In Old Kingdom (Egypt), ISIS was worshiped as goddess of fertility, nature, and motherhood. She was said to have married her brother OSIRIS and given birth to son HORUS. She was also responsible for Osiris’s resurrection after his death at the hands of the God Seth. In this respect she is also seen as protector of the dead. And so now, we have ISIS RISING, a new incarnation of Isis, and a fortified resurrection of her sibling-consort, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Is it not amazing how the American security-warrior State can itself, like the goddess Isis, give birth (or rebirth) over and again to dieties of mythic proportions?
It is interesting, is it not, that the self-proclaimed US hegemon can casually send armed forces ready to rumble into the Gulf to “protect American property and lives” against this newly emergent “terrorist” threat, without so much as a self-reflexive thought as to how he threatened Putin for doing precisely the same thing in Ukraine when Russian geopolitical necessity called for it. And mind you, Putin acted in direct response to an American-financed and managed putsch; his assistance having been directly solicited by the government and people of Crimea as well as the ‘republics’ in the southeastern regions of that small country. I should think that Putin (together with the EU) may want to impose some stiff sanctions on Barry for interfering in another countries internal affairs.
So, now the Islamists are once again on the move, with bigger and better plans for Iraq, Iran, Syria and Jordan, continuing to take plays right from our secret playbook.
They are religious imperialists, and their fierce ideology teaches them that they must expand or die; if they consolidate control over their existing territories, they will soon turn elsewhere. The ethnically and politically fractured kingdom of Jordan is an obvious candidate for their malevolent attention*.
Isn’t it marvelous how these religious imperialists have learned their lessons well from the ‘democracy-spreading’ hegemon. 
Like good little children they are not doing as we say, but instead doing as we do! It is not surprising, for we have shown nothing but disregard for national borders or ethnic diversity in our own imperialist endeavors to make everyone act like and subservient to the American nightmare.
So watch this new ISIS as she plows forward onto more fertile fields, resurrecting the long forgotten ghost of her sibling-consort Osiris, making the world a better place to spread another version of this current and rampant virulent disease, just as we have taught her by spreading our own brand of it ourselves!!
kulturCritic 
You have to shake your head in disbelief in all this stuff, but unfortunately it’s all too real.
Thinking conspiratorially, it makes me wonder if this isn’t another CIA/MIC sponsored trick to ramp up military spending in the area and/or draw in Russia and/or China for a fight while the US still has the power (in its own mind at least) to win it.
Either way, it’s sure beginning to feel like an end game is finally being played out, in that it appears that the US is not merely acting recklessly out of stupidity, by with carefully calculated goals in mind. As in, I don’t know, maybe setting us up for a REALLY hard right and militaristic swing in 2014 and 2016, all in the name of propping up what remains of clearly spent world economy? Just one of the many countless possibilities today, in a world that seems to be wobbling on its axis of late.
I’ve been thinking similar thoughts as I’ve culled English and German language media and blogs for news of what is really going on. One thing that occurred to me while listening to James Howard Kunstler’s podcast with Alice Friedemann a few weeks ago, was that energy worries might be driving the Administration’s tactics; plus the mistaken notion that fracking is somehow going to make the US energy independent for the next century. It won’t of course, for various reasons which Richard Heinberg and Gail Tverberg have been explaining for years. Friedemann stated that she knew the current White House science adviser, had talked with him and that the WH knows just how dire the petroleum situation is.
Another factor is the way that the Neocons have slithered into the National Democratic Party. Nuland, wife of Neocon Idiot in Chief Robert Kagan, did it under Hillary’s skirts. The Clinton’s mastery of political tactics is almost unparalleled, Unfortunately for the country and the rest of the world, like the rest of our political class, they are strategically bereft. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I didn’t want another right wing Democratic administration that Hillary would certainly have given us. Silly me.
I also have constantly at the back of my mind John Michael Greer’s fictional exercise on how imperial overreach could quickly and easily bring down the American hegemon. One of the Greeks, no one seems to know which one, wrote “Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” When I learned that the Administration has about a 1000 Russian-speaking mercenaries from Blackwater running around Ukraine serving as its vestigial military’s brain, nervous system and arms supplier I knew that is where we are now. As for the Hate Putin and Hate Russia campaigns, we have taken Orwell to levels of farce that I doubt have ever been equaled.
That said, societies can and do go mad, for goodness knows what reasons. Athens at its peak, Rome, England and France at various times; Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany and China more recently; to name just a few of the bigger ones. And now good old Uncle Sam’s civic family is not only reviving that tired old show, it’s taking it on the road, sea and air. Somewhere Gore Vidal is sitting on a sun-drenched terrace, sipping Campari on the rocks and looking smug as well he should.
touche’ Gordon!
Ya know—that terrace looks awfully inviting. Someday I’ll be able to book a table there, but I’ll be enjoying White Russians instead of Campari. Given my background as a long since reformed Right Winger I’m sure Gore will approve. 😉
Cheers, Sandy! Hope all is well in your corner of the world.
Why the media affords John McCainiac any platform is beyond me. The “bomb baby bomb” man is on a rampage calling for, you guessed it, bombing in support of Iraq’s Shiite government……….but wait………we would be aiding a member of the Axis of Evil, Iran, and their troops fighting in Iraq. How’s all that supposed to work? The NeoCons have really gone over to the funny farm yet again. Would somebody please send the guys in white coats with their nets to capture and institutionalize the NeoCons for an intensive round of shock therapy, please?
I noticed that too. The US, now apparently out of bullets in a part of the world it never should have interfered with in the first place, is now talking about cooperating with Iran of all countries in order to stem the bloodletting that all of this stupidity has unleashed. We’ve really stepped in the dog’s business this time, unwittingly or not, and as soon as this mess boils over into the world’s oil markets it’s gonna be game over Part II for the corporate capitalist world economy. And with QE II, III, IV(?) all an utter failure, the central banks ain’t gonna be able to do one damn thing to stop it this time. This thing is now officially Vietnam II on designer steroids.
OOH YES! We hate you, we hate you, nasty Muslim Iran! But please help us out just this once, to stop that nasty Iraq!
What if they say, Tough S–t, Yankee bitch infidels!
We can only hope!
well, well, well, how the worm has turned, does the name Jeremiah Wright ring a bell? but really we would have to take a trip in the wayback machine to really understand the depth of our complicity, back into the golden days of yore to the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
really, we have had our fingers in the pie for a long, long time.
it’s not just the coups we sponsored in the 50’s, it’s the Gulf Wars, the whole ball of wax.
it’s a pity really, these people had a chance to have semi-moderate secularist govts. once upon a time, that’s what the Ba’ath Party was all about in the beginning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party
supposedly.
well, we can all be proud with the stinking mess our great leaders have wrought, I’m sure the ladies over there appreciate it, who wants to wear slacks anyway?
It’s deja-vu all over again Sandy!
Yes, ISIS and company are taking a page from our playbook. How about that? Well, as I sip my iced tea, I decided to take a trip in the Wayback Machine (or in the TARDIS-whatever was available), and go back to Rome around the 5th Century CE. Like America, Rome extended itself all over the known world too. And when those nice “Barbarians” were knocking on Rome’s door, how did you think they knew how to defeat the greatest superpower in the Classical world? They took a page from Rome’s playbook.
Sixteen centuries later, America’s extending itself all over the globe while running into the brick wall of collapse. All these ISIS, al-Quaeda, Hamas, and other cats did was learn from what we did all along; and now are waiting for us to be caught with our pants down.
Peace.
now that we fucked everything up all we can do is pull out and let the Sunnis and Shias fight it out. the entire situation could have been avoided if we stayed out of WW1 and let the Turks rule the area. our strategy the past century has been to keep this area fragmented so that a regional power could not challenge us.
100 years ago this area was ready to modernize, good thing? questionable, but the truth. our foreign policy caused this, best we can do is get out, let events take their course, deal with whoever comes out on top, and hope that eventually whatever regime takes over moderates their behavior over time. really the only sensible choice seeing as how our moves so far have blown up in our face.
Until the oil spigots get turned off. Once this spills over into the House of Saud, as it eventually must, the nukes will come out and all hell will break loose. All of which, lest we forget, would greatly please a great many of the rabid US evangelical crowd.
But you’re right, everything we see now is the result of past and ongoing imperial powers’ blunders. Guess you could say we’re finally reaping the long awaited and much deserved whirlwind. Not hard to imagine a post-industrial world by 2020 at all now, is it? Might solve a few billion or more of our population problem anyway.
Having started yet another fiasco in the Ukraine that it will likely end up cutting and running from, the US leaves yet another colossal mess in it’s wake.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/russia-cuts-gas-supplies-ukraine.html
One can easily imagine that in any prospective WWIII it’s likely to be the US as villain against everybody else. Our demise will be swift and terrible, even accounting for the nukes, and our isolation in the aftermath will be total. And then the civil bloodletting will commence in earnest. The resulting recrimination could well open up even old civil war wounds, and the guns, the guns(!), will all be turned on each other in a bloodbath of epic proportions.
Sandy, you are the first person besides myself to have noted the tremendous irony in the name of this fundamentalist woman-hating, western culture-hating Islamic group — Isis. The premier Goddess of the late historic pan-Mediterranean world.
If only Isis were the deity they were worshipping, instead of a sex-changed Al-Lat.
