Anybody who has been unfortunate to be in a car or plane crash, but lucky enough to survive it and tell the story afterwards knows the inherent paradox: the event occurred in the blink of an eye, but seemed, in retrospect, to have unfolded in a dreadful slow-motion sequence. What can be called the crash time elasticity contradiction is an accurate metaphor for our era. It is the deep dichotomy of an intuitive knowledge that we, as a global collective, are on a deadly collision course while wearing the distorted slow-motion rosy glasses of projection, looking into some fictional eternal future. If time has, by essence, no end, our life span as a foolish megalomaniac species is about to reach an ugly curtain call. While the end times is a religious fiction, our looming apocalypse is entirely man-made and, as such, is a mere by product of ignorance and collective apathy.
For the very few of us still trying to impact the discourse, it has become incredibly challenging not to give in and surrender to the general entropy of crash time. With so many with their heads in the sand, ignoring an imminent systemic collapse, the effort to wake people up has become more than a Herculean task. The overall attention span is so minimal that ideas are almost never transformed into actions but are just ephemeral ripples on the deep water of forgetfulness. The constant media assault with its cacophony of killing mayhem, spectacles staged as reality, and propaganda passing for news has thoroughly brainwashed many people into a state of uncomfortable numbness. Meaningful ideas could, not so long ago, make waves and even change the tide of history. Now, the words of complex concepts have been gutted of all significance and served for idea consumption as trending hash tags. The media brainwasher/propagandists have powerful bullhorns and are always hard at work to keep their vast audience either uninformed, anxious, and feeling powerless or entertained. The news cycle has to spin so fast that critical thinking is never an option.
This deliberate aggression on our collective psyche, switching in rapid daily succession, is similar to the sleep deprivation torture technique known to induce psychosis in individuals. As an example, here is a frantic but accurately summarized version of a recent chain of events which was conveniently tucked in between two feel-good big media stories: Euro 2016 in the sports/entertainment division and the Democrats’ convention in the politics/entertainment category. A mass killing in Nice, conveniently justifying a three-month extension of the state of emergency in France; a failed military coup in Turkey, conveniently allowing PM Erdogan to assert a near absolute dictatorship in the country; an attack in Munich allegedly from Islamists, conveniently allowing Chancellor Merkel to reverse her previously generous Syrian migrants asylum policy; the killing of more than 200 Shiites in Kabul, Afghanistan, conveniently ignored by most Western media outlets.
It can reasonably be argued, and easily demonstrated, that a disease afflicting a person usually quickly affects a community. This goes of course for the middle-age plague pandemic called the Black Death which killed an estimated 50 percent of Europe’s population, and more than 120 million people worldwide. Beside its death toll, which reduced the world population by more than 25 percent during the 14th century, the plague pandemic induced deep collective psychological turmoil in connection with the interpretation that it was God’s punishment on mankind, and the start of the apocalypse. The plague revived the intolerance of religious fundamentalism. The Black Death was a foray into collective psychosis, where affected people were quarantined to die by the million from starvation.
A lot more recently, another form of collective psychosis struck humanity. That one was not a disease brought by rats, contaminated by infected fleas, to the shores of Europe, it was the ideology of the Nazis in Germany, and their fascist allies in Italy and imperial Japan. During the Weimar Republic, which spanned from 1919 to 1933, Germany was a culturally vibrant country at the vanguard in art, music, sciences, philosophy and literature. Nobody could have forecast that such an advanced civilization would become literally hypnotized by a mad man like Adolf Hitler. The global collective psychotic episode which engulfed the world between 1939 and 1945 and is called World War II, killed an estimated 72 million people worldwide. When one studies the history of mankind, it appears that mental disease combined with unusual charisma in a leader can be even more contagious than the plague in the middle-age. Contemporary Germans and Japanese suffer, in large part, from a convenient historical amnesia, but the evidence proves that their ancestors living during World War II were, by an overwhelming majority, fanatic supporters of Hitler and the emperor.
