PS: I agree with you Adam, the Professor McAllister should probably keep his mouth shut and have some humility, at least about ecological issues and the ocean. Sure, he's learned what "went wrong". It reminds me of people who are against the PanicFest, but only, now, 4 years later.

PS: Adam, first re "Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded". This is from the 2nd result from your search, per link:

"Ok, here's the deal, I watched it and from what I gathered they used some left over footage and interviews from the first CC. Now don't get me wrong, it's still interesting, it just seems to be video from the original production. It delves deeper into the assassinations and the methods for hiding the narcotics mostly. I gave it a 5 out of 5, but I love stuff like this."

I don't want to seem ungrateful, as you have been most helpful for YEARS on here. My kid picked up the Lionel Shriver novel at the 'brary, so I'll be reading that before reading much more of "Noticing". I would really like to see that original CCowboys, so if you got it, I'd be thrilled. Even if the library had had the original, watching it on the tablet is more convenient.


Anyway, I guess Americans had such a lot of land that "the solution for pollution is dilution" worked pretty well for MOST things. Chemicals that leave heavy metals or what have you and things with significant radioactive half-lives, well they're another story. It's pretty obvious from your quotes that gov't/corp. officials KNEW this was bad stuff they were leaving buried shallow in the ground up there in Niagara. That's one thing about war-time too - it's a good excuse for "anything goes".

I've written about the Indians and that they had 5-10 million (the numbers I see most) people on this big continent, so their Mother Gaia could clean up after them. If there won't likely be a human in the same spot for 50 years, the wood has rotten, stones have been smoothed down a bit, cloth all rotted back to dirt, and so, yeah, it's pretty much pristine again. They didn't have the plastics and the rest.

PS: Fred, yes, the Lew Rockwell writers that DO understand sound money - not all of them really get it - are mostly who I'd read on there. I don't know how to judge the home remedy stuff, but I don't spend much time on that. My wife is enough, as far as that goes! (Not all bad, by any means.). As for the prepper articles, well, there are sites with much better information. These are mostly amateurs

I just read an article from "Sovereign Man", who is another blast from the past for me. (Maybe he used to also be published on ZeroHedge if I don't recall incorrectly.). Anyway, sure, if you are very well off and mostly worried about keeping your wealth, his advice might be helpful, but we can't ALL set up shop in Uruguay, or northern Thailand, or Portugal, etc ..

PS: Me again,

Sorry, 'bout that, Achmed. I didn't realize that there were two of them, though I did notice "reloaded" in the title when I tested the video.

https://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=cocaine+cowboys

I queued up a couple others labeled 2006 to download, but they may be no different than the "reloaded" version. (Hell, they may not even download?) But I'll leave them for a while and see. Maybe they are the first version.(?)

Seems the "reloaded" version is similar to the original, with added scenes that didn't make it to the original. I found this review from a guy who seems to be an enthusiast...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/26fhgk/cocaine_cowboys_reloaded/

Maybe he is just excited about the movie because he is admittedly drunk...

Once upon a Time in the West (1968) came in. I'll upload it later and get you a link.

Happy Tuesday! ☮️

PS: Good afternoon, Messrs. Alarmist and Moderator!

“Consider it progress… They created a whole host of enduring problems, in addition to inflicting pampered Boomers on the world.” - Indeed, Mr. Alarmist.

Mrs. Smith has wondered why people of that age had such an enthusiasm for dumping the most poisonous things they could find into the nearest body of water. What were they thinking?

My Grandpa (born 1919) was one of those “Just take it down to the lake and dump it.” guys. Maybe they thought water would wash away even the most radioactive and poisonous of substances?

To be fair, they were not really picky about where they dumped their nuclear and chemical waste products. Any river, stream, lake, ocean, ditch, field, shallow well, forest, wooded area, storm drain, municipal sewer, whatever... It seems they'd dump poison just about anywhere...

---------------
BIG ATOM WASTE SITE REPORTED FOUND NEAR BUFFALO

By Ralph Blumenthal
Feb. 1, 1981

The Army and a defense contractor dumped more than 37 million gallons of radioactive caustic wastes from the World War II atomic bomb project in shallow wells at Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, between 1944 and 1946, a New York State toxic waste task force reported yesterday.

Citing what it called other ''environmental crimes'' the panel also reported the following:

The Army never sufficiently decontaminated the former Lake Ontario Ordnance Works eight miles north of Niagara Falls in Lewiston and Porter, leaving behind TNT wastes and radioactive residues after most of the property was sold off, in one case for the state's largest chemical dump site, which the panel now finds endangered. The site, where 20,000 tons of residue from the atomic bomb project's centers around the country were deposited on the ground and in makeshift buildings, was ''singularly ill-suited'' for radioactive storage from the start, the report said.

