Nov 272022
 


Johannes Vermeer View of Delft 1660-61

 

The Consumer Economy Has Completely Collapsed (CTH)
41% of US Small Businesses Can’t Pay Rent This Month (JTN)
Most NATO Members Are Out Of Weapons For Ukraine – NYT (RT)
Europe Accuses US Of Profiting From War (Pol.eu)
Ukraine Is Proud Of Its War Crimes (Milacic)
Biden Admin Quietly Greenlights Plan to Build Huge Gulf Oil Terminal (ET)
Musk: Exposing Hunter Biden Laptop Story Necessary To Restore Public Trust (ZH)
Companies Join Call to Suspend Advertising with Twitter (Turley)
Climate Activists: Slaughter Millions of Dogs To ‘Reduce Carbon Pawprint’ (NP)
Thoughts On A Crypto Crisis (Melekan)
Klaus Schwab Declares China A ‘Role Model’ (AT)
Finis Sinarum: Why I think China Cannot Win This (Pattberg)
US Officials Pressured Canada To Stop ‘Freedom Convoy’ (NYP)
The Vaccinated Now Account For A Majority Of Covid Deaths (Techno Fog)
People With Stable Cancer Rapidly Progress After Having a Booster (Dalgleish)

 

 

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It is lethal.”
– Paulo Coelho

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maersheimer 2015

 

 

 

 

Musk Putin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Normally, it’s wrapped all the way around the building. Today: no one.”

The Consumer Economy Has Completely Collapsed (CTH)

“Crowds? I see nothing. I’m surprised,” retail worker Jeremy Pritchett told FOX 2. “Normally, it’s wrapped all the way around the building. Today: no one.” That’s the typical ground report from areas all over the country. No one, literally almost no one, is doing any holiday shopping and the traditional Black Friday rush to get deals and discounts just didn’t happen. Financial media are scratching their puzzlers, perplexed with furrowed brows. Interestingly, almost every financial media outlet is using the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales this year. Apparently, pretenses must be maintained. Meanwhile, news crews and camera crews are having a desperate time finding any holiday shopping to use as background footage for the claims that sales are strong. “Look, over there. There’s a person buying something. Oh, wait, no, that’s just an employee dusting the empty cash register.” At a certain point, one would have to believe reality would run head-first into the mass delusional pretending. Maybe this holiday season will be it, maybe not.

Reuters – […] “About 166 million people were planning to shop from Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday through this coming “Cyber Monday,” according to the National Retail Federation, almost 8 million more than last year. But with sporadic rain in some parts of the country, stores were less busy than usual on Black Friday. “Usually at this time of the year you struggle to find parking. This year, I haven’t had an issue getting a parking spot,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry adviser of the NPD Group Inc. “It’s a lot of social shopping, everybody is only looking to get what they need. There is no sense of urgency,” Cohen added, based on his store checks in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. At the American Dream mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, there were no lines outside stores. A Toys ‘R’ Us employee was handing out flyers with a list of the Black Friday “door buster” promotions.”

It’s almost Kafkaesque to see how the media are continuing to maintain economic pretenses, yet the reality of a completely collapsed consumer economy is physically staring them in the face. (Bloomberg) – “Activity Light at One San Francisco Mall (4:40 p.m.) – At the Stonestown mall in San Francisco, shoppers were few and far between. The Target and Zara stores were mostly empty, and there was no line for the mall’s Santa Claus. Uniqlo and Apple were the busiest locations, but they still weren’t crowded. […] Crowds were thin in the late morning at the Stamford Town Center mall. Kay Jeweler, empty. Safavieh, empty. Only a couple of people waited at the checkout line at Forever 21 and just a few were in line for a purchase at Barnes & Noble. […] At a Target store on Chicago’s North Side, the parking lot was barely half full at about 9 a.m. local time. Shoppers were greeted with $3 ornaments and discounted Christmas trees when entering, and the store seemed calm and relatively quiet.