It is truly insane what we do not understand in this world we have created. Welcome to my blog, thetinfoilhatsociety! kC sandy
WOW the most articulate article and comments I’ve ever seen – I hated school but I love learning
The last number of months have been so strange, with the US Empire acting in ways that suggest a death wish. It looks like the US is beating the bushes and shaking the trees around the world in order to a) have a lovely selection of pretenses and scapegoats to blame for collapse of the economy and b) a new world war by which “taking” of limited resources will ostensibly secure supplies of said limited resources.
The ISIS out-of-nowhere thing is a bit disconcerting because it seems unforeseen in the same way that “No one could have foreseen planes flying into office buildings,” or “No one could have foreseen the breaching of the levies.” or “No one could have foreseen the collapse of the housing market and AIG, etc.” Is this the necessary “kernel” around which diversion narrative will form? Is Ukraine no longer necessary as the backup plan for diversion from the true responsibility for collapse? Will Big Bad Putin, in Washington’s narrative, be de-intensified from Putin-The-New-Hitler to maybe Putin-The-Not-Very-Nice, or even Putin-The-Reformed, should Washington need some extra satellites launched into orbit in a hurry?
I fear that USA collapse scenarios may not follow the Soviet model of collapse since the USSR collapse started with a totalitarian state but the USA is heading towards one; that the old USSR and the USA will have passed one another in opposite directions instead, i.e., that collapse here will result in the formalization of corporate totalitarian fascism over the public and its commons assets, with the US Military and militarized local police as the enforcers. This has been our trend line, as even Jimmy Carter announced last year that the USA is no longer a functioning democracy. Certainly the fearsome technology and weaponry exists to make this a reality. That pesky constitution is a lot less pesky now, what with the whittling down of the Bill of Rights and all.
If the rise of ISIS in Iraq is a tipping point, then we may be closer to a Post-Collapse “Iron Heel” than a loose federation of semi autonomous communities. In this scenario, I don’t know how much hope there is for a challenging but gratifying future that offers both community cooperation and a tangible sense of individual agency.
Siberia makes more and more sense as time goes on, doesn’t it? If you told me that 30 years ago, it would have seemed surreal. But surreal is what we are living through now!
Call me Mr. Cheerful. . .
Good points all, and my take on it as well. Something strange is definitely going on of late. Not all is as it seems. For instance:
https://plus.google.com/+WaltArmour/posts/XbAHMeFmJyb
When considering US “policy,” one always has to remember we play all sides against the middle until a most advantageous to US interests winner asserts themselves. Unfortunately, US policy makers are rarely smart enough to select such winners accurately in the long term. And then there’s the “ten dimensional chess” aspect, where US operatives covertly fund and encourage “false flag” actors and events all over the world. Sometimes they work spectacularly (9-11) and sometimes they fail utterly (Ukraine). But the thing we learned from Ukraine is that failure is not failure for these outlaws anymore. When caught in a lie, they just continue to repeat the big lie (propaganda 101) behind it and press on as before.
But the truly scary thing about it all this now is that the velvet glove is finally appearing to come off for once and for all. At a time when a rational people would finally be falling back and examining all the enormous blunders they have made over the past 10+ years, DC continues to go all in at an ever increasing pace. The political, economic, and strategic desperation is now palpable. All Hail Marys and gadget plays at this point. The hegemon is indeed naked and penniless and the world’s people are increasingly unafraid to tell him so.
And what we see in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, et al now is what we’ll see right here at home eventually. Government implosion and armed sectarian strife of the highest magnitude. Call it a coming attractions reel.
I’ve thought about how large swaths of America will be handled by the Iron Heel (ref. Jack London, 1908). Then I was struck by this article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/07/kenya-is-chronically-ill/
by Andre Vltchek on the anniversary of Kenya’s 50th anniversary of “independence.”
Some (not all) of the parallels struck me as how it would pan out here.
Key excerpts:
To complicate things, it seems that this dynamic would have an uniquely USA imprint on it as energy costs soar and the end of the “free energy” era of fossil fuels reverts us backwards in time (in some regions at least) back to the practice of indentured servitude. . . at best.
Excellent article. The symptoms are the same everywhere, minor cultural nuances notwithstanding, and go back to Hitler’s Nazification of Deutschland and long before. The silence of the complicit is always bought with the hope that the spectre won’t touch them and theirs, even as the death machine grinds away relentlessly up the socioeconomic ladder. They came for the old and infirm, but I wasn’t, so I said nothing. They came for the unemployed and the homeless, but I wasn’t, so I said nothing… etc. And so it goes. Same game plan as it ever was, just better execution (pun intended) and marketing. Only difference this time is that with the end of cheap fossil fuel resources, the death machine will have a whole lot more human grist for its mill.
As for revolutions, rest assured they most certainly are not in our future. The American populace (of all populaces!) has been expressly bread for docility before authority. And even under the best of circumstances, recent history has proven most populations worldwide to be remarkably docile when confronting truly monstrous evil. I would posit that having failed to confront evil in its lesser incarnations beforehand, such populations are naturally compliant once the evil they face metastasizes. So there ya go! My once in a great while semi-scholarly assertion!
And for the truly inquisitive American/world citizen, here’s some brief documentaries that might inform your future. Enjoy!
And a somewhat dated social commentary that may or may not be meaningful to those being led to their slaughter:
Okay, now I’m going to call you mister cheerful!
Thanks! I’ll take a bow now.
In light of recent comments, I think this one is always a good reminder as well:
OK, now don’t get me started.
HT, you ol’ sentimentalist you!
Sentimentalist? Hardly, i just don’t see what everyone is getting so upset about, just following orders, don’t you know. Who am i to judge? And by what standard? These people are just working out their destiny.
Lest you think I am kidding, How does a people with absolutely no discernible standards have any validity to whatever opinions they may spout?
ThinkI I’ll just sit this one out.
And that Counterpunch article? Railroads thru Africa? Why do we care? If there is war? Why all the better to decrease the surplus population.
I have been trying to get thru to people for going on 45 years, nobody listens, honestly, the entire situation just makes me want to alternately puke or laugh, i don’t know which.
The political class, the serious commentators? Please.
Uh oh! There you go taking it all seriously again!
Suggestion: laughing is easier. Puking is HARD and doesn’t solve anything anyway. We’ll ALL be dead shortly either way!
Very well stated, DA
how nice, DA
But perhaps the best commentary is delivered by the band best ever equipped to deliver it; the one, the only, the…
I’m so sorry, please forgive me
Who do I pray to to straighten out this problem?
Straighten out this problem, straighten out my mind
Straighten out this crooked tongue
My mind has wandered, from the straight and narrow
My mind has wandered from the flock, you see?
My mind has wandered, the man just said so
My mind has wandered, I heard it on TV
And the flock has wandered away from me now
All around the world now like a big bright cherry cloud
Traveling from home to home, TV sets and telephones
Here it comes just like a storm, bathe in it and be reborn
Time to let the world know, welcome madness say hello
Like a wave we cannot see washing over you and me
Hiding here and hiding there, madness hiding everywhere
Such a curiosity, here it comes to set us free
Plenty left for you and me, say hello insanity
I am the virus, are you the cure?
I am morally, I’m morally impure
I am a disease and I am unclean
I am not part of God’s well oiled machine
Christian nation, assimilate me, take me in your arms and set me free
I am part of a degenerate elite, dragging our society into the street, yeah
Into the abyss and to the sewer don’t you see
The man just told me, he told me on TV
Do you think you’re better than me
Do you want to kill me or befriend me
And the alcoholic bastard waved his finger at me
And his voice was filled with evangelical glee now
Sipping down his gin and tonics
While preaching about the evils of narcotics
And the evils of sex, and the wages of sin
While he mental fondles his next of kin
Cause my mind has wandered from the flock you see
And the flock has wandered away from me
And he waved his hypnotizing finger at me
Let’s imitate reality
Let’s strive for mediocrity
Let’s make believe we’re all the same
Let’s sanitize our little brains
I’d love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed
I’d love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head
I’d love to hear you laugh tonight, I’d love to hear you weep
I’d love to listen to you while you’re screaming in your sleep
Christian sons, Christian daughters
Lead me along like a lamb to the slaughter
Purify my brain and hose down my soul
White perfection, perfection is my goal
Do you think you’re better than me
Do you want to kill me or befriend me
Christian nation, make us alright
Put us through the filter and make us pure and white
My mind has wandered from the flock you see
And the flock has wandered away from me
Let’s talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter
Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters
The white folks think they’re on the top ask any proud white male
A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle
All around the world now like a big bright cherry cloud
Traveling from home to home, TV sets and telephones
Here it comes just like a storm, bathe in it and be reborn
Time to let the world know, welcome madness say hello
I’d love to take you home with me, I’d love to tuck you in
I wish I could protect you from the wages of our sin
I’d love to hear you scream tonight, I’d love to hear you cry
Protect you from the madness that is raining from the sky
Let’s imitate reality
Let’s strive for mediocrity
Let’s make believe we’re all the same
Let’s sanitize our little brains
I’d love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed
I’d love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head
I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box
On Sundays I would pray for you so it would never stop
I’d love to hear you laugh tonight, I’d love to hear you weep
I’d love to listen to you while you’re screaming in your sleep
I’d love to soothe you with my voice and take your hand in mine
I’d love to take you past the stars and out of reach of time
I’d love to see inside your mind and tear it all apart
To cut you open with a knife and find your sacred heart
I’d love to take your satin dolls and tear them all to shreds
I’d love to mess your pretty hair, I’d love to see you dead
Read more: Oingo Boingo – Insanity Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Perhaps a better produced version here:
As to what this song speaks to exactly, it’s hard to say. And therein lies its genius. Roughly speaking, it certainly speaks to the insanity of modern American religious based culture for sure, even though it was released over 20 years ago. Although Oingo Boingo is long since gone, Danny Elfman has gone on to a rather storied career as a Hollywood film scorer with an emphasis on the macabre. Anyway…
not to worry, it’s all good, all things being equal, probably just seeking their correct karmic state.
