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2019 Collapse Survey Results – The 500: Who are the Kollapsniks?
| Notes from RE:
1- Although the title says 500, I actually took this snapshot of the Stats when the numbers were between 430-435. They are now at 525 as I publish this article. I chose 500 because it sounds good and it’s right between the 300 of Thermopylae and the 600 of the Light Brigade. Percentages haven’t changed much with the additional submissions since the snapshot was taken. We will no doubt add quite a few more respondents with this article since I am leaving the survey open for the time being. 460 respondents marked the point at which the survey gained a 99% Confidence Level with a 6% Confidence Interval for a population size of 100,000, but more is always better when it comes to surveys. Respondents who added their email addys will get a pdf of the survey results right around 500, depending when I take the snapshot. More in depth analysis can be done with the spreadsheet, you can parse the numbers with that. Contact me on the Diner if you are interested in doing a more detailed numerical analysis and have verifiable background with which to do it. If you use the results of this survey in any academic papers or documents, please reference the Doomstead Diner as the source in your footnotes. Also please inform me through the Contact Page on the Diner if you are going to use the survey or its charts and graphs in this way, or on you blogs if you have one.
The Survey remains OPEN at this time. Responses keep dribbling in and I don’t want to leave anyone out of the final Tally. 2- Most of the questions don’t tally to the full 430 or so when I took the snapshot. This because all respondents don’t answer all questions. 3- Statistical Significance: This is always a bone of contention with any survey. How significant is it really? How big is the population you are surveying? It’s tough to estimate exactly how many people were surveyed here across all the websites, but I’m putting the Outer Limit at 100,000. r/collapse has the largest circulaton with almost 90,000 subscribers, but many of them no longer participate or read the sub anymore. Also unlikely that in 2 weeks all the currently active redditors saw the links to the survey. All the rest of the blogs and forums are much smaller, so 100,000 seems like a good outer limit here.
4- Question Structure Complaints: Once again with all surveys, complaints come in with the way the questions are structured and what the answer choices are. In this case I tried to give as many places for a free form write-in response as possible. Many respondents took advantage of this and I will publish their responses in follow up articles or Inside the Diner in the Surveys thread. 5- “Americentric” Complaints: Specific to this survey, several complaints came in that it was “Americentric”, which really is not true. There are a few questions specific to the Amerikan Political Sewer, but most of the questions are applicable to Kollapsniks who live anywhere at all.
Thanks to all the Kollapsniks from all websites who dropped in their 2 cents on this survey. Special thanks to the following 7 websites which contributed the bulk of the opinions (sites with >5 Repsondents):
#1- Reddit r/collapse with 168 Submissions #2- Cassandra’s Legacy with 121 Submissions #3- The Burning Platform with 98 Submissions #4- The Doomstead Diner with 68 Submissions #5- Economic Undertow with 16 Submissions #6- Our Finite World with 13 Submissions #7- Truthdig with 7 Submissions
Each of these websites has a somewhat different readerhship, I’ll make some general obserations here from my time participating on all of these websites as a (rather prolific, lol) commenter and TROLL. Before Admining my own site, I was a first class annoying troll in the commentariat of NUMEROUS websites, I can’t even count them all anymore. I was BANNED from most of them. lol.
