Debt Rattle August 22 2022
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Edouard Vuillard The window 1894 • ‘Russophrenia’ From Supposedly Smart People In The West (Diesen) • Russian Ambassador: We Simply Have No Con
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 22 2022]EU Nat Gas – https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/TG*1
Today’s increase, just the increase alone, is over 200% of the average previous 5 year price – the entire price!
Just surreal.
ps. Scroll down on the link for the 5 year average price.
Swedish artist Karl Jilg shows how much public space we’ve surrendered to cars
My home in Hong Kong is on an island without cars, scooters or any mechanized transport. It is a small island and you have to walk. The beach is just 10 minutes from home and you are always bumping into people you know. The best bit is that you can leave your dog off its leash forever as it will never get run over or suffer any other dangers from humans. Not only does your dog know your home, its friends also know your home, so do not be surprised to hear a scratching noise in the middle of the night as one of the dog’s mates has decided to wander round and wants to sleep in your place. Dogs are fabulous when they are socialised and are a positive complement to human life, but you have to treat them right and free is right.
It’s not all bad news. The huge explosion of the alcohol industry over the past 10 years proves that market forces work, the market really works: when the bullying government is distracted by something else. The quality has also improved in some areas, but the staggering number of new labels is overwhelming as is the new variations. Go into any whisly shop these days and you will see so many new labels that you will feel ignorant of whisky, so much so that some of the old timers are missing and have been replaced by the new kids on the block. Same with gin, so many new gins, so many variations from the old timers like Tanqueray, but also lots of new, good labels. The failure of society is turning us all to alcohol and variety is exploding and proving that humans still have what it takes to make good stuff, when sufficiently motivated. No doubt the government will soon put a stop to this.
Interesting.
‘Voters are starting to wake up’: Brian Tamaki’s protest group demands snap election, Govt be tried over ‘crimes against humanity’
Imogen Wells – 2h ago
Germ
‘Gazprom Will Halt Nord Stream Gas Flows On Aug 31
“Based on the pattern we’ve seen, it would not be very surprising now if some small, technical detail is found and then they could say ‘now we can’t turn it on any more’,” Germany said at the time. As it turns out, that “small, technical detail” is the hiccup in the return of the turbine.’
So, the gas may get turned back on again after a couple of days. Or not.
Great comments on Religion. I really appreciate it. So many stories similar to mine, so much to think about.
Why do I talk? Same reason as the rest of you. If I started my own site then I’d have to monitor it, control it, change it, put out content on demand, all sorts of binding, time-consuming things Raul can tell you about. Beside, I keep expecting things to pop off and be too busy to continue, but for whatever reason that hasn’t happened yet.
Yes, I just broke the day’s usual into parts as Day sometimes does. So skip it. It’s easy and I won’t notice.
“Baltimore on Pace for Possible Record Murders as Local NAACP Asks Governor to Deploy National Guard”So the Mayor? Nope. Police? Nope. Governor? Nope. Legislature? Nope. President? Nope. BLM even? Nope. They all think it’s fine. It takes the NAACP to ask for something to happen. Who are they these days? Don’t hear much from them anymore. Aren’t they for black gun rights?
“Swedish artist Karl Jilg shows how much public space we’ve surrendered to cars”
That’s good and appropriate, I feel very much like that. However, “we” are also the cars. Looking at people driving tractors, golf carts, it really changes the experience of both driving and walking, and living for that matter. If people moved slower, it changes the world quite a lot. How about classic cars and cruisin’, where your top speed is 55 and not recommended much over? Where your daily miles are 3-10 and you could walk if you had to?
“Russophrenia: the idea that Russia is simultaneously about to fall apart, and also take over the world.”
Orwell described this, where you could easy hold two contradictory views in mind without a ripple. Back when I read that, even after 2000, I thought that was hyperbole, impossible, that no more than 5% of the population could be so incredibly stupid, dishonest, and thoughtless. Nope. It was me who was stupid and dishonest for not crediting it.
The trouble being, if you use Bernays to cause such a thing, why would you ever stop? You can believe the most corrupt people are good and never been bribed. That when they take open bribes it doesn’t mean any actions were taken. That we should both pay for Military/Health/Comcast and yet get no services from them, and so on. And they do. Our American minds are filled with nothing but the stuff, and as such, we can have no effective action, both cooperatively or individually. Working like a charm…until the whole system frays to pieces and the wealthy Phrenia-makers collapse into poverty and chaos too, but they don’t think of that.
“…the lack of contact between officials means there is no potential to end the war through talks.”
Sure, but we were never going to end the war anyway. Or not until made to by force. Or does every day of 30 years not tell you that? If they “signed” and “ended the war” the next day the war would continue just as it has since 1989. They “signed” and “ended the war just the other year in Normandy, then doubled the arms and soldiers.
There’s no end except to transfer all wealth and power from Europe and America to Russia, and Biden and NATO, the EU and ECB are already doing this as quickly as they can. Russia is already richer, and Europe is about to test out cannibalism.
Just today, Biden told Mexico they better start giving us some oil! Because oil from Mexico and Saudi Arabia and Sudan is “clean, moral oil” that doesn’t release CO2, but American oil is dirty and terrible White Supremacist oil. AMLO said, “I don’t think so.” I think he was really saying “Please please sanction us like Russia. Please give us the mother of all sanctions so we can get rich as they are.” And the rest of the world too.