Jesus F. Christ, give it up, there are so few people capable of critical thought, what? 1% .5%?
Anderson Cooper has his black shirt on, and his serious face……………………….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxyB29bDbBA McCain isn’t the only one calling for airstrikes.
Obama to Congress: I don’t need new permission on Iraq
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/politics/us-iraq/
Rock and Roll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_lex
Powerful men are just so damn sexy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rattle and Hum? Maybe they really are trying to drive us crazy?
http://mic.com/articles/91091/a-mysterious-sound-is-driving-people-insane-and-nobody-knows-what-s-causing-it?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social
Secret underground facilities? the Earth vibrating as all the voids created by mining and drilling collapse? Or just the normal sounds that planets make.
Maybe we can get a two for one deal? ISIS can take back Iraq so that the people of the region can make the “messy decisions that free people do” (hat tip Rummy) and they could then capture and keep “the haircut in search of a brain,” (hat tip Jim Kunstler) John Kerry. One can only hope Obama and HillBillary would then follow him and be captured as well. Hey! One can still hope!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/world/meast/iraq-crisis/
More Boingo:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lumpling
Meanwhile, this has the tender lumplings in the USA all abuzz today. One does have to maintain one’s priorities!
http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/06/22/usa-portugal-world-cup-2014-tie/
Excellent (as usual) column by Gail Tverberg today:
She’s one of the more sophisticated peak resources thinkers out there. She does tend to discount the effects of climate change however, reasoning that we’re running out of the ability to economically extract resources so rapidly that the effects won’t be nearly as drastic as currently believed. But, in turn, I think she underestimates the time lagged damage we’ve already done and are still continuing to do. Either way, she’s always a provocative read, and future generations will know the truth of our current folly one way or another all too soon enough.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain
And even then, not so much. Stands to reason when most of the young’ns can’t even identify the states within the US anymore. But hey! We’ve got smart phones for all that shit anyway!
can’t go wrong with the Blues, a 40 year old song redone, and nothing has changed during the interim.
With this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/24/even-former-commandos-call-iraq-an-impossible-mission.html it looks like it’s finally time, in a virtual replay of the Vietam fiasco 40 years before it, to admit that the American people and the American armed forces in particular were hoodwinked by their political leaders into a conflict that served NOT ONE DAMN PURPOSE whatsoever, other than to enrich the MIC political elite and to sow the seeds of dissent throughout the world for future such conflicts. Veterans of this shit should be ashamed of their involvement, and the families and loved ones of those who were maimed and killed should demand accountability from their current and former leaders immediately. Further, the peoples of the region should rightly demand that the USA and its imperialist partners in this botched affair be held accountable as the PRIMARY terrorist nation in the world. This is just some sad and shameful shit, and its criminal that every American alive isn’t up in arms about their government’s role in all this. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the rogues gallery should be in Guantanamo TODAY for their involvement in this fucking abomination.
Indeed, However. Who’s going to do it? And with what moral authority? Funny thing about laws, every single one of them is an expression of a moral judgment made by society, No one seems to realize this simple fact. Our philosophical heritage has left us thinking that our laws are somehow the be-all and end-all of some sort of divinely revealed cosmic justice, which of course they are not. The problem with universal ideals is…………….
“.hoodwinked by their political leaders into a conflict that served NOT ONE DAMN PURPOSE whatsoever, other than to enrich the MIC political elite and to sow the seeds of dissent throughout the world”
But then that is the way every issue is played isn’t it? A great big cabal of capitalists worldwide with mutually reinforcing interests, playing the proles off against each other, reducing us all to interchangeable units ready to be twisted to whatever ends serve them the best. And the worst part of it? Most people really believe they are on the vanguard of some sort of nouveau intellectual movement, outre’, don’t you know; when the truth?
“We do in fact live among pure forms, in radical obscenity, which is to say visible and undifferentiated, among figures that were previously secret and distinct. The same is true of the social, which rules today also in its pure form, that is, obscene and empty.”
But then don’t listen to me, what do i know?
I don’t know there HT, sounds like you’re apologizing for empire. And I doubt they need any help in that regard.
“apologizing for empire”? Hardly, simply realizing the fact that our country is too fractured to function, what candidate for office can pass whatever purity test is thrown at them? Rand Paul? Hillary? Bush?
Our government is broken, it exists to serve the interests of the few, mainly those who have money and the ear of DC.
“But then that is the way every issue is played isn’t it? A great big cabal of capitalists worldwide with mutually reinforcing interests, playing the proles off against each other, reducing us all to interchangeable units ready to be twisted to whatever ends serve them the best.”
What part of that apologizes for empire?
While real people die we are more concerned with our latest issue du jour.
No, the pols are never going to change. This one will have to be a bottoms up production.
“apologizing for empire”? Hardly, simply realizing the fact that our country is too fractured to function, what candidate for office can pass whatever purity test is thrown at them? Rand Paul? Hillary? Bush?
Perhaps there’s the answer right there? Perhaps at least one of them should, or at least come close? As it is, none even come close.
Might be time to quit making excuses and start making informed choices. Whether or not they make an “actual difference” or not. Maybe its time Americans at least owned up to their own elected bullshit at least.
JHK is especially relevant this week, most relevant to those who are unemployed in this country.
Which will be more and more of us by the day.
Although, I don’t think his critique of a mindless immigration policy is really addressed at unemployment per se. Immigrants for the most part are brought in (many corporate sponsored) to fill jobs that Americans wouldn’t do anyway at almost any wage, thereby allowing opportunistic corporates types to take credit for creating jobs right here in the good ol’ USA, usually with more than generous federal and/or local tax incentives to boot. Never mind they’re just importing nearly the same sweatshop conditions that they would have otherwise exported elsewhere.
I think his main point is addressed at the carrying capacity of our so-called “nation state,” which is in itself rapidly becoming an archaic term due to those very same forces. Which I think further undermines one of JHK’s basic underlying premises, which is that if the people of the US (or anywhere else for that matter) could somehow just get their shit together locally, then we could somehow minimize the coming catastrophe, or indeed, perhaps prevent it altogether. All of which is, in a word, simply bullshit. Mind you, I can’t blame JHK for his current stance, given that he’s now a fairly successful speaker and author on behalf of us “doomers” (take it as a given that once your voice/movement/cause has successfully been labeled you have also been officially marginalized/written off), but I do take what he says these days with a grain of salt nonetheless.
And the overloading of the carrying capacity of nation states (due to shifting populations) will be one of the MAIN knock on effects of AGW as well, as we progress through the shoot that will eventually eliminate us all. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Economic effects in near perfect alignment with their AGW after-effects, steadily driving mankind into an ever tighter corner of its own design? One could easily say that it’s, what? Poetic justice, perhaps? Indeed!
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iraq-facing-a-new-reality-kurdish-leader-tells-kerry-20140624-story.html
Reminds me of the (in)famous Karl Rove quote made several years back regarding the whole Bush bunch post 9-11 strategy:
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
Guess the new “reality” is that the Bush bunch (and the Obama bunch following them) just plain FUCKED UP.
Here’s a nice comedy interlude:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/clinton-feature-actors-portraying-president-bill-clinton-article-1.1842289
The pics show the former first philanderer looking decidedly worse for the wear and tear. I doubt the old bastard will make it through another campaign in order to become first hubby though. Maybe the old hag HillBillary, who ain’t looking too damn good herself these days(!!!), will trade the lecherous old bastard in on a boy toy 40 years her junior (As all the twenty something bubbleheads say, ewww!). I’m sure there’s a lot of unemployed hunks out there who would fill the “Bill” nicely.
And NOW, for something completely different!
Yes, I know, I’m a major downer just about all of the time on this board, and yes(!), I know what a drag that can be. Well now, word to your mother(!), have I got something different to share with you! While clicking around the intertubes yesterday bored out of my mind, I happened to come across an article discussing ‘slow TV’. And just like that I now have a new passion, at least while enslaved here at my corporate j-o-b for 50 out of 52 weeks of the year.
For instance, ever wanted to take a winter train trip through Norway free of charge? Well now you can.
Or take the same trip (unabridged) in the fall?
Paris (F) to Kaiserslautern (D) more your style if you’re an American GI perhaps?
Or perhaps Geneve (S) to Milan (I)?
All videos YouTube, but most also available on the YouTube app for smart TV
My only complaint with the Smart TV version being that they are quite a bit less “resilient” to user inputs (fast forward or rewind, at least on my TV) than the pure internet versions, but of course the video presentation is usually exponentially better as well.
I know, I know; spoken like a true first world acolyte/sycophant. Guilty as charged. Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to truly living my ideals. Maybe we all will?
That said, the internet versions aren’t much more conducive to typical American impatience either. Perhaps there’s a lesson there?
And finally tonight, this is (typically) what NOT will save us from ourselves. Aging rock stars, merely repeating the truisms that we who have already lived it already know, all the better to CONTINUE to enrich themselves.
