We had layoffs at my multinational Fortune 500 tech company recently and one team was split in San Francisco and France.
The engineers in SF called into their morning meeting and less than an hour later got a call from HR with a return shipping label for their hardware, no notice and a week of severance.
The team in France? Legally they had to be placed on ‘Garden Leave’ for a month paid and the company had to prove they weren’t replacing them in the near future and it was a legitimate downsizing in which the employees couldn’t be reassigned and keep their jobs. If the company is found fraudulent at any point in the process they have to pay the dismissed worker a year of salary.
Oh, and another article that might be of interest. The AI race may be over before it begins, because China’s power grid is so superior to the United States’.
Gee, who knew that prioritizing tax breaks for the rich over building infrastructure would have consequences? Absolutely no one could have predicted this I’m sure.
I had fun watching LG&M and the other ShitLib, Blue Maga sites call out the Putin-Trump summit as a complete Nothing-burger. It mostly was, I will concede, but it was a small step forward, like the ice-melt on a frozen lake that presages a spring thaw.
Trump is still stupid (& Generalissimo Franco is still dead) but evidently he has enough of a take on what “Winners” are that reality has broken in on his bubble and he knows Ukraine likely won’t even last until the end of the year. He excluded the stuck-in-the-70s Clown Keith Kellogg’s Kornflakes from attending, his golf-buddy Lindsey Graham and the rest of the Baghdad Bobs “Ukraine Will Win!” bunch are no longer steering the Ship of War Fools. Dreamers, but not the John Lennon no governments, peace types, the We Will Kill All our Self-Made “enemies” bunch.
Exxon-Mobil is a big winner, which I personally don’t feel great about, apparently they will be invited back into parts of Russia, and they are important donors, of course. Donnie may (if he doesn’t CO) have his first actual policy success, at least from where I sit, unless someone removes him from the scene or he spastically swings to the opposite pole as he often does. Dressing down Zelensky in the Oval Office was light fun for him and Vance, but not particularly meaningful from a policy perspective.
Good coverage by Danny Haiphong this morning with both Pepe Escobar and then Mark Sleboda on. Also the Duran crew and then Alex Christoforou solo.
Trump only opened his big mouth and spilled for the press losers once, we agreed on important things and “one disagreement,” but the meeting still ranked “100%”!! Not 200, Donnie? You usual do better and get World Records don’t you?
The consensus among the preceding was the sticking point will be “Security Guarantees” for Ukraine. US will continue to sell weapons (which make no difference) & profit from the deaths of more Ukrainians as long as the Euro-Chihuahuas shell out the green.
The fat lady has started to sing, there may be more and even an Encore, but the Writing is on the Wall. . . . Pivot to China? Won’t matter. Someone mentioned today that China’s Industrial capacity is now a bit above the US + Japan+ the EU combined!!
Who is angry, with exploding heads, beyond the EU Chihuahuas? The US Press, not just the Dimmies & LG&M, either, Fox is going off on how BAD ending the failed war is. But unlike the buddying around with Jeffrey Epstein that Trump and Melania did (she is suing Hunter Biden for $1 Billion for quoting from a Michael Wolf hit-piece book; never thought I would sympathize with Crackhead Hunter), he will NOT lose votes and support from his actual base over this change of course.
I guess that if the Permanent War State demands it, Taiwan can be destroyed in a futile roll of the dice? My hope is that the saner people there will see how an unnecessary war ended for Ukraine and realize that sacrificing their lives and industry. The Rand Corp. studies admit that if China wins, the US would make sure all their chip factories and other earners are destroyed on the way out; kind of copied from what the Russians did to Moscow before Napoleon got there, but more lasting utter destruction.
My understanding is that it’s the old KMT faction that are the realists and don’t want to suffer utter destruction, the Western-oriented Globalists want “Independence” at any cost. Never thought I would respect that bunch either; history often surprises.
Unike the proverbial broken clock, Donnie isn’t right twice daily, more likely is so every 6-8 months. He may have a win coming down the pike. One success is more than the entire Biden Crew had in 4 years, a low bar, but 100% failure can often be bested. Donnie really wants that Nobel Peace Prize badly, he can’t go to his grave with Obama having one (merely for not being Bush Jr.) and not doing something “that n—–r” did. So it is.
Jealousy can promote losers doing good things as well as bad, here’s the proof.
Trump looked beleaguered and deflated yesterday after his three hour meeting — much like Marcellus looked after Butch rescued him. Seriously, he was wiped out. I have no doubt Putin gave him his demands for so-called “peace” and those demands are the demands they have always been. I’m also sure that Putin made it clear that if Trump or America or NATO or Europe interferes any further and crosses a line, nuclear war is on the table. Rubio looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
The following is more prevalent than ever. Do you suffer premonitions of the holocaust to come? I do. I always have. My atomic clock has waxed and waned over the years and right now it’s in full wax stage.
But what are the nuclear risks of the opposite scenario: when the conventional fighting in Ukraine shifts decisively in Russia’s favor?
Consider that the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict so far was by a nuclear power that was on a winning path. The United States decided to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, when Japan was nearly defeated by conventional means, but stubbornly refused to stop resistance and accept US conditions for surrender. While reasons and justifications for the US decision to employ nuclear weapons in Japan are still subject of debate among historians, it is safe to say that the bombings achieved at least three goals. They terminated the war with Japan more quickly, possibly saving the United States from having to mount a costly invasion of the home islands. They allowed the United States to impose the conditions of war termination and post-war settlement—that is, unconditional surrender and US military occupation of Japan. And finally, they made a strong impression on the Soviet Union.
While historical precedents should not be applied uncritically across time and context, they can be mined for insights. The set of incentives for Russia to resort to nuclear use when it is about to win in Ukraine would not be dissimilar from those animating the US decision in 1945. Perhaps, Putin’s mention of Hiroshima and Nagasaki precedents in his September 2022 speech was more than a trope.
A winning Russia might indeed have more to gain and less to lose from a nuclear strike than a retreating Russia.
“A collection of eleven short stories of occupied Germany where Kay Boyle has spent the last two years, introduced by a longer piece on the trial of the “”Frankfort Butcher””, Heinrich Boab. Both here, and in the stories, the “”true computation is fervently made”” that here, in the German people, is no realization of guilt, no knowledge of guilt. ”
“In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker”
Poor Europeans live longer than wealthy citizens of the US because they have socialized medicine.
Would be interesting to have the same comparisons made with Canada. I suspect that if Ian had been unfortunate enough to have been born on the misbegotten US side of the border he would not still be alive to host this website.
Russia is not the only atom-bomb power in the world today. The RussiaGov may wonder how irrationally the Western atom-bomb powers might respond to a war-shortening use of atom bombs by the RussiaGov. Also, the ChinaGov may well counsel the RussiaGov not to do it.
Somehow, I don’t think a winning RussiaGov is the most likely to first-use atom bombs. I think that one or more losing Western PowerGovs would be more likely to “cast the first stone” in that regard. I think the RussiaGov also thinks so. So I think the RussiaGov will just keep up the current level of fighting till Ukraine finally collapses into its own footprint and hope the collapse is just slow enough that non-chiliast non-nihilists in charge of the actual bombs can get some control in a politely non-disclosed way over their nihilist chiliast Civilian Leaderships.
