Oct 022022
 
 October 2, 2022  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Marc Chagall The Feast of the Tabernacles 1916

 

Russia Makes It ‘Impossible For War To End’ – Borrell (RT)
The End of Western Hegemony is INEVITABLE – Putin (Konstantin Kisin)
Nord Stream Explosions Are A ‘Tremendous Opportunity’ – US (RT)
Europe ‘Indefinitely Deprived’ Of Key Gas Supply Route – Gazprom (RT)
Who Profits From Pipeline Terror? (Escobar)
Russian Gas Exports To EU Via TurkStream Plunge (RT)
Russia Halts Gas Delivery To Italy (RT)
Azerbaijan To Increase Gas Deliveries To Bulgaria, Via Greece (AP)
Greek Gas Utility Clinches Winter LNG Deal (R.)
The Euro Without Germany (Michael Hudson)
Thousands Of German Stores On Brink Of Closure – Spiegel (RT)
Zelensky’s Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role In The Holocaust (Dershowitz)
FBI Agents Improperly Saw Privileged Trump Communications: Lawyers (ET)
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing (Steve Keen)
FDA Withholds Autopsy Results on People Who Died After COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)
Next On Europe’s Doomsday List: Collapse Of Cell Phone Networks (ZH)
China Tells State Banks To Sell Dollars, Buy Yuan (R.)

 

 

 

 

“Good people do things for other people. That’s it. The end”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Said it before: Borrell is EU’s No.1 warmonger, he needs to go.

Try this one: Putin has created the opportunity for peace. By making it much harder for Ukraine to shell its -formerly- own Russian speaking population.

Russia Makes It ‘Impossible For War To End’ – Borrell (RT)

The accession of four former Ukrainian regions into Russia makes the conflict in Ukraine impossible to end, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said on Saturday. Speaking to the Spanish RTVE channel, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs described the impending inclusion of the two Donbass Republics, and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, into the Russian Federation as an “annexation” and an act of “completely unjustified aggression.” “Putin makes it more difficult, even impossible, for the war to end,” Borrell said. The EU is committed to continuing its military support for Ukraine, the diplomat stressed. The bloc also intends to go ahead with another package of sanctions against Moscow “so that Russia would be isolated internationally,” he added.

Russia has consistently warned the West against “pumping up” Ukraine with weapons, saying that it would only prolong the conflict. Borrell’s claim that Russia’s “annexation” of new territories will further jeopardize a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis echoed earlier remarks by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Speaking on the eve of the accession ceremony for the former Ukrainian regions, Guterres condemned in very strong terms both their inclusion into Russia and the preceding referendums, and called on Russia “to step back from the brink.” In response, Moscow accused the secretary general of abusing his authority.

Putin, meanwhile, warned the Ukrainian authorities and their Western “handlers” that people living in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as in the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, have become Russian citizens “forever” because they made a choice “to be with their Motherland.” In his speech at the signing ceremony for the accession treaties, the president also accused the West of dreaming “to weaken and break up Russia,” of being “ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system,” and of overthrowing traditional values, which, in Putin’s opinion, amounts to “pure Satanism.” The Russian president did call on Kiev to “return to the negotiating table.” His Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, however, said that his country was ready for dialogue with Russia, but “with another president.”

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“.. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by “plundering our country”. Now they want to solve their problems by “breaking Russia”..

The End of Western Hegemony is INEVITABLE – Putin (Konstantin Kisin)

This is a reproduction of my live Twitter summary/translation of Vladimir Putin’s speech: I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin’s speech. Obviously, that won’t happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible. Setting aside his brief comments on the recent “referendums”, he spends most of his speech discussing the West. His primary complaint isn’t NATO expansion, which gets only a cursory mention. The West is greedy and seeks to enslave and colonise other nations, like Russia. The West uses the power of finance and technology to enforce its will on other nations. To collect what he calls the “hegemon’s tax”.

To this end the West destabilises countries, creates terrorist enclaves and most of all seeks to deprive other countries of sovereignty. It is this “avarice” and desire to preserve its power that is the reason for the “hybrid war” the collective West is “waging on Russia”. They want us to be a “colony”. They do not want us to be free, they want Russians to be a mob of soulless slaves – direct quote. The rules-based order the West goes on about is “nonsense”. Who made these rules? Who agreed to them? Russia is an ancient country and civilization and we will not play by these “rigged” rules. The West has no moral authority to challenge the referendums because it has violated the borders of other countries. Western elites are “totalitarian, despotic and apartheidistic” – direct quote.

They are racist against Russia and other countries and nations. “Russophobia is racism”. They discriminate by calling themselves the “civilised world”. They colonised, started the global slave trade, genocided native Americans, pillaged India and Africa, forced China to buy opium through war. We, on the other hand, are proud that we “led” the anti-colonial movement that helped countries develop to reduce poverty and inequality. They are Russophobic (they hate us) because we didn’t allow our country to be pillaged by creating a strong CENTRALISED (emphasis his) state based on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. They have been trying to destabilise our country since the 17th century in the Times of Trouble. Eventually, they managed to “get their hands on our riches” at the end of the 20th century.

They called us friends and partners while pumping out trillions of dollars (his irony game is strong today). We remember this. We didn’t forget. The West claims to bring freedom and democracy to other countries but it’s the exact opposite of the truth. The unipolar world is anti-democratic by its very nature. It is a lie. They used nuclear weapons, creating a precedent. They flattened German cities without “any military need to do so”. There was no need for this except to scare us and the rest of the world. Korea, Vietnam. To this day they “occupy” Japan, South Korea and Germany and other countries while cynically calling them “allies”. The West has surveillance over the leaders of these nations who “swallow these insults like the slaves they are”. He then talks about bioweapon research (haven’t heard about them for a while) and human experiments “including in Ukraine”.

The US rules the world by the power of the fist. Any country which seeks to challenge Western hegemony becomes an enemy. Their neocolonialism is cloaked in lies like “containment” of Russia, China and Iran. The concept of truth has been destroyed with fakes and extreme propaganda (irony game still strong). You cannot feed your people with printed dollars and social media. You need food and energy. But Western elites have no desire to find a solution to the food and energy crises *they* (emphasis his) created. They solved the problems at the start of 20c with WW1 and the US established dominance of the world via the dollar as a result of WW2. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by “plundering our country”. Now they want to solve their problems by “breaking Russia”.

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“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

Nord Stream Explosions Are A ‘Tremendous Opportunity’ – US (RT)

The US views the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” to wean the continent off of Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Friday. With winter approaching, Blinken said that the US wants Europe to decrease its fuel use. Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.” “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,”Blinken declared.

The US likely stands to gain the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which were damaged by a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm earlier this week. Washington has for years been trying to convince European leaders to swap Russian gas for its LNG, and the severity of the damage to the undersea conduits now means that Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route, Russian energy operator Gazprom stated on Friday. In a speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on“the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. “It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

While the way is now open for the US to sell its more expensive LNG to Europe, the shortfall cannot be covered overnight. US exporters warned throughout the summer that they will not be able to ship enough gas to meet demand on the continent, and many of Europe’s import terminals are still under construction or in planning. Meanwhile, energy bills are skyrocketing across Europe. In Germany, which faces the prospect of rapid “deindustrialization,” protesters took to the streets to demand the re-opening of Nord Stream 2, just days before the explosions. Food shortages have been predicted in Germany and firewood is in hot demand across the continent as citizens struggle to heat their homes. “There’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter,” Blinken said, suggesting, as EU leaders have also done, that Europe work to “reduce demand” for gas.

Blinken

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“..von der Leyen: [..] any “deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest retaliation.”

Watch out US! Poland! Denmark! Sweden!

Europe ‘Indefinitely Deprived’ Of Key Gas Supply Route – Gazprom (RT)

The damage to Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines means Europe is indefinitely deprived of one of its key gas supply routes, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov said on Friday. “Essentially, Europe is indefinitely deprived of one of the key routes for obtaining a crucial energy resource. Russia and Gazprom spent a huge amount of energy and money to build and launch these pipelines because this is the shortest and safest, as we thought, way for Russian gas to reach European consumers. Now the pipelines are standing with puncture holes,” Kupriyanov said at a UN Security Council meeting. Technical data “allows [Gazprom] to say with certainty” that the sharp pressure drops were caused by physical damage, the spokesman stressed.

According to him, at the time of the incident, the pipelines were not transporting gas, but both were filled with the fuel and ready for service. There were about 800 million cubic meters of gas in the strings, which is equivalent to Denmark’s gas consumption for three months. “Gazprom has begun searching for possible solutions to get the Nord Stream system back up and running, but the timeline cannot yet be estimated… This is a very difficult technical task,” Kupriyanov said, noting that in order to assess the situation, Gazprom will have to start with a physical inspection of the damaged areas. The Danish authorities reported leaks on the pipelines on Monday after a local pipeline operator noted a loss of pressure on both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines earlier that day.

Danish and Swedish seismologists later spoke of a series of undersea explosions in the area. The Russian, American, and Swedish authorities said the leaks might have been the result of a deliberate attack. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said the incidents were the result of sabotage, warning that any “deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest retaliation.” Russia called the incident a “terrorist attack” and summoned a UN Security Council meeting over it.

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“The US State Department declared that the idea the US was involved is “preposterous.”

Who Profits From Pipeline Terror? (Escobar)

The notion that Russian intel would destroy Gazprom pipelines is beyond ludicrous. All they had to do was to turn off the valves. NS2 was not even operational, based on a political decision from Berlin. The gas flow in NS was hampered by western sanctions. Moreover, such an act would imply Moscow losing key strategic leverage over the EU. Diplomatic sources confirm that Berlin and Moscow were involved in a secret negotiation to solve both the NS and NS2 issues. So they had to be stopped – no holds barred. Geopolitically, the entity that had the motive to halt a deal holds anathema a possible alliance in the horizon between Germany, Russia, and China.

The Poles, moreover, are terrified that with Russia’s partial mobilization, and the new phase of the Special Military Operation (SMO) – soon to be transformed into a Counter-Terrorism Operation (CTO) – the Ukrainian battlefield will move westward. Ukrainian electric light and heating will most certainly be smashed. Millions of new refugees in western Ukraine will attempt to cross to Poland. At the same time there’s a sense of “victory” represented by the partial opening of the Baltic Pipe in northwest Poland – almost simultaneously with the sabotage. Talk about timing. Baltic Pipe will carry gas from Norway to Poland via Denmark. The maximum capacity is only 10 billion cubic meters, which happens to be ten times less than the volume supplied by NS and NS2. So Baltic Pipe may be enough for Poland, but carries no value for other EU customers.

Meanwhile, the fog of war gets thicker by the minute. It has already been documented that US helicopters were overflying the sabotage nodes only a few days ago; that a UK “research” vessel was loitering in Danish waters since mid-September; that NATO tweeted about the testing of “new unmanned systems at sea” on the same day of the sabotage. Not to mention that Der Spiegel published a startling report headlined “CIA warned German government against attacks on Baltic Sea pipelines,” possibly a clever play for plausible deniability. The Russian Foreign Ministry was sharp as a razor: “The incident took place in an area controlled by American intelligence.” The White House was forced to “clarify” that President Joe Biden – in a February video that has gone viral – did not promise to destroy NS2; he promised to “not allow” it to work. The US State Department declared that the idea the US was involved is “preposterous.”

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Netherlands banned “export and provision of pipes for Russia’s use”. And this is not deliberate?!

