agree that children have always been children, but now they are remaining childish well into adulthood, by design.
I watched the local news last night which interviewed a woman who saw two men beating up a woman in a mall parking lot in Tulsa. She took a pistol out of her purse and threatened them. They yelled at her that it wasn’t a real gun, so she fired off a round in the air. They ran away and she stayed and helped the victim. Well the police showed up and ended up arresting her for not being licsened for concealed carry and firing a gun in city limits.
I guess she was supposed to let the fookers have their way.
Are you oblivious to the crime that is stopped by the use [ or simply the presence ] of a weapon? This report was a rare one, and NOT because it rarely happens.
As Jesus might have said but didn’t, the lawless and the reprobate you will always have with you. They don’t exist only, or even especially, within the confines of Tulsa, or of the United States of America. You can find people like that everywhere, at all times. Yet people everywhere don’t make a fetish out of fear and promote the idea of society as a cauldron of armed animosities — that’s an American specialty.
Countries very similar to the United States in terms of wealth, social development, level of industrialization — and even, in the case of my home and native land, cultural background — tend to have broadly similar levels of crime and violence. The sole exception is with regard to (a) ownership of guns, and (b) the amount of gun violence committed. In both cases the U.S., and the U.S. alone, is off the chart — a complete outlier.
What the gun culture needs is someone to help talk them down off the ledge, and realize that the reason why it feels blazing hot is because they themselves keep ramping up the temperature. messianicdruid, I tell you this: You, and your countrymen, are much safer than you feel. Please, let go of your fear. I assure you it’ll be fine.
“Let’s start with a number: 262 million. That’s the number of unarmed people the late Prof. R. J. Rummel estimated governments murdered in mass killings he termed “democide” during the 20th century. “This democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century,” he wrote.
Unsurprisingly, the bloodiest body count was run up by totalitarian regimes, though authoritarians were busy stacking up the corpses, too, if in smaller piles. Democracies were also responsible for unjustifiable deaths, especially in subduing resistance in their colonial possessions (think: Belgian Congo) and in indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets during wars (think: Hiroshima), but to a far lesser degree than Communists, Nazis, and overdecorated generalissimos.
Rummel’s 1997 book, Power Kills, stated his case most strongly, but he nicely summarized the argument on his website:
It is true that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and prosperity. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass murder). That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less the violence. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human insecurity and violence. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes we must also add that power kills.
So, opposing accumulation of power by government—being antigovernment—may be inconvenient for some people’s political plans, but it’s also, literally, a life-saver. Liberal democracies seem to be the least murderous type of regime, but there’s no obvious magic cutoff in terms of authority below which governments stop slaughtering people. So keeping any sort of government on a short leash is just good sense.“
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/15/be-antigovernment-and-proud
Your assurances contradict history.
Do you know William E. Binney? He doesn’t trust them either, with good reason:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/02/21/mindblowing-corruption-at-fbi-nsa-whistleblower-reveals/#more-171032
Leftist Laurence Tribe said listen to the kids! They aren’t uptight like adults. So what if they’re brains aren’t mature yet, and they have no experience – the perfect mob. This is going to be a Test: Did we learn nothing from the 60’s? Does the voting age need to be lowered to 16?
Fuck the Kids.
Wow, talk about a heartening sign! Thank you, Janos. It does my heart good to see you huffing and puffing like this and spitting out venom. That means you’re feeling real concern that the protests are getting traction. Ah, my glowing heart.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+11%3A6&version=KJV
There’s no moral authority quite like that of a peaceful child standing up and refusing to be brutalized any longer — and doing so not only without violence of their own, but in the face of renewed threats. Like standing up against an abusive parent at long last, America’s young people are taking in their own hands what the gun nuts would deny them.
Weaponizing the children echos prophecy.
“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”
“A theatrical background easily explains these students’ comfort on camera, composure, and ability to deliver the lines they are given while framing them with emotional call-to-action rhetorical devices. We were informed that students who were pro-First Amendment and supported the president were systematically blocked from any interviews or media appearances.”
“These poor children have been completely brainwashed into thinking that taking away guns will keep them safe as if people can’t get guns if they want guns. You take away the guns completely (which you never will do) and you get acid attacks, van attacks, knife attacks, machete attacks, boiling water attacks, arson, rape, bombings, you get more diversity of action but the same heinous hostility.”
http://thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/behind-various-anti-gun-movements-popping-parkland/
And Canada has too many baby seals, but you are working on that one aren’t you? Like I say, who the fuck am I to comment on what the people or the governments of another country choose to do? If I really cared I would move there wouldn’t I? Just flapping your gums for exercise? Why not try flapping about the deaths from starvation and the rape and murder in Africa? Far more die every day there and it seems that body counts are important aren’t they? Oh that’s right, they are black so nobody cares about blacks dying or killing one another, it is only when their demise is at the hands of white people that the crowd boos. Damn this world is seriously fucked up. Hey, how about a trip to Mars!
Elrond, I am sorry to report that kids understand the permanence of death in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, pretty much all of the middle East and pretty much all of Africa and much of Asia and even South and Central America. If the children in America and Canada do not understand it that is an aberration and I am not so sure that it is a good thing that they do not know of the one thing that is guaranteed for every human life. They are certainly not going to learn anything from Call of Duty, are they?
Change the subject a sec
I do not understand the new idea about AI. Richard Branson put a statement out this AM that the assimilation of AI to its fruition will make cash outlays to the ex-workers mandatory. My question is where is the wealth coming from to fund all these necessary outlays? In other words, who is going to pay for all of this? If the government just taxes the manufacturers more to pay for the outlays, what is the point of doing AI in the first place? I am scratching my head over the apparent disconnect by our “intelligent” elite.
If you take as a starting point that “for profit” capitalism has exhausted itself and some kind of central planning/distribution will have to take its place as more resource efficient in the new circumstances, your problem will be automatically solved.
Much more harder problem is how to put “extra” workers to good use?
I suspect that we will be repurposed as fertilizer or maybe spare parts for Dick Cheney’s future needs. What’s your thought?
Sorry if I made you think that for a second. I meant some creative productive work – not sure what that might be.
Science, art, crafts.
No problem, I tend to go there anyway, I do not really trust Big Business or Big Government. Another issue is that so many of the jobs that are being taken away by automation have been historically occupied by those that are “somewhat less talented”, less motivated, and less willing to show up on a consistent basis, at least as far as my New Jersey experience tells me. I cannot see what kind of “other” work can be found for them, though it certainly may become necessary to find something, may it not?
You were more than likely also thinking Soylent Green, Red, Orange, and everyone’s soon-to-be-favourite flavour: Tutti Frutti.
As an extra special treat one may drizzle on their Soylent some Russian dressing.
Tasty.
His statement…..
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/10/richard-branson-ai-wealth-should-be-used-for-universal-basic-income.html
….appears to be saying that when companies replace humans with robots, the companies should share the profits gained from automating with the disposed of workers (a penny on the dollar perhaps). Sounds like some sort of guilt payment or a line of horseshit aimed at making those who are replaced feel somehow like getting canned will be something to look forward to. Personally I cannot see how the manufacturing costs and the maintenance and repair cost of Robbie the Robot can undercut a minimum wage worker. But if the government can be tapped for grant and start up capital, well there you go.
Read “Rise Of The Robots” by Martin Ford. It’s very informative & somewhat like JHK’s “The Long Emergency”.
Walter,
Raise the minimum wage to $15/hr, which would necessitate increases in wages all the way down the line, and watch how quickly fast food restaurants, for example, would start eliminating jobs. And those without the capital to do so will go under.
The Luddites were right.
Sparta’s battle against the International Money Power of their time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwN7YmxEvbE&feature=youtu.be
Later the Confedaracy fought them, but again, was compromised by having to do business with them. As ever, they fund both and grow ever stronger. And of course the greatest fight of all, the Man Against Time, Adolf Hitler and the economic miracle he performed after kicking the parasites out.
You shall not crucify humanity upon a cross of Gold. The Founding Fathers were not wise in this way – or were deeply compromised themselves.
Janos,
But I doubt if our Founding Fathers were riddled with Christian Zionists, as the Church and the government are today.
No, of course not: the Puritans at least thought that THEY were Israel. They weren’t fan boys. But the Money Power was already here. It’s not exclusively Jewish after all, they may well be the biggest players now, even if not the first historically. Jefferson vs Hamilton. A sane, agrarian Civilization of White Men vs the excitement and wealth of Trade, your own people be damned. Sparta vs Athens.
The voting age should be lowered so the children who are subject to being killed have the opportunity to vote for or against gun control legislation. My suspicion is that most youth are capable of understanding the law. They know that they are at risk. They should be able to vote based on a politician’s position on firearms. According to Piaget’s child development research on the abilty to reason, the age could be lowered to 12. Then the politicians would have to listen to the children. And the children would be able to defend themselves politically … before being assassinated.
Janet, with all respect…
Digitus Impudicus.
How silly. Since even a newborn infant could be killed by a stray bullet while coming home from the hospital, I guess babies should be registered to vote fresh out of the womb.
Sperm rights!
“My suspicion is that most youth are capable of understanding the law.”
But, the question is, Do they understand history?
According to investigative reporter Mike Cernovich, former FBI director Andrew McCabe altered FBI investigator Peter Strzok’s notes taken during his interview with General Michael Flynn, to make it look like Flynn had lied. This is why Robert Mueller indicted him. Then McCabe illegally destroyed the evidence of what he had done, which is why Peter Strzok’s system didn’t back up. This comes after Byron York reported that former FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Flynn did not lie under oath. Then Flynn was indicted by the Mueller witch hunt months later for lying. What changed? According to Cernovich, Andrew McCabe illegally altered Strzok’s 302 reports — then criminally destroyed the evidence. FBI agents take notes during an interview – these summaries are put on a form numbered FD-302. The agent who interviewed Flynn did not think Flynn lied. But McCabe altered the agent’s form 302, fabricating what Flynn had said, to secure a guilty plea for Robert Mueller. Now the FBI is in deep trouble, with a tough-as-nails Judge demanding they produce evidence to clear McCabe of this criminal act – or else he will be going down. Andrew McCabe is planning to retire in March, while pocketing a $1.8 million pension. But it’s “full on freak-out mode” in the FBI right now, with many pundits stating that McCabe’s exposed misstep is the smoking gun that will bring the whole Deep State and their Russian collusion hoax crashing to the ground. This is an open and shut case of obstruction of justice by an FBI Director who thought he could do whatever he wanted, and answer to no one.
— https://youtu.be/83sp1ZU4phU
I am afraid the struggle went beyond the regular Justice system, or even US Constitution.
As I said before, all gentlemen’s agreements between the leaders of various US clans (or lodges, if you prefer) are broken. Nobody play by the rules anymore.
Just turn CNN on for 30 minutes, and everything becomes crystal clear.
I refuse. I have such animosity towards the commie media, I refuse to give them any clicks, views, or credibility. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. I’m usually 5yrs ahead of the curve, so soon enough they will truly disappear.
Interview with former federal prosecutor, Joe diGenova, connecting the dots on former Obama administration DOJ and FBI officials who turned a farce investigation to exonerate commie Killary into a tragic opera that will take down their commie mafia.