Of course I may just be whistling past the graveyard in the dark.
L&S, thank you for a post that shows less Russia Derangement than your earlier ones, perhaps you are starting to evolve. Best of luck.
That said, your source is not credible (speaking as someone with an MLIS degree, who understands research and credible vs. non-credible sources.
I won’t demolish a mosquito with a bazooka, so will just cite some obvious problems in your sources claims.
Your Slavic-named source, like the Nazi supporters Victoria Nuland and Chrystia Freeland, clearly has an axe to grind. The first clue is who pays her for content: She is from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, clearly a Deep State “Think” Tank by bloodless chicken-hawks who seek eternal war for imaginary grievances of centuries past.
2nd paragraph: “Russia, the aggressor,”– Nope! Assumes facts not in evidence (a classical logical fallacy). Has she never heard the NATO pledges starting with Bush Sr. that NATO would not move “one inch East”? Have you? I agree with Malcolm X, everyone has a basic right to self defense, even people we don’t necessarily like. 1,400 Donbass residents were killed by shelling from “their” government by the time Putin resorted to an SMO, because Russian speakers didn’t agree with not being able to speak their own language, textbooks saying the 3rd Reich was the “good” side in WW II and Russia the villains, the tearing down of monuments to the Great Patriotic War, their religion being banned, and monuments erected to Stepan Bandera and Nazi ideology. This doesn’t bother the author (or you?) but it remains true. Also hundreds if not thousands were injured by Ukrainian gov’t. shelling, even after Zelensky (who running as a “Peace” candidate promised to stop it).
She writes of the need to “break a hurting stalemate”, poor grammar and what stalemate does she mean? Every respectable authority now says Russia is winning daily, most agree there is no Miracle or Wonder Weapon that will reverse Russian progress.
She evidently reluctantly admits that “when the conventional fighting in Ukraine shifts decisively in Russia’s favor” is coming soon (already here actually) a half-truth, better than the previous claims at least.
“Consider that the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict so far was by a nuclear power that was on a winning path.” Harry Truman’s racist US slaughtering “Japs” is not equivalent to Russia, a multi-ethnic society, wherein racist beliefs of the past have lost credibility and won’t be blindly followed. 8 decades have passed since the US bombings, some attitudes change for the better. Russia cares what the RoW (Rest of World) thinks about it. Eisenhower was the LAST US President to do so, see his shutting down the joint UK-French-Israeli attack on the Suez Canal and Egypt. The last adult President in the room (& a Republican!)
“Related” ad for the moronic Chicken-Hawk Fiona Hill’s babblings shows this is not a serious “news” site, it is purely biased and editorial.
Russia now has Oreshnik missiles, evidently (only one or two have been used so far) as powerful in most respects as nuclear weapons, however not creating permanent nuclear fallout which lingers for centuries. Why hasn’t Russia carpet-bombed “Keev” like the Zionist entity has to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, etc, etc? The Russians are not (on the whole) psychopaths.
She’s just whipping up hate and fear as that’s what she’s paid for. A humane person would not do what she does, just as pigs don’t fly.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”– whether Sinclair Lewis or another source first said this, it remains true, and applies.
Ain’t superstitious but a black cat just crossed my trail
Bad luck ain’t got me so far and I won’t let it stop me now
Well the dogs are howlin all over the neighborhood
Whoa, the dogs are howlin all over the neighborhood
That is a true sign of death baby, that ain’t no good.
(From Howling Wolf’s Ain’t Superstitious )
Yeah yeah. Lotsa people hearing the dogs barking and wolfs howling as they pounce upon their prey.
People in Sudan, Ukraine, the West Bank Gaza
Toss a dart on a world map and see where it lands
Dogs are barking babies crying people/animals dying
Got a feeling about the future and it ain’t no good I know that.
And if you think that there’s an answer in AI check the desert outside your door and ask again and if the answer is soaked in blood then check your mind and if it’s cloaked in gray then you need to ask again and clean it up, wash your hands, your face and down below, then go ahead turn on the news and see what the talking heads say and know it’s all lies. . .
Buena suerte a cada
The Western World has started an active process of self-inflicted, global physical blindness. The following blog article, by Antonio Turiel, is in Spanish but can be translated automatically with your translator of choice
In Spanish we have a saying: “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente” (eyes not seeing = heart not feeling). This is the kind of thing I would have never predicted under any kind of logic I use.
I make a point of making myself read, watch or listen to at least some on-line commentators, who have taken up pro-Ukraine viewpoints on the War in Ukraine. There is a fair amount of what Jung called “shadow projection” in much of their expression, which I take it is sourced directly or indirectly from Ukraine’s impressive propaganda operation at least with regard to current events. Some of the motivation for obsessively following and commenting on daily developments I take to be vicarious stimulation by war porn.
As I have written here before, the information vacuum with regard to the war is particularly remarkable, given the daily flow of map updates and FPV videos. Basic information is unavailable or systematically distorted. Nevertheless, it is a pretty safe assessment to affirm that Russia is under considerable strain and Ukraine is crippled.
My own opinion is that this war may never reach a truly decisive conclusion — I do not see an obvious and desirable end-game for either party reachable by military force — no obvious way to “win the war on the battlefield” per se. Russia does not seem to be anywhere near to a point where it could secure Odessa, depriving rump Ukraine of a Black Sea coast and establish a link to Transnistria.
Russia could lose, imo, but I cannot see any scenario where something like that happened, probably toppling the Putin regime, to be desirable from an American or Western European standpoint. My conviction is that Russia outright losing the war would be a catastrophic outcome with the consequent turmoil affecting a vast of the globe. Pirate Capitalism might celebrate but it would be the dog catching the car and getting run over. The Russophobes are crazy to want it.
Ukraine losing, and giving up in an armistice ceasefire, also invites chaos. The Zelensky regime almost certainly will be overthrown or supplanted and its replacement will lack legitimacy and worse, funds, because no party or faction embracing peace with Russia will be able to either fight the far-right or keep the money spigot from the West running. Russia does not have the resources to occupy or reconstruct the whole of Ukraine. Western powers will want to stage a “humanitarian intervention”.
Both sides have already lost this war. Russia may recover, as its morale seems pretty good for the moment and mobilization has stripped away some of the corruption and cynicism, but it is hard to know how the finely calculating Putin will manage a peace, in which Russian interests continue under acute threat, as they are now, in the Baltic and Black Sea, alongside Russia’s dependence on China’s good will.
Ukraine may never recover. Peace turns off the money spigot. The country before the war had one of the most severe demographic deficits ever seen in a country not consumed in war, and now it has been consumed by war.
It is in Russia’s interest to rebuild hydraulic infrastructure on the Lower Dneiper, but that is going to be a heavy lift and Russia has not secured, as far as I can tell, enough territory to date to make it feasible. It is not likely to be easy if rump Ukraine is actively hostile. Ukraine’s ability to recover without Russian gas, railroad or electrical infrastructure component supply will be limited. Ukraine will need Western debt forgiveness, but cash will be needed, too, and cash for what? A big chunk of natural resource is in Donbass.