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“Last month, rent delinquency rates increased seven percentage points from 30% in September to 37% in October..”

41% of US Small Businesses Can’t Pay Rent This Month (JTN)

More than 40% of U.S. small business owners say they couldn’t pay rent on time or in full for the month of November, the highest this year. The small business network group Alignable released the survey, which found that the hardship varies by industry. A notable 57% of beauty salons said they couldn’t make rent as well as 45% of gyms, 44% of retail and 44% of restaurants. “Making matters worse, this occurred during a quarter when more money should be coming in and rent delinquency rates should be decreasing,” Alignable said. “But so far this quarter, the opposite has been true.” This latest report continues a steady increase in businesses that can’t pay rent this year. “Last month, rent delinquency rates increased seven percentage points from 30% in September to 37% in October,” Alignable said.


“And now, in November, that rate is another four percentage points higher, reaching a new high across a variety of industries.” Business owners cite a range of reasons for the difficulty making rent, including higher rent costs and lower revenue. But 60% cite inflation. “One indicator of the toll inflation is taking on businesses is a steep drop in the percentage of small businesses that are fully recovered, earning as much if not more than they did monthly prior to COVID,” Alignable said. “The percentage was 24% in October, but dropped to 14% in November — an all-time low.” Michigan had the highest percentage of small business owners unable to make rent at 51% with New York in second at 49% and Massachusetts third highest at 45%. The survey queried 6,326 small business owners in November.

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Buy buy buy.

Most NATO Members Are Out Of Weapons For Ukraine – NYT (RT)

Western weapon stockpiles have become strained after countless arms transfers to Ukraine, making it increasingly difficult for NATO militaries to keep up with politicians’ pledges to continue supporting Kiev with whatever it needs for as long as it takes, the New York Times reported on Saturday. “Smaller countries have exhausted their potential,” and according to one NATO official, at least 20 of the alliance’s 30 members are “pretty tapped out,” the newspaper wrote. Only “larger allies,” including France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, have enough stockpiles to continue or potentially increase their weapon shipments to Ukraine. Since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, the US and its Western allies have been providing Kiev with billions of dollars in security assistance, to the tune of nearly $40 billion, now comparable to the entire annual defense budget of France.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that the weapon shipments will only prolong the conflict and increase the risk of a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. As Ukraine continues to call for more weapons, EU stockpiles are running low, with Germany already “reaching its limit” as of early September. Meanwhile, Lithuania, which does not have any more weapons to donate, has urged the allies to give Ukraine “everything we have.” US President Joe Biden has vowed to keep the arms pipeline open for “as long as it takes,” but even American military stockpiles have taken a toll after repeated shipments to Kiev. As early as March, just weeks after the conflict in Ukraine kicked off, the US Defense Department was already scrambling to replenish thousands of shoulder-fired missiles supplied to Kiev.

By August, US stockpiles of 155mm artillery ammunition were “uncomfortably low,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon’s latest fact sheet detailed more than $19 billion in direct military aid approved since February, including over 46,000 anti-armor systems, nearly 200 Howitzers, 38 long-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and a litany of other heavy weapons, vehicles and ammunition – as well as over 920,000 of 155mm artillery rounds. The US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) previously pointed out that the American military is “not structured to fight or support an extended conflict,” while the defense industry is “sized for peacetime production rates,” and expanding capabilities would take years.

NATO is heavily invested in Ukraine, with the alliance’s members also providing training and intelligence capability. Despite this “unprecedented support,” the military bloc’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has repeatedly claimed that “NATO is not a party to the conflict.” Moscow sees things differently. Multiple top officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, have accused NATO of waging war against Russia “by proxy,” while Putin has described Russia as fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

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I think the word is “profiteering”: “..the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America.”

Politico.eu is usually alright, but here it reverts to things like ” The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.”

And it’s high time to stop blaming the consequences of western incompetence, on Putin. We only make things worse that way.

