Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Rob]

You've been busy hip-hooraying for Kavanaugh to get onto the Supreme Court, knowing full well his mission is to (effectively) end Roe vs. Wade, but now you're finger-wagging about population control?

The "hip-hooraying" you saw was for the victory of sanity and decency over the Democrat and media's bullshit smear campaign, but it is also good to have a normal Supreme Court that might do something about immigration. The non-hysterical scenario for Roe vs. Wade is that it becomes a state-by-state issue, correct? What would change in California?

And as someone who virtue-signals that they care about the environment, why are you giving California shit right now?

Because we're told that California is the future of America, and just look at California.

We got 12 years, tick-tock tick-tock.

Spoiler

Article says that "global warming is likely to reach dangerous levels unless new technologies are developed to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere." To achieve their goal we would need to get from our current 40 billion tons peak to "a carbon-neutral world" by 2050. Shaving a little bit off the top is not going to accomplish this, so we're left with hoping for that tech miracle. "Displacement of millions" is the only thing worth noting there, and I'm sure the U.N. has new homes already picked out for those future climate migrants - Europe has room for a lot more people according to this study (see pg. 112).

[quash]

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/10 ... 01701?s=19

"Believe it or not, George isn't at home, please leave a message at the beep"

[Zen]

"Displacement of millions" is the only thing worth noting there, and I'm sure the U.N. has new homes already picked out for those future climate migrants - Europe has room for a lot more people according to this study (see pg. 112).

Bullseye.

Thank God we have unelected overlords today, to bureaucratise "climate" and proselytise the ancient mystery of its "change", to the hungry ideologues, spiritually barren and dumbed-down "first-world" masses!
The sky is falling, the seas are rising and all those poor "third-world" people, will be drowned entirely! Sure, isn't the sea an awful fucker, to be picking only on them, so as only they have to come to us?!

In my Country, Ireland, the "Irish" "Government", not content with current forced immigrant importation and integration, have now set up the Project Ireland 2040 program, "for the extra 1 million "Irish" people, expected by 2040"
(keep firmly in mind, Ireland's population is 4.4 million and you will get an idea of what this means). Now, some apologists have argued, that this new 1 million will not be all immigrants. Indeed.
When was the last time that such an enormous population increase happened internally?!

Also vital to keep in mind, is which "citizens" have the highest birth rates. The Devil, as always, is in the details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsEJ3lFGgYU

Also; we Irish are not a viable race, apparently; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP7wsJU1tWU

This is a situation mirrored throughout much of Europe. Meanwhile, on this very thread we have BulletMagnet telling us that Peter Sutherland's words, intentions and actions were being hysterically misinterpreted,
while we deal with relentless civic nationalist propaganda and are, daily encouraged to be embarrassed by the "construct" of being ethnic Irish;
"The Look of the Irish - Redifining the Irish person | Saffa Musleh | TEDxWexford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMmFRCWKreg

As an addendum to this, it should be noted that the Irish Government actually paid journalists to give positive coverage to the Project Ireland 2040 program;
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mart ... -c6wtq772d

We have Mischief Maker telling us;
"To be even more specific, climate change caused droughts that triggered the Syrian civil war which created a fertile territory for the nascent ISIS to grab some land and declare its caliphate, triggering waves of muslims fleeing ISIS sharia." viewtopic.php?f=3&t=43825&p=1283731&hil ... e#p1283731

Yeah, they are arriving by iceberg, as we speak;

always good to to add the following;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... REq99KaLX4

Europe - 2018, where Nationalism is a dirty word.
But, of course, that was the whole point, all along.

[system11]

Climate sceptics always make me chuckle.

It's really easy to pick examples of people in cold places experiencing cold, and it's true that there may well be a cyclic nature to temperatures. Let's be honest and intelligent about it though, there's no fucking chance in hell we are not currently devastating the environment. Even ignoring the worst temperature predictions which it's very trendy to be alarmist about, look at all the other problems such as species extinction, power generation, deforestation and pollution. If the temperatures remain the same or return to the 70s when I was born, when the weather here was genuinely colder - that doesn't fix all the other problems.

