I think the people who are calling for Canada to build a high speed rail system are delusional – if the nation can’t even build a much smaller and less ambitious light rail, I suspect that a serious high speed rail is going to be a big mess, and not just because of inexperience in building light rail.
The same is true in the US, and perhaps even worse. Building things costs several times more than the rest of the world.
Who knew, it’s a Dickensian secret: have never witnessed anything so vile in my life as _ _ o _ _ _ e kort where your love ones become assets for vile monsters—to kill off slowly when they could be healed, because they are still alive—even when the _ _ _ g _ — whose bosses, the guvners and lawyer legislators are vile and inhuman—seems on one’s side, that’s all I can say about, other than terrifying.
Tell those you love, you love them, because one never knows when they’ll be robbed of you and you’ll be robbed of them, no matter what their age.
And frankly fuck everyone who claims that words cannot be deadly violence, particularly those vile, globe trotter, credentialed™ assholes who have the money and access to numerous attorney’s who have no clue how deadly words can be because they are never in those shoes..
The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Friday that some citizens will be exempt from the draft to Ukraine following a partial call up by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.
The ministry announced that “citizens with higher education” who work in the fields of banking, information technology and telecommunications will avoid the draft, according to The New York Times.
As always, it’s the poor and working classes who have to fight and die in the wars rich people start.
Mike Duncan is ending his Revolutions podcast series with some concluding remarks about the conditions that bring about revolutions that feels very on point for our current predicament. The whole series is well worth the time.
The cost of things, especially of things nominally purchased for by government, can be directly correlated to the degree of corruption in said government.
(i.e., if every public expense is a looting opportunity to rake in $100 while only delivering $10 (or less) of actual product, then no, you can’t afford to have nice stuff. This has directly correlated as well to our mystic belief in the power and efficiency of private enterprise (heaven forbid the government actually do the work itself and bypass Wall Street).
StewartM your post is one of the best statements of our current predicament I have seen. May I quote you, with attribution of course. Do you have a blog perhaps?
Chilling stuff, but didn’t we already suspect that something like this was exactly what all the virtue signaling and blame shifting was hiding?
Also in the article is a whiff of that odd conformist mentality some of us have noticed among the well-heeled professional crowd. It rears its head in this article when defense attorneys report a disturbing shift in attitudes from prosecutors.
Since the First Tier Flagship MSM has already been flooding the zone with sh!t for several decades, the Bannonist Trumpanons have merely been adding more sh!t to the MSM’s own floods of sh!t.
Places like Ian Welsh and some other blogs and some second-tier MSM outlets and some specialized-subject media outlets and partially some blogs like Naked Capitalism ( I say partially because of their own worshipful bias on subjects like their beloved cargo cult belief in Magical Monetary Thinking among other things) can hopefully remain as Islands in the Sea of Sh!t to which some truth-through-facts seekers may swim for brain refuge and brain survival.
We paid $90 for a basket of goods that three months ago would have cost us about $75. And three months before that the same goods would have cost about $60.
Not only are the numbers for food inflation complete crap, but we also noticed that the handful of sales that survived the Pandemic have dropped off to almost none, and they are not nearly as sweet as they used to be. The combined effect is severe.
Doesn’t matter what happens to interest rates, this kind of profiteering is going to continue right up until starving mobs loot and burn down big box stores just to “go shopping.”
Will that happen before people start burning buildings to keep warm this winter, when gas and electric prices go stratospheric? Gas just jumped $0.50 per gallon almost overnight, for no apparent reason.
Something is going to break, soon. It will make the BLM riots seem like peacenik sit-ins by comparison.
Re: naked capitalism as a partial Island in the Sea Sh!t you mention above in your comment to Chuck Mire.
no thanks.
Just for an instance, when have they ever truly highlighted (versus adding gratuitous links to steam vent, not at all the same thing as Front Paging!) the increasing horrors of United States Homelessness and Renter abuse? Even when some of their own commenters increasingly attest to their misery?
I’m addending my last comment to add that I think it was hugely ugly treatment of the site’s US based/stuck commenters and readers—particularly those in Florida—to not only not link (until this morning!) to anyHurricane Ian announcements (which started in the generally horrid mainstream news on September 26th), but, not even include one sentence (not even this morning, after an after the fact link was added) noting ‘We hope our Cuban and Florida commenters and/or readers are/were able to stay safe. The site has made its name because of it’s commenters, I don’t think that’s arguable. What a punch in the face.
I know it was never linked to by Naked Capitalism—Links , or Water Cooler—staff before this morning because there are a handful of ‘faithful’ commenters there (stuck in the US till they die), whose comments (which should be front paged but never are—because they don’t own property?) I check when I visit, and I’ve been checking daily to see if any of them got caught in Hurricane Ian.
Altandmain
@Ian Welsh,
In regards to your comments about China (https://www.ianwelsh.net/china-to-those-who-have-everything/), I think that Canada has also lost basic competence.
A good example is in Ottawa, Ontario, where I used to live. The government attempted to build a light rail system. It has been a disaster.
https://www.tvo.org/article/ottawas-colossal-lrt-debacle-a-brief-ish-history
I think the people who are calling for Canada to build a high speed rail system are delusional – if the nation can’t even build a much smaller and less ambitious light rail, I suspect that a serious high speed rail is going to be a big mess, and not just because of inexperience in building light rail.