Hitler and the Nazis used the powers of seduction, decorum and elaborate brainwashing strategies to propagate their brand of madness, but in the summer of 1945, across the Atlantic, a seemingly quiet and normal leader did the unthinkable with two criminally insane decisions. On August 6, 1945, unassuming Harry Truman had no moral issue with ordering the killing of 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima, Japan with atomic bombs. Truman coldly did it again three days later and killed another 80,000 in Nagasaki. The quiet little man should be remembered as the lunatic who established terror as state policy. In August 1945, Japan was on its knees. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not about speeding up the end of World War II like American historic propaganda still claims, it was about asserting US hegemony and scaring the world into submission. It is not a coincidence that only the United States of America has used the atomic bomb in warfare; it has been the empire’s ultimate prerogative.
From August 1945 to the present, the biggest collective fear has been nuclear annihilation, but like lab rats are often exposed to unmotivated electric shocks, smaller doses of fear and paranoia are administered to the population almost on a daily basis. Mass killings in some part of the planet or another, have become extremely useful to condition people into submission. In November, it will be a year since France has been under the boots of a state of emergency. Who would have thought that the country of revolution would have tolerated this? But again, who would have thought that Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia could fall into the darkness of collective psychosis almost overnight? Who would have thought that a little man with the charisma of an accountant could have been mad enough to go on a rampage and kill 220,000 Japanese in August 1945? In a world gone mad, perhaps letting the criminally insane run the asylum is not such a good idea after all.
eugene on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 7:48 am
Good article re what I see around me every day.
makati1 on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 8:57 am
Very good article and a mirror of America today. Collectively insane.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 9:36 am
Hmm, mental disease combined with unusual charisma in a leader can be more contagious than the plague. Now why does that seem so contemporaneously scary?
penury on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 10:17 am
Fear, the number one control method of government. Fear the number one source of funding for the MIC.Fear sells books, movies, newspapers, and advert time on TV. Tell people that the end of normal will happen over a span of time “no reaction” show people pictures of others thousands of miles away being attacked by terrorist and they will give up anything to be kept “safe” by the gov. Old Ben was correct “those who would trade liberty for security, deserve neither” and as we are about to see we have arrived at neither.
JuanP on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 10:58 am
I stopped caring about humanity’s future a long time ago once I realized it was a waste of my time and energy. Now I think that it would be best for life on Earth if we ceased to exist as a species.
I am really enjoying things more now that I don’t care about the results. I just trying to focus on enjoying what I am doing. Next week I will be taking a basic beekeeping seminar taught by FIU; I am really looking forward to it. I am busier than ever and growing more food than ever. After the beekeeping seminar I will choose to take a course to become a certified horticultural professional or a certified arborist; I don’t know which one I will choose yet. I will also take a class on grafting trees this year.
I am also thinking of opening a company to teach people how to grow food organically, and design and build raised beds using the Square Foot Gardening System and backyard Permaculture edible forests.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 12:21 pm
How much do we spend on national security in this country, and yet only 15% of rape kits are being sent to a lab in Baltimore????? This is why this country is fucked, cops care more about not letting marijuana being reclassified than violent crimes. Still haven’t heard what happened to that family that was massacred in Pennsylvania. If Hillary and Trump are both going to bend over for corporate prisons, why not send the right people to those slave camps?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/11/baltimore-prosecutor-on-woman-reporting-rape-seems-like-a-conniving-little-whore/?tid=pm_business_pop_b
Well the prosecutor seems like someone I wouldn’t consider a fucking human being.
Davy on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 12:27 pm
Reminiscing the 20th century misses today’s reality. The 20th century was a growth period on all levels. The tragedies of the 20th century were quickly absorbed and erased by the onward march of progress. Then the problem was us now the problem is what we have done. What we do to ourselves today is less relevant than what has been done and now will be paid for.
Dwelling on our dysfunctional humanity is missing the point of our collective collapse process that has been in motion and cannot be changed. It is more than our collapse process it is really all life on earth. Does it matter we are increasingly corrupted and politically controlled? Does it matter populations are being set up for local and regional suicide from overshoot? What really matters is our environment is in abrupt and dangerous change. Our foundational resources are in depletion. Our social and economic systems are unsustainable. These are now the foundational conditions of a new century and of little resemblance to the 20th century issues.
The 21st century is a century of decay, decline, and deflation in a macro and systematic sense. Deaths must outnumber births. Wealth and wellbeing must decline significantly in the wealthy areas. Many areas both wealthy and poor will be rocked by mass death. Growth is over and a new and harsh reality of a decline is firmly in place. This may not be realized in the social narrative because of the deception and denial at all levels even among those who can see it. I say this because many who can see it think it can be changed and managed. This is beyond human interface. This is at the macro level of environmental and civilization. It is self-organizing and self-adaptive which means it is proceeding under its own momentum with a conclusion in fate.