I just wish the environmentalists were more interested in the health of the planet as a whole instead of being micro focused on a single lobbying point. Yeah cutting carbon released into the atmosphere is unarguably a good thing, but just in my lifetime the world population has doubled and extinction rates, deforestation, methane generated by farming, bee killing pesticide use and many other negative factors have increased, as they inevitably would.

It is a sad fact that just having one child will undo every environmental lifestyle change you've made in your entire life, with change to spare. And nobody is talking about this problem, it's taboo. Even try to bring it up and usually you'll get shrieking emotional responses or the glib "why don't you kill yourself then?" deflection. It almost doesn't fucking matter what the climate does while this elephant stands in the room with a big neon sign over its head.

And I don't see immigration slowing down either, because nobody in charge wants it to. It's going to continue to destroy national identity (people mistakenly or deliberately equate this with the far right version of "nationalism") and cause incredible social problems which will quickly become irresolvable as we're already seeing in areas of Europe. Here's some food for thought:

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-int ... 1f83ce4e15

Now look at recent news, as one simple example it's now been found that the vast majority of people (about 80%) are worried about the effects of PC culture, yet it's hard to look at a single news source without finding it littered with examples of this expanding or people being shamed/fired/arrested for things people would have ignored or merely frowned upon for a moment, only 20 years ago. Government in liberal democracies are increasingly on board with ensuring the least tolerant of offense don't get offended. In fact it seems that liberal democracies while on paper well meaning and /liberal/ in the classic sense, are far more vulnerable to actual policy change due to the efforts of a minority of activists.

Summary: it's all fucked up, the world is becoming a less liberal place and will continue to do so in the very countries that sparked the englightenment, this problem now starts in academia which is incredibly hostile to anything but prescribed ideas and words, the cohesion of society is in some areas irresolvably fractured (even a govt report in the UK called this problem out, but everyone is too scared to talk about it because it's now unacceptable thought), and the environment is very likely doomed one way or another.

Sometimes I think I'm glad I'm not younger.

[Steamflogger Boss]

That's really the truth of it. We (humanity) are well fucked at this point and there are no good answers or potential answers that people would accept. I refuse to have children, but it doesn't matter.

[Weak Boson]

Here's some food for thought:

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-int ... 1f83ce4e15

This was an interesting read, although I must admit I skipped a paragraph or two about ancient history. I also just didn't get his point about Brexit contrasted against the federated USA??

Anyway, the phenomenon of minority preferences becoming the norm for the group is interesting, but it doesn't follow that a minority can exert influence merely by virtue of its intransigence. The effect is contingent of the acceptance of the minority by the majority. He references this when making his argument for "intolerance of intolerance" because a minority interest not a priori backed by the majority gains no momentum. So, in particular, I don't think the prediction that immigration will have some kind of cultural snowball effect can be made based on this.

But obviously minority preferences can override the majority in some cases. eg, those in the upper economic class. But I don't think that would be an example of this effect either, because the influence seems to come from hierarchical structure. So despite the many examples he gives I'm not sure it's as easy to spot this effect in action as I first thought.

[Zen]

Climate sceptics always make me chuckle.

Well, at least "sceptic", is an improvement upon "denier". I'll take it.
With regards to argument against any and all science based supports of the Anthropogenic model, I am of course, at your disposal.

Anyway, the phenomenon of minority preferences becoming the norm for the group is interesting, but it doesn't follow that a minority can exert influence merely by virtue of its intransigence.

On the contrary, it follows that intransigence will dominate a sleeping, dormant culture, quite easily.

The effect is contingent of the acceptance of the minority by the majority.

The piece was specifically about how this is not the case, or at the very least a critique on what is considered "acceptance" on a societal level.

Perhaps the author did not stress the importance of "skin in the game", enough to convince you of what is, essentially, a fact.

