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Attention Deficit Dystopia
Submitted by James H. Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Apparently someone at the US State Department put out the fire in John Kerry’s magnificent head of hair, because he has stopped declaiming (for now) on the urgent need to start World War Three over Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula. In my lifetime, there has never been a more pointless and unnecessary international crisis than the current rumble over Ukraine, and it’s pretty much all our doing.
After all, we kicked it off by financing the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. How do you suppose the US would feel if Moscow engineered the overthrow of the Mexican government? Perhaps a little insecure? Perhaps even tempted to post some troops on the border?
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has engaged in a nonstop projection of power around the world with grievous results in every case except in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The latest adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been the most expensive — at least a trillion dollars — and mayhem still rules in both places. In fact, news reports out of Kabul on NPR this morning raised doubts that the scheduled elections could take place later this week. The country’s so-called Independent Election Commission has been under rocket attack for days, the most popular hotel for foreign journalists was the site of a massacre two weeks ago, and the Taliban remains active slaughtering civilians in the lawless territory outside of the Afghan capital.
Of course, even those dreadful incidents raise the rather fundamental question as to why anything about Afghanistan really matters to the USA. How many years will it take for us to get over the fact that Osama bin Laden ran a training camp for jihadists there? Right now you can be sure that somewhere between Casablanca and East Timor there are training camps for religious maniacs and thousands more casual meet-ups among aggrieved young men with testosterone boiling in their brains and nothing else to occupy their time but playing with guns. Are we going to invade every land where this goes on?
One part of our ever-evolving reality is that the global economy is in the process of cracking up. Despite the claims of one Tom Friedman at The New York Times, Globalism was not a permanent installation in the human condition. Rather, it was a set of transient economic relations brought about by special circumstances in a particular time of history — namely, a hundred years of cheap energy and about fifty years of relative peace between the larger nations. That’s all it was. And now it’s dissolving because energy is increasingly non-cheap and that is causing a lot of friction between nations utterly addicted to high flows of cheap oil and gas.
The friction is manifesting especially in the realm of money and finance. The high energy addicted nations have been trying to offset the rising cost of their addiction, and the absence of conventional economic “growth,” by borrowing ever more money, that is, generating ever more debt. This ends up expressing itself in “money printing,” that range of computerized banking activities that pumps more and more “liquidity” into “advanced” economies. The result of all that is the mis-pricing of just about everything (including especially the cost of borrowing money), and an increasingly antagonistic climate of currency war as all players vie for the supposed advantages devaluation — most particularly the ability to dissolve their own sovereign debts via inflation.
The finer points of all that are debatable as to eventual consequences but we can easily draw some larger conclusions about the macro trends. The global orgy of cheap goods and bubble finance is ending. Nations and indeed regions within nations are going to have to find a new way of making a living on the smaller scale. This is sure to include new arrangements for governance. The breakup of nation states is well underway and is moving from the margins inward to the political center — from the hopeless scrublands of overpopulated nations that will never “develop” to the increasingly sclerotic giants.
The USA is exhibiting pretty severe signs of that sclerosis in the demented behavior of its leaders in episodes such as the current unnecessary manufactured fiasco over Ukraine to the physical deterioration of our towns, roads, bridges, and all the plastic crap we managed to smear over the mutilated landscape to the comportment of our demoralized, mentally inert, drugged-up, tattoo-bedizened populace of twerking slobs.
In short, it is self-evident that Russians have an abiding interest in the Crimea and we have none, while both the material and cultural life of the US is in a shambles and much more worthy of our own attention.
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Fucking Gold......Grrrrr!!
Plenty more downside. $1275 before a proper bounce. We may even continue to test the $1180 lows. If it breaks, Goldman Sachs wins and $1050 is next. We will probably make a low in silver at $17 at the same time. Well... low for now. As long as the Comex controls the price, it goes where they want it to go. Double digit gold and low single digit silver is not out of the question if they want it to. And yes... you will get delivery at that price no problem.
Double digit gold....sheesh, somebody has his head up his ass
The only people with their heads up their asses were those that thought $50,000 gold was possible. While the price is controlled by a single entity that will never happen, particularly when it is in said entity's interest to keep the price as low as possible.
Double digit gold -- you have your head up your ass.
Fielding....you meant triple digit gold is possible, righto?
I wonder what this world would like like if gold was selling for less than 99 bucks an ounce.
But back to the article--I think he is wrong to be saying their were no grievous results to the breakup of Yugoslavia. It's just we never hear any news out of the place.
""except in the breakup of Yugoslavia"" -YEAH RIGHT!!!
"I wonder what this world would like like if gold was selling for less than 99 bucks an ounce."
It will be a world where a real tomato will sell for 1,285 old American dollars, about the same in Chinese yuan, or two ounces of gold.
