100

At the Feet of Mammon…

Philip Farruggio

He stated:

There is no such thing at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press…There is not ONE of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print! I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with… The business of journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread… We are the tools of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes!“

We only need go back a few short years to see the utter magnitude of what Swinton was talking about. Remember the illegal and immoral USA invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Most of the ‘levers of empire’ were pushed to accommodate that bit of lying, disinformation and half truths.

This writer remembers when Phil Donahue had his nightly news/talk show on MSNBC. By February of 2003 or thereabouts, Jeff Cohen, Phil’s producer, recalls how he was told to have TWO pro invasion guests on for every anti invasion guest.

Remember, at that time General Electric Corp. owned MSNBC. Yet, that was not enough to satisfy the empire. On February 23 the Donahue show was cancelled, although the ratings were pretty good.

You see, by that time, late February, the machine was all ready for the attack. It just needed a few more morsels of propaganda to sink into both the Congress and of course the consumers… Sorry, I mean the citizenry.

This writer was extremely agitated by the high level of Pro invasion info coming over the embedded mainstream print and electronic media. One slight consolation was when C-Span actually ‘did the correct thing’ and showed a Canadian news channel’s coverage of the impending doom.

Of course, when the die was cast and Rumsfeld’s famous Shock and Awe campaign began, the three major news talk channels, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, were all over us with cheerleading.

FOX was so off the radar that no critique is needed.

However, CNN and MSNBC, trying to look like ‘Neutral Journalism 101’, could not contain their peanut gallery mindsets, the one that John Swinton referred to in his famous speech.

You had Aaron Brown, Lester Holt and little Katie Couric (of flagship station NBC, owned by GE), along with Brian Williams (later to be outed, for but awhile, for his phony news stories in Iraq) all right there celebrating the ‘Liberators of Iraq’.

They all wore their flag buttons on their lapels, and little Katie was filmed strolling through the halls of NBC shouting ‘Marines Rock!’ Of course, Lester Holt did the ‘right (wing) thing’ and now is a respected anchor… so much so that good ole Lester moderates presidential debates.

Swinton’s use of the phrase ‘Intellectual prostitutes’ rang true then.

Now we come to a recent bit of disgrace. Ellen Degeneres, the highly celebrated and successful daytime talk show hostess and proud gay woman, was seen sitting with Junior Bush at a Dallas Cowboys game, in the exclusive owner’s box area.

She has had Junior on her show to talk about his painting, has visited him at his ranch, and considers him a ‘Nice guy’. Junior has, on record as president, never did squat to help with the AIDs pandemic, and allowed his far right evangelical beliefs to keep him from ever speaking favorably about gay rights etc.

Yet, this openly gay woman, who must have felt alarmed by our illegal invasion (OR DID SHE?), must have had friends who were enraged by that invasion at the time.

All the many alternative news blips must have gotten to her eyes and ears, telling her that the Bush/Cheney gang were WAR CRIMINALS! Yet Ms. DeGeneres continues to satisfy the lie which tells us to take a pass on the dastardly things done by the war criminals in the White House.

As the war criminal Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to ‘Move forward’. Forward he did by increasing the number of drone murderous assaults by Tenfold!

Now that he is out of office, Barack, the ‘Hope and Change’ king, just purchased a home for $8.1 million. Tell that to the suckers who fell for his rhetoric in the Afro American communities.

Anyone but the foolish people who still support Mr. Trump realize that he is as much of a populist as the man he emulates with his body gestures: Il Duce!

Nothing ever changes when the majority of working stiffs suck in the foul air that comes from the mouths of the empire’s minions, whether they be presidents, congress people or (so called) journalists and talk show hosts. It is time for those of good conscience to boycott the lot of them!

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peeWee
peeWee
Oct 19, 2019 4:28 AM

Pretty good article. Pity you had to spoil it with the Trump populist Mussolini comparison at the end. Don’t get me wrong I am no Trump fan but are you saying that much of the stuff written about him is not propaganda? So when it comes to Trump the media are…..even handed?……honest?…..unbiased? (LOL). P.S. How many wars did Bush try and stop? How many wars did Obama stop? Is stopping wars now “populism”? Even I can see that the highest levels of the US government have been compromised by the intelligence agencies and corrupt partisan actors. Need I remind you that it was a “populist” who called out the FAKE NEWS?

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Oct 17, 2019 12:37 AM

“Love your enemies” is often seen from within Christianity as Christianity’s unique contribution to religious, moral and/or ethical thought, but it is not. Not even nearly unique. The extent to which you can’t manage it is the extent to which you are without any insightful understanding of religion, even religions of hatred; morals, even moralities of destruction; or ethics, even ethics of irrationality. Does the Pope have hairy palms? Is the Queen of Great Britain and (yet to be determined) Northern Ireland devoid of an anus?

Antonym
Antonym
Oct 17, 2019 3:25 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

Angela Merkel and Tony Blair are loving their enemies. The Gandhi dynasty did the same. That attitude works only with a few selective enemies, not with Islam or any other totalitarian ideology so they were/are digging their own graves. It is partly own-culture hate.

Those oil dollars last only one lifetime too – just sufficient for the average politician.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 17, 2019 6:58 AM
Reply to  Antonym

That’s not love, that’s politics, deals, manipulation, scheming, strategics. Not love.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 17, 2019 7:00 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

And when will Northern Ireland finally void its anus? To paraphrase your final rhetorical with some little licence.

Doctortrinate
Doctortrinate
Oct 16, 2019 10:47 PM

The News Today, as slipshod as you like – but how far is it different from those diligent yesterdays. Broadcasts, built upon a complex Fabrication, to deceive it’s willing dependants into accepting falsifications as an authentic constant of everyday reality.
So, until the demoi discard the pleasure of blissful ignorance, for the painful truth…whatever the spin, however its dressed, the story will continue, trapped in it’s own invention, lost in a pernicious labyrinth where every redundant turn forgets the last.

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Oct 16, 2019 8:04 PM

When a fictional aspect of personality is face to face with true existence, such questions arise as: ‘Who am I? How can my projections and inventions be integrated with reality? How can these self- generated factors—unsupported by reality—be made real?’

Existence exposes truth, and it can be a great defender of your own truth if you allow it to shatter that which is not really you. However, if you persist beyond your challenges and revelations to enforce your invented reality with intentional deception, you will enter the world of sin. Sin is a much simpler thing than you may think it is. It is just the force and mischief used to instill and empower invented realities. To the degree that you have made such investments, you have moved away from God.

“In the ways of the world, a great deal of energy is spent on judgment, which is nothing less than competition for dominance among invented realities. Judgment is a cruel, childish game of egos, competing for position. The sly, unspoken intent is that he who succeeds in sustaining a judgment is above judgment. That is not true. The fact is, the ego cannot and will not forgive. Withholding forgiveness is the ego’s assault against life.

Love does not judge. Only the ego judges, and through judgment it will perish. Your love will sustain your immortality, for love knows nothing of judgment.

-Glenda Green

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 17, 2019 7:05 AM
Reply to  Brian Steere

Thank you for quoting that, I find it beautifully eloquent. I had not heard of Glenda Green until now. I shall look her up!