#1- r/collapse: Like the rest of Reddit, r/collapse is dominated by social media freak Millenials. Their education and knowledge of the problems we face is very diverse. Some are well read up, others are fucking clueless idiots. Their numbers are HUGE, dwarfing any of the single collapse websites. Their Political viewpoints vary from the far right to the far left, leaning more toward the left. #2- Cassandra’s Legacy: Prof. Ugo Bardi’s Blog. He teaches Physical Chemistry at the Univeristy of Firenza in Italy. Ugo is a member of the Club of Rome and participated in the original Limits to Growth study done int he 1970s. The website is LOADED with Academics with Ph.Ds. It’s one of the reasons we have such a high education level recorded in this survey. Ugo and I collaborated on many video discussions of Collapse Issues which can be found on the Diner YouTube Channel. #3- The Burning Platform: Run by Jim Quinn, a CPA who handles the books at the Wharton Biz Skule in the Ivy League. A Baby Boomer who denies he is a Baby Boomer, for whom the 4th Turning by Strauss & Howe is the Bible of Collapse. Very Right-Wing/Libertarian leaning website, with quite a vocal commentariat. I praticipated on that site for a couple of years and wrote numerous contrarian articles there. It was very entertaining. lol. #4- The Doomstead Diner: My Doom Website, established in 2012 by myself and my co-Admin Surly and our Code Jockey tech designer Peter. The #1 Go-To Website on the net for Collapse Newz. Generally Left leaning politically, but we do have a few contrarian Libertarians who chip in their 2 cents as well. A very contentious commentariat, not a place for the meek. Don your Fireproof BVDs before you sign in. lol. #5- Economic Undertow: Run by Steve Ludlum, aka Steve from Virginia. An economic technical site with a very different from mainstream analysis you can get anywhere else, and usually right on the mark. Steve also collaborated with me on many videos. A relatively apolitical website. #6- Our Finite World: Run by Gail Tverberg, a former professional Actuary who does many charts and graphs to illustrate her POV on the energy problems we face. OFW has become increasingly Doomerish over the years, although the site has little political spin at all, just some very vehement Nihilists. Gail also collaborrated with me on numerous discussions and videos. No discernible Political Spin to this website. #7- Truthdig: Chris Hedges website. Chris is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and an unabshed Socialist with a Capital S. He himself does have a net worth in the $Millions$ though. lol. He’s a fabulous speaker and does great interviews as well.
Now, on to the charts from the survey. For today, we look at the Demographic Questions. I’ll make a few brief comments beneath each chart. For further analysis and discussion, visit the Survey Table inside the Diner. |
At this level of population, the Survey comes in with a 99% Confidence Level and a 6% Confidence Interval, IOW it’s very significant for this size population. It’s likely quite accurate in its numbers. Caculations done with the Survey Calculator on SurveySystems.com.
Survey still OPEN
Survey now @ 558 Submissions
This was one of the more interesting (and colorful!) Doughnut charts on the survey. The Political Spectrum from which Kollapsniks come is quite diverse, that’s why the chart is filled with so many colors.
Of interest first is how few Doomers identify themselves as either traditional Demodopes or Repugnants. The overwhelming majority of Kollapsniks are fed up with BAU in Washington (and their more local legislatures) and are abandoning these parties in droves, although on both sides of this artificial divide they mostly still do vote for one candidate or the other, because in the FSoA 3rd Party candidates simply can’t win and just end up being spoilers for one side or the other.
Where most of them have migrated to in their thinking though is either to the Democratic-Socialists (best exemplafied in the FSoA so far by Bernie Sanders) or the Libertarians (best exmplified in the FSoA so far by Ron Paul and his Heir-Apparent Rand Paul).
More interesting to me than this were the number of respondents who identified themselves as either outright Fascist or Communist. 7% in total in this snapshot, holding fairly steady with the combined total now at 8%. Communists lead Fascists 5%-3%. I am fairly astounded though that this large a segment of the population will identify themselves outright with either political system. Both have received tons of bad press over the years since WWII, and in Amerika most people would rather be “Better Dead than Red”. Kollapsniks take on these beliefs I think because they are so thoroughly disgusted with BAU and only see a major revolution as having any chance at actually changing things.
A pretty much expected result here, but quite different I think from the general public. My sense there is they get most of their newz and political beliefs from the TV and from Talk Radio shows. Every time I jump in a cab the driver has Rush Limbaugh squawking away and I have to sit through that shit for an hour long ride to Anchorage for my latest MRI or CAT Scan. I gotta start carrying my noise-cancelling Bose Headphones.
About nobody gets their newz at the Barber Shop or Bar anymore, but go back to the days before Radio & TV, this is where people got together to discuss the newz of the day. I think people were a little more politically savvy back then, although that is just a feeling, no numbers to back that up.
This is an EXTREMELY common topic on r/collapse, with quite vehement opinions exressed quite often when the topic comes up. There is a large cohort of people who think NOBODY should have kids, it’s “wrong to bring children into a World in Collapse”. Why bring a new life into the world just to condemn it to a life of pain & suffering? Also, the clear problems we have with Population Overshoot say we gotta reduce the total population of Homo Saps if we expect the planet to remain Habitable and ourselves not to go Extinct in the Near Term. However, how is the population of Homo Saps not go Extinct unless SOMEBODY has children?
