What Should We Name This Decade?
I'm Going With the Terrible Twenties
I saw an interesting piece in Bownstone from Jeffrey Tucker where I think he nails the challenges of our era. What would you name this decade?
As Jeffrey Tucker writes:
The New Yorker is running a contest. What should we call our era? Some possible candidates: Terrible Twenties, the Age of Emergency, Cold War II, the Omnishambles, the Great Burning, and the Assholocene.
Try as I might, I cannot understand the last one. Regardless, it’s absolutely the case that there has been a dramatic turning of events and our lives. It’s not just national. It’s global and devastating.
I’m going with the Terrible Twenties.
Everyone seems to agree that this moniker applies, regardless of class or political leanings. You can take your pick of the symptoms: ill-health, inflation, political division, censorship, overweening state power, shabby political candidates, war, crime, homelessness, financial strain, dependency, learning loss, suicides, excess deaths, shortened lifespans, lack of trust, demographic upheaval, the purge of dissent, the threat of authoritarianism, mass incompetence, spread of crazy ideologies, lack of civility, fake science, corruption at all levels, middle class disappearance, and on and on ad infinitum.
Put it all together and you have terrible times.
We seek out diversions and find them in trips, movies, arts, liquor and other substances, religion, and meditation. No matter what we do, once we come back from the temporary respite, there is no denying the awful reality all around us. And the more the terrible multiplies, cascades, and entrenches itself, the less obvious are solutions. The center stopped holding a few years ago, and is ever less in view. We have to struggle to remember the good old days of 2019. They seem like a dim memory…
Regardless, it all seems to be in the past, which seems always to compare favorably with the present. More profoundly, the past compares favorably to any imagined future we can conjure up. The Carousel of Progress at Disney World is like a macabre joke now. Indeed, the prophets of our future seem only to come up with dystopias: owning nothing, eating bugs, doing without, bikes over gas-powered cars, surveillance, cancellation, 15-minute cities, shot after shot for weird infections, Zoom-based communications, and the absence of elegance in dress, food, and travel, except for of course the elites who live like District One in The Hunger Games.
That’s because this hell that has been visited upon us is far worse than anything even the pessimists predicted in March 2020. We looked at the extreme policies of the time and forecasted unemployment, growing population despair, loss of confidence in public health and experts, as well as a long period of economic disruption. But we could not have known then that the two weeks would turn to two months and then to two years and longer. It was like society-wide torture under the thumb of autocratic bureaucracies who were merely making things up as they went along and justifying it all with duplicitous science and smiles made for social media.
The fakeness of everything was suddenly revealed to us, and everything we once trusted suddenly seemed to be part of the system. Where were the mayors and judges? They were scared. Where were the pastors, priests, and rabbis? They said the same things as the TV anchors and NPR. Where were the academics? They were too worried about promotion, tenure, and grant money to speak out. Where were the civil libertarians? They vanished, fearing departing too far from the mainstream consensus, however manufactured…
We try to find the workaround as best we can. For a while, the boycotts against bad guys worked, until there became too many to remember. Pfizer and Bud Light, sure, plus Target, but now it is WalMart, Amazon, Facebook, Google, CVS, Eventbrite, CNN, and who knows who else. Are we supposed to be against Home Depot and Kroger too? Hard to remember. We can’t boycott everyone.
Our victories over this brand or that, this policy or that, a good court decision that loses on appeal, are regarded by the plotters as nothing but temporary setbacks. The terrible is like a great ooze that keeps flowing and filling up the world no matter how much we scrub, clean, and bail…
Study hard, work hard, tell the truth, save money, obey the rules: these were the old principles that made for a successful life. We knew them and practiced them and they worked. But do they even apply anymore? Fairness and merit seem to have gone out the window, having been replaced by privilege, position, identity, and victimization as a pathway toward gaining a voice and a foothold. Decorum and humility are being swamped by brutalism and belligerence.
In my husband’s visa news today we are going back into the courthouse to try and retrieve a 20 year old document that a police officer in Bangkok has requested. This has led to an almost one month delay: at first they couldn’t find it and would produce it the next week, then they said they still couldn’t find it and would call us. When they didn’t call we called them a total of maybe 20 times. They kept on hanging up on us, with finally an exasperated man admitting sheepishly that the court couldn’t find the document and that we’d have to make a new one (???). We already cleared everything with Thalang Police in 2021, so this seems like an elaborate human trick.
