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Of Greater Fools, Bigger Liars, & A Society In Decline
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
"Societies in decline have no use for visionaries"
– Anaïs Nin
The moment we heard that John Boehner would resign, the first thing that came to mind was: the next one will be a Greater Fool and a Bigger Liar. For all of his obvious faultlines, Boehner is human. As was evident for all to see Thursday when the Pope -Boehner’s as Catholic as JFK and Jesus Christ- came to see ‘him’ in ‘his’ Senate. Even smiled reading that the Pope had asked Boehner to pray for him.
But Boehner was really of course just a man who through time increasingly became a kind of barrier between a president and his party on the one hand, and Boehner’s own, increasingly ‘out there’, party on the other. He moved from far right to the right middle just to keep the country going. In essence, that’s little more than his job, but just doing your job can get you some nasty treatment these days in the land of the free.
So now we’ll get a refresher course in government shutdown, though there’s no guarantee that Boehner’s successor will be enough of a greater fool to cut his/her (make that his) new-found career short by actually letting it happen. At least not before December.
The government shutdown is a threat like Janet Yellen’s rate hike, one which always seems to disappear right around the next corner, a process that eats away at credibility much more than participants are willing and/or able to acknowledge. Until it’s too late.
Now that it’s clear they lost on Obamacare, Republicans demand that funding for Planned Parenthood must stop, as the women’s group is accused of ‘improperly selling tissue harvested from aborted fetuses’, something it vehemently denies. And there we’re right back to the shadow boxing multi-millionaire tragic comedy act the US Congress has been for years now.
So yeah, by all means let it shut down. Thing is, as much as Boehner was always already a walking safety hazard, there’s guys waiting in the wings who’d love to end Obama’s presidency any which way they can. The official GOP viewpoint may be that Da Donald is a greater fool, but that view isn’t shared by the entire caucus. Again, so yeah, bring it on, like the rate hike, let’s see you do it.
It’s not a little ironic that one day after the Pope holds his hand, Boehner leaves a squabble behind that involves aborted fetuses. Where I come from, no accusations of people either eating babies or selling their tissue is taken serious, ever. We call that folklore.
Meanwhile, Anarchy In The US is a distinct possibility. It’s probably a good thing all these guys still have paymasters, wouldn’t want to have them make their own decisions. More irony: Boehner brought more donations into the GOP caucus than anyone else. They’ll miss him yet.
Also meanwhile, European and US exchanges were up on Friday as if no investor ever saw a Volkswagen in their lives. Even as there’s no escaping the idea that VW’s illegal drummings go way beyond the 11 million vehicles they themselves fessed up to, and the millions more from other carmakers. Where I come from, we call this endemic fraud.
This little graphic from T&E seems to indicate that VW was the least worst of the offenders. And it will be very hard for politicians to find a carpet left big enough to sweep this under. Class action lawsuits are being prepared for investors and car owners, and politics doesn’t trump courts, at least not everywhere.

Merkel and Hollande and all of their lower level minions will have to cut their losses and offer their carmakers to the vultures, or risk getting severely burned in the process. Or is it already too late? The German Green Party claims Merkel knew of the rigged emissions tests. For now, the government is in steep denial:
German Greens Claim Merkel Government Knew Emissions Tests Were Rigged
The German Green party has claimed that the German Government, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, knew about the software car manufacturers used to rig emissions tests in the US. The Green party has said it asked the German Transport Ministry in July about the devices used to deceive regulators and received a written response as follows, the FT reports: “The federal government is aware of [defeat devices], which have the goal of [test] cycle detection.”
The Transport Ministry denied knowing that the software was being used in new vehicles, however. The timing of the questions has raised concerns over whether the German government knew about the activities at Volkswagen stretching back to 2009. “The federal government admitted in July, to an inquiry from the Greens, that the [emissions] measurement practice had shortcomings. Nothing happened,” said Oliver Krischer, a German Green party lawmaker.
That written response the Financial Times reports on either exists or it does not. Let’s see it. Simple. If it does exist, Merkel’s in trouble. Then again, the EU knew about the defeat device at least two years ago. It’s starting to look as if everyone was involved. And you can’t fire everyone.