Here is where the plurality of respondents believe your financial means should determine whether you can have children or not. That is essentially the viewpoint of the Eugenics believers of the early 20th Century, followers of Margaret Sanger who felt poor people should be Sterilized. This of course was taken up by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitller in Germany as well. Why should reproduction be only for the rich? How many very successful people came from poverty, raised on rural farms to bootstrap themselves up to wealth and success? Should their parents not have been allowed to breed them?
Roughly half of the Kollapsniks are Married, but if you add in those who have a Life Partner or many Sexual Partners to this, that is the clear majority. If you parse out this data by age group though, you will see that this also represents the older demographic. Younger Kollapsniks are not so often coupled up. Many reasons for this, often discussed in the Sociological trends discussions Inside the Diner.
Similar to the Marriage question, it is mostly older Kollapsniks who have children. The number with replacement level or below is the majority, which does match with statistics showing that Industrialized Nations are shrinking in self-procreated poopulation (although immigration still makes up for that deficit in many if not most of those countries). You could parse this one out by Income distribution, but I haven’t done that as of yet. I suspect the people who have larger numbers of children also have larger incomes, but that might not be true.
I was surprised that roughly 1/4 of Kollapsniks consider themselves “Optimistic” about the future, considering all the incoming evidence that things will just be going from Bad to Worse over time here. This attitude is what I labelled as “Doom Lite” a few years back, and IMHO it’s the result of Normalcy Bias. We’ve always bounced back from crashes before, right? We came back from the Great Depression bigger and stronger than ever! After Rome Collapsed it took a few hundred years of Dark Ages, but we got the Reformation and Scientific Revolution! I personally think “this time is different”. I don’t think we’re going to rebound, at least not in the forseeable future anyhow. Perhaps some Plateaus and Dead Cat Bounces along the way down, but this is basically one long downhill slide we are on now. Apologies to John Michael Greer, but it’s not “slow & catabolic”. It’s moving along quite rapidly now, and getting faster all the time. So I dropped myself in the “Pessimist” category.
The Nihilist category is a whole other ballgame, and while still relatively small it grows all the time and is quite vocal on Collapse websites as well. This cohort of people is absolutely mired in Hopelessness and in many cases actually HOPES for the Extinction of Homo Saps, the sooner the better. Don’t bother arguing with these folks, it’s a complete waste of time.
Here is a result I REALLY did not expect, and it took me some time looking at the data to figure out why the Diner came out #1 on the Hit Parade of Collapse Websites. The reason is the algorithm the software uses to determine rankings. It’s not just how many Doomers rank you first, it’s how many 2nds, 3rds etc you get from them. Really low rankings from someone bring your totals down. So many of these websites cancel each other out, Doomers who read The Burning Platform don’t read r/collapse, and vica-versa. The Diner gets high rankings from its own readership, and middle level rankings from everyone else. In the totals, it comes out on top!
DOOMSTEAD DINER. #1 FOR DOOM ON THE NET!
Unsurprisingly since BY FAR r/collapse has the widest circulation, they turned in the most submissions. Of course, I do participate there myself and plugged the living shit out of the survey over there, which didn’t hurt either. lol. TBP was in 2nd for a while, but the cohort of Acaademics from Cassandra’s Legacy ended up trouncing them when Ugo put up the survey on his blog also. The Diner rolled in in 4th place, out of the money. lol. Significantly, without being listed in the main choices, Steve Ludlum’s Blog of Economic Undertow came in 5th with 16 write-in ballots.
This split actually has moved up some, now with 14% of Internet Kollapsniks registering their gender as Female. Either way though this matches earlier surveys we have done where the number always comes in between 10-15%, regardless of the Collapse Website you look at. Why this is so isn’t certain, and I asked this question in an earlier article on this topic. It’s not like wimmen are scarce on the net overall, you find them all over the place on the Cooking websites and the Homesteading sites as well with Gardening tips and so forth. They seem to avoid the real heavy duty Doomer websites though.
Another very colorful Doughnut chart here, with Kollapsniks quite widely distributed around the FSoA, and throughout the rest of the World as well. 15% of responses came from non-FSoA citizens living elsewhere in the world. Some of the other countries and regions represented are:
| Australasia |
| Australia |
| Belgium |
| Canada |
| Central America |
| Egypt |
| EU |
| France |
| Germany |
| Italy |
| United Kingdom |
| New Zealand |
| Oceania |
| Spain |
| Sweden |
| Turkey |
| Mongolia |
Some folks here identified themselves as coming from a given region such as Oceania rather than a specific country. Particularly true of people living in the EU. Regardless, it was a fairly wide distribution from around the Globe.