I haven’t been as upset about this as I might be otherwise because my husband still faces a Covid vaccine mandate to make the visa and I’m in no hurry to let him get poisoned. There is an exemption form I have filled out, but I abandoned it on realizing that the average processing time on it is three years (this on top of the four years already spent on this). The noncommital answer I recieved from the US Embassy about it made me think it was a waste of time.
Nobody has seen a single second of jail time for the greatest crime of the century, that being the Covid caper. Instead they put on disgusting show hearings like the one in Britain which seem mostly designed to demoralize the population. It’s like they want you to know that they can kill you with impunity. None of the stats have recovered towards life and living in any meaningful way. Here is birth rates in Switzerland:
Charts of excess deaths and disabilities are still elevated and in some cases rising. Prescriptions for cancer drugs have eclipsed prior times. It seems they can DEW people out of existence and out of their homes, which raises a question to me: since the AI has been programmedby anti human overlords, might the AI eventually train itself to wipe us all out? Right now it mostly appears to be a land grab. Here’s checking in on the disaster in Maui and what Lahaina residents are doing now:
Checking in on Lahaina Residents
As MoneyCircus writes:
“Local people are living on beaches. Those who have fishing rights make use of a bylaw that enables them to stay overnight.
Using beaches for camping, is one of the few levers they have to address a desperate housing crisis four months after a fire destroyed historic Lahaina. [1]
Others are forced to shuttle between hotels, moved at short notice and left to wait in lobbies for hours.
About 6,700 people, from 3,500 families, are being moved between temporary accommodation while state and federal officials trade responsibility.
More than 5,000 people are unemployed, down from the peak of 8,800 in Sep but that could be because of emigration.
More than 3,000 students and hundreds of teachers were displaced by the fires. They are asking for free school meals to cover at least the remainder of the 2023-2024 academic year. Hawaiian senators have appealed to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Federal aid to Lahaina families has so far been capped at $700 per household.
Thousands, sensing defeat, have left the island. Mike Cicchino, who has yet to reopen his dog care business, told Hawaii Free Press: “Every time I talk to Red Cross, they kind of encourage me, ‘Well, why don’t you just leave the island?’”
The Los Angeles Times, widely regarded as an outlet, like The Washington Post, close to the CIA, wrote as early as Aug 29: “Maui residents consider the unthinkable: Las Vegas, the ‘ninth island’.” [2]
Apparently water rights for a whooping 38 million gallons of water siphoned off per day from the area were set to expire the DAY AFTER THE FIRE:
Economic motive
Part of the scheming underway before the fires involved land and water rights. It continues — blatantly.
Having sued hard for the restoration of their water rights, the deadline for Hawaiians to submit their claims to a review was Aug 9. The fire struck a day before.
Until native rights are restored, multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to divert millions of gallons of water under temporary authorization.
BlackRock-owned Alexander & Baldwin, and East Maui Irrigation Co, have just received a new permit for 2024. It allows for 38 million gallons of water per day, across the year, to be diverted from East Maui streams.
Traditional Hawaiian agriculture depends heavily upon pond farming. Before the plantations and mansions, much of the islands comprised wetlands, on which the natives practised pond-farming of taro, called locally, kalo and, on the shores where fresh water mixed with seawater, grew crops like limu, a kind of seaweed.
This is every bit as convenient as oil and gas rights getting handed over to the Palestinians at the END OF DECEMBER 2023. They’ll kill anyone in their way, apparently. I really have a problem with this getting mixed in with God’s chosen people ideology. Is End times the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog?
December 9, 2023
The U.S. Stands Alone in the World Supporting Genocide Against the Palestinian People
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
In my extensive coverage of the Israel – Hamas war since it started, I have reported that the ongoing genocide of an entire race of people, the Palestinians, is vehemently opposed by a vast majority of the world’s population. More than half the Israeli population does not support Netanyahu’s reign of terror, and the majority of Jews living in the United States also do not support the annihilation of the Palestinian people, where recent polls have shown that about two thirds of the population of the U.S. do not support Israel’s action, but instead support a ceasefire.
And now, since yesterday, December 8, 2023, we can add the United Nations Security Council, where a resolution to call for a ceasefire in this horrible war with over 10,000 people now murdered, most of whom are women and children, failed by the only vote cast to oppose that ceasefire, the vote of the United States, who is a “permanent member” of the Security Council, with the authority to override everyone else’s votes.
Does any rational-thinking U.S. citizen still believe that the U.S. can take on almost the entire world, risking the security of our country, by choosing to stand with Netanyahu’s reign of terror?