Speaking of, Canada shut down another coal plant going into winter, relying on wind and solar. How much? No one knows, it’s a state secret, because if we told you it was 30 watts, it would be “disadvantageous to business.” Yeah, I bet since no one would buy your stock. Anyway, thinking ahead this time, they contracted for emergency power with the ‘States. At an enormous cost increase. What power does the ‘States use? Generally coal. So Canada, having no solar, is going to shut down their new, clean coal plant, to overpay by 50% for dirty American coal power. Got it? I’m guessing corporations and
bribesincentives are in here somewhere.Joke’s on them, though: we’re shutting off our power too! Sue us! In international court that we’ve established and packed with cronies. Ah, you Canadians never learn. The U.S. is “Not Agreement Capable.” On anything. Ever.
“Only 25% of the public is satisfied with the job he’s doing”
When the point is to destroy governments and make a mess of things, it’s going pretty well. Governments are failing, corporations are running things instead. Social Credit by Twitter united with BlackWater Mercenaries in perfect harmony.
Back to NATO, “Scholz Told Putin When Ukraine Could Join NATO (RT)”
Yes, but no one in the West has ever kept their word. Ever. Not Europe in 40 years and not the Anglos in 400 years. Why would Scholz bother? Does he think Putin is an idiot? As dumb as Canada is to contract with the Americans on coal, wood, and oil? How would “Germany” enforce this promise both to future administrations and to Ukraine?
“Berlin supplies “a lot of weapons” to Kiev and will continue to provide Ukraine “with what it needs for its defense,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said,”
See what I mean about lying? He can’t even get to a podium without vomiting astonishing lies like this. What has Germany sent, like 500 rifles and 10 trucks?
“China Is Preparing To Go To War (Chang)”
I was going to say they’ve been at war with us since Clinton and SCANDIA labs, and presently they own 2/3rds of Congress, but yes, converting your production to war is a real change.
“Drought Causes Yangtze River to Dry Up, Sparking Shortage of Hydropower (G.)”Am I the only person who remembers the Dams were all breaking? Problem is, and China knows it, when weather cycles dislocated, they are particularly hard hit. It’s part of being a Continental Weather as Russia and N. America has as well. Dynasties fall at regular cycles and we’re in one now.
“The UK could face a “humanitarian crisis” involving ill health, excess deaths and rising inequality if the government does not take urgent action on rising energy bills,”
I thought they were already in one with kids being white with hunger and Londoners selling their potting shed for sex. Besides, the NHS not only wrong about everything, they’re broke and providing half the services. This is the usual with Socialism and why people sign on: it starts out good, appears to give something for nothing, then gets worse and kills more than would have died if you’d just not.
“This, in turn, could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country”
I’m sorry: WHAT do they think is about to cause this 40% increase in all-cause mortality real soon? “Somebody else’s fault?” Hmmm.
“We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”
“British Soldiers to Prepare for Fighting Russia (RT)”
Surely you jest. You have no guns, no shells, no ships, no coal, no steel, and no planes. The 5 planes you have are called “The Penguin” since it can’t fly, can’t turn, can’t shoot, and isn’t allowed out in bad weather. They can prepare to die, but they cannot prepare to fight.
If you were going to fight, then surely 6 months after the invasion, you would have a bullet factory? No? You’d be going Victory garden and stockpiling food? No? Netfix sales would be down. No?
No? Well, you’re all going to die then. Bye bye. What do you want me to tell you? “I canna’ change the laws of physics Captain!” I don’t have food for 30 million in my basement even if I wanted, and I’m beginning to think I don’t wanna. It’s up to YOU.
“British forces are currently training Ukrainian recruits in the UK,”
Like Scholtz, cannot open eyes in the morning without lying. What men? What “August Offensive?” Lira and others were hearing this, and having the common sense of a plumber, asked, “Okay, where are they training and amassing this August Offensive?” No where. There are no men, no guns, no tanks. They are sending National Guard, untrained, to the front with one rifle for two men, no bullets. And no surrender. Because Biden’s ethnic cleansing and genocide.
“Trudeau government’s recently announced policy to reduce the use of fertilizer on Canadian farms by 30%.”
They are going to kill everyone, and revive open cannibalism the same way they revived open slavery. That is their ethos and their god.
“mishandling of classified documents will continue the trend that has defined the Trump era: an intra-elite, symbiotic feud that simultaneously boosts Trump among his base, and the national security state among his foes.”
We have to get out of this loop.
Quite sure that ’56 video is a put-on.
As it turns out, that “small, technical detail” is the hiccup in the return of the turbine.’
What. The. Heck. Germany now HAS the turbine, but doesn’t feel like forwarding it. ‘Cause, “Computer says no.” ‘Cause “Paperwork” that we use, that we made up, and obey or ignore every day at random, says “no.”
Well, when half a million German freeze, see if you can outrun them, you 3rd clerk over at Seimens. You chairman who seized and shuttered Gazprom Germany. This is GERMANY causing this. You’d at least think they’d forward the turbine and blame Russia, wouldn’t you?
I’m done. I don’t see what commenting on this is going to do at this point. There is only action now.
“While the federal government has not yet confirmed it, there is speculation that the water sampling we now know is underway, will be used as baseline measurements to enforce reductions in fertilizer usage going forward.”