Like the Gender issue, I wrote previously about the Religion issue, specifically how few Muslims particpated in the survey given there are over 1B followers of Islam on the planet. Many of course do not have internet access as their countries get Bombed Back to the Stone Age by the FSoA. However, many have migrated over the years to the FSoA and Europe, so you would figure a few more would show up. Their numbers still hover around 1% though, and are actually below Pantheists, Panentheists and Unitarian-Universalists, all spectacularly tiny religions.
Far as Kollapsniks go, the majority identify themselves as either Atheist or none, as in no religion at all. I find it hard to imagine how anyone can have no belief system at all, everybody believes something. Even if you believe you can’t believe anything, you believe something. lol. Christians are the other really large category, no surprise there since Christianity is the major religion of Western Industrialized nations, and they did a pretty good job of converting a lot of Chinese to this religion too. However, nobody from China listed themselves as from there in the locations question.
This is one of the more astounding results from the survey, since it is so far above the level of education in the population at large. 3/4ths of Kollapsniks have a Bachelors Degree or higher, with 13% at the Doctoral Level. In the general population, less than 1/3rd of people have a Bachelor’s Degree, and less than 2% Doctoral level. Generally speaking, Kollapsniks are very well educated people. An interesting data parsing here would be to see if attitudes about energy or extinction vary significantly by education level? I haven’t done that depth of analysis yet though so I can’t tell you. It’s rather time consuming work, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get to it. Just getting out the basic data is taking me a month of time here. If anybody else wants to parse the numbers, CONTACT me on the Diner and we can discuss it.
Another fairly colorful chart, since Kollapsniks seem to be quite well distributed across the economic spectrum, with the majority between $20,000-$200,000, the working poor to thehigh Upper Middle Class in the FSoA. The Survey did pull in 3 1%ers earning between $500,000-$1,000,000 and 2 0.1%ers with an income >$1,000,000. Who are these folks? How about making a TAX DEDUCTABLE Donation to the Sustaining Universal Needs Foundation (a 501c3 nonprofit Charitable Organization) to help us expand our work educating people about Collapse and building Sustainable Communities? CONTACT me on the Diner if you can help us financially.
Somewhat surprisingly to me ZERO respondents to the survey identified themselves as Homeless. It’s surprising because I know there are several Redditors on r/collapse living and working in some of the more expensive cties like Seattle and San Francisco living in their Stealth Vans. So these folks either didn’t respond to the survey or they don’t consider themselves Homeless, their Vans are their homes. I’m not surprised there are no respondents from people who are so far down now already they are sleeping rough. They don’t generally spend much time on the internet and aren’t real concerned with the greater scope of Collapse. They have their own personal collapse to deal with.
It was brought up Inside the Diner that how much money you have around to pay your monthly bills isn’t really a great measure of Net Worth, and that is somewhat true. However, in order to have months or years of cash around or assets to liquidate, your net worth has to be pretty good, and/or your expenses very low. I had to manage for 7 months with no income whatsoever when I first became a Cripple. A combination of low monthly expenses, no debt and a good sized nest egg I put together over the years enabled me to do this. Here in the FSoA, 60% of people don’t even have 1 month of savings to handle emergencies or loss of income. Kollapsniks do substantially better than this typical percentage, both because they have higher incomes in general than average and because, well they are Preppers & Doomers expecting things to crash any day now. lol. Part of Prepping Up for Collapse is having a Stash of Cash for SHTF Day and getting out of debt. Trimming your expenses to the bone and living a low consumption lifestyle also are important aspects being ready for Collapse to arrive at your doorstep, which it will at some point. Collapse is…
…Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You.
Help Build the Diner and Save As Many As You Can.
25 Comments on "2019 Collapse Survey Results – The 500: Who are the Kollapsniks?"
Cloggie on Mon, 14th Jan 2019 4:02 pm
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6588937/PM-makes-desperate-ditch-plea-MPs-ahead-Commons-showdown.html
“May warns Tory rebels they risk a Corbyn government and the break up of the UK if they reject her Brexit plan in tomorrow’s crunch vote after minister is caught with note claiming no deal means ‘no food’”
Dredd on Mon, 14th Jan 2019 4:26 pm
“Who are the Kollapsniks?”
They are the sycophants of Witch McConnell and his precious (Snoring While Woke – 2).