At a certain point, we simply have to say enough is enough. Nice song Jackson, but at a certain point we’ve got to wean ourselves off even of the likes of YOU!
here’s a little something for your Jackson Browne problem
Here’s a little classic from back in the 80’s I re-remembered upon coming across a Phil Collins news item today. It’s got it all; over the top satire, humor, great visuals, good music, and pointed lyrics. As relevant now as the day it was released.
And a follow on just because I’ve always loved this song. Genesis goes heavy in the mid-80s! Guess there’s a reason Gabriel, Collins, and the rest are all in the R&R Hall of Fame.
Images of sorrow
Pictures of delight
Things that go to make up a life
Endless days of summer
Longer nights of gloom
Just waiting for the morning light
Scenes of unimportance
Like photos in a frame
Things that go to make up a life
As we relive our lives
In what we tell you
Indeed!
Very nice. I remember when back in the day when Trower was being touted as the “new Hendrix.” Funny that, marketing. How about just “the first Trower?” Always on the hard sell.
But aside from that, I think we’ve finally outlived the 60’s idealism. Not much left these days, either sentimental or real.
Just to add, when I first found this link it literally screamed pretentiousness to me. Perhaps that’s why all the true rock legends are “doomed” to die young? To be spared a life of pitiful old age and pretentious claims to be “rebels” against the very systems they embrace? In other words, becoming their parents [Pink Floyd, Mother]? Food for thought.
What the hell, this one’s a little too “nuclear holocaust-y” for me (and a tad pretentious to boot!), but I think it fits in with the general theme:
Sorry (my bad), don’t know how that link got posted. Try this:
“Is it not amazing how the American security-warrior State can itself, like the goddess Isis, give birth (or rebirth) over and again to deities of mythic proportions?” Interesting statement especially since there are so many in this country believe we need to be everywhere just to protect our business interests around the globe thanks to globalization a nightmare if there ever was one. Me I just do not give a damn anymore, totally convinced the entire planet is full of lunatics trying to out do everyone else.
Me I just do not give a damn anymore, totally convinced the entire planet is full of lunatics trying to out do everyone else.
Capitalism, stand up and take a bow!
To be fair, capitalism is merely the modern, nearly perfected, expression of Sandy’s core thesis behind this blog; which is that hierarchical systems, first created with the broad adoption of agriculture way back when, are the actual root of all our current evils. And I must admit, after several years reading and running my prodigious mouth on this blog, I’ve gradually come to embrace that idea as well. Much to my horror, I actually attained a western curriculum approved MBA several years back (the horror! the horror!), and crazy as it seems now, actually embraced its core concepts at the time. Of course I’m also a retired USAF vet of 25+ years as well, so I guess you could say my entire life has been spent embracing the futile concept of “alternative learning,” or some such shit.
That said, the entire American way of life and seeing the world makes a perverse kind of sense when you’re immersed in it, and it no doubt has a world wide appeal, in that it so easily infects local populations, no matter how resistant (France, anyone?), when they’re subjected to it. And what’s not to love about such a mistress? Riches and temptations beyond your wildest dreams 24/7, and all you have to do is mouth some platitudes (increasingly) occasionally and give up some freedoms that you probably never had under any other system anyway. You’ll hardly even notice that the entire system is a mirage, built to vanish from the bottom up (a Ponzi scheme), or that in the process it’s poisoning the very environment (both social and physical) in which your very existence is rooted in the first place. Or, that in that same process, it’s also corrupting your very soul! But in the end, that’s the beauty of it all in the first place!
And since a reminder was on just last night on Decadent TV, here’s a shout out to a guy who got it long before many of us had a clue. [NSA disclaimer: NO, I’m not advocating Unabomber tactics, futile as they would now be, to deal with your now ubiquitous spying. Got that spooks? Are we CLEAR on that?]
Pay attention to the language used in this video. Lots of pejorative terms used, especially at the end of the piece, although they begin vilifying young “Terrible Ted” barely 5 minutes in. It’s a nice, fairly even-handed propaganda piece, which is, of course, the beauty of it in the first place. “Ted was always different,” indeed.
“shutdown mode”, “poor social skills”. “loner”, yup, not very outgoing. he was different.
poor guy, he probably expected people to behave like human beings. “a stranger”. it’s interesting that he wasn’t impressed by the politics of the times, he saw beyond, smart guy. a true Luddite, pity is his ideas are a really good critique of modern society. when we look around what a mess the world is…………………
“A child of God much like yourself perhaps.” – Cormac McCarthy/Child of God
a study in alienation. tragic, especially for his victims. cheap motels and bus stations, loser. a thought provoking post,
😉 Good DA
The current powers that be could never allow the huddled masses to believe that this guy might have made some valid points. His manifesto got right at the very roots of our ongoing malaise, no doubt striking way to close to home for comfort. But this kind of thinking is exactly what will be required to counter what ails us. Alas, that’s probably several bridges too far for a population that’s been systematically impoverished and indoctrinated for the last century plus. In short, the rich have a stake in keeping things just as they are, and the rest lack the ability, means, and social cohesion to do anything about it. Our only relief will be an endgame of some sort being played out and a resulting collapse. No surprises there. Numerous societies before us have borne out that same truth.
Ted Kaczynski is what a unrestricted capitalist system produces on the “fringe”. He may have been accurate in his thoughts about the capitalist system but what I find sad is that the capitalist news system made a lot of ad dollars airing the “PROGRAMMING” which condemned him at a profit.
Y’all are right, the sheeple watch the “programming” and think they know it all. Which makes us screwed to a certain degree. Let’s hope that evolution truly does fix stupid.
They made a big point about sentencing him to life imprisonment, rather than death, in the end, to imply that capitalism “won” and Ted was left to contemplate his role as a “loser” all alone in isolation for the rest of his life, when in fact, Ted had been living a pretty similar lifestyle all along and no doubt would have continued to do so in any case. Fair to say that Ted has a chuckle or two and a “I told you so!” every time news slips in of our current predicament out here in the “free” world. If anything, I think Ted underestimated/stated his case with the manifesto. I think things have gotten and will continue to get a good deal worse than he ever imagined.
The K-man speculates on WWIII today, and I must admit that I’ve certainly heard crazier things of late.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/voila-world-war-three/
Whether or not this latest round of insanity sends us to the magical inflection/tipping point, it does increasingly seem that we’re headed for some sort of armageddon these days. Or perhaps it’s only summer in an increasingly overheated world and we’re all merely doing what human beings do under such circumstances? Either way, we continue to enter worlds of increasing weirdness at ever increasing rates. Ain’t it fun?
More good stuff today (the insanity is just relentless these days): http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/us/california-immigrant-transfers/
Funny how the commoners will get all up in arms over an easily identified enemy/boogeyman (nevermind the fact that they were probably coached by entrepreneurial politicos of the right wing persuasion) in the form of a “third world brown type” much like them at their door, many or all of whom are almost certainly seeking refuge from their homelands in the first place thanks to US global imperialist exploitation policies, when the CIA/who-the-fuck-knows sponsored covert operations occurring half a world away that result in Iraqistan, Ukraine, et al (the list at this point is almost endless), goes completely unremarked. Alas, we masses are so fucking cooperative in that regard. Systematic impoverishment of the body, mind, and soul over the course of generations will do that to you.
And this: http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/07/02/tropical-depression-florida-tropical-storm-arthur/11995329/
Tropical storm Arthur threatens to turn into an Independence Day Hurricane surprise. Now granted, to remain absolutely politically and scientifically correct, we must add the disclaimer, “not that this can any way be directly attributed to AGW, which may or may not be an actual factor in any of the climate observations we make these days.” Granted, but “one more brick in the wall” might be an equally politically/scientifically correct retort. And no, I promise that wasn’t just a lede for this, although it will certainly do:
And this, a timeless classic that just grows more so by the day. I ask my younger self this timeless question everyday I’m alive.
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
Took almost a lifetime for me to realize what those highly paid young bucks realized all those years ago. Nonetheless, I finally am realizing it, and that’s all that counts in the end.
Hopefully we all do in the end.
Better late than never, DA! 😉 But, you may be excused as you were gov’t issue (GI) back then.
As good as it gets, I guess. Looks like even the cheery old Archdruid is in a dour mood after an extended hiatus: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ The WWI references are coming hard and heavy these days, as people are realizing the parallells are quite eery, given all of our foreign misadventures of late. But hey, it’s the 4th of July today, so time to go perform mindless midsummer activities to celebrate our “independence” from whatever it is we imagine ourselves to be independent from today.
“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Exactly! One of my favorite movies ever for that exact reason. Technology and current politically correct mores have reduced men to superficial afterthoughts. Perhaps that’s why the men that are successfully asserting themselves these days are megalomaniacal caricatures of what a real man should be. Sports stars, political or corporate charlatans, or mercenaries in the great bloodletting. Strange times we live in my friend. Oh but that we could simply opt out, but rapacious capitalism is an all-encompassing system these days, which won’t be content until we’re all properly commodified and consumed, our natural resources harvested, tallied, and accounted for on the universal balance sheet.
“Technology and current politically correct mores have reduced men to superficial afterthoughts.”
I despair, not only am I still unemployed, but whatever job I get will hardly support my extravagant lifestyle. NOT!
Notice the caps, must learn to type correctly if I am ever to fit in the machine.
Yes, the technology, science, it has been used to slice and dice us to oblivion; half of the political issues of our time have to do with the rearrangement of units within the body and the body politic. Consumable units, that is what we are to be, and the greatest sin is under-utilization
Why me? that’s what I want to know. Am I delusional?