— https://youtu.be/82_kdySxB3U
“This is an open and shut case of obstruction of justice by an FBI Director who thought he could do whatever he wanted, and answer to no one.” – akmofo
I’d say nothing is open and shut until do-nothing Jeff Sessions gets off his ass and starts indicting people. Sessions, for god’s sake, seems more intent on cracking down on states that have thumbed their noses at federal law, and legalized weed. I still wonder, and have not received any answers (though I welcome them here), if we’d have even had to look at Mueller’s ugly mug if milquetoast Sessions had not recused himself from this Russia nonsense in the first place.
Actually, we should kiss Sessions and Mueller because thanks to them the CIA DOS DOJ FBI conspiracy is being exposed for what it is. The information regards their criminality and treason is now out. These commies are going down!
Michael Cernovich (born November 17, 1977) is an American alt-right social media personality, writer, and conspiracy theorist. Just another conspiracy theory. Nothing to see here, folks.
I suggest you watch the interview with former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova I posted above.
Actually Cernovich is out of favor with the alt-Right. They consider him ‘alt-Light.’ He’s not one of them.
These Activists Are Registering Voters At Black Panther Showings
https://io9.gizmodo.com/these-activists-are-registering-voters-at-black-panther-1823116870
“Rock the vote? Wakanda the vote.
“That’s the idea behind, well, #wakandathevote, a program from the Electoral Justice Project, an arm of the Movement for Black Lives organization that aims to fight for the rights of black Americans. Now, the EJP, led by Kayla Reed, Jessica Byrd, and Rukia Lumumba, is using the opportunity presented by Black Panther to register black voters.
“‘This weekend we wanted to meet our people in Wakanda,’ Byrd and Reed bold Blavity.com. ‘We know that for some it’s a superhero movie, but we know that the world we deserve is still waiting to be built — and we want to build it! This upcoming spring and November 2018 midterm elections are an important step in building that new world, and we want to take every opportunity to engage our communities in the conversation of electoral justice.’ …
“The program also has elements for those who haven’t gotten a chance to get out to see the film: if you text 91990 with the word Wakanda, the EJP will help you register to vote.”
Elrond, how about you stop shoving the red rug into the bull’s nose for a while?
Trump urges ban on ‘bump stocks,’ other gun modifiers
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/20/trump-urges-ban-on-bump-stocks-other-gun-modifiers.html
“President Trump on Tuesday directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to craft new regulations to ban firearm modifiers including the ‘bump stock’ used in the Las Vegas massacre, amid bipartisan calls to strengthen gun laws in the wake of recent shooting rampages.
During an event at the White House, the president announced he signed a memo ordering the regulations on ‘bump stocks’ and told Sessions he wants new federal guidelines finalized ‘very soon.’
The memo, released by the White House on Tuesday, directs the DOJ to propose a rule ‘banning all devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns.’
“Trump wrote in the memo, ‘Although the Obama administration repeatedly concluded that particular bump stock type devices were lawful to purchase and possess, I sought further clarification of the law restricting fully automatic machineguns.’
“A spokesman for the DOJ said it is acting ‘quickly’ on the president’s order.”
—
An interesting data point. Will 17 high school students add up to (a) more action, (b) less action, or (c) the same amount of action on America’s gun problem as 500 country music fans? Taking all bets!
So far, the Florida legislature says there will be no change in the states gun laws.
Elrond, thank you for your perspective. It is intelligent, and a refreshing counter to the Russia bot’s incessant mostly irrelevant postings.
“the world we deserve is still waiting to be built”
“Elrond,
Permit me a moment of quiet satisfaction…we agree on the Wakanda issue…next year in Wakanada!
Is it merely an unfounded rumor that Wakanda has been found…in the heart of Canada? Wacanada is real…spread the good news….
#Wacanada
#Never Again
#Wakanda
#Me Too
#BLM
… You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
I consider the English aristocracy to be a real elite because the English, unlike Americans and Russian (Soviet) times of perestroika and glasnost, understand that the word “elite” has a double meaning and the elite by position and wealth should also be an elite by personal qualities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aF9AJm0RFc
Walking on Arbat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rHXzkFqs9w
Cheers!
One of the Orchestrators of the spontaneous Student’s Movement
https://truepundit.com/concerned-mom-creator-national-school-walkout-protest-gun-control-top-cnn-news-producer-almost-20-years/
Last week these kids were eating laundry detergent tabs in an attempt to catch a buzz.
this week, suddenly, they are the font of all wisdom.
It must be the years of practical experience combined with the superior 11th grade education.
brh
You’re right, BackRowHeckler.
The latest homicidal demonstration that their society values gun hobbyists more than their lives and safety couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it.
What was I thinking?
LOL!
You’re right, BackRowHeckler.
The latest homicidal demonstration that their society values gun hobbyists more than their lives and safety couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it.
What was I thinking?
Still reading Western Rifle Shooters I see. I was going to steal that one from Bracken (or did he get it from someone?) but you beat me to it.
Mueller got another confession from one of the Trump-Russia collusion team criminals. Another day another guilty plea …. and this time by a Trump-Russia collusion lawyer. Collusion is not a hoax. When a lawyer pleads guilty that equals disbarment.
—————————
Your kids are more important than your guns.
#Ban Assault
#Ban Assault Weapons
How about banning Cat Ladies? Would that be a problem for you?
brh, cat ladies do not kill tens of thousands of people every year; guns do. Cat ladies take care of their kids and their cats. Your kids are more important than your guns.
#Ban Assault Weapons
Nothing will be banned.
This will blow over like everything else.
George Clooney is involved now. Apparently he want guns banned except the ones carried by his private security detail that shadows him everywhere he goes.
brh
Little Jane Cat Ladies have no kids. They have cats, lots of ’em. That’s the whole point of being a Cat Lady.
brh
we kill babies don’t we?
Especially the dark-hued variety.
Hey CFNers check out the recent articles on the condition (last day or two) of Denver, LA and San Francisco. It ain’t pretty. Tens of thousands of homeless, many of them illegals, living in the streets seeking ‘Sanctuary City’ protection, defecating on sidewalks in public view, big steaming piles of it everywhere, streams of piss flowing in alleys, a real lefty paradise, a multi cult Dem utopia, coming soon to a city near you.
And Denver for one has the added delight of the hordes of human debris being stoned, legally, as an added bonus. Sounds charming, doesn’t it?
Remember the film ‘Vertigo’ or the TV show ‘The Streets of San Francisco’, how crisp and clean everything looked in that once beautiful city c1962, and how well dressed and dignified its citizens appeared to be?)
brh
Indeed. The City of the Bay was very beautiful even when I saw it decades later. Now Whites are beginning to flee the horror – the horror they voted for. Most of them will lie to themselves and say they’re seeking “better air”, “better schools”, “lower taxes”, etc, but in fact they are fleeing the invasion.
Michael Savage, who lives in and broadcasts from SF, has also been talking about it on his show. He said he was recently walking thru the city, and he couldn’t go a block without seeing used needles, shit, and urine everywhere. The threat of plague hangs over many American cities thanks to the open borders idiots.
Maybe that’s why swings are appearing all over San Fran. If you are a homeless person, you can jump on a swing and not get stuck by a hypodermic needle.
http://abc7news.com/society/swingbombsf-delights-sf-with-deluge-of-mysterious-swings/3121683/
Oh ya, i forget to mention the filthy diseases being spread across these cities by the conditions I described above. The price we pay I suppose for cultural enrichment.
brh
How do anthropologists determine that a particular culture is a “Shit Culture”?
Get Rich and then flaunt it on Facebook?
It’s a bit of a Shit Culture?
Do you remember the Vietnamese refugee in the US in the 1980’s (David Vang?) who was flogging his Get-Rich-Quick-Scheme of flipping real estate? His TV commercials showed this little smiling Vietnamese bloke on a big yacht surrounded by blonde white women with big tits in fluorescent pink bikinis.
It was an interesting culture when it valued legitimate newspaper investigative journalism and freedom of the press and inquiry. Then, the newspapers stopped even hiring reporters to even try to find out what was really going on, and then it all turned to Shit. Young people used to be curious and read books. Then they just wanted to get rich. The people valued “Fake News” because it was more salacious and exciting than Reality. Society goes Nuts….
In San Francisco and Denver the streets littered with bloody IV needles, used needles everywhere, contaminated with hepititis A & B, and AIDS.
I would ask “What about the children?” but are there any children in San Francisco? Would you raise a kid in San Francisco?
The ghosts of Ken Rexroth, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Brett Harte, and Dashiell Hammett haunt the streets of San Francisco, seeking solace.
brh
The Ham Sandwich
The development of science, while it remained a science, was subject to surprising laws when one could think that all basic laws of nature could be discovered with the help of mathematics, and the experiment turned out to be only a hint for the theorist, but in principle was not needed.
It all began with Faraday, who discovered the magnetic field and its connection with the electric field, and this was the first experiment that led to the creation of the Special Theory of Relativity. From this discovery Maxwell derived his equations, solving which, the mankind in his face (I draw your attention to this formulation) found that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference, that is, that the observer moving towards the light ray, measuring the speed of this ray, will find that it is equal to the speed that he will detect by measuring while catching up with this ray.
This contradicts the idea of all encompassing environment ether, the vibrations of which are electromagnetic waves. Michelson’s experiment in measuring the speed of light only confirmed what mankind already knew from Maxwell’s equations, and the aforementioned logical contradiction was overcome by Lorentz and Poincare, saying that the ether exists and most importantly there exists absolute time, (that is, each element of the ether has its ideal clock of unknown construction , which are the same for all elements of the ether), but we use the rulers that represent the crystal lattice of atoms, and real clocks, in which time intervals are measured by the oscillations of the pendulum.
Meanwhile, each element of the ether is an ideal observer, which fixes the “arrival” of a particle to it, can measure all fields, and can also communicate with the elements of the ether, which are its immediate neighbors.
And we, the sinners, using a ruler and real clocks to measure the speed of light, in contrast to the ideal observer, we find the constancy of the speed of light in all frames of reference, since the moving ruler changes its length, because the distances between atoms in the crystal lattice of the ruler depend on the speed of light, changing in a moving frame of reference.
Something similar happens to the mass of the pendulum in real, not ideal watches, and Lorentz and Poincare, having conducted a series of thought experiments have shown that the result of these considerations about the interaction of the real with the ideal (ala Plato cave) is a change in the “real” time intervals measured by real clocks and the “real” distances measured by the real ruler, compared to what is measured by the collective of ideal observers sitting in each element of the ether.
Thus, the Lorentz formula is the mathematical expression of those corrections that must be made to the “ideal” length, measured by the collective of etheric observers, in order to theoretically find the “real” length measured by the real observer with real clocks – that is, you and me, the sinners.
And Einstein slashed with an Occam’s razor through the ether, first saying that the team of observers sitting in the elements of the ether is the ether itself, and then asked, “And why are we worse?”
As a result, the ether has disappeared and the physical meaning of Lorentz’s formulas has changed, having ceased to be corrections to the ideal length measured by the ether, in calculating the length of the “real”, and becoming the formula for changing the length in the moving frame.
The most important thing in the theory of Einstein’s relativity is the relativity of the concept “simultaneously” when observing different events at different points, since the arrival of the corresponding photons in our eye is actually a sweet process of observing certain events. And since the concept of simultaneity is the basis of the idea of absolute time, then along with it absolute time has disappeared and a “relative” space-time appeared whose properties changed depending on the speed of the “real observer”.
