“When it’s cold like this, cars aren’t functioning well, chargers aren’t functioning well, and people don’t function so well either,” Javed Spencer, an Uber driver, told The New York Times. He said he’s worried about being stranded again with his Chevy Bolt.
For years, the Davos elites have pitched to the masses about a ‘green’ new world of EVs and how nothing could go wrong. But these elites are not fortune tellers and are sometimes very wrong in their predictions, as EVs are no match for a polar vortex.
The year was 2010 and my idea was to create a “dry creek bed” from the front porch extending “downstream” to curve around a circular planter I installed a few months beforehand at the corner of the house (with a juniper to hide cables “climbing” the structure in an unnatural way).
The functionality of the dry creek bed was to raise the elevation at the level of the east-facing external wall (with a small brick retainer extended vertically around the basement window to eliminate any low spot while preserving precious morning sunlight) so that water would not pool near the house and percolate its way into the basement, which was damp when we bought the house (the actual cause of which we did not find out until at least a year later and was – hilariously but expensively – totally unrelated to the elevation at the corner of the house).
The aesthetic of the dry creek bed was to provide something of non-grass visual interest in that small quadrant near the house and also to provide additional planting space for vegetables. In those days everything in this middle-class neighborhood was grass and lawnmowers and the usual stuff all around. We put in a garden in the front yard and could hear the clicking tongues of the passers-by that first year. Gypsies, to be sure, had moved into the neighborhood. But we only had good sun in the front, especially after the twin massive oaks fell on the house the year before. It was not a political statement, but rather a solar statement.
As it turned out, in the dry creek bed we had at least two large, heavily-producing tomatillo plants, some plucky and determined grape tomato bushes, and a very robust Japanese eggplant that fired off dozens of green torpedoes that one glorious summer.
*** On the appointed day the dump truck arrived with our dirt and two sizes of river rock. I saved money by combining them in one load. I lost money by being forced to spend valuable days separating two sizes of river rock from dirt.
In those days I had the added physical fortitude of a hearty daily commute importantly including several mad dashes to each leg of the journey. House down the hill to 17L bus stop. Pentagon Station rushing down to Metro. Change trains and run to catch the Orange line at L’Enfant. Finally…dash over from the Capitol Hill station to 203 Cannon. It seemed just like a daily routine, but in retrospect it was the kind of cardio workout that people pay for.
Still, when it came to extracting the sod and digging the channel for the dry creek bed I felt the exhaustion of one flaccidly thrusting behind a desk rather than a plow. As usual, I was out there alone as she cared for the small children. They popped their heads out a few times. Alas, the heat and the work digging sod produced a flame that could only be extinguished with a very cold half-liter can of Dutch Pilsner-style beer. From the photograph you can see one already discarded in what might soon become a pile. She came out, the youngest, with her sippy-cup to watch daddy with his sippy can. Cordless drill. Family man.
You spend part of your life building and another part of your life looking at what has been built. But there are no cues as to when one begins and ends and another takes its place. Sometimes when you look back you see yourself exhausted with a Dutch pilsner beer in your hand and a pile of dirt on your driveway. And that which you once cursed becomes a kind of savior.
Death comes as a shocking stranger, upsetting the order that you thought you have created. Upsetting your plan, which is anachronism. Holding a timetable, a ledger balancing what you have given and what has been given you. But at the same time brooking no argument or discussion.
What happened to the justice system that a president of the US finds himself the target of weaponized law used for racial, ideological, and political reasons, and there is not a peep from law schools, bar associations, judges, or media? How can citizens have confidence in the veracity of prosecutions, the veracity of judges, law schools, bar associations?
Both sides of that coin that is government has weaponized law, mainly against the citizenry.
Fani Willis, the incompetent and apparently corrupt black female Atlanta district attorney reportedly put in office by George Soros’ billions, is in more hot water than Trump is in from her fabricated case against him. Fani appointed Nathan Wade, who is believed to be her lover, special prosecutor to aid in Trump’s kangaroo trial. According to county records reviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County paid Wade $654,000 in tax payers’ money since January 2022. The money appears to be what financed the couple’s lavish vacations. The white liberal Democrats are disturbed that Willis was so stupid as to damage her case against Trump by destroying her credibility and public perception of her integrity.
Fani’s defense is, of course, that the race card is being played against her as she and her lover are black. There are two ways you can look at her self-justification. One is that blacks have learned from Jews that a claim of victimhood is a shield against being held accountable. The other is that she has no comprehension of acceptable behavior for public officials.
We have an interesting situation in which the prosecutions at the state and county level against Trump are in the hands of black women put in office by George Soros. Why is Soros doing this? Some people think that Soros himself got away with stealing his billions from the Bank of England via his manipulation of the British currency. Where was James Bond when the British needed him?
Criminal justice in America is in a serious situation when one billionaire can staff up state and local district attorneys with blacks taught to hate “white exploiters” who are sicced on Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. The trials are unconstitutional, because a black jury consisting of people taught to hate “white racists” does not constitute a “jury of peers” for a white person.