EU Warned On Devices At Centre Of VW Scandal Two Years Ago
EU officials had warned of the dangers of defeat devices two years before the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke, highlighting Europe’s failure to police the car industry. A 2013 report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre drew attention to the challenges posed by the devices, which are able to skew the results of exhaust readings. But regulators then failed to pursue the issue — despite the fact the technology had been illegal in Europe since 2007. EU officials said they had never specifically looked for such a device themselves and were not aware of any national authority that located one.
Matthias Müller was announced as VW’s new head honcho. Now there’s a greater fool if ever you saw one. Who can possibly want that gig? His predecessor Winterkorn left the top post, but to date not the one as head of Porsche. Ergo, he presides over those who lead the internal investigation at the company. And even if Winterkorn is bought off and out, VW is still as big of a hornet’s nest as you can find. The company’s corporate -and legal- structure, which includes unsavorily close ties to the governments of both Lower Saxony -which owns 20% of the company, in (highly) preferred stock- and federal Germany, virtually guarantees it.
Nor does it stop there. Both the German and British governments now stand accused of perverting EU law on emissions. The Wall Street Journal asks how much the EU itself knew. Easy answer: plenty. Inevitable. Key words: spin doctors, damage control.
This morning’s Bild am Sonntag, which claims to be in the possession of an ‘explosive document’, reports first that a October 7 deadline has been handed VW by Berlin to ‘fix’ its problems, and second that engineering giant Bosch, which provided the -initial?!- “defeat device” software, warned VW as long as 8 years ago, in 2007, that the software was for internal testing purposes only. VW‘s own technicians “warned about illegal emissions practices” in 2011, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung cites an internal report as saying.
And that’s just the beginning. Or rather, the beginning may have been much earlier. Bloomberg writes, in an article called “Forty Years Of Greenwashing” that “On 23 July 1973, the EPA accused [Volkswagen] of installing defeat devices in cars it wanted to sell in the 1974 model year.” Great, now we have to wonder what Gerald Ford knew? Dick Nixon?
In perhaps an ill-timed effort to divert attention away from her car industry, Merkel dreams of more global power:
Germany Battles Past Ghosts as Merkel Urges Greater Global Role
Europe’s dominant country is stepping out from its own shadow. Seventy years after Germany’s defeat at the end of World War II, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is signaling a willingness to assume a bigger role in tackling the world’s crises without fear of offending allies like the U.S. Spurred into more international action by the refugee crisis, Merkel on Wednesday prodded Europe to adopt a “more active foreign policy” with greater efforts to end the civil war in Syria, the source of millions fleeing to safety. As well as enlisting the help of Russia, Turkey and Iran, Merkel said that will mean dialogue with Bashar al-Assad, making her the first major western leader to urge talks with the Syrian president.
Germany’s position as Europe’s biggest economy allowed Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, to assume a leading role during the euro-area debt crisis centered on Greece, but the change in focus to beyond Europe’s borders is very much political. After decades of relying on industrial prowess – now under international scrutiny as a result of the Volkswagen scandal – globalization and the necessity to keep Europe relevant are opening up options for Merkel to make Germany a less reluctant hegemon.
Syria has spurred “a rethink in German foreign policy,” Magdalena Kirchner at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said. “As the refugee crisis developed, the view took hold that this conflict can no longer be fenced off or ignored. With her stance on the crisis, Merkel may be prodding other European leaders toward a bigger international engagement.”
And Angela’s Germany tells the ECB to take a hike and grow a pair while they’re at it. For a country that spent the best part of the year telling Greece to stick to the law and the plan or else, that’s quite something.
ECB Faces Defiance on Bank Oversight as Germany Hoards Power
The ECB faces increasing defiance from euro-area governments reluctant to cede control over their lenders, highlighted by a German bill that chips away at the ECB’s supervisory powers. The Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, votes Thursday on an amendment to Germany’s banking act that would allow the Finance Ministry in Berlin to issue rules on banks’ recovery plans, risk management and internal decisions under a bill implementing European Union rules for winding down failing banks. The ECB, which assumed supervisory powers over euro-area banks last November, is considering complaining at the European Commission, asking the EU’s executive arm to take Germany to court over the legislation.
As for Angela and the refugee issue, no changes any faster than a frozen molasses flow. Germany announced it will spend €4 billion on refugees already in the country, but votes to stop who’s still coming. As if that’s a serious option. They’re going to do it with gunboats, no less. Agianst overloaded dinghies.