Consider it like this;

A "majority" is an established group. As such it does not experience "threat" as a group, in the same manner that a "minority" does.
Its individual members, aware of a vast safety buffer of sheer numbers, reach existential homoeostasis.
The "majority", is no longer in touch with, or depends upon its "culture" - the very thing that secured its viability and success to begin with.
That is to say, strength in numbers, results in weak individuals, which in turn results in a weak group.

So you see where this leads;

A "minority" then, is by its very nature, the reverse of all of the above and when it's vital force, or as the author calls it, "intransigence", pits itself against the decadent majority,
that intransigence cuts like a hot knife though butter.
This is very basic group dynamics.

If still not convinced that the majority can be swayed (even to the extent that it is against their best interest's) a cursory study of the techniques of propaganda may prove illuminating.

although I must admit I skipped a paragraph or two about ancient history.

Not a criticism but a suggestion;
The author made parts of his case for asymmetric rule, in these histories.
You do yourself a disservice with regards fully grasping his argument, by skipping these components.

[BryanM]

That's really the truth of it. We (humanity) are well fucked at this point and there are no good answers or potential answers that people would accept. I refuse to have children, but it doesn't matter.

We're fucked due to political realities, not physical realities. While wagging your finger and saying "have less children" is obviously a worthless prescription, there did exist technological solutions to bringing our world to a near carbon neutral state.

The thorium reactor is a classic example of government control by capital being a negative for society as a whole. We're five decades behind because corporate interests paid their bribes and had all research on it shut down. And now here we are, with China being the only country investing meaningful in one of the few things that has any hope of making any impact.

At our current position reaching carbon neutrality won't likely be enough, and actively pulling the stuff out of the atmosphere will likely be necessary. That certainly won't happen from "individual action" (a favorite prescription of conservative liberals) or "the free market" (the favorite prescription of both conservative and social liberals).

[quash]

Sometimes I think I'm glad I'm not younger.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm going to assume you aren't a boomer. In which case, you should be glad that you got to live through the peak of the post-war order and that you're absolved of the guilt of robbing future generations. My parents were in that group, and the disparity between what they made and what their parents made is ultimately what determined their standing in life.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com

Type in 1965 and $5. The next time a boomer tells you how much harder they had it because they made over $40 an hour in today's money as a teenager, be sure to slip some polonium in their drink.

[system11]

I'm gen X, late enough to have watched the property ladder ascend into the distance, early enough to know the world is fucked and remember what actual liberalism looks like vs the bullshit the MSM/SJWs are pushing today.

[Ed Oscuro]

In that article you may note that supposed "bad" cases of intolerance are interspersed with good ones. That is because control by the minority is not in fact a bad thing; it is a necessary component of life, and is not predisposed to a good or bad outcome. The case of peanuts on planes and in schools is a good example - I wouldn't insist somebody in a sealed tin can at 20,000 feet should be forced to confront a potentially deadly situation. On the other hand, in schools (at least those on the ground) the threat is far less and if we had the political will we could very well deal with such fact-of-life situations more safely, and allow for some of the necessary exposure that the author described. (His failure to make a distinction like this is important; one cannot simply march blindly forward; context is important.)

Special note: This sort of argument does not apply to President Trump's preferred building material, Russian Asbestos. Some things are just bad for humans, and we should be able to easily chuck out a number of things hated by "ban culture" as being good and proper targets for bans.

Back to dogmas: "Liberalism" directly implies control over the majority by the minority. What the guy on Medium is describing is a fact of life; it's always been the case, in ages long before Greek nation-states, even before Homo Sapiens, Denisovan man, and Neandertals were getting frisky - let alone the mythical "classic age of liberalism."

It is the "give" of any social society (arguably, even nonhuman ones): Social arrangements cannot function without both room for dissent, and for that dissent to be expressed in the real world as change. The very idea of liberalism would be meaningless without this.

Arguably this is even a mechanism found in evolution itself, and serves a good purpose. We're all familiar with the concept of "fitness," describing the tendency to match a specific state of affairs, which many people take to mean something like regression to the mean - but they don't stop to think that you also have to have variance and mutation to prevent the downsides of inbreeding and genetic staleness. That is simply because there is no such thing as perfect fitness to the environment; environments change, and any system that does not allow variance will not be able to cope with change.