If only it could be a political issues of conflicts and social instability. It is going to be all of the above such that no one variable will dominate. It will be an inclusive shit storm of ascending levels of negativity. The best we can do is personally seek a refuge. To put our faith in systems and ideologies is folly. They mean little now because they are impotent. The best we can do as far as human control is global suicide through nuclear war. That is a sad statement when the best of what we are is being able to eliminate ourselves. Make your own way forget the bigger picture unless you want to see a brutal grand finale.
Plantagenet on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 1:41 pm
Discussing the global psychosis of National Socialism without discussing the even worse global psychosis of Communism is bizarre. The communists killed far more people then the Nazis did, conquered far more countries and ruled them for far longer then the Nazis did. In fact, while the Nazis are long gone, communists continue to rule hell-holes like North Korea today.
Cheers!
Cloggie on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 3:01 pm
“Discussing the global psychosis of National Socialism without discussing the even worse global psychosis of Communism is bizarre.”
Remarkable Chamberlainian honesty for a Brit in judging history, albeit a bit late. Nazism was nothing but a defence mechanism against the indeed global psychosis called communism that before 1933 had killed millions in Russia. Between 1933 and 1939 the “Nazis” killed a few hundred Nazis in internal power struggle and German SA mob killed some 94 Jews during the socalled Kristallnacht in retalliation for the killing of a highranking German diplomat in Paris by a Jew (something that is always downplayed by modern history faking). Hitler didn’t know how quickly he could stop this international public relations desaster.
The “Nazis” never conquered any nation in the sense of “now we are going to invade this country and add it to our Lebensraum” while rubbing their hands. Territories like Rheinland, Saarland, Sudetenland, Austria, Memel and Danzig were all German and wanted to return to the Reich.
The invasion of Poland was an intervention to stop the Poles from ethincally cleansing the Germans from Versailles Poland. After the Polish campaign Hitler offered peace and the acceptance of an independent majority Polish rump state.
Neutral states like Norway, Holland and Belgium weren’t really neutral after they had given in to pressure exerted by Churchill to give up neutrality and allow the presence of British and French troops on their territory.
France was invaded because they had declared war on Germany, not the other way around.
Yougoslavia and Greece were invaded after Britain had invaded Greece first, threatening the only oil source Germany had in Ploesti-Romania and spreading German forces thin was exactly the strategy of the British, giving their secret ally USSR three valuable months extra to complete the mobilisation and attack Germany in july 1941. The Germans detected the Soviet mobilisation and struck first, while many Soviet troops were in the train on the way to the front.
Later in Nuremberg it was not that difficult to interpret the German preemptive moves as a war of agression… a lie, prevalent until today.
Hypernationalist like the “Nazis” per definition do not want to conquer foreign territory and “integrate” it into their own. They just wanted to get their own people “heim ins Reich” and that’s it.
This view will prevail after the next geopolitical upheavel.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 4:10 pm
Global warming has brought a hellish heatwave to the Middle East – and it’s coming to the rest of the world
The severe weather shows what’s coming – and it’s going to be far, far worse
“Parts of the United Arab Emirates and Iran experienced a heat index — a measurement that factors in humidity as well as temperature — that soared to 140 degrees in July, and Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, recorded an all-time high temperature of nearly 126 degrees. Southern Morocco’s relatively cooler climate suddenly sizzled last month, with temperatures surging to highs between 109 and 116 degrees. In May, record-breaking temperatures in Israel led to a surge in heat-related illnesses.
Temperatures in Kuwait and Iraq startled observers. On July 22, the mercury climbed to 129 degrees in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. A day earlier, it reached 129.2 in Mitribah, Kuwait. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, the two temperatures would be the hottest ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere.
The bad news isn’t over, either. Iraq’s heat wave is expected to continue this week.
Stepping outside is like “walking into a fire,” said Zainab Guman, a 26-year-old university student who lives in Basra. “It’s like everything on your body — your skin, your eyes, your nose — starts to burn,” she said.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/global-warming-has-brought-a-hellish-heatwave-to-the-middle-east-and-its-coming-to-the-rest-of-the-a7185756.html
I’m sure the children will thank us in the manner we have coming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxYsi5Y-xOQ
sparky on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 5:40 pm
.