Russian Gas Exports To EU Via TurkStream Plunge (RT)

Russian gas flows to the EU via the TurkStream pipeline dropped by a quarter at the end of September compared to the end of August, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported on Saturday.According to the report, which cited data from the association of Europe’s transmission system operators, on September 29 about 32 million cubic meters of gas were supplied to the EU through the Strandzha 2-Malkoclar entry point on the Turkish-Bulgarian border. This is about 25% less than at the end of August, when the pipeline supplied about 43 million cubic meters of gas per day. On Thursday, the Russian-owned operator of the TurkStream pipeline,

South Stream Transport, said that the Netherlands had withdrawn its gas export license due to the latest EU sanctions package against Russia, which implies a ban on the export and provision of pipes for Russia’s use. Announcing their decision to revoke the license ahead of schedule, the Dutch authorities also referred to the ban on the supply of goods and provision of services, including technical assistance and maintenance of the pipeline in Russia’s exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf. European gas futures spiked on the news of the license withdrawal, jumping 10% on Friday to $2,087 per thousand cubic meters, or €205.995 per megawatt hour.However, South Stream Transport later noted that the sanctions do not expressly impose restrictions on the transportation of gas via the pipeline. The company has already applied for a renewal of its export license.

Representatives of the operator said that the gas delivered to Europe via Turkish Stream supports the region’s energy security and that the pipeline is likely to be exempted from sanctions for this reason. TurkStream is a two-string pipeline with capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. It carries Russian gas across the Black Sea to Türkiye and from there to countries of southern and southeastern Europe. With Nord Stream 1 currently out of operation due to this week’s leakage, TurkStream is the only remaining gas transmission system that bring gas to Europe besides the transit line running through Ukraine. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the TurkStream license withdrawal would not affect its operation and that gas supplies continue.

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“..the temperature when heating buildings will be reduced by one degree Celsius..”

Russia Halts Gas Delivery To Italy (RT)

Russia’s Gazprom has informed Italian energy company Eni that it will not be able to supply gas to the country on Saturday, due to the “impossibility of transporting it” through Austria, the Italian company said in a statement. “Gazprom informed that it is not able to confirm the gas volumes requested for today, stating that it’s not possible to supply gas through Austria. Therefore, today’s Russian gas supplies to Eni through the Tarvisio entry point will be at zero,” the statement from Eni said, as cited by news agency RIA Novosti. Eni has said it will provide further information “in case supplies will be restored.” Gazprom has not yet specified the reason for its inability to supply gas through Austria. Grid operator Gas Connect Austria has not made any statements regarding the situation so far.


Italy receives Russian gas via the one remaining transit line through Ukraine. The gas flows to Italy after passing through Austria. Other European countries that receive Russian gas through Ukraine include Slovakia, Moldova, Romania, and the Czech Republic. Earlier, the website of the Ukrainian gas transit operator reported that the flow through Ukraine is expected to amount to around 41.6 million cubic meters on October 1. Since February, the share of Russian gas in Italian imports has fallen from 40% to roughly 18%, with the authorities saying they can cope with the shortfall expected in the winter by using alternative fuel sources. The country has adopted an energy-saving plan to reduce gas consumption. As part of this plan, the heating season will be cut by 15 days and the temperature when heating buildings will be reduced by one degree Celsius.

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AP doesn’t specify how much goes to Greece, but I would guess at least 1 billion cubic meters.

Azerbaijan To Increase Gas Deliveries To Bulgaria, Via Greece (AP)

Azerbaijan’s president said Friday that his country is a reliable partner and will stick to an agreement to double gas exports to the European Union by 2027. Speaking to reporters in Bulgaria’s capital, President Ilhan Aliyev called a new gas interconnector with Greece “a historic achievement and an opportunity for Azeri gas to reach Europe in larger quantities.” Aliyev was in Sofia for the official launch Saturday of a new pipeline that will supply natural gas from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria, whose vital supply of Russian gas was cut off in April amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the event on Saturday, he will join heads of state and governments from the region, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The 182-kilometer pipeline is designed to run from the northeastern Greek city of Komotini to Stara Zagora in central Bulgaria. It is expected to start with an initial capacity of 3 billion cubic meters of gas a year, with the prospect of future expansion to 5 billion cubic meters. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev stressed the importance of the new gas link not only for Bulgaria, but for the continent. “It decisively changes the energy map of Europe,” he said. The desire for other sources of gas increased significantly after Moscow decided to turn its natural gas deliveries into a political weapon. In late April, Russia cut off gas supplies to Bulgaria after it refused Moscow’s demand to pay for the deliveries in rubles, Russia’s currency. Relations between the two former Soviet bloc allies have tanked in recent months, and last month Bulgaria ordered the expulsion of 70 Russian diplomats, triggering an angry response from Moscow.

Bulgaria, which has a contract for 1 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas, or one-third of the country’s annual needs, wants to increase the volume by between a half-billion to 1 billion cubic meters more per year following the suspension of Russian gas flows were suspended. Radev said he received a letter Thursday from gas system operators in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia that offered to transport gas from Azerbaijan using the integrated networks of their countries. He said Bulgaria could host a summit of the four countries to discuss possibilities for such gas transfers. The topic has become important after Russia said it would suspend some maintenance and repair work of a gas pipeline that supplies Turkey and countries like Serbia and Hungary.

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“TotalEnergies operates in over 130 countries spanning five continents..” US LNG? Qatar?

Greek Gas Utility Clinches Winter LNG Deal (R.)

Greece’s biggest gas utility, DEPA Commercial, has clinched a deal with TotalEnergies for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over the winter months if needed, the Greek energy ministry said on Thursday. The deal stipulates that TotalEnergies will supply Greece with two LNG cargoes a month for five months until March 2023, the ministry said in a statement The total LNG that would be delivered for the five months would be 10 terrawatt hours (TWh), though Greece reserves the right not to purchase the gas but pay a cancellation fee. A deal price was not disclosed, but the ministry said Greece would buy the gas at a benchmark price rather than the highly TTF price.


“It’s a deal of key importance for the country’s energy supplies in the event gas flows from Russia are curbed or halted,” the statement said. Greece has been receiving Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline, which also delivers to Hungary via Serbia. Athens has been working to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, ramping up LNG supplies and reopening some coal-fired power plants while also preparing to switch some gas-fired stations to diesel.

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“The problem is that its plans for how the Ukraine war and anti-Russian sanctions have worked out so far have been just the reverse of what was announced.”

The Euro Without Germany (Michael Hudson)

On Tuesday, September 27 when news of the Nord Stream gas attacks became known, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shed crocodile tears and said that attacking Russian pipelines was “in no one’s interest.” But if that really were the case, no one would have attacked the gas lines. I have no doubt that U.S. strategists have a game plan for how to proceed from here, and to do so that indeed is in what the neocons claim to be in the U.S. interest – that of maintaining a unipolar neoliberalized and financialized global economy for as long as they can. They have long had a plan for countries that are unable to [service] their foreign debts. The IMF will lend them the money, conditional upon the debtor country raising the foreign exchange to repay the (increasingly expensive) dollar loans by privatizing what remains of their public domain, natural-resource patrimony and other assets, mainly to U.S. financial investors and their allies.

Will it work? Or will debtor countries band together and work out ways to restore the seemingly lost world of affordable oil and gas prices, fertilizer prices, grain and other food prices, and metals or raw materials supplied by Russia, China and their allied Eurasian neighbors? That is the next great worry for U.S. global strategists. It seems less easy to solve than was done by the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2. But the solution seems to be the usual U.S. approach: something military in nature, new color revolutions. The aim is to gain the same power over Global South and Eurasian countries that American diplomacy wielded over Germany and other European countries via NATO.

Unless an institutional alternative is created to the IMF, World Bank, International Court, World Trade Organization and the numerous UN agencies now biased by U.S. diplomats and their proxies, the coming decades will see the U.S. economic strategy of financial and military dominance unfold as Washington has planned. The problem is that its plans for how the Ukraine war and anti-Russian sanctions have worked out so far have been just the reverse of what was announced. That may give some hope for the world’s future. The opposition and even contempt by U.S. diplomats to other countries acting in their own economic interest and social values is so strong that they are unwilling to think through just how these countries might develop their own alternative to the U.S. world plan. The question is thus how successfully these other countries may develop their alternative new economic order, and how they can protect themselves from the fate that Europe has just imposed upon itself for the next decade.

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“16,000 businesses may go bankrupt this year..” Imagine next year.

Thousands Of German Stores On Brink Of Closure – Spiegel (RT)

Over 15,000 German stores are facing bankruptcy due to soaring energy costs, Der Spiegel reported on Friday, citing the German Retail Association (HDE). According to the report, the HDE wrote a letter to Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck in which it warned that the “exploding energy costs” are making it impossible for increasing numbers of retailers to make ends meet. The group called the situation “existentially threatening” and said that around 16,000 businesses may go bankrupt this year, while the “negative trend” is likely to continue through 2023. The group said the rise in energy costs, which have spiked by 147% on average since the beginning of the year, is preventing retailers from making a profit. The share of electricity costs in sales volumes for retailers has already reached almost 3% on average and many in the industry expect this figure to rise to as high as 5% in 2023.


According to HDE President Josef Sanktjohanser and Managing Director Stefan Genth, the returns generated in many retail sectors are already extremely low today. In the case of clothing, the operating profit as a percentage of sales is 2.1%, while in the case of shoes it is currently negative at -1.2%. Even in the food segment, it is only 2-4%. Such a state of affairs may put many companies “at a disadvantage,” the group warned. Given the sharp decline in the purchasing power of private households and record-high inflation, it will likely not be possible to shift the rising energy costs to consumers, the HDE states. Therefore, the group urged Berlin to intervene by temporarily limiting tariffs and cutting electricity taxes to a minimum.

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“Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.”

The Great Game In Ukraine Is Spinning Out Of Control (Jeffrey Sachs)

Under Clinton’s watch, NATO expanded to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. Five years later, under President George W. Bush, Jr. NATO expanded to seven more countries: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania), the Balkans (Slovenia), and Slovakia. Under President Barack Obama, NATO expanded to Albania and Croatia in 2009, and under President Donald Trump, to Montenegro in 2019. Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement intensified sharply in 1999 when NATO countries disregarded the UN and attacked Russia’s ally Serbia, and stiffened further in the 2000’s with the US wars of choice in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. At the Munich Security conference in 2007, President Putin declared that NATO enlargement represents a “serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”

Putin continued: “And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances [of no NATO enlargement] our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?” Also in 2007, with the NATO admission of two Black Sea countries, Bulgaria and Romania, the US established the Black Sea Area Task Group (originally the Task Force East).

Then in 2008, the US raised the US-Russia tensions still further by declaring that NATO would expand to the very heart of the Black Sea, by incorporating Ukraine and Georgia, threatening Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Middle East. With Ukraine’s and Georgia’s entry, Russia would be surrounded by five NATO countries in the Black Sea: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. Russia was initially protected from NATO enlargement to Ukraine by Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who led the Ukrainian parliament to declare Ukraine’s neutrality in 2010. Yet in 2014, the US helped to overthrow Yanukovych and bring to power a staunchly anti-Russian government. The Ukraine War broke out at that point, with Russia quickly reclaiming Crimea and supporting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas, the region of Eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of Russian population. Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.