‘Double standards’: World reacts to US veto on Gaza truce resolution at UN
International rights groups say US ‘risks complicity in war crimes’, has ‘callous disregard for civilian suffering’.
World leaders, international rights groups and United Nations officials have criticised the United States for vetoing a UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and failing to halt the war that has killed more than 17,400 Palestinians and about 1,100 people in Israel since October 7.
A UN resolution on the pause in hostilities failed to pass on Friday at the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed the proposal and Britain abstained.
The remaining 13 of the 15 current members of the UNSC voted in favour of the resolution put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries.
Here are some of the reactions:
Palestine
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US’s veto made it “complicit” in war crimes in Gaza. “The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” a statement from his office said.
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the veto was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace”.
Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the UNSC that the result of the vote was “disastrous”. “If you are against the destruction and displacement of the Palestinian people you must stand against this war. And if you support it then you are enabling this destruction and displacement regardless of your intentions … Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance. Every single one of them is sacred, worth saving.”
Hamas strongly condemned the US veto, saying it considers Washington’s move “unethical and inhumane”. “The US obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.
United Arab Emirates
The UAE’s deputy UN ambassador Mohamed Abushahab asked the UNSC: “What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza? Indeed, what is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?”
Iran
Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian warned of the threat of an “uncontrollable explosion” of the situation in the Middle East, after the US veto, the AFP news agency reported. “As long as America supports the crimes of the Zionist regime (Israel) and the continuation of the war … there is a possibility of an uncontrollable explosion in the situation of the region,” Amirabdollahian told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a phone call, according to a ministry statement.
China
Permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the council: “Condoning the continuation of fighting while claiming to care about the lives and safety of people in Gaza is self-contradictory. Condoning the continuation of fighting while advocating for the prevention of the spillover effects of the conflict is self-deceiving. Condoning the continuation of fighting while making references to the protection of women and children and human rights is hypocritical. All these once again show us what double standards are.”
Russia
Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said: “Our colleagues from the USA have literally before our eyes issued a death sentence to thousands if not tens of thousands more civilians in Palestine and Israel.”
France
Ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, said at the UNSC: “Unfortunately once again this council has failed with a lack of unity, and by refusing to commit to negotiations the crisis in Gaza is getting worse and the council is not completing its mandate under the charter.”
Turkey
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned whether justice can be achieved after calls for a ceasefire were rejected. “The Israeli administration, which has the unwavering support of Western countries, is committing murderous atrocities and massacres in Gaza that will make all humans blush … A fair world is possible, but not with America, because America sides with Israel,” he said speaking at World Human Rights Day Event. “Reforming the United Nations Security Council is a must,” he added, saying the world is bigger than just the five permanent members.
Earlier the minister of foreign affairs, Hakan Fidan, told Turkish media: “America is now alone on this issue [of the war on Gaza], especially in the voting held at the United Nations today … American political system is now helpless on issues related to Israel.”
Oman
Foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi said in a post on X: “The use of the veto at the Security Council is a shameful insult to humanitarian norms. I deeply regret that the United States should sacrifice the lives of innocent civilians for the cause of Zionism,”
Malaysia
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressed his “strong objection” to the US vetoing the resolution. “It is strange and beyond human sanity when there are parties who support and remain silent regarding the massacre of innocent children and women as well as civilians,” he posted on X. (Full article.)
Here are some more recent articles covering this ongoing world crisis:
US Is Lone Veto Of UN Security Council ‘Humanitarian Ceasefire’ Resolution
Excerpts:
With the 2024 election fast approaching and Democrat support for Israel’s war on Hamas waning, the Biden administration – which is also trying to sell Congress on handing $14.3 billion in aid to Israel – has been ratcheting up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to minimize civilian casualties, recognize and work with the Palestinian Authority, resume peace talks, and commit to not reoccupying Gaza.
The chances of that happening are virtually nil, however, as Netanyahu’s government has made clear that Israel plans to destroy Hamas, retain an open-ended security presence in Gaza, impose a buffer zone to keep Palestinians away from the border, and never recognize the Palestinian Authority.
Despite the clear differences in vision for an endgame to this conflict, Israel knows the Biden administration is nothing more than a paper tiger in a dog mask, despite some 16,000 civilians reported dead by Gaza health authorities.
In late 2022, they came up with the following idea:-
*The next “provocation” by Hamas will give Israel the “green light” to attack Gaza.
