[TDoS]

It isn't lively much now.

Bringing us round to where we began, which is why it's well past time to let it go and focus on more proximal existential problems.

RE

Indeed. And I have been focused on those, as far as they relate to geology anyway, critical minerals is a hot topic now. But keeping track of the golden olddie is still a favorite pasttime. And tangential questions do keep cropping up, I have been asked quite a few questions on Venezuela as of late. Someone finds my name on a study, and suddenly my phone starts ringing. Happened earlier this week. Twice.

[RE]

And tangential questions do keep cropping up,

Oh come on.  This thread was about ICE.  Bringing Pea Oil into it stretches the concept of tangential past the elastic limit.

J6P fell for peak oil hook/line and sinker decades ago now

Yeesh. 🙄🙄🙄

RE

[RE]

More evidence the likelihood of fair elections in Nov grows slimmer by the day.  Now Trumpolini is suggesting they should be cancelled altogether, forget just trying to fix them.  Short of declaring Martial Law he has no authority to do that, but of course lacking a legal recourse has never proved an obstacle for Dandy Don.  The only law restraining his Trumpness is his own (lack of) morality. lol.

2026 is living up to its billing as a watershed year in collapse.  Freequency of crises is up to every day.  No rest for the weary in the newz cycle.  The tea kettle is getting ready to boil over.


Trump: "We shouldn't even have elections"

RE

DEMOCRACYDOCKET.COM • 2026-01-15

Trump: 'We shouldn't even have an election' 

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that "we shouldn't even have an election," as he complained about the political risks his party faces in the 2026 midterms and boasted about his accomplishments.

[K-Dog]

J6P fell for peak oil hook/line and sinker decades ago now

Yeesh. 🙄🙄🙄

[/quote]

When did J6P find out about peak oil?  I must have missed the news. 🤨🤨🤨

[RE]

When did J6P find out about peak oil?  I must have missed the news. 🤨🤨🤨

True.  If you asked 10 average J6P getting off the subway what is meant by "Peak Oil" and why it's important, 9 of them would have no clue what you were talking about.

RE

[TDoS]

And tangential questions do keep cropping up,

Oh come on.  This thread was about ICE.

The Orange One has found his Gestapo, and its name is ICE. "Das Papier bitte".....or ELSE.

America voted for him. Those that didn't aren't required to like it...particularly those who voted for him and he didn't do what he lied about when selling himself to the public.

All we are left with for the next 3 year is...patience. To see how hard he tries to get a 3rd term if nothing else.

[TDoS]

2026 is living up to its billing as a watershed year in collapse.

Do you happen to have a definition of collapse that encompasses the entirety of not just peak oil 8 years ago now but the more interesting politics so often discussed here, and maybe basic economics of life, etc etc.


"Collapse" strikes me as a powerful word. My definition of long ago is we would know we were collapsing when ice became an issue, because it is a partial luxury, and common, and would become less common, particularly in places less able to have electricity and freezers operating to make it, and give it awy free in drinks.

[RE]

2026 is living up to its billing as a watershed year in collapse.

Do you happen to have a definition of collapse that encompasses the entirety of not just peak oil 8 years ago now but the more interesting politics so often discussed here, and maybe basic economics of life, etc etc.

The AI definition works pretty well.

The collapse of civilization means a complex society rapidly loses its large-scale institutions, cultural identity, and social complexity, leading to decentralization, violence, scarcity, and a regression to simpler, smaller-scale ways of living, often due to factors like war, famine, environmental disaster, or economic failure. It's characterized by a breakdown in governance, trade, and infrastructure, potentially leaving behind remnants of the past and forcing survivors into new, simpler societal structures or absorption by stronger groups

We haven't yet collapsed completely, but we arre definitely seeing a breakdown of the type described heere ongoing.  More pronounced and further along in 3rd world countries, but picking up speed here aand in Europe now.

RE

[K-Dog]

This you will find NOWHERE in mainstream news.

No play at all.

