“The Cenozoic analysis is simple. The essential assumption is that there are 60 m of sea level in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between today and an ice-free planet and an additional 120 m of sea level between today and the last glacial maximum.”
“… nothing ever really changes. The neoliberal uniparty remains in power, and the technocrats continue to steer everything in the same direction… at least in the days before the neoliberal revolution, the technocrats pretended that they were implementing the politicians’ manifesto pledges. These days they practically rip up the manifesto as soon as a government is elected… “Whaddayah gonna do about it anyway?”
Earlier today I was for some reason reminded of Bartcop.com in its hey day. Is there anybody who participates or reads here who’s old enough to remember that far back in history? Then I came across William Rivers Pitt’s eulogy at Terrance Coppage’s (Bartcop’s) death in 2014. I’d never seen it before. Boy was that a trigger. Then some years later, Pitt died. At 50. Huh.
Charlie Sykes, a founder and the editor-in-chief of the non-partisan news site “The Bulwark,” discusses why he disassociated himself from the Republican Party, the challenges of covering Trump, the 2024 race, and whether conservatism can be redeemed.
Mama always told me that stupid is as stupid does. And that the neoliberal uniparty is as it pockets the donations. I used to wonder why it seemed so many corporations donated to both parties equally. Then I realized the donors didn’t care about either party, just who specifically they could bribe to do their bidding.
Unfortunately, one party seems to have lost control of that system, gone round the bend with so many cultural diversions they’re looking like the bouncy clown car seen at town parades. Nothing worse than enjoying a town parade and the clown car flips over and a bunch of crazed clowns run straight towards you. Scary clowns. Shouldn’t they be working instead to flip their car right side up? Then you see the other clown car racing by making loud popping noises, and you realize it’s a drive-by shooting.
Well, that’s the bad metaphor anyways. Forgot about the part where you look up into the parade stands where all the rich folks are sitting and see them all pointing and laughing at the spectacle.
So earlier this week someone posted on the DIY (Do It Yourself) subreddit asking why the quality of the posts there had gone down. One of the moderators responded, and I thought this bit of the response was interesting. Basically, Google is ruining the internet, and that place is just one small example.
The way projects are posted online has changed, it used to be mostly blog posts, instructables and the like with step by step photos. Three years ago Google decided to remove blogs from their search results so a lot of those creators went to Youtube. That’s when we received a lot of complaints about too many videos in this sub. Two years ago Youtube decided that small channels didn’t make enough revenue so the they stopped promoting them in favour of low effort click bait videos, so a lot of makers stopped making content (or possibly shifted to some other platform).
…
Help requests. Yes they’ve taken over. Moderating is hard work, we don’t have the capacity to enforce rules like we used to. There’s a lot of low effort posts getting through that could be answered by a quick Google search… except that Google is now full of generic, low effort advice written by AI or marketing departments as a way to get ads in front of viewers.
Capitalism ruins everything, including, apparently, the internet.
Stupidity on a massive scale, maleficence on a massive scale or both.
JFK Assination- Gulf of Tonkin- Attack on the USS Liberty- RFK and MLK assassinations-Watergate Break in-Trucking Deregulation-Support of Contras-Lies about Iraqi crimes in Kuwait-Banking Deregulation- Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction- Iranian Nuclear Program- Venezuela- Russiagate- Covid- January 6th- Nordstream Pipeline- The Ukrainian War, Greenwashing
The lies about events, about how (the US but not only the US) government works, are so massive that maleficence can not be doubted. But stupidity to surely seems to have a place.
In fact the stupidity is also so vast that I deem it sufficent to rise to the level that some us are trapped in a simulation while others are not all here.
Take the way that the US has handled the war in the Ukraine. It took great care to make sure that the Russians did not have the capabilty to launch strategic nuclear war.
That gave the US an ace in that it could always escalate the conflict against Russia and China. But despite this advantage it seems that the entire plan for regime change in Russia depended upon psycologically manipulating Russians in high level positions to actually carry out the plan. If that was only part of the plan it would have been a good piece of the plan. But at this point there does not seem that there was ever a plan B just in case plan A failed.
How can the leaders of the west expect the Ukriane to win a war of attrition against Russia when every piece of Ukrainian infrastructure can be attacked by the Russians but the Ukrainians can not attack any of the infrastructure inside of Russia. The Russians are not going to run out of weapons or ammunition if the factories producing those weapons and ammunition are not attacked. One could say that the Ukrianians will not run out of weapons or ammunition either because the Russians do not dare to strike at factories in NATO countries producing weapons and ammuntion for Ukriane.
But those weapons and ammunition can be attacked as soon as they cross the border.
Therefore it does not seem concivable that the Ukraine can win a war of attrition. This should have been easily forseen before the United States forced Russia in to a corner.
More importantly once the NATO countries clearly showed their beligerence towards Russia by heavily arming the Ukrainians and smothering view points that maintain the Russian leadership was justified in viewing NATO as at threat to Russia everyone in Russia can plainly see that Putin and the Russian leadership had correctly diagnosed the situation. That pretty much rules out a palace coup in Russia for quite a while.
Now here is one thing that I can not say for sure. Was the belief of the US leadership that starting a war in the Ukraine would lead to Putins fall from power insanely stupid.
I can not say that because it is possible that just as Putin believed that he had the support of an important 5th Column in NATO nations, that it turned out did not really exist, the leadership of the US might have made exactly the same mistake that Putin made.
In fact I strongly suspect that the Corona Virus Pandemic played, and perhaps still plays a key role in the information wars between the worlds leading intellegence agencies. I may be wrong about what is true and false about the pandemic. But one thing that I think everyone would agree is that a massive amount of lies were spread about during the period from December of 2019 up until now.
In fact the US MIC has tried so hard to convince the world that the virus escaped from a lab in China that I am thoroughly convinced that the virus was deliberately released by the US MIC or someone working on their behalf. But I digress here somewhat.
Because my main point is not about the Corona Virus.
My main point is that so many supposedly intellegent well educated people have such big blind spots it rises to the level of evidence that we (I at least) are stuck in a world that is not actually real, though it may seem real when we get struck by lightening.
The pain is real. Therefore it is easy to conclude that so is the time and space that produced that pain is real as well. But card full observations tell a different story.
“Concentration moon over the hill in The Valley. Cop kill a creep pow pow pow.” Frank Zappa of Brown Shoes Don’t Make It fame. Quit school, why take it fame.
It’s good news week, have you heard the news? Doctors finding bitter ways of freezing brains in metal trays to keep us from the heat. Have you heard the news?
The Middle East it is a burning . . . And you tell me over and over again we’re not on the eve of destruction
Those are song lyrics from the sixties when I was a kid listening.
Haven’t aged much.
Perhaps one or two random readers might relate to the references—if this comment even sees the light of day.
Kinda self indulgent of me all in all
You’re just another brick in the wall.
Frivolity why not take all of me?
Can’t you see I’m no good without you? So why not take all of me?
Because I’m no good without you
and your dirty love
your hot and dirty love
floozies in the lobby of the Lido hotel selling hot meat hot rats hot cats
Frank Zappa was convinced that psychedelics were a CIA psyop. Could be. Frank drank mucho cafe and smoked muchas cigarettes,
musical genius and avant-garde poet that he was.