Let's not kid ourselves, though, there were some easily predictable failures of "classical liberalism" that all had a common point of origin:

- Rolling out a major tax cut for wealthy interests because you can't tolerate the thought of average people getting money, and then springing the 'surprise' of a panic over 'Entitlements' such as the US Medicare and Social Security programs. Does nobody remember George W Bush's wars, tax cuts that don't pay for themselves, and privatization schemes?
- Disparate groups of Americans, including apparently the entire Republican Party in the state of Texas, losing their minds of water fluoridation. Disparate groups of Americans losing their minds over innoculations. These are hardly your bread-and-butter "SJW" issues.
- A US President who routinely denigrates journalists (don't kid yourselves it is "just the MSM;" The Alex Jones Show and Fox's occasional op-eds about things that are tangents on cherry-picked reports are not news. Neither is the wrestling guy who has Elon Musk on to smoke weed) having no consistent message about the quite apparent murder of an earnest and patriotic sometimes-critic by his own country, other than "we need to give the Saudis more time." To do what? To cook up yet another embarrassingly bad cover story?

Occasionally I find crap coming from the left - I was embarrassed to watch some coverage by MSNBC of the unwarranted attention of a political operative in Texas - not because it wasn't a story, but because they seemed to me to have not reported the full details. I was embarrassed by the response from some "Native American" corners in response to Elizabeth Warren's DNA announcement, but they still had some good points - and outright lies were coming, predictably, from Trump and his cravens in the GOP, again.

In any case, somebody remind me who it was that put on a smear campaign against the memory of Jamal Khashoggi? It wasn't liberals...

[BryanM]

Even Eric Andre taught me about this one...

I was embarrassed by the response from some "Native American" corners in response to Elizabeth Warren's DNA announcement

You weren't embarrassed by Elizabeth Warren?

[Ed Oscuro]

I didn't listen to her announcement in full, but in her announcement she said she wasn't looking to show tribal identity, but that her family history was her family history. That's hard to disagree with. The only thing to facepalm about is that she is kind of doing that Hilary Clintonish thing of being baited by Trump, which you should never do.

Boring but important: People roughly equivalent to an asteroid in extinction power, animal kingdom likely will need 3-7 million years to recover

[Rob]

She used her marginal heritage to game the system, then she thought it was a clever political move to show precisely how marginal. It's hard to believe that she's made a career out of politics.

[BryanM]

(I'd guess the only material gain in it for her is slightly improved name recognition, but what a cost..)

Massachusetts, the land where registered democrats outnumber registered republicans by over 3 to 1. But still keep electing republican governors.

Maryland seems to be a similar kind of place. The Washington Post runs an avalanche of "democrats voting republican" propaganda then suddenly Ben Jealous drops in the polls.

On the flipside, Ojeda might have a chance?

Re-alignment is a weird time.

[Specineff]

This issue is important to me:

http://www.weny.com/story/39296254/judg ... s-by-devos

This last week, a federal judge ordered the immediate reimplementation of a measure instilled by Obama to allow students defrauded or cheated by for-profit colleges, like ITT, Corinthian and ATI, to seek relief against the debt incurred for having to pay for useless degrees. But that turd-munching, corporate-cum-guzzling cunt called Betsy DeVos had blocked it for over a year, siding with stock-holders and owners of those fraudster "schools", to the point a lawsuit from eighteen states was needed to get the right thing done. Surely the fact that Trump University would likely be affected by the measure had absolutely NOTHING to do with her action, right?

Rancor and Greg, I hope you're still following this thread, because I have a couple questions for you: This has affected me and a member from my immediate household, because despite having evidence that the school provided a phony degree (it even got successfully sued in several counties), we've still had to make payments without legal recourse, and no chance to even appeal to the program until now. So, in sight of this and other developments, Rancor and Greg, can you please tell me again why was Trump going to be so good for the country as opposed to Hillary's Plan Of Obliteration? You know, since so many of your fellow Americans are getting fucked by this administration? You had no problem giving me a piece of your mind since it was so sacrilegious that a foreigner like me dared to say something about it and not wanting to be seen as a second-class human being, so it should be no problem to get a well thought-out answer from you.

