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My Theory

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Clarissa

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I was asked by a Czech journal to review an article about Greek literature. Because it uses my theory! I’m so glad. The whole point was precisely that the permanent, never-ending crisis is a global phenomenon. I’m happy people outside of my field are catching on.

The theory is what I wrote about yesterday. I predicted back when the Great Recession took place that it wasn’t going to end. Instead, it was going to mutate into another crisis, then another, and then another. And with each iteration of this endless crisis we would lose wealth, rights, and and the rest of the good things we have gotten used to in the nation-state.

As we are all seeing now, my theory is being proven right in real time.

I have a new theory now. Or the beginnings of one. It’s about how we will wake up from the collective hypnosis that we are in and that is facilitating this robbery masked as crisis. Stay tuned.

29 responses to “My Theory”

  1. ABC Avatar
    ABC

    I really hope your new theory is right — and in time for us to do something….

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Tangential: Bari Weiss has a cogent synopsis today about the situation in Sri Lanka.

    https://www.commonsense.news/p/sri-lanka-just-fell-what-do-we-have

    Pretty bluntly lays out how banning chemical fertilizers to meet international “green” initiatives led to the current crisis.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      What a horrible thing to do. Horrible and insane. Chemical fertilizers have been crucial to reducing world hunger. They are a wonderful achievement of science.

      I’ve been saying for almost two decades now that “green policies” were created for the purpose of keeping third-world countries starving and miserable. I remember how back in 1992-3 in Ukraine somebody brought in a UK textbook with the now standard climate demagoguery. My entire class spent an hour mocking the fools who would fall for such arrant stupidity. And that was still the early days of the climate movement.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. ABC Avatar
        ABC

        The interesting thing is that none of the MSM outlets — including BBC — mention any of this. Somehow magically Sri Lanka started producing less food last year and their economy collapsed. I found out from an Indian newspapers that provide a fair bit of background.

        Apparently all this was done in Sri Lanka at the behest of an Indian environmental group which has fortunately failed to have much impact in India. Sri Lanka was touted as their great victory. After all that happened, this group continues to be unapologetic, claiming that their “policies were just not implemented properly” and (get this!) “we should look to Cuba on how to do organic agriculture better”.

        Liked by 2 people

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I was wondering how the MSM covered it. I found out about the situation from a Ukrainian newspaper and it didn’t mince words about the stupidity of the policies that led to this catastrophe.

          But the call to look to Cuba for inspiration I didn’t see until now. Cuba is a place where you can’t get a piece of fresh fruit or veg even if you throw wads of US dollars around. Fresh produce simply doesn’t exist. Everything comes out of a can. I once stayed at an expensive hotel and feared I’d develop scurvy by the end of the stay because everything there was to eat was canned. Imported, obviously.

          Liked by 1 person

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        2. cliff arroyo Avatar
          cliff arroyo

          “this group continues to be unapologetic”

          greenies are like alchemists… they’re never discouraged by previous failure, they’re sure that this time they’ll get it right…

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. ABC Avatar
            ABC

            It is a bit like communism or lockdowns — it has never been done right!

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              “Oh, but we didn’t do real lockdowns/communism/greenism! It’ll work great if we just do the real thing.

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      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Some people are big fans of world hunger, I guess.

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      3. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “green policies” were created for the purpose of keeping third-world countries starving and miserable”

        I remember coming to the same conclusion about almost all foreign aid back in the 1990s…

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        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          Yes! Have you ever read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”? That book very succinctly explained the IMF/World Bank “development” scam: i.e. loan developing countries a heap of money they’ll never be able to repay, to build infrastructure, with the stipulation that they have to hire US firms to build the infrastructure. So we give them a ton of money, from US taxpayers, they give that money back to US megacorporations, which then go and build stuff in their countries… but never quite as much stuff as was promised because always underbid, right? And then you’ve got the whole country by the balls, because they can’t repay the money. So now you can squeeze them for their natural resources and control their governments, and keep them poor and unable to solve their corruption problems forever.

          “Green” initiatives are just the latest iteration of that scam.

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          1. donbenham Avatar
            donbenham

            Perfect explanation. Sad….Dangerous- power of money in few hands

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          2. cliff arroyo Avatar
            cliff arroyo

            ” ever read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”?”

            Hear of it hadn’t read it. My revelation (if you want to call it that) was gradual and related to the other revelation that things that accomplish what they’re supposed to are continued and when they don’t they are changed…. and a bunch of anecdotal information (from when I knew people in Latin American studies) about effective aid that was shut down in a hurry vs ineffective aid that chugs along for years (and a few years working inside a bureaucracy… which was a valuable education in lots of things though that’s not why I did it….).

            Liked by 1 person

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    Wow, imagine this coming to Klara’s school:

    // children at four primary schools in Wales are set to be offered insects to eat such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, locusts and mealworms in a bid to introduce some ‘alternative protein’.

    This will open up children and adults’ eyes to the benefits of edible insects and give clues as to how to best educate children about the environment.
    …
    The project starts this week and aims to better understand children’s understanding of ‘alternative proteins’. It will use surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups to explore this.

    Researchers have teamed up with teachers and hope that the four- to 11-year-olds will be willing to try out some of the more exotic foods.