Europe Accuses US Of Profiting From War (Pol.eu)

Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West. Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer. “The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO. The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.

“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.” Another top official, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell, called on Washington to respond to European concerns. “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us,” he said in an interview with POLITICO. The U.S. rejected Europe’s complaints. “The rise in gas prices in Europe is caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s energy war against Europe, period,” a spokesperson for Biden’s National Security Council said. Exports of LNG from the U.S. to Europe “increased dramatically and enabled Europe to diversify away from Russia,” the NSC spokesperson said.

The biggest point of tension in recent weeks has been Biden’s green subsidies and taxes that Brussels says unfairly tilt trade away from the EU and threaten to destroy European industries. Despite formal objections from Europe, Washington has so far shown no sign of backing down. At the same time, the disruption caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is tipping European economies into recession, with inflation rocketing and a devastating squeeze on energy supplies threatening blackouts and rationing this winter. As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America. Then there’s the likely surge in orders for American-made military kit as European armies run short after sending weapons to Ukraine.

It’s all got too much for top officials in Brussels and other EU capitals. French President Emmanuel Macron said high U.S. gas prices were not “friendly” and Germany’s economy minister has called on Washington to show more “solidarity” and help reduce energy costs. Ministers and diplomats based elsewhere in the bloc voiced frustration at the way Biden’s government simply ignores the impact of its domestic economic policies on European allies. When EU leaders tackled Biden over high U.S. gas prices at the G20 meeting in Bali last week, the American president simply seemed unaware of the issue, according to the senior official quoted above. Other EU officials and diplomats agreed that American ignorance about the consequences for Europe was a major problem.

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“The question involuntarily begs itself, does a united Europe need such a Ukraine, proud of the massacres?”

Ukraine Is Proud Of Its War Crimes (Milacic)

In the Russian mentality, mockery and mistreatment of prisoners is unacceptable. You can kill the enemy, but not torture. Russians in their ideology have always opposed themselves to the German Nazis with their concentration camps and gas chambers. So, if someone posted a video of the torture and murder of captured soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian audience would explode with indignation, recognizing the perpetrators of such acts as war criminals. However, the true reason for the appearance of Ukrainian torture videos lies not even in the different mentality of Ukrainian nationalists and Russians. In fact, Kiev propagandists deliberately give the green light to such videos. This is primarily done to scare Russian soldiers and reservists.

And official Kiev does not pay much attention to these crimes. Take for example the recent Ukrainian war crime in Makiivka. The Ukrainian army immediately began to claim that the video was staged and fake. However, it was the Western experts who confirmed the authenticity of the video and the Western media exerted pressure to launch an investigation. However, such video propaganda of cruelty actually has a much more serious purpose. Its main task is to form a stable feeling of hatred between Russians and residents of Ukraine. EU residents have little idea of the mentality of the average Russian. The fact is that many in Russia sincerely consider the current war to be a civil one. Almost all Russians treat Ukrainians either as a very close people or as southwestern Russians.

Half of the inhabitants of Ukraine have Russian surnames, relatives in Russia and use Russian as their main language. However, each such video should, according to the plan of Kiev radical propagandists, change the mentality of Russians more and more. They must hate all the inhabitants of Ukraine, stop treating them as “their own” and recognize that reconciliation with Ukraine and a new reunification with it is impossible. Peace will come sooner or later, but a steel wave of hatred will fall between the future Ukraine and Russia. At the same time, Russia’s desire to punish the killers of defenseless prisoners of war and civilians will also prevent the settlement of relations between Moscow and Kyiv for many decades.

The line of military contact between Russia and Ukraine is lengthening, fresh troops and new weapons are coming to the front from both sides. Obviously, the execution in Makiivka will not be the last video demonstrating the complete disregard of Kyiv, for “democratic values”, the Geneva Convention and human rights. However, what appalls observers of the conflict in Ukraine even more is the fact that the Ukrainian army tortures and kills its own citizens. We could see this during the Ukrainian seizure of Izyum and Kherson. After which hundreds of Ukrainian citizens simply disappeared, that is, they were liquidated by the SBU and the Ukrainian army. The question involuntarily begs itself, does a united Europe need such a Ukraine, proud of the massacres?