EU To Use Warships To Curb Human Traffickers
The EU will use warships to catch and arrest human traffickers in international waters as part of a military operation aimed at curbing the flow of refugees into Europe, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief has said. “The political decision has been taken, the assets are ready,” Federica Mogherini said on Thursday at the headquarters of the EU’s military operation in Rome. The first phase of the EU operation was launched in late June. It included reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence gathering, and involved speaking to refugees rescued at sea and compiling data on trafficker networks. The operation currently involves four ships – including an Italian aircraft carrier – and four planes, as well as 1,318 staff from 22 European countries.
Beginning on October 7, the new phase will allow for the seizure of vessels and arrests of traffickers in international waters, as well as the deployment of European warships on the condition that they do not enter Libyan waters. “We will be able to board, search, seize vessels in international waters, [and] suspected smugglers and traffickers apprehended will be transferred to the Italian judicial authorities,” Mogherini said. “We have now a complete picture of how, when and where the smugglers’ organisations and networks are operating so we are ready to actively dismantle them,” she said.
Those 1,318 staff could be used to help and rescue refugees, who will keep coming. Another 17 drowned in the Aegean Sea this Sunday morning. That should be the no. 1 priority. Instead, Europe’s policy of death continues unabated. France started bombing Syria -again- and Putin can and will no longer be ignored when it comes to his sole Middle East stronghold. We’ve created a god-awful mess, and not even god’s alleged man-on-the-earth, the underwhelming Pope Francis, does more than stammer a few hardly audible scripted lines about it.
It’s all about power and money, and none of it is about people. In other ‘news’, China securitizes its markets in a pretty standard desperate greater fools’ last move. As I said earlier, Beijing’s Rocking the Ponzi.
China Becomes Asia’s Biggest Securitization Market
China’s fledging securitization market is soaring, as Beijing looks for new ways to ease lending to firms amid the country’s slowest period of economic growth in more than two decades. In the past few months, Chinese officials have laid out new rules to expand and quicken the process for car makers and other lenders to issue debt by bundling together pools of underlying loans. Issuance of asset-backed securities in the world’s second largest economy rose by a quarter in the first eight months of 2015—to $26.3 billion from $20.8 billion in the same period last year, according to data publisher Dealogic. Though the Chinese securitization market took flight just last year, it has already become Asia’s biggest, outpacing other, more developed markets like South Korea and Japan.
China’s new economic reality, no matter what Xi tells Obama, was revealed by China Daily. Imagine a company in the US, or an EU country, announcing 100,000 lay-offs in one go. For China, it’s the first of many, though not all may be publicly announced.
Chinese Mining Group Longmay To Cut 100,000 Coal Jobs (China Daily)
The largest coal mining group in Northeast China is cutting 100,000 jobs within the next three months to reduce its losses – one of the biggest mass layoffs in recent years. Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group Co Ltd, which has a 240,000 workforce, said a special center would be created to help those losing their jobs to either relocate or start their own businesses. Chairman of the group Wang Zhikui said the job losses were a way of helping the company “stop bleeding”. It also plans to sell its non-coal related businesses to help pay off its debts, said Wang.
In Japan, desperate fool Shinzo Abe moves on to Abenomics 2.0 with three entirely fresh but as yet unnamed new “arrows”. Here’s thinking Japan doesn’t need Abenomics 2.0, it needs Abe 2.0. Or tomorrow will be even worse than today.
Japan’s Abe Airs Abenomics 2.0 Plan For $5 Trillion Economy
Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, fresh from a bruising battle over unpopular military legislation, announced Thursday an updated plan for reviving the world’s third-largest economy, setting a GDP target of 600 trillion yen ($5 trillion). Abe took office in late 2012 promising to end deflation and rev up growth through strong public spending, lavish monetary easing and sweeping reforms to help make the economy more productive and competitive.
So far, those “three arrows” of his “Abenomics” plan have fallen short of their targets though share prices and corporate profits have soared. “Tomorrow will definitely be better than today!” Abe declared in a news conference on national television. “From today Abenomics is entering a new stage. Japan will become a society in which all can participate actively.”
Participate actively in the downfall of both Abe and the nation, that is.
As for you yourself, unless you stop clinging to the silly notion of an economic recovery -let alone perpetual growth-, you too are a greater fool, the quintessential one. And until you do, you’re a bigger liar too. You lie to yourself. Just so others can lie to you too.