Hey. Most cultural icons have feet of clay up to their asses. Doesn’t detract from their messages.
I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of binge watching Turkish historical dramas. Lots of fun. Epic length. With current geopolitics in mind, this seemed like a good time to immerse myself in west Asian history. It feels like doing a spring cleaning on my brain. Everything is getting re-framed.
Easy to see why our corrupt clown rulers fear and forbid honest history. Sense of history has all the impact in the world on how we see what is in front of us right this minute. I’m finding that watching these shows is having more ripple effects on my sense of current events than I expected.
Also, in my dream alternative life, I now have an apartment in Istanbul with sweeping views of the Bosporus.
Zappa’ father worked at Rand. Not in some low-level, insignificant capacity. Rand Is a CIA joint. He evidently learned at an early age that “politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”
Zappa’s wife was also a mutiple-pack-a-day smoker, leading Frank to name his label “Barking Pumping Records” after her chronic smoker’s cough.
Was Adelaide Gail Sloatman-Zappa both a “Jewish Princess” and a “Catholic Girl?” Only Moon Unit and Dweezil know for sure, and they ain’t talkin.
From a casual ignorant distance, I presumed the earlier Ottoman sultans were ethically competent rulers which is why wizards like Mimar Sinan and their magnificent creations flourished. I mean, all those gigantic pendentive domes with rocket ship minarets, beautiful no matter what the viewing angle, in a city where all is visible and from great distances, and in earthquake country no less, seems almost magical. Not to mention the construction efficiency compared to other grandiose stuff being built in other parts of Europe, like St. Peters Basilica, which were taking ten times more everything to complete.
Then I saw a few episodes of The Magnificent Century. It seems the reality is that those sultans may have operated more like Mafia dons. Do what I say or I cut off your balls. Suleiman’s chief focus seems to have been monitoring the loyalty of his underlings. I saw the episode where he murdered his innocent son for suspected disloyalty, with lamentations from the completely powerless women kept well-hidden, lest he off them too.
Those episodes did little to assuage me of the idea that great power might be a good thing, just because stuff might get done quicker.
My purely amateur understanding is that the CIA brain-controller-wannabes thought that psycheledics would allow CIA to tailor-make Manchurian Candidates and other zombie-tools whenever they needed to have some. MK-Ultra was supposed to have been part of that CIA program.
A young Ken Kesey found his way into a CIA sponsored LSD experiment project and liked it so much that he found out how to get more of it and helped get it out of the lab and into the wild. Other hippie-types looked into other psychedelics after studying the work of Harvard Ethnic Botanists like Gordon Wasson and brought the drug sources they worked on into the American wild.
So if psychedelics began as a CIA program, they quickly escaped from the Brain Control Labs of CIA Central. And of course the mushrooms, cactuses and so forth which were/are the sources of so many psychedelics were discovered thousands of years ago by Native Indiandigenous peoples with no help whatsoever from a not-yet-even-existing CIA.
I have always regarded cannabis as a wonderful drug-source. But cannabis is not a psychedelic. I have never felt confident enough to try any of the actual designated-as-such psychedelics.
Given the decay introduced into many internet-available venues as discussed by NR up above, one wonders whether enough people would like to get that “older better” internet back to where they would be willing to pay for it through a subscription service of some kind?
A non-crap how-to ( and other things) video platform could be set up in the style of the “older better” you tube which used to exist, but just different enough to withstand shyster-lawfare attacks. It could be called We Vid ( for We Video) or some such thing.
A search engine for finding these things without the Google-type clutter could be set up called something like We Search or Shinola Search or some such thing. It could also be subscription-based if that were the only way to keep the Google maggots out of it.
Otherwise, the best people can hope to do is use email to share such things with eachother, links to such things, etc. Blogs are not illegal. They are just hard to find through the digital sewage. Blogs could be made with lists of urls of how-to video series. I’m sure other people might have other ideas.
Hello different clue.
True confession
In my youth I became intimate with such psychotropics as LSD 25, mescaline from cactus buttons, and psylocibin from shrooms.
Left it behind for more serious pursuits sometime after the experience became a revolving door.
Ok. Leave it to twisted Ivy Leaguers who created and inhabit their skull and bones world to create a monster like the CIA and to dream up some damn fool mind control scheme.
Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert — Ram Dass to you—were both Harvard profs with connections to Sandoz, which Swiss pharmaceutical company not only refined that rye ergot into Lysergicacid 25, they made pharmaceutical cocaine, which those of a certain social status used to enjoy and still do.
DMH, what was the name of the movie that moon unit was in?
Lots of print about psychedelic, particularly LSD, experiments in the MK-Ultra program. Not much ever mentioned about the amphetamine experiments.
I suspect they were using the two as a pair in some of their operations: LSD to break down inhibitions and/or set incentives and then speed to get their subjects to act. Speed induces an imprudent lust for dopamine pings and accelerates and shortens the thought process.
The Manson Family’s Tate murderers were on speed that night, or at least the principal murderer, Tex Watson, and Susan Atkins. The family had ties to MK-Ultra folks who were running drug clinics when they lived in Haight. Prior to the murders, Manson had been conducting LSD sex and lecturing sessions in the Family in which he spouted a lot of nihilism: nothing meant anything; murder and making love are synonymous. In some ways, he was trying to induce a lust for violence. He was successful.
The Tate murders were probably due to some CIA agent who was involved in the drug trade who wanted to steal drugs that had recently been delivered to the Tate place. They asked Manson to order the murders.
One of the folks staying at the Tate’s was a drug dealer. One of the victims that night, the drug dealer’s girlfriend, was on ecstasy; not that that by itself means much. There had been some problems between the drug dealer and a competitor in the weeks before the murders though, which means quite a bit more, and points towards a turf war. Back then those ran the risk of unwittingly, and unknowingly, stepping on the toes of the CIA.
There were also several separate accounts of people being over at the place that night after the murderers left. One of them was from a Family member who said that she went over there with Manson. As far Manson, who ordered the murders, was concerned, it would be pretty risky business to go to the scene after the murder. If he did, one would think it was for deeper reasons than pure morbid curiosity.
Then the resourceful script writers of the CIA had their production team media cast the blame all on the hippies and market the narrative that it was the end of the Woodstock free-love era.
Tom O’Neill authored a book about the MK-Ultra connections with the Manson Family.
An essential reason why we are at where we’re at in Ukraine is the eighty-some-year old egomaniac in the White House, who I often times refer to as The Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s or Fourteen Hundred Dollar and Zero Sense Joe, who is amped up on a concoction of drugs and wants to play tough guy. His ego demands that profile on Newsweek with the words beneath it, “And I told Putin, I told him you take one step west of the Dnieper and I’m sending our boys in.” and the rights to spout the ego-ingratiating punch line of “Well sonofabitch, wouldn’t you know it? Vlad stopped right in his tracks!” at a future Council of Foreign Relations meeting.
It’s not the only reason we’ve gotten to this point, but it is an essential one. Any sensible president at this point, probably even Trump, would have folded before getting this close to risking the whole plot for everyone.
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Another essential element is the Zionist Trio running the State Department. The flippant thing to say is that they won’t back down either, though it should be mentioned that Wendy Sherman is getting ready to step down and leave the cabinet. Sherman was, by far, the sanest of the three. Antony “I ain’t” Blinken is a cold-blooded nihilist. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan is a hot-blooded Zionist.