All must bow before the code. UPC, DNA, and of course the almighty SPLC.
“rapacious capitalism is an all-encompassing system these days, which won’t be content until we’re all properly commodified and consumed, our natural resources harvested, tallied, and accounted for on the universal balance sheet.”
Tell me, are you figuring this out all on your lonesome, or have I had some small effect upon your thinking? It would be nice if it were so.
The border surge is all in the news, all job gains since 20001 have been offset by immigration. As we have discussed before, living in the South i have absolutely no animus against Latinos (my favorite teacher was named Pedro, fer Chrissakes!), but I can’t help but be upset about knowing my kid’s are working for $9-11 an hour, and that i can’t find a job. As the world collapses the proles will be pitted against each other more and more. Having an intellectual understanding of this does absolutely nothing to replenish my dwindling bank account.
Read Greer, he is looking for WW3, I think it will be more like Civil War. Our government cannot provide basic services, will not respect the basic law of the land, but yet continues to take on all comers in a desperate attempt to remain some vestige of relevance.
I’m going to get some exercise. Best Wishes.
Tell me, are you figuring this out all on your lonesome, or have I had some small effect upon your thinking? It would be nice if it were so.
Both.
And it’s not just you. It will be all of us sooner or later. Probably sooner.
And I think it will be BOTH WWIII and civil war. No need to limit ourselves at this point.
Anton Chigurh: And you know what’s going to happen now. You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.
Carson Wells: You go to hell.
Anton Chigurh: [Chuckles] Alright. Let me ask you something. If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
Carson Wells: Do you have any idea how crazy you are?
Anton Chigurh: You mean the nature of this conversation?
Carson Wells: I mean the nature of you.
Another classic quote form a classic book and movie. Chigurh personifies our mortality, the grim reaper if you will. There’s no negotiating or arguing with it’s/his relentless nature. People think it’s a movie about violence, when in actuality it’s a movie about the random, inevitable, and wholly unforgiving nature of our life itself bound to this mortal coil. It’s a fantastic commentary on the human condition.
Glad you are a McCarthy fan. I just finished Child of God, my fave so far is Blood Meridian. McCarthy seems to deal with archetypes, Jungian, or just different aspects of human nature, his books are rife with Christian symbolism in the background.
I see Chigurh as representing the amoral attitude of the modern world, while the Sheriff represents traditional values, a parable for our times.
The sheriff represents the now fading notion that we have control over our lives. Traditional yes, especially in the sense of traditional Christian belief, the idea that something or someone will “save us.” Chigurh provides the emphatic counterpoint. There may or may not be an afterlife, but NO ONE is getting out of this life alive. If you listen to most of the characters he kills, they’re bargaining right to the end, all to no avail. Even Chigurh himself in the end succumbs to the same fate in his car wreck, which he casually shrugs off, just as he did the gunshot to his leg earlier. Fascinating tale!
And I think the world was probably always amoral to the core, we just hid it better before. Amorality seems to come out of the closet lately, popular politically correct notions of late notwithstanding.
Just to add, I thought Chigurh’s first two scenes illustrated the random and quirky nature of personal death the best. In the first, the black heel marks all over the floor after the desperate struggle between Chigurh and the deputy stand as testament to the deputy’s tenaciousness for life and Chigurh’s equally relentless determination to extinguish. That’s in direct contrast to the next scene, where the old man Chigurh pulls over using the vanquished deputy’s squad car meekly and dutifully follows instructions to “step out of the car, sir” only to get popped between the eyes with the captive bolt pistol. The deputy battles heroically for his life while the old man hands it over willingly for the taking. Totally different circumstances, same grisly ending. And Chigurh, the grim reaper, remains unaffected by either and unemotionally moves on to the next.
And to tie that in with the idea of traditional values HT, I think the sheriff’s outlook is that all of death somehow has to have meaning, where from Chigurh’s (death’s) ruthless standpoint, it has none. It merely is, and there’s no negotiating any of it. Same with the coin flip ritual Chigurh routinely inflicts on his victims. Randomness is the pute arbiter in the end. Only Carla Jean, in the end, of all the victims, seems to get that.
I cannot recommend Blood Meridian highly enough, Judge Holden is one of the most intriguing characters in modern fiction; a force of nature? fallen angel? God or the Devil, or a perfectly amoral representative of humanity, who knows?
McCarthy, with his down home idioms and timeless imagery sucks you into his little world which shows uncomfortable truths about reality.
Looks good from the Wiki description. Might have to start reading more again.
What’s going on in this scene in the book, HT? The movie seems to show Chigurh behind the door ready to kill the sheriff, yet when the sheriff goes in to look around, there’s no one there. Didn’t know what to make of that. Doesn’t really settle who killed Moss either; Chigurh or the Mexicans.
Moss arranges to meet his wife at a motel in El Paso to give her the money and send her out of harm’s way; instead, she reluctantly accepts protection for her husband from Bell. The sheriff reaches the rendezvous only in time to see a pickup carrying several Mexicans speeding away from the motel; Moss lies dead in his room. That night, Bell returns to the crime scene and finds the lock blown out in his suspect’s familiar style. Chigurh hides behind the door of a motel room, observing the shifting light through an empty lock hole. His gun drawn, Bell enters Moss’s room and notices that the vent cover has been removed with a dime and the duct is empty.
Sounds like this synopsis could be written for either No Country or Blood Meridian:
A major theme is the warlike nature of man. Critic Harold Bloom[8] praised Blood Meridian as one of the best 20th century American novels, describing it as “worthy of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick,”[9] but admitted that he found the book’s pervasive violence so distasteful that he had several false starts before reading the book entirely. Caryn James argued that the novel’s violence was a “slap in the face” to modern readers cut off from the brutality of life, while Terrence Morgan thought that, though initially shocking, the effect of the violence gradually waned until the reader was bored.[10] Billy J. Stratton contends that the brutality depicted is the primary mechanism through which McCarthy challenges binaries and promotes his revisionist agenda.[11] Lilley argues that many critics struggle with the fact that McCarthy does not use violence for “jury-rigged, symbolic plot resolutions… In McCarthy’s work, violence tends to be just that; it is not a sign or symbol of something else.”[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian
Myself, I found the violence to be the very nearly the whole point of the story itself. Without being merely gratuitous, it stood out in stark contrast to the sleepy desert southwest environment it played out in, and the other decidedly dullard characters who inhabited it. Having lived in eastern NM for almost a decade, that struck me as very realistic. And just as a personal aside, I think if movies depicted violence more honestly and openly (unflinching, as they say), we, as society, wouldn’t have so much of it. I think our movies glorify violence by either treating it with kid gloves and/or wallowing in it superficially and gratuitously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_Estacado
I suspect The Llano Estacado figures in both Blood and Country, also is mentioned in McMurtry’s books.
Old Comanche country (as was the entire great plains) where Quanah Parker led the US Army round and round for years and years.
Old Comanche country does indeed seem to have a special place in American history, doesn’t it? It’s likely the first place where the ideas of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny met their first serious resistance, and where the idea of American style “progress” is still seriously, probably permanently, stalled.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/field-notes-from-a-mirage/
Even now, the drive from San Antonio to El Paso (or almost anywhere else to El Paso for that matter!) is one of the longest and most desolate you’re ever likely to undertake.
I lived in Portales/Clovis NM for 9 years. Quite familiar with the whole Llano Estacado thing, as it’s also one of the main drags in Clovis. It’s indeed where the Great Plains first says hello to the Great American West. A land of contrasts to be sure, although not that many who live in that region (from my experience anyway) these days even know its history.
Loosely interpreted, I would say that the Llano represents the time/place where the ideas of the eastern establishment first met the hard realities on the ground of the Great American West, or the idea that aristocratic/imperialist European sensibilities had even a REMOTE chance of influencing such cultures.
The short and easy answer is, that of course they did, and they still do.
The longer and less obvious answer is, that such cultures often “go to ground” when faced with dominant invaders (just as the desert flora and fauna that surrounds them do), only to reassert themselves once again when conditions are more favorable.
I was stationed at Cannon for a while, I liked the desert.
Chigurh has to slip pout with the cash while the Sheriffs back is turned.
Did you read that in the book HT? Cause it doesn’t seem to make sense in context of the movie or the overall theme. In the movie it seems that the sheriff clearly sees Chigurh through the blown out lock hole, although that was certainly open to multiple interpretations.
But the idea that Chigurh would try to “slip out” of ANY confrontation would just completely fly in the face of everything that went before. Not sure I could buy that.
The grille was off the vent, Chigurh had the money, nothing against the Sheriff, there was no point in killing the Sheriff.
OK. Maybe the movie just didn’t portray it right. Certainly didn’t appear that way to me.
A refresher from my first point above:
And second:
At ~0:51 or so you can clearly see that Chigurh is apparently hiding behind the door, visible through the blown out lock reflection, and yet, when the sheriff kicks the door open and walks in the room, there is no Chigurh showdown to be seen or had, nor was there any evidence of escape or anything else portrayed.
Perhaps you can understand my puzzlement?
But to this point: The grille was off the vent, Chigurh had the money, nothing against the Sheriff, there was no point in killing the Sheriff. Given the rest of this movie, can you possibly be you serious?
It’s the only explanation, it was dark, odd lighting, everyone Chigurh killed was part of his job. Chigurh had the money, to kill another lawman at this point wouldn’t make sense, he had achieved his objective. killing Carla Jean made sense according to his code. We never know whether or not he killed the accountant.