What is happening in today’s world is a total downfall, both economic and moral, and the two are closely intertwined. What’s more, though we’re blind to it, as Anaïs Nin said, “Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.” Our societies therefore end up with liars only. Nobody else gets a shot at the title. There’s no use for anything but lies.
All leaders, as we can see these days wherever we look, talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Every single one of them schemes and lies and hides their acts from public scrutiny. Political leaders, corporate leaders, the lot. This behavior is so ubiquitous we’ve come to see it as inevitable, even normal.
Whether it’s the economy, climate, the planet, warfare, your future obligations, your pensions, the future of your children, nobody in power tells you the truth. Human life is fast losing the value we would like to tell ourselves we assign to it. We don’t, do we? Children drown in the Mediterranean every day, and we let them drown, it’s not just our leaders who do.
Children also get shot to bits in various theaters of war (or rather, invasion) in faraway countries that our leaders involve us in, our tax dollars pay for, and our media don’t show. What the European refugee crisis shows us is that there are no faraway countries anymore, or theaters of war. Our own technological advances have taken care of that. They’re on our doorstep. And sending in the military is only going to make it worse.
Our technological advances haven’t come with moral advances, quite the contrary, our morals turn out to be a thin layer of mere cheap veneer. What advances we’re making are the last death rattle of a society in decline, and a dying civilization. All we have left to look forward to from here on in is cats in a sack. And we owe that to ourselves.
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There is one Party to this Proceeding that hasn't been heard from, under oath or otherwise and that is the EPA. I know how this game is played having direct first hand knowledge of how this Arm of the Executive Branch of Government works. That VW fahrfegnugened up is their problem and they deserve what they get but it is also VERY POSSIBLE that they pissed of the EPA et. al. See previous ZH Post on "Campaign Contributions" by GM vs VW. As Fritz Hollings might have said, "Thay's a lotta bribinatin' goin' on around heah!".
This is a Major Cesspool and it ain't about no clean air. We're talkin' somebody getting a whole lotta money.
CW
Interestingly, the biggest polluter Opel is owned by... GM.
End the Fed. Shit will get better.
Audit the fed.
The fever will get worse before it gets better.
Quit reading right here: "just to keep the country going. In essence, that’s little more than his job"
Boner is the biggest Cuckold Cuckservatives in the history of cuckservatives. Unless you count Mcconnel.
They probably liked watching each bone the others wives, as we know Reid can not get it up for gals.
Germans can fix this easy:
Merkel- "Ahh that gold we requested to be repatriated, why don't you guys in NY just hang onto it for a while no hurry on our side".....
Not only people in power lying about the climate, but many articles here on ZH too, and most of the posters as well. Very sad. Most of you have bought the BS climate denial sold to you by the Koch brothers. Assholes.
Fuck you prog and the mile of ice that melted off N America says fuck you too..
The six ice ages that came before that say suprise. Then their were those mass extinctions and threw it all jellys, roaches, spiders and many other bugs worms and fish would like to say hello.
Some critters got themselves long term contracts on this rock. Maybe you should listen to what they have to say about it.
the Pope had asked Boehner to pray for him.
Maybe Boehner should have asked the pope to pray for him.
Maybe these guys have been praying....and those prayers were answered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eixNnXIxcl4
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/almost-all-us-temperature-...
How about this asshole..
Listen idiot: no intelligent person is going to deny that mankind is screwing Mother Nature. Pollution is real. Toxins, clear cutting, deforestation, strip mining, and the perverse over-use of natural resources are all real. What isn't real, is the myth that hydrogen dioxide ( what plants breath) is ruining the planet and we need to pay Al Gore to stop it. If you really fall for that crap you are too stupid to read ZH. If the climate change movement was letgitimate, then they'd be focusing on the oceans cause they really are getting f'd up.
Before you have the audacity to call people idiots, better get your facts straight, in4. Plants use carbon dioxide not hydrogen dioxide.
Your both wrong, plants use Brawndo, it's what plants crave.
You're.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/almost-all-us-temperature-...
Plants use both. Hydrogen dioxide is.............wait for it................water.
Sorry dude. Two hydrogens; one oxygen. That is water. H2O
Nice try though.
H2O2 = hydrogen peroxide.
Another community college first year, come to tell us the score..
Boehner is crying like a pussy because Black Francis stared through him with those eyes of Lucifer.
Francis/Lucifer cannot make one cower. It is the mob of following believers spreading like a brushfire that impels one to leap.