They have no “baseline”. It will be made up as everything else is. A chemical composition of soil over large areas isn’t something that has ever been done to my knowledge, not before wide spread use of FF chemicals. To do one now is no guide as the pollution levels everywhere are off the charts globally. I remember way back in the eighties, I believe, teflon was discovered in polar bears. If only they would stop using those frying pans for their seal meat!
On religion: I grew up in a baptist home and had to do Sunday school and church service as well. I reached the age of reason before I reached ten. Asked a few hard questions and quit after no reasonable answers were offered up. Had to keep going to these places till I was old enough to resist going, (early teens). No sense in any of it. The congregation would sit there listening to the lessons from a poorly written fiction about moral behaviour only to leave the church and do the opposite all week long and then next Sunday go back for forgiveness. Rinse repeat. How much hypocrisy is one person supposed to put up with? The moral to the story: we have no morals, only posers. Do no harm huh? How many wars were fought in the name of some god on at least one side? All of them? Spirituality yes, religions are cults from my viewing platform.
Strict to the letter “religionists” and hard core atheists have a lot in common, and one of those things is that they are teetering on the same brink.
You know the truth, yet you can’t convey it – who’s to blame?
Them, because they’re not clever enough to understand, or you, who steadily fail to make ’em understand?
No one’s to blame.
No reality, no illusion, no truth, no lies, only the many faces of The Everlasting Dissatisfaction.@ArmenioPereira ” . . . Everlasting Dissatisfaction .”
But it does, on the other hand, provide motivation to correct the dissatisfaction by DOING something about it, to satisfy it once and for all. A reason to get up in the morning and try.
“…Well, when half a million German freeze, see if you can outrun them, you 3rd clerk over at Seimens.”
I suggested to German friends that they can sequentially burn down all the German government buildings in their towns and cities across the country every Saturday night thru the long cold winter.
Beer and Schnapps, bring a good band, I don’t think the German’s ‘do’ marshmallows however.
Pace yourselves, don’t burn down all the government buildings on one weekend.
You a few left until Spring, you can still get some late frost nights even then.
The colder the night, the large the government building should be, you want the heat to last at least until dawn when the booze runs out.
We shall see if the Germans still have any balls when their nuts freeze off.
Prost! Ein Toast!:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/2107941577_c85142908f_o-58c322883df78c353c6597be.jpg)
Fauci, b’bye.
James Howard Kunstler . . . if I haven’t already said so . . . is one of my heroes. Few others have stood out there on the front so visibly vocal, for so long, and with such integrity. I would have trouble facing Mondays and Fridays without his regularly scheduled and faithfully delivered blog essays. [ here is today’s : https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/crazyland-2/ ]
Which makes it all the more aggravating when he tiptoes right up to the edge of the abyss that we all (including him!) know is there , alludes to the ancient and common rumors about how deep it might be . . . . and then chickens out and doesn’t have the chutzpah to peer over the edge, look down into it and tell us what he sees.
Here’s a snippet of his latest strategic withdrawal : “The amalgamated pathologies of Barack Obama’s reign — which includes the birth of Wokery, the Jacobin-Marxist crusade to trash culture and economy — and Hillary Clinton’s psychotic thirst for revenge has transformed the Democrats into the Party of Chaos, presiding over the suicide of America, and Western Civ with it. Which, of course, prompts the question: Who exactly is running Barack Obama? I don’t pretend to know at this point. Many people I know are sure it is an international banking claque. The part that doesn’t add up is the supposed banking claque’s utter lack of political charm. Nobody in Western Civ is for them …..”
Crikey, James, where to being? Like we don’t KNOW about Jewish banking dynasties, Royal Houses, and secret fraternal societies? Let’s start with, “The part that doesn’t add up is the supposed banking claque’s utter lack of political charm. Nobody in Western Civ is for them …..”
Well, it may be true that lots of folks don’t like bankers, and that Money can’t buy you love, but Money sure as hell can BUY all of the political charm that it wants, with its chump change, and still have plenty of cash and available product left over. What could be easier? Just buy lovable politicians (they’re a dime a dozen) and use some Money to pave their way to greatness. Money owns both the minions and system that the minions run in, so why not do it if you want to?
And what does it matter if nobody in Western Civ loves them? What’s love got to do with it? Machiavelli wasn’t whistling Dixie when he advised “Princes” to value fear over love, and since Money already OWNS Western Civ it don’t much matter what anybody outside that Owner class likes or dislikes anyway. As long as people fear to act against the monied Owners then the point is adequately made and the mission is accomplished. The point is that OWNERS do, indeed, “own”. That’s why they’re called “owners”. And what is it that they “own”? Western Civ, of course, what else?
There’s a significant difference, however, between “Owning” vital necessities (an idea kind of thing) and “Possessing” vital necessities (which are more or less actual physical REALITY sorts of things.)
That’s what the big fight is all about and I have a spoiler for ya: Reality wins.
Your job, James, (and I assume this rant will reach your eyes and ears eventually) is to be the honest and forthright Journalist and HISTORIAN who reports back the facts to us faithful hero worshipers. Stop worrying about being a labeled (by the caballist sympathizers, incidentally!) as a wacko conspiracy theorist. What else would you expect a suspect to do? When you call out the evil-doers do you expect them to sing your praises as a renowned authority and respected expert journalist/historian?
