el gallinazo
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Reverse Engineer said “The Military operates at the behest of corporations it serves”
Well, don’t stop there. And who owns and dictates to these corporations? You haven’t quite scaled the pyramid with that statement.
One could well argue that the USA had been under their heel since before the time of Smedley Butler. And there are no Butlers left – he was the last high ranking American military hero. Now we just have the fetid likes of John McCain.
Even a person with one eye (there is strangely a word for that condition in Spanish – tuerto) can see that we are witnessing the end game of turning the USA into a total 1984 martial law society. It is like a rolling wave and they no longer even attempt to cover it up. Pillsbury Doughgirl Clinton paraphrasing Caesar regarding Libya. At least Caesar could heft a Roman short sword without a subsequent trip to the chiropractor.
With this rolling wave of totalitarianism, I am beginning to wonder if the lifeboat strategies are sufficient even to help to protect awakening people. Or will they wind up like the 10 million dead Ukrainian peasants and kulaks under Stalin’s collectivization – update read “corporate farms?”
Off topic – but not really:
Declaration of the End of the US Republic
Secretary of War Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Thugs Martin Dempsey informed the Senate yesterday that they were totally out of the loop when it comes to declaring war, that the USA is no longer a sovereign country, and that international organizations primarily controlled by the global banking cartel will determine USA involvement in wars in the future. But if the Senators are nice, Panetta will drop by and let them know what’s going down.
When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon declaring war on the Roman Republic, he declared that he now was the Senate. Though setting himself up as a tyrant, at least Caesar had not sold out to foreign powers.
Recommend in particular tonight’s episode of Capital Account with guest Paul Craig Roberts. With Citibank hiring Watson the Robot, CA introduces the Dimonator.
My last eight years on St. John, US Virgin Islands, I owned an 18 foot Cape Dory Typhoon Weekender, “the littlest yacht.” It is a great training boat, Alberg design, if you would plan to move up to a larger classic monohull bugout, and they can be found everywhere, even lakes, in good condition cheap. As with most fiberglass boats from the early 70’s, they are overbuilt and have held up well. They are trailerable, though the keel makes it trickier. Displacement is one ton and it includes a 500 lb cast iron full keel. They are too small for any sort of bugout, but as they handle like a larger vessel in many respects, a great training vessel and lots of fun if one can leave the doom at the shore for the day.
I second RE that Orlov’s recommendations for a boat are excellent. He, his wife, and cat are living on their boat year round in Boston Harbor. As one might expect from Orlov, he thinks outside the box, and has executed a lot of good ideas, such as how to insulate the boat for a Boston winter without being buried in mildew. He made a lot of classic mistakes at the start of his nautical adventure, and one should search for his earlier writings on the subject as well.
The article was really interesting. It goes to show you how little most of the economic journalists really know what’s going down and how it works. Unfortunately, I found it a little confusing also, and I did go over the original Sober Look article. (Nothing worse than a sober look 🙂 It appears from the article that the ECB does not credit the banksters directly but through the national central banks? Actually, it might be useful if you could give a step by step chart of how the credit and collateral moves and why the new net amount must inevitably wind up in the ECB excess reserves. Why it must start its fateful voyage on the ECB (now bloated) balance sheet it clear.
Regarding Greenpa’s comment:
CDS’s are, of course, a zero sum game until the house of cards defaults start going down, i.e. the writers unable to pony up the dough and welching on their bets. The whole area is totally secretive since they are OTC and the last thing the writers wish is for other banks to know how vulnerable they are, as was AIG in 2008. However, it does seem that the Too Big to Jail banks wrote a lot more CDS’s than they bought, and a lot were purchased by hedge funds actually trying to hedge. Might have to revert back to beer to wash down the popcorn when this deal goes down.
RE – I bookmarked your link and will take it around the block when I have time. Thanks.
The United States is in very rapid transition from soft to hard fascism. Though Stalin’s Soviet Union was not technically fascist due to a lack of corporate superstructure, it certainly was totalitarian, and most lessons between the two are interchangeable. Probably the greatest threat to survival via doomstead preparation is the lesson of the Kulaks in Russia and Ukraine (formerly the Ukraine) 🙂 One reason that you cannot divorce a survival strategy from a political, big picture understanding.