KMT isn’t particularly realists. It is just that they have always represented the wealthy mainlanders who invaded Taiwan in the late 1940s (killing tens of thousands in the process) and that wealth has its factories and cheap labor on the mainland. The DPP rose to power because folks felt that the KMT had sold out the Taiwanese economy. But now Taiwanese are turning against the DPP because as little interest as most have in joining the mainland, they have even less interest in being the next Ukraine.
Someone (apologies for not remembering who) made a good case that the US A-bombs were not what forced Japan to finally accept unconditional surrender. All the important Japanese cities had long since been levelled, so militarily the impact was not that significant. And the horrors of massive delayed dying from radiation were not known at the time. What did force Japan’s hand was the rapid and quite successful Soviet invasion of Manchuria. If Japan had waited long enough, it could have been North and South Japan, not North and South Korea.
The Soviet invasion kept a promise that Stalin made to FDR that the Soviets would join the war against Japan 90 days after Germany’s surrender.
Thomas Neuburger has has asked the question “Was Preseving the Union Worth It?”. And Answers “Maybe Not”.
Here is my reply.
I am not an expert, real scholars should very much feel free to dispute me.
My military service colors my perspective; you never get those brain cells back.
First, I understand the purpose of asking the question, but I think there is very little resemblance between that history and current events.
Huge numbers of my fellow citizens are being conned, The purpose of that con is to cheat them out of the lives they deserve. As a left-winger, that’s what I believe about the other side.
Nobody Is talking about owning people.
I believe the biggest mistake of alternate histories is to think that the Confederate States of America would have endured as some sort of parallel United States.
The Confederate States of America was not the first Confederacy to govern in America, and it had the same flaws as the original. Given who was leading the C.S.A., it was probably weaker.
The reason the former colonies dumped the original Articles of Confederation, and moved to a Federal system with a real national government is because the colonies were beginning to fight each other, sometimes with guns.
The colonies looked like they were on the verge of becoming another Europe; historically, probably the most violent place on earth.
Consistent with that, a major reason the South lost the war was that the member states of the Confederacy, wouldn’t cooperate, even in the face of an existential crisis.
I believe the first thing that would have happened if the Confederacy had won is that it would have broken up, and the individual members would have started fighting wars with each other and us. No doubt with some “helpful” prodding from the European great powers.
I think we would have had a lot more wars in North America, given the openly expansionist ambitions of some of the Confederate leaders. Keeping the European powers out as much as possible was a good idea, and I think a break-up would have thrown open the doors.
The Southern states economies were dominated by latifundia (plantation) agriculture. There are many examples of what life is like when plantation-owners run the society; a tiny minority lives fabulously. Otherwise such places are violent, desperately poor, backwards, and congenitally politically unstable. Independence would have been great for plantation owners, economic doom for everyone else, future generations of whites very much included.
One of the problems with owning other people is getting them to do what you want.
The slave-holder society of the American South normalized torture. An entire society where making other humans shriek in pain was just the normal routine experience of ordinary people in their every day lives.
In the 50 years before the Civil War, American slavery expanded dramatically, it wasn’t just going away on its own, and as far as I know, it showed no signs of moderating it’s horrific violence and cruelty. My understanding is that slave revolts were practically continuous, even though punished terribly and never successful. There was a reason for that.
Given the lawless violence inflicted on the former slaves after emancipation, I am highly skeptical they would have done better under a regime where that violence was still legal.
That legalized torture had effects far beyond its direct targets.
Southern military units fighting in the Mexican War, were stood down and sent home for committing war crimes, before that was even understood to be a thing. To this day, if you subtract the Southern States from the crime statistics, America is basically Western Europe. Someone once said ‘the dark underbelly of American liberty is violence’ if you could trace back that violence, all of it, I would bet that 80% could be traced back to slavery in some way. I would point to Canada as a possible confirming counter-example.
Where the Union Army went, it broke the plantations up and gave the land to the former slaves.
In the entire history of the United States Army, this is without question it’s proudest moment. A finer act even, than liberating the concentration camps.
If preserved, this measure alone would have had tremendous positive effects in terms of both power and economics. Other places where land reform like this happens, it pretty much always super-charges the economy for generations. It probably would have done the same for the South. Compensation for the slaves. The final destruction of the plantation system and it’s would-be aristocracy. The de-funding of the founders of the KKK.
Thankfully, we are nowhere near the place where historical second-guessing of this period might be useful, but lets see what it might say about events 160 years ago.
Let’s review the chronology of how things went wrong.
It started when Andrew Johnson spent the first half of his Presidency single-handedly restoring the wealth and power of the exact same people who had started the war.
Next, the forgiven, pardoned former Confederates, having sworn true faith and allegiance a second time, betrayed that oath and began attacking Federal Officials.
This was understandable. Those Federal Officials were the same Northern shop-keepers and farm boys who, with no ridiculous pretensions to martial excellence, and zero military experience, had just comprehensively kicked the Confederate’s ass. They had exposed the lie that Southern cruelty translated into any kind of military prowess.
I don’t see the former slaves as obvious targets for a normal definition of revenge.
Nevertheless, those same forgiven, pardoned former Confederates followed up on their second treason, by inflicting unspeakable atrocity after unspeakable atrocity on people who had already spent their entire lives suffering at Southerners hands.
One of the perks of soldering for a democracy, is supposed to be the occasional opportunity to slaughter truly terrible people. The Confederates were the worst, as they proved by their actions after the War.
The only things wrong with the Civil War were undeserved and exploited charity shown the wealthy assholes who led the Confederacy, and an insufficiently energetic and ruthless response when Confederates violated their surrender.
The danger to Ukraine is that if it keeps fighting too long, it may damage not only the Ukrainian state but the Ukrainian people too. After all, the Ukrainian people survived for centuries without a state of their own.
Because of the vast damage caused by the Treaty in the 1920s splitting the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, I always sympathized with those who fought against the treaty. But watching Ukraine now, I think that it could have been worse. (Churchill threatened to put the Irish population in concentration camps like they did to the Boers.)
The frightening thing about the War in Ukraine is the mass political psychology, at least among elites, is such that no one can ever admit that they (or “we”) were wrong about everything, and then support reversing course 180 degrees.
The consequence is a ratchet effect on policy. NATO’s European members must commit to spend on an arms race apparently, but never to removing sanctions on Russia or using Russian resource exports in their economies.
This inability to abandon the narcissism that provoked war is why the war may never really end. Europe is locked into a path to WWIII.
Somecomputerguy’s comment raises the interesting ” oh if only” counterfactual speculation. What if Booth had missed? Or what if Lincoln’s bodyguard had done a good-enough job guarding Lincoln’s body?
On to EUrokraine-NATO . . . EUrope’s devotion to keeping Ukraine in the fight in the teeth of Trump’s effort to bring Zelensky to recognizing his-and-Ukraine’s ” Hirohito moment” hardens my belief that NATO was founded as British-European conspiracy against America . . . to draft America into fighting Euro-Brittain’s long running Great Game War against Russia-USSR-whatever.