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Churchill, Nobel Peace Prize, but embedded in the Bandera legacy. Yeah, makes a lot of sense…

Zelensky’s Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role In The Holocaust (Dershowitz)

Volodymyr Zelensky has performed a truly great service on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Because of his Churchill-like determination to resist Russian aggression, I have proposed him for the Nobel Peace prize. But he has in the recent past mendaciously denied the role of Ukrainian people in the Holocaust. He has used that argument to forcefully claim that Israel owes Ukraine offensive weapons. Several days ago, he escalated his criticism, saying he shocked that Israel hasn’t capitulated to his demands. He has never apologized for the following statement he made this past March: “The Ukrainians made a choice 80 years ago, we saved Jews…” He is right the Ukrainian people made a choice 80 years ago, but it wasn’t to save Jews.

Almost without exception, Ukrainians either participated in the mass murder of Jews or said nothing as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and slaughtered in places like Babi Yar. Many of those who pulled the trigger were themselves Ukrainian, recruited into the mobile killing squads by the Nazis. Vanishingly few saved Jews. The complicity of Ukrainians in these mass murders was greater than in most other countries. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were murdered. Nor was this the first time that the Ukrainian people made a similar choice. In 1648, Bogdan Chmielnicki led a pogrom that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews, including babies, children, and mothers. That was a long time ago, but the statue of this genocidal murderer still stands in the center of Kyiv, and his picture still adorns the Ukrainian five-dollar bill. That is now! Ukraine has made a choice: to honor the memory of a mass murderer of Jews.

Between the Chmielnicki murders and the Holocaust, the Ukrainian people made many other choices: they conducted pogrom after pogrom against Jewish families. Antisemitism was rampant throughout the Ukraine. That is why so many Ukrainian Jews immigrated to the United States and elsewhere. In recent years, the situation in Ukraine has improved measurably. Though there are still a large number of antisemites in Ukraine—including in certain units of the armed forces—the remembrance of the Holocaust has caused many Ukrainians to abandon the traditional antisemitism that plagued the country. They even voted for Zelensky, who is a man of Jewish heritage.

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“..Plaintiff is asking the Special Master to order disclosure of the names of each attorney and Special Agent who was exposed to materials eventually provided to the Privilege Review Team.”

FBI Agents Improperly Saw Privileged Trump Communications: Lawyers (ET)

The FBI team that seized documents from former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort improperly viewed communications between Trump and an attorney, violating attorney-client privilege for a third time, lawyers for Trump said in a new filing. The filter process set up by the government to try to prevent FBI agents from viewing privileged materials has already failed twice, the government has acknowledged. On Sept. 26, government officials informed Trump lawyers of a third failure, the lawyers said in a new filing lodged in a federal court in southern Florida. FBI agents viewed an email that they sent to the Privilege Review Team, a team that was supposed to filter out all potentially privileged materials before agents were able to view any.

The review team has characterized the email as non-privileged, but Trump disagrees. “Plaintiff believes the email falls squarely into the category of attorney-client privileged,” Trump lawyers told U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee who is serving as a special master in the case. Benjamin Hawk, the Department of Justice (DOJ) official in charge of the filter team, claimed during a recent hearing that the first two failures to separate potentially privileged materials were examples of the filter process working, but U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who inserted Dearie into the case, expressed doubt. The instances “indicate that, on more than one occasion, the Privilege Review Team’s initial screening failed to identify potentially privileged material,” she said.

FBI agents who viewed the potentially privileged materials may still be working on the case, according to a sealed filing described by Cannon. In the new filing, Trump’s lawyers said they want the names of all government officials who were exposed to the potentially privileged materials. “The unilaterally imposed filter team, which made no effort to contact Plaintiff’s counsel throughout its review process, has admitted to three breaches so far,” the lawyers said. “All this before review by the Special Master and the Plaintiff. By way of this filing, Plaintiff is asking the Special Master to order disclosure of the names of each attorney and Special Agent who was exposed to materials eventually provided to the Privilege Review Team.”

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Double-entry bookkeeping tells Steve that money is indeed destroyed. Just as Hyman Minsky and Augusto Graziani said.

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing (Steve Keen)

I owe enormous intellectual debts to Hyman Minsky and Augusto Graziani. But at one point, my “little knowledge” led me to believe, falsely, that they had both made a huge mistake in claiming that repaying debt destroyed money: Graziani: As soon as firms repay their debt to the banks, the money initially created is destroyed. (Graziani 1989) Money is created as banks lend—mainly to business—and money is destroyed as borrowers fulfill their payment commitments to banks. (Minsky 1982) This couldn’t be right, I thought: surely once banks had created money, they wouldn’t let it be destroyed? I considered cash loans in particular—surely the cash wasn’t destroyed on receipt, but put back into the vault for relending?

This is why the model of money in my Debunking Economics (Keen 2011) is of a cash-lending bank, and not a modern electronic banking system, where loans are simultaneously matched by direct payments into deposit accounts. Then I developed Minsky, the monetary modelling software that I named in honour of Hyman Minsky. I came to really understand double-entry bookkeeping, and realised that Minsky and Graziani were correct, and I was wrong. These days, money is primarily the sum of private bank deposit accounts. When you show modern bank lending and bank debt repayment in a double-entry table, it’s obvious that the former creates money, and the latter destroys it.

This points to a general rule about money creation and destruction: leaving aside cash loans, and direct government payments of cash to the non-bank public, to create money, an operation must increase both the Assets and Liabilities (or short-term Equity) sides of the banking system’s ledger. Conversely, this means that operations that occur exclusively on either the Assets side or Liabilities & Equity side neither create nor destroy money. Having made this mistake myself, I came to realise that understanding double-entry bookkeeping is the “Holy Grail” to understanding money, and therefore that if someone makes claims about money that contradict double-entry bookkeeping (DEB for short), then they should be ignored, because they don’t know what they are talking about.

Read more …

“If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports..”

FDA Withholds Autopsy Results on People Who Died After COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines. The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted. The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reports obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination. Reports are lodged with the system when a person experiences an adverse event, or a health issue, after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and other agencies are tasked with investigating the reports. Authorities request and review medical records to vet the reports, including autopsies.

The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies. The FDA cited federal law, which enables agencies to withhold information if the agency “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption,” with the exemption being “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Federal regulations also bar the release of “personnel, medical and similar files the disclosure of which constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The Epoch Times has appealed the denial, in addition to the recent denial of results of data analysis of VAERS reports.

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who advises the FDA as part of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said that the reports could be released with personal information blacked out. “The personal information could easily be redacted without losing the potential learnings from [the] autopsy,” Witczak told The Epoch Times via email. People make the choice to submit autopsy results to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Witczak noted. “If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports,” she said.

Read more …

“..most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.”

Next On Europe’s Doomsday List: Collapse Of Cell Phone Networks (ZH)

It’s not just heating that could be missing across Europe this winter: cell phones may be the next to go. That’s because if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter according to the latest doomsday reporting from Reuters. While everyone knows by now that Europe’s chances of rationing and power shortages have exploded ever since Moscow suspended gas supplies, in France, the situation is even worse as several nuclear power plants are shutting down for maintenance. And the cherry on top: telecom industry officials told Reuters they fear a severe winter will put Europe’s telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact (i.e., more bailout demands).

The problem, as four telecoms executives put it, is that currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages. Realizing that in just weeks Europe could be cell phone free, countries including France, Sweden and Germany, are scarmbling to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas spread across their territory. Alas, like with everything else in Europe, it’s too little, too late and Europe is facing a truly historic cell phone black out because while Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers, most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.

One of the alternatives being discussed is pushing Europe back to communist era blackout regimes: In France, a plan put forward by electricity distributor Enedis, includes potential power cuts of up to two hours in a worst case scenario, two sources familiar with the matter said. The general black-outs would affect only parts of the country on a rotating basis. Essential services such as hospitals, police and government will not be impacted, the sources said. And now, it appears that cell phones are considered essential too: the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), a lobby group representing Orange, Bouygues Telecomand Altice’s SFR, put the spotlight on Enedis for being unable to exempt antennas from the power cuts.

Enedis said it was able to isolate sections of the network to supply priority customers, such as hospitals, key industrial installations and the military and that it was up to local authorities to add telecoms operators infrastructure to the list of priority customers. “Maybe we’ll improve our knowledge on the matter by this winter, but it’s not easy to isolate a mobile antenna (from the rest of the network),” said a French finance ministry official with knowledge of the talks.

Read more …

What Reuters claims here is that the banks are today pushed to not sell, but buy dollars -with yuan-, only to sell them tomorrow, to support the yuan?!

At the same time, China wants the yuan to play a big part in the new currency basket they want to replace the USD as reserve currency. Problem is, it’s too weak right now.

China Tells State Banks To Sell Dollars, Buy Yuan (R.)

China’s central bank has asked major state-owned banks to be prepared to sell dollars for the local unit in offshore markets as it steps up efforts to stem the yuan’s descent, four sources with knowledge of the matter said. State banks were told to ask their offshore branches, including those based in Hong Kong, New York and London, to review their holdings of the offshore yuan and ensure U.S. dollar reserves are ready to be deployed, three of the sources, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. The simultaneous selling of dollars and buying of yuan could put a floor under the Chinese currency, which has lost more than 11% to the dollar so far this year and looks set for its biggest annual loss since 1994, when China unified its official and market rates.

The scale of this round of dollar selling to defend the weakening yuan will be rather big, one of the sources said. [..] While the yuan’s depreciation has been gradual and in line with the decline in major currencies against a dollar buoyed by aggressive Federal Reserve monetary tightening, its decline to the weaker side of 7-per-dollar has raised concerns about domestic sentiment and potential capital outflows. The offshore yuan moves in lock-step with the onshore unit, but its trading volumes account for about 70% of all yuan FX trades globally, dwarfing the volumes traded on the mainland. Chinese authorities have intervened in the past in the offshore yuan market to steer the yuan.

Sources said the intervention plan involved using state lenders’ dollar reserves primarily. But the total amount of dollar selling is yet to be determined as the yuan’s movements are largely dependent on dollar moves and the Fed’s tightening trajectory, the source said. China burnt through $1 trillion of its official FX reserves to prop up the currency after a one-off 2% devaluation in 2015 that roiled global financial markets. State banks, which usually act as the PBOC’s agents in offshore markets, are scrambling to procure more dollars in offshore markets, one of the sources said. The People’s Bank of China did not respond immediately when asked by Reuters about state banks stocking up on dollars.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle October 2 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)
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  • #117485

    Marc Chagall The Feast of the Tabernacles 1916   • Russia Makes It ‘Impossible For War To End’ – Borrell (RT) • The End of Western Hegemony is IN
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 2 2022]

    #117490
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Energy

    One might have hoped that the message would get through after nearly two decades. But no. The word ‘produce’ is still attached to the word energy, even though energy only ever changes form to another (other than is the very unusual circumstances of nuclear reactions, in which matter is converted to energy according to that famous equation E=Mc2 which most people have no idea of the meaning).

    And when it comes to oil, we see that same nonsense about nations ‘producing’ oil.

    No country produces oil: geochemical forces acting over millions of years produced the oil that is found in ‘reserves’. What humans do is extract oil.

    And that is where the above graphic is so misleading, because it does not indicate how the oil is extracted.

    We should note that US conventional oil extraction peaked over 1970-71. Extraction from Alaska temporarily offset the decline in the late-80s to 90s. But by the early 2000s US extraction was down to around 10 million barrels a day, and declining, whilst consumption was around 20 million barrels a day. Hence the numerous oil wars.