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Oct 17, 2019 8:25 AM
Reply to  Toby Russell

If you abide in such discernment through forms of presentation that may otherwise provoke controversy, you may find a resonance with ‘love without end’. (From which the quote was taken).

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 18, 2019 8:05 AM
Reply to  Brian Steere

That’s an almost eerie comment. It was precisely my inner discernment-judgement battle that was triggered when I visited her site briefly yesterday. Not colour schemes and images I would normally gravitate towards – quite the opposite – but the passage you quote is wonderful.

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Oct 18, 2019 11:36 AM
Reply to  Toby Russell

The book has her narrative of teachings that stand – or not- on their own merit. Those are italicised in the book. I find the same quality of coherency in most of what is represented there. I don’t take the quality from any presentations or images – but as a recognition within my own being. I stand in what I accept as true. In general terms I express my own ‘take’ on universal human themes – but I also share reading inspirations aloud. (They are different when read aloud).
The quote I shared cuts through to something true – instead of struggle in a world of lies and shifting hate, blame and self-specialness. So I decided to share it.

“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
― Malcolm X

It is my experience that any who seek truth will have to release judgements in order to be able to let it in. Else we seek only to get what suits our current personality structure.

Abiding through that which we otherwise pre-emptively judge against, is part of a willingness to listen, relates and receive rather than ‘get’ or ‘take’. So in some way I see that our realignment in ‘answers’ is often ‘hidden’ in the places we habitually judge against – and that releasing my ‘demons’ is akin to releasing pet hates that may be facets of that which I cant abide in myself or others – or perhaps use to feel superior as a way to offset my own sense of inadequacy.

A ‘need to know basis’ doesn’t just apply to the CIA or ‘journalism’ et al – but to the purpose we actively align in. From my shared reading today:

Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress, is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence. These tendencies are often described as “self-destructive,” and the patient often regards them in that way himself. What he does not realize and needs to learn is that this “self,” which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made up. Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even willing to “sacrifice” his “life” on its behalf. For he regards it as himself. This self he sees as being acted on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless in the power of the world.
~ Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice

For me ‘awakening’ is not to the nightmare – but from it – by opening perspective of true choice in place of a world of judgement that always comes back to us – but in ways we do not recognise – and generally do not want to know.

The ‘need not to know’ operates as demand FOR unconsciousness under fragmentation and dissociation as a reactive sense of self-protection.
It s easy to see the patterns of avoidance in others – and yet never without some involvement of our own – which of course we not only don’t easily own but protect against exposure.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 20, 2019 9:28 AM
Reply to  Brian Steere

Beautifully put, thank you.

lundiel
lundiel
Oct 16, 2019 6:10 PM

Looks like a deal is good to go on Brexit….. We’ll end up paying NIs tariffs forever.

MASTER OF UNIVE
MASTER OF UNIVE
Oct 16, 2019 4:22 PM

Corporatism is Fascism, and Fascists that tow the party line are always utilized for purposes of impression management much like props on a TV program are. Dubya is a corporatist whore just as daytime talk show hosts are too. Assuming that corporatist whores should have integrity is naïve in the extreme.

If you watch television you are an automaton without enough reason to be able to turn the television off given that you have been programmed to mindlessly adhere to whatever the television coughs up daily.
If you watch mindless Fascists entertaining mass murderers like George W. Bush at ballgames that host the Military Industrial Complex for halftime shows you are _Functionally Retarded_ and likely skimmed over this article whilst locked in a trance state of ignorance & a lack of education.

FUCK America & American television.

It’s a bankrupt Corporation that is $22 trillion in debt that it will never pay back, suckers!

MOU

wardropper
wardropper
Oct 16, 2019 4:16 PM

“…Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to ‘Move forward’…”
And I will never, ever, forget Nancy Pelosi’s dismissive shrug when many of that same party were calling for Bush’s impeachment on account of that illegal invasion:
“Impeachment is off the table.”
Decent Americans no longer have a representative in the US government.
As Swinton clearly implies, those who hire today’s journalists bear practically all the responsibility for this.

Jihadi Colin
Jihadi Colin
Oct 16, 2019 1:41 PM

Call Ellen DeGeneres by her proper name, Ellen DeGenerate, please. Thank you.

wardropper
wardropper
Oct 16, 2019 4:24 PM
Reply to  Jihadi Colin

These days you can get into a lot of trouble for such comments, but something has happened to her during recent years, and I feel compelled to agree with you.
Perhaps it’s the fame, but I’d say she has definitely “lost it”.
It might be just as well to remember that she started out as, and primarily still is, an entertainer, and I wouldn’t go to Seinfeld or Jay Leno for serious political or philosophic inspiration either.

hollyPlastic
hollyPlastic
Oct 16, 2019 1:07 PM

A glaring example of how much the West loves freedom is shown in this UN briefing on Torture, this week.

Spoiler: the room is basically empty.

https://www.rt.com/news/471016-assange-torture-violations-un/

This serves a good demonstration of how stupid Hong Kong protesters are in believing that there is a ‘West/UK/US’ supporting their quest for ‘Democracy’ and ‘Freedom’.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 7:47 AM
Reply to  hollyPlastic

you mean Hollywood movies aren’t an accurate source of information about world politics and history???

hollyPlastic
hollyPlastic
Oct 16, 2019 1:00 PM

Look and you’ll see that according to the C0ntrolled Corporate Mass Media, there are, in this period of history, three pillars that are supporting Western civilisation:

Pillar One: Peroxide. Look how very blonde people are getting on mainstream media. You can’t miss it. Good investment to buy shares in Peroxide factories.

Piller Two: White Skin. Whether it’s using Photoshop or Skin Whitening Products, people are looking very white in their photos, these days.

Pillar three: Piercing Blue Eyes. That must be using photoshop, because there aren’t eyes that are so blue in real life like you see nowadays in the photos.

And …
The Blonde is getting blonder. Even, black is now turning blonde.
The White is getting whiter.
The Blue is getting bluer.

Other pillars of Western Civilisation are somewhat behind the scene and include the proliferation/sales of weapons of mass destruction, breaking international laws, as well as, the withdrawal from treaties which restrict the deployment of nuclear missiles.

mark
mark
Oct 16, 2019 4:24 PM
Reply to  hollyPlastic

Ah, but everybody knows Bombing Brown People and Torturing Brown People is good for them.
We only do it for their benefit.
And this in no way contradicts Our Values and Our Rules Based Order.
All these benighted natives and lesser breeds are jolly grateful for all our lofty sermons and pious lectures about human rights.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 7:54 AM
Reply to  mark

indeed, it’s the white man’s burden.

padre
padre
Oct 16, 2019 12:55 PM

I find it very interesting, how people need to worship something!It seems to me that they aren’t able to admit, that there are things that are not clear to them!For instance, we know very little about the universe, so we declare God made it!

hollyPlastic
hollyPlastic
Oct 16, 2019 1:21 PM
Reply to  padre

There is a poignant remark made on these pages which goes something like this:

When surviving depends on believing, the mind works wonders

I think the implications of ‘believing’ in order to survive are profound. People need to believe in order to fit in, in order to get a job, in order to get a promotion, in order to get married, in order to get enough food to feed their offspring, and in order to ‘look’ free.