That’s how the dynamic changes in the rulers and watches described by the theory of Lorentz and Poincare turned into an object of kinematics, when Einstein said that this whole Abracadabra is not a consequence of the change in the ruler and the clock, but changes in the properties of space and time itself.
The main conclusion from this reasoning is that the speed of light calculated with the help of Maxwell’s equations turns out to be not only the speed of propagation of electromagnetic oscillations, but the universal speed of propagation of any changes in the “empty” space-time that became empty after Einstein cut out the ether with Occam’s razor, or rather a team of observers sitting in the elements of the ether.
Looking ahead, I want to say that this is the main drawback and, correspondingly, the main advantage of the theory of relativity, since time, in contrast to space, is a moral category and consequently an absolute basis by which a person realizes his sinfulness as a result of observing the consequences of his sin.
And if the consequences of sin come before the sin itself, then it is predestination, and therefore there is no free will and, accordingly, there is no sin as well. It must be said that the clearly formulated necessity to overcome this contradiction for natural scientific reasons is the main achievement of the General Theory of Relativity, and the basis of its, I would say, Orthodoxy.
Finc, that might be true if you stay within a single universe, but as it turns out, everything we experience here including chemistry and molecular structure is only a 3D projection of a reality which has at least 4 dimensions, and maybe more. Information transmits in and out of this (apparent) universe sideways too, so the above arguments may not apply.
I recommend to all (who are nerd enough to take it!) the revolutionary essay, “Chemistry by Number Theory” by Boeuyens and Comba. It will rock your world!
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258769036_Chemistry_by_Number_Theory
Also read this one, where the Quantum Computer Gurus at D-Wave admit that their quantum chips must access information from more than one universe in order to function;
Anthony A. Has the age of quantum computing arrived? The Guardian 2016 May 22 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/22/age-of-quantum-computing-d-wave
Fascinating stuff, with gigantic implications…
Finc, that might be true if you stay within a single universe, but as it turns out, everything we experience here including chemistry and molecular structure is only a 3D projection of a reality which has at least 4 dimensions, and maybe more. Information transmits in and out of this (apparent) universe sideways too, so the above arguments may not apply.
I recommend to all (who are nerd enough to take it!) the revolutionary essay, “Chemistry by Number Theory” by Boeuyens and Comba. It will rock your world!
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258769036_Chemistry_by_Number_Theory
Also read this one, where the Quantum Computer Gurus at D-Wave admit that their quantum chips must access information from more than one universe in order to function;
Anthony A. Has the age of quantum computing arrived? The Guardian 2016 May 22 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/22/age-of-quantum-computing-d-wave
Fascinating stuff, with gigantic implications…
Russia interfered in our election using trolls and web bots! Oh my God, the horror, the horror! BTW, who s really a surprised?The good ole USA has been interfering in elections whenever the local ruling families and their oligarchal corporate business parters from the America feel threatened by the poor, native, working classes looking for a fair deal. In comes Western intelligence operatives with wads of dollar bills to either foment a revolution and the subsequent overthrow of a democratically elected nationalist or to pay for death squads to maintain the status quo! Let’s see, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Vietnam come to mind. We are the true shithole country that exports violence, terror and mayhem all over the world with our proxy armies and arms. Another 150 billion dollar increase in the defense budget when we don’t even have a real enemy. My nephew works for a Russian-owned steel company in Colorado so I don’t consider Russia an enemy.
BTW, Hillary lost because she had no message and Trump did. She couldn’t even defend NAFTA in the debates.
BTW This Russian steel company pays union wages and benefits. Sure can’t say that about most American-owned companies!
Speaking of interfering in elections, I recall reading somewhere that the US C…IA pulled Ngo Dinh Diem out of his day job mopping floors at Maryknoll Seminary in New Jersey to make him dictator of South Vietnam. According to election results he won 98% of the vote.
Nobody questioned how Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic, managed to win 98% of the vote in a Buddhist country.
Interesting! Diem was overthrown and murdered with the USA’s blessing three weeks before JFK was assassinated. The CIA was not happy with Diem’s inability to quell the Buddhists’ uprisings nor were they happy with JFK in America. Things have never been the same since. The military/industrial/ intelligence complex that serves the oligarchy just gets larger and more heinous.
In particular, from Special Relativity Theory it follows that gravitational interactions must also be propagated at the speed of light and this leads to finding an analogue of the Maxwell equation for the gravitational field, since gravitational changes propagate instantaneously in Newton’s gravitation theory, which contradicts the SRT.
So the race between Hilbert and Einstein began for the creation of such theory that ended some hundred years ago, when Einstein, on January 25, 1905, made a report in the Prussian Academy of Sciences, presenting his equations of the “gravitational field”, which in fact denied its existence, not a field, but a change in the geometric properties of space-time.
And to any person who understands the meaning of these equations, at first glance at them it becomes clear that the left side of these equations represents the drain of a certain flow, something like a hole in a bath tab into which water flows, and the right part says that the size of this hole is proportional to the “ordinary” matter.
This makes us to remember the Ether, since it is natural to assume that it is the Ether that escapes into the hole, the presence of which was undetectable within the framework of the special theory of relativity, or rather became its essence in full accordance with the principle of Ockham entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
But the need for Ether became undeniable and this became the essence of the “Unified Field Theory”, which Einstein was developing in Princeton, but soon Niels Bohr was flown in a bomb compartment of the British bomber, the pilots of which were ordered to throw him out without a parachute, if the German fighters attempted to force this bomber to land on the territory controlled by the Nazis.
Impressed by this flight, Bohr told Einstein that Heisenberg was helping Hitler create an atomic bomb and this made such an impression on the GTR founder that he lost interest in the Unified Field Theory and wrote two letters – one to Roosevelt and one to Stalin – that resulted in the US and USSR starting to work on atomic bomb.
That’s how the Unified Field Theory was NOT created. And maybe it could not have been created at that time – just recently Grigory Perelman conducted a complete classification of the features of Richie’s flows that describe the same stream of Ether that Einstein wanted to describe in his Unified Field Theory.
This is all the more important since GTR itself is incomplete, in connection with the fact that it is absolutely unclear what should actually be written in the right part, what is “ordinary matter”, but it acquired a certain completeness, when the Einstein’s equation were solved by the great Russian scientist and rumored illegitimate son of Nicholas II Alexander Friedman.
From these solutions it follows that our Universe is a bubble that was first inflated by a Primary impulse or if you prefer the Primary energy, and began to expand gradually converting this Primary energy into various forms of “regular” matter and space-time, and in the process from this bubble the ether flows, flows and carries with it the energy of the Primary impulse until it ends and along with it our Universe ceases to exist.
Infinite dimension Hilbert space.
In mathematics irrational answers retain their value.
Just sayin.
Judeo-Christian-Islam (Abrahamic) concept of creatio ex nihilo.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/creatio-ex-nihilo
Just sayin.
And the pagans say It created the Universe out of Itself, like a spider, its web. At this high level, are these two theories really so different? I mean where does the Judeo-Christian God get the “stuff” with which he creates? Out of Himself of course.
God is both the material and efficient First Cause. The Abrahamic religions focus on the latter. Some Pagans on the former, but not always to the exclusion of the latter.
I mean where does the Judeo-Christian God get the “stuff” with which he creates? Out of Himself of course.
**************
No,
the question is,
even if he produces the silk,
what is the spider attaching his web to?
The Kabbalists have a very interesting idea, in line with some ideas in physics. In order for God to create, he had to first withdraw his Presence. In other words, time and space are His Absence. Then he could fill the void with stuff, but it is all very much less than HE. This is the “thinness” that so tormented William James and others under other ideas and feelings.
But to be clear, the creation is “good” with a small g. As the Bible, Koran, Plato, etc say: a reflection thru a glass darkly of Him and His blessed realm. Thus early gardens are an imitation of the Garden on high.
see Michelson-Morley experiment.
Houston, we got a problem with that ether thing.
See also Special Theory of Relativity.
I think Ive stumbled onto the holy grail of something very, very white?
but I need confirmation from white people, so I will leave this here:
http://theemptysubject.com/lamentations-biblical-variety/
Lamenting about poor conditions provides motivation to anyone regardless of personal characteristics unless it entails blame or resignation.
The customers will soon be in the same boat, so I have no desire to emulate them.
Thwack,
You assume he is white because he is skilled and competent at his job? You’ve never heard of the black Irish? #NextyearWacanada!
Smoked potatoes?
All the whining and angst makes me suspect he is white.
What a waste of white skin.
So, what is the “holy grail” that you were so excited about?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EF5Vit8PWEM
What white people talk about when there are no non white people around.
That Radio Head song called “Creep” is another example of the holy grail of something very, very white.
You’re right, Wack. It’s a weird, unhealthy song. You’re not seeing us at our best. As Races go bad, they go bad in different ways. Blacks get even more violent and unreasonable. Japanese kill themselves. Crazy Japs typically don’t hurt each other people, they just set their tatami mats on fire while sitting on them. Whites get weird in the above way. And in terms of violence against self and other: are in between the East Asians and the Blacks. More suicide than one and less violence against others than the other.
In other words, because Whites aren’t Perfect, they are ALL hypocrites – and therefore utter scum, even lower than the Blacks who have (supposedly!) no such high falutin ideals, content to eat grits, fuck and find a warm place to go the bathroom.
This is just a convoluted attack by Thwack, attempting to assuage his racial inferiority complex. Other Black just focus on Black athletic ability or sexual prowess. Thwack does plenty of the latter, but even he realizes it is not enough. There is still the reality of White Civilization and the unreality of Wakanda or any such thing.
White Civilization and the unreality of Wakanda
**************
one of these doesn’t know which bathroom to use.
Just sayin
Funny, that was the American mainstream media bragging, after the fact, about our own meddling in another nation’s election. — JHK
The good ole USA has been interfering in elections whenever the local ruling families and their oligarchal corporate business parters from the America feel threatened by the poor, native, working classes looking for a fair deal. == BuckP
Of course, it is all true and America did interfere in other’s Nation’s elections, but unfortunately, it does not matter under the current political discourse.
We continue to inch toward a devastating nuclear conflict, pushed by Liberal Media, but not only – the conservative media adds to this effort as well.
Sometimes I wonder if the highly compensated media personalities realize what exactly they are doing, or they are being used blindly and they do not care about the immediate fate of their own families as long as fat checks keep coming here and now.
For example, the Media demands of President Trump to “punish” Russia harshly for meddling with the American democracy. They do not demand any military actions – that would be an obvious non-starter.
By “punishment” they mean “Harsh Economic Sanctions”, or to speak frankly a semi-military blockade of the Russian Federation, probably not unlike the blockade the Freedom Island – Cuba – had to go through the last 40 years.
What is not being said is that they expect the imposed harsh economic conditions to lead to internal popular revolt and regime change in the Russian Federation, not unlike the situation in Venezuela or Iran.
And the latest Russian military doctrine allows a preventive use of nuclear weapons against any enemy if the very existence of the State is in jeopardy. It doesn’t say that the military actions need to be threatened or to be going already.
Any “mortal threat” to the Russian State may result in the invocation of this concept, including economic blockade (for instance, turning off the SWIFT system for the Russian banks and like-measures).