I AM THE MOB on Mon, 14th Jan 2019 5:35 pm
Americans more likely to die of opioid overdose than car crash, council report says
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/14/odds-dying-opioid-overdose-higher-than-car-crash-analysis-finds/2567996002/
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 2:19 am
Brexit Day!
Today we’ll see the “Meaningful Vote” in the British Commons. It will be a rather uneventful day as the Barnier-Raab deal, PM May is vigorously defending, is most likely going to be defeated, due to the work of the two most worthless politicians Britain can come up with, namely Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, who both have no trouble sacrificing the future of their country on the altar of their own vain personal political ambitions and are using the Brexit-drama as a possibility to catapult themselves into Downing Street 10.
The real fun, as in total chaos, will start tomorrow. May has already said she will Remain PM, for good reason. If Corbyn launches a vote of no confidence later this week, it is probably going to be defeated. Many no deal Tories hate Europe and the May-deal, but they hate Labour even more. May’s strategy is probably that eventually the truth about the situation will sink in in these dimwits in parliament and they will give in. The alternative is Britain crashing out of the EU with no deal, but that eventually a Norway package will come out of it. MP Damian Green was hinting at that possible outcome yesterday in Newsnight.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/assets-worth-800-billion-pounds-to-shift-from-uk-to-eu-due-to-brexit-ey-idUKKCN1P10SQ
“Assets worth 800 billion pounds to shift from UK to EU due to Brexit – EY”
Mind you, a no-deal Brexit means that every Brit, from baby to old-timer, will lose $16,000, just like that. One can have sincere doubts that new trade relations with the likes of ever vibrant Congo, can compensate for this. Asking the question is answering it.
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 3:04 am
Brexit. Why Britain is different from France, Germany, Italy and Spain?
Short answer: they are held hostage by their own past.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6591937/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Lets-revive-Bulldog-spirit-World-War-Two-dig-victory.html
Somewhat more elaborate answer:
– Britain is an island, the other major European countries aren’t. The British instinctively see their country as a castle, that in their view protects them against a hostile world and in which they can always retreat, after having the bridge up first. Safe!
– Between 1815-1939, Britain was geopolitically the #1 country, until the Americans intentionally destroyed the British empire, by sicking the British into war with Germany, by subsidizing a half-American traitor, Winston Churchill, into British politics, in order to do the bidding of the US and destroy Europe for them.
– The reason WHY Britain was the most important country in the 19th century was because of an energy head start, that is early adoption of steam and coal, conditions that never will repeat itself again.
– Although I have no problem recognizing that Britain is a major European country, on par with the likes of Germany and France, the reality in 2019 is that the British have a little too inflated sense of self-importance. To repeat what former Australian PM Abbott said in his passionate defense of Brexit: Britain should be more than “just a European province”, they should pursue the ideal of “Global Britain” (poor British commoner, like our Antius and get used to the smell of halal shoarma meat and ever larger Islamic rape gangs). That sense of self-importance is rooted in totally fake moral superiority regarding WW1 and WW2. The British in all earnest think that Germany started these wars and that the British won them. Mind you, before 1939 Britain was the global #1 and had a glorious empire that encompassed 25% of the planet. A real empire, unlike the present virtual US empire (the latter based on dollar, nukes, military bases, global media, fake WW2 stories, holohoax, global institutions like UN, IMF, WB, etc.) and much larger than the Roman empire. After 1945 they were a miserable US colony, without empire and now a majority Islamic capital. If that is winning a war, I wonder what losing a war means, in the eyes of the British.
– Britain thinks it can afford to shun Europe, because they have an Anglo “hinterland”: US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They have a plan B, The Five Eyes. The British, in great majority, are content with the current situation. If they can’t be #1 in the world, than America should be it, not continental Europe. Britain will always act as the long arm of the US, Brexit or no Brexit, against us continental Europeans. We should not be naive, like these geopolitical upstarts the Germans were, from the Kaiser, to Weimar, to Hitler and finally Rudolf Hess. They are not our geopolitical friends, never will be and we should act upon that insight while preparing for the European return to planetary prominence, together with Russia and China as the Great Other, comparable to the situation of the 20th century, dominated by the US and USSR.