If you have not already done so, go listen to Mike Rivero on RBN right now and please consider donating to the Republic Broadcasting Network. Today is their last day to make the grade. Please, the Universe knows you are there with a great big huge heart that has a pocketbook to match it. Will you please finally shift gears and make that magnanimous donation to save this truth telling network. Ben Swann just finished his two hours, and now comes Mike Rivero, then John Stadtmiller at 4:00 central time. Please do the right-up thing and donate now. Dig deep!!
http://republicbroadcasting.org/help-rbn-pledge-drive-rbn-monthly-expenses/
Also, for the financially minded folks here, Robby Noel and Jeff Bennett will be back on air after the John Stadtmiller Intel Report. These guys are a hoot to listen to, and they cover all things financial in the after market time.
http://republicbroadcasting.org/protecting-your-wealth-with-jeffrey-benn...
This is NOT an April fools tool shed errand, rather it is a chance to lay up some serious treasures in heaven where they will count for you the most. Please do it now. Donate as much as you can. The karmic return will be golden, and beautiful.
Bless.
Let me help you out with the membership drive. Republic Broadcast Network, is loose association of JewBashing, JewHating, Zionists are literally the devil, radio for every left/right/aryan/Duke inbred in Amerika. There, I fixed it for you, but I doubt that these many piker Neo-Nazis on ZH would cough up much.
Now that was a polite way of telling that fucker to stop with the fund trollling.....
the market will overcome the interventions eventually. Whether it is people waking up about the integrity and benefit of having sound money and thus everybody wanting at least some PMs and thus making the COMEX irrelevant, or the TBTFs devouring themselves as finally they all reach for the phyzz at once, the free market will ultimately win out. I agree for now that one can buy phyzz for not much different than the COMEX and London Fix, but that will end eventually. They can mess with the price for only so long because ultimately supply/demand and fundamentals like debt matter. I am counting my wealth in ounces not FRNs, and people need to be doing this.
Waiter Ill take two of whatever he's haveing, I want to get high as well.
you do at least mean TRIPLE digit...............correct ??????????????
Obviously triple digit... comes first.
What I am saying is that as long as the actual physical market does not set the price, any and I mean ANY price is possible.
Double digit's unlikely but yes, triple digit's easy. Plenty of propaganda and media hacks willing to explain why rising demand and currency depreciation justifies a lower gold price.
$1283... nearly to the first step.
Look at the way they toy with the price into the Comex close. If they are not stopped, this will continue indefinitely.
Agreed. They must be stopped. But who's going to do it? The whole System is a criminal enterprise from the top down.
The Fed has likely passed around to its favorite banksters the gold it stole from Ukraine last month, so it's selling and can make delivery for a while. Their access to silver is far more limited, so we could see some interesting moves there. It might be time to own a little of that Silver Wheaton again.
You are right. The deal was made.
Yes?
Harasho!
Yes indeed, society does seem to be falling apart. To paraphrase Yeats "Second Coming", there is no center left to hold.
Government remains in complete control.
That is why society is suffering.
Nobody is EVER in complete control.
True, there are people counterfeiting the official counterfeit money.
Still, government controls of all the land of earth.
Stupid is as stupid does. Along with self serving avarice.
Stupid, yes, but not 'incompetence'.
Criminal enterprise paying off in spades... for a few.
Japan is the US Federal Reserve's grand experiment in debt expansion.
Lets see how Japan does.
How it does?
Hah!
"Honey, does this diaper make my ass look big?"
The Financialization of American Economy = Death of Middle Class (that used to consume 2/3rds of goods/services) = Death of Real Economy
And the debt serfs lived miserably ever after.
The end.
An economy (and society) premised upon the continued ability of the middle-class to secure (and spend) ever-greater amounts of credit is doomed before it is even born. Financialization is just a (late) stage in the process.
"I am gravely disappointed. Again you have made me unleash my dogs of war."
The Humungus
That last paragraph is worth the read; thanks Mr. Kunstler.
A dystopia it is.
America didn't start out with this but here we are:
kak·is·toc·ra·cy (k?k??-st?k?r?-s?, kä?k?-)
n. pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies
Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/kakistocracy
kikistocracy?
It must be synonymous with democracy (or at least rhyme).
No one has ever called my tats bedizened before. I'm honored.
Technically, he was calling YOU bedizened with tattoos.
His writing is bedizened by virtue of the unnecessary use of obsure words :)
I have confidence that duplicity and self-delusion will help all REAL Mericans create the bullshit neccessary to see us through.
U.S. meddling in foreign affairs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_...
The latest adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been the most expensive — at least a trillion dollars — and mayhem still rules in both places.
The cost of those two wars is estimated to be $6 trillion:
The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Remember, when President George Bush’s National Economic Council Director, Lawrence Lindsey, had told the country’s largest newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, he had found himself under intense fire from his colleagues in the administration who claimed that this was a gross overestimation.
