gezelle
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Ouch!! Former ballet dancer truly feels your pain.
Take it easy as it is a maddeningly incremental healing process.
Everyone has their 2cents worth….I was helped with acupuncture. .
Your writing has been missed.Hidflect….is there a homogeneous age group that you saw or have all age groups started coming to their senses?
Raleigh, where do you fit the Klan as a whole and those nice, clean cut, crew cut white boys who brought us Oklahoma into your senario?
The global cabal has co-opted and defiled our air, water food supply, local and global economies in the name of JOBS, SAFETY, FIGHT ON TERRORISM. We acquiesced to TARP and QE circuses and watched everything crumble around us for JOBS, SAFETY, TERRORISM.
I will not, cannot, absolutely refuse to surrender my humanity, ethics and morality and shrug off the consequences causing this desperate migration.
I will not allow the .01% to profit on endless proxy wars for oil, commodity futures and morally bankrupt power grabs, which have added to the illusion of Western economic stability and “our way of life” and then say that the hundreds of thousands of lives deemed as collateral damage cannot be saved, cannot be witnessed, because of JOBS, WAY OF LIFE, SAFETY, TERRORISM.
I will not be a dupe or willing accomplice to this disgusting charade which seeks to commit shock and awe with my very humanity.
I will not sink to their level and I will not allow them to repeat Thatcher’s god awful ‘ there is no alternative’ once again as they eat us alive,Peace and love to you all.
May her doctor at some point in the future have an epiphany about life, suffering and death and dignity.The accompanying photo gave me quite a start. Mid 50’s thru very early 60’s I can attest to it being very much similar only one alphabet avenue away. The single difference was the absence of the scrap wood pile for heating. Some 20 years later there was a kerosene stove.
Always a very poor area, it was purposely allowed to languish and truly deteriorate thru the 80’s/90’s and then with the magic of urban renewal it was sold to cronies of the banks and politicians for a song and renovated. The area is now urban chic with matching rents which are eye watering and breathtaking in their scope and ridiculousness.
The rest of the urban theft was accomplished after 9/11 when more taxpayer money was handed out to developers and the rest of the area and Chinatown were handed over to the rentier class.
It will be interesting to see what happens now as it is all unraveling..so much of this is financed with highly leverage money and there are only so many Eastern European oligarchs and so much mainland China money avaolable to pick up the slack.oh, Nicole I fully realize that these cities are built for immediate profit both in materials and bribes across the board. My naivete is such thatI am confounded and disgusted by a world that builds massive cities for nobody and actively destroys existing cities and their populations all for immediate, virtual profit….and I realize that at some level up on the pyramid no doubt the very same people and corporations are involved in both actions.
As for intentionally and poorly built structures, I saw first hand what happens with this swindle when NYC taxpayers coughed up a tidy sum in 1960’s $$ for the buildings and venues at the Worlds Fair site. These were allegedly to be left as a great asset to the area in particular and the city in general. They crumbled almost immediately and had to be destroyed in less than 5 years.
This is one reason we fought the Olympics so hard here. Once again we were promised that we would be left with a wonderful selection of buildings and sites …paid for with our money..built by the same motley collection of bankers, politicians and crooked business entities.Chris M… I agree with your recommendation.
I really miss Charles Walters input in Acres.I can’t seem to wrap my brain around those phantom cities in China. I have seen the “new Detroit” and remember large swaths of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan allowed to stand vacant and decay pending insider deals between banks and politicians who stood to make fortunes with so called urban renewal, but entire cities built for no occupants at all confounds me.
Brand new metropolis’ for no one and entire of cities and their populations here allowed to decay and have their basic services and water cut off….by their govt and legal systems.Regarding ” the suddenly noticed ” bartering situation….. what a crock.
To my specific knowledge there has been a well developed and widespread bartering network of both goods and services on the islands as well as the suburbs and city centers for at least the last 5 years. This has been one of the only ways for people and smallish businesses to continue to survive at all.
I wonder why the media making note of it….could it be the mention of those dastardly people are once again avoiding taxes?? Imagine that, everyday people trying to survive the collapse
and chaos all around them and Reuters needs to mention the lack of taxes not being paid.
Shame on them all.Raleigh, thank you so much for the Santa Ben image…can’t tell you how much I laughed, which is about all one can do now reading the “news” these days.
Gravity, I think ” the institution ” is a very clever, subtle and necessary reframe of the situation.