High hopes.Yes, indeed! I think this says it all.
And a beautiful Floyd portrayal of a formerly eastern block landscape: ‘Marooned’ does indeed sum it up, doesn’t it?
Oops! Better version anyway:
A great video and song. Just so happened to be watching it, with its numerous bicycle wheel references, while also having the Tour de France tuned on the tele. Talk about a study in contrasts! One lamenting the end of empire in slow motion figuratively, the other celebrating its continuation in fast motion literally (for a time at least)! Used to follow the TdF religiously for the athleticism and heroics. Now, it just appears to me like everyone else. A rapid fire parade of advertising images meant only to sell shit. Whoo-Ahh!
Reawakening old wounds for no reason at all once again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-DJr1Qs54
Not sure that human consciousness goes anything beyond that, or that it should, or that it ever will.
Re post:
Video reminds me of Good Will Hunting, which I saw again last night. A classic movie about the virtues of personal human connection and family vs cold intellectual rationalism. A timeless(!) soliloquy from same [Spooks, are you listening?]:
Will: Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at the N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the schrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure, fuck it, while I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
Classic, see, analyzing America thru the movies is considered de classe’, quite the opposite I say, the movies are a window into the American mind, or lack thereof.
We love Will Hunting, Robin Williams best film, and Minnie Driver was perfectly typecast.
And if you don’t agree? You’re suspect.
‘Good Will Hunting’ was sold primarily as a vehicle to advance Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s interests. Good for them I say, since they were the ones that sold it and it definitely succeeded in advancing their careers, both appropriately.
That said, I can’t speak to the author’s intent in delivering the underlying message, other than saying it definitely rings true to the nth degree. Whatever the assorted NSA/CIA spooks who may or may not read this post and who may or may not have also seen this movie may think about it, I don’t know and I almost certainly never will.
That ALSO said, I simply don’t give a fuck anymore! Somethings, I think we should ALL agree, simply MUST be said, for better or worse, and points of contention simply MUST be aired, and THIS movie, whatever else you want to say about it, DEFINITELY delivers on that! And the idea of NSA spying and all the other ‘extra-legal’ shit the eastern educated egghead elite are doing these days has FINALLY come front and center – as well it should – FINALLY!
So, yeah, in THAT I think ‘Good Will Hunting’, a ‘movie classic’ at this point, shines MORE THAN a little light on our current predicament at this point. And THAT, is an ALTOGETHER GOOD THING in my opinion!
We have truly entered that time described by the book McWorld Vs. Jihad – the clash of ancient dogmatic religiosity and neo-capital religiosity. In the middle sit most of us but thankfully, it seems the real mess remains over there.
I give the ancient, most times dogmatic version the benefit of the doubt in that case. Left to its own devices it’s usually fairly benign and territorial. The neo-capital version on the other hand literally can’t survive without metastasis, which is in fact its current conundrum. It’s almost run out of resources, human and otherwise, to consume, and is rapidly approaching its terminal end game. Another reminder of that fact today over at NakCap, and I think this article and the comments that follow it all seriously underestimate the precariousness of our current predicament:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/gauis-publius-ipccs-carbon-budget-gives-one-three-chance-failure.html
The more I read and learn on the subject, the more I suspect that Guy McPherson might just have it right after all, especially when you throw in the really important factors (for us humans anyway), like our predilection to kill one another on a mass scale when times get even a little tough, nevermind the catastrophic conditions we’re staring down the barrell at now.
Another link from the comments casts even more doom and gloom on our current prognosis:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/07/albedo-change-in-arctic.html
I think that only in the aftermath of our rapidly arriving ‘Aha!’ moment will we realize how willfully stupid we were in ignoring our soon to be undeniable fate, but I’m not sure it ever could have been avoided in the first place, as this recent article also suggests:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/ilargi-overshoot-loop-evolution.html
In short, maybe we have been so conditioned either through evolution itself and/or our own ‘survival of the fittest’ mental conditioning that our current predicament was baked into the cake right from the start. I think the author makes a pretty good case. Whatever the case, I think the fact that we are now, as a culture at least, inevitably headed for a lethal precipice is undeniable. Whatever we do from here is more about personal philosophy and local concerns than it is realistic long term solutions. Which is just as well. In the end, the only way to ‘save the world’ is to save yourself first, so perhaps our ongoing crisis will prompt us all to do just that.
Another reminder (as if we need any more) that good words and thoughts don’t substitute for good actions. From the way back year of 1987 (and yet, here we are):
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerised as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?
In that same vein, perhaps a preview of what awaits us most fortunate ones (if we’re lucky):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/08/this-is-what-happened-when-i-drove-my-mercedes-to-pick-up-food-stamps/
Yes indeed. Some of us sooner than others, especially as both parties are bought and sold on the market, and care more about pandering for votes than doing their jobs.
Perhaps even MORE ominous is that ALL parties from here on out will be ‘bought and sold on the market’ given our current conditions, and ‘pandering for votes’ WILL BE (and INDEED, most insiders would say ALREADY IS!) their primary jobs. Indeed, just as in global warming, it’s exceedingly HARD to accurately state our current condition to initiates without making them think you’re resorting to hyperbole. Indeed, perhaps that’s the hardest problem of all.
Wel, yes, but w/o Roger Waters, isn’t sort of faux Pink Floyd.
Good question. Given the choice, I would consider ‘the Floyd’ more Gilmour than Waters, which is what the argument always boils down too. Roger Waters, alas, seems to have, at least in some small part, followed his mentor.
Heresy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everybody knows The Roger rules, however…………….
Some pretty exquisite shit you’ve posted here HT. Funny that you would defend Waters in the process of posting a virtuoso guitar solo. For my money, the Floyd first took off and will ALWAYS be about David Gilmour’s guitar solos. Period, over, said, done. Yeah, everybody knows Waters contributed some lyrics and assorted ephemerals up front, but after Gilmour arrived on scene, the party definitely changed. How exactly? Perhaps we’ll never know.
But once again, I think these guys (among others) might have filled in the cultural space in the mean time. And rather well at that!
hate to take issue with you, however, Waters wrote all of The Wall, most of Dark Side, credited on every song of Welcome to the Machine: like Lennon, the guts of the group.
Not that Gilmour is not a great player, he just was never the writer. Just as George Martin was the fifth Beatle, Alan parsons was the guiding hand behind Dark Side. the breakup of Floyd arouse much the same passions as the Fab Four.
Good stuff HT! Guess that’s where we must agree to differ. Granted, Gilmour did not take writing credit for much of what went on immediately after he came on, but then again not that much of it could be so easily circumscribed at that point, could it? I go mostly by what I hear (although the words are pretty damn indicative, to my mind at least, too), and what I hear is that Pink Floyd after Gilmour is a totally different band than before. And a BETTER one at that! To my (and most) ears at least.
John Lennon is an altogether ‘nother animal. Not really even in the same conversation. More a transcendent cultural icon than a musical personage. His ‘musicianship’ was almost always, from the very start, besides the point. Matter of fact, you could pretty much say that about the Beatles in general, at least in retrospect. They’re part of the R&R canon now, larger than life legends, beyond any real ‘criticism’ per se.
DA, but then i am a heretic in more ways than one. i think Floyd did their most interesting work before they turned to the Dark Side and went all poppy on us. To my tastes they actually peaked right about here.
still Gilmour’s tastiest licks, every album after this was merely a refinement.
I guess you are (anti-poppy), you old dog, at that! Myself, I never judged Floyd negatively after I first started listening to them on Dark Side, nor positively after I went back and listened to their earlier stuff afterward. To me, their earlier stuff was always just disjointed and incoherent just like their founder, Syd Barrett. Hardly surprising that David Gilmour was brought on to replace him. Nothing against Barrett, but he did crack up and lose his mind (by all accounts) after severe drug abuse. Roger Waters? A brilliant mind and lyricist as well, at least early on. But the driving inspiration for all that went on in the group post-Barrett? I think the reviews are mixed, at best. Alan Parsons? Yes, he played a large part in the group’s early success (Dark Side), at the very least.
next stop Pop Stardom
Syd Barrett died several years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Barrett
he did one album “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, Gilmour was on board for all of “A Saucerfull of Secrets”.
Yeah, I saw all the articles. In some ways it was sad, but in another sense I thought it was kind of cool. Pop/cultural icon reduced to normal existence, discounting his mental breakup of course, dies in relative anonymity. I imagine that’s exactly how Syd wanted it. Chalk it up to Gilmour being a survivor who managed to tempt fate while still not flying quite so close the sun, and Barrett playing his generation’s classic Icarus role. Or maybe that was Waters tempting fate – he became more than a little unhinged himself during their whole ordeal – rather than Gilmour? At this point, who the fuck knows or cares anymore anyway? I like Floyd’s post-Barret years best and post-Waters years second best, and the masses and the courts apparently agree with me on this one. But in the end, its all personal preference anyway. Ain’t it amazing how fast history overtakes what we old bastards still regard as reality and all of our thoughts and dreams get relegated to irrelevance these days?
then Waters essentially fired Wright while recording The Final Cut, and Gilmour and mason decided they didn’t care to be Waters backing band, sort of like the 3 felt about McCartney.
rumoured new album of Richard Wright songs as mixed by all the remaining members due out in October.
We live, we make relationships, we break up, we move on. I hope the remaining members do well with the rest of their lives. They certainly deserve it, at least from my limited perspective.