Not to forget, by believing in Jesus, you give your proxy support to plunder every inch of the Earth, and kill as many brown-skin people as possible.

smoe
smoe
Oct 16, 2019 4:06 PM
Reply to  hollyPlastic

Beliefs are the products of ignorance..Ignorance is the inability to detect a false hood or unsupported bit of information. So ignorance is a mind programming variable that allows to develop technology capable to establish, manipulate and maintain remote control over the thought and decisions processes a persons mind uses.
Propaganda is used to tunnel into, under or over or around the brains natural barriers which seek to defend against misunderstanding of reality. Why is defense against misunderstanding so important? Learning is the biological product of Experience and Experience is the direct result of data input to the mind from our human sensory systems to decode the information found or available in our environment. The sensory biology and mental processing biology involved is a network of different types of processors and links between those processors that collectively we call the mind. When the biology encounters information it tries to establish how to use the clue to make Maslov type decisions (when the encounter is a falsehood, the result is like a road sign pointed to a road that leads to a different town then the one the travelers seeks to visit.. those who depend on a road sign for which road to take, at a fork, will be misled: the sign points to road X, because it will lead to Town X, but someone changed the sign[wrongful or misleading propaganda], the sign now says road Y, will lead to town X. The sign (node) dependent traveler takes the wrong road and ends up in Town Y.

I think the challenge independent news media have is to develop and distribute a complete mind control theory, to identify all of the parts, variables, methods, algorithms, strengths and weaknesses of ways to control the mind of a other person. I describe this situation we face as mind control warfare. Every website communication should educate as it presents.. The theory must be well understood, by the lesser and best of us all, before we can begin to attack how mis-informed propaganda can be identified, indexed as wrong, and mind defended so that wrongful information cannot establish wrong interpretations of our information obtained experiences.

Unless information is sensed by the bio system (human) it is ignored and does not contribute to experience. When information is experienced by the bio processors that make up the human mind, that human experience indexes that information into its life long catalog of experience and the brain uses that life long catalog of experience to make decisions and to understand things. When the wrongful information is recorded into our personal, global experience, we understand things wrongfully.. That is what belief is, understanding based on wrongful data.

hollyPlastic
hollyPlastic
Oct 17, 2019 12:13 PM
Reply to  smoe

I describe this situation we face as mind control warfare

It is indeed. Thanks for the valuable thoughts!

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 11:42 AM

Mammon avoids questioning & analysing incredible endless lies by ‘Schiff for brains’:-

When actually, just like Norman Bates in Psycho, Adam Schiff is actually the “whistleblower”,

with bent whistle … all he needs is a wig and a rocking chair 🙂

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 11:47 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Correction: an electric rocking chair, lol

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Oct 18, 2019 12:40 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Jayzus…. Adam fecken Schiff. Complete wackjob extraordinaire, tho in Washington DC he has s(ch)tiff competition. Someone the Liberal bourgie professional types here in Aussie regard with dewy eyed fondness and admiration for leading the…. Resistance. Gag. Can things get anymore surreal? Do you sometimes feel like you’ve dropped acid by mistake such is the bizarre happenings, um, happening. Do you think the Mad Hatter would be perplexed at the state of our World? I know I bloody am…

bob
bob
Oct 16, 2019 10:31 AM

Hey man, there’s nothing wrong with the way the british regime treats its sick people ….

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/months-of-pip-distress-hastened-my-brothers-death/

…. is there?

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 12:28 PM
Reply to  bob

Bob, nothing wrong at all — if you worship St.Margaret of Muck, patron saint of the AZC.

“There’s no such thing as a social conscience”.

Pyewacket
Pyewacket
Oct 16, 2019 1:03 PM
Reply to  bob

Eugenics mate, it’s been back in fashion here for the past decade. But instead of dying in a death camp, you die on the street, or your own home, if you have one.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 16, 2019 9:43 AM

If it is true that humans very often fall in worship at the feet of Mammon, which very few reasonable people would contest, and if this idolatry produces almost wholly unwanted outcomes, a few important observations immediately follow.

The first might be that the so-called market and its allegedly ‘neutral’ distributive mechanisms do not produce the best of all possible worlds as a result of people trading with each other in pursuit of ever more money. The primary reason for this is that market fundamentalism takes no account of power and its symbiotic relationship with money; indeed, it is logically required by its fundamental tenets to deem money a ‘neutral veil’ that enables market activity as a kind of infinite and inert catalyst.

The second, and far more important, is what we hold to be valuable at the cultural level, and how we go about systemically measuring and distributing that value. Currently, money is the primary, almost only, tool for that job. Thus, if we cannot financially afford to do a thing, that thing is not worth doing by definition, even to the point of actively not doing what is actually affordable and desirable in terms of available resources and know-how to protect and nourish the environment that makes our very existence possible. Essentially, this ‘illogic’ is how societies operate today. With money as their guiding value system deep in their core functioning we are congenitally condemned to choose ‘profitable’ endeavours that are in fact destructive and socially corrosive over the long term.

The third is that there is thus something badly wrong in our cultural sense of what value is, how to generate it, and how to distribute it. The cure for this ill lies, in part, in dissolving the boundaries between various relevant disciplines – e.g., ecology, physics, sociology, economics, etc. – to some degree. For, while market-based economics wholly dominates how we think about and operate money, the general problem so sharply illustrated in the article above will persist, even though most of us, the vast majority of us, want that problem to go away. One pivotal element of what ought to be undertaken, in my view, is a very critical and open-minded look at how price and scarcity are interlocked, and how their symbiotic relationship influences how we perceive value, then over-consume as guided by that highly incomplete perception, and consequently fail to prioritise vital human vales such as trust, meaning and belonging.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 16, 2019 9:45 AM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Final sentence error: not “vales”, “values”.

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 12:33 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Toby, at last! economic principles that I understand. Could you recommend a textbook?

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 16, 2019 2:18 PM
Reply to  vexarb

I wish I could, vexarb, but know only of a few decent ones that critique rather than offer solid ideas for complete overhauls, which is what is needed. One little volume that at least examines some alternative money systems and is also easy reading is Richard Douthwaite’s “The Ecology of Money”.

Aside from that there’s Herman Daley’s multi-decade commitment to steady-state economics, though he only recently began looking at the money system as a driver of perpetual growth, and I’m not sure what he’s put forth on that pivotal point.

There’s also “Sacred Economics” by Charles Eisenstein, but his offered solution – negative interest rates funding a guaranteed income as a kind of flowing ‘money out from the top / money in at the bottom’ dynamic – is likely both impractical and paradoxically too rooted in compound interest and money-profit to really work as expected, though that’s my personal opinion. Besides, when radically new is needed, open-minded experimentation is the order of the day.

There’s also biophysical economics, but I’ve only looked at it briefly and that was quite a while ago.