The Biden directive also targets Bible buyers and Bass Pro Shop customers.
Serves you deplorables right for clinging to your religion and all that other stuff government doesn’t like.
The failing banking industry has been rolling over and reporting on customers since 9/11 and Dubya. Probably before that. They can’t survive without government handouts.
Doug Casey: As Der Schwabenklaus of the World Economic Forum boldly said some years ago, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
Doug Casey: One currently fashionable indication of this is the 15-minute city, which governments are trying to impose all over the world. These would penalize you if you exit your designated 15-minute zone more than X number of times per month. The idea is green. And, like most green notions, it is very retrogressive. They want to return people to the status of medieval serfs, when few ventured more than 15 minutes from their hovels.
International Man: The carbon hysteria extends far beyond oil and gas companies.
One overlooked area is household appliances.
Politicians are implementing increasingly stringent regulations for dishwashers, washing machines, and other appliances. There have even been reports of a desire to phase out gas stoves.
What’s your take on all of this?
Doug Casey: As Der Schwabenklaus of the World Economic Forum boldly said some years ago, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
The fact that a prominent figure could actually say that, promote the idea, and not be pilloried gives you an idea of the spirit of the current century. The lack of outrage from the average man is even more sick than the idea itself.
Not owning appliances is a practical application of the meme, but just one tentacle of the global warming octopus. Appliances are constructed from resources that have to be mined and run with electricity; that makes them evil. It’s much more important in these people’s views to “save the planet”—a ridiculous concept—than to continue raising the standard of living.
The fact is that the self-righteous authoritarians who want to limit the use of appliances basically just hate people—especially middle-class people. They’d really like to revert to pre-capitalist times, when only the upper classes, the feudal aristocrats, could benefit from conveniences.
Ecowarriors, the Greens, are cut from the same cloth as socialists, communists, and fascists. Their totem fruit is the watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside.
International Man: Many people have noticed that modern appliances are not the same quality as the ones produced decades ago. For one thing, modern appliances tend to require much more time to do the same thing an older model could do faster.
For example, today, it’s common to see a standard dish-washing cycle to take more than two hours.
Modern appliances also don’t perform as well and break down more frequently. Climate regulations are largely to blame for this regression.
What is really going on here?
Doug Casey: I don’t have a lot of personal experience with how appliances work, but I’ve certainly heard that modern appliances are designed to sacrifice convenience and time in order to possibly use less water or electricity.
One thing that I do recall is that several decades ago, the US government decided to regulate the amount of water that could be used to flush toilets. The devices are now less sanitary and often have to be flushed twice. The idea that politicians should mandate plumbing designs is absurd. But they do this with all products—cars, planes, houses, you name it. They destroy capital and slow technological progress, even while annoying and frustrating engineers.
But perhaps the average person doesn’t think about these things or care. The standard of living has gone up for so long that we tend to think it’s automatic and divinely ordained. I’m not so sure about that. Everything tends to wind down unless there is enough outside force to counteract it.
For instance, we live in a throwaway society. If you need something repaired, it’s generally more economic to throw the whole thing away than to hire a skilled craftsman to fix it, even though they barely exist anymore, and they’re very expensive. It’s often cheaper to replace things that break.
Is that truly economic or not? I’m not sure, but we can see it even with houses. Once upon a time, houses were built to last 100 years or longer. They were a major capital investment. But now, they seem to be the residential equivalent of IKEA furniture. They’re disposable assets. But who cares if you’re renting or have a large mortgage?
I can understand how a “throwaway” mentality might be a good thing, even though it seems wasteful, simply because technology improves. Out with the old, in with the “new and improved.” Most changes make electricity, plumbing and insulation more economic. Who wants old stuff when technology can give you new stuff that works better? The problem, however, might be that new appliances are expensive and often financed. Your standard of living might go up in the short run but further down in the long run as you deal with debt.
A case can be made for everything being bulldozed after 50 or 100 years—a cycle of life argument. You may want to keep an old car for sentimental reasons, but newer cars really do work better. Although you’ll probably have to finance the thing over seven years since they’re so expensive. Or lease it, turning a minor asset into a perpetual liability. And if it breaks, you can forget about trying to fix it yourself, if only because of its thousands of computer chips. The same is true with most devices.
There are reasons to hate appliances and devices even while you need or even love them. But I prefer to make the decision, not some government official. It’s a moral question, not a technical question.
In other words, Gonzalo dared exercise the “free speech” Washington claims it is defending in Ukraine to tell the truth about what is actually going on in a country where billions of US dollars have simply “disappeared”
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One call from the White House or State Department could have saved California-born journalist Gonzalo Lira’s life. Living in Ukraine-controlled Kharkov (to be close to his children), Lira saw early on, from his unique vantage point, that the propaganda being fed to the American people from the mainstream media about that “plucky little democracy” in Ukraine fighting to protect “our values” was, as is all pro-war propaganda, utterly false.