Exactly. End the FED! The author ignores the source of the fraud. The fraudulent money turns people into frauds from the top down.
Our societies therefore end up with liars only. Nobody else gets a shot at the title. There’s no use for anything but lies.
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you. Who knew Opel still manufactures vehicles?
Opel is like British shit with Lucas electronics/instrumentation, eh? I'm shocked too.
I did. With Germans the default position is always distrust. I don't wish on anyone what the Kohl-Regime dished out to me and my family. When the head has no honest bone in his body, you cannot expect anything from his protege Merkel & Co (=VW).
The regulators are probably just as at fault here by setting standards which can not be realistically achieved or based on faulty premises, they have a deep history of doing exactly that.
GM got a 900 million fine for ignition switches that killed 174 people. VW got 18 billion for fudging emissions that seems to be the norm. This is auspiciously like the Banc Paribas and Credit Suisse shit, big bad US strong arming these guys. Or somebody looking for some fiat to keep the goveymint open a day or two longer.
Talking about lies, how did Senator Harry Reid wind up being beaten so badly that that he lost sight in his right eye. The story that he was injured in an exercise accident is laughable.
http://nypost.com/2015/01/10/senator-harry-reid-has-lost-vision-in-his-right-eye/
http://lasvegassun.com/news/2010/oct/13/harry-reid-hopeful-desertxpress-gets-support-next-/
http://www.truthandaction.org/busted-harry-reid-owns-93-acres-next-bundy-ranch/
Reid could not get Cliveden Bundy kicked off his Nevada ranch. Bundy was the last holdout, some 28 other ranchers in the area had lost their ranches, mostly thanks to pressure from the Obama crony kleptocrats. The story that a Chinese company was planning a solar power plant in Nevada now seems to have been a smokescreen. Already in 2010, the high speed rail link between Las Vegas and Los Angeles was on the drawing boards, with Rory Reid running for Nevada governor to back the multi-billion dollar rail project. When that high speed train gets built, the land values where the rail stations are built will skyrocket.
If the BLM has kicked the Bundy family off their ranch, the rail line could run trough that ranch and then through land Harry Reid and his friends owned in the vicinity of the Bundy ranch. A multi-billion dollar rail project would turn Nevada scrubland into gold.
The Triad backers of Reid must have had a conniption fit when they saw their plans for the rail link pushed back by the Bundy Ranch standoff. So the Chicom backed Triad investors sent a message to Reid, delivered by their thugs.
---
High-speed rail from LA to Las Vegas gets on track
Colin Jeffrey
September 22, 2015
http://www.gizmag.com/xpresswest-high-speed-railway-los-angeles-las-vega...
A joint venture between Chinese and American companies promises to connect Las Vegas to Los Angeles with a high-speed train system. The trip from LA to Las Vegas may only take an hour by air, but the hassles associated with air travel have seen numerous proposals for a high-speed rail link between the two cities floated over the years. Lack of cash has usually proven the insurmountable hurdle, but after failing to secure a US$5.5 billion federal loan, XpressWest has found another way forward by teaming up with China Railway International USA in a joint venture that could see the link begin construction in late 2016.
The joint venture between the US and Chinese companies boasts $100 million in starting capital and will fund, construct, and operate the new rail network that will span some 370 km (230 miles) to connect Southern Nevada and Southern California, including stations in Las Vegas, Nevada, Victorville, California, and Palmdale, California, and service throughout Los Angeles. The project is expected to spur new economic growth and tourist development across the region. XpressWest believes construction on the network can begin as early as September 2016.
A bigger game.
Germany doesn't want anymore nukes on its soil.
Uncle Scam brings pressure on Germany.
So Boehner is a visionary? Yep he did raise funds from the Chamber of Commerce to support cheap labor amnesty. Human? Get a life. The only reason he quit was somebdy got ahold of the little boy pictures. Only two groups he did not give a shit about were the unborn and the American people.
tick tock boom I say
If anybody wants a solution that works for a prosperous civilization ask Q99X2.
They know.
In this engrossing and highly controversial philosophy of history, Spengler describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity. Guided by the philosophies of Goethe and Nietzsche, he rejects linear progression, and instead presents a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations. He argues that a culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/801754.The_Decline_of_the_West
And here it is for free in pdf for you other cheap bastards:
https://ia800304.us.archive.org/12/items/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spen...