Here is a little article from the New Cold War ( Know Better) website. I found it by looking up the quote I remembered from years ago: ” keep Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. And I found the correct form of that remembered quote in the very first paragraph of this article as well as the title itself:
” A History of NATO ‘ Keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down’ “. Here is the link. https://newcoldwar.org/history-nato-keep-russians-americans-germans/
” ‘Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.’ Those were the words of NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, when explaining the aims behind the new military alliance (as it was then). ” As noted, those words were spoken by NATO’s first Secretary General, named Lord Ismay. That’s LORD Ismay. L O R D Ismay. Get it?
For all Trump’s badness ( which I predicted in general and against which I voted for Harris on the basis of), if Trump can destroy America’s presence in NATO, that will be an accidental good thing for America. If America leaves NATO, Canada will stay in NATO out of loyalty to its Royal Brittanic Imperial Legacy traditions, which means that Canada will be part of any WWIII which the Britto-EUro conspiracy against peace can create between NATO and Russia.
At which point, will the Anglo-philliac brainjackers in charge of Establishment American policy still have the power to conspire America into that war the way Twentieth Century America’s most evil President, Woodrow Wilson, conspire with Great Brittain to manipulate American into WWI?
Here is an amazing sand sculpture from the BeAmazed subreddit. It won the 2019 Sand Sculpture contest somewhere in Texas. It WON. In TEXAS. This raises the question: is Texas a Red State? Or is Texas a GerrymandeRed State? ( I am sure a maganazi mob would have torn that sculpture right down, nowadays. Or maybe stopped the makers from even getting it built.)
Here is a scary video about “sticker shock tsunami” washing through Walmart and elsewhere just recently. Solidly middle-class-looking people are sharing their appallment at recent massive price-jumps. Some of them are also highlighting the contribution to these price-jumps of the recent Trump tarriffs. They also show Walmart’s ( and lesserly Target’s) efforts to hide evidence of the former price so the effect of the tarriffs won’t be so obvious. ( I would note that Trump promised revenge with every tool in his toolbox against any retailer who overtly noted the tarriff contribution to price-rises). But the employees told to destroy all evidence of the recent former prices are letting some of that evidence slip through and a couple of presenters in this video show how to find that evidence.
I think a saying will start to emerge . . . ” Middle-class is the new Poor”. I would also note that some of these solidly middle-class-culture people seem to be massively ignorant and information-deprived as to basic lowest-on-the-food-chain survivalist information. They will have to get up to speed on this sort of information very fast.
Who will help them find it and learn it and learn how to apply it? I have no idea.
Maybe some of them ( or some people who know some of them) are reading this very comment. If so, here is a tiny sample of the kind of survivalist information that they, you and others are going to need to survive the bright new future. It was gathered over time by Kurt Saxon. Here is a wiki about Kurt Saxon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Saxon
I note that the internet is making it ever harder to find any links to anything that Kurt Saxon actually wrote. Here is a user-hostile format of something that used to be user friendly. But there is still survival information here for people ready to endure the inconvenience of the newer user-hostile format. This is a little set of articles about ultra-cheap eating. https://ia801302.us.archive.org/18/items/KurtSaxonSurvivalFoods2004/Kurt%20Saxon%20-%20Survival%20Foods%20(2004).pdf
The titles of the few articles are clickable. The information they contain is real, though it is only a fraction of the information in his books which these articles are meant to teaser you into buying. Still and all, here is a bit of the type of real information which the Walmart sticker-shocked people in this video will need to learn and internalize in order to survive the future, because Walmart will never offer ” always the lowest price, always” ever again. And neither will anyone else for the sort of mainstream food which the people in this video were buying and looking at the prices of.
So if any readers of this comment are among the Nouveau Poor who can’t afford to shop at Walmart anymore, and will never be able to afford Walmart ever ever again, here is a taste of real Survivalist information. Learn it, Live it, Love it. Good bye and good luck.
@different clue. I’m not sure why any cognizant functioning person would want to shop at Walmart in the first place unless they lack options, which seems to be the idea.
In many places, a Walmart is the only store-with-food left standing, from what I’ve read. Recently, Dollar General and Dollar Tree have been entering the Walmart Zones to establish a presence and begin stripping away customers from below.
In the Urban Food Junkyards, there are not even Walmarts. There are bunches of little bodegas and minimarts. I gather the food quality and food choices are not very good there, from what I have read.
I live in a money-breeder-reactor college town. I was able to get into a co-op so the monthly carrying charges I pay would be considered affordable anywhere in America and are considered amazing by anyone who lives around here. Ann Arbor is a food jungle. There are so many choices and places. I don’t think there even is a Walmart though I think there is a Sam’s Club. If you know rudimentary basic cooking which I do, you can buy affordable food ingredients and make them into basic rudimentary dishes which are ” good enough to eat.”
I don’t think the people in that video are cognition-proof or even very cognition-defficient. What they are is information-deprived and skills-free. If they were taught the skills and given the information and could then overcome their own fear and self-doubt; they would be able to make basic health-maintaining survival food for less money than what they were show spending at the Walmart. IF they live in a place with survival food raw materials.
Here is a Kurt Saxon article called ” Hunger In America”. He wrote it after watching a PBS show called Hunger In America. He was writing about the Food Stamp Welfare poor shown in that show. His tone about them was very harshly dismissive but his information about cheap eating was very informative. Here is that article and the next few clickable/scrollable articles can be reached from there. https://ia801302.us.archive.org/18/items/KurtSaxonSurvivalFoods2004/Kurt%20Saxon%20-%20Survival%20Foods%20(2004).pdf
Since Middle-Class is the New Poor, the people in this video will need this information and the skills to use it if they want to survive going forward. Who will teach them these skills? Who will give them this information?
The Jackpot Design Engineers want them to die off in their millions just slowly enough that none of them realize that they are the targets of a long term killoff plan.
If they learned how to survive in Kurt Saxon style, that would make the Long Killoff Plan harder to apply. Culture War Revolutionaries could make a lot of trouble for the Ruling Class Overlords and their Long Killoff engineers if those revolutionaries could reach and teach millions of the New Poor about successful resistance, rejectance, obstructance, etc through the personal application of Kurt Saxon Cuisine ( and Social Protest Hippie Cuisine too, if one wants to be Leftish about it).
I see the pepsi cans in the picture are posing on a granite countertop. So unless he is posing these cans on someone else’s granite countertop, he can afford to live in the immediate short term in a place with a granite countertop. This particular person may indeed be among the cognitively defficient. ( I’m sorry. I’m supposed to say “differently cognitive”). Regardless, this picture and item really does bring to mind John Wayne’s classic saying: ” Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.”
Now here’s something that looks utterly frivolous on its face, but upon being read to the very end, takes on a surprising level of importance given the whole Trumpenepstein situation.
NR
A little something I saw on social media:
But hey, American exceptionalism, am I right?
NR
Oh, and another article that might be of interest. The AI race may be over before it begins, because China’s power grid is so superior to the United States’.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/
Gee, who knew that prioritizing tax breaks for the rich over building infrastructure would have consequences? Absolutely no one could have predicted this I’m sure.
