Diogenes Shrugged
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Q: “Why do Americans allow for that to happen in their name?”
A: Because of an increasingly brutal, militarized police state that operates with impunity. That police state now exists to protect and serve the criminal government, not the taxpayers who’ve been extorted to pay their wages. When the cops have all become criminals, who you gonna call when Eric Holder permits them to confiscate everything you own, including your life?
A lot of us frogs sat in the slowly-heated pot expressing every sort of complaint, letter to our Congress-traitor, and “ballot” against the abusers along the way. But not until the first few frogs died did we start to prepare to resist. I can’t imagine what you had in mind that we should have done when you accuse us of doing nothing while this crap was escalating, but writing articles is almost as ineffective at overcoming entrenched tyranny as voting is. You and Karl Denninger are in good company blaming this shit on us, but try hard to remember where the blame really lies. Try to remember that we got fooled by a false flag on 9/11, that most of our countrymen still can’t fathom the enormity of that fact, that the U.S. has been transformed into the war-muscle behind re-shaping the world according to Zionist and New-World-Order nazi goals, and that our mainstream media and our politicians (Obama) consistently and systematically lied to us.
This is not your mother’s world. Things have changed radically and rapidly. Institutions habitually trusted for generations (e.g. MSM, banks) have become untrustworthy, and have managed to keep their transition into crime and treason a secret.
At ZeroHedge some months ago, somebody else enunciated the same attack on Americans for “permitting” and “enabling” criminal government, criminal banking and criminal corporations. He upbraided Americans for failing to adequately stop it. Another commenter appropriately replied, “Lead the way.”
When you’re about to load up your long rifle and go to work, Ilargi, let us know. You’ll find yourself suddenly in good company. But until then, continue bitching with the rest of us. There is NO WAY TO REGAIN FREEDOM EXCEPT THROUGH FORCE. That’s unfortunately a time-tested, immutable fact of life. The parasites never pack up and leave the body after having been alerted that they’re unwanted.
The day will come in the U.S. when people call 911 and wait in ambush for the cops who respond. You’ll see. Perhaps that’s what you’re trying to shame us into doing, but that sort of thing can’t be expected from an entire population when a “recovery” is in full swing and we’re distracted by fantasy narratives about “terrorists” and “exceptionalism.” There are a relative few in every country who will lead the way, but the time for that has quite simply not yet arrived. It certainly does appear to be coming, though.
And by the way, Huck, I’ve been to the evaporation ponds at Silver Peak, NV, and was close friends with the geologist there. Your comment on lithium made me laugh out loud. Learn a little humility, man. You’re not half as bright as you pretend to be in the mirror.
huckstfinn,
You’re counting the “values” of depreciating assets as being on a par with assets that produce income. You’re also implying that these “assets” are fungible, which they are not. Then there is the issue of who they belong to (the commons) and whether they legally qualify as collateral (they don’t). Furthermore, you’re implying that the world’s debts will be repaid, or at least serviced into perpetuity. Not a chance, pal.
I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish with the personal attacks against Ilargi and Stoneleigh, as I’m unable to discern the root of your twisted-ness, but your accounting skills don’t impress. Michael Hudson – – “debts that can’t be repaid won’t be” – – is right. The bail-outs and coming bail-ins reflect bank credits of Earth-shattering magnitude that cannot be repaid, and eventually, will also not be serviceable by a population that is increasingly unemployed. Either you live in a fantasy world (due to ignorance, which might be forgivable), or as I said before, you’re being paid to post here as a troll. Unless Ilargi stole your girlfriend in high school and you still haven’t been able to adjust, I’m betting on the latter explanation.
Of one thing I’m certain. You don’t adequately understand the majority of the information that’s been conveyed through this website.
Boogaloo:
Please endure my restatement of what you wrote, but with a little embellishment:
“EVENTUALLY we enter into a deflationary cycle of cascading defaults because over time, exponential debt ALWAYS outruns exponential growth. There is no avoiding it.”