According to the report's account, Linde operated two secret plants for the Manhattan Project in Tonawanda, one a former ceramics plant converted to uranium ore processing, the other called ''the Chandler Street plant,'' whose operations have never been disclosed and remain classified.

In a letter dated March 29, 1944, and included with the report's appendix of documentation, a Linde superintendent, A. R. Holmes, wrote to the area Army Engineer, Capt. Emery L. Van Horn, about disposing of liquid caustic wastes contaminated by radiation.

The options, he wrote, were to discharge the material into a storm sewer, which empties into Two Mile Creek and eventually into the Niagara River, or to ''discharge this material into a well on our Tonawanda factory property,'' which he said was already unfit for drinking. 'Plan 2 Is Favored'

The Linde official then added: ''Plan 1 is objectionable because of probably future complications in the event of claims of contamination against us. Plan 2 is favored because our law department advises that it is considered impossible to determine the course of subterranean streams and, therefore, the responsibility for contamination could not be fixed.''

The report also cited new eyewitness accounts and other documentation to back up previous contentions that Army personnel had dumped drums of toxic chemicals from various defense contractors, including what was then the Hooker Electrochemical Company, into a ditch called Love Canal beginning about 1942.

(Examples like this are abundant all throughout the Greater Niagara region.)

You're right though, Mr. Alarmist. Building reefs out of tires from the landfill is not as nearly bad a dumping nuclear and chemical waste into the ocean, lake, river or woods by the off ramp.

Progress!

---------------

“Miss Thunberg couldn't be reached for comment…”

Maybe she 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 have been? I don’t know. I didn’t try. 🙃

As you allude, she's never around for any real environmental disasters or problems.
I guess they don't make for good photo ops.(?)

https://i.ibb.co/J5W7NzH/Greta.jpg

I do think there are some lessons to be learned from McAllister's folly.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2012/09/22/ray-mcallister-was-beloved-by-south-florida-divers/

https://www.iflscience.com/the-time-florida-dumped-2-million-tires-in-the-ocean-to-help-fish-61575

"The really good idea was to provide habitat for marine critters so we could double or triple marine life in the area," Ray McAllister, a professor of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University who helped organize the project said some years later, in 2007. "It just didn't work that way. I look back now and see it was a bad idea."

Ray McAllister may have meant well, but he really shit the bed with his tire reef idea. I would think that until his tires are all cleaned up he would have no right to speak of environmental issues, or anything else ocean or reef related... Or anything that involves any common sense...

https://www.coralreef.gov/assets/meeting15/mcallister.pdf

Apparently he still fancied himself some sort of expert even after years of cleanup efforts by others and millions of taxcattle funds spent. The guy really knew how to leave behind a legacy.

https://irt.defense.gov/Portals/57/Documents/news/Currents_Magazine.pdf

As far as I know, the guy was never charged with littering or held responsible for the multi-million dollar, multi-generational mess he created. An interesting case of failing upward.

I'm sure there is some sort of lesson here for all the eco-warriors and gretas of the world...

Do no harm? (Perhaps?)

☮️

PS I read Lew Rockwell's site for quite a while. I still read it once in a while, but I'm not so fond of the alternative medicine stuff, which seems quackish and quixotic to me.

The anti-war and economic stuff seems sound, though I suspect it will take a collapse of more than Great Depression magnitude before we can go back to some kind of value-based money. But Austrian economics does help me understand the economics of inflation (currency inflation and price inflation), and, due to its influence, I've never been tempted by bitcoin. It also helps me distinguish between those "evil profiteers" who make obscene profits providing all of us with stuff we want, and those noble, crusading government entities that try their best to keep them from doing it and make sure they get paid well in the process.

PS

Hey, at least tires aren’t as bad as dumping nuclear and chemical waste into the oceans. Consider it progress.

As bad as the Boomers were, the real problem for the world was their parents’ generation: They created a whole host of enduring problems, in addition to inflicting pampered Boomers on the world.

PS: I can actually remember this project from when I was a kid, Adam. I'd figured they had it all worked out - that the ecologists knew that coral really really liked tires. That's back when projects could actually get DONE. America was a can-do country, so let's just do it. (Plus, great way to get rid of the tires!)

No, it didn't work out so well at all, Adam. Doing that clean-up is REAL environmental work. Miss Thunberg couldn't be reached for comment because there's no political action that these reef tires could provide an excuse for.