The Troika was a very overblown and grandiose name implying an historical tradition of importance and gravitas…people of stature and power to be obeyed and venerated.
“The Institution ” reduces everything to a colorless nonhuman entity: a cold and impersonal ‘Thingness” devoid of humanity and run on a computer program rather than human understanding and caring…..the Borg as it were.
This is a nice step in altering people’s perception of TPTB and their power over us.These people are showing a bit of real sly intelligence and forward thinking, they are not the inexperienced, hapless duo the media lapdogs are trying to make them out to be.
Remaking this on a human scale as a problem for people and their communities not merely an accounting and bureaucratic exercise of the great and powerful.@ greenpa….I have also seen the change in people’s belief patterns that you describe.
However, while many of them believe that not everyone will make it, they always believe that they themselves will. I have no such certainties about myself.Raul, in the last 45 or so years I have written, phoned, voted , marched with 10’s of thousands of like minded people countless times, organized, demonstrated, been maced and arrested.
I have in the last dozen or so years seen civil rights, voting rights, labor law, health and safety standards, reproductive rights, environmental and resource standards, banking/ fiduciary standards decimated and eliminated…oh, yeah how many illegal, immoral and treasure sucking wars??? I forget now.
Let us not forget the NYPD, our Municipal Police force, who has just announced the formation of an “elite” trained group who will be equiped with machine guns to fight terrorist threats…and protesters. Yay!!!!!
Pardon me if I am a tad skeptical of our 99% abilities to make any direct impression, having been in demonstrations of phenomenal size which mass media deemed too unimportant to mention at all on the news..well, except a passing mention of the old hippies and anarchists who were socialistscommunistsnazislazyparasites, who hate the baby Jesus.
While I will continue to tilt at windmills, I can no longer take a face full of mace or pepper spray so I also have concluded that we need a second front to fight on.
I am not a consumer of stuff or any of the mass illusions pedaled by TPTB and have organized for local food security and sovereignty, barter groups and all forms of what used to be called counter culture living etc etc etc
I believe that the system will have to crash totally for any of what we have been saying and doing to have the slightest national or global effect.
Meanwhile I keep on, tired and mighty pissed off at the idea that we have all just been sitting on our hands.@ Chris m
Charles Walters was the man behind Acres magazine, a force for organic agriculture and resource preservation, for more than 30 years. I always enjoyed his monthly essays as well as his other writings. He understood true resource and human value vs the present day ethos of global bank and hedge fund “harvesters”
He understood the value of land, agriculture, resource management and human value for both the greater economic value as well as what has now become known as sustainability… of culture, health and basic living options.
Some view his ideas as quaint relics of an agricultural economy of another era which has no merit or place in the global economy. I do not and believe that we need to keep his ideas in mind as the US and EU economies crumble.Thank you for this. I truly struggle to wrap my mind around all of it.
It’s hard to understand this global moral/ethical debauchery without thinkng that I am the madwoman.
The world is truly losing an entire dimension, if it isn’t gone already.Koso,
It seems to me that any money sitting idle, sequestered in banks, as cash reserves or untapped credit not being has zero velocity. People cannot/will not spend what is not in circulation either through wages or loans , nor are they willing to start tapping into cash stashed under the mattress.
As Ilargi said, central banks cannot make the little people spend and have no intention of forcing the banks to let loose some of their ill gotten tarp and zirp booty.V. Arnold, I think you might have misunderstood Rapier’s point and perhaps the point of Raul’s piece.
We may know that other sources exist , and Raul has pointed out but a few of them, but mainstream media has become criminally biased, corrupted and at the behest of big businesses who own all the main media feeds in this country[ and the gov’t they own by proxy] are complicit in continuing the cosmic ignorance and subservience of their readership…. to serve their own miserable ends.
For most people, MSM basic readers, it is comforting and stabilizing to believe that there is only one truth…. the one media chooses to endlessly display, or ignore as MH17 coverage shows us.
To these people, all alternative info, if it is even noticed at all, is viewed as the real propaganda. Such is the coup for Bernays and his spawn.
The more outrageous and obvious the media’s party policy becomes, the more readily it is gobbled up and believed, to the detriment of us all. I stand equal parts vexed, amazed and outraged. Were do we go from here?I believe we are living in the perfect past that never actually was….a Warner Bros movie set constructed after WW II for the benefit of those industries and investors due for a major decline after the war time economy came to an end.