    So what is the 18.61 million barrels a day quoted?

    Well, if you take 9.6 million from the 18.6 million you have around 9 million barrels of fake oil.

    That fake oil consists of condensates extracted from gas wells, plus various glugs imported from Canada but called ‘production’ because refined oil is exported to Canada to dilute the glug and make it pumpable so it can be imported back into the US, so it can then be refined or re-exported, plus whatever can be extracted from short-lived fracking wells. And when we say short-lived, we mean wells with an average life of 3 years start to finish, i.e. kaput.

    Saudi is forcing extraction by pumping sea water into wells.

    Canada burns a stupendous amount of natural gas to extract oil from tar sands.

    A while ago Zero Hedge had an interesting report on ‘Who has the most oil reserves’: it turned out to be Venezuela.

    The only problem is, all the easy-to-extract oil was extracted decades ago, and what is left is nigh-on-impossible-to-extract kerogen in very awkward locations and requiring a monumental effort and a massive amount of energy to extract. Hence, it remains unextracted.

    You can tell any story you like by clever use of words and juggling with numbers. Politicians, bankers and economists do it all the time.

    One would hope that oil geologists do not fake the numbers. But we do know that commercial oil extractors and retailers do.

    There is the famous story of how OPEC oil sale quotas were determined on the basis of reserves. So, the ‘reserves’ of numerous OPEC nations suddenly doubled overnight!

    It’s a fake world when it comes to politics and commerce and energy. Ask Dr Colin Campbell, retired oil geologist.
    .
    .

    #117491
    Redneck
    Participant

    ‘At the same time, China wants the yuan to play a big part in the new currency basket they want to replace the USD as reserve currency. Problem is, it’s too weak right now.’
    The real problem with the Yuan is that China has a closed capital account.It has a closed capital account because if the Yuan was traded freely on the global capital markets , the capital flight to other currencies would gut the Yuan overnight. The Chinese people don’t want the Yuan , they want any other currency but the Yuan. China is constantly trying to block the flight of capital. They also keep their capital account closed so they can manipulate the currency to keep Chinese exports cheap. So the Yuan will most likely never be floated and that is why it is such an unwanted currency and not suitable for a reserve currency.

    #117492
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Russian Gas Stops Flowing to Italy after ‘Problem’ in Austria”

    A day after the elections. What a coincidence. Isn’t that right, Ursula?

    Faced with ‘Acts of Sabotage’, EU Countries Rush to Secure Energy Assets”

    I have not seen this. Considering what a change it would be to the foundation of the world, every act, function, price, and allegation in it, I would expect more. My reasoning was that everybody knew who it was, so they know they have nothing to worry about.

    Just like T’rrists! Under me bed! And yet 20 years later literally nothing in the whole United States is hardened. Not one fiber line, not one substation, not one pipeline. If anything it’s significantly weaker and more vulnerable than ever, to everything, including but not limited to an EMP/Carrington event. Sure pal. Sure we have actual terrorists you didn’t pay for, and suuuuuure you’re really sooper scared of them.

    The Curious Whodunit of Nordstreams 1 and 2


    Luongo has his latest article, saying what I said, NS1 and 2 is the United States, but WHO in the United States? What faction? Who gains? TL;DR, Davos. As minions of the god of Chaos, they need to collapse the world to their level to have any chance to compete. Sounds insane? Aha! Just proved it then. They are the Le Plus PREMIER league insane blood-munching lunatics.

    No? Okay: Joe said he’d blow it the minute Russia invaded. So? What took so long? That is, who gave the order that NOW was okay when last week it wasn’t? It’s not like these guys didn’t want to, didn’t try, as in sinking an entire Russian battleship. Or shooting down Russian airplanes (Syria as well as MH17) So who held them off all this time? Who gives the orders?

    Put it this way: If Europe loses Russian plunder, they are dead for 100 years. China and America will blow by them. So THEY have to start the war and get Russia. What does the U.S. get out of it? Not much. And if Russia is won, who cuts up the carcass and eats? Europe. The U.S. only rakes a %. And if Russia DOESN’T fall, then what? Europe fails utterly. So what’s the best outcome then? That the United States and China fall also. Cue Taiwan. Cue Pelosi, Cue Joe. Cue the media, the Universities, the Letter agencies. Historically, do they go for panopticon environmentalism like Davos? Do they ally with “Europe” and depopulating Davos think-tanks and against the Deplorables and Gilet Jeunes? I would say yes.

    So when do you burn NS1 and 2 and blame America? When you have no way back but war because you’ll collapse, finance is already cracking because of Powell, and at the very least need to discredit, attack, and blame America for it. Getting them in a 2-front war with China they can’t win.

    How do you do it? Finally give the green light and pay Nuland and a few oil execs:
    “ Nord Stream Explosions Are a ‘Tremendous Opportunity’ – US (RT)”
    It isn’t, of course. It’s a death trap. If $10B pipelines can blow, but LNG ships can’t? Srsly?

    As above, the resulting behavior, the choices they should make but aren’t are revealing who knew and who benefited. Germany? Meh. Doesn’t seem bother’ed. So the U.S. the major NATO ally and occupying force just OPENLY DECLARED WAR ON YOU, and is certain to kill I dunno, all of industry and 20% of your people, and you’re not bother’ed?

    Really? O rlly, O rlly? Huh. Well I have to say they – and everyone else in Europe – are taking this unusually well. VERY unusually. Why?

    ““..von der Leyen: [..] any “deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest retaliation”

    Clearly not. Clearly this statement is completely, totally false. Because the only person who did NOT blow up the pipeline is Russia, and you have stopped investigating.

    My guess, what would be funny for perennial liars? The U.S. trains UKRAINE to do it, gives them a “drone” as we admit we do – just a deepwater, armed, undersea drone – then runs it out of a Polish Naval base. Then we deny the whole thing! WE didn’t blow up the pipes! No U.S. soldiers were involved at all! Well I say, sir!

    Who signs off? Well Joe isn’t running anything, don’t bother there. Upper echelons of CIA/Military Black Ops they essentially already own. Who? The Derp State cartel that is essentially merged with Davos looking for that world government. Then Joe says “Well –I – didn’t do it! It HAD to be Russia!” Uh-huh. You’re just not in the loop, jackass. You’re the patsy.

    Fed Inflation: DiMarinto Booth in interviews points out that Inflation, unemployment, more or less the same during the years Powell wouldn’t raise, and while he decided to raise. So…what’s the actual reason for the hiking? ‘Cause it’s not what they claim. They’re lying. ‘Cause: The Fed.

    Oil chart: You see why if we remove Europe there’ll be plenty of oil left for us. P L E N T Y (And obviously 100 years of free oil for Russia alone.) Especially since Canada refuses to use it and gives it to us to sell. What a bunch of hosers. They’re on the Biden plan: refuse to use your own oil, and make sure somebody else burns it instead, like Saudi Arabia. Then it’s sooper-moral and carbon free! Make sure Russia has liquid hegemonic power that wins wars instead, then go fight them 10,000 miles away in their backyard. #Winning! O Canada.

    “Russia Makes It ‘Impossible for War to End’ – Borrell (RT)”

    Really? When one side loses doesn’t it end? Who is the war between? Not Ukraine, they already lost, they have no gear. Germany isn’t sending anything, certainly the EU and Spain aren’t. So who’s it between? Who has to write the peace? Putin seems to know, why don’t you ask him? Didn’t he not mention Ukraine once in one of his recent speeches because they’re irrelevant?

    BTW, this is just an extension of the ‘Treaty’ you ALREADY signed giving Donbas autonomy. So it’s impossible to sign what you already gave away, or were you lying the whole time? I mean, like you openly said you were in order to make and train a slav-killing army.

    Speaking of the flood of Russians leaving (still contested), so they lost 200k Western-loving Twitterati and gained 8 million hardened Russian fighters? Deal! If only we could do the same, but they won’t leave the U.S. like they promised.

    “Greek Gas Utility Clinches Winter LNG Deal (R.) “

    Again, LNG is strongly un-environmental. They waste a constant percentage of gas compressing the gas they could get from Russia for natural pressure. Then waste dirty diesel bunker fuel shipping it. So this demonstrates they are the LEAST environmental-minded on earth. Anti-environmental.

    Just keep it in mind and don’t let them get away with it, same as out-gassing $1B in methane from NS2 on a lark. Probably more than every farmer on earth they fret about. Lying awake nights figureing out how to steal all that $1B in juicy green condo lots.

    “The Euro Without Germany (Michael Hudson) “

    Rumors were China is collapsing. Dumb rumors. However, look at cutting off Russia entirely, no western pipes. Zero. Then IF China could be brought to ruin, either with no Euro imports or actual war, Russia couldn’t sell East either. See the plan now? So is it in Europe’s interest to collapse Russia and eat them? Who’s cutting off the pipes and also starting a war in Taiwan? It’s easy when you’re willing – nay when as gleeful as Christmas morning – to kill all the world’s poor as well as half your own people with the fallout of a food/energy war. Greenies. Technocrats. Ugh.

    “Thousands of German Stores on Brink of Closure – Spiegel (RT)”

    #Winning! There’s nothing Davos Centralists like better. Everything must be run from the top, like a Politboro. Or a Scientific Dictatorship. A Technocracy if you will, where every paperclip is tracked, and your chip won’t allow you to buy one unless we say so. The existence of small people and small businesses is the antithesis of this plan and they’re sorry they didn’t die already during Covid like we told them to.

    So this is not a BAD thing to them – it’s a GOOD thing. Killing these businesses is the REQUIRED thing for their plans. BBB.

    “ The Great Game in Ukraine Is Spinning out of Control (Jeffrey Sachs)”

    Not really: they’re just losing. And when they’re losing, they just self-immolate and blow up the world instead.

    “I have proposed him for the Nobel Peace prize. But he has … denied the role of Ukrainian people in the Holocaust.”

    Uhhhhhh….what? Isn’t generally Holocaust deniers reserved for Neo-Nazis? That are also world peacemakers? That you both lionize and criticize in the same article? When they say Liberalism is a mental illness, Dersh is their poster-boy.

    “The filter process set up by the government to try to prevent FBI agents the government from viewing the government’s privileged materials has already failed twice, the government [said].”

    I trust ‘em! Faith and confidence. When have they ever dun wrong?

    That said, I have no idea what they’re up to it’s become so Byzantine. I’d have all HRC’s missing emails in the stash, or the name and evidence against of all these crooked agents in the material.

    Keen didn’t know double-book accounting as an economist? Ummm. And it took years to get through his thick head when he wrote entire economics textbooks about it? While bridge-trolls were yelling at him about it.

    “FDA Withholds Autopsy Results on People Who Died after COVID-19 Vaccines (ET) “

    We always hide evidence that is most helpful to our case and can discredit all our critics, making them obey us from now on. That’s just basic Science to hide all evidence, refuse all data sets, and deny access to all models. Scienz!

    ““..most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.”

    Ours use 500,000 diesel generators. Which will go dark after the tank runs dry, but, “Go Green!”

    Who wins if in the “Three World Wars” the people are brought to abject poverty, war, and desperation? Gee, that’s actually THEIR WRITTEN PLAN. To give food for the chip, every action tracked and cut off if you misbehave by THINKING wrong. Sounds like the collapse is just one step towards “Building Back Better”.

    The problem here is nobody else is insane enough to believe them. They write a manifesto like Adolf did and they say “Nah. He doesn’t really mean it.”