UNICORNRIOT.NINJA • 2026-01-15

ICE Shoots Second Person in Minneapolis, Community Responds

A federal agent with ICE shot a man in Minneapolis last night, marking the second shooting in the city committed by immigration enforcement agents since Trump's administration launched the federal occupation of the Twin Cities. Immediately after the incident, neighbors and community members flooded the scene, chasing off the agents involved and uncovering sensitive operational details left behind by the agency.

ICE and ISIS


Both cover their faces and both murder

[K-Dog]

📡

INQUISITR.COM • 2025-09-30

Masked ICE Agents Assault Photographer, One Journalist Hospitalized

A routine morning at Manhattan's immigration court exploded into chaos Tuesday when masked ICE agents were filmed shoving photojournalists inside 26 Federal Plaza, leaving one reporter hospitalized and igniting a fresh fight over press freedoms at federal facilities.


I think the answer is lots of stuff.  And this means U.


You can be ignorant and happy or knowledgeable and sad.  The vast majority chooses happiness.  Being as I know the sand in my hourglass will run out, I choose knowledge.

U make your choice and I make mine.

[TDoS]

2026 is living up to its billing as a watershed year in collapse.

Do you happen to have a definition of collapse that encompasses the entirety of not just peak oil 8 years ago now but the more interesting politics so often discussed here, and maybe basic economics of life, etc etc.

The AI definition works pretty well.

The collapse of civilization means a complex society rapidly loses its large-scale institutions, cultural identity, and social complexity, leading to decentralization, violence, scarcity, and a regression to simpler, smaller-scale ways of living, often due to factors like war, famine, environmental disaster, or economic failure. It's characterized by a breakdown in governance, trade, and infrastructure, potentially leaving behind remnants of the past and forcing survivors into new, simpler societal structures or absorption by stronger groups

We haven't yet collapsed completely, but we arre definitely seeing a breakdown of the type described heere ongoing.  More pronounced and further along in 3rd world countries, but picking up speed here aand in Europe now.

RE

Haven't collapsed completely yet? More like....where is it at all?  How many "remnants of the past" have we arrived at yet? Many folks horse and buggying around Anchorage? And "survivors" would sure seem to be needed. Survivors of...what? Because the world population is still growing, so current state of whatever collapse you think is happening hasn't even knocked off population growth....let alone created legions of "survivors" living in more simpler times. Unless they have been there all along, say sub-Saharan Africa.

"We haven't yet collasped completely"? Please. It is so invisible that the only people that can see it consists of "surviving remnants" who...get this...in the case of you? Still get top grade pharmacutical meds and someone from all the other collapse survivors coughing up cash for heat, light, and keeping you fed. That comes from this thing called "surplus", which sure isn't part of the "remnants" of the modern world. And K-Dog? Well in order to be ecologically friendly he spent $20k on a heat pump for his house. Not for his teepee or mud hut of having collapsed mind you but one of those nice pile of bricks with real doors and windows and stuff. He didn't buy land to grow trees to use as firewood, or an extra plot for a bigger garden or some chickens and hogs to slaughter himself to get through the next winter...nope....he bought a gizmo for be better for the environment. In the middle of collapse, seems like a weird priority, and hardly a rush back to simpler times. 

As someone who once lived from season to season, I can assure you that a means of heating the house had NO consideration for its environmental friendliness. And I'm betting the temp he maintains in his house or that for you in the facility isn't what folks dredging out an existence would keep it at....we used a 50F setting on the funrnace before the propane furnance fired up. Kereosene heater in the living room to keep the living room and kitchen in the center of trailer high enough that the thermostat wouldn't kick on the furnance. This obviously didn't help out when it came to no running water because the pipes coming in from on end of the trailer froze and we had to haul water from the creek. But hey, we were all collapsed more than half a century ago living a simple life back then.

Maybe we all did collapse back then and we all cured it by moving to nicer places?

Certainly none of us live where we started out, so we CURED OURSELVES!!!! WOO HOO!

[TDoS]

This you will find NOWHERE in mainstream news.

No play at all.

You mean, except for THIS mainstream media? I mean seriously folks....get a better news feed. CBS most certainly isn't the usual internet based advocacy group pretending they have a lock on whatever.   