Foreign Ministry acknowledged the death of Russian citizens “during a recent clash” in Syria
The Foreign Ministry acknowledged that during a recent military clash in Syria, citizens of Russia and CIS countries were killed, but the department stressed that it was not military personnel.
The Foreign Ministry stressed that “there are Russian citizens in Syria who went there on their own will and with different purposes,” and therefore “it is not up to the Foreign Ministry to assess the legality and legality of such decisions.”
At the same time, the department noted that “during the recent military clash, in which the servicemen of the Russian Federation did not participate in any way and the technical means were not used, there are dead citizens of Russia and the CIS countries, as already mentioned, there are also the wounded.” According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “there are several dozens.”
https://vz.ru/news/2018/2/20/909224.html
Of course, they can’t say that it was the same company that “did not participate in any way” in the liberation of Crimea.
“An interesting data point. Will 17 high school students add up to (a) more action, (b) less action, or (c) the same amount of action on America’s gun problem as 500 country music fans? Taking all bets!”
Ok, you want to talk numbers:
“But when are we going to stop with the bull**** about “assault weapons” when (1) the most-common, by far, violent act committed by mentally ill people is suicide, (2) suicides are more than half of all violent deaths that involve firearms, (3) nearly all suicides and nearly all homicides (10:1 ratio for the latter) are committed with handguns, not assault (or any other form of) rifle or shotgun — indeed, you’re about 3x more likely to be killed by someone with a knife than a rifle of any sort and (4) among those who are under the age of 25 these drugs not only do not work they make both violent criminal behavior AND suicide more likely by a factor of anywhere from two to five times over those with similar afflictions who take sugar pills — that is, nothing.
The above is not based on my opinion it is based on multiple scientific, medical studies never mind the false (and, it appears, intentionally-so) claims made by one of the drugmakers in question — and that firm was criminally charged for off-label marketing of said drug.
Yes, 17 people dead in Florida sucks. How badly does it suck that 22,000 people kill themselves every year, many times more than 17, and of those who are under 25 at the time how many of them were taking either currently or recently a class of drug we know not only doesn’t work it makes suicidal ideation anywhere from 2 to 5 times more likely?“
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233015
I want to make sure I understand you correctly, so I’ll take you point by point:
(1) The most common violent act committed by mentally ill people is suicide. My response: Whether it’s suicide, homicide, or something behind door #3 is not the issue. All else being equal, guns abet all forms of violence, whether directed at oneself or others, and that’s a problem. This is reflected in the data, which show that gun-related deaths (suicide and homicide both) in the USA far outstrip those in other developed countries. (Source.)
(2) Suicides are more than half of all violent deaths that involve firearms. Your point being? If you care about human lives, every life saved counts for something. So does every one ended, by whatever means. I don’t get why you bring suicide into the discussion at all, really, since both the Las Vegas massacre and last week’s school shooting in Florida were most definitely the other kind of gun crime. It’s simply a red herring.
(3) Nearly all suicides and nearly all homicides are committed with handguns, not assault weapons. So you’re trying to defend civilian ownership of assault weapons, because the Trump administration is responding to the Las Vegas massacre by banning bump stocks (which allow semi-auto weapons to be used as if they were full-auto).
Frankly, you’re wrong. Assault weapons are weapons of war. Flooding civilian society with them increases the likelihood of them being used for whatever purpose — whether it’s target shooting, suicide, homicide, or stirring soup for all I care. But weapons of war they remain, and only a fool would expect them not to be put to that use. A child could see that. Only someone very dedicated to self-deception (and the gun culture encourages this in spades) could fail to do so.
You know Eldrond, I rode the bonebox in the USA outside of Boston MA for 34 years. Mass Has some of the toughest gun laws in the USA.These laws don’t work! Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, Hartford.,New Haven Bridgeport,Lynn, Lowell, Albany,
I want to make sure I understand you correctly, so I’ll take you point by point:
(1) The most common violent act committed by mentally ill people is suicide. My response: Whether it’s suicide, homicide, or something behind door #3 is not the issue. All else being equal, guns abet all forms of violence, whether directed at oneself or others, and that’s a problem. This is reflected in the data, which show that gun-related deaths (suicide and homicide both) in the USA far outstrip those in other developed countries. (Source.)
(2) Suicides are more than half of all violent deaths that involve firearms. Your point being? If you care about human lives, every life saved counts for something. So does every one ended, by whatever means. I don’t get why you bring suicide into the discussion at all, really, since both the Las Vegas massacre and last week’s school shooting in Florida were most definitely the other kind of gun crime. It’s simply a red herring.
(3) Nearly all suicides and nearly all homicides are committed with handguns, not assault weapons. So you’re trying to defend civilian ownership of assault weapons, because the Trump administration is responding to the Las Vegas massacre by banning bump stocks (which allow semi-auto weapons to be used as if they were full-auto).
Frankly, you’re full of shit. Assault weapons are weapons of war. Flooding civilian society with them increases the likelihood of them being used for whatever purpose — whether it’s target shooting, suicide, homicide, or stirring soup for all I care. But weapons of war they remain, and only a fool would expect them not to be put to that use. A child could see that. Only someone very dedicated to self-deception (and the gun culture encourages this in spades) could fail to do so.
Yeah, Life is War as the Buddha said and the Burmese Buddhists have every right to drive the Muslims into the sea – in fact, it is their duty. And We don’t trust our Government like you guys do. Our Founders told us not to. We’re a different Civilization.
“Frankly, you’re full of shit. Assault weapons are weapons of war.”
Are you admitting that “assault weapons” are only the first step?
Druid,
In WWI, the state of the art “Weapon of War” was the 1903 Springfield…and, of course, it’s doppleganger the 1898 Mauser.
“…you don’t need a weapon that will kill at 600 yards to kill
Bambi….”
Alexis de Tocqueville and the American Heresy
Hillary Clinton’s answer to the main slogan of the Donald Trump’s campaign “Let’s make America Great Again” sounded during the second televised debate like this:
“In the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump does not get: that America is great because America is good”.
At first glance, this phrase is castrated quote from Alexis de Tocqueville “America is great because it is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
The problem is that Alexis de Tocqueville never said that phrase, but it constantly pops up in the speeches of American politicians in this context, as a similar phrase is a well-known ritual password of one of the esoteric sect, a member of whom was Alexis de Tocqueville and Hillary Clinton and both George Bushes and the great Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, who wrote about it in War and Peace in connection with the problem of interaction of Greatness and Goodness on the example of Napoleon:
– Question: “We are great because we are good?”
– Answer: “We are good because we are great!”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/hillary-clinton-and-the-fake-tocqueville-quotation/article/2003585
Firstly, this password is the formula of the Cold War, as Alexis de Tocqueville, not only wrote “Democracy in America”, which in the opinion of the members of this sect is the best book about democracy and about America, but also articulated in it historiosophy of “American exceptionalism” which Joseph Stalin, who received an excellent theological education, described as American heresy.
Fortunately, ideological, and possibly a theological analysis of this heresy was done by the great American film director Quentin Tarantino in movie “Kill Bill”.
The fact that the relationship of Greatness and Goodness reflects the Manichean concept of the genetic affiliation to the Good and Greatness by virtue of birth, and not by phenotype/individual development.
According to this concept one cannot become Great and Good, they have to be born this way, and the main sign of the Greatness and Goodness is the right to kill with impunity.
Suffice it to recall the last scene in which David Karradin explains Ummah Thurman that the ability to kill is a duty to kill, because people are not only divided into two biologically different species, but also created by different Gods. And Umma Thurman when she tried to become a worker bee still remained a killer-bee, she just betrayed her biological species and has been punished for this betrayal.
It is against this quite consciously Donald Trump has spoken, saying that all people and all nations are created by one God. And the ideological legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville is the basis of so-called moral high ground of American politics, a lack of understanding and even the denial of which Donald Trump is being accused by the Clintonoids.
According to this concept, the fact that the American missiles were in Turkey during Caribbean Missile crisis, and now are in Poland and Romania is not the aggression against the Soviet Union or Russia, but the Soviet missiles in Cuba were, President Kennedy by removing the missiles from Turkey, has betrayed America, Good and Great, as well as Umma Thurman betrayed her Nation of Born Killers, trying to be an ordinary woman and a mother.
Meet one of the kids:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17030294/florida-shooting-survivor-david-hogg-gun-control
He hates America and did before the shooting. Probably got it with his mother’s milk if you know what I mean. He’s not going back to class either – he’s launching his political career now. He filmed the shooting while hiding from the shooter. He’s pretty sharp, isn’t he? Really seizing the moment. What kind of name is Hogg anyway?
What about the Kids who don’t agree with this? Who support Trump? Why aren’t they getting on TV?
Until we get a more balanced sample, I say Fuck the Kids. Media coverage without full representation is Tyranny.
He filmed the shooting while hiding from the shooter
*******************
Does any convincing video of the shooting even exist?
I haven’t seen any?
just like the rest of them.
These kids are learning their ABC’s. Automatics, Bullets, and Crazies.
Hogg’s ahead of the class. He also knows Audience, Ballots, and Crises. But he says “he’s not a crisis actor.”
Soon to wear the title Boss. As in, Boss Hogg. Got a nice ring to it. From Florida, no less. Imagine he’ll start a little backwoods nightclub called Porkies too, I’ll bet. To entertain some of his fellow Hoggs and Hoggettes, of course.
How many black people are gonna name their child “Wakanda” because of the BP movie?
“How many black people are gonna name their child “Wakanda” because of the BP movie?”
Many, God willing….#NextyearWacanada.
“As a concept, Wakanda’s a vastly different place than when it was first introduced in Marvel’s comics back in 1966. As more and more black fans and comics creators have come to love and create new stories for the Black Panther, Wakanda’s become so much more than a thought experiment about what an African country would be like if it’d been untouched and unconquered by colonizers. The Wakanda we celebrate in our excited conversations about Black Panther is a love letter to the African continent, those of us who carry it with us in our blood, and wear it on our skin. It’s the Wakanda that N’Jobu likely told Erik stories about when he was a young boy—a wondrous place where his talents and potential would never be squandered or extinguished.
Erik Killmonger’s story is tragic, but Black Panther expertly frames it as the ideal opportunity to confront the difficult questions we’ve all asked ourselves about Wakanda. He’s far from perfect—indeed, he’s a vicious killer. But he isn’t exactly a villain, either. He’s human and fragile and trying to work through a constellation of difficult, agonizing feelings. He’s all of us.”
“a love letter….”, “if it’d been untouched and unconquered by colonizers…” Jeez, Dreamers everywhere.
Almost the entire continent would be bangin’ drums and chuckin’ spears.
Here’s more:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/black-panthers-killmonger-is-everyone-who-loves-wakanda-1822972609
It’s a Politically Correct, Facebook Shit Culture.
The trailer to the movie Black Panther plays Rap Music. But, unfortunately, they don’t play anything by the comic book super hero “Vanilla”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE
Facebook, Rap Music, Comic books, TV, Fastfood, Shopping Malls, Get Rich Quick, and Fake News….
Fart!!!!!!!
Ham Sandwich Shit Culture….
Where to start…
First off, that TIME Magazine cover article wasn’t celebrating how the CIA hacked Russian media to plant fake stories about Yeltsin’s opponents. It was about how some of Pete Wilson’s former PR guys went to work for Yeltsin as campaign advisers and got paid a salary to do it.