RE, would you consider the upcoming global economic collapse as a phase of the long term TPTSB strategy, or would you regard it as a very serious miscalculation? I really cannot figure that one out with any certainty, but not from lack of trying. The possible dissolution of the EU would be strong evidence for the latter opinion, as Master of the Universe David Rockefeller has made it quite clear that the consolidation of pseudo sovereign government into a small global number, perhaps four, is a necessary stepping stone to a one world government run by enlightened, technocratic bankers. The recent installation of this system into Greece and Italy certainly indicates a pathway for this possible game plan. Eventually, of course, they will have to use NATO thugs to reinforce it against populist revolution. The upcoming chaos in Europe may very well lead to the consolidation of power in classical Naomi Klein fashion – total jackbooted state. OTOH, they may have truly miscalculated and their plans may fall apart, even in the short term, through centrifugal forces, even prior to PO kicking in hard.
The “Reagan Revolution” was a Neocon, crony capitalist agenda which bearded itself with a few idealistic if misdirected Libertarians. Nixon made China acceptable for trade, and then Reagan started the packing up for the shipment of USA industry overseas, while rapidly increasing the national debt to collapse the Soviet Union, enrich the MIC, and make the USA the unrivaled bully on the block through technical enhancement of its weaponry, much of it deep, ultra compartmentalized black ops and still under cover. Clinton was a consolidation phase during which the banking cartel consolidated its interests through bankers such as GS Rubin in top government posts, culminating in the repeal of Glass-Steagall in its final days. . Stockman points out that the real collapse of the US began around 2000. W was in charge of preparing the country for a complete fascist takeover of all aspects of life through creating the Terraist bogeyman, primarily through false flag operations to replace the Soviet “threat.” Obama is W’s third term. None of this is an accident or an unfortunate concatenation of braindead events as the MSM and much of the alternative media would have you believe.
As to the debts, both “public” and private being unpayable, the last thing that Vinnie the Horse wants Joe Schmo to do is to pay off his loan. Just as long as he pays enough usury on it each week to prevent Vinnie’s boyz from paying him a little visit.
Reverse Engineer,
Welcome to the exalted club of “conspiracy factists” here 🙂 I find your comments very valuable and thought stimulating.
I listened to a radio interview with the Gambles yesterday, creators of the very amazing film, Thrive. After hearing them interviewed yesterday, I immediately paid my 5 bucks to lease it, and was happy at the technical quality of the transmission as I have a very narrow broadband where I live, nominal 1 Mbps. They refer to TPTB as TPTSB, the powers that shouldn’t be. I think I will adopt this in the future.
What we might give some thought to is that if TPTSB declare a “bank holiday,” then what is all that debit card money going to debit. They would be putting all their nuts, assuming they have any, in the functioning of the electronic system. Even a minor Carrington event would take down the monetary system or a single, strategically placed nuclear explosion in the ionosphere.
Also, only the Starbuck yuppies and the Amalgamated Union of Nerds with their handheld iGadgets are really ready to go cashless. The heat hasn’t been under the lobster pot long enough to get the teeming millions to go along without resistance.
And then we should give some thought to exactly how the recall of currency will go down. While other governments have pulled this shit, they have replaced the currency with a new paper currency, and the excuse is always that their political antecedents have allowed the base unit to reach such a small value that they need a new currency that divides it by a 100 or a 1000 (or perhaps 10 to the 8th 🙂 Are enough Merikans that brain dead or would this be the kick off to an even more radicalized resistance movement? Turning in your sweat and blood paper for electrons might not go down that easily. Inquiring minds would like to know.
BTW, bartering your JPMC acquired potatos (I prefer the Dan Quayle spelling) for vodka with your local bootlegger would be a nifty idea. Keep the wheels of industry spinning.
Haven’t got one for several years, but ironically enough, Postal Money Orders are a great way to convert your disreputable cash into a responsible looking document. They are much cheaper than at a bank, and the PO doesn’t even take your name. Just money on the barrelhead. Hope that hasn’t changed. Since your name does appear on the order itself, and they eventually wind up back somewhere in the PO system eventually, guess they could trace them to you if they really put their minds to it. But not to worry. We’ll all have RFID chips implanted in our nostrils shortly.