    Across Europe, eating alternative sources of protein like insects is already the norm.

    A 2020 study by the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) found 9 million European consumers had eaten insects in 2019, with this expected to increase to 390 million by 2030.

    ‘We want the children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now, rather than just as foods for the future, so trying some of these foods is central to the research,’ said Christopher Bear, of Cardiff University.

    https://galaxyconcerns.com/pupils-at-four-wales-primary-schools-offered-insect-diet/

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Yeah, that’ll go great until they kill some kid with a shrimp allergy.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        I mean: totally not kidding. We banned peanut butter from schools, airplanes, etc. for years because a small minority of people are seriously allergic to peanuts.

        Newsflash: people with deadly shellfish allergies (like my grandfather) also cannot safely eat bugs. Many of them don’t know that. It’s the same allergy. But sure, let’s go and try to get everybody to eat bugs without ever once mentioning that. And hey, your kid is still stuck in the peanut-free classroom because… reasons.

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I didn’t know that. I’m glad I found out because we have people with a serious shellfish allergy in the family. It’s definitely curious that nobody is mentioning this.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Crabs, shrimp, lobsters: buncha legs, exoskeletons, antennae. They’re just aquatic bugs. Tasty aquatic bugs, but still… essentially bugs.

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. Avi Avatar
              Avi

              There are good reasons why Judaism forbids the eating of shellfish and other types of seefood. Ancient ethical wisdom.

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              1. cliff arroyo Avatar
                cliff arroyo

                “Judaism forbids the eating of shellfish ”

                But it does allow the eating of some kinds of locust?

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Knowing how fussy kids this age are about food, these researchers must be daft to think this has a chance.

      But absolutely, this is despicable and these are nasty, despicable people.

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    3. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “Across Europe, eating alternative sources of protein like insects is already the norm”

      This reads like Soviet propaganda about everyone expressing a desire to donate a day of labor to the state….

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. ABC Avatar
        ABC

        Lol, that’s exactly the reaction I had when I read it….

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        That’s EXACTLY how the Soviet propaganda sounded. The difference is that nobody took it seriously. The people in charge definitely didn’t.

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    4. Avi Avatar
      Avi

      I’ve read the article: it’s pure propaganda, and the journalist writing it knows it.

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  4. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    I’ve read the article: it’s pure propaganda, and the journalist writing it knows it.

    Like

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  5. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
    Post Alley Crackpot

    “The whole point was precisely that the permanent, never-ending crisis is a global phenomenon.”

    And yet I’m missing something, but not what you’d immediately expect, which is probably because my points of reference are a bit older.

    To my ears this is like a revisiting of some of what Georgio Agamben wrote in “States of Exception”, using the idea of Ausnahmezustand from 1920s Germany.

    It also sounds like you’ve noticed that there never really was a top-down flow as coming from a “sovereign” as much as the crisis propagation mechanics themselves became reified into a virtual sovereign, one of global reach, and that the vestigial forms of The State were led to obey the logic of crisis as a way of extending each “state of exception” that led to taking more power.

    Best of all, these people seeking power would never have to usurp the magisterial nature of the virtual sovereign, because they could take power, feed crisis back to the virtual sovereign of crisis, and be rewarded with even more power.

    Some people who work in politics are obviously big fans of these algorithms, for which crisis is their only worthwhile currency in a carry trade.

    If you were of a more sci-fi bent, perhaps you’d have a variant of Vernor Vinge’s “Peace Authority”, but instead it’d be called “The Crisis Authority”, in which all matters are settled through the propagation of crises and their eventual partial resolution.

    And anyone threatening the existence of a crisis would be popped into a stasis bubble, that’s the sci-fi part, of course, since a crisis has more rights than people.

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
    Post Alley Crackpot

    “I have a new theory now. Or the beginnings of one. It’s about how we will wake up from the collective hypnosis that we are in and that is facilitating this robbery masked as crisis.”

    Does this theory sound like the end of the “Kids in the Hall” movie where they create a “cure” for “The Cure” and then jolt people back to a miserable reality?

    People pay to be medicated so that they may experience a steady-state reality with regard to health, so why would they pay to deregulate that kind of experience?

    My theory sounds a lot like people becoming more self-reliant and thereby needing The State less for their needs, eventually sliding into a pseudo anarcho-capitalism which while also being a failed system does provide a basis for less crisis management, through which they can partially remove themselves from control by The State.

    FAFO is in fact the managing principle, but the primary failure of anarcho-capitalism is that it does not provide for the mechanisms by which terrorist incursions of an emergent State can be dealt with before the terrorism becomes The State by default.

    There’s a really good series of books on this kind of thing by James C Scott including one called “The Art of Not Being Governed”. This book includes how the independent mountain peoples of China were terrorised by The State of the PRC into compliance.

    But my political philosophy does include the idea that The State’s propaganda about terrorism is utterly precious because The State is in fact a form of terrorism.

    Left, Right, it doesn’t matter because it’s all discourse on a Marxist-Hegelian dialectical axis on which all positions help reaffirm the central position of a “shadow of the silent majorities” which reinforces the simulation of a genuine political discourse through its abnegation.

    Or that all your banal politics are belong to us. 🙂

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Wait, there was a Kids in the Hall movie? How did I not know about this?

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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