If you read German, there’s Franz Hoermann’s Infogeld, which is the idea that most interests me. It includes novelties such as asymmetrical prices that are determined scientifically/democratically in terms of actual biophysical costs rather than via so-called ‘price discovery’, guaranteed basic provision (not income), earning Infomoney for studying, parenting, staying healthy, etc., and a broad philosophical approach that recognizes how complex and subtle real value is, and that linear numbers simply cannot measure it. I translated/paraphrased much of his work a few years ago. It can be found here. It’s not a fully fleshed-out idea, just a collection of sketched pieces, but with work and experimentation it might become what’s needed…

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 4:44 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Toby, many thanks for your considered reply. I have marked two of your recommendations for my own reading and as presents for the Festive Season to my grand daughter who is studying both ecology and biophysics: “The Ecology of Money” and Biophysical Economics. The latter seems to be an expansion of Findlay’s notion (as a chemist) that wealth ought to be measured in units of energy (an idea which was taken up by our professor of Chemical Thermodynamics in the 50s by comparing nations in terms of their “energy slaves per capita”. Ecology and Biophysics are sciences, which is why I was attracted by your 3 principles in the first place.

Anecdote to explain where I am coming from: Many years ago Shell Oil inflated the price of their oil reserves; this caused a flutter in business news but I could not understand what the fuss was about because Shell’s figures did not affect the real amount of oil that was actually there, underground.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 16, 2019 5:10 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Interesting. And if we go back to the 1930s we find the work of another chemist, Frederick Soddy, who also tackled economics and wealth, in particular how to design a money system that acted in accordance with physical laws, so to speak (e.g. “The Role of Money”). I believe he won a Nobel Prize for his chemistry, but was soundly poopooed by the economists of the time for meddling in their business.

I personally think that wealth and value, as synonyms, cannot ever be objectively defined or measured as they are rooted in subjective experience. Any new economics worth the effort will need to take proper account of this fact, alongside all the necessary biophysics and ecology of course. All schools of the dismal ‘science’ do address this issue, but with varying degrees of philosophical rigour. The treatments of subjective value I have looked into within economics thus far are unsatisfactory (behavioural economics somewhat excepted), with the market invariably posited as a neutral (thus scientific) ‘objectifier’ of all that subjective trading between households and firms.

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 7:20 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Toby, firstly thanks for the gentle correction: yes it was Soddy who proposed “energy pence”, though Findlay was very keen on Chemistry in the Service of Humankind. And I agree thoroughly with your own doubt “that wealth and value, as synonyms, cannot ever be objectively defined or measured as they are rooted in subjective experience.”

“A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” — Oscar Wilde.

Your remark seems to throw an interesting light on a well known saying by Rabbi Jeshuah of Nazareth: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” — if by God you mean the Creator of All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All things Wise and Wonderful”; and my Mammon you mean the Creator of Fiat Money alone.

BigB
BigB
Oct 16, 2019 10:12 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Toby, Vex:

I was revewing the recent paper by Keen, Ayer, et al – not this very afternoon. Which is biophysical economics by the way. Briefest synopsis: modern macroeconomics runs as a perpetual motion Cobb-Douglass equation – as a function of only capital (K) and labour (L). This is termed ‘cost/share’ analysis. If you add a third variable – energy (E) – you get a three factor cost/share analysis called LINEX.

Problem 1: Kummel-Ayres-Voudouris have been pushing this fruitlessly on mainstream for years – to no avail.

Problem 2: it doesn’t work. You can set E = 0 and still get production via the Cobb-Douglass function

So theirs is a sophistication of LINEX – thermodynamically and exergy compliant. Then they started doing maths and my brain started to bleed. So then I looked at another one called HARMONEY – following a very similar development outline.

Problem 3: they are production biased – assuming we can carry on production. Which at least HARMONEY takes on board – as it is Limits To Growth and WORLD 3 compliant.

Here is the real sobering analysis in regard to money.

Due to some rather nasty feedback the other day – for saying cities are centres of collapse – which is nothing exceptional for the ecological literature (it’s not often said explicitly, mind). I’ve spent this week looking at the literature – including on consumption. Here is the nub.

Unseen to us we have a collapsing overfinancialisation debt and derivative bubble collapsing at this very moment. Probably north of $350 tn. Dr Tim Morgan estimates $320 – four times the size of GFC 1.0. No one can predict whether it will be a partial or full collapse. No one.

What few will be aware of is this. GDP is strongly correlated to energy, material throughput, as well as production (using capital and labour). There was a relative decoupling of resources and GDP in the late 90s. Then came the DotCom bubble and that decoupling became a re-coupling – a re-materialisation of the global economy. Then came GFC 1.0. The re-materialisation increased. Of all the materials extracted from 1900-2015 – a third were mobilised between 2002 and 2015. A third!

We know from David Harvey: between 2011 and 2013 China consumed 50 percent more cement than the United States had in the entire twentieth century. The correlation is clear. We – China – built our way out of back to back recessions …using as much as a centuries worth of some commodities in a few short years.

Open question: can we do it again? Not in China – and the Russian economy is too small. Canada; Australia, South Korea, China never deleveraged and are carrying all their debt forward. We have conservatively four times the magnitude of debt and derivative bubble. Central Bank rates are universally around zero. There is a limited amount of negative yielding junk bonds you can create. We already have around $15tn – underpinning the euro and yen. And there is the ongoing collapse of the repo market – where rates (nominally 1.9% – spiked past 10%) – which is a tell that junk ‘wealth management products’ are being used as collateral …just like 2007.

Given this context: does money have a future? If money has a future: do we have a future? Since 2010 – with the advent of QE1 – finance started to decouple from labour and materials again. Can we re-materialise – that is recouple – ‘free’ energy (solar and stored solar – at the point of extraction), materials, exergy (productive energy – at the point of use), capital (energy embodied in machines), labour (energy embodied in humanity – which is only partially ‘exergy’ (<50%)) …and have a productive 'real' economy that carries that debt burden forward …and pays it down (destroying value)?

I can pretty much tell you: I very much doubt if anyone – apart from me – has even framed the questions we should be asking. Academics – despite what they may think privately – cannot say "full and rapid collapse".

Keen and Ayres are assembling a team to get the economists shutdown and retasked "teaching remedial maths". But is his own solution – debt jubilee and peoples QE ($10K to paydown debt or buy stocks – to democratise equities) – any better? Are we then going to restart industrialised production for a Marxist dialectical value Capitalist hybrid economy?

I think the answers are staring us in the face. Only we are averting our gaze. The largest liquid asset on the planet – the Ghawar oilfield – is currently partially out of action due to the *cough- psyop* "Iranian" missile attack. Aramco revealed that production has been overestimated by 1.8bn bpd for decades. They are now post-peak with a lot less reserves than was previously thought. Julian Assange made this known – that there reserves were 40% overestimated. This is the largest 'clean and light' field known. The Permian – Americas shale wonder – has taken over as the the worlds top producing field. But they are selectively 'sweetspot' drilling – which is a flash in the pan.

Anyone who points out the deficiencies in the capitalist psychology – and it is more than a mindset – it is an epochal way of being …or not being – hits a cognitive wall. There has to be a massive reality check and correction of unrealistic expectation and value production. Free energy and land will be the only value production assets we have. And they are being degraded fast.