But we’re not talking about the inevitability of deflationary collapse at the moment. We’re talking about the desirability of growth. I insist we in the 99% need growth to help compensate for all the theft going on. Bank-issued currencies are intrinsically the most lucrative forms of theft ever perpetrated, followed closely by taxes (or is it the other way around?) The parasites are doing everything in their power to render YOUR property rights (but not their own) obsolete.
We need to demand harsh justice, an end to the long-entrenched systems of theft, but not an end to growth. We are not facing the last barrels of oil, the last few tons of phosphorus, or the exhaustion of timber at this point. We still have a little time – – with a waning abundance of resources – – to rectify the systems that have brought us to this cliff-edge. With harsh justice, the thriving systems of theft and murder could be stopped. We’d all rapidly become much more affluent – – surprisingly so – – and wouldn’t need to assume debt for purposes of consumption. And wouldn’t feel so desperate for growth!
If others can legally steal well more than half of what we produce, complaining about growth isn’t going to improve our lot. But if we end the thievery, I assure you, the clouds will part.
Not saying any of this to be adversarial. Just trying to enlarge on your points.
And as has been pointed out by TAE many times before: when the oil industry lays off large numbers of highly educated, experienced personnel, it will be all but impossible to replace that talent when prices rise again. After all, a lot of those people are close enough to retirement to “go Galt,” while the younger ones find new professions. Crashing oil prices aren’t the only problem. They’re just the current problem in a what TAE regarded years ago to be a predictable sequence.
hucksterberryfinn,
You asked two remarkably stupid questions, but required that Ilargi answer three.
Can’t count? Can’t handle your alcohol? Off your medications?
This TAE village has, for a long time, been in need of an idiot. From all the spittle on your beard and vomitus on your shirt, I’d say you’re a shoe-in for the job. I don’t know what you’re paid to do this, but so far you haven’t earned a penny of it.
Ilargi:
The reason we desire growth is because there is theft.
That’s THE answer to your question, and it is “elegant.”
You can’t realistically expect to change people’s motives, much less the world, by shouting down growth. You can have a profound effect on both, though, if you join those who earnestly seek an end to the Ponzi schemes via vigorous and thorough criminal prosecutions.
To be clear, taxes, price-fixing, front-running (HFT), fraud, extortion, blackmail, false-flag events, wars, and national debts to banks are all forms of theft. An exhaustive list of the different forms of theft running rampant in the world today would stretch to the moon and back several times. (Note: That lie didn’t constitute a theft — a robbery of the truth – – because we all recognize it to be hyperbole. In reality, the list would only stretch from Brussels to Tel Aviv.)
And speaking of growth that I’m sure even TAE would embrace, you presently have TWO articles posted on page one of ZeroHedge, and even sport a bitter-sounding troll on this comment thread (!) Bullish TAE!
A year ago (11-30-2013) after an article posted at ZeroHedge, a commenter calling himself Buckaroo Banzai wrote this:
“It’s called ‘Free Banking,” and it existed in Scotland for a few hundred years, until the English identified it as a threat and crushed it.
“It’s a system that works, but it isn’t clear how well it would suit an electronic economy, like the one we have today. BitCoin is an outstanding choice for Internet transactions.
“Gold and silver coins, free banking, and Internet crypto-currencies: these are not mutually exclusive ideas! They can all work side by side.
“It is sad that I have to explain this. It just goes to show how completely foreign the idea of a truly free financial marketplace is in this day and age. 100 years of financial tyranny has mentally disabled the population so badly that even in a forum like ZeroHedge, the idea that multiple systems of currency and finance can freely coexist, with each serving its own purpose, seems barely comprehensible.” (End quote)
I’ve always maintained that the value of gold will never go to zero, and thus represents a form of money that can be considered a durable store of value. But when that value is measured in dollars, it can be expected to fluctuate, even wildly.
In Ilargi’s defense, I believe his observations on gold have consistently been the result of analysis rather than advocacy. Always remember that investment advice is too often given by those intending to take the other side of the trade from you. Ilargi is not giving advice, but is rather making observations at arm’s length.
I’m sure many of you have noticed that Martin Armstrong has also been relatively bearish toward gold for quite some time now. He sees $650 gold being an actual possibility.