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Also, there’s the fact that Putin can’t trust any agreement with the West on Ukraine so it’s practically a guarantee at this point that because of that and the multi-faceted cost of the war to Russia that Putin is going to want the entire coastline of Ukraine, which means Odessa and all the ports. Larry and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Schwarzman’s Blackstone, and Vanguard bought up a ton of farmland in Western Ukraine and they’re going to want a bountiful return on their investment. They need the use of those ports, particularly Odessa, and control of the land itself, of course, to get that.
They can make a case that control of the farmland, and access to Odessa, is a national security concern; that in a multi-polar world the U.S. may need it to feed its populace to prevent further societal breakdown and possibly revolution. I suspect that they’re making that case.
Their wish is that the conflict gets frozen before then but if it comes to it, they’ll call for military action to stop Russia before it takes the coastline and Odessa. So, it’ll come down to whether or not they’ll get their way.
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The situation in Syria is perking up again, especially now that they’re back in the Arab League. The Arab League is asking for all uninvited foreign military forces to leave Syria. The U.S. military is uninvited in Syria and is stealing their oil and food. Israel routinely bombs Syria, including their capitol’s main airport.
In related matters, Israel is seeing resistance in several different directions and as the Arab world unites, under the guidance and efforts of China, with Russia also being popular in the Arab world, the ranks of their enemies are growing.
There is open talk now of Israel and the U.S. combining to attack Iran. One can imagine that if Vlad doesn’t fold on Odessa that The Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s might be rehearsing an alternative line of “And I told Tehran. I said, you make one more step towards a nuclear bomb and I’ll be sending you one. Delivered by air mail!
Syria invited the Russian military into their country (this was a while back, but they are still there). It would be difficult for Russia to run two wars of this size. I haven’t read any rumors as such, but if Iran or Syria invites in the Chinese military into their countries, then that will be another huge, escalating geopolitical chess move.
Sooner or later China is going to have to get militarily involved against the U.S. whether they like it or not because the U.S. is going to keep pushing them until they do. It makes sense to make their stand over there rather than wait until they have to make it over Taiwan and the war is on their home ground.
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So, we’re endangered by the ego of a drugged up eighty-some-year old who is experiencing the tow of cognitive decline and is being drawn closer to the edge of that water fall. (((And the democrats want to run him unopposed for another term!))) And we have Blinken and Nuland who have far too much ego, and probably money, invested into Ukraine to do anything but escalate. Larry, Stanley, and Steve have made their financial investment and they’re not willing to take the loss on it. All of them are drunk on their ego and greed and none of them are going to alter course and they, for whatever reason, don’t seem to fear nuclear war.
There are stirrings of discontent in the Deep State about the direction we’re being shoved into (((Hersh’s story on the U.S.’s responsibility for the Nordstream bombing was the first sign of cracks in the unity in the Deep State))), but they’re much less likely to have as much sudden impact on the situation as someone in the military might. Nor are they as likely to go directly to the public and force the statestream media to cover it. They work through their assets and I’d imagine, especially in this neuro-surveillance world, there has to be quite a bit of fear of being caught leaking.
Our biggest hope at this point, in my view, is that someone high up in the U.S. military very publicly breaks ranks and resigns and announces that they are quitting because the directors of Weekend at Biden’s are recklessly leading the country into a dangerous direction with their foreign policy and thus for the good of the country they have to step down in protest.
DMH, what was the name of the movie that moon unit was in?
She’s been in a few. You may remember her playing Rusty’s California girlfriend in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. Poor Russ had to go to Germany to feel his first pair.
John Astin of “Addams Family” fame played Kent Winkdale, host of Pig in a Poke – not be confused with Wink Martindale, he of Tic-Tac-Dough fame.
Winning the Pig in a Poke grand prize allowed Russ and the fam to get away from Moon Unit and all things Cali-for-ni-A…
Please remember to have your pets spayed and neutered.
Z, there’s no mechanism currently operating which compensates whistleblowers. Biting hands which feed is generally seen as folly, by our PTB-conditioned common wisdom perspective.
The real reason we’re in Ukraine is so American PTB can think they still have worldwide power and influence. And of course Russian PTB, namely Putin. If Putin really is some 4D chess genius, then he calculated that Chinese investment in his resource-based economy would be more advantageous than Western, and that would make up for any potential high-cost risks usually inherent in invasions.
But I’m doubting it. I think Putin’s every bit as senile-power as is Biden.
Obviously, you can believe whatever you want to believe about Putin.
You believe Billy Browder that Putin is the richest man in the world but that somehow someone who is that driven by maniacal greed is also disciplined enough not to flash it and also able to hide his trillion from the West which very much would love to expose it to discredit him.
And now you believe that Putin is “every bit as senile-power as is Biden”.
I believe that Billy Browder is a liar and tax cheating thief who very likely had Magnitsky murdered because he had the goods on Browder and then Browder cried Putin and blamed it on the person who tossed him out of Russia and Browder used his considerable connections in the intelligence community to arm twist Western politicians into passing the Magnitsky Act.
I also believe that if Putin was “every bit as senile-power as is Biden” that Russia would no longer exist in its current form and that, although mistakes have definitely been made, he’s done a damn good job navigating his country through the complexities of the war, both economic and military, that the West has largely foisted upon Russia. I also believe that he did quite a bit to try to avoid this war and offered War Pimp Zelensky a pretty decent deal, one that I’d imagine most Ukrainians wished Zelensky would have accepted, to avoid it.
In Germany today a 32 year old Hamburg Man was convicted and sentenced to prison for approving of the attempt by Russia to liberate the Ukraine and Western Europe from the rule of lunatics. A few weeks or months ago an old man in Berlin was charged with the same offense. He has not yet been tried.
Can a government that surpresses unpopular minority view points continue to call itself a democratic country? Are flawed elections sufficient to claim that a society is democratic?
Although I am enraged by the behavior of the German Government I also recognize that sometime between tommorrow and 2040 industrial civilization is going to completely collapse due to resource deplition, global warming, and massive pollution problems, if not WWIII.
There is nothing productive that can be done other than watch and weight.
Especially considering that all the financial investigations like Panama Papers have him in their crosshairs as the number one person that they’d want to reveal having hidden riches and realizing how much they would pay someone with inside knowledge of it to provide proof of it and yet they still haven’t found any dirt on him.
I also think that I’m closer to the truth than your belief that Putin is “every bit as senile-power as is Biden”.
Larry and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Schwarzman’s Blackstone, and Vanguard bought up a ton of farmland in Western Ukraine and they’re going to want a bountiful return on their investment.
Meanwhile, back in the states:
Schwarzman Says Blackstone in Talks to Buy Regional Bank Assets
For a long time I believed what I was being told over and over and over again. That Russia and China are ruled by a class of corrupt ruthless and stupis oligarchs. Such a narrative sound a lot like what the Nazis were saying about the Jews of Europe, who the Nazi implied were very powerful if not secretly in control of many governments.