Doug Valentine on CIA in Ukraine

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What they do, not what they say.

Biden Admin Quietly Greenlights Plan to Build Huge Gulf Oil Terminal (ET)

The Biden administration has quietly approved plans to build a new crude oil terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, seemingly in contradiction to the president’s climate agenda. The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration approved the application (pdf) for Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal, one of four proposed offshore oil export terminals, on Monday. According to the application, the port will be located offshore of Freeport, Texas. It will have 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity and add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity. In its 94-page decision, the Maritime Administration said that it had approved the application because the construction and operation of the port is “in the national interest and consistent with other policy goals and objectives.”

“The construction and operation of the Port is in the national interest because the Project will benefit employment, economic growth, and U.S. energy infrastructure resilience and security,” the administration wrote. “The Port will provide a reliable source of crude oil to U.S. allies in the event of market disruption and have a minimal impact on the availability and cost of crude oil in the U.S. domestic market.” The decision states that the project will expand on an existing Enterprise Crude Houston operated terminal located in Houston and will generate 62 permanent jobs over 30 years. Additionally, 1,400 temporary construction jobs will be created, with the majority of the workforce being hired from existing labor pools in Texas and Louisiana, according to the application.

The Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued its approval (pdf) of the project in October but stressed that “more emphasis is needed to ensure that environmental justice and climate change considerations are included in the project for the protection of overburdened communities.” Protests broke out shortly after on the Gulf Coast, The Texas Tribune reported, with climate activists condemning the move, and pointing to the fact that President Joe Biden has prioritized issues such as climate change and clean energy incentives during his time in office. Biden has vowed to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

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He talked about “Twitter’s Internal Discussion Of..”, but certainly at this point the essence is the same. Musk realizes Twitter pushed away half its audience, and its credibility.

Musk: Exposing Hunter Biden Laptop Story Necessary To Restore Public Trust (ZH)

Revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust,” according to new owner Elon Musk. Musk was responding to a tweet by the recently-unbanned @alx, who said: “Raise your hand if you think @ElonMusk should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.” The Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real “laptop from hell,” which contains unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a meeting between Joe and an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, in 2015.

“The laptop contained caches of emails detailing business dealings with Burisma and state-owned CEFC China Energy Co, from which his firms received $4.8 million in wire transfer payments from its founder, Ye Jianming, according to a Senate report.” -Daily Caller. Twitter had restricted any user from sharing links of the Post’s coverage, both publicly or via direct message – while the social media giant also locked out former White House spox Kayleigh McEnany’s personal account, as well as former President Trump’s campaign account, for sharing the link. In the ensuing years, the authenticity of the laptop has been confirmed by both the Washington Post and the New York Times, while CBS News authenticated the laptop on Monday.

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“..these companies appeared to have no objections to the company maintaining one of the world’s largest and most notorious censorship systems..”

Companies Join Call to Suspend Advertising with Twitter (Turley)

National Public Radio yesterday posted an article titled “Twitter has lost 50 of its top 100 advertisers since Elon Musk took over, report says.” The article relies on a report from the liberal site Media Matters for America founded by Democratic operative David Brock. The report lists companies that have publicly pulled their advertising and the article strongly suggests that it is due to the pledge of Elon Musk to restore free speech protections on the social media site. These companies are well within their free speech rights to boycott the company or suspend their support in light of possible changes on content. However, customers also have the right not to support companies that do not support their free speech rights.