Values are what we make them. They are who we are. [See McMurtry's "onto-axiology" – life-blind and life-coherent value creation]. But above all: we have to put humanity at the heart of our experience. That is by overcoming the – internal/external; subject/object/ self/other – false dichotomies of experience. We have hollowed out nature by exteriorising it and replacing it with a scientifism of dead deterministic fighting; fucking; and fitness competitive hierarchies – isolated in a mechanistic causal absolute spacetime …WHICH DOES NOT EXIST!

That is our only problem: we have taken our representations to be a reality and built a gazillion dollar bubble reality to insulate ourselves from non-existent representations. And I really mean 'non-existent'. We live in projected ontological structures we agree are real. It's the fucking Matrix as a documentary!

It is neither solipsism or nihilism to say so. The solipsism and nihilism are inside the Matrix. Outside: there is only life and the reciprocal live experience …of life experiencing life through the fluid processes of bodily movement.

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance"

That is your value production equation. Given by a poet. No money required because no commodity of objectivity or subjectivity is being exchanged. No spurious pseudo-exhange of services and commodities for the eternal valorisation and glorification of the Mammon of Money …at whose feet we sit: waiting for the collapse.

If not this time: the probability rises that it will be the next. After that: the odds are really short of being dumped on.

Surely other people are working this out? If we can restart this with real exhange – of the co-instantiation of each other as neither subjects or objects – and rebuild communities of trust and harmony …where the interior landscape of human nature has no inside or outside that is not co-extensive with the real nature – the one we have yet to encounter en masse. Then we must NEVER, NEVER, EVER let this happen again.

First, we have to deal with the collective mess we have made. If it can be dealt with. There may well be no after. Don't blame me. Blame the collective co-constitution of Mammon. Not one that ever captured me: the pseudo-values of money.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 17, 2019 7:41 AM
Reply to  BigB

Excellent, thank you for that, BigB! Wow, and John McMurtry got a mention in there. I’ll see your McMurtry and raise you a Jackson…

(I have to say, your thinking and hopes align quite tightly with those of Franz Hoermann. Shame his work is in German. He’s a kind of nutty professor, works in a Viennese university in Rechnungswesen or something, which is some form of accountancy, but is very widely read and open-minded.)

Around 2007/2008, I became obsessed with money systems … for obvious reasons. I started a blog sharing my angry insights and laying out as clearly and angrily as I could Why Money Has To Go! What I discovered is that people don’t want to know, can’t imagine a world without money, and I concluded that the cultural lag preventing radical change is a true representation of where we are as a species, as consciousness in human form. Our state of consciousness is as natural as everything else. After all, there is only nature. Even deliberate, malicious distortions of nature are part of nature. And that’s when I really started working on myself, which is of course the work of lifetimes. Because, to paraphrase that infamous Michael Jackson song; you can’t change them, you can only change yourself.

BigB
BigB
Oct 17, 2019 12:16 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Have you read any late Merleau-Ponty? He was largely overshadowed by his better known friends Sarte and Simone de Beauvoir. After his death he slipped into the shadow of Sartre’s shadow of fame – and was largely forgotten.

He was a huge influence on Varela. Around 2005: some of his late lecture notes turned up – made by an anonymous student – and there were several books published. This has sparked a minor revival in his significance: which I have been revisiting for the last few years.

He held the view of the nature we know as a *constructum* …a scientific representationalism that is an active barrier – not to the nature ‘without’ …but the nature within. The *chair du monde* …the ‘flesh of the world’ …the heart of all creation and experience.

He was undergoing a Gestalt: to put pure phenomenological experience at the heart of nature – thus liberating science from itself. Echoes of Schrodinger, Bohr, Eccles,: presaging Bohm, Varela, Bitbol etc.

Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a stroke. Sartre and de Beauvoir stole the limelight …’till now.

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/late-merleau-ponty-revived

Regarding money value systems. I wholly concur with you and your “nutty professor” Hoermann. The general or Husserlian ‘natural attitude’ is based on money. What is hard to discern: is that it is based on it whether people have ‘skin in the game’. Everyone wishes the market to do well: because they have ‘dreams in the game’. If the economy does well: there will be a return to progress and prosperity – where ‘I’ will do well. This has nothing to do with access to capital. Access to dreams and values linked to capital are all that is required. Free-enterprise market based economies are really ‘desire-dream production’ facilities. Linking Freudian pleasure principles to actual production and valorisation of capital. This is Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism’.

That is why the production function is not linked to any real world values. If it were: production – desire-dream production – would stop. Which is why Ayers, Keen, Kummel, Spash et al will be rejected. Because exergy and entropy considerations end the desire-dream “actual fantasy” production. And it can never be restarted.

The real reasons for which are not lack of resources (input source degradation) – or waste pollution of sinks (output sink degradation) …they are lack of imagination. If you take away the current money-value nexus: you take away the Self that is invested – self-invested: at all market levels (not just capital markets) – in those values. Value and asset stripping the epochal Cartesian subjectivity of its worth. The paradox is that worth is already less than zero – due to the market failure and artificial intervention of the Central Banks.

Cartesian subjectivity is self-invested in a Capitalist Realism that is about to asset strip and devalue every form of desire-dream production – downgrading entire continents of human aspirations to ‘negative yielding junk’ status. That is Capitalist Realism. In the coming market failure: everyone fails. There will be carnage – and deaths. And a tsunami of recrimination and blame.

A tiny percentage of ‘Cassandras’ will be powerless to stop this. All the information is in the public domain. I had no trouble finding any of it. The picture is crystal clear. Whilst the majoritarian involvement is with desire-dream production of perpetual motion prosperity: something entirely different is actually occurring. I cannot think of anyone that is looking at the coming collapse as anything other than the end of another business cycle. We’ll just start another business cycle. How?

It’s a fair question: one very few want to confront. There is no Plan B: because there is no doubt of the answer. The current political debate is pure pantomime and fantasy if you apply real world dynamical constraints. I wish Steve Keen every success: though I truly believe it has come too late in the day.

I think we would have more success following Merleau-Ponty and foregoing the entire reliance on desire-dream production. Whole people who are actuating life and creation as a syngenesis – the ‘together creation’ of a valueless value-equality system – don’t need spurious dreams. They are living the dream right now. No need to rape the earth. Only preserve it as the only shared value production system we have. But you already know this.

BigB
BigB
Oct 17, 2019 4:05 PM
Reply to  BigB

Unbeknownst to me: Ted Trainer has been reviewing a similar reading list to me. And drawn the same “true prophecy” conclusion: we are already in a post-production world.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-17/why-de-growth-is-essential-a-rejection-of-left-ecomodernists-phillips-sharzer-bastini-and-parenti/

Maybe we will notice one day!

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 18, 2019 5:43 AM
Reply to  BigB

From the above discussion, one could conclude that conventional economic theory is standing on its head: it uses money as a measure of wealth, when in reality wealth is the measure of money.