C’mon Jimmy boy. There’s a lot at stake here. Give it up. Tell us what you know.
Oh, and…
Not soon enough. He can do a lot of damage until then.
He seems to believe the dnc loses bigly this next election (if he”lets” it happen.)
There is no statute of limitations on murder.Peptide cancer cure
With all the cancer from vaxxed folks with compromised immune systems, there might actually be enough impetus to get this doctor’s cures to go mainstream.Religion vs. lack thereof
I consider myself fortunate for this: I grew up in a home with a great set of parents who were morally upright, we had enough material things (but not much excess), and household members were supportive, loving, etc.
I am the first of four children, the oldest two have left the religion of the family while the remainder remain devout. I recognize that for those who stayed, the religion is central to their lives and their core social outlet, playing a net-positive role for them.
However, one thing that I have realized that they do not see is that the stability of their lives does not proceed from the religion, but rather from their core values and the way that they live their lives, with a nice dollop of good luck on top. The core values may align with many of the teachings and tenets of the religion, but they rather derive from each individual’s parents and related upbringing plus individual effort.
I see it this way because there are so many who are “raised Mormon” whose core values differ quite radically from my own. The organized religion (and the LDS faith is very organized) doesn’t produce a uniform moral code in its congregants.
That is why “losing my religion” did not shatter my value system — it came from my parents plus my own experience, not from the religion.
(Of course…there is a great deal of variety out there. And some kids who come from less than ideal homes may find an organized religion — or people associated with an organized religion — and incorporate the morals of the religion because they intuitively realize that what they are getting from their parents is problematic.)
Religion has a role to play. Sometimes that role is beneficent, sometimes it is deficient.
I do sometimes wish that my devout family members would attribute their stability to their own behavior or to god directly rather than to the religion.It may be a lucky thing that the WEF is trying to incrementally destroy the industrial food production complex instead of all at once. By turning the food conveyor down by 30% a lot of people are going to wake up a bit and start gardening in earnest. I have been gardening all my life and this year have quadrupled production. Unfortunately, for those in the Northern hemisphere we are going into Autumn and it is becoming a bit late to start growing much in the way of calorie crops.
Interesting times indeed.
“Childhood Dementia Initiative gained DGR1 status and became a registered charity with the ACNC in June 2020, and launched to the public in October 2020. Our audited financials are available below.”
From their website.
BTW, vaccines do NOT cause it. They said so.“We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”
“British Soldiers to Prepare for Fighting Russia (RT)”
The Duran just had a concise summary of the Ukroclusterphuck.
All participants agreed that at a minimum, Ukraine has had at least 80,000 killed.
80,000 killed is more than the ENTIRE standing British army at this point in history.
The Russians have killed the equivalent of the ENTIRE British army in the last few MONTHS.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
It wasn’t necessary
– to spend trillions fighting global warming / climate change
– to build wind turbines and solar farms
– to close nuclear and coal fired plants
– to stop using Russian gas and oil
– to export CO2 production from the West to China
– to force the use of electric cars
– to use Covid ‘vaccines’
– to have lockdowns
– to destroy Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Syria and Libya
– to sanction Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba etc
– to destabilise Ukraine and TaiwanAll this is leading to massive damage to Europe, and possibly the US. Not sure about the rest of the world.
When I read my previous post to my wife and daughter they both had the same response, which was to basically say, “He probably doesn’t want to put enough out there that it scares the bad guys enough that they decide to kill him. If you’re such a brave guy why don’t YOU stand up and get your butt shot off !”
I’m trying, I’m trying.
As a staunch Atheist, I’d like to make a few observations.
It’s always strange to see supposedly rational fellow-atheists assuming that anything done “While Christian” is a Christian action. (but super-selectively) …but then, 90% of the “fellow atheists” I encounter, if I can put them at ease that they have a receptive audience, admit to all kinds of belief in mystical or irrational claptrap. Wicca, Tarot, Pyramid Power, various things they call The Science that are against science and which they cannot reason out.
They seem to argue on the basis that, if a geographical area was predominantly Christian, demographically, then anything done in or by entities within that region are definitively Christian actions stemming FROM Christianity, which seems very strange.
When Christians want to argue to me that all the Things That Make Society Possible all come from the Bible, I point my finger at the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, etc. They didn’t have the Bible. They had libraries, schools, running water, a courts system, irrigation, nuclear families, marriage, etc WITHOUT the Bible and without Christianity. As an atheist, I’d argue that all these institutions that make civilized life possible and pleasant are definitively secular, as they exist successfully across all societies and civilizations despite the fact that they each have religions that say everybody else’s religion is wrong.
Check the evil actions performed “by Christianity.” Do they happen across all ages, all societies, all religions? Then evil IS ITSELF SECULAR IN NATURE, not belonging to any one religion. As secular as running water and libraries.
Or do my “fellow” atheists pick on Christianity because, along with having a religion, they had WRITING? Because predominantly Christian nations were writing down what they did, then examining them over hundreds – thousands – of years, they’re bad guys, because bad things were written down? …but if entire continents such as Africa, North America, and South America have no writing, thus no written records, then it means nobody did anything bad there like the Christians did???