The Germans didn’t succumb to some madness in 1933
their behavior was forged by an horrendous economic crisis seeing misery soar to unprecedented level
the Nazis stabilized and improved everyday life, gave the people a sense of dynamic purpose and some scapegoats .
consider the demographic which has suffered the most from globalization ,the upper working class,they are far from the pain level the Germans experienced but the siren song of authoritarian populism is resonating loud and clear.
should we again experience 50% unemployment with no social safety net , the same solutions might well seduce a majority .
sparky on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 5:40 pm
.
The Germans didn’t succumb to some madness in 1933
their behavior was forged by an horrendous economic crisis seeing misery soar to unprecedented level
the Nazis stabilized and improved everyday life, gave the people a sense of dynamic purpose and some scapegoats .
consider the demographic which has suffered the most from globalization ,the upper working class,they are far from the pain level the Germans experienced but the siren song of authoritarian populism is resonating loud and clear.
should we again experience 50% unemployment with no social safety net , the same solutions might well seduce a majority .
onlooker on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 5:52 pm
Great article. I submit to you that the psychosis is really stemming from our collective fear. As the article pointed out we are being constantly primed with anxiety and fear. We do all seem to be feeling the strain of a world that is becoming increasingly unhinged. In this state, we are falling back on mindless sensory and soothing pleasures and distractions. The Media only to happy to cater to us. The War on Terrorism is the epitome of this paradigm of incessant anxiety. It is the both the cause and effect of a world that it being hurdled into the abyss of chaos and turbulence. That is why I see no hope for us to alone as a species overcome the challenges presented before us. And as the world falls into chaos and confusion, the specter of the Giant threat of environmental and climatic devastation looms. If they’re is a future it will be written by some very strong and hardy survivors who manage by a combination of luck, guile and perseverance to make it into the further off future.
makati1 on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 5:56 pm
sparky, actually less than 40% of the voting age population chooses the President and Congress. About 40%, of eligible voters do not vote, on average. That means that only 30+% of voters need to be converted for a change to some form of Nazism. I think we are fast approaching that demographic.
Real unemployment is about 23%. Under employment is even higher. All it will take is the next economic / financial crash to see a similar change in America. That’s why I see Trump as the likely winner.
derhundistlos on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 6:02 pm
The media, including fringe elements, relish in the ability to condemn the German people as intrinsically evil for a war from 70 years ago, yet the same media is incapable of lambasting on an equal bases of intensity Israel’s self-determined right to appropriate Palestinian land and relegate the Palestinian people to a miserable existence inside the concentration camps of Gaza and the West Bank.
He who owns the gold rules.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 6:45 pm
California’s 70 Million Dead Trees: A ‘Botanical Emergency Room’
“Until recently, strolling through a California forest meant walking in dappled light along a path strewn with leaves or pine needles.
But across the state, once-towering pines have collapsed, their desiccated limbs sprawled across forest floors. Toppled oak and tanoak trees, their trunks bleeding, decomposing from the inside out, litter the ground.
Choked with the detritus of at least 70 million dead trees, vast tracts of the landscape have become a botanical emergency room, parched by drought, invaded by damaging insects and infected with a deadly organism that may have piggybacked its way to the state on rhododendron leaves.
In many communities of the central and southern Sierra Nevada range, “80 percent of trees are dead,” said Ken Pimlott, the state’s top forester as director of Cal Fire, the state forestry and fire-protection agency. “There will be no conifers [there] when this is done.”
https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/08/10/californias-70-million-dead-trees-a-botanical-emergency-room/
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 6:49 pm
Here’s something I have been trying to drive home for years. Too late now.