In the 70’s I listened to my coworkers as they embarked onmajor spending and investing sprees so they could hurry and catch up to the new middle class ..this tasty mirage they saw I front of them. It was fueled on the the bountiful overtime and newly available consumer credit. The boomers who are now so vilified really were stock players in a gigantic fake movie..
They and their children are in way too deep now to not keep up the pretense….even if they could see it as such.@ Cory….
I haven’t posted here in a while, but felt the need to respond to your posts about your dilemma after “doing what Nicole told you to do”
. Other than selling your house, what other things did you do in the list of things that were put forth? Did you downsize/modify your lifestyle and expenses [even modestly] … have a store of cash built up and handy…have additional sources of income or barter.. look at the larger employment/unemployment situation in your area and the country as a whole…enlarge your skill set ….extrapolate costs going up down the road????
I ask this as someone who lives in a very modest 1950’s house on an extremely modest 1950’s income in the North East…not a cheap area to live….I am also a landlord. I have downsized, consolidated expenses to a minimum, built extensive local contacts
Although my mortgage is paid for, since the year that you have sold your house and the beginning of the economic slide my RE taxes will be 35% higher next quarter, house insurance was rising steadily them jumped to 40% more after the hurricanes, floods in this area and other disasters across the country.
So, where would you be now if you were still paying your mortgage and these things occurred??? Did you sell and then rent for much less than your mortgage and related house expenses? Did you downsize your life along with shedding the house? did you take what ever you made from the house and keep it in cash and easily accessed?
Your rent has gone up.. yes I understand this. As landlord,. I was able to keep my tenant in place with a minimal increase due to my lifestyle and the skills and value my tenant brings to the table. People who bought to let on high mortgages and without other resources and skills have have to raise their rents…just as you would have had to shell out more cash if you still had your mortgaged house.
Heating, electric and water bills have risen 30 to 40% despite the fact that I have curtailed my usage BY THE SAME PERCENT! This winter was noted for it’s harshness, ice and prolonged cold. My roof, which needed to be replaced before the winter and for which I had already received a quote from a local roofer cost much more due to the fact that not only did the cost roofing material go up in general but the hugh amount of end of winter repairs in the area caused a shortage of supplies and drove the price up even further. I was still able to negotiate a good discount due to the fact that I used a local person with whom I had a working and community relationship and I paid in cash from my ready and easily reachable stash…… but it was still thousands $$$.
Why do I tell you this? Because if I still lived an “average” 2014 lifestyle and had a mortgage to pay as well as these extra bills I would be in straightened circumstances right now…just like a number of my neighbors…. just like you would be if you too were still paying a mortgage with no other lifestyle changes.Additionally I might add that it took me several years to effect my descent, starting way before the TAE came onto my horizon. You cannot read the words “sell Your House” and jump ship without any further planning and adjustments and you very never told to do so here….read the primer section again….in full….with an eye to the big picture it presents.
I live in a small 1950’s era house in a major city on what ammounts to a small 1950’s income when adjusted for inflation.
I have kept careful records of all my expenditures for the last 15 years.
Costs rose slowly until the last 4/5 when they really began to shoot up.
Electric, water and natural gas have rise 30 to 40 percent despite the fact that I have dropped my usage by 30 to 40 percent in all areas! The same with gas for the car. Insurances up 10 ish but RE taxes up 40% despite the corresponding 30% drop is housing prices here. Still manageable with out a mortgage and any other debt.
Food sticker price [ includes meat, eggs cheese, dairy flour, beans and veg] for all organic, and local [within 50 to 150 miles] is up 3 to 5% as is most other items. This is less tha supermarket prices for big ag food and ready prepared items, but I was paying more already for the type, origen and quality of the food already.
However, other than what I pay out to officialdom, as I spend the rest of my money at small family owned concerns for just about everything, butcher to shoe repair, pet supplies to vacation cabins, I get between 5 an 15% discount because I pay cash up front sometimes more.
I also am able to trade goods and services for my very varied skill set, so I am still doing ok.
Bank of the Backyard investments paying better than anyother to be sure.RE, has it occured to you that your overt, used car salesman-like approach is actually turning people away from both your posts and the Diner itself?
Your endless links and clips are a giant turn off and have caused me to simply skip most of your posts rather than bother to sift through the jabber for anything that might be of value….you seem to be of the mind that if you can’t dazzle with brilliance you need to baffle with bullsh!t…that’s really too bad when we need all the lucid thoughts that we all can muster.Stoneleigh, that you for another excellent post…as usual It gives me much to think about.