Finally, congratulations to Ilargi for being recognized as a guest Tyler (ZH) so many times recently, as well as for being increasingly re-posted at other truth-seeking aggregator sites. The growing publicity is many years overdue.
Ilargi: I’d be most grateful if you and Nicole would give us your views on monetary policy. Not just on the consequences of current policy, but also how you’d like to see the system change. Would you both be in favor of the “Chicago Plan?”
Quoting from the video: “BIll Still and Ellen Brown support it.”
With respect to my position on Ebola, I’m increasingly realizing that I’m not alone.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/10/14/ebola-very-crafty-false-flag-vaccination-blackmail/
Ilargi: Regarding my suggestions on this site’s format, I have reconsidered. What I was advocating for too-much resembled a free speech zone and divorced the direct relationship between your posts and our comments. Sorry to waste everybody’s time. Had to stub my toe to notice that the chair has legs.
bluebird: Thank you for that. I’ve perused this website at length and found some of it to be cumbersome and of limited utility. That includes the roster referenced by your link. What I’m accustomed to is much more user friendly: something more resembling the daily comments here, or the conversations at ZeroHedge. I will point out that you felt it necessary to post your message twice. That shouldn’t be necessary. I’m probably not the only one coming here who feels this way, but then again, maybe I am. Anyway, I’m over it now, and will continue to belly-ache about other things.
The Trivium4TW: Thank you for your long rejoinders a day or two ago. I’m still trying to find time to wade through them. In the mean time, I thought the following video did an excellent job of explaining the etiology of present day bankster-ism and fascist politicial-ism. (If everybody else these days can make up words, why not me too.)
Ilargi: Reviewing my previous comment, I also have to ask whether it might be possible to widen the margins in the comments section so as to accommodate the full width of YouTube clips?
And one more thing about Ebola. Isn’t the CDC basically a branch of the military in this country? Couple that with the troops sent to Africa, and doesn’t that at least warrant a raised eyebrow? There are multiple ways “they” intend to not allow this crisis to go to waste.
With respect to Ebola, I made some comments a couple of days ago that went over like a lead balloon, but I’m still banging that drum.
Also, I don’t feel comfortable using this guy as a source, but today’s post did coincide with my own assessment:
If prophylaxis works for the flu, why not Ebola? I think you’re being set up to think that your only chance at survival will be a vaccine.
Ilargi: This new format, while appreciated for its additional content, is a challenge for commenters. Previous posts must be revisited, with attendant scrolling, to see where the comments finally ended. It’s also difficult to keep up with all the Shorpy photos, but I can learn to live with that. A suggestion: Please consider providing a link to a separate webpage after your posts – – a webpage devoted solely to comments – – and links to your articles at that comments webpage. Comments could be tagged with date and subject if they become unwieldy, and could be removed to an archive every week or so. Anyway, just a thought.
One more thing. Crime syndicates (e.g. the “mob” and ALL forms of government) have always owed their success to the fact that most of the people working for the crime syndicate DON’T KNOW they’re working for the crime syndicate. If this Ebola thing is a lie and you’re busy repeating (propagating) the official narrative, that means YOU.
If there’s a cliff ahead, dear lemmings, it’s called “Zmap.” Just guessing here, but I doubt Zmap will hurt anybody. Then again, just guessing, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out to make people sterile. Think that one over for a while. Big objectives here – – oil, diamonds, wresting control of Africa from China, and the real prize: gradual depopulation. Never underestimate the schmucks with money and power.
All that said, wouldn’t it just be my luck now to come down with Ebola. 😉 🙁
Whether you see this Ebola thing as authentic or as a “big lie,” what we’re witnessing is a case study of how (a few embers of misconception) + (winds of fear) = (growing holocaust). This could lead to all sorts of stampedes. Try to refrain from being sucked in by the currents. I’m already watching from a safe distance and just shaking my head.
You’ve been reading endless articles filled with nothing but conjecture. Just as was the case with 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook hoax and a dozen previous false flags, Americans are once again demonstrating their boundless credulity. I’ve become convinced this is all a sloppily orchestrated show.