The real solution for all the old tires, besides recycling some into that playground matting (which I got a feeling will end up to be a small environmental problem too) is finding a way to burn them for energy without emitting those REAL nasty emissions of pollution. Tires burn pretty well - hard to put out.

One, more thing, I loaded up the file you inserted - that was "Cocaine Cowboys - Reloaded", not the original. I appreciate your work, but this one IS at the library, and I'd wanted to watch the original first.

PS: A little more tire reef info...

1,000 tires washed up on a North Carolina beach. Where did they come from?
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/12/19/tires-holden-beach-storm-reef

"Between 1975 and 1983, North Carolina state officials placed about 650,000 tires in the ocean to create artificial reefs..."

Good times... ☮️

PS: Good evening, gentlemen,

https://www.thecooldown.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/57d52cf4-1.png

I know this is off topic, but this story is so chock full of stupidity.
I'll begin with a five star review written by Shannon...

"I have small wrists and most the 4Ocean Bracelets don't fit me all that great. But this one gets very nice and tight. Better yet, you can definitely tell it is made of tires. It does have a smell to it, but frankly that is to be expected, and it is not that strong unless you truly try to smell for it. And the details to it are so nice. This is probably my favorite bracelet from the more expensive collection. I even convinced my mother to get one"

https://www.4ocean.com/products/the-osborne-reef-bracelet

"Our crews are diving to new depths to clean the ocean and protect our coral reefs from millions of tires that were sunk into the ocean over 50 years ago. This historic underwater cleanup is funded through the sale of our Osborne Reef Jewelry Collection, which is made with rubber from the tires we recover."

Apparently some very intelligent geniuses thought dumping more than 2 million tires into a 36 acre area off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale was a good idea. The Goodyear Blimp was even on hand to celebrate the occasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef

"With endorsement of the project by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Broward County government approved the project in 1974. That spring, more than 100 privately owned boats enthusiastically volunteered to assist with the project; accompanied by the US Navy's USS Thrush, thousands of tire bundles were simultaneously dropped onto the reef. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company provided equipment for the auspicious undertaking, even supporting the project so far as to drop a gold-painted tire from a Goodyear Blimp to christen the site. The culmination of the project was the deposit of over two million tires bound with steel clips over 36 acres of the ocean floor, approximately 7,000 feet (2,100 m) offshore, and at a depth of 65 feet (20 m)."

https://globalsubdive.com/missions/osborne-tire-reef/

I'm not trying to make fun of the volunteers who are helping to clean up this colossal mess or the people buying the bracelets to help fund it. But, I can't help but think how entirely wasteful and stupid such a project is.

It has taken more than 20 years (and I have no idea how much money) to remove ~250,000 tires from the dumping ground. Some have been swept away by the ocean. (Some of the Osborne Reef tires were found on the beach in North Carolina.) It will take many more years to remove all the remaining tires from the ocean.

Greta Thunberg's booking agent was not reached for comment.
https://mn2s.com/booking-agency/talent-roster/greta-thunberg/

☮️

PS: That all fits together well, your conspiracy theory. It sounds like a great screenplay, or a 20,000 word Ron Unz article, one. ;--}

I do remember the whole "then the terrorists will have won" theme, from about 15 years ago, too. I believe that the fact that air travelers are happy to put their arms in the air in some big machine, get searched up if need be, with specific reason is a great example of the terrorists having won, whether they know it or not...

PS: Here's my story on that, Mr. Hail. As someone who was reading these Libertarians from the time before 9/11 (I'm pretty sure), I may not have paid much attention to Mr. Rockwell's and the others strict anti-Iraq/Afghan war stances. I realize the two are slightly different in purported motivation by the US Gov't, aka, the NeoCons of the day.

My concern immediately after 9/11 was all the talk and implementation of a bigger US Police State, the Dept. of Motherland Security, the TSA (eventually part of the latter), etc. I cared more about the harm to this country than to foreigners*. I figured the Afghanistan War would be a fairly short effort at retaliation.

Iraq? Like many people, I couldn't see what in blazes Iraq had to do with 9/11, but I still was naive enough to think "maybe the Bush Admin. knows something I don't or sees some connection that they can't tell us about." That it was being waged for completely other reasons, GW wanting to avenge his Dad, show up his Dad (something about this is in one of the articles in the "Invade-the-World / Invite-the-World" section of Mr. Sailer's book - those articles are VERY good, but you all have probably read them, or parts he dwelled on later.

So, I gotta admit that I never was anti-Iraq war very specifically in talking to friends - didn't have the blog then - but I was surely miffed about it. I did not see any good argument against the words of the Lew Rockwells of the time either. I didn't really think of who NeoCons were and what they were up to until a few years later, maybe '05 or so.