Oh , pulleeeze….Anarchists in brandspanking new, matching outfits, from their fashionable little hoodies to their matching shoes and socks!
Also note the identical, choreographed use of their nightsticks, errr, no make that Anarchists Weapons…..how adorable!….sheesh.
[By the way, we have a nice, big bridge here in Brooklyn that is for sale, if anyone is interested.]Edited to add that this is more an indication that TPTB realize that their OWS Problem is not being solved either by mass arrests or on site brutality. In fact, such actions might have even been garnering support for those nasty anarchist/old hippies/spoiled commie kids. They need to be blatanly discredited before more people start to listen and think for themselves.
What is needed is an action worthy of News at Eleven….Americans dearly love a well costumed, clear cut action film after all.TPTB realized after the extreme blowback from Kent State, that you can’t simply execute demonstrators….the public took it very badly, and that was in a long ago economy when the general population was fat, dumb and happy. ‘America was Number One’ and there were actual jobs, affordable health care and a somewhat stable economy. Anarchist Freaks were seen as the ‘other’ who were spouting anti America gibberish, and could be percieved as an easy target for the government to stigmatize.
With the state of the economy today more people are willing to listen to alternative narratives than before…what have they got to lose?What is needed are well staged, photogenic Acts of Anarchy to disparage the movement dispel this thinking nonesense….no doubt there will be more of these manufactured photo ops in the works.
A very ill friend of mine, living of less than, $800. SSDI, had a 3 year running battle with a hospital and later a series of collections agencies regarding a bill for HIS pap smear and hysterectomy!!
First a fight with the hospital, which after much “investigation” claimed that yes, they would concede that HE didn’t have these procedures, but it much be a coding error for something that he did have done. They couldn’t place him in the hospital within 6 months of the date of billing…so they investigated some more before saying yes it was indeed a mistake and they would take care of it. They sent it to collections.
Even though it is illegal to freeze accounts into which disability checks are deposited, the agency and the banks did so…causing checks to bounce and huge fees to accumulate.
After a judge told the 1st agency that this was not a justifiable claim and dropped the case it was then sold to another agency and it started all over again. More bogus claims, more illegal actions, more illegal bank fees.
He couldn’t have paid the bill, even if he had wanted this to just go away, as he is that poor, although I’m sure that’s what the collections people were aiming for.
Several long years later this was somehow resolved with both the collections people and the banks, but my friend now has to get himself to a check cashing place to cash his SSDI check and pay large fees for money orders to pay his few bills as he no longer trusts banks. Even if he is sick he has to get there anyway because Gov’t checks expire after 30 days and it takes forever to get a replacement. Without friends to literally hold him up he would be sunk.His experience reinforced my belief in living debt free and keeping a large stash of cash available.
Michael, Have you made any way to divert the water from your house in case your cachement system over flows in extreme rain/flooding? I ask this as I extended my down spot into my main planting bed some years ago which worked very well in moderate rain and drought years [it used to drain into the underground storm water system] but will now have to change my system as the last few years of unusualweather and fierce rains have made a swap out there…in an area with otherwise excellent drainage.
I regard to flourescent bulbs and mercury…since nearly half of US electic power is supplied from burning coal, which produces heavy toxic pollution, a good deal of which in the form of mercury, wouldn’t a bulb which uses a quarter of the wattage for a much longer life, be lowering the pollution levels? Does anyone have any figures as to the actual mercury used in manufacture and dispersement of these bulbs?
I’ve missed Nicole’s imput greatly, thanks for this interview link.
Nicole has a special way of illustrating both the large and small picture in such a way as to educate and inspire people without talking down to them.
She always manages to both clarify and illuminate myriad things, some that I may have read or thought about, but did not connect to each other or know how to follow through with had I connected them.I ‘m hoping when this tour is complete that she will resume her regular posts here.
If Greece reverts to Drachmas alone will there be food for them in the supermarkets anymore, or pertrol and diesel readily available for the average, unconnected Greek anywhere?
A local food supply, bartered and paid for as they go, will certainly help get them through the transition when no food /fuel is incoming from the rest of the world without Euro’s as payment.
Even the wealthy and well connected will find that their stash of Euros will dwindle and buy much les than they had expected.It might be interesting to see if this leads to the beginning of various CSA or food box schemes being attempted in the different local regions to supply not only basic produce but oil, olives, meat, poultry, local beans and pulses as well as bread from village wood fired ovens which still exist.