Mark Level
I had fun watching LG&M and the other ShitLib, Blue Maga sites call out the Putin-Trump summit as a complete Nothing-burger. It mostly was, I will concede, but it was a small step forward, like the ice-melt on a frozen lake that presages a spring thaw.
Trump is still stupid (& Generalissimo Franco is still dead) but evidently he has enough of a take on what “Winners” are that reality has broken in on his bubble and he knows Ukraine likely won’t even last until the end of the year. He excluded the stuck-in-the-70s Clown Keith Kellogg’s Kornflakes from attending, his golf-buddy Lindsey Graham and the rest of the Baghdad Bobs “Ukraine Will Win!” bunch are no longer steering the Ship of War Fools. Dreamers, but not the John Lennon no governments, peace types, the We Will Kill All our Self-Made “enemies” bunch.
Exxon-Mobil is a big winner, which I personally don’t feel great about, apparently they will be invited back into parts of Russia, and they are important donors, of course. Donnie may (if he doesn’t CO) have his first actual policy success, at least from where I sit, unless someone removes him from the scene or he spastically swings to the opposite pole as he often does. Dressing down Zelensky in the Oval Office was light fun for him and Vance, but not particularly meaningful from a policy perspective.
Good coverage by Danny Haiphong this morning with both Pepe Escobar and then Mark Sleboda on. Also the Duran crew and then Alex Christoforou solo.
Trump only opened his big mouth and spilled for the press losers once, we agreed on important things and “one disagreement,” but the meeting still ranked “100%”!! Not 200, Donnie? You usual do better and get World Records don’t you?
The consensus among the preceding was the sticking point will be “Security Guarantees” for Ukraine. US will continue to sell weapons (which make no difference) & profit from the deaths of more Ukrainians as long as the Euro-Chihuahuas shell out the green.
The fat lady has started to sing, there may be more and even an Encore, but the Writing is on the Wall. . . . Pivot to China? Won’t matter. Someone mentioned today that China’s Industrial capacity is now a bit above the US + Japan+ the EU combined!!
Who is angry, with exploding heads, beyond the EU Chihuahuas? The US Press, not just the Dimmies & LG&M, either, Fox is going off on how BAD ending the failed war is. But unlike the buddying around with Jeffrey Epstein that Trump and Melania did (she is suing Hunter Biden for $1 Billion for quoting from a Michael Wolf hit-piece book; never thought I would sympathize with Crackhead Hunter), he will NOT lose votes and support from his actual base over this change of course.
I guess that if the Permanent War State demands it, Taiwan can be destroyed in a futile roll of the dice? My hope is that the saner people there will see how an unnecessary war ended for Ukraine and realize that sacrificing their lives and industry. The Rand Corp. studies admit that if China wins, the US would make sure all their chip factories and other earners are destroyed on the way out; kind of copied from what the Russians did to Moscow before Napoleon got there, but more lasting utter destruction.
My understanding is that it’s the old KMT faction that are the realists and don’t want to suffer utter destruction, the Western-oriented Globalists want “Independence” at any cost. Never thought I would respect that bunch either; history often surprises.
Unike the proverbial broken clock, Donnie isn’t right twice daily, more likely is so every 6-8 months. He may have a win coming down the pike. One success is more than the entire Biden Crew had in 4 years, a low bar, but 100% failure can often be bested. Donnie really wants that Nobel Peace Prize badly, he can’t go to his grave with Obama having one (merely for not being Bush Jr.) and not doing something “that n—–r” did. So it is.
Jealousy can promote losers doing good things as well as bad, here’s the proof.
Like & Subscribe
Trump looked beleaguered and deflated yesterday after his three hour meeting — much like Marcellus looked after Butch rescued him. Seriously, he was wiped out. I have no doubt Putin gave him his demands for so-called “peace” and those demands are the demands they have always been. I’m also sure that Putin made it clear that if Trump or America or NATO or Europe interferes any further and crosses a line, nuclear war is on the table. Rubio looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
The following is more prevalent than ever. Do you suffer premonitions of the holocaust to come? I do. I always have. My atomic clock has waxed and waned over the years and right now it’s in full wax stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRXMBLql6GQ
Also, there is this to consider now that Russia is confident it has the upper hand.
https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/why-russia-is-more-likely-to-go-nuclear-in-ukraine-if-its-winning/
canopy
The Smoking Mountain
Kay Boyle
“A collection of eleven short stories of occupied Germany where Kay Boyle has spent the last two years, introduced by a longer piece on the trial of the “”Frankfort Butcher””, Heinrich Boab. Both here, and in the stories, the “”true computation is fervently made”” that here, in the German people, is no realization of guilt, no knowledge of guilt. ”
“In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker”
canopy
and this via a link at NC this morning –
https://www.vice.com/en/article/money-cant-buy-life-the-richest-americans-die-earlier-than-the-poorest-europeans/
Poor Europeans live longer than wealthy citizens of the US because they have socialized medicine.
Would be interesting to have the same comparisons made with Canada. I suspect that if Ian had been unfortunate enough to have been born on the misbegotten US side of the border he would not still be alive to host this website.
different clue
@Like & Subscribe,
Russia is not the only atom-bomb power in the world today. The RussiaGov may wonder how irrationally the Western atom-bomb powers might respond to a war-shortening use of atom bombs by the RussiaGov. Also, the ChinaGov may well counsel the RussiaGov not to do it.
Somehow, I don’t think a winning RussiaGov is the most likely to first-use atom bombs. I think that one or more losing Western PowerGovs would be more likely to “cast the first stone” in that regard. I think the RussiaGov also thinks so. So I think the RussiaGov will just keep up the current level of fighting till Ukraine finally collapses into its own footprint and hope the collapse is just slow enough that non-chiliast non-nihilists in charge of the actual bombs can get some control in a politely non-disclosed way over their nihilist chiliast Civilian Leaderships.
Of course I may just be whistling past the graveyard in the dark.
Mark Level
L&S, thank you for a post that shows less Russia Derangement than your earlier ones, perhaps you are starting to evolve. Best of luck.
That said, your source is not credible (speaking as someone with an MLIS degree, who understands research and credible vs. non-credible sources.
I won’t demolish a mosquito with a bazooka, so will just cite some obvious problems in your sources claims.
Your Slavic-named source, like the Nazi supporters Victoria Nuland and Chrystia Freeland, clearly has an axe to grind. The first clue is who pays her for content: She is from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, clearly a Deep State “Think” Tank by bloodless chicken-hawks who seek eternal war for imaginary grievances of centuries past.
2nd paragraph: “Russia, the aggressor,”– Nope! Assumes facts not in evidence (a classical logical fallacy). Has she never heard the NATO pledges starting with Bush Sr. that NATO would not move “one inch East”? Have you? I agree with Malcolm X, everyone has a basic right to self defense, even people we don’t necessarily like. 1,400 Donbass residents were killed by shelling from “their” government by the time Putin resorted to an SMO, because Russian speakers didn’t agree with not being able to speak their own language, textbooks saying the 3rd Reich was the “good” side in WW II and Russia the villains, the tearing down of monuments to the Great Patriotic War, their religion being banned, and monuments erected to Stepan Bandera and Nazi ideology. This doesn’t bother the author (or you?) but it remains true. Also hundreds if not thousands were injured by Ukrainian gov’t. shelling, even after Zelensky (who running as a “Peace” candidate promised to stop it).