But somewhere along the way as I realized that the US and Europe are ruled by a class of corrupt, ruthless, and clever oligarchs I came to understand that I can not trust what I have been told over and over again about the leadership of Russia and China. Liars sometimes tell the truth, either by accident or design. So Russia and China could actually be lead by ruthless corrupt oligarchs. But having grown up in the US and after having lived in Europe for a long time my experience tells me beyond any shadow of a doubt that western civilization is at the apex of world corruption and ruthlessness.
Therefore, if I were on the Central Committee of the SIMULATION Directorate, and the simulation that was not preprogramed for something other than the extinction of mandkind due to climate change, resource deplition, and other types of enviromental collapse, this is the script that I would write for mankinds future.
That a war between the US and China never takes place. That the government of India and China become the best of friends. That to solve water issues Pakistan and Bangladesh peacfully reunite with India. That Yugoslavia reunites.
Finally I wold write the story that the Russian not only capture the Donbass region, that the Russians not only capture all the land east of the Dniper River, but that the Russians capture all of the Ukraine. Then the Slovak and Hungarian, Bulgarian and Greek people manage to free themselves from NATO and EU occupation and invite Russian forces to help them defend their independence. And that leads to a domino effect which leads to the end of NATO and the EU.
An EU in principle is a good idea. But the way that this EU was implemented has not turned out so good. The EU is the mechanism by which Gemany economically dominates the rest of Europe. The bombing of the North Stream pipeline is the mechanism clearly shows that NATO is the mechanism by which the US politcally dominates Germany and therefore Europe.
A common western European Defence Force is a good idea. But not if it is allied with the USA. It must be independent of foreign entanglements.
Finally there would be Parecon treaty between the major trading blocs of the world to ensure that the worlds resources were traded in a manner that is better than which would happen if were traded based upon one dollar one vote.
This best case scenario is obviously not going to happen. I just think people should understand what the best case scenario actually is. Yes the Chinese and Russian leadership MIGHT be ruthless corrupt oligarchs. But I would rather take my chances with them than with the ruthless corrupt American and European oligarchs.
Some of my comments are still waiting to be released. I want to now mention that I have been warned by aan intellegent, very well educated, person that I generally have high reguard for not to talk about out lives being a simulation because it adds an unneccessary level of complexity that adds nothing to our understanding of events. Such a view hold that talk of simuation theory is no different than using religion rather than science to explain things.
I agree for the most part. Though I would like to point out that I do not worship the those running the simulation. I curse them. And I agree that there is another possible explination for events, for the course of history. The value of understanding that we are trapped in a simulation is very limited. The only value that I can see one gains from it is an understanding that we humans are not alone. Someone out there understands what we are going through. Though most humans may not give a crap that someone out there understands what we are going through a few might benifit from such a belief. A funny thing about this perspective though is that the relationship between those of us trapped in this spider web and those looking at the web could be like the relationship of ants and scientists who study ants. Or, it could be the relationship between a slaveholder and slaves who are employed as gladiators in an arena or perhaps victims of a real snuff film.
So lets say that I would take the advice from this very intellegent Vampire who reccomended that I not talk about simulation theory. What would be my explination for course of the 21st century.
It would go like this. Leftist thinkers said in the 20th century that humanity has to choose between Socialism or Barbarism. But that choice was not the entire story.
Humanity also had to chose between (Agricultural) Life and Industrial Civilization.
That is also not the entire story. Another part of the story is that in making those choices not all voices carried an equal weight.
The choice between Socialism and Barbarism is a very well hashed subject in leftist intellectual circles. But I do not think that a majority of of leftist understand that an industrial society is sustainable for any level of population. Humanity is headed for a crash not only because of climate change. Humanity is headed for a crash also due to peak oil. Coal is abundant but even if it were not a green house gas it will get harder and harder to extract giving a lower and lower level of return on investment. Anyways industrial society is dependent on many more non renewable material than just hydrocarbons.
Therefore if we actually wanted to have a sustainable human population it would have to be small enough to exist with resources that could be grown on the earth over and over and over again. If humans depend upon metals at all humanity will not be sustainable. A sustainable agricultural society could have been possible. How comfortable such a society would have been would have been at least partly determined by the level of the human population. The higher the population the lower the standard of living.
Once humans created an industrial society creating a sustainable agricultural society might have still been possible to a certian point, perhaps 1900, perhaps 1930, maybe even 1960 or 1980. But at this point it is clearly game over for mankind. We are not only not going to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we are going to increase it even more. Any reports that humanity is doing anything serious to mitigate the impacts of global warming is just as much fake news as the news about nazi miracle weapons near the end of world war 2 was fake news.
To have successfully implemented a plan to create a sustainable society billions of people at least 30% of the world population would have had to have agreed to a massive cut in thier standard of living. Another 30% would have had to have taken a substantial cut to their standard of living. Not only that 100% of the world’s population would have had to have surrendered the hope of ever achieving the standard of living that an industrial life style afforded. Ok maybe I am exaggurating a little bit because the Amish never aspired to an industrial life style.
Here is a little though experiment. Say that it is 1959 and you are in line to be concieved to be born on planet earth. An angel or a simulation official says you can be born on a farm in Costa Rica and be a bananna farmer and have an average life and live to be 80 years old, or you can be a rock star and make millions of dollars per year and die at age 40, which one do you choose. Which one do you think most people who live today on planet earth would chose if they could go back to 1959?
Those of us who were born after 1959 clearly were born in to a doomed world, though no one understood that at the time. But as time passed more and more people at the pinacle of power would have had the ability to understand this. Once people recognized this they could have said, wow we are in an emergency situation we need to do something. But once they started looking into what could be done they would have faced the realization that although they could delay the collapse of industrial civilization for decades at least there was nothing that they could do to prevent it.
Just as importantly the more they publically acknowledge it the faster the system will breakdown and the faster that those who benifit from the system, which is somewhere between 30% and 60% will suffer. Because the benifits of the system of industrial capitalism are shared very unequally it is hard to determine how many people benifit financially at least a little. Of course when we consider non financial costs against financial gains the number who benifit from the system will be smaller. It is non the less a large number of people who dirive a net benifit from the system, at least for the time being.
So once those people who were at the top levels of society realized that on one hand they could give up their prestige, previlage, and power to in an effort to help humanity avoid extinction for a few more decades. Or they could talk the talk but not do the walk and live a good life until they died and sentence their children or grandchildren to a horribel death rather than sentence their grandchildren and great grandchildren to a horrible death. It should be pretty obvious what choice would be made.
Once that choice was made it was easy for western leaders to bring destruction to places like Áfghanistan, Iraq, and the Ukraine in an effort to keep things comfortable in their neighborhoods as long as possible. It is this second choice that was easy for western leaders to make that really gets me pissed off. Because with just a wee bit of effort such a choices could have been different. That is the difference between the first choice and the second.
There you have it. I have explained the grand scheme of world history without resorting to simulation theory.
Trinity
Climate Change
https://climatecrocks.com/2023/05/20/hansen-earth-on-track-for-catastrophic-warming/
“The Cenozoic analysis is simple. The essential assumption is that there are 60 m of sea level in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between today and an ice-free planet and an additional 120 m of sea level between today and the last glacial maximum.”