Climate inertia
“As I wrote before: Postponing meaningful mitigation action until the shit hits the fan comes with considerable risk, because many changes in climate are not reversible on human timescales. Once you notice the trouble, it’s only the beginning, because of the inertia in the various systems (energy system, carbon cycle and climate system). The conundrum is thus that those who caused the problem are in the best position to solve it, but since the full consequences will not materialize until much later, they have the least incentive to do so.”
https://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/climate-inertia/
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 7:20 pm
There is no psychosis – just the humans being humans. Some small number of us just happened to be born in a time and place where we harvested a one time mega energy bounty from nature that resulted in our lives being privileged and soft and we made up a bunch of warmNfuzzy bullshit secular stories about ourselves. This energy bounty was unprecedented and will soon end, but the consequences will go on for millennia although the humans might not be around to experience them. Recess for the fat N happy is about to end. Humans are a rapicious ape and have been since their brains made a cognitive leap some 70,000 – 100,000 years ago. Once that happened the carnage started and has not stopped except for a happy few for a few generations. Other species or each other – it don’t matter. Humans are a walking holocaust. A plague species that will prey upon anything and anyone. War, for the last of the global resources, will go on until we nuke ourselves or the energy to play global risk runs out. The destruction of the biosphere will go on in the same manner. It’s what we are and the evidence is crystal. No psychosis, just rapacious apes following their evolutionary programming.
Is this all humans are? Diminutive monsters of death and destruction?
New research suggests that there was never a state of grace. We have always been the nemesis of the planet’s wildlife
“As the paleontologists Lars Werdelin and Margaret Lewis show, the disappearance of much of the African megafauna appears to have coincided with the switch towards meat eating by human ancestors. The great extent and strange pattern of extinction (concentrated among huge, specialist animals at the top of the food chain) is not easy to explain by other means.”
“Almost everywhere we went, humankind erased a world of wonders, changing the way the biosphere functions. For instance, modern humans arrived in Europe and Australia at about the same time – between 40 and 50,000 years ago – with similar consequences. In Europe, where animals had learned to fear previous versions of the bipedal ape, the extinctions happened slowly. Within some 10 or 15,000 years, the continent had lost its straight-tusked elephants, forest rhinos, hippos, hyenas and monstrous scimitar cats.
In Australia, where no hominim had set foot before modern humans arrived, the collapse was almost instant. The rhinoceros-sized wombat, the ten-foot kangaroo, the marsupial lion, the monitor lizard larger than a Nile crocodile, the giant marsupial tapir, the horned tortoise as big as a car – all went, in ecological terms, overnight.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/24/humans-diminutive-monster-destruction
Humans responsible for demise of gigantic ancient mammals
Early humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of a variety of species of giant beasts, new research has revealed.
“Known collectively as megafauna, most of the largest mammals ever to roam the earth were wiped out over the last 80,000 years, and were all extinct by 10,000 years ago.”
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_465673_en.html
Solarity on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 7:44 pm
“From 1945 to the present, the biggest collective fear has been nuclear annihilation.”
This statement is BS! Many more people today believe that Climate Change is much more threatening. Several years ago Global Warming supplanted nukes, and provided a key platform plank for the election of the worst U.S. President ever.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 8:06 pm
Great another fucking retard who thinks politics (the wrong team) is the problem.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 8:14 pm
And yet another one.
America’s Latest 500-Year Rainstorm Is Underway Right Now in Louisiana
Observers are calling the record floods a “classic signal of climate change” — and high-resolution models predict another one to two feet of rain by Saturday evening.
“By mid-morning on Friday, more than a foot of rain had fallen near Kentwood, Louisiana, in just a 12-hour stretch — a downpour with an estimated likelihood of just once every 500 years, and roughly three months’ worth of rainfall during a typical hurricane season. It’s the latest in a string of exceptionally rare rainstorms that are stretching the definition of “extreme” weather. It’s exactly the sort of rainstorm that’s occurring more frequently as the planet warms.”
https://psmag.com/americas-latest-500-year-rainstorm-is-underway-right-now-in-louisiana-98acbdf435d0#.yhoalqtnf
Dredd on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 8:14 pm
It is like When You Are Governed By Psychopaths – 2 .