The key for Europe to get there is enshrined in this graph:
https://deepresource.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/fall-empires.jpg?w=1400&h=
Note the intersection of the US and British empire around 1910 and the current (upcoming) intersection of US and Chinese geopolitical power. Now that is a very comfortable outlook, for us continental Europeans! We only have to wait for the inevitable:
– US and China locking horns over global supremacy, probably in the South China Sea first
– US blowing up from within due to multicult and CW2
– The WW1/WW2 alliance Britain had with France and Russia, no longer exists.
– Europe is now united under one currency, parliament, president, energy policy, single market
– Russia wants to become accepted as a major European power, because it fears China
The first could very well unleash the second.
If you add all this up, you can only conclude that in this century you don’t want to be an Anglo.
The 19th British and 20th American centuries are over. Multipolar world is next, carried by both PBM and China. If PBM manages to include a sizable chunk of the US into a “Commonwealth of European people”, we can even remain the #1, although the center of gravity of political power will shift from Washington-NYC back to PBM.
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 4:01 am
“Assets worth 800 billion pounds to shift from UK to EU due to Brexit – EY”
clogged, you are acting like this is going to be a plus for the EU but it will not. It will be just another crushing blow for the future of the bloc. You are going down and this is the first step.
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 4:26 am
“The Decline And Fall Of The European Union”
https://tinyurl.com/yaymhdu4
“In essence, the French and German banks colonized Europe’s periphery nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery. The banks and exporters of the core extracted enormous profits from the periphery via this expansion of debt and consumption. The assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core’s money-center private banks. Note how little of the Greek “bailout” actually went to the citizenry of Greece and how much was interest paid to the financial powers. The core has stripped Greece of collateral and political independence, just as the colonial powers of the 19th century stripped the African and Indo-Asian regions of income, assets and political independence.”
“This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the EU are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core, and the taxpayers of the core nations are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any financialization schemes that go bad. Neocolonialism benefits both the core’s financial Aristocracy and the periphery’s oligarchies. This is ably demonstrated in the essay Misrule of the Few: How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece. The EU has finally reached the endgame of the Neocolonial-Financialization Model. There are no more markets to exploit with financialization, no more assets to strip, and the serfs (a.k.a. yellow vests) of the core are tiring of being stripmined in service of the EU kleptocracy. At this point, the financial Aristocracy has an unsolvable dilemma: writing off defaulted debt also writes off assets and income streams, for every debt is the core’s asset and income stream. When all those phantom assets are recognized as worthless, the system implodes. This exhaustion of the neocolonial-neofeudal model was inevitable and as a result, so too is the decline and fall of the European integration/exploitation project.”
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 4:35 am
“Italy Building Anti-EU Axis”
https://tinyurl.com/ybcxjffp
“Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is leading an effort to create a pan-European populist alliance to challenge the pro-European establishment over the future of the European Union. The aim is to reclaim sovereignty from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and transfer key EU powers back to national capitals. Germany and France, the self-appointed guardians of European integration, are responding to the challenge with an ambitious counterplan to make the European Union a “more decisive power on the world stage.” The showdown, which threatens to split the European Union down the middle between Eurosceptic nationalists and Europhile globalists, will heat up in coming weeks and months, ahead of elections for the European Parliament in late May 2019. During a visit to Warsaw on January 9, Salvini, now the most powerful politician in Italy, said that populists from Italy and Poland should spark a “European spring” and forge a “new equilibrium” to replace the influence of Germany and France in the European Parliament”
“Salvini is trying to create a new political bloc — dubbed the “alliance of sovereignists” (alleanza di sovranisti) — that incorporates nationalists and populists from across Europe to contest the upcoming elections for the European Parliament. The objective is to reassert national sovereignty by changing the political composition of the European Parliament, and by extension the EU’s executive, the European Commission, and eventually the European Council, where national leaders make the most important EU decisions.”
“Germany and France have responded to the challenge by doubling down on European integration. On January 10, The Times of London reported that Merkel and Macron are set to sign the so-called “Aachen Treaty” which will “herald a new era of integration” by “forging shared defense, foreign and economic policies in an unprecedented ‘twinning’ pact regarded as a prototype for the future of the European Union.” According to The Times”
“The Aachen Treaty is certain to face considerable domestic opposition in both countries. In France, which has been rocked by the “yellow vest” protest movement, Marine Le Pen dismissed the new treaty as an “unbalanced” diktat from Germany. Alexander Gauland, leader of the anti-mass-migration party Alternative for Germany, described it as an “erosion of our national sovereignty.”
makati1 on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 4:49 am
Must be frustrating to Davy when most of the intelligent people are offline when he can be online. Too bad he has to sleep. Now he has to post continuously to get his bullshit in, which will not even be read by anyone.