Kind of “ironic” (for lack of a better word) ain’t it? We and ours are already entering our “eulogizing” phase of life. Of course in earlier times this would hardly be surprising, but I think that in these times especially, such things are decidedly economic status determinant. Probably something we should all get used to, as the economic poverty tide continues to encroach on all of us.
Cheers!
Ok, I TRIED to find a better/newer version of this that might somehow make a different/improved commentary on our current situation. Couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried. So let’s try it this way: play this one VERY SOFT for you and yours and pay CLOSE ATTENTION to the lyrics, historical AND predictive that they may be. By and by.
When the light that’s lost within us,
When the LIGHT that’s lost within us,
When the light that’s lost within us,
Reaches the sky,
By and by…
Looks like the latest casus belli for wider war has just materialized in Ukraine. http://stream.marketwatch.com/story/live-coverage-of-the-malyasian-plane-crash-over-ukraine/SS-4-66418/ Funny, I was listening to the MSM all hyperventilate over the story over the lunch hour, ticking off the likely suspects in order, Russian separatists in Ukraine, the (US installed and controlled) Ukraine government, or the Russian government themselves; and not one mention of the US CIA or any US sponsored NGO! Anyway, I found that funny, since until I hear specifically otherwise, I now assume they’re behind pretty much everything evil in the world these days. Oh well, it will be “interesting” to see how all this gets spun in the coming days, weeks, and months.
authorities believe, considered the most likely suspects, strong indications, may have arms, the possibility, according to, even before it is determined, officials accused……
please, please, cried the defrocked nun, as the burly bushman………………..
now where has our host got off to?
From the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/malaysian-airlines-plane-ukraine.html?_r=0
American intelligence and military officials said the plane had been destroyed by a Russian SA-series missile, based on surveillance satellite data that showed the final trajectory and impact of the missile but not its point of origin.
But Mr. Putin did not specifically deny that a Russian-made weapon had felled the Malaysian jetliner.
That’s how it starts. Preparing the ground, sowing the seeds of discontent, etc. Wonder how many Americans remember this one:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-kass-met-0718-20140718,0,3687168.column
As I recall, much was made at the time about “self-defense” and the fact that the error was regrettable but somewhat unavoidable given the fog of war, nearly blaming the airliner crew themselves for flying so provocatively. Same old shit; another decade, another conflict, more people dead for no good reason.
And to borrow and argument from the anti-gun control crowd, maybe commercial airliners should carry missile defense systems now too and/or missile launch site fire control targeting systems? Then we could enlist everyone in the “global war effort.” Safe to say, the war of all on all has (long since) already begun and most have barely even noticed. The Beast is a bitch!
or maybe. just maybe, the species as a whole could decide we need to preserve our energy supplies for the next ice age, nah……………….
too sensible, we humans can always be counted on to take the unwise choice.
walk hard.
NakCap had a good link I linked to above to an academic article on why conservation was, is, and never will be a realistic option. Stripped of all the academic rubbish it comes down to this: we now have a society of 7B plus that’s predicated on cheap fossil fuel energy and without which a significant portion of those 7B will begin to die immediately. No one aware of that fact (well, very few anyway), will ever chose to turn their back on the life giving powers of fossil fuel energy, even though continued use will kill us all anyway. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
And as Archdruid has documented repeatedly, there’s no realistic options to turn to anyway. Given the enormous profit potential if there were, rest assured enterprising western capitalists would have been all over it by now.
And from Tomdispatch today, this http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175869/tomgram%3A_dahr_jamail%2C_incinerating_iraq/#more rather succinct but damning report on the full-on disaster that is now Iraq, thanks to you know who. As the US government continues to fuck things up so utterly the world over, one can’t help but conclude that this must all be by design. I’d also consider this article a sign of things to come for Ukraine currently, but eventually everywhere our ass-clowns in DC set their sights on. At this point, I think it best to hope that our inevitable collapse comes sooner rather than later. MUCH sooner!
by design? maybe, maybe not. could be beets, could be peaches, who knows?
it’s sort of like the pot in the frog of boiling water 🙂
which is not true anyway, however.
gasoline has been beyond the $3,50 mark for how long?
groceries are on the rise, wages down, crime up, but hey, just take a pill.
ACA rolls on, forcing people to pay in order to prop up the drugs needed to combat everything from AIDS to obesity, just keep them fat and happy.
the signs of collapse are all around us, the death throes of the beast, it’s sort of a day by day slow motion train wreck with pompous politicians preening for the next cattle call.
watching O and HC, Cruz and whoever act as if this entire thing is not out of control, it would be funny if it weren’t so sickening.
no, i think certain interests have designs, but we give them too much credit, sometimes things do go bump in the night.
and frogs do jump out of a slowly boiling pot.
sometimes, sometimes not.
Listened to an NPR segment on the way home featuring some academic “nattering nabob” or another decrying Putin and the Russian Federation’s obstinance in dealing with the issues in Ukraine. The propaganda effort is now pervasive and all-encompassing. Meanwhile, we’ve just opened another imperial palace of mass consumption up here in our little burg, lest anyone be annoyed by pesky news events from half a world away that might indicate a crack or two in the imperial facade.
Speaking of proxy wars, Australian PM and US proxy mouthpiece and all around Obama loving ass-clown Tony Abbott lays all the western cards on the table in the video attached to this piece. This whole thing is looking more and more like a CIA/NGO sponsored Shock Doctrine event now.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mh17-crash-russia-furious-at-unacceptable-tony-abbott-comments-20140719-zuq68.html
Someone has clearly decided that the time is ripe to bring the Russian bear to heel and obedient to western interests. I’m guessing a divide and conquer maneuver in fear of an emerging Russian/Chinese block that is growing increasingly restless with DC stupidity. If that’s the case, this could well result in nuclear sabre rattling fairly quickly, given that US military resources on the ground and their ability to project them are already severely depleted, as are Russian nuclear counterstrike capabilities. This also signals that natural resource depletion is now a real concern in DC, all political bloviating about shale oil notwithstanding. Makes me think of this lyric:
“There must be some kind of way out of here,”
Said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Business men – they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None will level on the wine
Nobody of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited,”
The thief – he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour’s getting late.”
All along the watchtower
Princess kept the view
While all the women came
And went bare-foot servants too
Outside in the cold distance
A wild cat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl, hey.
“The words of the prophets are. Written on the subway walls, And tenement halls. And whispered in the sound of silence.”
as i said, while it all falls down the appearance of normalcy must be maintained.
but yes, DC and NYC, the London Exchange, all freaking out, their hegemony is done, it’s over. TPTB know damn good and well that when the fuel goes, so do the cheap goods from overseas. they are scared to death of the American working class, that’s why i keep bringing up 100 years ago, the IWW, Socialists running for President, they couldn’t have it. they know they will have to share, they don’t like it. overseas resources human or otherwise, this is what greases the western machine. the immigration? nothing to do with justice, please, when has our ruling class ever cared about justice except as a talking point?
Saw on Oliver Stone’s documentary series the other day that Henry Wallace had strong populist/socialist leanings as well. No wonder he was anathema to the political class! So instead we got a faux populist rube with a small penis complex from Missouri name Truman, and the rest as they say, is history. And when one of the rich’s very own got into the WH a decade later and tried to turn on his masters as well they had him unceremoniously gunned down in the street like a common criminal (the Texas way!). Throw in Nixon’s little impeachment drama and the conservative backlash it spawned, and that probably sums post WWII US history in a nutshell. At that point, Carter and Reagan were merely bit players playing out pre-ordained parts (hard liberal swing, hard conservative swing), although it should be noted that with each swing of the political pendulum we got evermore conservative, thanks largely to the political tactics developed by the Abramoff, Norquist, and Rove College Republican crowd in the 1980’s. Say what you will about them, but they most definitely foresaw which way the political winds were blowing and capitalized big time. Although conventional political analysis would say “this too shall pass” or some such similar nonsense, these are most definitely not conventional times. The dilemmas we now face in resource depletion and AGW would spur a conservative response in most rational polities, never mind a rabid, fanatical base like we have here in America, where we’ve been collectively brainwashed over generations to imagine ourselves as the latest incarnation of the ubermensch or some such shit. Our inevitable fall is going to be one for the history books, assuming anyone’s still around to write it: long, hard, and miserable. ‘Walk Hard!’ indeed!
Watching US Nightly News summaries now castigating the Russians left and right, implying strongly that the blame has already been assigned. In the end, this event will be a political event even more than it will an actual physical tragedy. We’ll probably never know for sure who was behind this, and in any case, the political ramifications will almost certainly manifest themselves long before that time anyway. One more reason to suspect that this is all Shock Doctrine Theater on the part of western interests specifically unknown. Hey, desperate times require desperate measures!
The next two weeks to a month will be crucial in determining how all this plays out. If DC starts sabre rattling, as many expect they will, we’ll know for sure what’s really going on here, although I don’t expect Putin to flinch in the least. Perhaps even worse, if Putin remains steadfast and tells the EU and DC to go fuck themselves (as I think he will), it’s hard to imagine what they might try next. There’s definitely an air of desperation in the nation’s capital these days, and for good reason. The emperor and his entire coterie are indeed naked and the people are fed up with pretending that they ain’t!
i figure the rebels shot the plane down, which begs the point, NGO’s and CIA were all over the area before any of this started. you may be correct, once again, why are we there at all?
my issue is that 100 years ago we got involved in Europe, if we had stayed out the 20th century may have been completely different.
our country has oceans on either side, we are naturally defensible, why have troops anywhere? fat cat global industrialists, that’s why.
profits from outsourcing create a yawning chasm between the haves and have nots, the coasts suck off of the flyover states and foreign labor, and then preach to the peasants about how to live. the class consciousness is non-existent, all we get are saccharin substitutes, “progressives” support this foreign policy, always have.