She writes of the need to “break a hurting stalemate”, poor grammar and what stalemate does she mean? Every respectable authority now says Russia is winning daily, most agree there is no Miracle or Wonder Weapon that will reverse Russian progress.
She evidently reluctantly admits that “when the conventional fighting in Ukraine shifts decisively in Russia’s favor” is coming soon (already here actually) a half-truth, better than the previous claims at least.
“Consider that the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict so far was by a nuclear power that was on a winning path.” Harry Truman’s racist US slaughtering “Japs” is not equivalent to Russia, a multi-ethnic society, wherein racist beliefs of the past have lost credibility and won’t be blindly followed. 8 decades have passed since the US bombings, some attitudes change for the better. Russia cares what the RoW (Rest of World) thinks about it. Eisenhower was the LAST US President to do so, see his shutting down the joint UK-French-Israeli attack on the Suez Canal and Egypt. The last adult President in the room (& a Republican!)
“Related” ad for the moronic Chicken-Hawk Fiona Hill’s babblings shows this is not a serious “news” site, it is purely biased and editorial.
Russia now has Oreshnik missiles, evidently (only one or two have been used so far) as powerful in most respects as nuclear weapons, however not creating permanent nuclear fallout which lingers for centuries. Why hasn’t Russia carpet-bombed “Keev” like the Zionist entity has to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, etc, etc? The Russians are not (on the whole) psychopaths.
She’s just whipping up hate and fear as that’s what she’s paid for. A humane person would not do what she does, just as pigs don’t fly.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”– whether Sinclair Lewis or another source first said this, it remains true, and applies.
mago
Ain’t superstitious but a black cat just crossed my trail
Bad luck ain’t got me so far and I won’t let it stop me now
Well the dogs are howlin all over the neighborhood
Whoa, the dogs are howlin all over the neighborhood
That is a true sign of death baby, that ain’t no good.
(From Howling Wolf’s Ain’t Superstitious )
Yeah yeah. Lotsa people hearing the dogs barking and wolfs howling as they pounce upon their prey.
People in Sudan, Ukraine, the West Bank Gaza
Toss a dart on a world map and see where it lands
Dogs are barking babies crying people/animals dying
Got a feeling about the future and it ain’t no good I know that.
And if you think that there’s an answer in AI check the desert outside your door and ask again and if the answer is soaked in blood then check your mind and if it’s cloaked in gray then you need to ask again and clean it up, wash your hands, your face and down below, then go ahead turn on the news and see what the talking heads say and know it’s all lies. . .
Buena suerte a cada
Egoculexegonos
The Western World has started an active process of self-inflicted, global physical blindness. The following blog article, by Antonio Turiel, is in Spanish but can be translated automatically with your translator of choice
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2025/08/el-fin-de-la-observacion-de-la-tierra.html?m=1
In Spanish we have a saying: “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente” (eyes not seeing = heart not feeling). This is the kind of thing I would have never predicted under any kind of logic I use.
bruce wilder
I make a point of making myself read, watch or listen to at least some on-line commentators, who have taken up pro-Ukraine viewpoints on the War in Ukraine. There is a fair amount of what Jung called “shadow projection” in much of their expression, which I take it is sourced directly or indirectly from Ukraine’s impressive propaganda operation at least with regard to current events. Some of the motivation for obsessively following and commenting on daily developments I take to be vicarious stimulation by war porn.
As I have written here before, the information vacuum with regard to the war is particularly remarkable, given the daily flow of map updates and FPV videos. Basic information is unavailable or systematically distorted. Nevertheless, it is a pretty safe assessment to affirm that Russia is under considerable strain and Ukraine is crippled.
My own opinion is that this war may never reach a truly decisive conclusion — I do not see an obvious and desirable end-game for either party reachable by military force — no obvious way to “win the war on the battlefield” per se. Russia does not seem to be anywhere near to a point where it could secure Odessa, depriving rump Ukraine of a Black Sea coast and establish a link to Transnistria.
Russia could lose, imo, but I cannot see any scenario where something like that happened, probably toppling the Putin regime, to be desirable from an American or Western European standpoint. My conviction is that Russia outright losing the war would be a catastrophic outcome with the consequent turmoil affecting a vast of the globe. Pirate Capitalism might celebrate but it would be the dog catching the car and getting run over. The Russophobes are crazy to want it.
Ukraine losing, and giving up in an armistice ceasefire, also invites chaos. The Zelensky regime almost certainly will be overthrown or supplanted and its replacement will lack legitimacy and worse, funds, because no party or faction embracing peace with Russia will be able to either fight the far-right or keep the money spigot from the West running. Russia does not have the resources to occupy or reconstruct the whole of Ukraine. Western powers will want to stage a “humanitarian intervention”.
Both sides have already lost this war. Russia may recover, as its morale seems pretty good for the moment and mobilization has stripped away some of the corruption and cynicism, but it is hard to know how the finely calculating Putin will manage a peace, in which Russian interests continue under acute threat, as they are now, in the Baltic and Black Sea, alongside Russia’s dependence on China’s good will.
Ukraine may never recover. Peace turns off the money spigot. The country before the war had one of the most severe demographic deficits ever seen in a country not consumed in war, and now it has been consumed by war.
It is in Russia’s interest to rebuild hydraulic infrastructure on the Lower Dneiper, but that is going to be a heavy lift and Russia has not secured, as far as I can tell, enough territory to date to make it feasible. It is not likely to be easy if rump Ukraine is actively hostile. Ukraine’s ability to recover without Russian gas, railroad or electrical infrastructure component supply will be limited. Ukraine will need Western debt forgiveness, but cash will be needed, too, and cash for what? A big chunk of natural resource is in Donbass.
Jessica
KMT isn’t particularly realists. It is just that they have always represented the wealthy mainlanders who invaded Taiwan in the late 1940s (killing tens of thousands in the process) and that wealth has its factories and cheap labor on the mainland. The DPP rose to power because folks felt that the KMT had sold out the Taiwanese economy. But now Taiwanese are turning against the DPP because as little interest as most have in joining the mainland, they have even less interest in being the next Ukraine.
Someone (apologies for not remembering who) made a good case that the US A-bombs were not what forced Japan to finally accept unconditional surrender. All the important Japanese cities had long since been levelled, so militarily the impact was not that significant. And the horrors of massive delayed dying from radiation were not known at the time. What did force Japan’s hand was the rapid and quite successful Soviet invasion of Manchuria. If Japan had waited long enough, it could have been North and South Japan, not North and South Korea.
The Soviet invasion kept a promise that Stalin made to FDR that the Soviets would join the war against Japan 90 days after Germany’s surrender.
somecomputerguy
Thomas Neuburger has has asked the question “Was Preseving the Union Worth It?”. And Answers “Maybe Not”.