“A logo that looks as good on a smartphone app as it will inevitably and eventually on a T-shirt, and all other places we can see fit to fit it on.”
Don’t forget the boxer shorts.
Nassim
“Can someone please tell me about the gold crash?”
When a global market drops 5% in a few minutes with no obvious cause, such as the outbreak of a major war, it becomes interesting. What word or phrase would you find inoffensive for this sort of event? Flash drop?
Tao Jonesing
Interesting point. In the USA, bank reserves held in the Fed have their own special category, MB. In the UK they throw them into MO. Never realized this until your comment sent me to Wiki. Of course, the Fed is not printing, and Helicopter Ben is not sprinkling those Franklins onto the teeming millions like Santa from on high. Most of it is going into the black holes of bank balance sheets, and then right back to the Fed. The little that does escape into the real economy keeps up the coke prices for the bankers or is used to speculate on commodity futures. Blow and commodities are the two major areas where it results in price inflation. Of course it is also holding up the bogus stock indexes, but how much of this is escaping into the real economy? It was released yesterday that the Israeli Central Bank intends to invest 10% of its foreign reserve currency in US equities or indexes. Of course, the Fed is prohibited from doing so by law. Guess they needed a favor.
Seychelles
Food for thought. Guess that’s why they call it a downward death spiral.
Riesterm
I recommend that one has three banks, if possible, tied into td.gov, and one of them being a credit union would be excellent.
Burgundy,
I agree with you in principle. But the purpose of this blog site is to increase your odds of making it to the next change. And holding on to your savings for an extra year or two over having them expropriated would probably increase your odds. The timing of the collapse is not written in stone. I can’t believe that TPTB have kicked the can down the road for 3.5 years and counting. Besides, everyone’s milage will vary. A strapping young lad with a BA and living in Dad’s basement with a $100k student loan should have a different strategy than a 65 year old buzzard whose family thinks he’s a whack job.
Bluebird
I’ll clean my floor but I don’t do Windows. But it sounds to me that your browsers are set to reject the cookies that td.gov is planting on your hard drive so their computers will recognize it. I would go into the browser settings and “liberalize” the accept cookie preference or at least see how it is set. If by chance you have a Mac running something under the new Lion, I could give you more details. Td.gov is geared to run on computer interaction, and it does appear that they are understaffed with human support, so one should take as much care as possible to make your computer relations smooth. Reports back to me do appear that once you actually get a human there, they are friendly and competent.
Hey Swami,
I don’t follow the presidential crap either other than maybe see what effect Ron Paul appears to be having on the mass perceptions. Regarding TV, I just got cable in Mexico, but I use it mainly to watch the Simpsons in Spanish. Seriously, I never watch the news on TV. The cable is just a tool to improve my understanding of spoken Spanish, my weakest suit. I did download the RT daily half hour news for the first time today, but haven’t watched it yet. Thought I would take it around the block. Their half hour economic Capital Account, posted to youtube about 7 PM EST kicks ass. I am trying to correlate Lauren Lyster’s neckline with the S&P500. Today was a plunge.
Ron Paul may run as an independent since he is not running for Congress any more. The latest Rasmussen poll says that he would beat Obama by two points among registered voters. If he ran as an independent, it would probably throw the election into the House, as no candidate would probably get a majority of the electoral college. I would like to see that happen as it would just serve to invalidate the process that much more. But the ballot control is so rigged that anything could happen as long as we wind up with a globalist stooge as POTUS. The one thing I would take odds on is that Paul will never make it to the oval office even if he had 70% support. But they are more subtle and sophisticated now than when the Kennedy’s were causing problems.
It’s probably good that Paul is so old. Any movement has to be built on ideas, not cults of personality.
Great article, Ash. I have held a seething contempt for Sachs since Yeltsin put him in charge of stealing everything from the Russian people in the 90’s. I’ll take a Cheney or a Rumsfeld over these pseudo-progressive creeps like Obama or Sachs any day. At least you know exactly what you are dealing with. They are wolves with wolves’ fur.