Is this some sort of magical belief in observer-caused reality? The Americas did not exist until a Christian European observer showed up to cause them and their peoples to come into existence, at which point, coincidentally, at the moment of creation,Europeans started writing down what those newly-created-by-christians non-christian people were doing such as slavery, human sacrifice, and torture of prisoners of war? (also, repeatedly passing the Carrying Capacity of their surroundings and experiencing dieoffs/crashes? The Mayans… Cahokia?) Had they not shown up, the natives would have lived in blissful, peaceful, non-sinful innocence forever? The only way for them to be innocent would be to not BE, due to the entirely SECULAR evils perpetrated by every society in any age anywhere on the planet that wrote down what they were doing. Just make up your mind if you think it is due to human nature or the technology that allows record-keeping.
The non-christian Ottomans and Barbary Pirates practiced the second-largest slavery system for hundreds of years against predominantly Christian Europeans (see Candide by Voltaire…) but enslavement is a TRAIT of Christianity? The atheist USSR practiced the largest slavery system in human history, but slavery is a TRAIT of Christianity? Maybe enslavement and resource extraction are secular in nature. No thanks goes out to Christian Britain, whose navy eliminated slavery from the continent of Africa?
That said, if you are going to heap every single evil action done by demographically predominant Christian societies, nations, organizations etc onto the religion, like, if your assumption is that anything done by a demographic IS their religion, then, following the same rule, you would have to heap every single good or useful thing onto it as well, wouldn’t you? To be even close to intellectually honest?
So…everything that keeps you alive, then? Anything at all that brings you good? It’s all CHRISTIAN? You’re basically living in a Matrix pod in which the pod and all inputs are Christian – everything good, everything necessary? And how long do we argue on this absurd basis before you, my fellow atheist, admonish me to be more spiritual and start Raising My Awareness about, idunno, tEh bAlAnCe, chakras, yoga, whatever? (protest as you will, 90%+ of my discussions with “atheists” veer off in that direction)
And the Crusades! THE CRUSADES!
Look at a map, man. The Islamic Conquests were an enormous military achievement. Greater than Napoleon, Hitler, or Alexander. You could say, in sheer territorial gains, the Mongols had it beat, but for staying power, the Islamic Conquests beat the Mongols as well. The Romans at their height conquered less territory but lasted longer. Arguably the greatest conquest ever is still the Islamic Conquest.
If you look at Europe, Africa north of the Sahara, and the Near East as one some-what diverse cultural, economic, civilizational unit, then you have to conclude that the Arabs were absolutely kicking their collective ass.
Conquests: Isreal, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Afghanistan, Sudan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Spain, Sicily, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania. Pakistan, Crimea, Hungary.
Look at a map to see where Tours and Vienna are. That’s the high-tide mark.
3/4 of the land area of this economic-cultural bloc was conquered and with its back against the wall. You think they wouldn’t bother to couch any pushback in religious terms? Did the atheist USSR couch a pushback against German invasion in religious terms, despite being staunchly atheist?
And what was the extent of the pushback? er…. Spain, Sicily, and temporarily parts of the Levant? And hundreds of years later, slowly, the Balkan peninsula? Look at what happened to Germany in response to ITS massive conquests. Look at what happened to Napoleonic France. Theirs is a post-conquest success story by comparison. They got off extremely easy, historically speaking. Hey, sometimes that’s just how it goes.
So,far from trashing the Islamic expansion – I say it is arguably the greatest conquest in history. It commands respect, because competent use of force tends to do that. But they practiced enormous conquests, massive amounts of slavery, wholesale negation of pre-existing cultures, and were not Christian.
So, giving up on the broad brush of history – Oh, one PARTICULAR Christian was a Big Meanie? Well, did Jesus TELL him to do that thing and then he did it? No? Did Jesus tell him NOT to and he did? Oh. So that’s Christian in your book? Pardon the use by an Atheist, but… JE-sus!
Again, if you want to heap all secular ill that OBVIOUSLY exists across all societies, all peoples, all time periods, on the head of Christianity, then go ahead and heap all the credit for all good as well and live in the Christian Matrix pod. Go on. The impression I get is that ex-Christians want God/Jesus to be The Big Daddy EVEN WHILE saying they are Atheist. There was something wrong somewhere, daddy make it all better. My NON EXISTENT daddy, that is. Despite not existing, it’s still all his fault.
It was heartening to see, during the lockdowns, that copies of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius sold out. SOLD OUT! An 1800 year old book that could be published by any publisher due to no copyright, all copies from all publishers… sold out. Throughout 2020 I could feel the Stoics gritting their teeth and saying to society at large, perhaps under their breath “Damn it just CARRY THE WEIGHT. Just look things in the face, FACE them and… Carry. The. Damn. Weight.” Feels like the past 2 years have been an object lesson in what happens when nearly an entire society just continually cringes away from looking at and thinking about things.
For many years, nothing would piss me off so much as that GK Chesterton quote, about if a man doesn’t believe in God, he’ll believe in anything.
But here we are. Self-avowed atheists blaming non-existent God for secular ills. Dabbling in ouija, half-understood eastern mysticism, the occult. Gathering in town squares, chanting and kneeling. Why even go on a journey? Might as well have just stayed at home and gone to church. Good god. (ha)
I blame Automatic earth for my having sat through My Dinner With Andre last week. That 3 minute clip is the only good section of the movie.