Here is my reply.
I am not an expert, real scholars should very much feel free to dispute me.
My military service colors my perspective; you never get those brain cells back.
First, I understand the purpose of asking the question, but I think there is very little resemblance between that history and current events.
Huge numbers of my fellow citizens are being conned, The purpose of that con is to cheat them out of the lives they deserve. As a left-winger, that’s what I believe about the other side.
Nobody Is talking about owning people.
I believe the biggest mistake of alternate histories is to think that the Confederate States of America would have endured as some sort of parallel United States.
The Confederate States of America was not the first Confederacy to govern in America, and it had the same flaws as the original. Given who was leading the C.S.A., it was probably weaker.
The reason the former colonies dumped the original Articles of Confederation, and moved to a Federal system with a real national government is because the colonies were beginning to fight each other, sometimes with guns.
The colonies looked like they were on the verge of becoming another Europe; historically, probably the most violent place on earth.
Consistent with that, a major reason the South lost the war was that the member states of the Confederacy, wouldn’t cooperate, even in the face of an existential crisis.
I believe the first thing that would have happened if the Confederacy had won is that it would have broken up, and the individual members would have started fighting wars with each other and us. No doubt with some “helpful” prodding from the European great powers.
I think we would have had a lot more wars in North America, given the openly expansionist ambitions of some of the Confederate leaders. Keeping the European powers out as much as possible was a good idea, and I think a break-up would have thrown open the doors.
The Southern states economies were dominated by latifundia (plantation) agriculture. There are many examples of what life is like when plantation-owners run the society; a tiny minority lives fabulously. Otherwise such places are violent, desperately poor, backwards, and congenitally politically unstable. Independence would have been great for plantation owners, economic doom for everyone else, future generations of whites very much included.
One of the problems with owning other people is getting them to do what you want.
The slave-holder society of the American South normalized torture. An entire society where making other humans shriek in pain was just the normal routine experience of ordinary people in their every day lives.
In the 50 years before the Civil War, American slavery expanded dramatically, it wasn’t just going away on its own, and as far as I know, it showed no signs of moderating it’s horrific violence and cruelty. My understanding is that slave revolts were practically continuous, even though punished terribly and never successful. There was a reason for that.
Given the lawless violence inflicted on the former slaves after emancipation, I am highly skeptical they would have done better under a regime where that violence was still legal.
That legalized torture had effects far beyond its direct targets.
Southern military units fighting in the Mexican War, were stood down and sent home for committing war crimes, before that was even understood to be a thing. To this day, if you subtract the Southern States from the crime statistics, America is basically Western Europe. Someone once said ‘the dark underbelly of American liberty is violence’ if you could trace back that violence, all of it, I would bet that 80% could be traced back to slavery in some way. I would point to Canada as a possible confirming counter-example.
Where the Union Army went, it broke the plantations up and gave the land to the former slaves.
In the entire history of the United States Army, this is without question it’s proudest moment. A finer act even, than liberating the concentration camps.
If preserved, this measure alone would have had tremendous positive effects in terms of both power and economics. Other places where land reform like this happens, it pretty much always super-charges the economy for generations. It probably would have done the same for the South. Compensation for the slaves. The final destruction of the plantation system and it’s would-be aristocracy. The de-funding of the founders of the KKK.
Thankfully, we are nowhere near the place where historical second-guessing of this period might be useful, but lets see what it might say about events 160 years ago.
Let’s review the chronology of how things went wrong.
It started when Andrew Johnson spent the first half of his Presidency single-handedly restoring the wealth and power of the exact same people who had started the war.
Next, the forgiven, pardoned former Confederates, having sworn true faith and allegiance a second time, betrayed that oath and began attacking Federal Officials.
This was understandable. Those Federal Officials were the same Northern shop-keepers and farm boys who, with no ridiculous pretensions to martial excellence, and zero military experience, had just comprehensively kicked the Confederate’s ass. They had exposed the lie that Southern cruelty translated into any kind of military prowess.
I don’t see the former slaves as obvious targets for a normal definition of revenge.
Nevertheless, those same forgiven, pardoned former Confederates followed up on their second treason, by inflicting unspeakable atrocity after unspeakable atrocity on people who had already spent their entire lives suffering at Southerners hands.
One of the perks of soldering for a democracy, is supposed to be the occasional opportunity to slaughter truly terrible people. The Confederates were the worst, as they proved by their actions after the War.
The only things wrong with the Civil War were undeserved and exploited charity shown the wealthy assholes who led the Confederacy, and an insufficiently energetic and ruthless response when Confederates violated their surrender.
Jessica
The danger to Ukraine is that if it keeps fighting too long, it may damage not only the Ukrainian state but the Ukrainian people too. After all, the Ukrainian people survived for centuries without a state of their own.
Because of the vast damage caused by the Treaty in the 1920s splitting the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, I always sympathized with those who fought against the treaty. But watching Ukraine now, I think that it could have been worse. (Churchill threatened to put the Irish population in concentration camps like they did to the Boers.)
bruce wilder
The frightening thing about the War in Ukraine is the mass political psychology, at least among elites, is such that no one can ever admit that they (or “we”) were wrong about everything, and then support reversing course 180 degrees.
The consequence is a ratchet effect on policy. NATO’s European members must commit to spend on an arms race apparently, but never to removing sanctions on Russia or using Russian resource exports in their economies.
This inability to abandon the narcissism that provoked war is why the war may never really end. Europe is locked into a path to WWIII.
different clue
Somecomputerguy’s comment raises the interesting ” oh if only” counterfactual speculation. What if Booth had missed? Or what if Lincoln’s bodyguard had done a good-enough job guarding Lincoln’s body?
On to EUrokraine-NATO . . . EUrope’s devotion to keeping Ukraine in the fight in the teeth of Trump’s effort to bring Zelensky to recognizing his-and-Ukraine’s ” Hirohito moment” hardens my belief that NATO was founded as British-European conspiracy against America . . . to draft America into fighting Euro-Brittain’s long running Great Game War against Russia-USSR-whatever.
Here is a little article from the New Cold War ( Know Better) website. I found it by looking up the quote I remembered from years ago: ” keep Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. And I found the correct form of that remembered quote in the very first paragraph of this article as well as the title itself:
” A History of NATO ‘ Keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down’ “. Here is the link.
https://newcoldwar.org/history-nato-keep-russians-americans-germans/
” ‘Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.’ Those were the words of NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, when explaining the aims behind the new military alliance (as it was then). ” As noted, those words were spoken by NATO’s first Secretary General, named Lord Ismay. That’s LORD Ismay. L O R D Ismay. Get it?
For all Trump’s badness ( which I predicted in general and against which I voted for Harris on the basis of), if Trump can destroy America’s presence in NATO, that will be an accidental good thing for America. If America leaves NATO, Canada will stay in NATO out of loyalty to its Royal Brittanic Imperial Legacy traditions, which means that Canada will be part of any WWIII which the Britto-EUro conspiracy against peace can create between NATO and Russia.