War propaganda. We don’t need to go down the whole line, but “yanking babies from incubators” and “giving Viagra to the troops” and “mobile rape vehicles” and “mobile chemical weapons delivery devices” and “these Iraqi weapons could decimate New York!” and so on and so on.
You know the routine. You know how war propaganda works.
And you know how furious the US regime becomes when anyone dares to refute that war propaganda.
When Julian Assange dared reveal to the American people that their own government was not on a “liberation” mission but rather on a murder mission in Iraq, the permanent state began plotting its revenge. When Wikileaks exposed the secret murder and surveillance workings of the CIA, Assange’s fate was sealed. His whistleblower organization became, in the words of neocon former CIA director Mike Pompeo, a “hostile intelligence service,” a determination Assange himself explained to Ron Paul Institute DC Conference attendees in 2017.
The life of American citizen and journalist Gonzalo Lira ended on Friday, all alone in a cold Ukrainian dungeon. Freezing, he slowly suffocated to death with a collapsed lung and double pneumonia. His body was swollen with systemic edema from fluid-filed heart and lungs. He was left to slowly die from October when he developed pneumonia, until December when his captors finally admitted that he was sick, to this past Friday, January 12th (yesterday), when, with no medical treatment, his 55 year old body finally gave out.
Desperate to save money anywhere, they announced in December their plans to abolish subsidies for agricultural diesel and impose the standard motor tax on previously exempt farm vehicles like tractors, provoking an immediate outcry among the people who produce our food.1
We are now a week into the great German farmers’ protest, and the main event is set for tomorrow in Berlin. 10,000 demonstrators are expected; the rally will begin at 11:30am. Speakers will include Johann Rukwied, President of the German Farmers’ Association, and also Finance Minister Christian Lindner. I doubt he will be well received.
I’ve traveled to the capital to report on these events in person. The tractors are slowly collecting on the Street of 17 June, between the Siegessäule and the Brandenburger Tor. As of about 11am this morning, hundreds had already arrived:
A great many more are expected. Some farmers are concerned that police, who have established a marked presence on all the main arteries entering the city, may try to limit arrivals, but I can’t find any confirmation that that’s happening yet. Police continued to escort newcomers into the barricaded boulevard throughout the afternoon.
There’s a heavy police presence …
…but the mood is not threatening. There’s a clear sympathy between at least some of the officers and the demonstrators, and a great many ordinary Germans were on hand too. Some were just mothers with young boys eager to inspect the farm equipment, but also hundreds of people came by to chat with the farmers and show their solidarity.
The media, on the other hand, were conspicuous by their absence. I expect there will be much more press tomorrow, but today is a great opportunity to interview the participants in a relaxed environment. I guess it’s no surprise that our journalists aren’t very interested in doing that. I did see one camera crew from CNN Turkey. I stalked them for a few of their interviews, and all their questions seemed openly supportive. I also saw a few live-streamers with their cellphones on selfie sticks, one of them providing hostile commentary I guess to a leftist audience. Otherwise, there were no direct counter-demonstrators, although the Greens did show up on Pariser Platz this afternoon to demand yet again that Alternative für Deutschland be banned.
It’s very clear, both from the signs and the few brief conversations I had, that the protest has grown much, much bigger than the tax-hike on agricultural diesel that set it off. It has become a broader anti-tax protest and a statement of profound displeasure with the government in general. In contrast to most leftist protestors, the farmers are eager to explain their grievances, they welcome photos and are otherwise highly conscious of public relations. One of them had even set up a stand to hand out free sausages to passersby, as an excuse to engage ordinary people in conversation. Politically – and for better or worse – they’re very vocally centrist; talking about the AfD makes them nervous, though they’re eager to cite growing support for the party as evidence of dissatisfaction with the traffic light coalition. Given their high levels of organisation, this is probably due at least in part to simple messaging discipline. Rukwied has made many tedious statements distancing the protests from the “right” and the protestors on scene this afternoon seemed to support this line.
One man I talked to assured me that a core group of protestors plan to stay where they are well after tomorrow. He said a lot of them are veterans of earlier actions, including the Dutch farmers’ protest that culminated in 2022, and they’ve brought supplies for many weeks. I can confirm that they seem very well prepared.
Below I provide some pictures of their signs and placards, with English translations, to give you a flavour of the protest. I’ve cropped all number plates out of the photos, because some leftists are reporting these to police, in hopes that their owners will be fined for operating them on public roadways. (This is a pretty dumb campaign and unlikely to succeed, but better safe than sorry). You’ll have to take my word for it that they’re from all over Germany; I looked for the promised Dutch contingent but couldn’t find them, I suspect they have yet to arrive. If you’re reading this on email, you may need to click over to my website to access all the photos, as there’s too many of them for gmail and other email services.
“Want to save energy? Turn off the traffic light.”
“Without us, Ricarda would never be full.” The reference is to the obese Green co-chief Ricarda Lang.
MCViewPoint 