But I disagree that said pseudo-progressive creeps don’t know the truth about wealth extraction. Like Bernays and Goebbels, they know the truth, but consider it their job is to turn it on it’s head. You know, the big lie repeated ad nauseum. Now we have electronic devices to pound them into our heads incessantly. You give them too much charity.
As to Nietzsche and Christianity, I would only agree in terms of the institutionalized churches whose main job is also wealth extraction, both for their bosses and for themselves. Jesus would not have nice things to say about them.
As to YesMaybe’s strange comment, I heard that Francis Drake was also a woman 🙂
Hey Swami,
The Onion was both satire and truthful. The world has gotten so weird that this is now possible. The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were both determined by electoral fraud, but as Obama has demonstrated, it didn’t make the slightest difference regarding national decisions. Gore is a complete globalist hypocrite as is Kerry. One could regard Obama as W’s third term. Perhaps our friends in Sweden will give him the War Prize next year. He could use it as bookends with his Peace Prize for his personal constitutional library, now a historical relic.
The Onion serves the roll of the jester in feudal courts who can spurt out the truth about the king because everyone knows he’s nuts and not responsible for what he says. They often lost their heads anyway. Things have reached the point that the truthiness at the Onion and Jon Stewart is much higher than MSM news. I couldn’t even tell you who the anchors are on any of the big six networks. They are all clones anyway.
The fact that you feel compelled to divide media up between “truth” and satire indicates you might be able to use a little reality rework.
Regarding the PM crash yesterday, I assumed that it was connected with the Bernanke hearing. I haven’t watched it yet or read about what he said. Assumed he threw cold water on QE 3. The markets are so overleveraged that they have become junkies on ZIRP free money and monetization. And gold is now mainly tied at the hip with the S&P500. This is odd and I assume that it is because the price of both is determined by the liquidity and leverage available.
Today’s Capital Account was really exceptional. Laid it all out with Corzine and Dimon. They are playing hardball.
Nassim
I agree with everything you say. But just to point out that they can freeze your account in any financial institution such as a bank or a money market just as easily as in td.gov. Td.gov is marginally safer regarding seizure as at least Corzine and Dimon can not personally steal your savings and the treasury has to think twice before screwing with bondholders at the risk of foreign currency flight. As to a minimum of 10% each in bills and PM’s, agree with you totally. The trick is finding a safe place for it. Silver is easier to use as currency than gold, but gold is a lot easier to move around.
Regarding the danger of a forced extension of maturity of Treasuries as an earlier commenter raised. This is equivalent to a default. That is what all the hoopla is about with the upcoming Greek default triggering CDS’s. Some of the Boyz are maintaing that if it is voluntary (as in I make you an offer you can’t refuse, Mario), then it is not a CDS “event.” However, in relationship to having your savings parked at td.gov, a maturity extension is part of the end game, and there should be quite a bit of warning before that happens. That is why short term is good. You can get out at face value when the posse is coming around the corner and not have to sell into a seething secondary market.
Vulcanelli,
All of Seychelles advice is good. The last thing you want to do is transfer funds into a bank that is wobbling on the edge, as it may be the last thing. Since wire transfers from td.gov to your bank are without charge, don’t transfer more than your bank will let you pull out in currency. The less time your money spends in the bank, the better. Consider it to be a three minute egg.
Also, note that the default of what to do with your money at maturity is to send it back to a bank, so whenever you put in for an auction purchase, be very careful to direct it to C of I upon the maturity. Along with the famous cash in a creative spot, I keep a little in C of I all the time. With 13 week T-Bills so close to zero, it doesn’t make much difference except that having your money in actual bills may be marginally more secure.
Glennda,
My best guess is that you were in a signed out status when you tried to unsubscribe. Try signing in and then unsubscribe. Let us know how it works out.
Joanne:
The original Tea Party supporters had a lot more in common with the Occupy movement before it was taken over by the Koch Suckers. Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake radio was an activist in the early movement and quit when it got co-opted by the fascists.