Take the Icelanders for example: the only “Western” country to follow China’s excellent practice of jailing crooked bankers. The Icelandic Leader did not look at the enormous sums stolen, and exclaim in awe, These crooks are too big to fail. Instead, Iceland looked at their real wealth: water, fish, a fragile but productive soil, and geothermal energy. So they cocked a snook at British PM George Brown who called Icelanders “terrorists”, jailed their crooked bankers and their crooked politicians, and are doing much better than the UK’s Classical Monetarist economy.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 18, 2019 8:01 AM
Reply to  vexarb

Precisely. In a very real sense, we are a simple 180 degree twist away from something wonderful. Its our collective somnambulist imagination that stands in our way.

BigB
BigB
Oct 18, 2019 7:03 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Precisely.

WEALTH:
From Middle English – *wele* = wellbeing; welfare

…closely allied to HEALTH – *hoelp* = wholeness; being whole (among other roots).

The word has been engineered in use into a narrowly defined measure of accumulation.

Real wealth is simply being here. Economies do not allow for that anymore.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 18, 2019 7:58 AM
Reply to  BigB

Thank you. No, I hadn’t heard of Merleau-Ponty but will now look into him. It sounds very observant, clear sighted. There is so much of this stuff out there, but the deep dog-whistle excellence of public-relations brain washing has been able to keep the infantile solipsism – which I take to be Cartesian subjectivity – alive and kicking in its pram of consumer conveniences. Who knows what the cost will be.

BigB
BigB
Oct 18, 2019 7:39 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

It is way to early to falsely declare that the individual Cartesian subject is dead. But it its disembodied subjectivity is under threat: from the very science that stands between us and nature.

We supposedly live in a positivist empirical scientific paradigm. Supposedly: because we left us out of the representation. And the rational empirical Self we invented from science and philosophy is nowhere to be found for anyone who cares to look. Which is too few unfortunately.

No one wants to totally debunk science: only to liberate an observer participant/dependent second order science – with first person phenomenology at its heart. After all: we do not experience ourselves via self-reports to others who dictate back to us what and who we can be. Actually, we pretty much do exactly that for the moment.

To bridge the gap: Varela proposed his ‘neurophenomenology’ – which was a rigorous first person accounting …”mutually constraining” the third person neursoscientific lab approach (how much we are supposed to learn from ‘rubber hand’ illusions – I have never quite been sure. In fact I believe this ‘third person’ approach to be quite distorting and very possibly even dangerous …we ‘hallucinate’ consciousness; reality is an illusion; etc).

We need to end up with a holistic account – not a ‘Frankenstein’ paradigm stitched together from phantom limb pains; whole body illusions; aphasia and lesion studies; etc.

We are whole: not the sum of our dead deterministic parts! What a pity Varela died too soon too.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 20, 2019 9:22 AM
Reply to  BigB

Yes, a holistic account. For me that starts with accepting there is no matter, just information; no space, just the mathematics of dimension, volume, distance, etc.; no energy, just the mathematics and physics of force, attraction, repulsion, etc.: all information. There is only experience, which is a necessary property of consciousness. We cannot know what is ‘beyond’ that, because it lies outside what we are. We cannot even know if anything ‘beyond’ consciousness is possible.

And yes, the proposition that dead bits and pieces can be arranged in such a way as to create the ‘illusion’ of life and consciousness is wholly untenable. Just the simple query: “Who or what is being deceived by the illusion?” bursts that bubble. Or ought to. People do so cling to their beliefs…

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 12:44 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

Fine comment, Toby and may I submit that for real values to shine through, on collective societal ‘growth’ & evolution of consciousness, harmonised with critical reasoning, then the very first thing we need to get rid of is the IMF & Co.

Now that Kristalina Georgieva is the new M.D. people should be able to quickly see clearly, that after her 1,001 days at the WBO and her previous pathetic E.U. C.V. one does not need to understand ANYthing to do with how the system truly functions presently & how it could be made to work for the people.

Stalinka’s wholly unsuitable levels of deception, distraction & professional incompetence, combined with her love & respect for Mafia Bosses, (literally), in her own personal drive of pure self-interest and fuck Bulgaria and the Bulgarians mentality, was well proven when she sided against Irina Bokova for Secretary General of the U.N. :- purely to get on side with Merkel, May & BG PM Borisov’s alliance with Anglo-Zionist-Capitalists & NATO’s non-existent interest in the Palestinian Problem. Bokova, on the other hand, had actually done more than just getting down to work in changing Law and scything Budgets @UNESCO and since serving as boss of UNESCO, thanks to Bokova we can now proceed legally, theoretically, against any genocidal policy of war, because in Law,
“The Destruction of Culture is a Terrorist Act “…
A solid foundation from which to work from,
in securing Palestinian ‘values’ & property rights.
Forget the IMF & Stalinka’s rhetoric: we don’t grow olives in Bulgaria, but have much to trade with those who do and after Erdogan’s “Operation Olive Branch”, it is high time people penalised Rhetoric & rewarded Sincerity in actions, not empty words inverting
& perverting reality . . . to twist trust, spin meaning & annulate cultural belonging.
“This idolatry produces almost wholly unwanted outcomes” no ‘ifs’, Toby.

Greetings,
Tim

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 16, 2019 5:16 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Thank you, Tim.

Yes, the evolution of consciousness is central. Indeed, I don’t think we’ll manage to lastingly root out our need for corruptible institutions like the IMF and World Bank and BIS etc., until we have developed or evolved a robust cultural desire to do things very differently. I don’t feel a top-down change can happen. And for radical change to be bottom up, effective, sustainable and true to who we are as humans, we have to change in our consciousness, away from fear, distrust and greed, towards love, trust and sharing. And these things take time…

smoe
smoe
Oct 16, 2019 10:03 PM
Reply to  Toby Russell

yes , boundaries present profit opportunities. The nation states are bounded human containers.. the humans caught in the containers are fed the information that makes up the environment and so they only know what is made available to them. That means those in control of the propaganda can differentiate the humans and then sort them by binaries..
like gun control, or politicians, or race, place of origin, social factors, education, mental ability, religion or just about anything.. But separation is not enough, those in control of the information (propaganda) then polarize the thinking or feelings of the persons in the differentiated groups; its like a football game, everyone is either for the Red Team and strongly against the blue team, or vice-a-versa.

If you exchange a new born child, born to a Jewish family in New York, for a child born the same day in Iran.and and the parents of the exchanged children mature in their own native societies the non genetic child,…24 years later. the adult version of these two now matured children will hate each other, not be able to speak the language of the other and be committed to a vastly different set of goals and hold a vastly different set of basic beliefs.

Nation state encapsulation allows to different humanity and propaganda allows to polarize the thinking of those incarcerated within the nation states. These two things (boundary and propaganda) account for, or are the basis of citizen support for all wars, and binary differences that lead to reasoned differences of opinions. War comes about when some greedy person (usually those supporting the leader and the leader) wants something the polarized other side has or refuses to yield on.

Toby Russell
Toby Russell
Oct 17, 2019 7:17 AM
Reply to  smoe

Yes. Your summation reminds me strongly of Lewis Mumford’s The Myth of the Machine, which is about how unchecked ego – the mythic solar hero run rampant – structures societies as mechanical-processional systems revolving around its hidden fears and need for final control of everything. Of course there is never enough control and it all breaks in the end, as narcissism must.