The NPR article contains this graph: “Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck & Co. and Novartis AG all issued statements about halting Twitter ads or were reported and confirmed as doing so. The others ceased advertising on the platform for a “significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers.” A quick review of these companies show that many use the same vague rationale of Chipolte that they want to wait to “gain a better understanding on the direction of the platform under its new leadership.” These companies have not expressly called for censorship. They simply say that they will not advertise with the company until that they satisfied with the company’s new “direction.”

The assumption is that the companies were fine with the “direction” of the old Twitter in limiting free speech. In the very least, it did not seem to be a sufficient concern to prompt them to make public statements suspending advertising in prior years. The companies have remained silent on why the prior “direction” did not appear to be a corporate concern. They did not apparently view the prior Twitter policies as barriers to advertising. Specifically, these companies appeared to have no objections to the company maintaining one of the world’s largest and most notorious censorship systems. The blocking of the Hunter Biden laptop story did not appear to be a barrier for advertisers. The blocking of individuals offering opposing views on Covid, climate change, transgender policies or other issues was not an apparent barrier. Yet, the announced intention to restore free speech protections has warranted these suspensions.

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Beyond cow farts…

Climate Activists: Slaughter Millions of Dogs To ‘Reduce Carbon Pawprint’ (NP)

Climate activists are now calling for millions of dogs worldwide to be slaughtered in an effort to reduce the “carbon pawprint” they produce as a result of eating meat. In the last few years, the level of urgency to “save the planet” coming from the mainstream media and globalist elites has intensified to dizzying new heights. From the early warnings of “don’t shower every day,” to today’s open discussions about eugenics. Trying to deface iconic works of art is sadly just the start, they’re now trying to openly kill our pets and will eventually move onto humans too. Wnd.com reports: Scientists — who write the papers funded by eco-idealogues with findings developed so that they can write the next paper funded by eco-idealogues — use any means necessary to scare people.

Decades of the sky not falling means only a minute fraction of the public believes the hype, and therefore support extreme positions regarding population control and now, even animal control.” A few years ago, cow flatulence was going to keep the world from achieving its climate goals, so Bessie was targeted for her carbon hoofprint. That was child’s play compared to the CNN column, recapping a study that immediate action was necessary to stop the pending climate catastrophe. Their solutions? Don’t bring large-breed animals into your home, and no matter the size, feed Fido or Fluffy only insect-based meals. According to the CNN column, “Their [pets’] meat-heavy diet is the biggest contributor to their carbon pawprints, which requires an abundance of energy, land and water to produce.

And the production of pet food emits huge amounts of planet-warming gases … if our furry friends formed a separate country, it would rank 5th in global meat consumption behind China, the US, Brazil and Russia.” As a pet owner, the thought of sacrificing any of my six dogs — three small-breed and three whose size exceeds 45 pounds apiece — is both laughable and irritating. My girls’ care, feeding, health and exercise is top-notch, and their importance to my family is beyond anything the world would achieve by eliminating the larger three, or replacing the occasional beef or chicken-based treats with a grub, grasshopper or glowworm.

Read more …

There Will Be Blood.

Thoughts On A Crypto Crisis (Melekan)

If you’ve never seen the movie “There Will Be Blood” starring Daniel Day Lewis, then now might be a good time. Based loosely on an Upton Sinclair novel that satirizes the early days of the oil industry, it portrays the life of an independent oil man who rises to great wealth and power at the expense of his humanity. While that character’s arc is predictable, what makes the movie is his back and forth interaction with a young pastor whose own lust for power turns out to be just as great, and just as corrupting. Lewis’ character, while evil, is at least self-aware about his greed and selfishness. The pastor is not, and in some ways turns out the more pathetic character. Welcome to the state of crypto in its thirteenth year, except that in our story the greedy entrepreneur and the morally bankrupt spiritual leader have turned out to be the same person.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, but also Do Kwon (of Terra), Su Zhu (of Three Arrows Capital), Alex Mashinsky (of Celsius) and a few others. All claimed to be working towards the greater good. All ended up obscenely wealthy in the process. All turned out to be frauds. Tempting as it might be to focus all of our energy into anger towards these men, this is a time for self reflection. As an industry, but also a community. Crypto has attracted millions of people from all over the world and the vast majority are good people who believe in this new way of building trust. But we are terrible at picking leaders (with a few exceptions) and have only ourselves to blame when they let us down. The great irony of the collapses we’ve experienced lately is that nobody has to use these firms. Unlike Wall Street, where consumer choices are always limited (by design) the censorship resistance of crypto often means nobody has to use any service.