From my experience of a year in Argentina, the populace ten years later did not look back in gratitude toward the banker controlled politicians when their accounts were frozen down to a withdrawal trickle. People in the USA also still regard their money in the bank as their money. How childish of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKsMnAM8vk
My feature was picked up by the Business Insider blog on the front page. I found the comments on TAE to be both brighter, more circumspect, and “more wholesome” than BI, and am I am glad to be part of this virtual community.
And I am not positive that HI is impossible in the near future, it just seems much less likely to me. I think that the game plan of the CB capos right now is to aim for “moderate” inflation to reduce sovereign debt and bail out the banks. While Uncle Ben says he would like to see 2%, he is of course a pathological liar and is probably aiming for around 6 or 7%. But so was the Bank of Japan in the early 90’s and look how successful they have been. They have had over 20 years to circle down the HI drain with their massive QE and ZIRP. As a matter of fact, they are printing like crazy in order to keep their currency worth less than 76 to the dollar.
What all the goldbug hyperinflationistas claim (and I am not anti-gold; I just don’t see it as a panacea) is that the central bankers will hyper print to save the banks which will lead to HI. This reminds me of the old Vietnam War saw, that we destroyed the village to save it. When you point out that HI will certainly not save the banks, they fall back to the position that Ben and Mario and their puppet masters are too stupid to know that. I, for one, certainly do not think Ben and Mario are stupid. Scumbags yes, but not stupid scumbags.
But Yogi, certainly the greatest American philosopher of the 20th century, summed it up with:
Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.
The BI guys always refer to Weimar, but there were a lot of other things going on in Weimar. First you had alternate currencies including the Dollar and the British pound banknotes floating around, and this changes everything compared to a HI where this is no alternate currency. Same deal in Zimbabwe. Reverse Engineer points out in an excellent comment that this hasn’t happened since the collapse of Rome. And that was much slower. As with size, speed does matter 🙂 And Weimar had a vengeful purpose to devaluating their currency as they wished to pay off their war reparation banksters in toilet paper.
And I don’t mean to imply in my article that maintaining the purchasing power of savings is the primary focus for surviving the apocalypse. However, if one is officially in old age and/or has physical or medical problems that make the likelihood of physical, backbreaking work to be productively unlikely, and have accrued enough savings that they would have seen one through to the grave in less larcenous times, then paying special attention to this aspect of the apocalypse may have its advantages.
Joanne:
The original Tea Party supporters had a lot more in common with the Occupy movement before it was taken over by the Koch Suckers. Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake radio was an activist in the early movement and quit when it got co-opted by the fascists.
From my experience of a year in Argentina, the populace ten years later did not look back in gratitude toward the banker controlled politicians when their accounts were frozen down to a withdrawal trickle. People in the USA also still regard their money in the bank as their money. How childish of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKsMnAM8vk
My feature was picked up by the Business Insider blog on the front page. I found the comments on TAE to be both brighter, more circumspect, and “more wholesome” than BI, and I am glad to be part of this virtual community.
And I am not positive that HI is impossible in the near future, it just seems much less likely to me. I think that the game plan of the CB capos right now is to aim for “moderate” inflation to reduce sovereign debt and bail out the banks. While Uncle Ben says he would like to see 2%, he is of course a pathological liar and is probably aiming for around 6 or 7%. But so was the Bank of Japan in the early 90’s and look how successful they have been. They have had over 20 years to circle down the HI drain with their massive QE and ZIRP. As a matter of fact, they are printing like crazy in order to keep their currency worth less than 76 to the dollar.
What all the goldbug hyperinflationistas claim (and I am not anti-gold; I just don’t see it as a panacea) is that the central bankers will hyper print to save the banks which will lead to HI. This reminds me of the old Vietnam War saw, that we destroyed the village to save it. When you point out that HI will certainly not save the banks, they fall back to the position that Ben and Mario and their puppet masters are too stupid to know that. I, for one, certainly do not think Ben and Mario are stupid. Scumbags yes, but not stupid scumbags.
But Yogi, certainly the greatest Zen philosopher of the 20th century, summed it up with:
Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.