    “China wants the yuan to play a big part in the new currency basket they want to replace the USD as reserve currency. Problem is, it’s too weak right now.”

    Wouldn’t they just use gold and oil? And speaking of, why haven’t they? They set up the plumbing and don’t seem to have opened the taps.

    #117494
    Red
    Participant

    The Difference Between Hypothesis and Theory

    A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.

    In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.

    A hypothesis is usually tentative; it’s an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.

    A theory, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory. Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, it is understood to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis is.

    In non-scientific use, however, hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably to mean simply an idea, speculation, or hunch, with theory being the more common choice.

    Since this casual use does away with the distinctions upheld by the scientific community, hypothesis and theory are prone to being wrongly interpreted even when they are encountered in scientific contexts—or at least, contexts that allude to scientific study without making the critical distinction that scientists employ when weighing hypotheses and theories.

    The most common occurrence is when theory is interpreted—and sometimes even gleefully seized upon—to mean something having less truth value than other scientific principles. (The word law applies to principles so firmly established that they are almost never questioned, such as the law of gravity.)

    This mistake is one of projection: since we use theory in general to mean something lightly speculated, then it’s implied that scientists must be talking about the same level of uncertainty when they use theory to refer to their well-tested and reasoned principles.

    The distinction has come to the forefront particularly on occasions when the content of science curricula in schools has been challenged—notably, when a school board in Georgia put stickers on textbooks stating that evolution was “a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.” As Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, has said, a theory “doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”

    While theories are never completely infallible, they form the basis of scientific reasoning because, as Miller said “to the best of our ability, we’ve tested them, and they’ve held up.”

    Did you know?
    Two Related, Yet Distinct, Meanings of Theory

    There are many shades of meaning to the word theory. Most of these are used without difficulty, and we understand, based on the context in which they are found, what the intended meaning is. For instance, when we speak of music theory we understand it to be in reference to the underlying principles of the composition of music, and not in reference to some speculation about those principles.

    However, there are two senses of theory which are sometimes troublesome. These are the senses which are defined as “a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena” and “an unproven assumption; conjecture.” The second of these is occasionally misapplied in cases where the former is meant, as when a particular scientific theory is derided as “just a theory,” implying that it is no more than speculation or conjecture. One may certainly disagree with scientists regarding their theories, but it is an inaccurate interpretation of language to regard their use of the word as implying a tentative hypothesis; the scientific use of theory is quite different than the speculative use of the word.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory

    #117495
    zerosum
    Participant

    TAE says Read more …
    Why?

    How many ways can the truth be told
    How many ways can lies be told
    Vote for me
    You lied
    You told me
    You saw the problems
    You saw the solutions
    You told me that you would take care of our social/economic system for me
    You made war not peace
    You took
    You did not give
    You’re smarter, I’m not smart enough
    Everything is worst, nothing is better
    Racist
    Motivator – pen or/and guns
    ———-
    Fear mongering
    Tactical nuclear weapons would return Ukraine to nature.
    Would remove all social/economic activities in the radiation shadow

    Radioactive fallout would contaminate air, soil, water and the food supply (Ukrainians are already familiar with this kind of outcome because of the disastrous meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986).
    ———-
    USA Walk back
    https://www.rt.com/news/563881-russia-wont-nuke-ukraine-austin/

    US doesn’t believe Russia will use nukes in Ukraine

    Putin NEVER mentioned using nukes in Ukraine.
    That is western propaganda.
    Washington brought up the fairy tale nukes.
    ———-

    #117496
    Red
    Participant

    There are Iranian women, though a minority, who are not in favor of the mandatory veil – a legitimate grievance, an opinionated dissatisfaction to which humankind is entitled. And then there are people leading a fraudulent anti-hijab movement with a barrel aimed at Tehran.

    Masoumeh “Masih” Alinejad-Ghomi
    Meet Masih Alinejad, Washington’s weapon of choice for flaring up the largest color revolution attempt in Iran today.

    “I’m leading this movement,” Alinejad, 46, told The New Yorker on Saturday. “The Iranian regime will be brought down by women. I believe this.”

    Operating from an FBI safehouse, Alinejad has been living in the US for the past decade working as a full-timer for VOA Persia – or, Voice of America, Persia – Washington’s propaganda mouthpiece funded directly by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a soft power arm of the empire fully funded by the US Congress, made to capitalize on harmful narratives in favor of Washington’s corporatocracy.

    Alinejad’s tasks are quite a few: To take cozy photographs with the world’s most effective pro-war politicians who’ve only done everything to wipe out West Asia, such as Mike “We lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo, and Madeleine “The price is worth it [to kill Iraqi children]” Albright.

    But, that’s not all. Between 2015 and 2022, the US Agency for Global Media paid Alinejad over $628,000 to harass veiled women, spew propaganda, and demand more sanctions against her country (not a very patriotic thing to do). Alinejad has been doing everything in her media power to isolate her country, attempting to render it a pariah state banned from all diplomatic, economic and political privileges in the global arena. Indeed, a champion for imperialism, Alinejad is on a fat CIA payroll to incite violence and lies.

    But, that’s not all. Between 2015 and 2022, the US Agency for Global Media paid Alinejad over $628,000 to harass veiled women, spew propaganda, and demand more sanctions against her country (not a very patriotic thing to do). Alinejad has been doing everything in her media power to isolate her country, attempting to render it a pariah state banned from all diplomatic, economic and political privileges in the global arena. Indeed, a champion for imperialism, Alinejad is on a fat CIA payroll to incite violence and lies.

    Enough yet? there’s more:

    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2022/09/30/dirty-money-meet-the-us-agent-driving-the-cia-led-riots-in-iran/

    #117497
    Red
    Participant

    Due to Western sanctions against Russia, gas was not being delivered through the destroyed pipelines. However, gas inside the pipelines is leaking dangerously. The pipelines remained ready for use whenever an agreement could be reached. And the first, dramatic significance of the sabotage is that henceforth, no agreement can be reached. Nord Stream 2 would have been the key to some sort of settlement between Russia and the Europeans. The sabotage has virtually announced that the war can only intensify with no end in sight.

    In Germany, the Czech Republic and some other countries, movements were beginning to grow calling for an end to the sanctions, specifically to solve the energy crisis by putting Nord Stream 2 into operation for the first time. The sabotage has thus invalidated the leading demand of potential peace movements in Germany and Europe.

    This act of sabotage is above all a deliberate sabotage of any prospect of a negotiated peace in Europe. The next move from the West has been for NATO governments to call on all their citizens to leave Russia immediately. In preparation of what?

    The Russians Did It

    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2022/10/01/diana-johnstone-omerta-in-the-gangster-war/

    #117498
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @AFewKnowTheTruth regarding energy #117490

    Excellent essay. That’s the most concise, cogent, accessible and communicative summery on the topic that I have read anywhere to date.

    #117499

    Anyone else having trouble accessing Moon of Alabama site?

    #117500
    Dora
    Participant

    While all eyes are focused on Ukraine and Nordstream the WHO is up to no good…again.
    What if they threw a pandemic & nobody came.
    https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/what-if-they-threw-a-pandemic-and?sd=pf

    A little background from Forbes magazine, 2009.

    The Pandemic is Political
    https://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/swine-flu-world-health-organization-pandemic-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento.html

    #117501
    zerosum
    Participant

    Let’s see what is the most democratic.
    1. Four ethnic Russia/Ukraine provinces vote and request to rejoin Russia.
    2. Ukraine president request, without a vote, (after 4 provinces democratically voted to join Russia), to join NATO.
    (ps.: Our opinions don’t matter)

    #117502
    Noirette
    Participant

    At 21st century wire, by Freddie Ponton, a French journo, title:

    Chaos By Design: The Roots of the EU Energy Crisis and France’s ‘Green’ Deception

    .. . Relates present events to a long standing agenda of de-industrialisation of the W, starting with the US.

    Article is translated from F, not well, but one can read thru the ‘mistakes.’

    excerpt:

    The Trilateral Commission‘s role in orchestrating the self-destruction of the domestic U.S. economy from 1977–1981 is well documented, and that includes the push for the so-called era of “globalization,” as well as former Vice President Gore’s relentless effort to create a “post-industrial society” under the guise of fighting climate change – all which has been overt manifestations of a global plan of control to bring about a financial regime change which requires a constant state of emergency and subsequently a population in a constant state of fear.

    The radical changes implemented by both the Nixon and Carter Administrations, which are best known as acts of self-destruction of America, were instrumental in bringing about the gradual dismantling of this once glorious republic – a process which continues up to this very day.

    Time has now come for Europe to undergo this transformation, better known as the 4th Industrial Revolution, the key pillar of the UN’s Agenda 2030. It’s crucial to understand the very root of this Saturnian agenda and the motivations of its architects, as well as the implications associated with their proposed new economic world order.

    Here we can posit that the origins of the so-called “Great Reset” can be traced back to the Council on Foreign Relations’ CFR Project 1980s, when the name of Klaus Schwab and World Economic Forum didn’t mean anything yet.

    > end quote.

    Such attempts at describing historical continuity are quite interesting, natch I don’t agree with it all.

    https://bit.ly/3dWVx1g

    #117503

    Both Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank look in very deep doo-doo. Both are too big to bail. More tomorrow.

    #117504
    TAE Summary
    Participant

    A Tale of Two Narratives, Climate Change Edition

    Disclaimer: These narratives are based on multiple sources and neither may represent any particular person’s beliefs

    * The Mainstream Narrative
    – Greenhouse gasses absorb dark radiation and re-emit it. With more such gasses in the atmosphere, radiation and its attendant heat stays in the earth’s atmosphere instead of escaping into outer space and so the atmosphere and earth itself warm up.
    – CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas inducing warming. It has increased from about 280 ppm to 420 ppm, an increase of 50% in the last 200 years and is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. The effect of greenhouse gasses is non-linear and a significant tipping point will be at around 450 ppm.
    – There is a proven correlation between CO2 levels and global warming both long and short term. Increases in CO2 have caused mass extinction in the past. It takes a long time for life forms to adjust to big changes in CO2 levels.
    – One of the effects of global warming is a disruption of the jet stream which causes extreme temperatures both higher and lower than normally seen.
    – Another effect of increased CO2 is the acidification of the oceans as CO2 combines with water to form carbonic acid. If left unchecked this will terminate much of the life in the oceans.
    – That the earth is getting warmer is obvious to anyone over the age of 50.
    – CO2 emission and therefore global warming is primarily due to humans burning coal, oil and natural gas.
    – Nothing is being done to actually combat climate change because of the immense profits to be made from selling fossil fuels. Climate change is a consequence of our continued financial ponzi scheme. None of the so-called climate change initiatives are sincere or effective.
    – Expect mass extinction on earth including humans by 2050.
    – People who deny climate change ignore the facts and are victims of propaganda. Their beliefs are similar to religious hopium.