The paper:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/PipelinePaper.2023.05.19.pdf
A Crisis of Government (UK edition)
“… nothing ever really changes. The neoliberal uniparty remains in power, and the technocrats continue to steer everything in the same direction… at least in the days before the neoliberal revolution, the technocrats pretended that they were implementing the politicians’ manifesto pledges. These days they practically rip up the manifesto as soon as a government is elected… “Whaddayah gonna do about it anyway?”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/05/17/a-crisis-of-governance/
Ché Pasa
Earlier today I was for some reason reminded of Bartcop.com in its hey day. Is there anybody who participates or reads here who’s old enough to remember that far back in history? Then I came across William Rivers Pitt’s eulogy at Terrance Coppage’s (Bartcop’s) death in 2014. I’d never seen it before. Boy was that a trigger. Then some years later, Pitt died. At 50. Huh.
Makes you wonder. That’s all. Wonder.
Chuck Mire
PBS Firing Line: Guest Charlie Sykes:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/firing-line/video/charlie-sykes-bqg1wy/
Or Here:
https://youtu.be/0b1LZsXwKJ0
Charlie Sykes, a founder and the editor-in-chief of the non-partisan news site “The Bulwark,” discusses why he disassociated himself from the Republican Party, the challenges of covering Trump, the 2024 race, and whether conservatism can be redeemed.
Willy
Mama always told me that stupid is as stupid does. And that the neoliberal uniparty is as it pockets the donations. I used to wonder why it seemed so many corporations donated to both parties equally. Then I realized the donors didn’t care about either party, just who specifically they could bribe to do their bidding.
Unfortunately, one party seems to have lost control of that system, gone round the bend with so many cultural diversions they’re looking like the bouncy clown car seen at town parades. Nothing worse than enjoying a town parade and the clown car flips over and a bunch of crazed clowns run straight towards you. Scary clowns. Shouldn’t they be working instead to flip their car right side up? Then you see the other clown car racing by making loud popping noises, and you realize it’s a drive-by shooting.
Well, that’s the bad metaphor anyways. Forgot about the part where you look up into the parade stands where all the rich folks are sitting and see them all pointing and laughing at the spectacle.
NR
So earlier this week someone posted on the DIY (Do It Yourself) subreddit asking why the quality of the posts there had gone down. One of the moderators responded, and I thought this bit of the response was interesting. Basically, Google is ruining the internet, and that place is just one small example.
Capitalism ruins everything, including, apparently, the internet.
Curt Kastens
Stupidity on a massive scale, maleficence on a massive scale or both.
JFK Assination- Gulf of Tonkin- Attack on the USS Liberty- RFK and MLK assassinations-Watergate Break in-Trucking Deregulation-Support of Contras-Lies about Iraqi crimes in Kuwait-Banking Deregulation- Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction- Iranian Nuclear Program- Venezuela- Russiagate- Covid- January 6th- Nordstream Pipeline- The Ukrainian War, Greenwashing
The lies about events, about how (the US but not only the US) government works, are so massive that maleficence can not be doubted. But stupidity to surely seems to have a place.
In fact the stupidity is also so vast that I deem it sufficent to rise to the level that some us are trapped in a simulation while others are not all here.
Take the way that the US has handled the war in the Ukraine. It took great care to make sure that the Russians did not have the capabilty to launch strategic nuclear war.
That gave the US an ace in that it could always escalate the conflict against Russia and China. But despite this advantage it seems that the entire plan for regime change in Russia depended upon psycologically manipulating Russians in high level positions to actually carry out the plan. If that was only part of the plan it would have been a good piece of the plan. But at this point there does not seem that there was ever a plan B just in case plan A failed.
How can the leaders of the west expect the Ukriane to win a war of attrition against Russia when every piece of Ukrainian infrastructure can be attacked by the Russians but the Ukrainians can not attack any of the infrastructure inside of Russia. The Russians are not going to run out of weapons or ammunition if the factories producing those weapons and ammunition are not attacked. One could say that the Ukrianians will not run out of weapons or ammunition either because the Russians do not dare to strike at factories in NATO countries producing weapons and ammuntion for Ukriane.
But those weapons and ammunition can be attacked as soon as they cross the border.
Therefore it does not seem concivable that the Ukraine can win a war of attrition. This should have been easily forseen before the United States forced Russia in to a corner.
More importantly once the NATO countries clearly showed their beligerence towards Russia by heavily arming the Ukrainians and smothering view points that maintain the Russian leadership was justified in viewing NATO as at threat to Russia everyone in Russia can plainly see that Putin and the Russian leadership had correctly diagnosed the situation. That pretty much rules out a palace coup in Russia for quite a while.
Now here is one thing that I can not say for sure. Was the belief of the US leadership that starting a war in the Ukraine would lead to Putins fall from power insanely stupid.
I can not say that because it is possible that just as Putin believed that he had the support of an important 5th Column in NATO nations, that it turned out did not really exist, the leadership of the US might have made exactly the same mistake that Putin made.
In fact I strongly suspect that the Corona Virus Pandemic played, and perhaps still plays a key role in the information wars between the worlds leading intellegence agencies. I may be wrong about what is true and false about the pandemic. But one thing that I think everyone would agree is that a massive amount of lies were spread about during the period from December of 2019 up until now.
In fact the US MIC has tried so hard to convince the world that the virus escaped from a lab in China that I am thoroughly convinced that the virus was deliberately released by the US MIC or someone working on their behalf. But I digress here somewhat.
Because my main point is not about the Corona Virus.
My main point is that so many supposedly intellegent well educated people have such big blind spots it rises to the level of evidence that we (I at least) are stuck in a world that is not actually real, though it may seem real when we get struck by lightening.
The pain is real. Therefore it is easy to conclude that so is the time and space that produced that pain is real as well. But card full observations tell a different story.
mago
“Concentration moon over the hill in The Valley. Cop kill a creep pow pow pow.” Frank Zappa of Brown Shoes Don’t Make It fame. Quit school, why take it fame.
It’s good news week, have you heard the news? Doctors finding bitter ways of freezing brains in metal trays to keep us from the heat. Have you heard the news?
The Middle East it is a burning . . . And you tell me over and over again we’re not on the eve of destruction
Those are song lyrics from the sixties when I was a kid listening.
Haven’t aged much.
Perhaps one or two random readers might relate to the references—if this comment even sees the light of day.
Kinda self indulgent of me all in all
You’re just another brick in the wall.
mago
Frivolity why not take all of me?
Can’t you see I’m no good without you? So why not take all of me?
Because I’m no good without you
and your dirty love
your hot and dirty love
floozies in the lobby of the Lido hotel selling hot meat hot rats hot cats
Frank Zappa was convinced that psychedelics were a CIA psyop. Could be. Frank drank mucho cafe and smoked muchas cigarettes,
musical genius and avant-garde poet that he was.
Hey. Most cultural icons have feet of clay up to their asses. Doesn’t detract from their messages.
someofparts
I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of binge watching Turkish historical dramas. Lots of fun. Epic length. With current geopolitics in mind, this seemed like a good time to immerse myself in west Asian history. It feels like doing a spring cleaning on my brain. Everything is getting re-framed.
Easy to see why our corrupt clown rulers fear and forbid honest history. Sense of history has all the impact in the world on how we see what is in front of us right this minute. I’m finding that watching these shows is having more ripple effects on my sense of current events than I expected.