Oswald Spengler, from Man and Technics (1932): "Man is a Beast of Prey"
Or pick up a copy of Blish's Cities in Flight, which makes more and more sense everyday.
A shorter explanation. A civilization breeds down until it collapses under its own ineptness. Evolution then takes over to restore the breed to a higher functioning level. At east it worked this way in the past. With today's advances, the breeding stock will have the opportunity to plumb greater depths before the process of restoration cycles back in.
The government created its own impossible goals, and then tripped over them. A few years back, they had developed the technology to reach perfectly reasonable emissions levels. I had spoken to several engineers, who said that the extra effort to try to get fractionally cleaner was simply absurd, and it didn't really produce enough of a difference to be worthwhile. You bring 200 ppm down to 1 ppm, and that last 1 ppm is a real bugger. You know, the law of diminishing returns. But they always have to bring in more "experts" with the "yes we can" attitude and screw the pooch. This time they did it big time.
Plants die when below 150 ppm. How do we feed ourselves at 1 ppm?
Bill Gates wants it at 0 ppm. He is also pushing vaccines for the third world.
1+1=... ?
Who the hell downvotes this? Fact, question, fact, fact, question.
Show yourself troll!
It's the mad down voter I tell you. A CIA plant for sure.
I like the idea of clicking on the downvote number to see who it was that downvoted. Do this for a month and observe how the percentages change, if they even change at all. That would run counter to the site's theme of anonymity, however ( .....can't wait to see the downvotes on this ).
If this forum got a decent Comments system (like disqus) you could see who voted up or down. Maybe it costs too much for Tyler.
From 1986:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090985/
Le Declin de l'Empire Americain (The Decline of the American Empire) a film by Denis Arcand
The opening interview of that film is insightful. Decline leads to hedonism but then it's just one sexual escapade after another involving the same empty headed French-Canadian tarts.
"The Return of the Barbarians" is much better with an amusing look at the wonders of "free" Canadian health care.
Again and as always, Ethics begets Politics.
If Åristotle's Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics lectures are too high brow for this crew, then see George Carlin's "Why I Don't Vote" Routine. Same principles, same conclusions.
(What made/makes Carlin's humor undeniable is his relentless allegiance to logic/Aristotelianism juxtaposed against absurdity.)
Pittsburgh won,
Please. Is there anything else going on in the world?
"Our technological advances haven’t come with moral advances..."
This is a lie.
Looking only at State behavior it is easy to get discouraged, however, there is a compelling case to be made that humanity has been ever increasing demand for self-government, with modern "representative forms of government" (we know none are, but most claim to be) being one of the last illusions of statists and perhaps the final false god that humanity needs to lose faith in before fully embracing self-government and self-ownership and all of the implications without any compromise.
States are worse than ever, but I believe "people" are better than ever (I also don't belive this is a coincidence) - they ("people") are mostly just confused with good intentions and vicitims of relentless propoganda and systems and institutions they don't understand. But to doubt humanity's growth in its own self-awareness and its own morality is being a little short-sighted, I think. Technology is only quickening the process. I'm bullish on the long-term future of humanity :)
Good luck with that. You take your chances with 'believing' in humanity when the shit hits the fan. Technology has increased narcissism and substantially decreased empathy. People used to depend on each other and have each other's back. Now more people, like toddlers, are addicted to their technological toys, and put little to no emotional effort into connecting meaningfully to another human being. I wonder are we on the same planet here. Just wondering?
What does "believing" in humanity have to do with my actions when the shit hits the fan? I agree it will. My comment was that I'm a long-term optimist in the growth of humanity. People are open. More people are waking up every day.
Many readers here at ZH clearly take supreme satisfaction that everybody else in the world is an igorant fool and annoys the shit out of them. I get that dark energy, and this site understands that it has a user base essentially tapping that energy as a fuel for life, so it feeds its readers accordingly. And my post debases that concept, which is blueprint for living for many. And when you threaten one of somebody's core ideas (whether they realize it or not), they tend to get defensive. Hence all of my down votes. I knew the smiley face would really piss people off :)
I've been involved in the Liberty movement for a decade + and the gains I've seen in inquiry and knowledge around the world are massive. It's like everybody on the planet is walking around talking about how disconnected we are and about how our morality has declined and how shitty our governments are. Everybody recognizes it and everybody is saying its true about everybody else and people think nobody else understands because they see that the state and institutions still crushing everything in their path.