At which point, will the Anglo-philliac brainjackers in charge of Establishment American policy still have the power to conspire America into that war the way Twentieth Century America’s most evil President, Woodrow Wilson, conspire with Great Brittain to manipulate American into WWI?
different clue
Here is an amazing sand sculpture from the BeAmazed subreddit. It won the 2019 Sand Sculpture contest somewhere in Texas. It WON. In TEXAS. This raises the question: is Texas a Red State? Or is Texas a GerrymandeRed State? ( I am sure a maganazi mob would have torn that sculpture right down, nowadays. Or maybe stopped the makers from even getting it built.)
Anyway, here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/1mtpp9r/the_winning_sand_sculpture_of_2019s_texas_sand/
different clue
Well, the moderator took that image down real fast. But ” Texas sand sculpture 2019 image” finds a bunch of images and a few of them are this Lincoln sand sculpture. Hopefully some of them are as accessible as the linked-bunch makes them seem.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrEtzvasKNoDQIA4a9XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=texas+2019+sand+sculpture+winner+image&fr=sfp
different clue
Here is a scary video about “sticker shock tsunami” washing through Walmart and elsewhere just recently. Solidly middle-class-looking people are sharing their appallment at recent massive price-jumps. Some of them are also highlighting the contribution to these price-jumps of the recent Trump tarriffs. They also show Walmart’s ( and lesserly Target’s) efforts to hide evidence of the former price so the effect of the tarriffs won’t be so obvious. ( I would note that Trump promised revenge with every tool in his toolbox against any retailer who overtly noted the tarriff contribution to price-rises). But the employees told to destroy all evidence of the recent former prices are letting some of that evidence slip through and a couple of presenters in this video show how to find that evidence.
I think a saying will start to emerge . . . ” Middle-class is the new Poor”. I would also note that some of these solidly middle-class-culture people seem to be massively ignorant and information-deprived as to basic lowest-on-the-food-chain survivalist information. They will have to get up to speed on this sort of information very fast.
Who will help them find it and learn it and learn how to apply it? I have no idea.
Maybe some of them ( or some people who know some of them) are reading this very comment. If so, here is a tiny sample of the kind of survivalist information that they, you and others are going to need to survive the bright new future. It was gathered over time by Kurt Saxon. Here is a wiki about Kurt Saxon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Saxon
I note that the internet is making it ever harder to find any links to anything that Kurt Saxon actually wrote. Here is a user-hostile format of something that used to be user friendly. But there is still survival information here for people ready to endure the inconvenience of the newer user-hostile format. This is a little set of articles about ultra-cheap eating.
https://ia801302.us.archive.org/18/items/KurtSaxonSurvivalFoods2004/Kurt%20Saxon%20-%20Survival%20Foods%20(2004).pdf
The titles of the few articles are clickable. The information they contain is real, though it is only a fraction of the information in his books which these articles are meant to teaser you into buying. Still and all, here is a bit of the type of real information which the Walmart sticker-shocked people in this video will need to learn and internalize in order to survive the future, because Walmart will never offer ” always the lowest price, always” ever again. And neither will anyone else for the sort of mainstream food which the people in this video were buying and looking at the prices of.
So if any readers of this comment are among the Nouveau Poor who can’t afford to shop at Walmart anymore, and will never be able to afford Walmart ever ever again, here is a taste of real Survivalist information. Learn it, Live it, Love it. Good bye and good luck.
different clue
. . . and my goodness . . . I neglected to include the link to the Walmart Sticker Shock video its own self.
So here it is.
” Walmart Prices EXPLODE 💥 Americans Are Furious at Tariffs!” ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxewO6QQ3Bw
mago
@different clue. I’m not sure why any cognizant functioning person would want to shop at Walmart in the first place unless they lack options, which seems to be the idea.
different clue
@mago,
In many places, a Walmart is the only store-with-food left standing, from what I’ve read. Recently, Dollar General and Dollar Tree have been entering the Walmart Zones to establish a presence and begin stripping away customers from below.
In the Urban Food Junkyards, there are not even Walmarts. There are bunches of little bodegas and minimarts. I gather the food quality and food choices are not very good there, from what I have read.
I live in a money-breeder-reactor college town. I was able to get into a co-op so the monthly carrying charges I pay would be considered affordable anywhere in America and are considered amazing by anyone who lives around here. Ann Arbor is a food jungle. There are so many choices and places. I don’t think there even is a Walmart though I think there is a Sam’s Club. If you know rudimentary basic cooking which I do, you can buy affordable food ingredients and make them into basic rudimentary dishes which are ” good enough to eat.”
I don’t think the people in that video are cognition-proof or even very cognition-defficient. What they are is information-deprived and skills-free. If they were taught the skills and given the information and could then overcome their own fear and self-doubt; they would be able to make basic health-maintaining survival food for less money than what they were show spending at the Walmart. IF they live in a place with survival food raw materials.
Here is a Kurt Saxon article called ” Hunger In America”. He wrote it after watching a PBS show called Hunger In America. He was writing about the Food Stamp Welfare poor shown in that show. His tone about them was very harshly dismissive but his information about cheap eating was very informative. Here is that article and the next few clickable/scrollable articles can be reached from there.
https://ia801302.us.archive.org/18/items/KurtSaxonSurvivalFoods2004/Kurt%20Saxon%20-%20Survival%20Foods%20(2004).pdf
Since Middle-Class is the New Poor, the people in this video will need this information and the skills to use it if they want to survive going forward. Who will teach them these skills? Who will give them this information?
The Jackpot Design Engineers want them to die off in their millions just slowly enough that none of them realize that they are the targets of a long term killoff plan.
If they learned how to survive in Kurt Saxon style, that would make the Long Killoff Plan harder to apply. Culture War Revolutionaries could make a lot of trouble for the Ruling Class Overlords and their Long Killoff engineers if those revolutionaries could reach and teach millions of the New Poor about successful resistance, rejectance, obstructance, etc through the personal application of Kurt Saxon Cuisine ( and Social Protest Hippie Cuisine too, if one wants to be Leftish about it).
different clue
Now here is a MildlyInfuriating subreddit item called: ” Bought some Pepsi from Amazon… the case was completely busted, wet, and taped together, and the cans came out looking like this ” Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1mwu8sv/bought_some_pepsi_from_amazon_the_case_was/
I see the pepsi cans in the picture are posing on a granite countertop. So unless he is posing these cans on someone else’s granite countertop, he can afford to live in the immediate short term in a place with a granite countertop. This particular person may indeed be among the cognitively defficient. ( I’m sorry. I’m supposed to say “differently cognitive”). Regardless, this picture and item really does bring to mind John Wayne’s classic saying: ” Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.”
different clue
Now here’s something that looks utterly frivolous on its face, but upon being read to the very end, takes on a surprising level of importance given the whole Trumpenepstein situation.
It is what purports to be a real Xtweet really sent out by Ivanka Trump on the Xitter.
It has been titled: ” Ivanka sets the record straight”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TOTALLYREALTWEETS/comments/1mx9shm/ivanka_sets_the_record_straight/
After I read this whole tweet, my first reaction was: Ooo! Ooo! How did she know that?