I think it still might attract taxes and overt rulings, but like Italy, when foolish EU food regs out of Brussels were crushing ancient food traditions and products, people found their way around the official grip.
I wonder how long it will take TPTB to intervene with a new ,and large, tax or levy on this type of transaction, if, indeed, they don’t make a new set of laws to end it all together. Chain supermarkets, many with their origins in Europe/Germany, will not allow their profit margin to be cut without fighting back.
The Greek people are to be crushed and people cannnot be allowed to have control over their own food supply and still be slaves to the system……riot and we cut off your food supply…. end of problem. A heads up to us all.This illustrates the need for us to get a robust, local food system in place everywhere else now.
Birdshak, I agree that the idea of middlemen means jobs, however the owners of the system, those making the hugh profits on the mark up of food post farm,
are either not the Greeks themselves or ,if they are, the profits being made are not remaining in Greece to any large extent, but being sucked up by foreign banks/investors. The money paid to the local farmers will remain in Greece and, more importantly, in the very local economy.@Reverse Engineer … Oh no! I’ve been outed!
Wow, ‘youse guys’ have to be the only people interested in my museings on neighborhood demographics.
This is an interesting place to watch global economic and political happenings at work…a heavily populated area of approx 5 square miles representing a bit over 130 countries/ethnic groups and speaking 120 plus different languages. Nobody leaves their country of origin if they can feed themselves well and avoid the local stormtroopers, so everyone here has a story.Since we are all packed in together, conversations will eventually start up and, if you ask the right questions, all sorts of interesting info comes out. The backlash of global unrest and economic turmoil starts to be evident here some months after they appear …. in the case of Egypt and Greece even sooner.
Fixed! Combination damaged hand and not being used to this teeny laptop keyboard make for some wacky postings….sorry!
The 1940’s draft results dispelled the notion that Americans did not suffer serious malnutrition during the depression.
The link above was the quickest found, but the sheer numbers of undernourished draftees and those who were too malnourished to serve were startling, even to those who knew that the population did not fare as well as the government and TPTB had insisted.
Not the mass deaths under Stalin, but a sobering statistic we need to heed. How much of our crop land has ben lost and how much of our food is now imported?? Large cities in the US are showing increasing numbers of severly undernourished children today.
iIt will only get worse.Scandia, “gezelle” is very much tongue in cheek!
It is a friends definition..gezelle the feminine of gezer….a title I proudly hold.
I can still double dig a garden plot and shovel the boatloads of snow we have here , just a mite slower than before.
It’s all good!I am in NY, in an area which has one of the largest large Greek populations
out side of Athens. In the past few years, as children and grandchildren “made good” and moved to greener pastures and their Mc mansions elsewhere, the population has declined somewhat……this has recently changed.
My immediate area has seen a very recent influx of older to very old new Greek arrivals. Local residents are bringing their relatives, who were formerly content to remain in Greece over, and in large numbers. They apparently cannot make it any longer on reduced pensions and soaring food and fuel prices.
After a trip to the local cheese and olive emporium today, a chat with the owner
revealed that the young people are still staying away despite record unemployment numbers in Greece because we have so little available in the way of jobs for the educated young ones, and even family jobs, ie restaurants and small businesses here cannot accomodate their sheer numbers. Some are choosing to stay and fight, others are heading to Europe, hoping for some employment and life. When I see them starting to arrive here. it will be clear that the end is very near for the status quo.Scandia, I never posted on the old board because of the close-knit community…I never felt like new voices were welcome. Why even the Troll With Many Names was part of the regular cast of characters.
I have been reading my way through Stoneliegh’s list of reccommended books from the post on price waves and many of the links gatrnered from Ash’s posts. The content and data are very important to me and my learning curve.“Well John Newton was a slaver before he got religion so a private equity investor could have the same insight into the flaws of his economic system”
The evils of the slave trade and supply side economics were well known and talked about in boths men’s times.
Each had acquired tidy fortunes that kept them and their families in comfort for the rest of their lives before Jesus and Lehman Bros. wrought their respective enlightenment. Newton’s spiritual fame and Stockman’s new literary and talking head reknown should not overshadow the fact that those voices who spoke out were right and should not be overshadowed by those who converted, when the situation no longer served aft them and they had made their fortunes.