Secondly, there was never a cover-up. They worked for Yeltsin IN PLAIN SIGHT without violating any Russian laws, and never denied doing it.
Seriously, Jim, your water-carrying and excuse-making for Cheeto-lini and Putin is reaching absurd new heights. We get that you don’t like most democratic politicians (who does, really?), but compared to Trump, HRC was well qualified, competent and even (kills me to say it) far more ethical.
You backed the wrong oligarch, dude. Deal with it.
These kids are learning their ABC’s. Automatics, Bullets, and Crazies. == tucsonspur
The first flight of the Greenland goose
Every Greenland Goose on the third day of its life must make this flight in order to survive and in three years return to these rocks, lay eggs, sit them out and in turn expose their children to this test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsCaFSVRls8
Fantastic!
From how high up would you have to drop a one pound, one inch thick steak so that it would be at least medium rare when it hit the ground?
Everyone should read this article by Matt Taibbi in full. Walter B, I’m particularly interested in your comments. I’ll just highlight some lines that echo my own thinking.
If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too
America’s rage-sickness trickles down from the top
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-parkland-florida-school-shooting-gun-control-nra-w516850
“… [It’s] when Americans talk about what actually drives people to kill in huge numbers, that we show off our amazing incapacity for introspection. …
“Everyone from Donald Trump to Ralph Nader has tried blaming violent video games (‘Electronic child molesters,’ Nader called them).
“Music lyrics are usually next in line – it was Marilyn Manson’s fault after Columbine, but the latest bugbear is gangsta rap (you’ll hear this one even in England).
“After that, it’s movies, where we’ve been told by academics that the amount of gun violence even in PG-13 movies has doubled since 1985 and started surpassing the levels in R-rated film.
“OK, sure. But what about the fact that we’re an institutionally violent society whose entire economy has historically been dependent upon the production of weapons?
“And how about the fact that we wantonly (and probably illegally) murder civilians in numerous countries as a matter of routine? Could that maybe be more of a problem than 50 Cent’s lyrics? No? Really? …
“Maybe this is just hippie-ish whining about the military, but if we’re talking about where the rationalization of violence comes from in our society, Jesus, how can you not look in this direction? …
“Why are peace and nonviolence impossible to embrace as national values? Why is this the last taboo?
“The people who point at pop culture as the reason disturbed kids and lone-wolf madmen go on killing sprees are half right. But images of violence are less the problem than the messages behind them, which are profoundly intertwined with deep-seated cultural ideas about the virtue of military supremacy and the political efficacy of violence.”
—
The devotion to violence in American culture is not a product of movies, music lyrics, video games, or anything else of that kind. The relationship works in the opposite direction: the idea that violence is redemptive is deeply rooted in the American character, and these cultural products are reflections of it.
In 1923, D. H. Lawrence wrote: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” And so it is today. The hard, isolate boy who took so many lives last week in Florida was acting out one extreme of a drama whose roots were planted in stolen soil and nourished on blood drawn out with whips. Until this idea is uprooted, all the beating of breasts, citing of statistics, and wailing about robberies in parking lots won’t change a thing: America will continue to treat the problem of violence with more violence. Like treating cancer with heroin, this will make some people feel better but will never touch the underlying problem.
What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?
A fundamental misunderstanding. Man in his natural state is intensely violent. Steve Pinker of Harvard said: “Homo Sapiens is a nasty business. Recorded human history from the Bible to the present is a story of murder, rape, and honest ethnography (unlike the Marxist Margaret Meade or Jared Diamond, JS) shows that foraging peoples, like the rest of us, are more savage than noble. The !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert are often held out as a relatively peaceful people, and so they are, compared with other foragers: their murder rate is only as high as Detroit’s.”
Your attempt to frame this as an American problem is the very essence of dishonest ethnography.
Exactly! All the more reason that glorifying violence (including military sponsored) 24/7 in the MSM and making firearms so ludicrously easy to get a hold of just might not be in our best interests, don’t ya think? But I’m a realist. I know, just like you, that that will never happen. So in the meantime, I say party on dudes! Won’t none of us be able to say we didn’t get our just desserts when we find ourselves in the crosshairs of one of our psychopathic “countrymen.” But hey, we’re all going out of this son-of-a-bitch one way or another soon enough anyway. I can’t imagine that getting shot is all that much worse than any other.
Well Traditional America achieved an internal Pax Americana where lower instincts were held in check for the most part, and our higher natures fostered. I thought you didn’t believe in higher nature, but then you seemed open to experiential religion, so I might have been wrong.
But before people can “experience”, they must be formed rightly. Thus religion is important as well as a civil culture informed by it. And btw, the devout desire to experience what they preach – and often do so.
Obviously the external Pax Americana was less admirable, and like Rome’s, based on conquest. And the internal was fraught with contradictions as well once the consumer culture got into high gear.
Religion is at best a bandaid for those who have no conception of right and wrong themselves. More often these days it’s just a hedge for those afraid of dying and the old wive’s tale of eternal damnation (I had an old girlfriend that was naive enough to actually admit that to me one time – so precious!). Religion is inherently a hierarchical and political control device. It works for primitive societies, but gradually the shine wears off, especially when technology came along and produced the genuine “miracles” that religion never could and never will deliver. Going back to religion is certainly an attractive choice for a society that’s utterly out of ideas, but as the old saying goes, “you can’t go home again.” For better or worse, we’re far beyond such simplistic notions these days, and the only alternative western culture has on offer is the twin gods (actually the two faces of one god) of money and power, which both translate into our nearest, albeit feeble, conception of “immortality.” We simply haven’t a clue beyond that.
Well I see your Marxist self is fully in control today. No wonder my confusion. Do you even remember saying those other things? As Gurdjieff said, Life is real only then, when I am. You haven’t attained inner unity yet. The first step is to admit you are disunited. And then to observe your other I’s. But before you can admit, you must remember. If you can’t, go back and check your previous post last week.
You lost me at Marxist. What’s Marx or any of his ideas have to with it? Or is that just a catchy slogan you roll out to shut down the dialogue?
A lot of “feel good” galimatias. “The hard, isolate boy….”? WTF. Without any flowery, intellectual deconstruction, let me just say the kid was a mental case. “Acting out one extreme of a drama…”? This is a stretch that joins the absurd with the asinine. A pathetic psychological assessment, cloaked in a perversely romanticized historical notion of violence.
D. H. Lawrence also said:
“Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.”
Thanks Janos and tucsonspur, for your succinct response to Elron who, like all Utopians, spins a spiel of earthly paradise, which, as I’ve described before on this site, is naught but the secular version of Biblical Rapture. In other words, human psyche’s denial of mortality or…..”shaggy God story”.
What’s the alternative then? Shit happens? If only I’d shot that bastard first? Wild, wild, west motherfuckers!
Elrond qua Taibbi:
“entire economy has historically been dependent upon the production of weapons?”
Ummmm, come again?
Reading this post quickly, it all makes sense to me Elrond and it seems pretty much all true to a great extent. Of course if it is it would explain why we Americans, if not we humans feel the need to be armed, not only because we realize that we are constantly in danger from those other human beings that would enslave us or that we do not care to be herded like sheep and farmed for the profit of a small band of greedy masters. More later – great post.
Until we address the pharma involvement in these children’s lives we will not get anywhere. Discussing tools instead of motives [ quit guessing ] is distraction.
Don’t think pharma is relevant, nor do I think it’s about motives. Perhaps the mirror image of that? How about simple boredom and no belief in strictures (assuming there are any, of course) prohibiting violent impetuous acts, for whatever reason. Incipient destructive nihilism, if you will. The movie Natural Born Killers comes to mind as a model for such behavior, not to blame the movie. I think Stone was prophetic with that one.
Like the movie, I could easily see mass murder being (further) glamorized in the MSM by and by, as the novelty continues to wear off. I can imagine mass murder tourists and eager merchandisers lined up to cash in on same, and I can imagine a return to something akin to the old west, as people arm up to partake in the festivities, and law enforcement, although bigger, badder, and more well-funded than ever, mostly stand aside to watch the carnage unfold in the average to lesser neighborhoods (as they do now, for the most part), resorting mainly to “shock and awe” artillery barrages to settle things down again after they’ve let the combatants tire themselves out and enough blood has been spilled for one episode. But most of all, I think we’re foolish to resist such a future, as for the most part, it’s already here. The rich will continue to seal themselves off in their enclaves with amply paid private protection forces, and natural selection will have its way the rest of us. Can actual pre-planned televised specials be far behind that? LOT’S of money to be made there!
““The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
Elrond,
How the hell can you quote Lawrence and then suggest the culture as he defined accept peace, love and understanding?
“Maybe this is just hippie-ish whining”
Uh…yeah….
How? Because I’m arguing for a change of heart and a change of mind.
I’m arguing for the gun culture — the small, unrepresentative rump that holds an entire nation in its thrall by the strength of its paranoid devotion to the means of violence — to see itself as others see it.
That’s how.
Elrond is The Quiet American 🙂
“I’m arguing for the gun culture — the small, unrepresentative rump”
Elrond,
I expect you enjoy the “canard du jour” that only 3% of US households are gun owners. I honestly don’t know ANYONE who is not a gun owner…ANYONE. Christ, the NRA represents approximately 2% of the population…and those are just the “joiners…card-carrying, dues paying members.
I would guess that even Thwack and Janet are armed to the gills.
“I honestly don’t know ANYONE who is not a gun owner.”
BAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha!
*collapses in helpless gales of laughter*
Oh, elysianfield, you’re the best! The funniest thing I’ve heard all week, and not only is it at your expense, you simply have no clue! I am amply compensated for my hundred bucks.
I’m proposing your response to Merriam-Webster as their new definition of solipsism.
“I honestly don’t know…” Oh, mercy… 🙂
Young Hogg may not be a crisis actor, just a garden variety media hog and drama queen. But he is immensely unlikable. Again the Left shows their political ineptness against the growing skepticism of the Woke and the anger of the Folk.
Young Hogg may not be a crisis actor, just a garden variety media hog and drama queen.
********************
Yeah, an attention whore.
If you’re in high school right now, it means you grew up with the internet and its all you know.
“If you’re in high school right now, it means you grew up with the internet and its all you know.”
Elrond and Alba take note….
The living victims of the outrage in Florida are simply the
“useful idiots” of those who would manipulate them for their own political purposes.
This is the useful delusion of the moment: that the protesting students are just puppets.
The idea that they have any agency of their own — that they are acting of their own volition, with adult help, in recognition of an urgent problem that affects them directly — is anathema. It is crimethink that must be stamped out at all costs.
It’s not hard to see why. Their simple, human objection to being placed in the line of fire — because the most paranoid extremists of the gun culture will accept nothing short of total victory — is completely valid. It is manifestly correct on its face, and utterly unanswerable. Denial, deflection and denunciation are therefore the only possible responses for the gun culture, because after all, nobody wants to admit that they are making a depraved argument. (Namely, that the kids should just shut up and take it.)
It’s only fitting, though. The war culture declares war on everyone and everything, foreign and domestic, including itself. Only in a country this deranged could a statement like that actually make perfect sense. We’re gonna need that wall alright!
If you’re in high school right now, it means you grew up with school shootings and it’s all you know.