Also, in my dream alternative life, I now have an apartment in Istanbul with sweeping views of the Bosporus.
Dinah Moe Humm
Zappa’ father worked at Rand. Not in some low-level, insignificant capacity. Rand Is a CIA joint. He evidently learned at an early age that “politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”
Zappa’s wife was also a mutiple-pack-a-day smoker, leading Frank to name his label “Barking Pumping Records” after her chronic smoker’s cough.
Was Adelaide Gail Sloatman-Zappa both a “Jewish Princess” and a “Catholic Girl?” Only Moon Unit and Dweezil know for sure, and they ain’t talkin.
Willy
From a casual ignorant distance, I presumed the earlier Ottoman sultans were ethically competent rulers which is why wizards like Mimar Sinan and their magnificent creations flourished. I mean, all those gigantic pendentive domes with rocket ship minarets, beautiful no matter what the viewing angle, in a city where all is visible and from great distances, and in earthquake country no less, seems almost magical. Not to mention the construction efficiency compared to other grandiose stuff being built in other parts of Europe, like St. Peters Basilica, which were taking ten times more everything to complete.
Then I saw a few episodes of The Magnificent Century. It seems the reality is that those sultans may have operated more like Mafia dons. Do what I say or I cut off your balls. Suleiman’s chief focus seems to have been monitoring the loyalty of his underlings. I saw the episode where he murdered his innocent son for suspected disloyalty, with lamentations from the completely powerless women kept well-hidden, lest he off them too.
Those episodes did little to assuage me of the idea that great power might be a good thing, just because stuff might get done quicker.
different clue
My purely amateur understanding is that the CIA brain-controller-wannabes thought that psycheledics would allow CIA to tailor-make Manchurian Candidates and other zombie-tools whenever they needed to have some. MK-Ultra was supposed to have been part of that CIA program.
A young Ken Kesey found his way into a CIA sponsored LSD experiment project and liked it so much that he found out how to get more of it and helped get it out of the lab and into the wild. Other hippie-types looked into other psychedelics after studying the work of Harvard Ethnic Botanists like Gordon Wasson and brought the drug sources they worked on into the American wild.
So if psychedelics began as a CIA program, they quickly escaped from the Brain Control Labs of CIA Central. And of course the mushrooms, cactuses and so forth which were/are the sources of so many psychedelics were discovered thousands of years ago by Native Indiandigenous peoples with no help whatsoever from a not-yet-even-existing CIA.
I have always regarded cannabis as a wonderful drug-source. But cannabis is not a psychedelic. I have never felt confident enough to try any of the actual designated-as-such psychedelics.
different clue
Given the decay introduced into many internet-available venues as discussed by NR up above, one wonders whether enough people would like to get that “older better” internet back to where they would be willing to pay for it through a subscription service of some kind?
A non-crap how-to ( and other things) video platform could be set up in the style of the “older better” you tube which used to exist, but just different enough to withstand shyster-lawfare attacks. It could be called We Vid ( for We Video) or some such thing.
A search engine for finding these things without the Google-type clutter could be set up called something like We Search or Shinola Search or some such thing. It could also be subscription-based if that were the only way to keep the Google maggots out of it.
Otherwise, the best people can hope to do is use email to share such things with eachother, links to such things, etc. Blogs are not illegal. They are just hard to find through the digital sewage. Blogs could be made with lists of urls of how-to video series. I’m sure other people might have other ideas.
mago
Hello different clue.
True confession
In my youth I became intimate with such psychotropics as LSD 25, mescaline from cactus buttons, and psylocibin from shrooms.
Left it behind for more serious pursuits sometime after the experience became a revolving door.
Ok. Leave it to twisted Ivy Leaguers who created and inhabit their skull and bones world to create a monster like the CIA and to dream up some damn fool mind control scheme.
Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert — Ram Dass to you—were both Harvard profs with connections to Sandoz, which Swiss pharmaceutical company not only refined that rye ergot into Lysergicacid 25, they made pharmaceutical cocaine, which those of a certain social status used to enjoy and still do.
DMH, what was the name of the movie that moon unit was in?
Z
Lots of print about psychedelic, particularly LSD, experiments in the MK-Ultra program. Not much ever mentioned about the amphetamine experiments.
I suspect they were using the two as a pair in some of their operations: LSD to break down inhibitions and/or set incentives and then speed to get their subjects to act. Speed induces an imprudent lust for dopamine pings and accelerates and shortens the thought process.
The Manson Family’s Tate murderers were on speed that night, or at least the principal murderer, Tex Watson, and Susan Atkins. The family had ties to MK-Ultra folks who were running drug clinics when they lived in Haight. Prior to the murders, Manson had been conducting LSD sex and lecturing sessions in the Family in which he spouted a lot of nihilism: nothing meant anything; murder and making love are synonymous. In some ways, he was trying to induce a lust for violence. He was successful.
The Tate murders were probably due to some CIA agent who was involved in the drug trade who wanted to steal drugs that had recently been delivered to the Tate place. They asked Manson to order the murders.
One of the folks staying at the Tate’s was a drug dealer. One of the victims that night, the drug dealer’s girlfriend, was on ecstasy; not that that by itself means much. There had been some problems between the drug dealer and a competitor in the weeks before the murders though, which means quite a bit more, and points towards a turf war. Back then those ran the risk of unwittingly, and unknowingly, stepping on the toes of the CIA.
There were also several separate accounts of people being over at the place that night after the murderers left. One of them was from a Family member who said that she went over there with Manson. As far Manson, who ordered the murders, was concerned, it would be pretty risky business to go to the scene after the murder. If he did, one would think it was for deeper reasons than pure morbid curiosity.
Then the resourceful script writers of the CIA had their production team media cast the blame all on the hippies and market the narrative that it was the end of the Woodstock free-love era.
Tom O’Neill authored a book about the MK-Ultra connections with the Manson Family.
Z
Z
An essential reason why we are at where we’re at in Ukraine is the eighty-some-year old egomaniac in the White House, who I often times refer to as The Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s or Fourteen Hundred Dollar and Zero Sense Joe, who is amped up on a concoction of drugs and wants to play tough guy. His ego demands that profile on Newsweek with the words beneath it, “And I told Putin, I told him you take one step west of the Dnieper and I’m sending our boys in.” and the rights to spout the ego-ingratiating punch line of “Well sonofabitch, wouldn’t you know it? Vlad stopped right in his tracks!” at a future Council of Foreign Relations meeting.
It’s not the only reason we’ve gotten to this point, but it is an essential one. Any sensible president at this point, probably even Trump, would have folded before getting this close to risking the whole plot for everyone.
–
Another essential element is the Zionist Trio running the State Department. The flippant thing to say is that they won’t back down either, though it should be mentioned that Wendy Sherman is getting ready to step down and leave the cabinet. Sherman was, by far, the sanest of the three. Antony “I ain’t” Blinken is a cold-blooded nihilist. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan is a hot-blooded Zionist.
–
Also, there’s the fact that Putin can’t trust any agreement with the West on Ukraine so it’s practically a guarantee at this point that because of that and the multi-faceted cost of the war to Russia that Putin is going to want the entire coastline of Ukraine, which means Odessa and all the ports. Larry and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Schwarzman’s Blackstone, and Vanguard bought up a ton of farmland in Western Ukraine and they’re going to want a bountiful return on their investment. They need the use of those ports, particularly Odessa, and control of the land itself, of course, to get that.