Go ahead: hate me, denigrate me, shout me down, but for the time being, just keep the possibility buried somewhere deep in the back of your mind.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/nana-kwame/ebo-lie/10202862436634177
Raleigh:
> > “As we’ve seen, when people paid way too much for their houses (and their houses dropped in price), they simply walked away and bought another house that was much cheaper (and, to boot, they got the cheapest mortgage rates in history), or they rented.”
This is news to me, but it is something I’ve wondered about. If people have walked away from the mortgages they’ve purchased (you don’t purchase a house, you purchase a mortgage), but have been granted new mortgages soon afterward, that would indicate that the banks have ignored credit risk altogether. This is a delicate question to ask, but do you know of any evidence that that has actually happened, or were you, for the sake of making a point, using hyperbole? Since the banks have been backstopped by the taxpayer, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.
Also:
> > “Trivium – in the video, ‘Inequality: Why Are the Rich Getting Richer,’ at 1:10 minutes it says: ‘The shocking fact is, if nobody went into debt, there would be almost no money in the economy.’ Why is that so bad? That would just mean house prices (essentially all assets) would come way, way, way down in price, a dollar would actually be worth something again.”One problem with gold and silver coinage (not the chief problem, by the way) is that there isn’t enough of it. How do I rush out and buy a can of beans with a silver coin worth $1,000 (ignoring that it might be the entirety of my wealth)? One might suggest copper coins with a smidgen of silver, but as a former fire assayer with over a-hundred-thousand meticulous fire assays to my credit, I have to ask how you’d know the silver was actually present in the correct concentration in the alloy? Anyway, my point is that Trivium appeared to be talking about a resulting hard money supply so small that it would present the same problems as gold and silver (i.e. no liquidity, and NOT an efficient means of exchange).
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just revert to clamshells and beads? (Just being funny there. If I was serious, I’d have said Bitcoin.)
Your comments here are much appreciated.
Ilargi: This will show my shameful ignorance of finance, but I’m curious whether a very recent statement by Karl Denninger has the potential to contradict arguments you’ve put forth recently. Can the Fed rate diverge from treasury rates over long periods of time, or do they rise and fall in tandem?
Karl Denninger @17:00 – – “But I’m actually on the contrarian side when it comes to government bond rates. Everyone says they’re going up a lot. You have to realize there’s another side to this, which is if the economy sucks severely enough, they will go down instead. We could see a 2% 10-year treasury rate for the next 10-15 years, and of course the problem with that is you don’t get a 2% treasury rate for the next 10-15 years with a robust economy and good hiring. What you get it with is a 1930’s-style depression.”
V. Arnold,
> > “I do not see how it affects everyday life for the average American. I couldn’t care less how the wealthy fare…”
Please , I implore you, watch the two videos posted above by TheTrivium4TW. It’s pretty clear you must have missed them.TheTrivium4TW,
Your arguments against the worldwide bankster’s paradise are superb. I tend to focus too much on the pernicious nature of “government” (per se), or to contemplate my navel with salvos against “climate change” rather than address the real problem. Your posting of those two videos, in my opinion, constitutes a great public service. If only we could somehow get the bulk of this species to attentively watch them – – preferably more than once.
That said, money supplies issued out of thin air in the form of loans-at-interest isn’t the only fraud banks perpetrate on mankind. They also perpetrate a more readily recognizable fraud with an even more horrific toll: wars. The video I’m posting below is a longer video than most have time for, but if you’ve never seen it, I hope you can make room in your schedule sometime.
I keep reading pundits who ominously portend the “death of the dollar.” BRICS nations are rapidly displacing dollars as the international reserve currency, they darkly warn.
I have two words in response. Horse and shit. Preferably spoken in together in succession with scorn in my voice.
Their mistake is arithmetic, but why bother with arithmetic when your guru status as a blogger demands hysterics?
Let’s see here. Other countries forsaking dollars (debt dollars, at that) means hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars will soon come “flooding back to the U.S.” and cause H’inflation, right? Right? Isn’t this conventional wisdom by now?
But QE is ending, meaning deflation, right? Throw in a little dark-complected signet and maybe a deflationary collapse, right?