Shoveling snow Davy? It was 85F here today and sunshine. Sleeping with the goats to keep warm? LOL
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 4:51 am
What clogged is doing is cherry picking destructive divergence in the EU and reassembling into his PBM empire fantasy. He wants to grab some of the integration principles of the establishment like a common army and global political power and the finer populist points of the “sovereignists” then brew them up in his own special racist mead. He is crowing about Brexit as if this will benefit the EU and destroy the British. He constantly talks about the decline of the US and the rise of Russia and China for Euro chauvinistic reason. Instead his continent is Balkanizing both economically and politically. This is all very different in his head. It is all according to plan he is sure of it. Even the renewable transformation that is stalling is according to plan. His cognitive dissonance knows energy is Europe’s weak point but he repaints Europe as an energy phoenix. He adapts his plans as reality sets in. Macron was once his hero and he even apologized about his Rothschild roots. Why, because Macron wanted more integration and a common EU army. He cherry picks the populist in the same way mixing their ideas with the establishment instead of seeing a clash of ideologies he is seeing a blending of the best of all in a fantasy world according to clogged. Clogged is just manufacturing his reality. He revises history in the same way. The guy is completely warped. It is all about him the pissed off little Dutch guy that got his ass kicked twice in WW2 and now he wants a return to the grand Dutch Empire of the Colonial era. Get a grip clogged. The world is coming apart together and you are front and center now of that unravel at all levels.
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 5:00 am
‘Must be frustrating to Davy when most of the intelligent people are offline when he can be online. Too bad he has to sleep. Now he has to post continuously to get his bullshit in, which will not even be read by anyone.”
LOL, makattii is whining. You read what I say and then you pretend you don’t. You are a fool makattii. BTW, where is your lunatic enabler dirty Juan. Isn’t it funny when the dumbass is gone the dirty shit stops. The type of shit you whine about then praise as harassment when it is directed at me. You are pissed makattii because I neuter you shit. Your extremist drivel gets moderated and you hate it. It is hilarious how when I come on in the morning you head to bed unless your idiot enablers are on. If your buddies are here you are all puffed up and ready for a fight but alone well it is off to bed early. At night when I sleep well that is when you attack me. What a coward and a fraud
“Shoveling snow Davy? It was 85F here today and sunshine. Sleeping with the goats to keep warm? LOL”
I like cold weather makattii, I like heating with wood. There are plenty of wonderful days here. I enjoy the contrast. I actually get out and do physical activity. You don’t do shit on your fantasy farm you do not even own.
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 7:09 am
“Italy Building Anti-EU Axis”
https://tinyurl.com/ybcxjffp
OMG, davy has been googling again on terms like “EU collapse” and the like. And then he found something with the desired title: “Italy Building Anti-EU Axis”, in the standard Anglo hope that the EU will soon fall apart. As always, he wants to hide the source in a tinyurl, that should NEVER be used, not to deprive the innocent reader of essential information, UNLESS the link is so barbaric long that it could make the thread unreadable, since this stone age Fred Flintstone board software can’t handle these links.
So I do it for davy…
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13560/italy-anti-eu-axis
Now who is gatestoneinstitute… sounds like a think-tank… uh-oh…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute
Although the think-tank, as usual, is run by a neocon Jew(ess), Nina Rosenwald, not even more old-left, but again kosher-run Wikipedia, likes this institute (Wikipedia is run by a (((Jimmy Wales))), who is definitely not from Wales):
The Gatestone Institute (formerly Stonegate Institute and Hudson New York) is a right-wing anti-Muslim[a] think tank with a focus on Islam and the Middle East. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false articles and being a source of viral falsehoods.
So far the opening skirmishes and putting the source in its place. Now for the meat.
Actually, if you read the article (something that davy probably didn’t do, attention span thingy), the contents opposes the title. Salvini doesn’t want to abolish the EU at all, but what he really wants is to redefine the globalist character of the joint, as supported by staunch US allies Macron and Merkel and turn it into a bloody superpower.
What do you mean, “abolish the EU”?