The BI guys always refer to Weimar, but there were a lot of other things going on in Weimar. First you had alternate currencies including the Dollar and the British pound banknotes floating around, and this changes everything compared to a HI where this is no alternate currency. Same deal in Zimbabwe. Reverse Engineer points out in an excellent comment that this hasn’t happened since the collapse of Rome. And that was much slower. As with size, speed does matter 🙂 And Weimar had a vengeful purpose to devaluating their currency as they wished to pay off their war reparation banksters in toilet paper.
And I don’t mean to imply in my article that maintaining the purchasing power of savings is the primary focus for surviving the apocalypse. However, if one is officially in old age and/or has physical or medical problems that make the likelihood of physical, backbreaking work to be productively unlikely, and have accrued enough savings that they would have seen one through to the grave in less larcenous times, then paying special attention to this aspect of the apocalypse may have its advantages.
First, let me express my admiration for the quality of the comments here on TAE. It makes the writing feel worth while. The article was also picked up on the front page of Business Insider (who knew?) as we New Yawkers would say. Haven’t read their comment section yet.
Franny. Yeah, they changed their security, and I feel for the worse also. I liked the old matrix card. A commenter here brought it up last month, I forget who, and he mentioned that you only get two strikes before they send you back to the dugout, and you better have that second cup of coffee before you log on. I also recommend that you keep all your td.gov security stuff written down exactly in a safe place. (Not on your computer. To large a chance that it can be commandeered over the broadband). Td.gov is a bit “stricter” than most “savings institution when you screw up your security, but most of them revoke your rights after a certain number of strikes.
Here’s a short story. When still in residence in St. John, I arrived in Cusco, Peru, and as usual, came down with a mild case of altitude sickness for three days (Zero to 11,250 feet in half an hour). My bank, Scotia, had branches all over Latin America, though none in the 50 states. I found one of their ATM machines, but I had my PIN in my head (which wasn’t hitting on all its cylinders) as a four letter word, and this machine only had numbers on the key pad. Well, I screwed it up trying three times and it ate my card. It was a Sunday when all the banks were closed, and I had to meet my girlfriend in Puno that night. Fortunately, I had enough dollar FRN’s stashed on my person to get by, as well as a credit card (which charged a usurious rate to extract cash). Two weeks later, I returned to Cusco, and went to the Cusco office of Scotia there. Interestingly, no one spoke English (well it’s a Canadian bank) though there must have been more than 20 staff, but I managed to get my question posed in my mangled Spanish. The manager pulls out a stack of ATM cards from his draw, flips through them, and there is mine. He says that he should have sent it to the head office in Lima long ago but they were running behind. But this is not the end of the story. The card no longer worked. Bank offices in Peru couldn’t trace the problem. I called Scotia in St. John by telephone, and they could not find any hold. When I got back, I tried the card in the cash cow outside the Scotia branch and it worked fine. The next time I was on Tortola, British Virgin Islands and about 5 km away as the albatross flies, it didn’t work. So there was some sort of international hold that didn’t apply locally. I finally solved the problem by demanding a new ATM card with a new number.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words.
As to:
“She flinched more when ol’ Bush jr tried to give her a shoulder rub.”
I condemn her for many things, but that is not one of them. I too would prefer the touch of an honest German brew on my skin than the hands of a cognitively challenged mass murderer.
Jal,
i would be very careful not to take on other people’s failures as your own. We all have our cup full of our own individual shortcomings to have the luxury to take on others. Wisdom in all its forms, if one should be so fortunate to possess a farthing of it, is a non-fungible commodity.
I highly recommend this Rant of the Tylers.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/no-itg-zero-hedge-would-prefer-not-regulate-you-either
SA wrote:
“I’m not quite sure what the benefit to society is to make these people’s life harder than it already is. Living for free will not be tolerated!”
Well, it will make the position of being a WalMart greeter feel like a great privilege. Good for ovine endorphin levels.
Reverse Engineer
I found your comments about debt and surplus interesting. However, never underestimate the ability of the deranged and ruthless to squeeze blood from a stone. I lived on the Island of St. John in the Caribbean for 13 years. It was the site of the first Caribbean slave rebellion of 1733, the island being a possession of Denmark and a sugar and rum producer, a hugely profitable industry at the time. At the time of the revolt, the average lifespan of a Danish, white indentured servant was six years and an African born slave, 8 years. There is a wonderful book about the revolt written by a guy named Anderson called “The Night of the Silent Drums,” a local classic. It lies somewhere between historical fiction and history. By the time I read it, I was very familiar with the tiny island’s geography, and I followed the events with my National Park Topo map. But the point I am making is that you can always extract a surplus from slaves if you work them to death.
pipefit – you a fellow plumber or a gigolo?