The Columbine high school massacre took place on April 20, 1999 — just about nineteen years ago. Therefore anyone young enough to be in high school today was born after Columbine.
If you’re in high school right now, it means you grew up with school shootings and it’s all you know.
This is the world as they found it. This is what prior generations bequeathed to them. And they’ve had enough. Only a fool would blame them.
Hey Elrond what gives with your Prime Minister, in India all dressed up in native garb like Lawrence of Arabia?
At least TE Lawrence had some gravitas backing him up, skilled soldier, writer, adventurer and pol that he was.
not a poseur and pajama boy
(Ironically Lawrence’s lasting legacy is the hard shell motorcycle helmet)
brh
BRH, speak up again when you have something to offer besides non-sequiturs.
http://nationalpost.com/news/is-trudeau-hobnobbing-with-terrorists-why-india-doesnt-trust-canada-all-that-much
Wow, I guess North America has more than one buffoon running their country.
How’s the Mexican President doin? 🙂
“All you know”? Wtf? As if there are no classes, clubs, sports, dances, etc? All you know – as if it’s ISIS held Syria?
As usual Elrond, your opportunism wars with your idealism – and subdues it. One of the “kids” says how they sat down to write out their question. CNN then changed everything they wrote, basically making them into a script.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/02/22/cnn-scrambles-denies-scripted-question-invites-colton-haab-appear/
Another weirdly named student, Caskey, said that when he looked at Rubio, he just saw the barrel of a gun. Please review what students no older than these did during the Cultural Revolution in China. You people like to play with fire. After the questions, some of the young Red Guards went up to Dana Loesh (sp?) of the NRA and said they hoped she burned.
It’s the drama queen in him. Of all World Leaders, he is the goofiest and most worthless of all. Even young Macron (Harold) and his granny wife (Maude), has some personal gravitas. And Kim Jong Un, some ferocity born of hate. Trudeau is just an utter vacuum, a symbol of the absurdity of the Canadian people and their coming doom.
Young Hogg will be the Lebron James of Media, skipping college to go directly to the Big Show from High School.
I hate young Hogg. It’s natural to do so. He is very hateable indeed.
Can the first in utero campaign speech be far behind? Perhaps he or she has been conceived already? Can’t wait!
Who? The Anti-Christ? Or the Mahdi? I can assure you that the latter is already a young man – and that He will plant the Jolly Roger in the ravished land of Palestine. It has already happened – in the future. Some prophecies can be changed and some cannot. This is one of the latter.
Tell us more, Unca’ Janos! When will Armageddon be? I wanna’ buy a new suit for the coming out… er, down out of the clouds… or whatever party.
I had always thought that the nadir of American culture was the 1985 Flick “Rambo”, for which actor Walter Matthau remarked: “If I ever make a movie like that I hope that they lock me in a rubber room.” Now we have Facebook.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PpnjGBCHbXI
How the English Humor saved UK in Crisis of 2008
Margaret Thatcher, who considered victory in the Cold War as an absolute priority, for the sake of this victory, practically destroyed the English working class along with British industry, either by sending it to India, China and Pakistan closer to cheap labor, or by bringing this labor force to the UK.
I must say that she compensated for the loss of these jobs, creating a so-called service industry, and a powerful financial sector, most of which was the creation and sale of all kinds of business insurance.
As a result, the United Kingdom became the winner in the Cold War and beneficiaries of privatization in Russia became the residents of the United Kingdom, and in the early 2000s its citizens proved to be the most prosperous people in the West, with a minimum of debts and a maximum of savings.
Nevertheless, the psychological trauma that Thatcher dealt to the entire English-speaking world turned out to be so great that her death became a celebration for tens of millions of Anglos around the world, bringing the song “Ding-dong, the witch is dead” to the top.
But the most dangerous thing for the Western world was that the system of these services spread from Britain to the rest of Europe and the USA, where they turned into “Alan Greenspan’s creative financial instruments” evidently because Americans do not have an English sense of humor that allows Englishmen to call themselves a Constitutional Monarchy, despite the absence of a constitution.
When the fall of property prices led to a mortgage crisis in mid-2007, and on the verge of bankruptcy was the English Northern Rock Bank, which the British with their usual English humor quickly nationalized, strangling their crisis in the embryo, thus combining the principles of a market economy with a common sense.
Despite this, the panic began to spread rapidly in the financial sector, and the strength of the freshly fortified English financial system was directly proportional to the panicky headlines of financial articles of graduates of the London School of Economics: “We stand on the brink of the abyss!” or “The catastrophe is inevitable!”.
The first victim of this financial crisis was George W. Bush program to normalize the financial situation in the US, and the very existence of American financial institutions that provided medical insurance (AIG), mortgages (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and in mid-June began uncontrolled fall of the markets – after the denial of loans to Lehman Brothers began a crisis of uncertainty that the State institutions really act in the interests of the State.
CNN leads a scripted attack on the Second Amendment
In my opinion, they hate the 2nd Amendment to the American Constitution because it guarantees the American citizens the right to form a “Well-regulated [and armed]” Militia as the last remedy in case the power in the country is grabbed by usurper using less than honest voting machinations.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/22/shooting_survivor_colton_haab_cnn_gave_me_scripted_question_after_denying_question_about_armed_guards.html
Last time something close to formation of such Militia happened in 2013, during the march of a million American bikers on Washington to disrupt a march of a million Muslims on September 11 organized by the Flying Monkeys, that is, on the day of voting in the Congress to allow bombing of Syria after President Obama heroically refused to start air campaign against that unfortunate country without the sanction of Congress.
This bombing, if it had taken place, would make the large scale war in Syria inevitable, the dissolution of the UN and, most likely, the war with Russia.
Steve Pieczenik on this nonsense scripted staged theater designed to take people’s rights to defend themselves against the gov mafia.
— https://youtu.be/E2PIYYhPd1Q
For those who like to read about financial chicanery when it was still relatively decipherable, J.K. Galbreath’s The Great Crash, 1929 is an excellent place to start. Short (<200 pages), concise, and easily approachable, it's written in layman's terms, and offers up a breezy but expert analysis of the event that defined the 20th century and which previews the one that will soon help define the 21st. Not surprisingly, one of the key players was none other than a recent upstart named Goldman Sachs, who helped pioneer the phenomenon of investment trusts and their associated holding companies, one of the prime components for increasing leverage and profits to obscene levels on the market's way up, and likewise leveraging losses on the way back down again. And who was one of their notable early investors? Why, no less than one John Foster Dulles, who, along with his younger brother Alan, would go on to have some considerable notoriety/infamy for the rest of his dark days on earth.
‘Ol Scratch, it is not J.K. Galbreath …
It is J.K. Galbraith
I stand corrected, school marm. Now go read the fucking book and deliver a book report to the class!
The entire Mueller/F.B.!. Investigation Theatre is progressing so slowly that perhaps, due to popular demand, it shall be codified by law and instituted for the complete four-year cycle of a presidential term. A continual political witch hunt “reality” soap opera, similar in tone to the (now discredited due to the celebrity pervdom of Kevin Spacey) TeeVee program “House of Cards”. Guest stars, special plot themes, Christmas “specials”, program marathons, cameo appearances, “Who Killed J.R.?”….the whole Hollyweird shebang.
In pondering the indictment by the Special Counsel; I don’t think it is 12 Russians and a ham sandwich JHK.
I believe it is a (bull)shit sandwich with a heapin’ helpin’ of Russian dressing.
(And for the philosopher kings of the CFN: how is life like a shit sandwich? The more bread one has, the less shit one has to eat.)
Now, what are we having for lunch?
For lunch we’ll be having recently tossed chunks from the breakfast shit sandwich smothered in a velvety smooth, hot buttered piss dressing. Topped off with a wafer-thin mint. Umm, umm, gooooooood! Would Monsieur like it in the customary trough, or in a bucket?
Sounds D.C. delectable.
I would venture to speculate, whatever the outcome, the final menu should “The Investigation” of special counsel Mueller ever be completed:
Starter: Pig’s knuckles a la Schumer.
Soup: Vichysoisse au Collaborateur (served ice-fucking cold).
Choice of Entrees: Humble Pie Scaramucci.
Roast Old Crow a la Pelosi.
Cirrhosis Liver Lyonaisse.
served with either hush-moneyed cabbage or baksheesh Brussels Sprouts with mushroom sauce. Choice of political hot-potatoes.
Dessert will not be Viennese Table and certainly not Just Deserts.
Selected Desserts: Corruption Compote, Imbecile Ice Cream, and Shinola Sherbet.
Port and Punch cigars if you are lucky.
Democrats and Republicans will be scrambling to get their tickets (at $10,000.00 a plate) for the gala.
In the meantime all the Military guys will be having a Dining-In whilst the civilian members of the gigantic State Security Apparatus will be flying out to garden spots i.e. Thailand for pad Thai and Nuru massage; Capri for Romanesque frolics and fettuccine; L.A. for a Weinsteinian weekend of excess (is that Epstein fellow still having those “special” parties in the Caribean?)
Beats the Gag-In-The-Bag drive through I guess.
Poppa John’s pizza delivery for Podesta brothers and the lumpen.
Bon appetit (should it ever happen).
Nice creativity!
I’m trying to figger out, if this gun ban comes around like many activists are now demanding, will it include armed security details surrounding lefty billionaires, Big Hollywood Celebrities, multi millionaire NBA playas, and Politicians (anywhere he goes in the state, one of our Senators travels in a caravan of 3 Escalades, him riding in the middle vehicle with a driver and one security agent, and two security agents each in the leading and trailing vehicles. I saw him at a country clambake greeting citizens surrounded by two agents in suits.)?
Or will it just be the Little People who will have to turn them in?
brh
There will be no ban, for show or otherwise. The NRA would send out the secret signal and declare open warfare if it ever came to that.
Of course it would just be Little People, no doubt.
You could take away every gun & knife in the country, and you would still have this population of boys who are actively murderous towards their schools & society. They’d use cars. They’d make bombs. They’d make car bombs.
Then what?
You have to admire the improvisational skills of our youth. We’ve taught them well.
Or they’d use pens! Or they’d use pineapples! And then… and then…
Every car is a potential weapon. Every driver is a potential murderer, if they’re so minded. The same goes for every secretary with a letter opener and every suburban dad with a pair of hedge clippers. Where does this line of thinking end? It ends in hell: every man for himself and God against all. Your paranoia about Little People is just that: paranoia. The false narrative that there are threats behind every blade of grass is what drives all of this nonsense. Guns used against human beings, outside moderate responsible use in truly exceptional circumstances, aren’t a solution — they’re an addiction, a balm against fear that can never ultimately be assuaged.
“This population of boys who are actively murderous towards their school and society” are only aided and abetted by the easy availability of guns. In most U.S. states kids his age can’t even drink, yet Nikolas Cruz easily bought his own AR-15 last year with his own money. Putting assault weapons in the hands of young men full of hormones and emotional turmoil is practically begging for the result that actually happened. When you find yourself plummeting down a slippery slope to hell, the smart move is to stop lubricating it.
If we are armed, then Bill Ayer’s dream of 25 million dead White Americans will never happen. Thus if G (guns) then no F (Fema Camps). I was going to say if G, then no G (Gulags), but that would have been confusing.
Surely a few mass shootings are a small price to pay. And again, why now? What has changed? Easy access to fireamrs has been a constant in American life – even for young men. That should be your focus – if you really wanted to help. But since you aren’t asking these questions I can only conclude that you don’t.