Salvini wants PBM, just like his godfather Berlusconi, the one who interrupted telephone conversations with Obama, when he detected that Putin was on another line:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/908338/Berlusconi-Italy-election-2018-EU-army-Brussels-Berlusconi-nuevo-look
Italy, the fascist original, is at it again.lol Rediscovers some Roman energy lines.
I AM THE MOB on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 7:28 am
Rolls-Royce enjoys record car sales after US tax cuts
https://www.ft.com/content/5c8fb398-142d-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e
What a populist!
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 8:03 am
“OMG, davy has been googling again on terms like “EU collapse” and the like.”
No need to google Euro decline clogged. There is plenty of news all around. The fact you had a longish and lame response shows how impacted you were by my comment. You are a pro at deflection and subterfuge. The facts stand on their own. Your filthy fantasy is easy to wipe clean.
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 8:09 am
Theresa May, the modern day Neville Chamberlain, professes to fight on, even if catastrophically defeated tonight, as she probably will.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6592903/PM-faces-crushing-Brexit-defeat-vote-no-confidence.html
Chamberlain, hands-down the most decent figure in the 1939-drama, Chamberlain who did what was in the best interest of the British empire, Chamberlain the European, Chamberlain who declined all invitations by Roosevelt, because Chamberlain knew precisely what the filthy war-monger and mass-murderer was up to, namely the destruction of the European world, if necessary at the cost of millions of European lives:
https://documents1940.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/chamberlain-and-the-forrestal-diaries/
Chamberlain is shunned today by the empire, because he refused to dance to the tunes of the Americans, much in contrast to Churchill.
Will Theresa May follow in the footsteps of Chamberlain and go down in history as the PM that couldn’t prevent the UK from becoming a 100% colony of the US, the inevitable outcome of a no-deal Brexit and turn into an outright Orwellian nightmare, once the whites in America will be electorally a minority (not numerically, the US is full with white leftist trash, willing to sell themselves out at the first opportunity to darkie rule), probably as soon as in 2020 or 2024 at the latest.
The final outcome will not be decided tonight but in the coming months.
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 8:36 am
The most eloquent and thoughtful Remainer voice in British politics, Lord Heseltine on Brexit, last month:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtxZXOplXQ
Now that’s a way to become 85!
(nota bene: heart attack in 1993 in Venice, refrained from taking over the Tory party because of health problems)
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 10:46 am
“OMG, davy has been googling again on terms like “EU collapse” and the like.”
No need to google clogged. I got that news from the hedge. Sorry for the feeble attempt to mislead everyone again.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-14/italy-building-anti-eu-axis
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 11:18 am
This is the news that there is plenty of all around nederliar:
“US May Enter Recession As Soon As This Quarter Due To Extended Shutdown”
https://tinyurl.com/yb9tc6hd
The entire world is scrambling to decouple from the USD, especially after the global financial crisis that began in the US. My country, just like me, is a mental case.
THE ABOVE 2 POSTS ARE FROM DIRTY JUANP on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 11:43 am
the dirty illegal immigrant and mental health emergency commonly know as JuanPee THE DIRTY
JuanPee THE DIRTY on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 11:45 am
LOL @ the dumbass!!
JuanP on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 11:50 am
I can’t help myself I grew up dirty and nasty. What can you expect no father or mother to offer me any nurturing. I am a complete fucked up mess
Davy on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 11:54 am
Oops, sorry again. Another false link.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-14/decline-and-fall-european-union
DIRTY JUANPEE POSTED THE ABOVE on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 12:01 pm
the dirty illegal immigrant and mental health emergency juanPee
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 12:35 pm
Bezos beats Britain!
$53B divorce bill for a new pair of boobs:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6591983/Lauren-Sanchez-seen-chopper-Santa-Monica-Airport.html
Britain: £39B voor a divorce without new boobs.
JuanP on Tue, 15th Jan 2019 12:38 pm
“The Main Stream Media is quite clear about it: Mixed-race people are more intelligent and taller than are either of their parents [People born to genetically-diverse parents likely to be taller and more intelligent, says study, By Steve Connor, The Independent, July 1, 2015]. And they are also, in general, physically more attractive than mono-racial people [It’s a wonderful, mixed-up world, By Philip Hollis, The Daily Telegraph, November 1, 2009]. A total exaggeration, of course —but it is true that mixed-race people tend to be more crazy.”
http://www.unz.com/article/mixed-race-people-taller-more-intelligent-better-looking-but-also-crazy/