Consequently, Lawrence Lindsey was forced to resign. It is also imperative to recall that the Bush administration had claimed at the very outset that the Iraq war would finance itself out of Iraqi oil revenues, but Washington DC had instead ended up borrowing some $2 trillion to finance the two wars, the bulk of it from foreign lenders.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-wars-in-afghanistan-iraq-to-cost-6-trill...
Talk about wealth transfer
I "adopted" a soldier in 2003 just before the march North. I have pictures of 26 of his friends who never came home from their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some think of the billions and billions. I think of the young men and women lost.
I have a list in my head of the policy makers I shall gut-shoot if I should be lucky enough to run into them in my last years.
Not billions and billions, but trillions of our nation's wealth. That's leading to suffering, death and slow destruction at home. I count those lives as well.
It's not either/or. That's a strawman argument. All part of the same picture.
Last time I checked they were all volunteers.
And you 'adopted' one? Quite the ghoul your are.
...and the cunnies start with the reds. LOL so much for fight club.
Hey, google Samar Hassan you cunnies; why don't you adopt those that left her an orphan and murdered her parents? Look at her screaming, you cunts...
"I think of the young men and women lost." But only those men and women who volunteered to serve the Demonic Banksters and the power-mad Elite; I give nary a thought to the million screaming dead they murdered - 'cause imma cunt.
Yup, it's soooo sad when a Sovereign Nation is invaded and the invaders get wasted by men defending hearth and home - they should roll over and die, right?
"I have a list in my head of the policy makers I shall gut-shoot if I should be lucky enough to run into them in my last years."
Yea yea yea.
I'm sure you'll find them down at the Dollar Beer night where you hang out.
I want you to be clear here-you are a disgusting cunt. This isn't an ribald internet insult but a reasoned conclusion based directly on your post. You literally sicken me. And all those greens, wow.
Just testimony how this nation is irretrievably brainwashed, and lost.
That's why Pooty just has to sit-and-wait at present. Let Ukraine descend into chaos under Western orhcestration - he can pick up the pieces later this summer.
And that's a metaphor for the entire Western system. Russia-China-India wait in the wings for the sound of the crash. That's their cue to strut onstage.
It'll be interesting to see how the Western-centric UN responds, given the failure of the nation-state is ultimately the path to globalism.
I think the Western-centric UN is a myth, in that bold Russian moves have simply caught the UN in a temporary regression to its Western slant. Ban Ki Moon is a Western boot-licker too - that has its effect, temporarily at best.
As the failure of nation states takes its toll on the heart of the over-developed democracies of the West, I think the UN's core Eastern slant will reemerge. That might take a few years, but it is inevitable, because failure of the Western democracies is imminent. We're already far down the slippery slope, way past the point of no return. So I think we'll see the weaklings in the West come more and more to the UN to get their agenda serviced, but it will actually come at the expense of what the petitioners see as the most desirable items on their agenda. Because they simply won't have the leverage to enact their agendas themselves, and the core powers in the East will exact a high cost at the UN for giving their cooperation.
Kuntsler sounds mad that the slaves who have been trained to not give a fuck finally just don't give a fuck any moar ... But where was he gnashing his teeth over bank bailouts and QE free money policy? Maybe he was, but I don't recall it.
Obviously you haven't followed him.
No I haven't really followed him, but unless I'm mistaken isn't this Kuntsler guy big buddies with guys like Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, a big Republican Party guy? Those guys also all turncoated on the bankster bailouts. Anyway, what good have any of these guys done us? I pretty much just call bullshit on everyone these days.
"unless I'm mistaken isn't this Kuntsler guy big buddies with guys like Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, a big Republican Party guy?"
Kunstler unfortunately is a Democrat but clearly isn't in the mainstream of liberal politics.
Re: Maybe he was, but I don't recall it
He was.
He's fun to read, but I bet he'd be even more entertaining reading his own articles on the "radio".
Most people who inhabit Economic Morality OCD sites just can't comprehend other people's duplicity, and the fundamental role of duplicity for success and survival.
Yea I watched all of 'our guys' like Beck fold like cheap card tables on TARP bankster bailouts back in the height of 'Tha Great Crisis', bunch of bullshitter back stabbers as far as I'm concerned. A lot of good any of em did us huh?
Re: A lot of good any of em did us huh?
Well, there's 4 political brain configurations. Authoritarian socialists (Blue Team), Authoritarian fascists (Red Team), NON-authoritarian liberals (no current team), NON-authoritarian conservatives (Libertarians). Most people are authoritarians, and almost all leadership and synophants would (almost by definition) be authoritarian. What most people call "left and right" are the authoritarian configurations - which is how most people's brains are configured.