Add them together and … and …. oh. Shucks. Interesting times aren’t that interesting after all. Hmm … Do you suppose somebody at the Fed actually got something right for once? I’m not saying the math is perfect, but maybe the almighty dollar isn’t in much jeopardy after all.
Stoneleigh and Ilargi aren’t the only people who’ve understood the mounting economic Tower-of-Babel correctly (in my opinion), but they’re the very best purveyors of that understanding I’ve found. I can’t begin to tell you how fortunate I feel for having found this blog. I would really hate living in a world where misconceptions reign, and only misconceptions reign.
But they’re completely misguided when it comes to climate change. Close to perfect, but not quite.
Obama is a wonderful example of a teleprompter-reading, selfie-snapping, fairway-chopping, political-campaigning professional confidence man (i.e. crook). He’s proof that CIA grooming and good dentistry are all it takes … wait for it … to be the President of the United States of America (all rise, throw your hats in the air and cheer). Face it, had his front teeth rotted prior to 2008, maybe while doing hard time for smoking marijuana (like half our world-record prison population), he’d have had as much of a shot at the White House as most crack addicts do. People elected his smile, not his character. He richly deserves an Academy Award or a spot in a glossy dental ad, but certainly not a Nobel Prize, much less the Presidency.
Nobody is bright enough, much less busy enough, to run a country from the top, and Obama appears to do it without much effort at all. In other words, Obama is NOT running the country. He’s taking orders from more industrious types in the background who actually spend more time on nefarious plans than they do with posing.
POTUS is not a position anybody should waste time voting for. It’s more akin to Head Boy in a grade school setting or Queen for a Day on 1950’s television. It’s a cardboard cut-out, a smoke screen, a ruse, a lie. This country’s government is a sack of flaming shit on the doorstep of the electorate, and the electorate is dutifully stomping on that sack to put the fire out. Okay, bad analogy, but what I wanted to say would probably land me in jail.
Ilargi just correctly told us who runs the country (as if you didn’t already know by this time). In fact, they run the world. They cannot and will not be prosecuted when accomplices like Holder (and soon, Big Sis) prioritize bogus race issues and clandestine gun running to Mexican cartels over justice for white collar banking crime. (Are there still lamp posts in most major cities, or did the banksters make sure those disappeared long ago?)
Ebola is the only possible solution, and it’s a long shot. Pray it takes this criminal class down with the rest of us. From what Ilargi has written lately, it appears certain they’ll handily survive a long overdue, epic deflationary collapse. All that’s left is natural causes, even if the allegations of some strains of Ebola being GMO are true.
Stock up on food, firearms, ammo and Chlorox. And booze. You’re gonna need a whole boatload of booze.
Essays like that are what keep me coming here. A solid synopsis and analysis written from an edifying perspective. Nice.
I sincerely don’t know whether I’m correct or mistaken with parts of what I’m about to say, but here’s how my little mind has things stacked up. Any and all guidance from the better minds here would be appreciated.
More than determining which set of tyrants will rule them, Scots are determining whether to remain with the British pound, migrate to the Euro, or even to issue their own money supply through a state-owned bank (though that last option might just be wishful thinking). That tells me that the whole populist / independence thing is just another “democracy” smokescreen being used to hide the fact that this referendum is about:
1. The pound versus the Euro
2. Westminster vs. Brussels
3. Who gets rights to the oil profitsAfter a yes vote, power players resting quietly in the background will move into the vacuum and take control, and if Scots find greater freedom as a result, it will only be in trivial ways. Steal the meat of the country and throw the citizens a bone.
The American “Declaration of Independence” – – the document itself – – was perhaps the most important product of the American Revolution, as it naturally led to the U.S. Constitution, which attempted to perpetually secure the independence of EACH and every American FROM HIS OWN AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. That is all apparently missing from the Scottish attempt at “independence,” and I shudder to think that they’re possibly choosing between the fire and the frying pan today.
Karl Denninger writes, “The reason the UK is freaking out is because if Scotland secedes all of the derivatives on UK sovereign debt trigger, and while that may not sound all that awful since they haven’t defaulted (yet) the protection evaporates and that triggering means that holders of said derivatives can force delivery on the derivative contract!”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229419
So the immediate aftermath of the Scottish vote might be considerably more “interesting” than most Scots presently realize.