Andre got mad at the elbow-specialist doctor for not “seeing” his mother. Dude, you are trying to fix an elbow, so you needed an elbow guy, right? If your mom’s furnace goes out, you want the HVAC guy to obsequiously mourn your mom for you as well?
What would have SATISFIED Andre in that situation? Had the doctor said a word or two, more generally about his mother, he’d have been complaining over dinner, “Well, he saw her, but he didn’t SEE her.” I reckon his demands would have been neverending. If the doctor dressed up in sackcloth, smeared himself in ashes, and began tearing out his hair and keening for Andre’s mother, er…. MAYBE then?
And based on everything else Andre said – his total disconnection with reality, his implicit constant psychedelic drug use, his constant travel away from family and friends, preferentially into places where people did not speak his language, he was totally disconnected, anesthetized. Meaning is an emergent function of CONTEXT and he had both bombed his own context back into the stone age and then done violence to his own ability to perceive whatever context would be left.
And I suspect, at the bottom of it all, he was ashamed because he did not feel what he ought to have felt AND he had no structure through which to express any grief, no rituals, nothing. So he took it out on the Elbow Guy. Elbow Guy needs to feel these things about his mother FOR him. He spent 2 hours at dinner talking in an entirely circular fashion how he continued to try to “access reality” and was continually tearing down all structures and implicitly attacking even his a priori faculties via heavy drug use and whacko postmodernist deconstructionist thinking. Unspoken but obvious.
Ohhhh so you wanted the Elbow Doctor to be a PRIEST for you??? If you WANTED a priest in the hospital room, why on earth didn’t you go GET one? What’s WRONG with you?
“Maybe we could have, like… monasteries” Sir. …Sir!!! you DO have monasteries. Go to one right now if you want one.
Andre didn’t tell a bunch of fascinating stories over 2 hours. He told one boring repetitive short story over and over and over for 2 hours. Vizzini ALMOST pointed out the problem to him when he brought up the Renaissance and Science. He NEARLY explained that laying down a structure of understanding on top of reality is absolutely necessary to derive context and therefore meaning, thus Andre’s emptiness and constant failed attempts to “get at reality” through tearing down all the structures, drug use, and occasional chaotic attempts to create religious ritual.
But Vizzini veers off as soon as he starts to get close to that answer. Because it would immediately follow that Andre’s pseudo zen buddhist deconstructionist postmodernist drug-quest is doomed and the EASIEST answer is to grab a product sitting on the shelf, tested and honed over a couple thousand years – not currently being beta-tested or anything – and just avoid wasting another 20 years of his life, just slap that sucker on, bolt it down, and get on with something that is proven to work, get on with LIFE.
But this would involve admitting a host of things, starting with admitting what he actually NEEDS. So Vizzini gets close and then makes a Confession Of Faith. I Believe All The Things. No, of course of course. But a weird type of Confession of Faith that in an almost terrified manner steps around huge holes we must all agree to not look at or discuss.
If I were to sum up My Dinner With Andre, it would be – this is a movie about two men sitting in a sinking lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with water filling the boat from a hole from which they have pulled the plug. While their boat sinks, they discuss everything EXCEPT the hole and the plug sitting right next to it.
in 2020, as a staunch atheist, I was forced to admit, religion appears to be part of the Human Operating System. If you pull it out, they will to fill it in again. With something awful and new that is on its first Beta test. The Beta test tends to last for about 2,000 years with awful things happening while we work the kinks out. May as well have stayed at home and used an off-the-shelf product sitting right there waiting for you. Rather than spending decades re-discovering the wheel. Or waiting millennia for the bugs to be worked out. Just consider if you have the time to spare.
So, having, with all our enlightenment, discarded Christianity, we now adopt a new religion that involves loading people down with unbearable unwarranted guilt, and then coaching them to project that guilt, examined, unprocessed, onto others. So basically we now have a religion that has ensconced the “reasoning” and abuse methods of Cluster B personality disorders.
Just fantastic. Might as well have just stayed at home and gone to church, made some casseroles for some potlucks, run coffee hour once in a while, do an occasional build for Habitat for Humanity, do the egg toss at the Church Picnic, donate to a horrible christian charity from time to time. Evil, hypocritical structures, right?
Sorry, I’ve just had it with all these fake atheists.
Stop mismanaging your shame, “atheist” dudes. Shame is a secular human trait. It doesn’t come from religions that attempt to address it. It doesn’t come from people doing record-keeping. It cannot be resolved by ignoring it and projecting it. Nature is NOT perfect. It’s one of YOUR arguments against Creationists, remember? So nature does what’s Good Enough and, for our own well-being, to prevent ourselves from wasting all the time in our lives, we slap a structure down on top of it that, itself, is GOOD ENOUGH.
An entity that can RECOGNIZE shame is not the ROOT CAUSE of shame. If anything, the 2020’s seem to be all about tearing down all the pragmatic good-enough things because they lack perfection. So now we watch to see if we end up at sticks, rocks, and cannibalism, or if we pause to realize some of the stuff we accumulated over the past 8,000 years was good for something.
If you’re an atheist, you should have SOME respect for empirical data. You should have SOME respect for facing up to facts and considering them. Like John Cusak in Say Anything …I can’t work for that corporation. But I’m not blind either.