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dueling-accounts-of-ice-shooting-of-venezuelan-migrant-in-minneapolis/

[RE]

As I mentioned earlier, we have reached a  point where we have a new crisis on practically a daily basis.  There's so much mayhem ongoing out there now it's impossible to follow all of it and keep up.  Information overload results in many important stories being missed or overlooked.

Currently, on the macro level there are 3 wicked problems that are leading goobermint toward failure here in the FSoA.  Wicked problems are intractable with no politically palatable answers that polarize opinions resulting in legislative lockup.  The rapidly growing homeless problem, the affordability crisis for the middle class and the immigration problems are affecting large numbers of people in many communities across the FSoA at the same time.  None are soluble either by throwwing money at the or by dispatching militarized police to quell the mayhem.  Trumpolini can send 3000 ICE Gestapo to Minneapolis, but he can't do that with Chicago, NYC, Portland, LA, SF etc all at the same time without invoking the Insurrection Act, and even then it's questionable there's enough personnel to handle the disorder on a national level.  You can't control chaos when the numbers grow large and it's geographically spread out and not confined to a single location.

I do see a more generalized breakdown of law & order coming out of this with a rise in home invasions in wealthy neighborhoods and increased gang activity in low income neighborhoods.  Possibly also a rise in kidnappings and assassinations of corporate executives along with sabotage of the internet, electric grid and oil production and distribution faciities.  Berlin recently had their elecyricity knocked out for 3 days by sabotage.

A lot of this stuff is very difficult to track because it doesn't turn up in the news cycle except in the specific location where it happens.  So you can't track the number of home invasions occuring nationally, for instance or the increases in gang violence.  However, this would be consistent with everything I've observed about collapse as it has progressed in other countries, so I expect it here as well now.

RE

[K-Dog]

APNEWS.COM • 2026-01-16

ICE says a Cuban man died during a suicide attempt. A witness says a guard pinned and choked him

A Cuban immigrant died in a Texas immigration detention facility earlier this month during an altercation with guards, and the local medical examiner has indicated that his death will likely be classified as a homicide.

Somebody start keeping score!

[K-Dog]

And the immigration problems are affecting large numbers of people in many communities across the FSoA at the same time.

I have no issue with the other two wicked problems but a common fear is that immigrants "take jobs" or lower wages for native-born citizens is bullshit.  I do not understand why a finger is not pointed at employers.  If undocumented people are working in the US the legal responsibility of the 'crime' is actually on the EMPLOYER.  Anybody with a functioning brain can figure this out.  But if you are a stupid fuck you cannot understand that power and privilege has done another switcheroo on your dumb ass.

As somebody who had a career nearly destroyed by the LEGAL H1-B program I should know if immigrants can steal jobs or not.  The rest of you can shut the fuck up because I doubt you can cite a single instance where an 'illegal' stole a job from you.  How do immigrants get jobs if they are not legal, somebody please explain the mechanism by which people without paperwork can steal jobs when American Citizens have to scramble for a fucking birth certificate every time we change jobs.  It has been this way for years.

So why then America, are you so fucking stupid.

As the immigrant population in a neighborhood increases, crime rates in that neighborhood often decrease or remain stable.  Another uncomfortable truth.

Fears of immigration are racist fears with a pretty bow around them.

And Trump has been a know racist for 53 years.

The federal government sued Trump Management, Inc., Fred C. Trump, and Donald J. Trump in October 1973 under the Fair Housing Act alleging systematic exclusion of Black and Puerto Rican applicants; litigation did not produce a trial verdict but ended with a court‑approved consent decree in June 1975 that imposed injunctive relief and compliance obligations without an admission of liability. Courts dismissed the Trumps' $100 million countersuit and entered requirements that the corporate entity adopt nondiscriminatory advertising, vacancy reporting, training, recordkeeping, and monitoring, and subsequent reporting and enforcement actions treated those remedial measures as judicially enforceable.

The dude has been a shit from day one and he will be a shit until he is stopped.

When power and privilege "do a switcheroo," the switch is a calculated effort by those who can to maintain an advantage.