I was immensely impressed with the first nine paragraphs of Ilargi’s essay today, right up through this one:
“Our choices then are clear. We can at this moment choose to prepare a smooth path towards de-centralization, or we can prepare to fight a thousand bloody battles over it. There are no other flavors available.”
At that point, I had to wonder who “we” would turn out to be, what this “smooth path” might consist of, and to doubt whether we were any closer to establishing that smooth path now than we were six years ago, thirty years ago, or even 100 years ago. Without that path, the only alternative is as Ilargi states.
The upshot I took away from this: it’s always best to prepare early, even if it turns out later that you didn’t need to. Just saying.
Separately from this, I seem to have picked up some misconceptions about the Scottish election. It’s a bad thing if Ukraine adopts the Euro, but a good thing if Scotland does? I’d like to see a brief explanation on how that can be so. Will Scotland become saddled with bailing out Greece and Ukraine later on? Bill Still seems to think Scotland will have an opportunity (with a yes vote) create its own national currency. Anybody know if he’s just hallucinating?
This Thursday’s Scottish referendum is increasingly reminding me of America’s Presidential elections. Pretty smiles, overblown threats, ad-hominem and big promises that turn out to be lies and misrepresentations later on. Does any Scottish voter really understand the ramifications of what he’s voting on? I have my doubts.
I’m often excoriated by those closest to me. Why? For pointing out the dishonesty of the power-mongers in banking, government and corporations. The response I’m given by family and friends is that they’d prefer to ignore these things. I’m called a fear-monger when I send links describing financial and economic peril. I’m called a conspiracy theorist when I send links on 9/11, chemtrails or staged events like Sandy Hook. I’m accused of anti-semitism for pointing out the role of Israel in fomenting genocide, murder and destruction throughout the Middle East.
I’m actually told: “There’s nothing you can do about it, so why waste your life worrying about it.”
Dr. Diablo, have you been taking lessons from my family?
> > “Yelling ‘Fire!’ without offering visible exits is really no help at all.”I have to disagree. Visible exits might appear later, like when the fire department hacks a hole in the wall. Are you saying that it would be best at that point for the crowd to be unaware of the fire?
In fact, I would submit to you that the reason all the bad things are happening in the world is BECAUSE of people’s lack of awareness (due to censorship, disinformation, misinformation, cover-ups, state secrets, falsified balance sheets, and other official ways they keep most of us humans in the dark). Solutions to problems come after awareness, not the other way around.
Raleigh:
Your hijacker comparison is certainly a good one, but the 9/11 hijacker narrative is a myth.
Also, I’ve changed my mind on the Scottish “independence” vote this Thursday. I’m now in the “no” camp, and chastened for feeling so sure of myself when it now turns out I didn’t know all the facts after all. I wonder how many readers here will also have a change of heart after hearing Farage speak.
Variable81,
The cornflakes tasted fine. Thank you for your comments.
I’ll chalk it up to conversational style, but I’d certainly understand if I started receiving a regular drubbing in response to things I write here. I get pretty shrill about climate change, for instance, and wonder how far I can push it before Ilargi kicks me out. We’re all here to exchange points of view. Hopefully everybody walks away with nothing worse than minor bruises. Anyway, speaking strictly for myself, occasionally I need a good, figurative roundhouse kick to the side of the head before I wake up and learn something important.
You’re right – – and I’ll take the liberty to paraphrase your central point – – short of using violence, individuals are impotent to effectively stop the rape. Some minds can’t be changed with reason, common sense or special appeals, and can only be “changed” by permanently “switching them off.” But even if a crafty vigilante terminated a hundred of the worst, it would barely make a noticeable dent in the status quo, so even violence has ruinous limitations. Especially when compared with the violence the enemy wields every day.
I have to differ with you, however, concerning introspection as a solution to the world’s problems. It’s all well and good to look inside one’s self and discover the nuances of virtue, but that will not serve as an adequate defense when they come to rape you again. We are dealing with crimes here. Criminals who prey on good people and thereby make a dishonest living for themselves. Leaving a wake of suffering and death as they mislead us into thinking things are under control.