I don’t think these huge deficits that the US government is running will continue much longer. IMO, they were necessary to try to counter the deflationary collapse while the bankers fine tuned their Stasi state. Obviously, it was also necessary in order to clean out the remaining wealth of the middle class which was primarily transferred to the 0.001%. The greatest worry of the NWO is successful rebellion from the remaining middle class, the military, and the para-military. They don’t want a total austerity hammer to drop until they have their ducks in a row and have gotten the sheep acclimatized to having the genitals of their children groped by thugs. When the hammer comes down, the deficits will become much less, the new budget being mainly foreign wars and Battlefield USA war.
Also – re the Glennjeff delete comment.
Yes, not having a proper delete function is a pain. But there is an edit function. My suggestion as a workaround is if you make a comment you wish to retract, then edit it down to nothing.
Jal – regarding refreshing the comments, why not just click the refresh icon on your browser tool bar. Or maybe I don’t understand the problem properly. There are comment pages that don’t give one a full standard browser page with upper tool bar. But there is usually a directory scheme with links somewhere on that type of page, and one can refresh by clicking the last level directory.
Re BBCode – Wikipedia has a useful article under that heading. However, I regard not having the emoticon bar not functioning on an automatic click insert after selection as ridiculous if Joomla designed it that way. That is what computers are for. Hopefully something is not “turned on.” Same goes for the attachments. I consider them “broken” as they are with a somewhat tedious workaround.
The Open Comments box in the main forum has been reduced to only permitting one thread in hopes that this will replace the old Blogger style comment format for the nostalgic 🙂 I would suggest that everyone comment against features very much on topic, and use The Official Thread for Open Comments for everything else. The cats must herd themselves to some degree to make the comment sections work.
Reconstructing the site is a huge project and will take time to improve, so patience is warranted. And Ash is doing a yeoman’s job, trouble shooting and currently writing the majority of features with Ilargi and Nicole in OZ. I think having absolutely all the comments on one thread like with the old format would be a mistake as TAE gets more commenters. It would really become a mess if it grows to say 500 comments a day. But shedding your old skin is painful – ask your neighborhood snake.
MR166
“I found it interesting that this discussion on debt slavery has turned into a discussion on drugs and jails. “
Huh? Part I was all about how the Jim Crow era used prisons as a form of slavery and how people in the deep north like MN are being throw in jail for not paying their debts. It didn’t “turn into” anything. That was the feature articles.
And over 50% of the dudes in jail now are in for victimless crimes such as minor drug possession without intention to sell. As people become more miserable, they will use more drugs, particularly alcohol, and as most of them are illegal, it will give TPTB more coercive leverage. And as the prisons are increasingly sold or leased to private corporations, these corporations want guarantees that they will have enough inmates to make them profitable. The US has by far the highest per capita prison population of any country in the world.
MR166, let me commend you for never using a recreational drug. It’s not easy to go through life without even an occasional beer, coffee, or cigar. I know because I gave beer up a couple of weeks ago becoming just too damn fat and my pants wouldn’t stay up. And I kicked coffin nails 23 years ago and counting. I had nightmares for years of lighting up a cigarette which would wake me up in a cold sweat. But if I am ever tempted to use a recreational drug, which is very unlikely as I live where I do at the forbearance of a government of which I am both a non-citizen and useless eater, I will check in with you to make sure that it is “used properly.”
I think whether Friedrich has a job on Tuesday depends on how he votes on Monday. If he votes with Merkel, then I think she will ignore his speech. The Boyz who pull Merkel’s strings will not let the EMU go softly into the night. Like how can they have a one world government (their wet dream) if they can’t hold western Europe together. If they cannot dazzle the sheep with their footwork, they will use the military. What we need soon is a really good war – none of this proxy shit.