Ken Okeefe offers some hope here too, I recommend this...https://youtu.be/NbJIvsO9GCg
The people of the West stopped the USA from bombing and invading Syria in 2013. This is growth.
"...States are worse than ever, but I believe "people" are better than ever"
"Again and as always, ethics begets politics..."
Would that were so. Prosperity and popular culture reveal people as the fools they have always been. They don't want self government. They want to be governed and no humiliation is too much to bear. They don't know what insults are heaped on them.
Contemptible foreigners arrive at the railroad station to turn their home into a third-world slum and to take over and they smile, wave, and clap like seals.
THE REAL MOTIVE BEHIND THE VOLKSWAGEN "SCANDAL"
http://www.tomatobubble.com/id898.html
~//~
Winston Churchill
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest. (Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill - His Career in War and Peace, p. 145; quoted as per: Adrian Preissinger, Von Sachsenhausen bis Buchenwald, p. 23.)
They build it up, we knock it down to give the appearance we're on the high ground; meanwhile Ford and IBM are making a killing.
Plus ca change, plus ca reste pareil.
It is a beautiful world. Only the management sucks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnY5IiLpns
Graham Parker and The Rumour - "Watch The Moon Come Down" (Live at WFUV)
This Douche-clown says: "Where I come from, no accusations of people either eating babies or selling their tissue is taken serious, ever. We call that folklore." He thinks all the videos proving it are what... faked? Where I come from, jagoffs like this are called cabin boys. His breath smells like Reid's rectum.
This is the reason why we need to close down all public education in Amerika!
Who the fuck is this writer again? where i come from, we string up assholes like him.
Just a commie with a checkbook.
Anarchy in the USA would be much better than DC bozos.
Hey Achmed...
Wassup, Abdul?
Party at Raul's house.
Bring a friend.
Bring ten thousand friends if you want, cause we're sending the bill for all this compassion to him.
Ilargi needs some refugees in his living room.
Meanwhile, Anarchy In The US is a distinct possibility. It’s probably a good thing all these guys still have paymasters, wouldn’t want to have them make their own decisions. More irony: Boehner brought more donations into the GOP caucus than anyone else. They’ll miss him yet.
Don't kid yourself.
"There will be anarchy, one way or the other"
- Larken Rose
Anarchy in the US simply means that America will begin to heal first while other countries continue to deny that they are doing anything wrong.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
fear the boner, the lame duck speaker of the whores of representatives
I have only one question. When all carbon dioxide emissions are outlawed, will only outlaws have carbon dioxide? And will that make plants carbon dioxide addicts? Punishable by a jail sentence? Hey wait a minute, that would make a great story, just like Farenheit 451! I'll get to work on it right now!
i'm learning freeze drying so when all plants die from lack of co2 i'll be on the fore front of the soon to be thriving soylent green demand...remember, tuesday is soylent green day
"Soylent Green is people!" /voice=Charlton Heston
article is suck ass apologist bullshit
Boehner's "job" is to keep the Wall St.-K Street looting of America going. He deserves a gallows like the rest of them, not a farewell.
Boehner is in charge of the house (AKA congress), not the senate.
Exactamundo.
Why defend the ineffective crybaby Boehner?
Well it is amusing to see that ZH attracts to it the biggest bunch of neo-fascist clowns and psycopathic frustrates that abound on Earth.
Just to read the comments here every morning is a dash of vodka, a sniff of the sewer, a plunge into the plastic continent of America's unrecycled industrial defecation, imposed on planet earth, and a good laugh at Man's vanity incarnated by a bunch of Casino addicts who are pissed off that the number Zero now keeps magically coming up; all the fault of those dirty COmmies that abound at the FED !
When words mean the opposite of factuality you know we live in the cuckoo's nest!
Zero Hedge exposes the nauseating face of acridly fuming, head up ass America.
Well done Mr Ilargi for reminding us of that reality right here in this forum.
I guess you like it, since otherwise you'd leave. You really can go away, you know; you wouldn't be missed at all.
When it gets too hot in the kitchen a cook has to choose between being a man who looks for truth and excellence or a man who follows the crowd that yells out aloud.
I don't doubt your sentiment. But I don't doubt of my passion either.
Fight club means just that. And, silence is for the sheep at the slaughter house.