The same is true in the US, and perhaps even worse. Building things costs several times more than the rest of the world.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/08/02/why-does-infrastructure-cost-so-much-in-america
Another part of it may be the neoliberal desire to keep government as small as possible.
While infrastructure isn’t everything, it’s a sign of the times.
multitude of poors
Who knew, it’s a Dickensian secret: have never witnessed anything so vile in my life as _ _ o _ _ _ e kort where your love ones become assets for vile monsters—to kill off slowly when they could be healed, because they are still alive—even when the _ _ _ g _ — whose bosses, the guvners and lawyer legislators are vile and inhuman—seems on one’s side, that’s all I can say about, other than terrifying.
Tell those you love, you love them, because one never knows when they’ll be robbed of you and you’ll be robbed of them, no matter what their age.
And frankly fuck everyone who claims that words cannot be deadly violence, particularly those vile, globe trotter, credentialed™ assholes who have the money and access to numerous attorney’s who have no clue how deadly words can be because they are never in those shoes..
gotta go, as usual, will check back
NR
https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/3658537-russia-says-certain-workers-will-be-exempt-from-draft-after-backlash/
As always, it’s the poor and working classes who have to fight and die in the wars rich people start.
Chuck Mire
https://theconversation.com/conspiracy-theories-are-dangerous-even-if-very-few-people-believe-them-189859
As Steve Bannon said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit”.
Astrid
Mike Duncan is ending his Revolutions podcast series with some concluding remarks about the conditions that bring about revolutions that feels very on point for our current predicament. The whole series is well worth the time.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yZXZvbHV0aW9uc3BvZGNhc3QubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M=
StewartM
Some URLs of ‘interesting times’ I have been watching as analogies for our won ‘interesting times’
The Bronze Age collapse (extended version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM6JSS3l-IQ
Post-Roman Britain up to 500 AD, I recall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k3e4qlgtaQ
StewartM
Altandmain,
The cost of things, especially of things nominally purchased for by government, can be directly correlated to the degree of corruption in said government.
(i.e., if every public expense is a looting opportunity to rake in $100 while only delivering $10 (or less) of actual product, then no, you can’t afford to have nice stuff. This has directly correlated as well to our mystic belief in the power and efficiency of private enterprise (heaven forbid the government actually do the work itself and bypass Wall Street).
Mary Bennett
StewartM your post is one of the best statements of our current predicament I have seen. May I quote you, with attribution of course. Do you have a blog perhaps?
someofparts
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-justice-department-was-dangerous-dbe
Chilling stuff, but didn’t we already suspect that something like this was exactly what all the virtue signaling and blame shifting was hiding?
Also in the article is a whiff of that odd conformist mentality some of us have noticed among the well-heeled professional crowd. It rears its head in this article when defense attorneys report a disturbing shift in attitudes from prosecutors.
different clue
@Chuck Mire,
Since the First Tier Flagship MSM has already been flooding the zone with sh!t for several decades, the Bannonist Trumpanons have merely been adding more sh!t to the MSM’s own floods of sh!t.
Places like Ian Welsh and some other blogs and some second-tier MSM outlets and some specialized-subject media outlets and partially some blogs like Naked Capitalism ( I say partially because of their own worshipful bias on subjects like their beloved cargo cult belief in Magical Monetary Thinking among other things) can hopefully remain as Islands in the Sea of Sh!t to which some truth-through-facts seekers may swim for brain refuge and brain survival.
GrimJim
So today my wife and I went grocery shopping.
We paid $90 for a basket of goods that three months ago would have cost us about $75. And three months before that the same goods would have cost about $60.
Not only are the numbers for food inflation complete crap, but we also noticed that the handful of sales that survived the Pandemic have dropped off to almost none, and they are not nearly as sweet as they used to be. The combined effect is severe.
Doesn’t matter what happens to interest rates, this kind of profiteering is going to continue right up until starving mobs loot and burn down big box stores just to “go shopping.”
Will that happen before people start burning buildings to keep warm this winter, when gas and electric prices go stratospheric? Gas just jumped $0.50 per gallon almost overnight, for no apparent reason.
Something is going to break, soon. It will make the BLM riots seem like peacenik sit-ins by comparison.
multitude of poors
different clue,
Re: naked capitalism as a partial Island in the Sea Sh!t you mention above in your comment to Chuck Mire.
no thanks.
Just for an instance, when have they ever truly highlighted (versus adding gratuitous links to steam vent, not at all the same thing as Front Paging!) the increasing horrors of United States Homelessness and Renter abuse? Even when some of their own commenters increasingly attest to their misery?
gotta run, will check back
multitude of poors
I’m addending my last comment to add that I think it was hugely ugly treatment of the site’s US based/stuck commenters and readers—particularly those in Florida—to not only not link (until this morning!) to anyHurricane Ian announcements (which started in the generally horrid mainstream news on September 26th), but, not even include one sentence (not even this morning, after an after the fact link was added) noting ‘We hope our Cuban and Florida commenters and/or readers are/were able to stay safe. The site has made its name because of it’s commenters, I don’t think that’s arguable. What a punch in the face.
I know it was never linked to by Naked Capitalism—Links , or Water Cooler—staff before this morning because there are a handful of ‘faithful’ commenters there (stuck in the US till they die), whose comments (which should be front paged but never are—because they don’t own property?) I check when I visit, and I’ve been checking daily to see if any of them got caught in Hurricane Ian.