I'll write more in an hour or so.


* I understand the were I being bombed and droned by America, I'd think much differently.

PS: First off, maybe it was not obvious, but when I wrote "There are a few good writers whose words still ring true, I of course include Mr. Rockwell, and I'm thinking of Paul Craig Roberts (as much he's been a dick about UR comments) and a few more serious Libertarian/Constitutionalist pundits.

There's no comparison between Lew Rockwell and Andrew Anglin, I agree. Is this just the sign of the "Idiocracy" following times these days?

I remember "AntiWar" blooger Justin Raimondo too. I didn't like him from one column way back, but I didn't give him much of a chance. Unfortunately he died a few years back. I'm pretty sure he was on the LewRockwell.com site.

PS

Mr. Hail said, “If you don't wear a Corona-Mask and get multiple injections of unknown substances, you are Letting the Terrorists Win.”

I didn’t need a sarc tag to get it, Mr. Hail, but truth be told, If you wear a Corona-Mask and get multiple injections of unknown substances, you are indeed Helping the True Terrorists Win.

BTW, the USA had every reason to believe Iraq still had WMDs, because it and its allies in the EU had sold their Iraqi proxies a number of WMD constituents in the foolish quest to knock Iran down a few pegs in the region.

PS: Good afternoon, Mr. Hail!

What do you mean by "radical anti-war content"?

Is that a real thing?

Cheers! ☮️

PS

-- Lew Rockwell as Anti-War --

I think Lew Rockwell (dot com)'s reputation was forever cemented in the eyes of people on the side of Reality, by their hardline and consistent stance against the Iraq War, from the start, from before the start.

The version of reality the Fox News watcher got, like that "Get a Brain, MORANS!" U.S.-flag-bandana-wearing protester had (a famous early "meme"), was artificially constructed by agenda-setters.

Most people fell for the "weapons of mass-destruction" in a way really reminiscent of the Virus Panic of 2020. But Lew Rockwell was mocking the whole thing from the start. This is a sign that whatever faults he/they had, they had clarity-of-vision AND a valuable form of moral-courage.

Mr. Moderator, I don't readily recall whether you have given your personal-history of your feelings on the Iraq War. And if you were reading Lew Rockwell as of late 2002 and early 2003, you'd have been exposed to radical anti-war content (it's part of their three-hyphenated-word slogan, after all). Did you at any time "believe in the WMDs" and/or Iraq having masterminded "Nine Eleven" or any other theory circulating at the time?

-- -- --

It would be a delightful conspiracy theory if somebody proposed the Wuhan Apocalypse Virus had originated in a germ-warfare lab run by Saddam Hussein for use targeted use against White-American Christians and against their moral-superiors, the Chosen People. But to which Arabs and others would be immune.

"Shock and Awe" caused the evil experimenters in flu viruses to get spooked and run off. But just before the "Mission Accomplished" party held by G. W. Bush, Bin Laden personally retrieved the terror-virus and all its accoutrements, and personally brought it to Wuhan for safekeeping. Then slinking back to his cave at Bora Bora to await the chance to follow the plan of inserting The Virus into an exotic animal and watching the West crumble before Islamic Might.

If you don't wear a Corona-Mask and get multiple injections of unknown substances, you are Letting the Terrorists Win.

PS

-- On the value of Lew Rockwell --

The value of Lew Rockwell that I remember was that he, or they (the "Lew Rockwell" authors and editors), were consciously anti-system and dissident in a morally serious and coherent way. I mean, in a way that is shocking to a political "normie" but WHILE being completely without crudeness and even comic-book-villainesqueness.

I have in mind Andrew Anglin there, with that description of what Lew Rockwell is "not." Andrew Anglin's popularity is not for his ideas but for his shock-jockeyness, his obsessions with Internet-personalities, and his "trolling" persona. The man plays the role of "shock jock" for a ca. 2010s Internet-social-media era.

Another difference is that Lew Rockwell has an actual political program; Andrew Anglin has nothing except four-letter words, ethnic slurs, and a big fan he uses to direct thee toxic fumes of social-media drama onto a reading public.

Lew Rockwell and co. remind me of the long tradition of radical dissidents of the 19th and 20th centuries who were quite morally serious. This includes some in the anarchist tradition. I guess in a certain era that some of the Lew Rockwell people may have been considered right-wing anarchists, even though in our type "the A-word" is the exclusive domain of the Left.

Another good thing about Lew Rockwell is how he is such a classic-American type, again as if a 19th-century man walked through a magic-door to enter our bizarre postmodern reality.