Boat on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 9:02 pm
ape,
While many claim climate change biased by the media everyday humans are seeing many more stories where the problems are caused by a warming climate. This will make Republicans lose ground in politics. It won’t be long before climate fear tops the list. Yet another reason Trump will come up short in the election.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 9:40 pm
Anyone who think North Korea is communist is a fucking retard. North Korea is a right wing military dictatorship. It has more in common with a feudal kingdom like 14th century England or modern Saudi Arabia than it does with anything Marx and Engels ever wrote. You fucking retards need to learn to think for yourselves.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 9:42 pm
Hey plant you stupid fucking retard, this ones for you. Dumb cunt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cleanest_Race
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Fri, 12th Aug 2016 9:46 pm
Hey plant, it’s called Google you retarded cunt. Plant is living proof how fucking retarded the average American really is.
https://asiansecurityblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/5-interpretations-of-n-korea-communist-rogue-fascist-neo-confucian-or-gangster/
theedrich on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 2:06 am
Excellent response, Cloggie. Thanks to the sanhedrin controlling the mainstream media, the average person hardly knows that Stalin existed, let alone anything about the true history of 1914-1945. The only thing of significance mentioned in the above article was the statement that Truman chose to slaughter over two hundred thousand (some say 250,000 or even more) innocent civilians to prove that America was the “indispensable nation.”
peakyeast on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 5:29 am
@Truth: You are starting to sound like the ape man. 🙂 Same loving and caring tone to your fellow apes.
makati1 on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 5:58 am
Solarity, those of us who lived thru Cold War I fear nukes more than climate change. Climate change is a slow death. Nukes are instant for some and only a bit longer for the survivors. You can adapt somewhat to climate change, but you cannot adapt to 50 megatons of nuclear blast nearby.
Few people today even believe in climate change, although the number is growing. Most over 30 know what MAD means and “Duck and Cover” is not unknown. Those under 30 have no idea what anything means if it is not on their I-junk.
The “need” by most Western countries for a mega war to cover up their decline is getting desperate. If we do not have a World War going by 2020, I will be pleasantly surprised. Some believe that it has already started in the financial and cyber worlds, but, like any war, it will escalate.
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:38 am
Thanks Theedrich. I think I will shamelessly add the word “sanhedrin” to my rethorical repertoire. Sounds milder than the Stormfront word ZOG-USA, but more to the point than the more harmless souding “Israel Lobby” as promoted by Mearsheimer and Walt, who still haven’t been fired from anything, mostly beause they wholeheartedly support the intentions of the sanhedrin, aka globalist liberalism and reject Trump:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/26/the-collapse-of-the-liberal-world-order-european-union-brexit-donald-trump/
Mearsheimer and Walt are similar to Carol Quigley, all professors who want to show to the world how smart they are and that they have it all figured out, but in the meantime support the NWO and gladly accept a reprimande for spilling the beans.
Davy on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 7:35 am
Extend and pretend continues:
“North American Life Insurers “Accidentally” Pile Up Massive Distressed Debt Holdings”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-12/north-american-life-insurers-accidentally-pile-massive-distressed-debt-holdings
“Unsurprisingly, in their stretch for yield, insurers added to energy bond positions in 2015 to offset the funding gap. Now, the collapse of oil prices has apparently left North American life insurers in a bit of a pickle with distressed debt holdings having doubled in a matter of 6 months as IG energy bonds turned to junk.”
“But don’t worry about the rising risk of bond portfolios at the insurers. Regulators are already working on a plan to relax capital requirements to accommodate increasing risk appetites at America’s insurers. Guess moving down the quality curve is one way to combat a low-interest rate environment.”
onlooker on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 7:58 am
”But don’t worry about the rising risk of bond portfolios at the insurers. Regulators are already working on a plan to relax capital requirements to accommodate increasing risk appetites at America’s insurers. Guess moving down the quality curve is one way to combat a low-interest rate environment.” I guess we are doing debt at sub sub sub prime levels now. But who cares about massive over leverage and risk when we have taxpayers to bail out whomever and more magical money to create out of thin air. Besides don’t you the whole system is rigged and those at the very top always come out on top. Too big to fail
onlooker on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 7:59 am
don’t you know the whole system i
Cloud9 on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 8:30 am
The cycle tends to be the same from the founding of the earliest city states to the rise of the greatest empires. A political entity is born. It grows up; it grows old, and then it dies. Included within that cycle is the striving and vigor of youth, the complacency and nihilism that comes with middle age and the acquisition of wealth, followed by the decrepitness and dementia of old age.
There are so many story lines that are playing out in the plot of our demise that we are distracted from the central plot. That plot is disarmingly simple. Things evolve from the simple to the complex. At some point based on resources and demographics maximum complexity is reached. At that point, devolution sets in. Seneca’s cliff is an observable fact. It may take a hundred years for a man to reach the moment of his death, but once he dies, he starts to rot in three days.