[Ed Oscuro]

She used her marginal heritage to game the system, then she thought it was a clever political move to show precisely how marginal. It's hard to believe that she's made a career out of politics.

At least one of the indigenous tribes that commented on this story didn't see it that way: Delaware Lenape chief: Elizabeth Warren exploring her Native American roots isn't all bad One Delaware person noted Warren has not tried to claim any tax breaks or gain any material advantage from it, and if she had you could be sure to have heard of it. I think it unlikely she got preferential treatment at law school over it; even today if you are white, but also Indian, and say you're Indian, you're looked at like you're Rachel Dolezal. There were certainly lots of people who did not like Indian folk back then, too, which adds another layer of risk to making such a claim (remember, it was just 1971 when John Wayne said that the Indians had kept the land "selfishly to themselves").

The Cherokee chief was making a political statement that had little to do with Warren, but lots to do with tribal politics. The story I linked above puts the Cherokee statement into perspective:

“The Cherokee view themselves as the Indian identity police," Coker said. "They’re the first ones to call out anybody that they don’t think is legitimate, whether they're legitimate or not."

Fun autobiographical stuff: I spent some years in the early 2000s involved in some Indian identity politics - namely, the issue of school mascot names (a nearby school system called themselves the Redskins). I ended up feeling pretty ambivalent about many of these issues, but a major thing folks ought to know is that there is always an argument over who is being traditional in the Native world, and over who gets to write history. Taken that way, the Cherokee statement isn't totally wrong, either, and yeah, maybe Warren really isn't Native in that respect.

I would say that Trump is the one making the biggest deal out of this, though I do agree that Warren has allowed herself to be baited here and that is not what you should do with Trump. But chalk that one up to her believing, as many people still do, that facts matter in the post-Trump world. It probably was a silly thing to do.

But isn't a person allowed to say they are a thing that they actually are?

In other stories of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, here's a fun riff on a commonplace theme: The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers

Incidentally, I think I may have some Egyptian royal blood somewhere, coming through the Irish nobility (and an unrecognized half-Indian son of one of the same).

[Mischief Maker]

The other thing to bear in mind is that Russian troll bots have been all over this Warren story:

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/com ... aking_out/

Also I love the mental image of Donald Trump in a lab coat with a micropipette and an electrophoresis gel in front of him looking completely baffled as he tries to figure out how to test Warren's DNA "himself."

[Domino]

This issue is important to me:

http://www.weny.com/story/39296254/judg ... s-by-devos

This last week, a federal judge ordered the immediate reimplementation of a measure instilled by Obama to allow students defrauded or cheated by for-profit colleges, like ITT, Corinthian and ATI, to seek relief against the debt incurred for having to pay for useless degrees. But that turd-munching, corporate-cum-guzzling cunt called Betsy DeVos had blocked it for over a year, siding with stock-holders and owners of those fraudster "schools", to the point a lawsuit from eighteen states was needed to get the right thing done. Surely the fact that Trump University would likely be affected by the measure had absolutely NOTHING to do with her action, right?

Rancor and Greg, I hope you're still following this thread, because I have a couple questions for you: This has affected me and a member from my immediate household, because despite having evidence that the school provided a phony degree (it even got successfully sued in several counties), we've still had to make payments without legal recourse, and no chance to even appeal to the program until now. So, in sight of this and other developments, Rancor and Greg, can you please tell me again why was Trump going to be so good for the country as opposed to Hillary's Plan Of Obliteration? You know, since so many of your fellow Americans are getting fucked by this administration? You had no problem giving me a piece of your mind since it was so sacrilegious that a foreigner like me dared to say something about it and not wanting to be seen as a second-class human being, so it should be no problem to get a well thought-out answer from you.

And you were the guy who went to a proprofit school without doing your research if the school was legit?