That said, this will probably get my door knocked down in the middle of the night, but I’m going to urge you here to become heavily armed and mentally prepared to defend yourself, your family and your home (if you haven’t already). You don’t have to venture out and shoot politicians and bankers. They will eventually bring the war to you. You will learn the meaning of fear and panic in an unbearable and insane way if you’ve left yourself unprepared when they do. And if you’re defenseless and frightened, think of how frightened your family will be.
You’ve read it before – – it’s not that lengthy – – read it again. Solzhenitsyn knew firsthand, and he gave us the gift of his warning:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
We grew up here in the U.S. thinking we were free. Thinking the most powerful military in the world had secured that freedom permanently. Thinking freedom was a birthright, an entitlement, an unassailable given. We were wrong. Freedom requires maintenance. Freedom requires effort. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’ll give handsome odds that the future for many people will be shockingly grim. You snooze, you’ll lose. I wish everybody here the best. Of luck, that is.
A sharp old metallurgist once told me that there are two ways to run a mill (for processing ores into concentrates and tailings). You can run easy or you can run smart. No need for a lengthy explanation with examples; I think you get the point. More than wishing everybody good luck, I hope you all run smart.
> > “And even if you don’t believe in heaven, you should at least have an inch of decency left in your life, and that too would make it imperative that you stop these atrocities being committed in your name.”
The implication being that a loss (or absence) of decency attends atheism?
From where I sit, the world’s war criminals don’t appear to be zealous atheists. And George Soros is a Zionist Jew (born Schwartz Gyorgy).
Morality predicated on the promise of Heaven is NOT morality. Morality predicated on God’s word … is ISIS morality. Atheism and Satanism are essentially antonyms.
Continuing to nit-pick that quote, which I BTW agree with in spirit, how exactly can I stop atrocities being committed in my name? By praying? Or just as ineffective: by voting, writing my congressman, or carrying a sign in a protest? Might I anticipate Nuland and Yatsenyuk being swayed by my efforts in those regards?
> > “Too much power gets concentrated at the top – this is just as true for the US as well -, and the shit that floats to the top of that should never be trusted with that kind of power. They should at best be allowed to run rural Five and Dimes, and only under strict supervision.”
Of course, supervisory positions tend to attract the very people you’re trying to supervise, so even the Five and Dime solution won’t work. Maybe the problem isn’t “shit that floats to the top,” but rather political systems that feature a “top” to float to.
> > “The only thing we can do, no matter how large the setting, is set up a system, based on law, that prevents the wrong kind of people from floating to the top.”
Precisely what the framers of the Constitution struggled with, and failed to adequately safeguard against. As Karl Denninger points out, the thing that’s missing from the Constitution is an “or else.” There should be clear penalties for violations of Constitutional law written right into the Constitution itself. Any legislator trying to abridge the right to keep and bear arms would, for instance, be fined heavily and imprisoned for a few months. Any President facilitating a money supply issued by private banks would, for instance, be shot at sunrise. There’s your solution, but good luck trying to get the country’s “floating shits” to adopt it.
desertrat,
“They clearly aren’t aware of how much of the arctic has been burning lately, …”
Are you?
Growth In Five Year Old Sea Ice Since 2011Neither is methane a problem:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/news/2012/methane.htmlWhen the continental glaciers reclaim the Great Lakes and 95% of the human population has retreated to within 50 degrees of the equator, will there still be claims that arctic melting threatens humanity? Answer: Certainly, especially if there’s still big government money riding on that myth.
I vacationed on the coasts of California and Oregon back in 1968, nearly a half-century ago. Do you suppose I’d notice the rise in sea level if I returned next week?
I didn’t think so.
With respect to the last two articles linked above, isn’t this is just more fear-mongering over a non-issue?
“The bulletin suggests that in 2013, the increase in CO2 was due not only to increased emissions but also to a reduced carbon uptake by the Earth’s biosphere. The scientists at the WMO are puzzled by this development.”