Beck ("Conservative" Red Team) would be fascist, Kunstler would be NON-authoritarian (not sure which flavor, as I don't read him much, except on here).
Another pair of wonderful reads from the real media of just how close we are to war... Because after all?...
Our leaders need one in the worst way, even if it means they themselves may not survive what they will initiate! Someone mentioned Israel's Sampson Option on a prior post and that can't happen unless President Remus and the other EU mental midgets are a willing party to that "option"...
This is when you know your Leaders have truly lost their minds. Still want to know more about the scars on the back of Ye Ol' Barry's head???!!!!
http://unreportedtoday.com/planned-turkish-false-flag-exposed.html
http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/obamas-sleepwalk-toward-war/Most people have always been idiots. It's just sprayed all over the place now with "Dumbass Sprinklers" I mean social media.
I can see fairly clearly that the whole thing will be a pile of shit on the exact date I plan to draw social security.
Well, successful political parties (of which we have two) are always skilled at hiding the piles of shit. That's their job. Societies exist to move loot from the dumb-n-clueless to the smart-n-savvy.
I'd suspect SS will be around when you "need" it, it just won't be worth much. I've only got 5 years left before I get in on Big-OldFart and Big-OldFartMedicare. I'm going to take all I can get as soon as I can get it.
you and me both compadre
Geezer Army March on Washington
The people who are fucking things up are the ones who don't have tattoos
Perhaps they have them on the inside......and they all involve horns.
could well be
I gave you 2 a hit up.
H.E. Barnes explained everything that seems new and shocking in his 1926 History and Social Intelligence, the title of which is somewhat facetious because it gives a very complete history of social stupidity.
Barnes said near the end of his life that maybe just one out of a million people are capable of true honesty, with self-honesty of course being the hard part. In 1926 he provided a very prescient view of what came to be called, decades later, evolutionary psychology. Barnes referred to it with the adjective genetic as in genetic history, but he was applying the concept not to the behavior of individuals, but to the herd, or societies as whole entities. It's like he was was the first to describe the evolution of societies from a Darwinian perspective. What sociologists today have the depth of insight shown by Barnes? I daresay none. And we no longer have any social criticism that follows the rules of rigorous academic discourse. How sad.
But your loss is my gain because I'm buying up his books for pittances, where they charge me more for shipping than for the book, which is usually new and unused, with me being the first person to ever read it.
Very few people are capable of seeing Truth. It seems that both individuals and their aggregations into clans, nations, etc., are "bred" to have the same thoughts and desires as everyone else. We're living in a huge ant colony.
Start with the most excellent Cato Paper 12, which at 7.5 ozt is well worth its weight in gold, or $10 K, but you can find a copy in unused condition for $40. It will be like lifting the veils and seeing for the very first time. Is there anyone here who dares to deviate from the herd and read the most dangerous book published during the lifetime of anyone who was born more than 34 years ago?
Attention Boyz and Girlz...
The party just officially got underway. BYOB!!!!
Just ask yourself how Yellen's going to produce "green shoots" in April now???
http://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-flushes-the-us-dollar-russias-gold-ruble-payments-system-delinked-from-dollar/5375866
Are the deaths of U.S. soliders even reported anymore? I haven't heard of any in a long time.
Are the deaths of U.S. soliders even reported anymore? I haven't heard of any in a long time.
And you won't if they start sending them to Syria and Ukraine.
Won't be at all surprised if the U.S. doesn't encourage them to join Greystone/Academi for "triple" the salary so they can keep the uniforms and flag draped caskets off the books coming into Delaware when they ramp this thing up!
That's a Bingo!!!
" training camps for religious maniacs and thousands more casual meet-ups among aggrieved young men with testosterone boiling in their brains and nothing else to occupy their time but playing with guns."
texas?
:)
WoW
I do not advertise that I am poor and stupid. I have no tattoos. Although, I do have a birthmark on my side that appears to be in the shape of the state of Texas. I deny that that the birthmark looks like the state of Texas.
As I drove down the I-85 corridor yesteray through South Carolina over roads that are potholed and washboarded I thought of the one billion dollars congress authorized to the unelected/coup placed Ukrainian government.
The juxtaposition of our crumbling infrastructure with the ever ready war preparation and military adventures is enough to cause TOTAL Cognitive Dissonance.
The people running things are completely disconnected from this country.
Its just so crazy....will Americans rise up?
On the positive side we have a simi-black, simi-american president who believes in hope and change.
Well written piece, made me laugh
prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.... really is that the same prestigious school that wont release obama's records...and hires but not fires princess fauxcahontas ... and graduated scum sucking libtard hitalry clintoon... very prestigious indeed... it is a libtard shithole financed by foolish capitalist endowments by the second and third generation inheritance retards who didnt earn a penny of it... as prestigious as a suck ya dick for a dolla crack ho....