    * The Counter Narrative
    – While it is true that greenhouse gasses absorb and re-emit dark radiation, it has not been proven that this action increases global temperatures. Energy absorption by CO2 levels off as concentrations increase after which there just isn’t much more energy to absorb. The models used to predict the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are too simplistic.
    – The CO2 increase in the last 200 years is only from 0.028% to 0.04% or 0.016%, an insignificant amount. Such a small increase in concentration has little effect. Water vapor is much more prevalent in the atmosphere and more involved in warming than CO2.
    – CO2 is necessary and beneficial for plant life and higher concentrations will increase crop yields and be a net benefit for mankind. Epochs with higher levels of CO2 had more abundant life compared to now. Plants today could use more CO2.
    – There is no proven correlation between CO2 levels and global warming. The earth has had both dramatically hotter and cooler temperatures with the same level of CO2 we have now. The earth has not gotten any warmer in the last 20 years. We are just experiencing normal, erratic weather. We have recently seen a lot of extremely cold weather which contradicts global warming.
    – Increased CO2 will not acidify the oceans. As CO2 is absorbed by the oceans it will form insoluble carbonates and act as a carbon sink. Even with ocean acidification fish will survive like they did in other epochs with high CO2.
    – The idea that humans can affect the climate is hubris. The climate changes naturally, always has and always will. Solar radiation is the biggest contributor to warming of the planet and especially the oceans and is outside human control. Human activity is insignificant to the climate.
    – The global war on climate change is a way to grab power, reduce the population and save resources for the elites. It is a political tool. The people preaching climate change are themselves big CO2 emitters and huge hypocrites.
    – Humans are very adaptable. Even with the natural shifts in climate that we are experiencing mankind will continue to thrive for a good long time.
    – People who believe in climate change ignore the facts and are victims of propaganda. Their beliefs are similar to religious paranoia.

    #117505
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    Fully agree with DBS about AFKTT’s energy essay (and others of his, as well). It’s not too fawning, I trust, to describe them as brilliant.
    it’s interesting how in some matters (mostly political and logistic) many people can apply their pattern recognition algorithms and intuitive common sense, and come up with genuinely insightful commentary — even, occasionally, wise.
    However, when addressing science matters clouded by a “consensus,” prejudiced by a belief that science is simplistically “logical,” and crippled by indoctrination into beliefs about the infallibility of reductionist linearizing semi-science, too many people completely fail at sanity and realism.
    This is true of the climate noise, about Covid and its “vaccines,” about nutrition… the list goes on and on.
    When I read (fairly often) people quoting the late and lamented Al Bartlett that “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function…”, I recognize that that inability is a subset of our collective inability to comprehend complex non-linear systems.
    Both those inabilities are being challenged by an increasingly obvious need to develop a working complexity-ware paradigm, however tentative and nascent, with which to adequately address our real-world challenges (since our present paradigm is failing us every day in every non-trivial way).
    So it is with compassion that I propose that AFKTT (and many others) go back and re-assess from scratch his climate-change beliefs, and stop pretending mastery quite so aggressively and foolishly — which subverts his credibility in other domains.
    The genuine science is available for that process; however, it delivers uncomfortably indeterminate explanations of how climate-change works overall. At the very least, though, it entirely falsifies the politicized conclusions of the corrupted pseudo-science used to justify its social manipulations.
    So snap out of it!

    #117506
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Only in Canada?, you ask, … fools like the following one*) provides investment advise like that?

    The end?

    The end?

    … pity, ain’t it!

    F.S.

    *) https://www.turnerinvestments.ca/

    #117507
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @AlexanderCarpenter

    I recall a multi-panel-cartoon from some magazine back in the day. Panel #1 showed a door-to-door canvasser (clipboard and questionnaire at the ready) knocking on an apartment door. Panel #2 shows a slightly scruffy hippie/beatnik type answering the door, and the survey taker reciting his pitch, “Hello, I’m from the Acme Good-Cause Polling Company, and I wonder if you would take the time to answer a few questions.” Panel #3 shows the hippie laconically replying, “I’m sorry I can’t help you, man, but I don’t have any answers. All I’ve got is questions.”

    Honest to goodness Scientists, if they’re being good and honest, are like the hippie in the doorway. All they’ve really got at the end of their quest for answers is just a bunch more questions.

    #117508
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Helmer in overdrive: … another posting of his:

    THE OCTOBER SURPRISE — ASK NOT WHAT THE KREMLIN WILL DO, BUT WHAT THE US WILL DO NEXT

    THE OCTOBER SURPRISE — ASK NOT WHAT THE KREMLIN WILL DO, BUT WHAT THE US WILL DO NEXT

    F.S.

    #117509
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    How Two Narratives Function in Online Debate:

    It’s similar to TPTB’s fave distraction method: fling poo then blame it on the flung upon.

    It is, indeed, distracting. Even a little annoying. But that’s all.

    Efforts like this, however, merit (imo) not flung poo but a nice slice of cake, served not flung:

    “So it is with compassion that I propose that AFKTT (and many others) go back and re-assess from scratch his climate-change beliefs, and stop pretending mastery quite so aggressively and foolishly — which subverts his credibility in other domains.”

    Anyway, it pleases me.

    Me, I’ll quote Robert Frost:

    “Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.”

    #117510
    zerosum
    Participant

    Why do it.
    If Germany and EU are not buying Russian gas, why repair. It may be better sealing the pipe and Ship the gas to friends
    Maybe, USA will sanction anyone trying to repair.

    https://www.rt.com/business/563912-nord-stream-pipes-restored/
    Nord Stream pipelines can be restored – Moscow
    The process would be time-consuming and costly, according to Russia’s deputy PM

    #117511
    redshift
    Participant

    Lauded economist Steve Keen has only now learned how the fractional reserve system works and we’re talking about one of the least indoctrinated economists out there.

    Yes, the principal is destroyed upon repayment, but not the interest, which means there is more debt than money in the world and if you try to pay all debt, you will run out of money and there still will be debt left to pay. It’s a negative sum game.

    People don’t realise how big of a sham the field of Economics is.

    #117512
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Russia is doing an excellent job of following a major strategic part of its plan: present itself as a genuinely “good cop” versus USNATO’s “bad cop”. DOing so has required it to use its decidedly larger military stick with what Sam Gutman in The Maltese Falcon called “nice judgment”.

    It’s willingness to be superficially humiliated by USNATO so that the damage caused by USNATO’s collapse won’t hurt any more people than can be prevented by having a much Bigger Stick all around and using it with nice judgment.

    Sadly, Russia is killing its own people with kovid vakzines, but so is everyone else, so: yippee! More room in Russia to which savvy kind-yet-ruthless people can immigrate! My kids aren’t as stupid as their old man, so they may make it there yet!

    Velkom Home, Kumradd!

    Ah, that good Russian vodka and kombinat kokaine… it’s what 20th Century rock musicians crave…

    #117513
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “stop pretending mastery quite so aggressively and foolishly ”

    However, I’d remove “foolishly”, at least from my perspective. From what I’ve observed so far, both of you employ folly in your discursive aims. Why, if you put your follies together you might scrape up enough to sound as foolish as me!

    ***

    Also, “So snap out of it!” is as aggressive and, if ye like, foolish as AFKTT’s more strident remarks.

    ***

    Also-so: Also: Witness ‘It’s willingness to be superficially ‘

    ***

    Early, purt near proto-ur recorded pop music:

    Turn Off Your Light Mister Moon Man-Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes

    Before microphones allowed crooning to be heard by large audiences.

    #117514
    Bishko
    Participant

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
    
― H.L. Mencken

    The Great Lie. One of the Hobgoblins. If you want to better understand the Anthropomorphic Climate Change Hoax read on.

    I am a chemist. I run a business measuring air pollution. In chemistry there is a scientific tool known as spectroscopy. The principle of spectroscopy is measuring the absorption or transmission of “light” through matter.

    “Light” is in quotes because for true scientists the electromagnetic spectrum is a continuum of frequencies that begins with the very very low frequencies, say below one cycle per second, (alpha brain waves are 8 cps btw) all the way up to ultra high frequencies of X-rays and Gamma rays and beyond.

    Different forms and compositions of matter absorb or transmit different frequencies of “light”. For example, a 0.1 mm thickness of aluminum can stop visible light that would easily transit one hundred miles through air. However, in spectroscopy, we vary the frequency of the light that we use to “study” the material so that we end up with a “Spectra” of the material as we vary the frequency. In chemistry, these Spectra are used to tease out compositions of materials as well as their concentrations.

    In chemistry, we immediately run into the phenomenon known as “Extinction” or the “Extinction Coefficient” where our sample, suspended in the “light” beam blocks the light so completely that there is no useful data coming through the sample like the aluminum above. The Spectra is at complete absorption or 0% transmission. Not useful. When this happens, you dilute the sample or make it thinner so there is greater penetration of the “light” so you can obtain a Spectra.

    In the other extreme, your sample may be too transparent in the spectrum that interests you to obtain a Spectra. The Spectra is a complete transmission or 0% absorption or near enough. Also not useful. In this case you make the sample more concentrated or increase the path length of the cell making the sample “thicker”.

    As this relates to our atmosphere. The “cell length” of absorption of solar radiation is a somewhat abstract concept. If you assume that the atmosphere “ends” at 50 or 100 miles above us, you can make calculations. However, at any one time there is only one point in the atmosphere where the sun is coming down at exactly 90 degrees. This changes moment by moment as the earth rotates and seasons change. Everywhere else the sun is coming down at an angle which increases it’s path length. At the poles much of the sun goes straight through the atmosphere and never touches the earth and exits out the other side. The perfect tangent. This is what causes the “ozone holes” not the fluorocarbons. A separate hoax and separate discussion.

    So, with all these varying path lengths, and variable densities (absorption also changes with pressure) and changes of state (clouds are liquids suspended in gas) you get a complex absorption process.

    However, you can easily measure the solar spectrum at the earth’s surface (or at any altitude) to obtain the measurements that show you which frequencies are absorbed partially or totally or not at all. This spectrum shows thousand of “holes” where thousands of frequencies of light zip through the atmosphere, carrying their entrained “photonic energy”.
    The “Hard UV” radiation that hits our upper atmosphere is absorbed by the oxygen molecules when they are still quite dilute at 20 to 25 miles up where the atmospheric pressure is almost a vacuum. These UV frequencies are at “extinction” because they never penetrate very far into our atmosphere. The UV frequencies that are “softer” the so-called UVA and UVB are of a lower frequency and exist at what is considered the Ultra Violet Cutoff for our atmosphere. Hard Ultra Violet frequencies cannot penetrate down to the surface since they are absorbed to “extinction” at much higher altitude. Our atmosphere at sea level would need to be near these vacuum conditions for these “Hard UV” photons to reach the surface, or there would need to be no oxygen in the atmosphere. Neither would allow life to exist here.

    Any and all light the reaches the earth’s surface is either absorbed, reflected or refracted. Some of the absorbed light enters into chemical reactions where it is “trapped” as chemical energy. Photosynthesis comes to mind but there are others. This is a very small fraction of the total received. Some is reflected. The fact that you can “see” is a confirmation that a great deal of the light that reaches the earth is reflected. Since all of this light that reached the surface has already been “filtered” through the atmosphere, these reflected photons have a great propensity to “exit” the atmosphere as well since their frequencies have not been shifted very much. The multi spectral sunlight that hits a green leaf is partially absorbed and partially reflected. The reflected light is green because the “useful” frequencies have been deducted from the spectrum by the chlorophyll to operate the plant’s chemical factory. The remaining non-useful light is reflected away as waste. That color green was always “inside” that sunlight that came down and is reflected away to your eye, camera, bird wing or to space. This is why you can see green forests from the space station, that green frequency is not absorbed by the components of the atmosphere.

    All these processes occur on femtosecond time scales. The light travels from the sun in about 8 minutes transits our atmosphere in about 5/10,000 of a second, hits the leaf and is reflected back out to space in another 5/10,000 of a second and continues it’s journey throughout the universe to an unknown end.