For me, one of the most important lessons from going to church was the concept of gratitude (the other dogmatic parts of religion never really took). I think the simple act of expressing thanks before a meal seems to be in contrast to the materialistic, instant gratitude we are told to want and expect. Perhaps the coming hardships will serve to remind us to be grateful for even the smallest things in life.
Thank you RIM, as well as the community here, for giving of yourselves, sharing your views and providing a great example of what community can be. Not only has this place been an oasis of sanity for the past 2.5 years, I credit you all with keeping the clot shot out of me, possibly saving my life.
Great rant!! A ‘lovely’ diatribe if that is possible. Thumbs up
thanks @ Antidote. long, loooooong time Automatic Earth lurker here. (well over a decade, I am guessing?) lol, like others posting recently, I broke silence after seeing that weirdo berating Dr D for overposting. If Dr D posted 10x as much, I would read it all and wish for more. like – fine, HERE’s an overpost for ya!!1!!
I’m waiting for some wag of a scalawag to sue one of his cohort in the cabal for nonpayment of blackmail.
Oh Noes, a pandemic of the Vaccinated Cult
Ode to Joy indeed. Consensus reality Cult members are not immune to reality after all.
I reside in the one of the Covidian Branch central hubs Seattle and interact with thousands of guests per week through the hospitality Biz.
I saw, heard, watched and directly experienced their Covidian Cult madness towards the unvaxxed. It has been sickening, dangerous and grotesque far beyond getting sick with covid itself.
To remain employed, I needed to “identify” as Vaxxed. Realizing we were at war justified my position that the first casualty of war is the Truth. They started this f’n war- targeted directly at me and any choosing to remain unjabbed. They lied literally, ethically and morally. I lied in order to feed myself.
I heard their hatred, watched their ignorant virtue signalling arrogance- day after day, month after month, year after year. I watched them walk through the door, arms held high, literally waving their Vax Cards. I saw little hitlers all around me- “Did you check their cards?” “Put your mask on”, “you can’t dine here you’re not fully vaxxed” on and on… Little Virtue signalling Hitlers with their new power over others.
I heard them mock and threaten the unvaxxed. “Every un vaxxed person should have their doors kicked in, get jabbed, and then vaxxed” Hahahaha “Horse paste” oh what idiots these sub-human unvaxxed are. Hahahaha
During the entire time of “show me your papers” I never once asked to see any ones vax cards. I was constantly asked by mgt- did you check their vax card? I never needed to- the vaxed were literally shoving their cards in my face, they wanted to show me team Cult status. Oh how proud they were with genuine hatred towards any non cult members. “I don’t even want to be in the same room with the dirty unvaxxed”. On and on…
There were multiple incidents where guests contacted mgt saying they did not see employees asking for Vax cards. “You are checking for vax cards right?” It is the law…
Back in Dec the vaxed started contracting covid in huge numbers. Every week I was getting emails- “you’ve been exposed to an employee that just tested positive for cvd”. I was asked to test for cvd repeatedly- I never did. I began covering shifts for those vaxed, boosted and out sick, me the pure blood, constantly exposed, not even allowed to enter the building for a meal or drink, serving the Cult members and covering for the sick… Total f’n insanity.
I literally watched Society break and fail. Science became Dogma. Reality inverted, lies and hatred everywhere. Signs in the park, posters on every bus, highway signs lit up- constant barrage of get vaxxed, get boosted- “do you part, we’re all in this together”
I will never forgive and never forget. As the fraud begins to unravel, the Cult members literally dying…
I tried to warn them, using basic reason, logic, science, patterns of historical pharma fraud- nope, they would not, could not and refused to hear any of it. Now the vaxxed will cry big tears, oh poor us, how could this have happened?I don’t pity the Fool, not after what I’ve seen and directly experienced these past 3 years.
Here’s a tune for the Fools, with passion and heart. You’re alive, act like it.2020’s – a tour de force in Shame Mismanagement.
Have you been baptized? Have you undergone the purification ritual?
If they had made it something innocuous like bathing my feet in specially blessed water to show we all are purified and Belong, I would have still refused. But instead they chose something far, far more idiotic.
I don’t think I can ever forget. They fired me in April. It made no sense. I had worked from home for over 2 years – not ONCE had I come in to the office to do my job. They WAIVED the requirement for people working retail, in contact with the public 40+hrs a week! But fully remote people with nowhere physical to GO for work in their STATE were let go for not taking The Waters.
Shame, being such an incredibly powerful factor in human life – overpowering, if anything- MUST be a survival trait. Because we live as social creatures, surely.
I’ve wondered about people with perfect memory. People who remember literally everything. Why wouldn’t this be ALL of humanity? Surely, a powerful survival trait. Think how much wisdom and skill you could accumulate.
…but humans are social. We cannot accomplish anything of meaning without others. And whatever we accomplish gains meaning in the context of others. Are you more or less likely to write a symphony, a book, paint a painting, if you are the last person on earth or if there are people you will be able to show it to?
(no, don’t virtue signal as a Profound Artist – HONESTLY. Everyone is gone. No effect on your making art or other content? And if you say no effect, I’d make it just the same, in your isolation as the last human on earth, you WOULDN’T fantasize about aliens one day finding your desolate planet and your art, or the cultural remains of humans in general? …and why would that be?)
I suspect strongly that the reason we are forgetful is for survival.