The thing to keep in mind during the coming obfuscation is that no matter who manufactured the weapons system or who fired the missile itself it could have still well been the doing of the CIA or western NGO, just as 9-11 and all the false flag incidents before and since then have been as well. Much will be made that this has Russia’s fingerprints all over it, but the CIA and their boys are all far too smart to leave their prints on anything as obvious as this. First question I always ask is who does this benefit? The answer is fairly obvious in this case. “World outrage” my ass! The only one’s outraged are the western oligarchs who are going to use this as the next USS Maine/Maddox incident to incite a conflict. The rest of us are just rolling our eyes at the stupidity of this kind of bullshit playing out yet again and praying we don’t get caught in the crosshairs as well.
The plot thickens:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-18/final-moments-flight-mh-17-russian-side-story
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/07/evidence-continues-to-emerge-mh17-is.html
Personally, from the gut, this one has false flag written all over it. Way too many strange coincidences to assume that it’s anything else at this point. And if so, once again, it signals that the west has clearly decided to go to war with Russia, one way or another. And just in time for midterms and Obama’s final lame duck two years in the WH. Imagine that!
War! What is it good for? Profits and control of fearful populations, that’s what.
Music for the occasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ml-Gx0SYs
The demonization continues and steps up a notch with a Stars Wars reference for good measure.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-dark-side-20140721-story.html
And oh that our leaders should risk our billionaires’ disapproval on anything.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-20/russian-billionaires-in-horror-as-putin-risks-isolation.html
Uh oh! Looks like the DC narrative has been exposed already, and now the “walk back” of the official narrative begins:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/u-s-officials-missile-may-launched-defector-ukrainian-military-trained-use-similar-missile-systems.html
I wonder if NBC News will be retracting their comments made on the evening news the other night referring to “Putin’s henchmen” and other such slanderous terms (that’s a rhetorical question, of course they won’t!)? There’s even speculation out there now that Putin knew all along where the missile came from (actually, intelligence services for both the US and Russia new), and that he was either giving Obama the rope to hang himself with publicly or allowing him room to maneuver to save face once the truth (or a close approximation thereof) inevitably came out. Imagine, listening to the US bluster and bloviate for propaganda purposes, all the while knowing the truth of the matter yourself, and knowing that the US propaganda mill knew the truth of the matter too!, even as they were spreading lies and innuendo to pin blame elsewhere. I imagine for Putin, a former spy himself, this was just business as usual, but I’m sure he had to take a special satisfaction watching such a bunch of rank amateurs in the west trying to outfox an old master fox like himself. Obama’s done after this. Just fucking toast. He really should just resign now and spare himself and the country the continued embarrassment of his presence. And by extension HillBillary, Kerry, and the whole current ring of neo-con/neo-lib/neo-fucktard liars and war criminals as well.
Good one, DA!!!!! 😉
It will be interesting to see if the MSM narrative changes now as well, or whether they will just continue to spew the same venomous shit. The one thing this whole incident illustrates so well is how little anyone – the MSM or the viewing public – over here even cares for the truth anymore and how willing we are to go along with any prepackaged narrative that fits the overall cultural bias; i.e, the US good, the rest of the world bad. We really have evolved into a sad nation of Pavlov’s dogs for the most part.
I’ll tell ya what. Ol’ Vlad’s coming out of this whole affair positively statesmanlike! The western press and the whole US MIC rogues gallery couldn’t have fucked this whole mess up any worse if they tried. Almost makes me wonder if they’re not conspiring to somehow make Putin look good now! But of course the dumb-asses ain’t that smart.
But the whole “ten dimensional chess” aspect of it all certainly is fascinating. When you stop to consider that while all the wild speculation was running rampant here in the west (fueled by and/or with western intelligence’s tacit approval), both western and Russian intelligence already knew the truth of the matter, at least in broad strokes. And by extension, any western politician worth his or her salt had access to that same truth as well, provided they were even interested in hearing it in the first place. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), that means they were all either so “irrationally exuberant” in their pursuit of a mythical Russian bear that we in the west have been conditioned from birth to presume guilty until proven innocent, OR, they were active participants in a planned false flag event (a conspiracy by any other name) at least loosely organized at the very highest levels of US/western government. Or some combination thereof. Neither of which speaks highly of our “elected representatives,” although at this point I very much question which any one of them would think is worse. Quite frankly, I very much doubt at this point that proven charges of a false flag event carried out by our own government would much raise the ire of the American sheeple at all. A fact our government stooges know all too well. And at that point, what’s left to discuss? The putsch is complete. Fait accompli, game over, say hello to inverted totalitarianism.
The Archdruid’s latest is up early tonight.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-gray-light-of-morning.html
Although I’m sure about what he’s getting at, I’m not sure he supports it well. His transition from what amounts to the rational to the irrational seems a bit awkward to me, especially since he’s always been a bit hyper-rationalist to my mind.
More Fairytales From D.C.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/24/us-state-department-tells-lies-justify-war/
Roberts definitely speaks some truth to power, and he’s no idle commentator either – some serious bonafides there! I think it’s a good thing (for now at least) that the MSM (and therefore likely the NSA/CIA and all the rest of the government spooks) largely write off and/or actually encourage “extremist/crank” commentary like his (and mine, and many others), in that it encourages the meme of “Look at all these crazies out there! Ain’t they insane and funny? Such lovable losers all!” When we cease to be a source of amusement to them, rest assured the end game will have begun.
As you know, I work in a very conservative place, and most of the people I work with would dismiss my comments as batshit crazy (and probably already do dismiss me personally as such anyway), even though at least 50% of them are unarguably decidedly more intelligent than I. Which just shows to go you the all pervasive impact of money and power on people’s opinions. Lots of very wealthy people up here living on what is basically the proverbial “government dime,” although most would most definitely object to that characterization.
Which further illustrates the problem of entrenched interests and bringing about meaningful change in an era of peak resources, economic failures, and AGW. As peak resources and AGW bring about economic failures, which in turn aggravate peak resources (fewer resources economical to extract/use) and AGW (dirtier energy resources are turned to and wars over energy sources proliferate) the world over, entrenched powerful interests will continue to consolidate and solidify, meaning political decisions will as well. Needless to say, meaningful change in the opposite direction will increasingly become impossible, as we are seeing here in the west especially, already.
Is the situation already completely intractable? I would say it’s at least perilously close, as this link from today’s NakCap in a very small and characteristically understated way illustrates.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/anders-levermann-explains-why-nothing-can-be-done-to-halt-the-collapse-of-the-amundsen-sea-s-ice-shelf
AGW in particular, to my mind at least, is a completely lost cause at this point. With lags times on the order of 100 years or more, our window of opportunity has long since slammed shut. I’m not sure Guy McPherson’s 2030-2050 extinction events are in the cards just yet, Archdruid’s many scoffing comments to the contrary, but I think our chances of continued existence at population and civilization levels anywhere near to what we’ve recently come to accept as “normal” are now nil. AGW is going to be an epochal global reset, and I think as that realization takes hold (if it hasn’t already), the tendency and pace to burn the remainder of the carbon-based fuel stocks will only increase. So be it.
An added comment to the above that should really go without saying: science in general, is inherently conservative in its pronouncements, and science in particular in the current political environment is even more so. All AGW predictions that I’m aware of thus far have come up short of the mark regarding severity of predicted impacts when measured against reality, most decidedly so. Food for thought.
As an aside, as these “information/propaganda wars” continue to heat up, notice how stories either gain traction, strength, and news cycles; or alternatively fall by the wayside quickly and are then either ignored or refuted thereafter. This latest Malaysian Airlines shootdown/crash and their one earlier this year in the Indian Ocean are textbook examples. Propaganda LOVES THE HYPE!
JHK wades knee deep into the Israeli/Palestinian fiasco today. Not surprisingly, quite a lively give and take in the comments thereafter:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/excuse-me-for-living/
A coworker and I discussed this today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/07/28/obama-ben-rhodes-germany-france-united-kingdom-italy-russia-ukraine/13263179/
In typical Disaffected fashion, I told him to write it down, the west will suffer exponential blowback from all the shit they’re trying to put over in this whole sordid affair. Obama and the fat-ass Merkle, a fucking German HillBillary clone if there ever was one, are laughing now in the dog days of summer; but come the cold hard light of a European winter it will be “Vlad the Impaler” once again in the driver’s seat.
But once again, all of this is so transparently obvious that you have to wonder whether the Obama clones aren’t just trying to set up the next step in this global chess game now; i.e., preparing the ground for a future Russian shutoff of Euro gas supplies as their next pretext for war. And so it goes. What does seem relatively certain, at least at this point in time, is that a major western power play is in progress in the region as a whole, and that it at least tangentially involves Russia (How could it not?). And my guess is China too.
At any rate, certainly <interesting times we’re living in these days. And you know what the ancient Chinese said about that!
And the hits just keep on coming! It’s a comedy. A tragic comedy!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/28/us-accuses-russia-violating-187-missile-treaty/
Funny, isn’t it? Not really. Just sad, mostly. America, the right wing, and Israel all. Just sad. Propaganda all around.