People, many people, subscribe to the exceptionalist meme, The 'I am not an Animal"group is very large,,well alright,,the Animal classification is arbitrary, animals are what we think they are, still everything alive comes from nature, this includes the creatures called Human, no matter their classification.
When Humans do things they are exhibiting the behavior nature has programed them for, nothing alive can escape it's nature.
Time lasts forever but People, Worlds, Galaxies don't, something without a beginning or an end cannot be measured, the value of the Big Bang theory is that it gives us an arbitrary beginning to anchor our calculations about time and space.
hey friend I am more modest in my appreciation of the larger picture 'cos I am a homo sapien, not an alien, nor an electromagnetic wave nor a God.
My perception is based on Man's time line and what is fact and what is historical truth as gleaned from our common "value systems".
The latter two being a subject of eternal debate.
I do not subscribe to the theory that natural instincts of man dominate his will, his spirit and his memory stored in his brain. Civilization is the timeline of that empirically proven belief. Humans are more than just animals.
I subscribe to what Aristotle and Jefferson said : Life is a choice, individual and political for a group belonging to a cultural identity (nation state).
Happiness and freedom are concepts that depend on how the group thrives to allow individuals to do the same.
There is a heirarchy there; its not anarchy. Never was.
Here's a flash for Militant Enviromentalists: The earth does not care about you. The earth does not know that you are alive. The earth will not change an inch after you are dead. The earth will be doing just fine long after you have died, been killed, or have starved to death. If no one cares enough to bury your body, insects & animals will consume your carcass.
The systems of the earth are ruthlessly effecient & absolutely implacable. For as long as t-i-m-e is referred to as "t-o-d-a-y" the earth-system (including the Sun and other cosmic influences) will continue to process man-made chemicals, plastic bags, landfill garbage et cetera--eventually reducing all that flotsam & jetsam to the small atomic dust they were before the trembling hand of man manipulated those elements & raw materials into useful tools & compounds.
If you believe that you are having a significant impact on the systems of the earth, you are mistaken. You need the earth more--much, much more--than the earth will ever need you. The earth does not love you. The earth does not care if you love it. Environmentalism is a lucrative racket for crooked lawyers & bureaucrats.
Capitalist PIGS, LIES to get more PROFITS?? Shocked!! I really shocked!!
This has been going on over multiple election cycles. It seems that democracy doesn't work.
Which pretty much means the people in power have to be removed via other means.
Exactly this is the norm till the people make it stop, it can only get worse.
The people in power have atomic weapons. Lots of luck.
WTF is this, is the author ghost writing for Debbie Wasserman Schultz?
"Now that it’s clear they lost on Obamacare,..."
You must think it's over, its not, far from it.
Furthermore, it will never be over until I'm properly compensated for the damages done to me.
What it is, is theft.
And as long as the theft continues unabated the damages continue to add up. In the end I don't really care who ends up cutting me the check (plus the time value of money added), whether it comes out of Pelosi & Reids pension packages or any other bastard that voted for it (to include "judge" Roberts) or Obama's royalties for his forthcoming book "The Audacity of My Cronyism" someone(s) is going compensate me for my premium's rising into the stratosphere while my coverages sank into the abyss of the Marianas Trench.
As you fuckers on the left love to say Raul..."No justice, no peace."
Its far from over.
but just doing your job can get you some nasty treatment these days in the land of the free.
Bonier and McConell lied to the American people to get elected, that is not doing your job. This article is a joke!
......." Our societies therefore end up with liars only." Precisely why he needed to go along with McConnell and Obama!
The fact that B and M lied is not the issue that this article addresses.
They were elected and thus had a regular mandate to do what they felt was good.
You make out that others don't lie in Congress....hahaha... that's the real joke.
And the gist of this article is that the whole Western World lies; whence the inevitable decline. Nobody in this mindset can define a "vision" into the future.
If you can't see the tree from the forest you need a new pair of glasses.
I'm not sure why ZH keeps republishing this guy. I suppose it keeps them looking "balanced." I haven't read anything I've appreciated from Raul since his posts explaining Europe's TARGET2.
Nothing like reading the comments on zerohedge to show how far we have come to Idiocracy. You're a bunch of fucking morons. Stick to your meth you assholes.
The sky has always been falling, every coment, every eclipse a harbinger of bad news. Is winter really comming? I say Born Free is the Future of Humanity.