Maybe this will shed some light on that ADMITTED puzzlement:
“Climate change could force more than 300 North American bird species out of most of their current ranges by the end of the century, according to a new study from the National Audubon Society. “Half of the birds of North America are at risk of extinction,” says Gary Langham, Audubon’s chief scientist. ”
We’re all at risk of extinction, so that’s just agenda-driven rhetoric.
Dubious predictions over the next century (!!!) notwithstanding, is he extrapolating the last two decades of “warming” that verifiably did not happen at all? Or is he talking about the prospect of our possibly being on the doorstep of another mini-ice-age? Either way, climate change can’t possibly be the culprit. Birds endure (and have endured since the Cretaceous) all the temperature extremes that make even human life difficult, in spite of our bathing suits and down jackets, heated and air conditioned living spaces, and ability to “fly south” year around. Birds are robust across a huge range of temperatures, or hadn’t you noticed that?
Why does any thinking person fall for this feeble bullshit? Just glance at the graphs, folks:
https://www.biocab.org/Carbon_Dioxide_Geological_Timescale.html
On the other hand, if you’re chomping on the bit to pay the oligarchs more in “carbon taxes,” then I think I finally see the motive behind your persistent misunderstanding. If one isn’t being paid handsomely to advance this line of “climate change” nonsense, why would one feel compelled to do it?
A two-minute video from the “money master” himself, on banking in Independent Scotland:
And for your consideration, an excellent eight-minute synopsis of climate change:
I still maintain that Chemtrails are the elephant in the room (and in the skies). But somehow they still manage to keep that a secret.
We do have a harbinger:
https://www.lochaber-news.co.uk/News/Black-swan-visitor-is-a-long-way-from-home-28082014.htm
The following interview nearly frightens me to death, as what Kotlikoff describes here would almost certainly kill me:
Bail-ins are just kid stuff, folks.
With respect to the last attached article:
The specific gravity of fresh water averages a little over 1.00, and the specific gravity of sea water is closer to 1.03. When fresh water runs off of continents, like oil, it thins out on the sea surface because it’s relatively buoyant. Unlike oil, it also mixes with the sea water. The result is an ever-thinning layer of fresh water (a relatively small mass) on sea water (a comparatively enormous mass) over an ever-expanding area, with an expanding salinity gradient and relatively short time before the waters become mixed. If you threw a balloon full of fresh water into a tank of sea water, most of the balloon would remain submerged (like an iceberg). If you then broke the balloon, the tiny emergent portion would immediately vanish due to gravity, and ALL the water would immediately share the same homeostatic level.
World’s Stupidest Humans Back At It Again
Remarkably, I still meet people who think Saddam Hussein orchestrated 9/11, that Oswald shot Kennedy, and that carbon dioxide jeopardizes life on Earth. Our attention more properly belongs on the deliberate changes to Earth’s climate being effected using chemtrails. But that’s all a big secret – – and even some “deniers” play along – – because the entire “global warming” business (now empires on both sides of the debate) hits a brick wall when we recognize that all the last decade’s global temperature data reflect anthropogenic geo-engineering, not CO2.
The comments and quotes in the attached video support Trivium4TW’s observations. Throughout America’s past, prominent insiders have lamented the immense, criminal power exerted by banking cartels over governments (and by extension, the media).
Ilargi, even National Enquirer gets it right once in a while. I’ve found that blind trust in any source of information is naive, so the search for truth is a bit like prospecting for gold. Gold is located in the places you find it. This might have been a more convincing link than the one I provided:
https://vimeo.com/groups/193158/videos/67207619Odds and ends:
— For anybody wanting to buy a boat and “go Orlov,” this might be useful:
Coast Guard Boardings and Your Fourth Amendment Rights, Part 1
— I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. The weather is being manipulated, and chemtrails are a chief component of that manipulation. How can anybody, and I do mean anybody, regard any temperature data from the last decade or more to be a valid indicator of the effects of CO2? If man is directly and intentionally affecting the climate with chemtrails, how can you dice out the effects of carbon dioxide on temperature? The whole global warming controversy stops suddenly in its tracks when people finally grow a brain and look up (at the sky).
— I’ve read that some people regard “denier” to be synonymous with “terrorist.” Which is obviously ridiculous because the deniers are the ones telling you to stop being frightened.