* The aim was to destroy Hamas, clear out North Gaza. Look at the map carefully-Marine 1 and 2 are directly off-shore north Gaza! (Now, you know the REASON why Israel is clearing out north Gaza- in order to change “facts on the ground”).
*Get the PA to become the new police force for Israel.
*Get the PA to sign over the rights to the 2 off-shore gas fields – Marine 1 and 2. (See the map below).
*Do a merger deal with all the various shareholders in the following fields off-shore Israel/Gaza: Aphrodite, Tamar, Leviathan AND Marine 1 and 2.
*The next step would be to increase the stake of Noble in this combined gas complex.
All of the above would need to be completed before December 2023. The reason is simple.
The original license holder for Marine 1 and 2 is British Gas. That license ends in December 2023. The urgency comes in as the PA HAS PROMISED THESE FIELDS TO GAZPROM!
For the Rockefeller family, under no circumstances must Gazprom be allowed to enter into any gas deal in this area.
As Matthew Ehret writes:
A Real Concern: Gaza Offshore Energy Steal
The east Mediterranean offshore oil/gas fields are much more strategic and feasible and have taken on additional appeal for a desperate Europe cut off from Russian fuel since Russia’s special military operation (SMO) began in February 2022.
If developed, it is believed that these offshore resources would transform Israel into a global energy hub supporting the glory of Greater Israel as a new empire, which, according to 2010 US estimates, represents over “1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas” valued at over 453 billion dollars.
This vast deposit off the coast of Gaza (and thus under the legal ownership of the people of Gaza), was first discovered in 1999 when a company called British Gas discovered deposits of approximately one trillion cubic feet of natural gas 19 miles off the Gaza coast. Agreements to develop this project at a cost of $1.2 billion soon followed.
Although Yassir Arafat expressed an active interest in developing these resources two decades ago, Israel worked tirelessly to block the Palestinian Investment Fund (the fund responsible for carrying out the development) from extending investments into the project, using the argument that “funding may be used to support terrorism.” When Hamas was elected in 2007, Israel’s efforts to block funding for the Gaza marine field vastly increased.
This is perhaps why Hamas’ 2007 victory was celebrated by none other than Israeli intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin, who cabled US Ambassador Richard Jones that he would be “happy” if Hamas formed a government because “the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.” In the cable made available by Wikileaks, Yadlin also dismissed concerns about Iranian influence within a Hamas government “as long as they [Hamas-controlled Gaza] don’t have a port.”
If Israel wishes to have full control over Gaza’s maritime oil/gas reserves, it can only achieve its goal if the legal owners and beneficiaries living in Gaza disappear.
On October 13, 2023, a policy paper authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence was leaked. It recommended “the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,” as +972 reported.
The paper laid out three possible scenarios for the people of Gaza. The first involves the replacement of Hamas with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The second involves the emergence of a new local Gaza authority (not Hamas or PA), and the third includes the expulsion of all civilians into Egypt. The report clearly identifies the third scenario as the most preferable option. The report’s authors write that this third option “will yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel, and is an executable option. It requires determination from the political echelon in the face of international pressure, with an emphasis on harnessing the support of the United States and additional pro-Israeli countries for the endeavor.”
This foreshadowing of a prophetic global war to usher in the Messiah (as many Christian rapturists dream of), was outlined in depth by Greater Israel advocate and Jabotinsky collaborator Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook 100 years ago.
Kook was Britain’s selection for the Chief Ashkenaz Rabbi for Jerusalem and Palestine from 1919 to 1935, and his influence in shaping several generations of radical Zionist zealots that took over control of much of Israel’s government after the inside job that was the Six Day War is immense. His prophetic remarks should not be easily dismissed. In his book Orot, Kook said:
“In wars, national characters crystalize. Israel, as the universal reflection of mankind, benefits thereby. The heels of Messiah follow upon World Conflagration… At the hour of the downfall of Western civilization, Israel is called upon to fulfill its divine mission by providing the spiritual basis for a New World Order.” [emphasis added]
The only hope to avoid this calamity and disrupt this flight toward an Armageddon scenario steered by End Times Messianic cultists is to force a ceasefire, as Russia, China, and the vast majority of world citizens (even Americans) demand.
Without this restoration of sanity, the world as a whole will be in for an experience that will make the 14th-century Dark Age appear to be an uncomfortable hiccup in world history.”
I think God’s chosen people are those who were blessed with being here during these prophetic times. But am I the only one who feels that there are very dark days ahead?
So what would you call the 2020’s?
The Clusterfuck-20's
this decade: the Tyrannical Twennies