Those that yearn for freedom will have it in the onset of the dark ages. As the remnants form up safe havens in a world of chaos, it might be wise to look at institutions and narratives that preserved western culture after the collapse of Rome.
Theocracies are proto states. Monasteries preserved knowledge. A code of chivalry evolved and knights preserved the social order. The most successful of those holy orders were the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller.
In the collapse, old men and fools will be sorted out in short order as the law of the jungle once again will rear its ugly head. What follows the initial die off will largely be determined by which narratives the remnant embraces. A democratic republic cannot exist without virtue.
Christian religion offers a simple narrative that the reason the collapse occurred was that the people became self-indulgent and turned away from the face of God and the Golden Rule. The secret to turning ruin into to rebirth is to turn once again to the virtuous tenants preached by Christ.
The second narrative that will resonate with the remnant will be that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not fail the Republic, what failed the Republic were the byzantine laws of Congress and the rulings of the Supreme Court that were designed to circumvent the protections and restrictions laid out in the founding documents.
A return to the basic tenants outlined in the Constitution and the assertion that the Bill of Rights are bright line limitations on tyranny and a plain English reading of their content is all that is necessary for their understanding will go a long way towards restoring freedom as it was intended.
Dredd on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 11:20 am
Some psychosis is learned behavior (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 11:41 am
Record Flooding in Southeast Louisiana May Get Worse
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/record-flooding-in-southeast-louisiana-may-get-worse
At Least 3 Dead in Louisiana Flooding; Evacuations and Rescues Ongoing as Rivers Rise Toward Record Crests
https://weather.com/news/weather/news/gulf-coast-flooding-latest-news
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 11:57 am
Hey peaky, I guess my embarrassing you as a retard AGW denier really gave your poor fragile feelings a little boo boo eh? Fellow apes huh? You feeling the love towards all those fellow apes from the middle east that have been overrunning your scandinavian welfare paradise? The rich politicians who let them in? The captains of industry who profit?
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 12:09 pm
Cloud9, the Romans did not “turn” to Christ until over 300 years after their republic ended. It was pagan republic, so apparently any made up god or collection of made up gods will do. Like the constitution and bill of rights they are just human invented, faith based ideas – they work if enough people believe in them. Same as National Socialism in Germany in the early 20th century. I find it unlikely that anything will replace techno-capitalism worship. Once that system has exhausted itself it’s game over for the humans.
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 12:14 pm
Flooding now causing most crop damage
http://www.producer.com/2016/07/flooding-now-causing-most-crop-damage/
For every 1C temperature rise (currently 1.2 since 1880) the atmosphere holds an extra 7% more moisture. Obviously, it don’t hold it forever as the rain bombs keep dropping on you heads.
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 12:16 pm
Wildlife, plants feeling the heat
“We’re sleepwalking to disaster,” he said.
“We’re going to start paying the price for not paying attention to evidence-based policy. The science has been in for some time … It’s basic physics and chemistry.”
http://www.intelligencer.ca/2016/08/12/wildlife-plants-feeling-the-heat
peakyeast on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 12:30 pm
Wrong on ALL accounts Apneaman – It
must be difficult to misunderstand everything I said, but you are up to it. ‘
U Da Boss, Ape !
Anonymous on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 1:57 pm
Wow, is that the hollywood version of history they teach in merikaland Cloud9?
-Monasteries did not ‘preserve knowledge’. This is mostly xtian spin, revisionism, and PR. They mostly preserved xtian hymns, homilies and other similar nonsense. Any actual ‘knowledge’ they preserved, was largely accidental. It was the libraries of the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic world that preserved western culture, not christian monks. Those guys were as likely to destroy what little knowledge remained under their care as preserve it.
-There was no ‘code of chivalry’, at least not the hollywood, fairy tail version of it. The only order they preserved was the pecking order. Illiterate , xtian ignoramuses and a parasitic priestly caste on top, everyone else on bottom. The only ‘code’ those guys cleaved too was that of the hired muscle.
‘Westerners’ (ie xtians) did very little work preserving anything after the collapse. Ironically, it was the East that preserved western knowledge. The very people and culture it is the current fashion to routinely demonize in order to support the endless war-narrative of the ‘west’. My own feeling, when we fall down, and hard, it likely be the east(again) that preserves whats left. Most Likely Asia or Russia will be tasked with preserving the remains of ‘Western’ civilization. We likely wont be in much condition to do it ourselves, just like last time.