[Specineff]

And you were the guy who went to a proprofit school without doing your research if the school was legit?

My spouse did, but the cat wasn't out of the bag until after they had ran with the money. Same deal as with ITT Tech.

[Rob]

Glad I finished The Camp of the Saints before the movie came out.

[Zen]

Wait a minute . . . I know that film!
I think that might be the Hollywood remake, of the European disaster film series!

Only difference would be, in the European version those numbers were invading on a daily basis. Also; the EU version was full of rape and murder and bombing and vehicular assault, so it got a restrictive rating of;


That was bad for business though, so later it was "censored" quite a bit, for those unable to take it all in and got a much more commercial rating of;


Bringing it to a wider audience was not without quirky incident though.
It's popularity inspired some tasteless cosplay;

Spoiler

In all seriousness though, whats the story with Honduran convoy?
Did the glaciers melt in Honduras, or are they running from ISIS, or what?

[Rob]

The media's always good for a chuckle. For the credulous they're super busy with the woebegone migrant and illegal immigrant stories (this deported one misses his car, Playstation and Buffalo Wild Wings - none of which exist outside of America) as we can see barriers being climbed and smashed down, bloodied Mexican police and cheering bystanders burning American flags.



The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must not read The New York Times because here is what George Soros said in The New York Times:

But he had always “identified firstly as a Jew,” and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father’s motives, he said, “The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew — unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state.”

George Soros in fact funds efforts to pry open Western societies for non-Europeans ("brown people", in Krugman's words) and he explains for us why he does it, so if you don't want your society to be "open" to welfare exploitation and multiplying interethnic conflicts it makes it kind of difficult to never mention George and his spending habits at some point. Maybe they should tell George to keep quiet about his motivations if they're bothered by those details getting out into the world and being treated as fact by "alt-right conspiracy theorists". Did he fund this particular totally spontaneous happening that is coincidentally timed to stir the hearts of voters just before the election - who knows, but given how spontaneous and organic this event isn't and what Soros says above about his philanthropy it's not an entirely outlandish theory.



On the other hand, The New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall theorizes that it's Sheldon Adelson. At least some of our New York Times columnists can agree that it's one or the other side's benevolent billionaire. Speculation aside, this looks to be energizing/benefiting Republicans the most so far and by far, while pro-migration advocates seem to be taking a more defensive tone.

[BryanM]

Eh, seems like we have a Halloween Chud Bomber.

[Rob]

Spoiler

It's a doubly good thing it didn't blow up as there seems to be some Law & Order: Hate Crime-type clues taped to the bomb. I hope this is it for pre-election excitement.

[brokenhalo]

Glad I finished The Camp of the Saints before the movie came out.

"The caravan is largely made up of young men and women with children fleeing Central America's violence, poverty and corruption. Most are from Honduras, but hundreds have also joined from El Salvador and Guatemala"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... baa5d86758

Looks like a lot of chickens coming home to roost. Maybe if we would stop fucking up large swaths of the world, we wouldn't have to worry about dealing with the fallout.

[Rob]

I was reading the Washington Post and was under the impression that they were all mothers with children crying over lost stuffed animals.

Looks like a lot of chickens coming home to roost.

[brokenhalo]

I was reading the Washington Post and was under the impression that they were all mothers with children crying over lost stuffed animals.

Looks like a lot of chickens coming home to roost.

You didn't look at the link, did you? It's an article from last year. The US history in Honduras gave birth to the term "banana republic". We've been screwing up their country for over a hundred years. This is a problem of our own making.

[Rob]

We've been screwing up their country for over a hundred years. This is a problem of our own making.

Do you know which group of people holds the record for total years "screwing up" Honduras? Hondurans.

Do you ever wonder why some countries that America burned to the ground popped right back up and others that have experienced much less seem to be pinned down for all eternity? Even if America was entirely responsible for the enduring inferiority of Honduras, that still doesn't give 9 million people and whoever wants to blend in with them unlimited access to our country.

[Mischief Maker]

Google "Marshall Plan"