They can make a case that control of the farmland, and access to Odessa, is a national security concern; that in a multi-polar world the U.S. may need it to feed its populace to prevent further societal breakdown and possibly revolution. I suspect that they’re making that case.
Their wish is that the conflict gets frozen before then but if it comes to it, they’ll call for military action to stop Russia before it takes the coastline and Odessa. So, it’ll come down to whether or not they’ll get their way.
–
The situation in Syria is perking up again, especially now that they’re back in the Arab League. The Arab League is asking for all uninvited foreign military forces to leave Syria. The U.S. military is uninvited in Syria and is stealing their oil and food. Israel routinely bombs Syria, including their capitol’s main airport.
In related matters, Israel is seeing resistance in several different directions and as the Arab world unites, under the guidance and efforts of China, with Russia also being popular in the Arab world, the ranks of their enemies are growing.
There is open talk now of Israel and the U.S. combining to attack Iran. One can imagine that if Vlad doesn’t fold on Odessa that The Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s might be rehearsing an alternative line of “And I told Tehran. I said, you make one more step towards a nuclear bomb and I’ll be sending you one. Delivered by air mail!
Syria invited the Russian military into their country (this was a while back, but they are still there). It would be difficult for Russia to run two wars of this size. I haven’t read any rumors as such, but if Iran or Syria invites in the Chinese military into their countries, then that will be another huge, escalating geopolitical chess move.
Sooner or later China is going to have to get militarily involved against the U.S. whether they like it or not because the U.S. is going to keep pushing them until they do. It makes sense to make their stand over there rather than wait until they have to make it over Taiwan and the war is on their home ground.
–
So, we’re endangered by the ego of a drugged up eighty-some-year old who is experiencing the tow of cognitive decline and is being drawn closer to the edge of that water fall. (((And the democrats want to run him unopposed for another term!))) And we have Blinken and Nuland who have far too much ego, and probably money, invested into Ukraine to do anything but escalate. Larry, Stanley, and Steve have made their financial investment and they’re not willing to take the loss on it. All of them are drunk on their ego and greed and none of them are going to alter course and they, for whatever reason, don’t seem to fear nuclear war.
There are stirrings of discontent in the Deep State about the direction we’re being shoved into (((Hersh’s story on the U.S.’s responsibility for the Nordstream bombing was the first sign of cracks in the unity in the Deep State))), but they’re much less likely to have as much sudden impact on the situation as someone in the military might. Nor are they as likely to go directly to the public and force the statestream media to cover it. They work through their assets and I’d imagine, especially in this neuro-surveillance world, there has to be quite a bit of fear of being caught leaking.
Our biggest hope at this point, in my view, is that someone high up in the U.S. military very publicly breaks ranks and resigns and announces that they are quitting because the directors of Weekend at Biden’s are recklessly leading the country into a dangerous direction with their foreign policy and thus for the good of the country they have to step down in protest.
That’s a possibility. Not a probability.
Z
Dinah Moe Humm
DMH, what was the name of the movie that moon unit was in?
She’s been in a few. You may remember her playing Rusty’s California girlfriend in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. Poor Russ had to go to Germany to feel his first pair.
John Astin of “Addams Family” fame played Kent Winkdale, host of Pig in a Poke – not be confused with Wink Martindale, he of Tic-Tac-Dough fame.
Winning the Pig in a Poke grand prize allowed Russ and the fam to get away from Moon Unit and all things Cali-for-ni-A…
Please remember to have your pets spayed and neutered.
Willy
Z, there’s no mechanism currently operating which compensates whistleblowers. Biting hands which feed is generally seen as folly, by our PTB-conditioned common wisdom perspective.
The real reason we’re in Ukraine is so American PTB can think they still have worldwide power and influence. And of course Russian PTB, namely Putin. If Putin really is some 4D chess genius, then he calculated that Chinese investment in his resource-based economy would be more advantageous than Western, and that would make up for any potential high-cost risks usually inherent in invasions.
But I’m doubting it. I think Putin’s every bit as senile-power as is Biden.
Z
Willy,
Obviously, you can believe whatever you want to believe about Putin.
You believe Billy Browder that Putin is the richest man in the world but that somehow someone who is that driven by maniacal greed is also disciplined enough not to flash it and also able to hide his trillion from the West which very much would love to expose it to discredit him.
And now you believe that Putin is “every bit as senile-power as is Biden”.
I believe that Billy Browder is a liar and tax cheating thief who very likely had Magnitsky murdered because he had the goods on Browder and then Browder cried Putin and blamed it on the person who tossed him out of Russia and Browder used his considerable connections in the intelligence community to arm twist Western politicians into passing the Magnitsky Act.
I also believe that if Putin was “every bit as senile-power as is Biden” that Russia would no longer exist in its current form and that, although mistakes have definitely been made, he’s done a damn good job navigating his country through the complexities of the war, both economic and military, that the West has largely foisted upon Russia. I also believe that he did quite a bit to try to avoid this war and offered War Pimp Zelensky a pretty decent deal, one that I’d imagine most Ukrainians wished Zelensky would have accepted, to avoid it.
Z
mago
Wowie Zowie you guys.
That’s some heavy hitting.
Talking to all of yous.
Willy
Z, you seriously think anybody’ll buy it?
Curt Kastens
In Germany today a 32 year old Hamburg Man was convicted and sentenced to prison for approving of the attempt by Russia to liberate the Ukraine and Western Europe from the rule of lunatics. A few weeks or months ago an old man in Berlin was charged with the same offense. He has not yet been tried.
Can a government that surpresses unpopular minority view points continue to call itself a democratic country? Are flawed elections sufficient to claim that a society is democratic?
Although I am enraged by the behavior of the German Government I also recognize that sometime between tommorrow and 2040 industrial civilization is going to completely collapse due to resource deplition, global warming, and massive pollution problems, if not WWIII.
There is nothing productive that can be done other than watch and weight.
Z
Willy,
Of course, I can’t prove all that, if that’s what you are getting at. Obviously, I don’t even know if it is all true.
But I’m betting it’s a lot closer to the truth than Bezos and Vlad running neck-and-neck towards the trillionaire finish line, like Browder suggests.
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/347541-jeff-bezos-vs-vladimir-putin-whos-the-richest/
(Must have caught Vlad karaoking on Elvis night to get that photo. )
Especially considering that all the financial investigations like Panama Papers have him in their crosshairs as the number one person that they’d want to reveal having hidden riches and realizing how much they would pay someone with inside knowledge of it to provide proof of it and yet they still haven’t found any dirt on him.
I also think that I’m closer to the truth than your belief that Putin is “every bit as senile-power as is Biden”.
Z
Laura
Larry and Stanley’s Asset Inflation Factory Blackrock, Larry’s pal Schwarzman’s Blackstone, and Vanguard bought up a ton of farmland in Western Ukraine and they’re going to want a bountiful return on their investment.