    Light that is absorbed by material at the earth’s surface has a different journey. The energy is absorbed by the electronic configuration of the molecules that it hits. This forms an electronic “excited state” where the electrons of the material move to a “higher” orbit. This excited state can be used by plants to run their chemical processes, or, in inanimate matter, can exist for a period of time (usually only femtoseconds) until it is re-emitted as a lower frequency photon or photons.

    Thermodynamics forbid the new photon from being re-emitted at the same or a higher frequency (higher energy) although there are modern high tech exceptions to this (thermal imaging scopes &c where additional energy is added to the matrix).

    So this new lower frequency photon is once again either absorbed, reflected or transmitted out into space.

    If the new lower frequency photon is absorbed onto something, it means that it’s frequency was just right to enter into the electron cloud of this new molecule forming a new “excited state”. This is once again re-emitted as a new-new lower frequency photon which follows the same process of reflection, transmission or absorption. All matter is constantly emitting photons that are being absorbed by the matter around them. The higher energy (from hotter atoms) photons relatively quickly reach equilibrium with its surroundings. Hotter things emit faster and more energetic photons. Think of a hot skillet taken off the stove. Doesn’t take but a few minutes to “cool” to room temperature. Some convection, some radiation of photons. All the convected heat also gets emitted as photons from the atoms that did the convecting.

    Once again, all these thing occur at very short time scales.

    The photon that get’s absorbed and re-emitted at infrared frequencies follows this cascade in nanoseconds depending on the time it takes the photon to travel to the next absorption site, either microns away to kilometers. If the photon’s frequency is of a wavelength where it cannot exit the atmosphere since there are many molecules of say CO2 there to absorb it, it gets absorbed and then re-emitted at a lower frequency. Eventually, the photon is emitted at a frequency that has no “absorbers” around. All it sees is open sky and is gone. Nanoseconds. The atmosphere has many “frequency holes”.

    CO2 has a Spectra, look at it if you can find one wide enough, see the thousands of holes in it. The fact that it can absorb in some infrared frequencies does not mean that it absorbs all infrared frequencies. The infrared spectrum is much much broader than the visible spectrum.

    Clouds are a complicating issue in all this since they are composed of small droplets of liquid. The Spectra of liquids is usually different from the gas phase. However, that said, clouds are quite transparent to some frequencies of infrared light. Infrared imaging cuts right through fog and clouds thus no absorption at those frequencies.

    So, overall, the sun’s energy that enters earth’s system does not stay here long. The heat that builds up during the day in the soil, rocks, water and air spends the next few hours emitting and re-emitting lower and lower frequency photons to each other and to the sky as they approach the new dawn. Cloudy nights can offer a reflecting surface to slow their exit from the atmosphere of certain frequencies but even a cloudy night gets quite cold by morning since those lower frequency infrared photons pass right through the clouds.

    If you ever spent a sunset in a desert you realize how quickly the air loses it’s heat to infrared photons and the desert’s surface does not reheat the air above it much. The radiation pressure of a clear night sky is very weak and these infrared photons coming off the land are exiting en-mass.

    The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has also reached “extinction” in that the frequencies that CO2 absorbs, almost none of those photons escape back out of the atmosphere to space. They are, however, re-emitted at lower frequencies almost as soon as they are absorbed. This is the point of the person who wrote about the “sunglasses” analogy where more CO2 is just adding more sunglasses.

    I like to use the ink in the pool analogy. If you are underwater in your pool and looking across to the light under the diving board you are getting near 100% transmission (of the visible not IR). If someone throws an ink well into the pool and stirs it around, your ability to see the light drops. Adding additional ink makes it drop more. At some point you have complete absorption and cannot see any light. Adding more ink to the pool does not make you see less. You have reached “extinction”. You could of course swim towards the light until you could see it again. Then more ink would make it opaque again. CO2 in our atmosphere has reached “extinction” a very long time ago, long before life arrived. This CO2 Hobgoblin has been so effective since almost none of the people, and unfortunately almost none of the scientists understand, or they refuse to understand these principles.

    This dissertation is a slightly simplified version of reality. I tried to keep the concepts intact without going into too many sidelines. A nit picker, including myself can find many nits to pick, but I think that I’m getting the main points across.

    These concepts are not difficult to understand. It is all founded in base level physics and chemistry. Applying your intellect to the understanding of how all this works clears away the “fog of agenda”.

    Plant potatoes.

    #117515
    WES
    Participant

    Bishko:

    Thank you for the refresher course in how and why solar heating panels (not to be confused with solar electric panels) work.

    Light passes through the glass then hits a dark surface creating heat which the glass then prevents from escaping.

    It is so cold up here in the land of ice and snow, I could really use more solar heating right now! 0The US must be sabotaging that too!

    #117516
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @ Bishko: an excellent post. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. This translation provides new understanding.

    Question (one of many) – Frequency is sound, right? So how does sound become “light”? And light become matter? Or is it that light reveals matter, matter being the manifestation of “light”?

    My curiosity is rooted in my study of Yoga, where Om (AUM) is the primordial sound. “In the beginning there was Om” (and the creation grew out of/from that).

    Love the mind-opening potentiality here.

    Om Shanti.
    LOVE to All

    #117517
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Bishko: I think you did very well. I think I learned something. I will be reading some basic text on concepts like spectral absorption extinction to make sure that I’m not misinterpreting you, and also to make sure that you’re not miscommunicating — being confusing despite your best efforts or blowing smoke up someone’s ass, on purpose or unwittingly.Not that I have any reason to mistrust you or doubt your competence, but I want to be at least a little bit scientific in my approach to your text.

    In the spirit of complete disclosure, I’ll gleefully add that my driving motivation is to somehow prove you wrong because, while I maintain a diligently open mind on climate theories (and just about anything I mentally encounter), my early bias regarding climate theories was inclined to believe at least the primary facets of greenhouse warming effect models etc. etc.

    I will even more gleefully admit if it is I who am proven wrong. I’m pretty sure I am, but who am I to direct my ego? (As if I or any but the very enlightened few — or so say the major holy writs of the world — can direct our egos any more than Hunter Biden on viagracoke can sexually restrain himself…) Considering that it is my ego that disapproves of the intractably impulsive nature of my ego, the sound of one hand clapping is for me that of me surrendering to my ego and appeasing it with the discipline that a long-ago mentor said was “the discipline of allowing yourself to do what you really want, especially what you think is right(eous)”. This works better since both I’n’I are constantly sucking up to each other and admitting how brilliantly superior the other is — which is what they wanted all along since the day they were born and first learned to squawl and kick for attention.

    I’ve been and will surely continue to be wrong much of my life and have learned to enjoy it.

    Surreally relevant (with an uneasy sneer at Elon Musk’s AI Day) to my infant reference is what was the best section for me as a teenager from Stanislaw Lem’s book, Solaris,:

    “I regained height and continued to fly above the fog, the machine almost touching it, until I discovered another clearing, much larger than the previous one. 80 While I was still some distance away, I noticed a pale, almost white, object floating on the surface. My first thought was that it was Fechner’s flying-suit, especially as it looked vaguely human in form. I brought the aircraft round sharply, afraid of losing my way and being unable to find the same spot again. The shape, the body, was moving; sometimes it seemed to be standing upright in the trough of the waves. I accelerated and went down so low that the machine bounced gently. I must have hit the crest of a huge wave I was overflying. The body—yes, it was a human body, not an atmosphere-suit—the body was moving.

    QUESTION: Did you see its face?
    BERTON: Yes.
    QUESTION: Who was it?
    BERTON: A child.
    QUESTION: What child? Did you recognize it?
    BERTON: No. At any rate, I don’t remember having seen it before. Besides, when I got closer—when I was forty yards away, or even sooner—I realized that it was no ordi- nary child.
    QUESTION: What do you mean?
    BERTON: I’ll explain. At first, I couldn’t understand what worried me about it; it was only after a minute or two that I realized: this child was extraordinarily large. Enormous, in fact. Stretched out horizontally, its body rose twelve feet above the surface of the ocean, I swear. I remembered that when I touched the wave, its face was a little higher than mine, even though my cockpit must have been at least ten feet above the ocean.
    QUESTION: If it was as big as that, what makes you say it was a child?
    BERTON: Because it was a tiny child.
    QUESTION: Do you realize, Berton, that your answer doesn’t make sense?
    BERTON: On the contrary. I could see its face, and it was a very young child. Besides, its proportions corresponded exactly to the proportions of a child’s body. It was a . . . babe in arms. No, I exaggerate. It was probably two or three years old. It had black hair and blue eyes—enormous blue eyes! It was naked—completely naked—like a new-born baby. It was wet, or I should say glossy; its skin was shiny. I was shattered. I no longer thought it was a mirage. I could see this child so distinctly. It rose and fell with the waves; but apart from this general motion, it was making other movements, and they were horrible!
    QUESTION: Why? What was it doing?
    BERTON: It was more like a doll in a museum, only a living doll. It opened and closed its mouth, it made vari ous gestures, horrible gestures.
    QUESTION: What do you mean?
    BERTON: I was watching it from about twenty yards away —I don’t suppose I went any closer. But, as I’ve already told you, it was enormous. I could see very clearly. Its eyes sparkled and you really would have thought it was a living child, if it hadn’t been for the movements, the gestures, as though someone was trying … It was as though some one else was responsible for the gestures . . .
    QUESTION: Try to be more explicit.
    BERTON: It’s difficult. I’m talking of an impression, more of an intuition. I didn’t analyze it, but I knew that those gestures weren’t natural.
    QUESTION: Do you mean, for example, that the hands didn’t move as human hands would move, because the joints were not sufficiently supple?
    BERTON: No, not at all. But . . . these movements had no meaning. Each of our movements means something, more or less, serves some purpose . . .
    QUESTION: Do you think so? The movements of an infant don’t have much meaning!
    BERTON: I know. But an infant’s movements are confused, random, uncoordinated. The movements I saw were . . . er . . . yes, that’s it, they were methodical movements. They were performed one after another, like a series of exercises; as though someone had wanted to make a study of what this child was capable of doing with its hands, its torso, its mouth. The face was more horrifying than the rest, because the human face has an expression, and this face … I don’t know how to describe it. It was alive, yes, but it wasn’t human. Or rather, the features as a whole, the eyes, the complexion, were, but the expression, the movements of the face, were certainly not.
    QUESTION: Were they grimaces? Do you know what happens to a person’s face during an epileptic fit?
    BERTON: Yes. I’ve watched an epileptic fit. I know what you mean. No, it was something quite different. Epilepsy provokes spasms, convulsions. The movements I’m talk ing about were fluid, continuous, graceful . . . melodious, if one can say that of a movement. It’s the nearest definition I can think of. But this face … a face can’t divide itself into two—one half gay, the other sad, one half scowling and the other amiable, one half frightened and the other triumphant. But that’s how it was with this child’s face. In addition to that, all these movements and changes of ex pression succeeded one another with unbelievable rapidity. I stayed down there a very short time, perhaps ten seconds, perhaps less.”

    #117518
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    @zerosum Nord Stream pipelines can be restored – Moscow
    _____________________

    Of course it can be, … it’s not that difficult with help of modern technology: “smart pigs”, or ”intelligent pigs”. It’s done all the time. Example of using pigs from ENB: https://www.enbridge.com/Stories/2017/September/Smart-Pigs-Safe-Pipes-Part-5-cathodic-protection

    Anyway, … if Газпром is permitted – fat chance of that happening! – they can isolate pipelines damage with sending pigs from each sides and work on fixing the damage. This is done all the time in offshore oil and gas fields! Just think how quickly damage pipelines are fixed in Gulf of Mexico after hurricane damage – and those damage pipes are all the way down, down to depths of more than 11,000 ft.