I should add, though, that diversity is vital. Life without diversity is impossible. The way for us all, unique as we are, to communicate as successfully as possible with each other, is to have zero beliefs, as you suggest in another comment above. That means almost zero propaganda, and that little which might remain – there may always be a need for some common vision of what life is about as part of meaning making and the fact that humans are social beings – must be explicit and transparent, and always open to robust questioning.

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 9:37 AM

Bottom Line from Amerikanski BTL Saker re reformed TV host:

“Thank you, Mr. Trump, I never liked your TV show, but you do have a few hints of the truth.”

Frank
Frank
Oct 16, 2019 9:31 AM

A ‘boycott’ implies some deliberate effort in avoiding something, as if effort were required in the abstention thereof.

But the mainstream media, really? The BBC? The Guardian? And the rest?

I make as much effort to eschew mainstream media as I do to avoid stooping in the street to pick up and eat dogshit and for identical reasons.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 16, 2019 9:41 AM
Reply to  Frank

Sadly, although absolutely no effort is required to avoid eating dogshit, one is still occasionally exposed to its unpleasant odour, while inadvertently in its vicinity.

And so it is with the lying propaganda mainstream media.

Antonym
Antonym
Oct 16, 2019 7:13 AM

Anyone who watches AND/OR is on TV? you’re no clear.

I agree that those whose faces are constantly on the Tube plus those directing the shows are bought and sold by the 1%, while the 99% have to pay the final bill through license fees and more expensive products. For the watchers the whole show should be a learning process.

TV is the easiest tool for mass manipulation: audio plus video and controlling a few TV channels is simpler than zillions of Internet sites or mobile channels.

Next is controlling people one by one. 5G + facial recognition and you have China’s Total Social Control System. Is direct chip implant after?

Antonym
Antonym
Oct 16, 2019 4:25 AM

Mammon changed face many times during history: the graphic above reminds me actually of Mohammed with his alter ego Allah. Be assured that his conquerers wrote history at the penalty of amputation or death. Atilla was another one and so was the East India Company empowered by King Charles II.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 16, 2019 9:45 AM
Reply to  Antonym

You would probably be more effective as a zionist shill, if you made at least a slight effort to disguise that fact.

Antonym
Antonym
Oct 16, 2019 12:32 PM
Reply to  milosevic

Word count for Milosevic’s con-tributions:
1) shill
2) troll
3) the
4) and

Iskren Govornik
Iskren Govornik
Oct 16, 2019 2:26 PM
Reply to  Antonym

Indeed Slobo is highly predictable. Perhaps he’s an auto-bot created in Belgrade that reacts to specific key words, but it’s not a very sophisticated bot yet…just four words as you point out.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 6:30 AM

— Belgrade being a well-known centre of disinfo operations on such subjects as Israeli war crimes and US imperialism.

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 7:08 AM

note how the troll personas discourse with each other, to further the impression that they’re real people arriving at a consensus.

somebody should make an academic study of disinfo-trollology. a public study, that is; presumably the private studies have already been done, and we’re now seeing the applied results.

axisofoil
axisofoil
Oct 16, 2019 4:15 AM

It’s an odd thing to have thrown in the towel long ago on all of these people but still have a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe he means this.
https://youtu.be/OFPigJiISCc

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 6:57 AM
Reply to  axisofoil

AOO, you mean Trump’s Time to Bring Them Back might be genuine? I give him credit because I understand his problem: he has to face his Jewish daughter and her Likudnik husband.

“It is easier to rule an Empire than to manage a family” — Montaigne

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 7:04 AM
Reply to  vexarb

ps Not only face but live with. Trump’s sincerity is in the same awkward family position as Cher in “Moonstruck” when she and her boyfriend meet her father and his girlfriend at the Opera, and she says to her father:

“I’m not sure whether I saw you”.

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 8:04 AM
Reply to  vexarb

pps I guess Trump’s triumph over the Hilary Killary Shrillary War Party will get him re-elected for a few years. But he has to face his daughter’s tears and his son-in-law’s resentment…
Till Death Do Us Part. No wonder that, like Cher in Moonstruck, Trump is not sure that he saw what he sees in front of him.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 10:08 AM
Reply to  vexarb

is this a dagger, i see … ?

vexarb
vexarb
Oct 16, 2019 10:45 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

Tim, in a way, Macbeth’s uncertainty resembles the wavering course of Trump, having to steer between political forces abroad and a family force at home.

mark
mark
Oct 16, 2019 3:53 AM

The only 2 reputable journalists who tried to cover Iraq honestly were Donahue and Chris Hedges.
Needless to say, both were immediately sacked.
Needless to say, all the cheerleading whores with blood on their hands prospered greatly and are still in situ peddling new lies.

Graft
Graft
Oct 16, 2019 5:16 AM
Reply to  mark

Unfortunately Donahue is not on the working mans side he just didn’t want a war and Chris Hedges is controlled opposition that’s why he has his own tv show and lost a tonne of support for his outright lies about Lenin

mark
mark
Oct 16, 2019 4:29 PM
Reply to  Graft

I don’t agree with either of them on different issues but I wouldn’t question their integrity.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Oct 16, 2019 3:19 AM

“But the more fundamental problem is that Americans are too nice. That may seem like a paradox, since we are a country that blithely bombs the world and then weeps with self-pity and affronted dignity when the little people we just stomped on fail to forgive us for tearing out their fingernails. In fact, our niceness is itself a symptom of the moral obliviousness that permits us to enact atrocities in the first place. Niceness is not friendliness, not hospitality, not charity and not goodness. Niceness is the blank grin on the face of the psychopath: it is the public enactment of all the forms of love and kindness without the troublesome burden of loving anyone or treating people with kindness.

This is what an Ellen DeGeneres is really getting at when she brags about being friends with those who have “different beliefs.” It is not a matter of actual emotional attachment to any system of values, and it’s certainly not a matter of transcending minor political squabbles to form some approximation of a community. […]
Rather, she is saying that it is more personally and professionally convenient just to be nice to whatever person happens to be in the same grandstand for the same spectacle of large men grievously injuring each other. It is not that there are disparate values to be bridged in order to form a diverse and tolerant society. Instead, it is hankering after the ease of a society in which there is no necessity to form a core of values beyond the practical calculation of personal and social advantage.”

Ellen DeGeneres and the American Psychopath

mark
mark
Oct 16, 2019 3:56 AM
Reply to  Ramdan

Dubya rehabilitated himself by slagging off the Orange Man.
So he’s now a jolly decent chap and all round good egg.
Certainly outweighs a little thing like a couple of million dead sand niggers.

Graft
Graft
Oct 16, 2019 5:17 AM
Reply to  mark

As jimmy Bore said on his show liberals love Bush nowadays but they still fucking hate Ralph Nader, because he gave us……..Bush! Mind officially blown

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 16, 2019 10:01 AM
Reply to  Ramdan

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Oct 16, 2019 11:25 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Fame-hungry sycophant fawning over all over a war criminal then pretending such abberant behaviour is normal – no wonder Jimmy called DeGeneres a ‘classhole’.

We have exactly the same thing in Britain with a liberal elite that essentially loathes the left.

It’s easy to see through the crocadile tear of the likes of the Guardin when journalists lament the externalities of austerity while at the same time doing all they can to protect those who inflict such policies.