Meanwhile, back in the states:
Schwarzman Says Blackstone in Talks to Buy Regional Bank Assets
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-24/schwarzman-says-blackstone-in-talks-to-buy-regional-bank-assets?srnd=premium
Curt Kastens
For a long time I believed what I was being told over and over and over again. That Russia and China are ruled by a class of corrupt ruthless and stupis oligarchs. Such a narrative sound a lot like what the Nazis were saying about the Jews of Europe, who the Nazi implied were very powerful if not secretly in control of many governments.
But somewhere along the way as I realized that the US and Europe are ruled by a class of corrupt, ruthless, and clever oligarchs I came to understand that I can not trust what I have been told over and over again about the leadership of Russia and China. Liars sometimes tell the truth, either by accident or design. So Russia and China could actually be lead by ruthless corrupt oligarchs. But having grown up in the US and after having lived in Europe for a long time my experience tells me beyond any shadow of a doubt that western civilization is at the apex of world corruption and ruthlessness.
Therefore, if I were on the Central Committee of the SIMULATION Directorate, and the simulation that was not preprogramed for something other than the extinction of mandkind due to climate change, resource deplition, and other types of enviromental collapse, this is the script that I would write for mankinds future.
That a war between the US and China never takes place. That the government of India and China become the best of friends. That to solve water issues Pakistan and Bangladesh peacfully reunite with India. That Yugoslavia reunites.
Finally I wold write the story that the Russian not only capture the Donbass region, that the Russians not only capture all the land east of the Dniper River, but that the Russians capture all of the Ukraine. Then the Slovak and Hungarian, Bulgarian and Greek people manage to free themselves from NATO and EU occupation and invite Russian forces to help them defend their independence. And that leads to a domino effect which leads to the end of NATO and the EU.
An EU in principle is a good idea. But the way that this EU was implemented has not turned out so good. The EU is the mechanism by which Gemany economically dominates the rest of Europe. The bombing of the North Stream pipeline is the mechanism clearly shows that NATO is the mechanism by which the US politcally dominates Germany and therefore Europe.
A common western European Defence Force is a good idea. But not if it is allied with the USA. It must be independent of foreign entanglements.
Finally there would be Parecon treaty between the major trading blocs of the world to ensure that the worlds resources were traded in a manner that is better than which would happen if were traded based upon one dollar one vote.
This best case scenario is obviously not going to happen. I just think people should understand what the best case scenario actually is. Yes the Chinese and Russian leadership MIGHT be ruthless corrupt oligarchs. But I would rather take my chances with them than with the ruthless corrupt American and European oligarchs.
Curt Kastens
Some of my comments are still waiting to be released. I want to now mention that I have been warned by aan intellegent, very well educated, person that I generally have high reguard for not to talk about out lives being a simulation because it adds an unneccessary level of complexity that adds nothing to our understanding of events. Such a view hold that talk of simuation theory is no different than using religion rather than science to explain things.
I agree for the most part. Though I would like to point out that I do not worship the those running the simulation. I curse them. And I agree that there is another possible explination for events, for the course of history. The value of understanding that we are trapped in a simulation is very limited. The only value that I can see one gains from it is an understanding that we humans are not alone. Someone out there understands what we are going through. Though most humans may not give a crap that someone out there understands what we are going through a few might benifit from such a belief. A funny thing about this perspective though is that the relationship between those of us trapped in this spider web and those looking at the web could be like the relationship of ants and scientists who study ants. Or, it could be the relationship between a slaveholder and slaves who are employed as gladiators in an arena or perhaps victims of a real snuff film.
So lets say that I would take the advice from this very intellegent Vampire who reccomended that I not talk about simulation theory. What would be my explination for course of the 21st century.
It would go like this. Leftist thinkers said in the 20th century that humanity has to choose between Socialism or Barbarism. But that choice was not the entire story.
Humanity also had to chose between (Agricultural) Life and Industrial Civilization.
That is also not the entire story. Another part of the story is that in making those choices not all voices carried an equal weight.
The choice between Socialism and Barbarism is a very well hashed subject in leftist intellectual circles. But I do not think that a majority of of leftist understand that an industrial society is sustainable for any level of population. Humanity is headed for a crash not only because of climate change. Humanity is headed for a crash also due to peak oil. Coal is abundant but even if it were not a green house gas it will get harder and harder to extract giving a lower and lower level of return on investment. Anyways industrial society is dependent on many more non renewable material than just hydrocarbons.
Therefore if we actually wanted to have a sustainable human population it would have to be small enough to exist with resources that could be grown on the earth over and over and over again. If humans depend upon metals at all humanity will not be sustainable. A sustainable agricultural society could have been possible. How comfortable such a society would have been would have been at least partly determined by the level of the human population. The higher the population the lower the standard of living.
Once humans created an industrial society creating a sustainable agricultural society might have still been possible to a certian point, perhaps 1900, perhaps 1930, maybe even 1960 or 1980. But at this point it is clearly game over for mankind. We are not only not going to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we are going to increase it even more. Any reports that humanity is doing anything serious to mitigate the impacts of global warming is just as much fake news as the news about nazi miracle weapons near the end of world war 2 was fake news.
To have successfully implemented a plan to create a sustainable society billions of people at least 30% of the world population would have had to have agreed to a massive cut in thier standard of living. Another 30% would have had to have taken a substantial cut to their standard of living. Not only that 100% of the world’s population would have had to have surrendered the hope of ever achieving the standard of living that an industrial life style afforded. Ok maybe I am exaggurating a little bit because the Amish never aspired to an industrial life style.
Here is a little though experiment. Say that it is 1959 and you are in line to be concieved to be born on planet earth. An angel or a simulation official says you can be born on a farm in Costa Rica and be a bananna farmer and have an average life and live to be 80 years old, or you can be a rock star and make millions of dollars per year and die at age 40, which one do you choose. Which one do you think most people who live today on planet earth would chose if they could go back to 1959?
Those of us who were born after 1959 clearly were born in to a doomed world, though no one understood that at the time. But as time passed more and more people at the pinacle of power would have had the ability to understand this. Once people recognized this they could have said, wow we are in an emergency situation we need to do something. But once they started looking into what could be done they would have faced the realization that although they could delay the collapse of industrial civilization for decades at least there was nothing that they could do to prevent it.
Just as importantly the more they publically acknowledge it the faster the system will breakdown and the faster that those who benifit from the system, which is somewhere between 30% and 60% will suffer. Because the benifits of the system of industrial capitalism are shared very unequally it is hard to determine how many people benifit financially at least a little. Of course when we consider non financial costs against financial gains the number who benifit from the system will be smaller. It is non the less a large number of people who dirive a net benifit from the system, at least for the time being.
So once those people who were at the top levels of society realized that on one hand they could give up their prestige, previlage, and power to in an effort to help humanity avoid extinction for a few more decades. Or they could talk the talk but not do the walk and live a good life until they died and sentence their children or grandchildren to a horribel death rather than sentence their grandchildren and great grandchildren to a horrible death. It should be pretty obvious what choice would be made.
Once that choice was made it was easy for western leaders to bring destruction to places like Áfghanistan, Iraq, and the Ukraine in an effort to keep things comfortable in their neighborhoods as long as possible. It is this second choice that was easy for western leaders to make that really gets me pissed off. Because with just a wee bit of effort such a choices could have been different. That is the difference between the first choice and the second.
There you have it. I have explained the grand scheme of world history without resorting to simulation theory.