    Also, with pigs, NS1 and 2 pipelines can be preserved for the next 50 years if done within a month or so. Salt water can be expelled from pipelines, preservatives applied, … and when or if repairs to damage sections is completed, … restarted.

    – some more pig stuff => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging

    … fwiw,

    F.S.

    #117519
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    @bosco: No fire or ice for me just yet…but a bite of that perfectly layered chocolate wonder will do.

    @ Wes: just got my Classic Edge 560 EPA certified stick wood burning outdoor furnace (American made in MN). Will get it hooked it up (next week or two) to my giant hot water boiler/radiant floor heating system. Getting off the propane (cooktop the exception) for good! Now I can do fire remediation without such a heavy heart by putting all the dead trees to good use – beyond the insert/fireplace. Do send some cold weather over my way (NoCA).

    #117520
    John Day
    Participant

    Dr.D said: “Keen didn’t know double-book accounting as an economist? Ummm. And it took years to get through his thick head when he wrote entire economics textbooks about it?”

    I think Keen was providing a gentle entry to this complicated discussion for his readers, meeting them at the door himself, so to speak.
    (I glazed-over several times, had to get up and eat some fresh okra I just prepared for mental fortitude.)

    #117521
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    A friend acquired a large sheet of aluminium. I suggested it would be an interesting project to make a solar oven. Four sides of aluminium sheet and top and front of glass, to heat objects inside as per the greenhouse effect. On a turntable to allow for the rotation of the Earth.

    There was a day when the ambient temperature was above 18oC and the sky was clear for a couple of hours. A candle placed on a dish on a dark block in the centre of the oven just began to melt, i.e. a temperature of around 75oC was briefly reached.

    However, for the past two weeks every day has been characterised by cloudy skies and temperatures in the range 8oC to 15oc. So the solar oven sits, unattended, awaiting clear skies.

    The solar oven will undoubtedly work quite well a few months from now.

    The above emphasises several important points.

    1. The amount of energy required to manufacture sheets of aluminium is stupendous..(Aluminuim was unknown until reliable means of passing large currents through aluminium salts was achievable.) The manufacture if glass is also energy-intensive, though nowhere near as energy intensive as aluminium.

    2. Passive solar is useful for raising the temperature of buildings etc, a few degrees above the ambient temperature but is ineffective in achieving the kind of temperature required to cook food, other
    than in the height of summer.

    3. Solar panels for heating water or generating electricity work best when required the least, i.e. in the height of summer.

    We should note that Germany ‘invested’ heavily in ‘alternative energy’ and when the wind dropped and snow fell, none of the ‘investments’ converted anything more than a miniscule amount of wind energy or light energy into electricity. Coal-energised and natural-gas-energised systems were utilised to keep the electrical grid active.

    With a large portion of the coal and gas cooing from Russia, and with NATO having declared war on Russia, we can speculate on a mass migration of Europeans to Africa, reversing the trend of the 1950s to 2010s.

    .

    . .

    #117522
    zerosum
    Participant

    “… we can speculate on a mass migration of Europeans to Africa, reversing the trend of the 1950s to 2010s.”
    If they walk, the roadway will be edged with bones.

    .

    #117523
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    Bishko, thank you for the informative post. I’ll need to read through it a few times to grasp the the fine points. Plant potatoes indeed and a few extra hills for your ‘keto’ neighbors.

    #117524
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Can’t poke any big holes in Bishko’s application of atmospheric extinction vis a vis CO2 except this, and he can probably explain that I’m wrong about this as well: “Then more ink would make it opaque again. CO2 in our atmosphere has reached “extinction” a very long time ago, long before life arrived.”

    This doesn’t account for how much of how many other gasses/particulates were in the atmosphere, something which has a major effect on the photonic absorption/re-emission cascade factor. In the pool analogy, the right kind of absorptive particulate might absorb ink into themselves and create “holes for additional light to come through.

    Per Bishko, at some point (that we’re already long past), increasing CO2 emissions won’t make the climate warming effect part of ACC (anthropogenic climate change) worse just by increasing CO2 emissions. I don’t see that this relates to the concept that lessening CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) output now will result in reduced CO2 levels down the road. That involves many other cycles. <<Not that I necessarily assume that lessening them in 50 or 100 or whatever years is automatically better, or that this would make a sufficient change in CO2 to go below the atmospheric extinction level and produce genuine lessening of energy from solar infrared radiation.>>
    But it does appear true to my manic mind that there’s a maximum setting on the atmospheric warming throttle of Terran CO2 greenhouse gas warming. We can’t make it warmer faster just by pumping more CO2 into the air once we’re past that level.

    I’ll also note that there is significant debate among people researching paleometeorology about how much CO2 was in the air aeons ago, or so I read. It doesn’t appear to be all that settled a topic. I might better gauge how seriously I should take this aspect if you’d tell us what that maximum extinction level for CO2 is.. I’ve been proven wrong about believing I’ve been proven wrong maybe as much as just plain proven wrong. 😉

    I remember when the term was greenhouse gases not carbon emissions? I would guess that the move from greenhouse gases to CO2 as the kleptocrat’s climate logo moves in symmetry with the emphasis on natural gas that began ? probably when the 80s domestic oil boom began fading? With the PR people recognizing that greenhouse and green energy made conflicting semiotics in the public talkstream?
    Thanx mucho: this was very stimulating and enlightening. Mongo learn something new every day whether him remember or not.

    ***

    Meanwhile, entirely irrelevant to my remarks to Bishko: It’s a form of food fight, really. and much easier to clean up. Is it a global warming joke or a joke about the joys of internet discourse, or both? It adds at least to meanings to the expression ‘hot chili’.

    #117525
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant
    #117526
    Bishko
    Participant

    @Susmarie108
    “Question (one of many) – Frequency is sound, right? So how does sound become “light”? And light become matter? Or is it that light reveals matter, matter being the manifestation of “light”?”

    Yes, sound has a frequency. A “pure” sound, say 1,200 cycles per second, is a very clean sound. Philosophically unobtainable with any modern science. If you use a sound generator to generate a 1,200 cps tone, it might sound quite clear and clean. But how exact is it? Can it be demonstrably proven to be at exactly 1,200? Or does it have a “width”? Say 1,199.999999997 to 1,200.000000003 cps. Hmmmm. Not so clear after all. Also, what metric are you using for the second? The beat frequency of a Hydrogen atom at 54 degrees kelvin? You see my point. We can at any point and in any argument get away from “truth” and argue for the minutia, but at what cost. To prove a point?

    Yes everything is vibrating, and not at just one frequency. Our bodies are filled with myriads of frequencies; some harmonics from your body being an antenna to the power harness in your house, the power lines outside in the street and underground, your cell phone &c. There are also untold other “frequencies” in our bodies; our peristalsis; our brain waves (~8cps which strangely enough coincides with one of main peaks of the Shumann Resonance); our many endocrine cycles that move over days or weeks. The list is endless.

    Sound energy can “become” light, I have done it. You make a spherical resonance chamber, usually made of glass so you can see the light, fill it with water, glue two transducers (small powerful speakers) on opposite sides of the chamber and crank up the sound (usually ultrasound). The sound waves form a standing wave pattern that has the exact center of the globe as it’s focal point. Light will be produced. It turns out that the light emission matches the frequency of the gases dissolved in the water. This is called sonoluminescence.This is highly artificial and no “natural” phenomenon of this are known to exist so far. Your are artificially concentrating sound to produce light (and heat). Some calculations estimate the point source of this light can exceed one million kelvins, a lot hotter than the Sun’s surface (but not the center).

    Speaking of the Sun, this is where light becomes matter and matter becomes light. In the center of the Sun it is so hot that matter does not exist as we know it. The atoms are so hot that their electronic excited states are so wide that it can be calculated that the atoms have no electrons at all, they have all flown the coop so to speak. However, they are still nearby, swimming around in the “Soup” of atomic nuclei in what is commonly known as a “Plasma”. 27 million degrees is really hot and you would expect all these “particles” would emit a lot of light. Since these electrons are not happily nested in their normal orbits (normal for us here on earth) we find it difficult to “calculate” the band gap frequencies that photons would have from electron interactions. The frequencies would be higher than we normally have experience with. X-rays and gamma rays are the normal currency of the center of the Sun. These extremely powerful and short wavelength photons are transferring from atomic nucleus to atomic nucleus so rapidly that there is a flux that enters the Einstein equation E=MC2. Light really is being converted to matter and matter is really being converted to light. The concept is that if you “untie” the “knot” of an atom, it’s entrained energy is released with a value that is proportional to the speed of light squared. In the dense, hot, confusing center of this plasma the photonic density is so great that there are innumerable photons squeezing together again to reform matter. This is the common belief in the center of main sequence Suns.

    Light does indeed reveal matter, especially in a dark room, and matter certainly is a manifestation of light. Especially in the center of Suns. And since Suns are far and away the largest component of the universe (as far as we can tell so far) then these statements are more the norm for the universe, even if they are not quite so true on Earth.

    BTW, even though I have spent my life studying to be, and working as a Scientist, I found out in 2006 at Burning Man that I am a Shaman. I didn’t believe it at the the time but after a bit of study, I was rocked to my roots to find it true. My main task then was to find a way to keep them from fighting: Spirituality vs Science. Not only do they not fight, but they made an agreement to work together for the betterment of myself and for all I meet. Been quite a Journey.

    #117527
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Did the world just changed last week?

    Scuttlebutt: “Something broke” in several important places.”

    Hmm, … Credit Suisse is currently trading at 0.23x tangible book. Deutsche Bank is trading at 0.3x tangible book value. These are most distressing valuations for any bank! Credit Suisse, I understand. Deutschmark Bank, … not so. Could it be criticalenergy supply situation in Europe? Like I said, Hmm, …

    F.S.

    #117528
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “…a shaman.”

    You certainly resemble that remark. I love it when I find things like this (re: sonoluminescence):

    “The mechanism of the light emission remains uncertain, but some of the current theories, which are categorized under either thermal or electrical processes, are Bremsstrahlung radiation, argon rectification hypothesis,[2] and hot spot.”

    Graci.

    #117529
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Bishko

    Thanks for that.

    Not forgetting that photons sometimes behave life waves and sometimes behave like particles. Also electrons, of course.

    Is it a wave or a particle?

    Is it where you think it is?

    It depends on whether you are looking at it or not. If you are looking at it, it’s not there. When you look away it is there.

    It gets tough when you try to explain why electrons sometimes spin in one direction and sometimes in the other direction. And even worse when you try to explain why a bunch of them spin all in the same direction and generate a magnetic field. Especially when they are not particles anyway but are waves..

    I do know for sure that whilst many people say “Plant potatoes,” potatoes are one of the most unreliable of foods when it comes to storage, and that other sources of carbohydrate have better storage potential.

    So the key to survival immediately after the financial-economic-social crash we are living through gets to the gruesome stage is diversity. Potatoes, kumara, sweetcorn, yams…beans peas, onions, nuts, fruits etc.

    Obtaining animal fats -essential for really good health and vitality- could be problematic. I guess cheese will generally become unobtainable.

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