If we are armed, then Bill Ayer’s dream of 25 million dead White Americans will never happen. Thus if G (guns) then no F (Fema Camps). I was going to say if G, then no G (Gulags), but that would have been confusing.
The rest of your arguments aside, that’s a pretty tenuous supposition you’ve made here. Assuming the military follows their orders if it comes to that, a few guns in the hands of a few militants will go down exactly as it’s going down now all over the world. Not well for the militants/patriots. And assuming the drones get used as well, which of course they will, it will be nothing less than a bloody “Silence of the Lambs,” to borrow a phrase.
Guns certainly aren’t going anywhere in the US, but the silly notion that they’re in any way “keeping us free” needs to be retired post haste. If anything, they’re holding us captive. A more honest and genuine argument would be simply that “we’ve got them now, we’re not going to ever give them up, and if you try to take them away from us we’re going to shoot you first. PERIOD.” If you put such a sentiment to a vote, I think it would actually win overwhelming approval.
Guerrilla warfare can sap the morale, economic and military power of even a superpower.
An armed citizenry is the one of the best ways to keep the gov mafia in check. The others are morality and knowledge. The armed citizenry of the US needs hold tight to all three while insisting of the dissolution of the gov mafia and its institutions.
Don’t recall seeing any gun owners marching on DC demanding the abolishment of the “government mafia” any time recently. I wish I would.
Soon enough..
— https://youtu.be/3SscKZXAdss
The ?FBI needs to be shut down
— https://youtu.be/5dQGsPmvOJE
I think there are some problems here between reality and an ideal.
You can make it harder for teen boys to get guns, yet they will still get them. Maybe they will borrow them. Maybe they will steal them.
Or do you believe that if you make something illegal, poof! the problem is fixed (?) I’d think or hope you aren’t that naïve. Now I bet right now you thinking of Australia. Of course. They have very strict gun control (from what I understand), and gun crimes have dramatically decreased. However, Australia and the US, or Canada and the US– have some pretty fundamental differences. I think they have probably more in common than not. In regard to violence, guns, etc. I think they have fundamental difference.
These boys are driven. These aren’t casual crimes. The planning for many of these shootings are very elaborate.
So, I think there is too much effort on the means, and really a non-discussion (and really the meat or the heart of the matter)– on motive.
btw, you might be able to kill someone with a pineapple. They are pretty jagged 🙂
and btw, banning the AR-15 to me is just total PR. It’s nonsense.
Dylan & Eric had a shotgun each with them in the columbine attack, and that weapon makes more sense in that environment. I think they had semi-automatic pistols too, or one of them did.
These boys are driven. These aren’t casual crimes. The planning for many of these shootings are very elaborate.
Disagree. I think these sorts of things are rather casual these days. They don’t require all that much planning, just a little observation and an average teenage intelligence. And nearly all of the perps reveal themselves not to be idealogs after they’re easily and inevitably rounded up immediately afterward. I honestly think that most are just craving attention and/or nursing a personal grudge and, as teenage boys are famous for doing, not thinking things through before they act.
But being a realist, let’s face it, the US will NEVER prohibit firearms in our lifetimes. Realizing that, the most constructive path forward is figuring out what to do about that in response. For those of means, I’d suggest moving elsewhere if you can. For those with considerable means, it’s likely a moot point either way. For the rest, welcome to the shooting gallery. Many are inevitably headed for military service anyway.
It’s notable that school shootings seem to be pretty much a US problem, though. That speaks volumes, whatever the underlying reasons.
PeteAtomic: “You can make it harder” etc.
This is junkie thinking. Much like an addict, the one thing a junkie can’t wrap their mind around is the concept of existence sans their drug of choice. In this case the drug isn’t guns in particular, but the fantasy of redemptive violence that drives the gun culture.
The junkie will proffer every excuse: “I’ve got it under control. I can cut down. It’s okay, I can handle this.” They’ll make every accusation: “Why is everyone against me? You’re all ganging up on me!” They’ll run and hide to avoid dealing with the one thing that scares them most: the problem that has taken over their lives. Or they’ll lash out — and when the addiction takes this particular form, that possibility is a very great concern indeed. But the stakes are too high to just cede all initiative to the extremists. That’s how matters got to this point.
PeteAtomic: “Or do you believe that if you make something illegal, poof! The problem is fixed (?)”
If you’re dying of excessive excitement and need a dose of life-saving boredom, trying reading through all my posts on this page, and from the last couple of JHK’s blog posts. See if you can find one where I say guns should be made illegal, outlawed, ‘grabbed’, confiscated, etc. etc. You won’t find one. It’s true that I have said disparaging things about guns, about the gun culture, and sometimes my opponents in this debate, but words are wind. If you can’t take being disparaged, go home and watch Thomas the Tank Engine.
My target is not firearms. My target is the culture. The fantasy of redemptive violence that I mentioned is the fixed point that everything else revolves around, and that’s what needs changing in my view. I’m quite serious when I say America needs to change its mind about guns. That’s just me running my mouth — you can do it, or not. And nothing like that is going to happen overnight, either. But then, real change never does.
Elrond-
What is the 2nd Amendment there for anyway?
It wasn’t written into my founding document for pleasure shooting, or hunting. It is there for the right of the people of my country to keep it a republic against tyrants.
So, I’m not arguing on a position of a junkie, and neither were the founders of my country.
Now, there are certainly many practical policy changes that may (or may not, I don’t know) make gun ownership safer. I guess you could make gun ownership like owning a driver’s license in this country. You could mandate people to show up so many X years to get your gun license renewed & have a whole list of conditions that could preclude gun ownership. Would that work? I don’t know. I think it would more than likely just create another layer of government bureaucracy. Plus a test like that may very well be unconstitutional. More than likely.
We will have to agree to disagree, Elrond. Which is perfectly fine. I understand what your position is, and I agree with you that the idea of “redemptive violence” doesn’t really work, well–unless your country is taken over by a dictator. Then you need to use violence oust that tyrant. That’s a real thing. Democracies devolve into dictatorships. So, it is important for the people to have a last resort. For my country, it is private gun ownership.
Certainly, if there are policy & practical things that can be done right now with gun ownership for gun safety that are common sensical and agreed to by the community– then, certainly, perhaps they should be implemented.
I’ve run out of time for now. It’s a complicated issue. Like Ol’ Scratch is saying there, I don’t think there will be a ‘gun ban’ probably because of the money from the NRA there. I’m not a lover of lobbies, myself, but– that’s a whole new issue LOL
“My target is not firearms. My target is the culture. The fantasy of redemptive violence that I mentioned is the fixed point that everything else revolves around, and that’s what needs changing in my view”
Elrond,
Of course, the issue is culture. Redemptive violence, restated, is…revenge…the Biblical “eye for an eye”. It is basic in Human Nature, and no existing culture, no successful country, has existed without it.
There is an old hackneyed saying that I will repeat…”God didn’t make men equal…Sam Colt did….” Food, Shelter, Security. Go figure. Us Sad, little men with multiple penises close at hand have been given a scant sliver of the State’s most closely held privilege…the security of deadly violence, if required, even for the old and lame.
There will be no ban, for show or otherwise. –Ol Scratch
Trump is leading the way, pushing for a ban on bump stocks. He will take on the NRA if necessary. Trump is a golden-shower-loving bone spur plagued draft dodger who used to be a Democrat. Mostly he just does whatever he wants to do. If he wants a ban, there will be a ban. Democrats will support him.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered his Justice Department to work toward banning rapid-fire bump stocks like the ones used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre
Believe it when I see it. But regulating bump stocks is a joke anyway.
You are so incredibly naive, lil j-bot!
Do you know what all of the idiots who cry to the government for salvation from their problems have completely forgotten? When exactly, besides making and taking more money for themselves, when exactly have these “politicians” ever accomplished ANYTHING? When did they ever solve a single problem? When did they correct any wrong or institute anything, anywhere that did anything constructive at all? Morons. Our political correct, sellout “leadership” is completely incompetent, totally useless, and extraordinarily inept at doing anything whatsoever. Go ahead children cry for your Uncle Sammy if you are really lucky you might get a special treat tonight before he tucks you into bed. I am not going to worry about them screwing things up worse than they already are. I am going to concentrate my worries on those lunatic Liberal Bolsheviks that prefer violence as a means to an end. They are the real problem and also the reason that nothing can ever change for the better. Chaos over change!
yeah I agree with you. I don’t see any types of ban either.
If you play Texas hold ’em poker, you’re often “under the gun”.
As if some bizarre, macabre, new form of the game has taken hold, we are now all “under the gun”.
For some escape from today’s harsh realities, let me take you back to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when guns were in song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swa7-9CBHR8
Great singer, great song!
Marty Robbins had his hits, but he achieved immortality when Don McLean referenced one of his songs in in ‘American Pie’.
If that song were written today, it would go something like:
A black trench coat
And a Smith and Wesson
I’m all dressed up for school
A black trench coat
And a Smith and Wesson
It’s time to break some rules
Once you told me long ago
To the rave with me you’d go
You OD’d on crystal meth
Someone’s going to pay for your death
A black (a black) trench coat (trench coat)
And a Smith and Wesson …
Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Whether you like it or not.
We love it brother. I figure it is part of the payback for our little incursion into your Northern Wastes back in 1812. We got it coming.
Trump is supporting the 21y/o requirement.
Trump must carry the Big Iron.
Trump says if teachers were armed the “sickos” would not attempt to shoot the kids.
Let’s see. What if the shooter was going after shooting up adults, not kids. What if the adults were all trained in use of military assault weapons and armed. Would the “sicko” attempt an attack then?
According to Trump, the shooter would not attack well-trained, well-armed adults. Of course, Trump is wrong. Some “sickos” stage attacks on military bases in the USA, not being deterred in the least that they are not attacking defenseless kids. On November 5, 2009, a mass shooting took place at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas. The shooter was not deterred because everyone was armed. The July 2015 shootings at two US military facilities in Chattanooga were another in a long series of military base shootings across the US.
Sickos have always attempted to enter restricted military facilities, often with deadly results. Some were racially motivated, especially in the pre-Cold War segregated military. Others are acts of domestic terrorism, planned and carried out to inflict maximum damage. But being assigned an assault weapon, being highly trained in its use, does not guarantee your safety.
Everyone being armed and knowledgable in the use of military-style weapons did not prevent the shooters from carrying out their attacks on military bases. Trump is wrong. All gun owners are wrong if they feel invulnerable. They are wrong if they feel “safer”.
Gun owners live with the illusion of security. They believe they can defend themselves by being armed. But nobody, armed or not, can prevent an attack when a shooter is determined and has the element of surprise.
I have never felt the need for a gun, because I recognize that human nature is good. Lots of people in the world I live in have guns, have always had them, but I feel no fear because human nature is good. It is only when you believe human nature is violent that you become paranoid and buy weapons.
#BLM
#Me Too
#Never Again
#Indivisible
#UnidosUS
#DumpTrump
You forgot #bullshit.
“I have never felt the need for a gun, because I recognize that human nature is good.”
I think human nature is good as well. That is why the government must provide rigorous training for normals to become efficient killers. The psychopaths and sociopaths just get a little fine tuning.