On topic:
!0 minute speech by Nigel Farage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7fnlRS_0xQ
Also my pick for Oscar: category – con job
Dig Dirt wrote:
“Can the Upanishads help me El G?”
I read them in my 20’s and I’m still fucked up at 65, so what do you think?
Yapeen or anyone else
Can anyone see how to download this series (left behind) as an mp3 file in order to move to an iPod? I can just stream it.
Re Argentina,
While the International Mafioso Fund did not take a hit on Argentina’s sovereign debt, the privately held bonds certainly did which was the majority. That also will be similar to the upcoming Greek fiasco. Some of these bond haircuts are still being negotiated (many in the hands of my fellow vultures), and as memory does(n’t) serve me, the average haircut was about 65%. Unfortunately, AR is back in the hands of corrupt politicians run by the banking cartel. They are currently buying up Patagonia as well. But I feel sorry for left leaning Christina (la presidente) as the local papers reported that she lost €100k in a gym bag when last in Europe. I guess that the $10,000 undeclared limit only applies to the axis of evil heads of state.
As the Firesign Theater spoke on their classic album, Don’t Crush that Dwarf (in relation to soiled sheets), “Nothing’s on purpose, Ma’m.” Ash, you seem to be rebutting that observation. You must be a Conspiracy Factist. Excellent post.
Scandia, there was a small class in feudal Europe, between the serfs and the aristocracy, known as the freemen. Many were in the craft / guild systems. The aristocracy found it difficult to nurture high technical skill levels within the serf system itself, which was more geared to agricultural peasantry. However, this devolved into its own sort of slavery with the apprentices as virtual slaves, and the journeymen still under the sway of the “master” guildsmen. When there were enough masters in a city or town to allow honest competition for the services of a journeyman, then the daily wage was set by a free market, which allowed some freedom to the journeyman class. The term “journeyman” comes from the French “jour” for daily wage. One way the masters could control this was by allowing only masters to employ journeymen and limiting the number of masters through political coercion. Since we appear to be headed back into feudalism, one might as well become more familiar with the details and your future place in it. BTW, the terms apprentice, journeyman, and master are still used by the North American plumbers union. My recommendation is to study to become a braumeister. This will be a field in demand locally after the serfs eat the Budweiser Clydesdales. That evolved state of consciousness, as discussed in the Upanishads as “the realm of the thirsty shitfaced,” is a real up and comer.
A very interesting voice from Argentina – Adrian Salbuchi
He is totally bilingual
https://www.asalbuchi.com.ar/2012/02/argentine-advice-for-greece-default-now/
Argentina 2001 was a test run for the NWO.
“All governments should understand that you either govern for the people and against the bankers; or you govern for the bankers and against the people.”
Scandia
Yeah, sad. But waking people up to the rape from the NWO is like changing the course of a supertanker. These people have had a life time of MSM BS filling their heads, and they have now turned it up to 11. But I would say that the NWO attacks on the freedom of the internet such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, all failing so far, shows how worried they are about it.
One might also check out the superlative ZH blogger, George Washington’s recent feature:
I don’t have a monopoly on tin foil haberdashery. But they are getting down right stupid with it. Take the Fast and Furious Dept. of Justice gun running to the Mexican drug cartels or the obvious false flag Iranian “attempt,” nipped in the bud 🙂 to zap the Saudi Ambassador via the Zeta Mexican drug cartel and a failed used car salesman pothead in Texas. Even the Onion couldn’t have thought that one up. Or the facts released at his trial last week, that government officials forced the underwear bomber on to the plane against the wishes of the airline. Or that Oberst Chertoff, formerly of Vaterland Insecurity, had already cut his personal multi-million dollar deal with the naked body scanner dudes while still in office. And the hits keep rolling on.
As to changing the topic a bit. The Open Comment section is not meant to be that unidirectional. It is meant to be a replacement for the former Blogger comment section minus Butthead. It could even become identical to it if people choose to make it that way on a single posting start such as this one, though I would suggest a restart when it hit maybe 200 comments. A couple of my friends who were avid TAE readers discovered that the virtual family of the old comment section was a prime reason for coming here, and there is no reason why we can’t get that part back.