As many guessed all along – rich liberals are a key ingredient in the corporatocracy stew.

Willem
Willem
Oct 16, 2019 11:23 AM
Reply to  Ramdan

Ellen’s mindset, when she had a good time with W, as explained by Vonnegut

‘So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.’

Ramdan
Ramdan
Oct 16, 2019 12:22 PM
Reply to  Willem

This is an interesting (as for debate) assessment of the motives and the way we (mis)construct reality….

“in the interests of survival”but “survival” of what?

“survival” of a mind construct as in “I don’t like this but I NEED to do it…to survive, to STAY ALIVE, to keep eating, to not to die”?

“Survival” as in the indegenous kids eating from dumpsters? (here and here) ….

OR “survival” of our INTERNALIZED adoration of Mammon as the provider for pleasurable moments and the utter avoidance of the non-pleasurable.

survival of a vehement desire for what is mentally, socially and culturally construed as ‘satisfactory’, ‘laudable’, ‘praiseworthy’, ‘deserving’….which basically is the adoration of wealth, and ‘upper’ social status, of celebrity …and of all other things that represent the ACTUAL internal adoration of Mammon.

Is in this- seemingly ‘innocuous’ – way that reality is subverted and we (unconsciously) construct the uber-materialistic worldview that continues to discard the honest, deep human, spiritual values that can save us from this madness.

I would rather remember again, and old, “crazy” guy ….

“A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. “If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn’t have to live on lentils.”

Diogenes replied, “But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn’t have to flatter Dionysus.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 4:35 PM
Reply to  Ramdan

Phew, at last some good news 🙂

I love lentils, especially the orange ones, extra spicy . . .

Do you think POTUS likes orange lentils, too much ?
(just idle thought), but who knows ?
Bush hated broccoli & mushrooming GNDs & gay marriage.
And more people knew about his distaste for broccoli, than his policies.

Ramdan
Ramdan
Oct 16, 2019 5:18 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

idle thought
Beware of those!

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Oct 16, 2019 2:37 AM

Greed.
It turns humans inhumane.

Graft
Graft
Oct 16, 2019 5:18 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Then let’s be inhumane to the inhumane

Reallyoldhippy
Reallyoldhippy
Oct 16, 2019 9:46 AM
Reply to  Editor

Leninists don’t do morality. Psychopaths all of them.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 10:12 AM
Reply to  Reallyoldhippy

Correction: Sponsored Psychopaths 😉

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 16, 2019 10:07 AM
Reply to  Editor

What would be a humane way to treat war criminals?

comment image

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 11:16 AM
Reply to  milosevic

During War, or in the aftermath ?

Iskren Govornik
Iskren Govornik
Oct 16, 2019 2:45 PM
Reply to  milosevic

What’s that photo of Slob? Ultra Serbs hanging up innocent Danube Swabians at the end of WW2 ?

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 6:57 AM

no, Benito Mussolini and some of his friends enjoying their just deserts. Perhaps you know them?

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 10:32 AM
Reply to  Editor

@Ed.- He’s not. End of, so moving on: I figure you already see the purpose of ‘gamer Graft’, so,

Whilst yer’ here: Perhaps you could explain to me why you edited out my seriously factual comment & reply to ‘Graft’s arrogant ignorant “Hissy Fit”, accusing me of a hissy fit, over my personal first hand experience here on the Balkans, (that explained the roots of the name ‘STALINka’, for Kristalina Georgieva, new IMF M.D. , it being her father’s choice affectionate nickname: the comment was first Published & then ‘Disappeared’ along with Graft’s Hissy Fit over my Factual experience, living near where she was born !

I almost wrote an email to enquire why you edited / censored me on that and see no shame in a public explanation. I had responded to BigB, remember?
“Capitalism has Failed” quoting Lagarde 2014

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 10:54 AM
Reply to  Editor

Nope, sorry, not good enough, seriously! First you published Graft’s hissy fit to me, for using her father’s nickname ‘Stalinka’, to which I responded, see ?

IT WAS THERE ! and my reply …

Something IS amiss ! minimum 2 comments …

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 11:00 AM
Reply to  Editor

P.s. this is unequivocally not me being stroppy for some childish reason, I am seriously concerned for OffG’s programmes & servers, that may have been compromised during the last cyber-attack …

Iskren Govornik
Iskren Govornik
Oct 16, 2019 2:47 PM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

That, and the deliberate removing of comments according to a liberal interpretation of the community guidelines. Some days it reminds me of the Guardian BTL

Editor:We’re becoming familiar with the troll technique of posting completely fake accusations of censorship. Our open comments are a challenge for those who sponsor persistent efforts to discredit and disrupt us. They don’t succeed.

You haven’t been censored and you won’t be unless you are persistently abusive, OT or spam repeat posts.

But you already know this full well.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 16, 2019 3:37 PM

Naaah, have you checked the Guardian BTL recently ? It’s full of clueless kids and neo-con-lib-dem-nonsense wannabes & egos.

I was almost always moderated & put on pre-moderation, if I said too much, and always on pre-moderation towards the end, which I managed to invert & use against M.i.7 and cause conflict within 😉

And there is no way my comments will ever be published again at the Guardian: I’m banned for life, m8 >>> I decided to tell M.i.7G operatives and their more genuine moderator colleagues exactly who they work for & with and the truth about Climate & Military intelligence, even operating within their work place. In the early hours of a quiet Sunday morning, when, having sussed that the M.i.7 operatives were not on duty or temporarily missing in action, I provoked a walkout of their genuine moderators, which left only one article open all day Sunday, for comments >>> on cycling … 🙂 Shortly after the Paris Climate Accord. After that comment, revealing exactly ‘what is what’ on the interconnectivity between corporate & military intelligence, due to my actions & words, the Guardian stopped allowing comments on every significant article, daily and the Guardian became super boring for most serious minded souls, who didn’t want to just comment on football, cycling and gender diversity. 🙂 Of course, the fact that my grandfather was in military intelligence and taught me and my godfather (whose dad had died in WW2) science, was slightly disturbing for Mi7, because godfather was Chief Scientific Advisor for the M.o.D 1993 – 1999 and I’d been working for the CEO of BP directly, on nightshifts, preparing his breakfast briefing, at the time when they bought ARCO & HAARP.
How about you, Iskren, do you believe it’s possible to geo-engineer the weather and even weaponise the weather ? 🙂

milosevic
milosevic
Oct 17, 2019 6:45 AM
Reply to  Tim Jenkins

my grandfather was in military intelligence

So, you’re carrying on the family tradition?

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Oct 17, 2019 9:40 AM
Reply to  milosevic

What was it Oppenheimer said, after exploding the first ever Atomic bomb ?

Loads of bombs going off here, literally, right now ! Minimum 2 hour long barrage, so, more important things to go check immediately. Therefore, i’ll postpone my explanation, till later. I will say though, your focus is well off, m8,
get new optics !

How’s your ole’ friend Reinertorheit ?
You were pals, it once appeared.
Have times changed ?

johny conspiranoid
johny conspiranoid
Oct 16, 2019 8:38 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Or possibly “debt”.