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 3:07 pm
Anonymous, I get confused about this whole classification of “western” civilization. I have yet to read anything from the ancient Greeks and Romans (Mediterranean civilization) where they consider anyone from western or northern Europe as part of their civilization – bar bar bar barbarians is what they called them – to be conquered and enslaved – which they were. Millennium later many are walking around talking as if “the west” is part of an unbroken chain of civilization dating back to those ancients. Methinks if those ancients were around today they would still say we are barbarians.
Terry Jones does a humourous takedown of so called chivalry.
Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives – S1 Ep 5 – The Knight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhWFQtzM4r0
Dredd on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 3:39 pm
The humble psychopaths (Humble Oil-Qaeda).
Anonymous on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 5:50 pm
Ape, I agree the definition of ‘western civilization’ is not exactly clear, especially these days, and is a little fuzzy around the edges. Probably the ‘best’ definition, would be the classic greco-roman culture. Not exactly ‘current’ I know, as the xtians were pretty thorough about destroying all traces of civilization once they were ‘in charge'(well, in charge of the wreckage anyhow). Nevertheless, I believe there are more than a few people in the ‘west’ would not shed any tears if the current dominate, barbaric xtian paradigm disappeared tomorrow. A lot of the scandinavian countries, still to this day, observe so-called ‘pagan’ holidays and traditions, despite being nomically ‘xtian’.
Like I said above, when the new dark ages comes, the parts that are still worth saving, will likely be preserved by either Asians and or Russia. The central EU nations that originally gave rise to Greco-Roman ideals and culture, are so undermined by turd world immigration, and amero-zinonst neo-liberalism and militarism, to mount much defence of what is left. Germany and the nordic might be up to the task, but that is by no means certain either.
That is why clouds comments are so puzzling. What exactly was it that xtian monks were allegedly ‘preserving’? Mostly made-up Xtian bullshit, and maybe a few scraps of non-xtian works besides, mostly as an afterthought, or by accident.
makati1 on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:16 pm
BTW: With the difficulty I have getting PO to come up on my PC at times, and the long wait for a comment to post, I will be limiting my comments and visits to the site. I know that will make some here happy, but, just because I do not point out facts, doesn’t change them.
makati1 on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:17 pm
It is obvious from many of the comments above, that propaganda has killed the intelligence of most Westerners and many from the other “educated” countries. History is a forgotten subject, and real history is difficult to sift from the bullshit put out by the “winners”. That makes any kind of positive reaction to current events almost impossible. Are you reacting to the truth or fiction? If you are an American living in the 50 states, you are probably reacting to fiction. The US MSM is in total control of your life. No? Think about it.
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:19 pm
“But what if causality is reversed? what if the use of fossil fuels is the root cause of modern prosperity, and we’ve been misattributing to the capitalist institutions that actually cause more harm than good? In essence, this makes economics into one giant Cargo Cult. By convincing us that wealth-concentrating institutions of capitalism are the root cause of modern living standards, economists prevent any attempt at reform by telling us that we will fall back into the Malthusian Trap without them. But what happens when these aristocratic pro-capitalist institutions run up hard against hard limits thanks to fossil fuels and other environmental limitations? It seem like this is a driver of modern Neofeudalism. Economics is dedicated to furthering this misunderstanding through its dissemination of simplistic libertarian propaganda under the guise of legitimate scientific inquiry.”
http://hipcrimevocab.com/2016/08/13/some-additional-notes/
onlooker on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:35 pm
I think guys the only ideals of Western civilization that can be seen as virtuous is innate individual/human rights unfortunately Western Civilization in action routinely trounced on these rights via conquest, slavery, and the rule of money and privilege creating whole classes of people denied “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Hard to be happy when you’re dead, enslaved or have hardly any food to eat.
onlooker on Sat, 13th Aug 2016 6:35 pm
I think guys the only ideals of Western civilization that can be seen as virtuous is innate individual/human rights unfortunately Western Civilization in action routinely trounced on these rights via conquest, slavery, and the rule of money and privilege creating whole classes of people denied “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Hard to be happy when you’re dead, enslaved or have hardly any food to eat.