“[Erich] Fromm saw the genesis of human evil as a developmental process; we are not created evil or forced to be evil, but we become evil slowly over time through a long series of choices.
When confronted by evil, the wisest and most secure adult will usually experience confusion.”
– Peck, Scott. (1983, 1988). “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil”; Century Hutchinson.
“Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. Now I’m not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back (of the room).” — Dana Loesch, NRA spokesperson.
Yes. Everyone in the media is grateful for dead white kids. But in case the first reference to race zipped past the audience, Loesch made sure to grind it in.
“And notice I said ‘crying white mothers’ because there are thousands of grieving black mothers in Chicago every weekend, and you don’t see town halls for them, do you?” Loesch asked. “Where’s the CNN town hall for Chicago? Where’s the CNN town hall for sanctuary cities?”
Actually, 24 people have been killed in Chicago in the last month, about half of them black. Exactly one of them was under 18. So Loesch’s estimate of “thousands” per week is only off by … thousands.
I doubt it’s just white kids. Dead kids sell wherever they are. We should probably pay a whole lot less attention to school shootings in the US and a lot more on US drone attacks on schools the world over. That would upset the narrative, though, now, wouldn’t it? I think the kids might eventually turn the tables on us if we don’t wise up.
US drone attacks are just an extension of the belief by many that violence is “effective” … although 5,000 wars in 3,000 years would argue that violence does not bring about a peaceful world. As A. J. Muste said: “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”
Abolishing the second amendment will not eliminate 100% of gun violence, just a large part of the carnage involving guns. When the 2nd amendment is abolished, thousands of lives will be saved… and we won’t have to hear people whining about their “constitutional right” to own guns… because it will no longer be in the constitution.
If that happens there will be no constitution, period.
The constitution was changed to eliminate slavery, and the constitution still exists, period.
The constitution was changed to eliminate slavery,
****************
ok, but they never declared “negroes” to be PERSONS.
Therefore I suspect we remain
“beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race,”
To sum up,
in order to be a citizen, you must FIRST be a person.
When did negroes become persons?
“When did negroes become persons?”
Thwack,
Many are…
Persons of Interest
But Janet, your buddy Barry Obama, Nobel “Peace” laureate, was the one who mastered the drone strike. I cannot recall you complaining when BO was ordering the murders, what made you change your tune? The White guy doing it?
Last week these kids were eating laundry detergent tabs in an attempt to catch a buzz. this week, suddenly, they are the font of all wisdom. It must be the years of practical experience combined with the superior 11th grade education. –brh
Or it could be the threat of death, seeing their loved ones being shot in front of their eyes. Death has a way of concentrating, focusing, and sharpening the mind. Their intelligence (not book learning) was always there… now it is being put into use to modify policy.
Abolish the 2nd amendment. Practice lovingkindness. As Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”
Go to Chicago Janet, disarm the brothers and when you have succeeded in securing peace e can start on the rest of the country. Gandhi is a great example of successful nation building, look at India or all of Africa and the Middle East where defenseless people have been turned into starving chattel. Perhaps you and your foul masters wish the same fate on America, perhaps you are just too simple to understand that tyrannical governments in their greed eventually turn on their own people when they no longer fear them.
” Where is Kesa? ”
IF it is EVEN POSSIBLE to change the world , I think it can only be done one person at a time, and where you actually have something invested in the outcome.
Which is to say , given finite time , energy , money , etc , I could devote 6 – to – 15 hours writing to someone I know and care about , where I am neck -deep invested ,
or I could spend 6 – to – 15 hours writing here ….. And what is here ?
It’s only a funny kind of entertainment.
As far as entertainment goes —
For a long time now I pretty much check in to see what Volodya , Walter B , and Ole’ Scratch have to say.
As for our host ; Well, at least he is finally admitting that the FBI is the Stasi in a different costume.
” Our “Stasi Sweetheart”? ”
That was an entirely accurate description once apon a time.
” who will be next to have their friendship face-stomped by the jackboot? ”
Is that a complaint ??? And how so ???
I have no doubt that the Stasi make exceptions in the case of their parents, spouses , mistresses , siblings , children and select cronies .
I’m in none of those categories however.
And being that is the case , ” friendship ” is about as applicable as it is to reptiles and spiders.
” She was hittin’ the schnopps pretty hard a few weeks ago; maybe still on a bender. ”
That incident embarrassed me , until I read that.
” She was from East Germany? what? lol ”
I’ll repeat myself since it won’t take long or much effort ;
99 out of 100 people have absolutely zero talent when it comes to humor.
If it’s fake condescension ; People who are much better at it than you , beat you to it , a long time ago.
If it’s genuine condescension ; You managed to be hilariously funny accidentally.
Kesa,
Welcome back!
“And being that is the case , ” friendship ” is about as applicable as it is to reptiles and spiders. ”
Yesss…spiders have no politics…if they wore jackboots, we all would be face stomped.
“If it’s fake condescension ; People who are much better at it than you”
Well, we try. I assume the “Frau Blucher” reference was a bit obscure?
” The constitution was changed to eliminate slavery, and the constitution still exists, period. ”
The constitution was changed to redefine slavery , period.
As many in the BLM movement , ironically , point out.
If you Americans quit worshipping Abraham Lincoln like Lenin or Kim Ill Sung you might begin to make a dent in the elevation of Nihilism to a religion.
Until / unless , you are full of shit.
Do You Love White People & Trump?
Grab some popcorn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVd0kWmEAwM
Congratulation to CFN with the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Red Army
One emigrant listens to the song of another emigrant, and you know what I tell you? Not having been in America this song is impossible to write.
I do not know who first discovered the water, but it clearly was not the fishes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilsHUpHF8Oo
Very approximate translation of the song:
I am Russian. I’m that “red” and “commie”.
SovDep Bolshevik Ivan.
I love vodka and Parade,
I am the heir to victorious soldier.
Remember in this world, except for grub, exist
Decency, dignity, and conscience.
And our Russian “we go on you” –
Alas for you, stupid, is bad news.
Do not touch Russia, gentlemen.
Remember: what does not kill us makes us stronger.
Hear us. And if not, then
The death will come for a new crop…
Stop checking us for lousiness,
American, you are not Messiah.
Think, brother: we are not Vietnam – ROSSIA.
Think whom you intend to fight.
https://www.stihi.ru/2015/09/13/887
I liked it.
” Where is Kesa? ”
Shit , your Stasi sweetheart wishes kunstler would hurry up and post Friday’s blog !
Did your Stasi sweetheart , even when drunk , ever pull that , ” poor children ” shit on you ?
compared to that , ” Gestapo man ‘ is practically a term of endearment isn’t it ?
life is full of ironies isn’t it ?
It doesn’t take me a wall of text to say that I hate your country.
Yet, as it turns out , I’m not the one who gets my panties in a twist if you own an AK – 47 , or a tank for that matter , or smoke a fucking cigarette in the waiting room when your wife is dieing of cancer in the hospital.
Which is to say , I think , that I’m not the one treating you like a disliked child.
“It doesn’t take me a wall of text to say that I hate your country. ”
Kesa,
Yet sometimes that wall appears…and is usually glorious in its invective.
I like your posts…you have an odd, acerbic bent…certainly an honesty with a bit of truth thrown in for color,.
Sorry.
“When did negroes become persons?”
When it became more convenient to use them as assets instead of liabilities. Issue them a SS number and use as collateral for loans.
“The constitution was changed to eliminate slavery, and the constitution still exists, period.”
When you go into an Equity Court [ the one with fringe around the flag which indicates Admirality Law ] and try to argue constitutional rights. You will be ignored – they are enforcing CONTRACTS. Your perceived rights don’t mean squat to them.
Their are no constitutional courts because there are no citizens free of self-imposed contracts to perform certain acts. Thus the constitution is dead. And don’t expect anyone who serves the court [ for example your word-twister { attorney } to inform you.
“The totalitarian specter seems to await only the proper sequence of commands, the deadly algorithm, to bring it to life. Call it our “inner fascist”, that infantile, whining, naked lump of animated protein willing to sacrifice everything—dignity, justice, love, tolerance, restraint—for the soothing assurance that it can be saved and kept warm, secure, fed. It is the secret enforcer that turns neighbors into informants, ready to denounce life-long friends. It is why the 100-plus nations that employ torture never lack for army officers, prison guards, doctors, judges, politicians, or clerks to perform their hideous procedures. It is why the middle class of so many nations side with repressive death-squad-driven regimes in order to protect their shaky place in the sun, however bloody the sky at sunset.” — Barton Kunstler
Well, well.
Sound like any Russophobic nation that you might have heard of?
What could possibly turn the approaching hoofbeats?
What we’d rather not acknowledge….
Post WW2:
[With the psychotic striving of the Dulles Bros. (Inc.)] “The agreed-upon narrative took shape. We are America, hero of WW II and the Marshall Plan, the benevolent, democratic, free-market wonder-child of the West, leader of the free world. All who renounce Communism receive our benediction however brutal your regime. Our corporations will come to you and receive your huddled masses yearning to work for next to nothing, and in return we shall arm you to the teeth so you can smite your enemies (who happen to be your own people but what the hell). We’ll even train your government death squads. We should have been confident and secure. Instead, we were bombarded with lurid fantasies of Communist infiltration, of being outgunned and outfoxed, and a national paranoia was cultivated that has never abated.” — Barton Kunstler
Hadn’t heard of Barton Kunstler, ozone, so thanks for yet another bookmark in my CFN folder!
Just read a few of the posts on his site. Relevant to the gun discussions:
*When Drones and Guns Collide*
“So gun fanatics, if the government really does want to get you, they’ll do it with joy-sticks and little armed winged robots that seek you out in the river-bottoms and mountain tops and Chamber of Commerce meetings and herd you into camps like those cavalry from “Planet of the Apes”. There won’t be much security in a gun when civilian, military, and police drones—legal and otherwise—can zip up behind you like Tinkerbelle and knock you out, inject you with a customized serum, or just shoot you in the back. Who needs target practice when an algorithm will do?”
“…At some point, drones will make even those Rugers and Glocks seem as quaint and dated as flintlocks, however many rounds per minute they spit out. When drones and guns collide, guns will seem so 20th century.”
From a few years ago…
I am very aware as well….
From The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot– page 606 – In the hours and days immediately following his brother’s assassination, Bobby had frenetically chased every lead he could think of, quickly concluding that JFK was the victim of a plot that had spun out of the CIA’s anti-Castro operation. But after this initial burst of clarity, Bobby soon sank into a deep fog of despair, unable to develop a clear plan of action. His depression came, of course, from the devastating loss of his beloved brother—the northern star on whom he had fixed his life’s course. But Bobby was also filled with despair because there was not clear way to respond to his brother’s murder. His mortal enemy Lyndon Johnson was in charge of the government and his own power as attorney general was dwindling so quickly that J. Edgar Hoover—another bitter opponent—no longer bother responding to his phone calls. Meanwhile, Kennedy antagonists such as Hoover and Dulles were in control of the official murder investigation. If RFK tried to circumvent the system and take his suspicions directly to the American people, he risked sparking and explosive civil crisis.
In June 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to take over its data operations. The ‘data analysis company’ that’s in news for the downgrading of facebook nowadays. In early July, Shane Harris of the Wall Street Journal released a series of reports that offered some of the most compelling evidence yet that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian hackers.
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