Rototillerman
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One welcome feature that has returned: the article summaries on the main page have a direct link and count of the number of comments again. Yay!
Dr D: was that the same guy who said “If people understood the way that banking works in this country, there would be a revolution before the next morning?”
I feel like there needs to be a “Brexit for Dummies” post… I’m never quite sure what is being argued over when they refer to the “Irish backstop.” Have I got this right: once Brexit occurs, there has to be a border somewhere in a place where there currently is no border? It either has to be a border with customs controls between the two parts of Ireland (because Northern Ireland goes with the UK), or it has to be a border between England and Northern Ireland? And if those are the choices, why the hell aren’t we hearing the voices of those most affected, namely the two parts of Ireland? It’s all code words and phrases at this point.
The other big sticking point: is it that the UK currently is in the EU, and governed by a bunch of rules and regulations, and once Brexit occurs those no longer apply? And the UK has apparently done nothing to replace those rules, or harmonize with them, hence the disruption of trade, lorries waiting 48 hours for paperwork, etc etc?
Some of the causes of migration out of Central America are commonly known (as Tabarnick lists above: poverty, corruption, violence, drugs, etc), but often overlooked is the fact that the root causes circle back to those of us living in the center of the empire, sipping our lattes. Coffee bean prices paid to farmers in Gautemala have declined by roughly 2/3, making the country’s dominant agricultural product a money-losing venture. Here is one article, which I refuse to turn off my ad-blocker for; I think it is the same one I read in print last week, however, and that article said that middlemen are now paying only $0.85 per pound for beans, versus $2.20 some years back.
The culprit? Mechanized production in the Amazon basin, which is a two-fer: displaces rain forest and Central American jobs. Meanwhile, prices are the same as they ever were at the end of the pipeline in a Starbucks, which says that somebody, the middlemen or Starbucks, are making a killing.
I would expect David Rovics will be the one to write the definitive song of Assange. I listen to his podcast, and haven’t heard him sing about Julian Assange yet, but he has the chops and the ethos to recognize the importance of what role Assange has played in the world.
When I saw that headline about Trump and 9/11 my first thought was that it was a shot across the bow to certain entities that have been toiling lo these many months to bring down his presidency, as in “I know what you did or didn’t do in 2001, and I’m not afraid to go there.” Pass the popcorn, Fannie, this could get interesting.
Well done presentation, thank you for featuring it on the web site. It is non-partisan enough that I might just be able to convince some of my relatives to sit through it.
Interesting read, unsurprising conclusion. It made me reflect that it has been quite a long time, years at least, since I have seen the trucks carrying windmill towers and blades heading south out of Longview, WA to travel east on I-84 out to central and eastern Oregon. Perhaps that has all been built out as much as it makes sense to do, either because the good sites are all gone, or the subsidies ended. I used to notice the big trucks on the days I would cycle to work, since it would take 12 minutes to cross the bridge over the Columbia, and I would see a lot of the oncoming freeway traffic in that time from a leisurely vantage point.
“UK MPs Campaign to Have Donald Trump’s State Visit Cancelled (G.)”
Thankfully, there’s nothing important going on in Britain right now so they have a lot of time to waste doing this.
Dr. D, you’re killing me here with the deadpan humor! Thank you for posting your daily musings, they are well worth scrolling down to the comments section.
Maxwell Quest said:
The only thing his election has really accomplished so far is that it has provided the circumstances which required the DNC, media, and Deep State to come out from the shadows in order to fix a presidential election that got away from them, and failing that, an attempted coup via the Mueller investigation. All because Trump wanted to throttle back on the war machine. This has been an eye-opening experience for many, awakening them to the true nature of our supposed democracy.
This is really the heart of the matter, and it continually surprises me that so few people, even intelligent people, recognize this fact. Thank you for summarizing it succinctly, Maxwell.
Regarding deflation and the global meltdown: in 2011 the local metal recycling establishment was paying $220 per ton for scrap iron and steel. Two years ago they were paying $160 per ton. Six months ago they were paying $70 per ton. Last week they offered me an unbelievable $30 per ton! They paid me $2.81 for a pickup load of scrap fencing. All I can figure is that the bottom has dropped out of once-insatiable Chinese demand for steel.
John Muir (author of the book “How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: a Guide for the Compleat Idiot”) wrote a much lesser known second book, called “The Velvet Monkey Wrench.” A slim volume with a red cover, illustrated in the same style as the VW book, it is a manifesto that lays out how direct democracy might be restored to our North American continent. Given that it was written pre-Internet, Muir envisioned a future in which television screens would be outfitted with voting buttons, and all governance proposals would be submitted directly to the populace for approval or disapproval. The same thing for legal matters: citizens would tune into trials, and vote for guilty or not guilty. As I recall, he also felt that physical money would be replaced with a system of electronic credits. Beppo Grillo’s proposal for direct democracy via the Internet reminded me of this book that I haven’t thought about for years.
It’s been a long time since I read it, but I recall that the proposal that struck me as the most radical was the creation of outland zones: Muir felt that there would always be those in society who preyed upon others, or abused others, or stole from others. Rather than lock them up, and pay for their maintenance and food and such, he proposed that they should be banished to Zones where they were free to practice whatever they wanted. Killed someone? Fine, you’re going to have to live in a primitive, lawless fenced-off area of the Utah desert. No safety net, no laws, no niceties, just the rule of tooth and claw.