We are primates. If there’s one thing we should remember, it’s that we are primates. I say chimps can understand every Shakespeare play in its essence. Hamlet has played out in Chimp society many times. We are a scheming, resentful, paranoid lot, us primates. We can be nice too, but nevertheless.
How the heck can we survive, if we NEED each other, if our meaning derives so strongly on a social basis, if we remember every lie, nasty action and word? So we forget. Why else wouldn’t perfect memory have become the dominant trait? We MUST forget. Just to live with each other.
The intricate, wobbling balance of memory, shame, and other factors. With religion, philosophy, tradition as steadying moderating forces.
But yeah. Some things you cannot and should not forget.
The “interesting” old film clip from 1956 is apparently fake. Pretty well done, though…
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-satire-not1956video-idUSL1N2LK20S
Regarding Kunstler. I first encountered him back in 2003/4, when he featured in End of Suburbia. He had some worthy comments.
I followed what had to say until he became a rabid supporter of Obama -hope and change you can believe in, and all that bullshit. I contacted Jim Kunstler and pointed out that Obama was just another fake, someone who could not be trusted to do anything other than screw the populace.
Jim Kunstler called me a moron, for daring to question his narrative.
I stopped looking at his blog for many years.
But around 2018 his blog was referred to, and it was clear he was in the process of doing a U-turn.
So, there you are. Even slow learners can sometimes get to the right point eventually, if not by being advised, then at least by learning from bitter experience.
Looking for gas in all the wrong places!
“Trudeau said natural gas would have to be shipped by pipeline from the gas fields of Western Canada to a still-unbuilt liquefaction terminal on the Atlantic coast.” …
… but there is hope: … green Canadian hydrogen. Yes! “Trudeau and Scholz will travel to Newfoundland and Labrador on Tuesday to meet with companies there that are pitching new hydrogen projects that eventually could feed energy to Europe.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-scholz-canadian-natural-gas-europe-1.6558542
F.S.
Nothing fails as fast as failure, and the juggernaut Great Western Empire of Lies / Counterfeit / Censorship / War / Murder is FAILING at an accelerating, mind boggling rate. It’s not just “exponential”, but the exponent is BIG. When the value of their counterfeit currency drops below the capacity of that money to sufficiently bribe and blackmail and extort the necessary armies of minions . . . then those minions quit & when the minions stop minioning it IS . . . . de facto . . . .game OVER.
Any numbers geeks out there with a model of how long this implosion is gonna take? Just going by gut feeling and dirty thumbnail sketch I’m feeling/thinking that its weeks, not months until pandemonium.
the internal combustion fleet is most properly understood as a disposal system for the least valuable byproduct of petroleum refining.
IF we were to replace internal combustion engines with electric, our refineries would still need to refine oil for all the many, many things our survival depends on. Including the tires for the electric vehicles.
Having cracked the petroleum into all its constituent parts and having successfully, virtuously converted the entire internal combustion fleet to electric/battery (a fairy godmother intervened, perhaps)…
WHAT ON EARTH will we do with all the gasoline we are accumulating? Where will we store it? Do we ship it back to the oil wells and pump it back down? Just release it on the ground? Spray it on our crops? What new systems for massive gasoline storage and transportation will we have to develop? What new massive quantities of petroleum fuels will we burn in the course of this? What new massive environmental disasters in gasoline storage/transportation will happen as we work all this out?
We will DIE if we stop refining petroleum. We can’t not produce gasoline as a byproduct. What’s the plan here? Do idiots think “getting off oil” consists of refusing to use gasoline while producing endless, ginormous, stupendous surpluses of gasoline with no place for it to go? I guess they do.
Whether it’s coal>electric or hydrogen that replaces it, what’s the damn plan for where the gasoline we definitely will still produce GOES?
According to the Military Summary channel, the person who carried out the murder in Moscow was a Ukrainian military officer who fled to Estonia after carrying out the crime.
Now the question is, irrespective of the war, can the murderer of a civilian be brought to justice via civil systems, or will Russia need to apply some additional pressure?
Also, Russian policy currently forbids the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but in view of the persistent attacks on the nuclear power station by Ukraine (U.K.- U.S) , that policy may well be revised “to give Putin more options.”
Figmund Sreud
The only green gas I know of is chlorine! (as used by the Germans in an attempt to break the deadlock of trench warfare in WW1)
‘Green hydrogen? No, hydrogen is a colourless gas with an incredibly low molecular mass (2, versus an average of 29 for air and 44 for propane c.f. LPG) which is incredibly difficult to liquify and which has an incredibly low energy density when compressed. What is more, the molecules being so small, tend to leak past valves rather easily, and form an explosive mixture with air.
“it’s all bullshit, and it’s bad for you.” -Carlin.
But you already know that, otherwise you wouldn’t be on TAE.
The only real question is: how much longer can the maniacs at the top if the dung heap keep up their disconnected-from-reality narratives?
D Benton Smith
‘Any numbers geeks out there with a model of how long this implosion is gonna take? Just going by gut feeling and dirty thumbnail sketch I’m feeling/thinking that its weeks, not months until pandemonium.’
Models don’t work when everything is lies and fabrications!
That said, my guess is October of this year.
Bear in mind that the great bullshit machine still has an awful lot of believers. And it has an incredible capacity for keeping up appearances. After all, it really should have fallen over in 2009.
Refer the Mannarino video posted yesterday “Flashing orange”
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