Most of FTX’s clients could have custodied their own coins and used DeFi, in the same way that people who wanted a more decentralized stablecoin could have used Dai. And yet, countless users who came to crypto to get away from traditional authorities ended up running into the arms of services offered by inexperienced leaders who act like they are running a cult. But why? The simplest answer is greed. The KwonZhuMashFried’s of the world all promised their followers a faster road to riches. Greed has an exponential function. The more money people make, the more they (paradoxically) want, despite the marginal utility of the next dollar declining quickly. Crypto has made a lot of people rich, but for every user who cashes out there seems to be two who double down. This compulsion for always making more drives some people to suspend disbelief and to seek out the quacks who make the most grandiose promises. But blaming everything on greed is too simple. There has to be more to this story, and true self reflection requires going deeper.

Max Keiser

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Monica Showalter: “China in fact is a giant prison, complete with slave labor, sweatshops, low wages, continuous lockdowns and actual laogai, or Gulags..”

But how exactly is that different from the US? You know, once you incorporate 2-3 years of Fauci and Covid in your view.

Klaus Schwab Declares China A ‘Role Model’ (AT)

Once upon a time, the Soviets had a tightly controlled network of internationalists known as the COMINTERN to promote their communist model to Europe and beyond. As it stands now, the Red Chinese have gone them one better: They’ve got Klaus Schwab. According to Fox News: World Economic Forum founder and Chair Klaus Schwab recently sat down for an interview with a Chinese state media outlet and proclaimed that China was a “role model” for other nations. Schwab, 84, made these comments during an interview with CGTN’s Tian Wei on the sidelines of last week’s APEC CEO Summit in Bangkok, Thailand. Schwab said he respected China’s “tremendous” achievements at modernizing its economy over the last 40 years.


“I think it’s a role model for many countries,” Schwab said, before qualifying that he thinks each country should make its own decisions about what system it wants to adapt. “I think we should be very careful in imposing systems. But the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries,” Schwab said. A role model? A country of zero freedom, low social mobility, social credit scores, and constant government surveillance? Who the heck, even among the revolutionary wokester crowd, is openly calling for a Chinese model for their own countries? China in fact is a giant prison, complete with slave labor, sweatshops, low wages, continuous lockdowns and actual laogai, or Gulags. Challenge the government in any way and you’ll be packed off to one for years upon years in no time. In the case of the Uighurs, just being the wrong nationality is enough for such punishment.

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Long piece on education and the way China sees Americans annd other “westerners”

Finis Sinarum: Why I think China Cannot Win This (Pattberg)

The Western control over China is blatantly obvious. And because it is so blatant and obvious, you would be considered a baichi—an idiot—to speak about it. A baichi is a person who is oblivious to social conventions. Which makes him a tragic hero, to some. But more generally speaking, an idiot does more damage than good to a harmonious society. If the baichi does not die from immediate consequences, he transforms into a huairen or bad person. In the West we would call him a villain. All the idiot heroes who point out the obvious situation that Chinese education is already westernized will be considered terrorists as well.

Example. One baichi German guy at Beijing Foreign Language University pointed out that the 50,000 holders of the Chinese Government Scholarships (CSC) are NOT looked after by the Chinese side, and that the applications were pre-sorted and forwarded by Western governments. Two months later, the guy died in an accident. Most nationals do not realize this, but the West controls education globally. Not just all the standards. Not just the Anglo-Satan BA, MA, MBA, PhD degrees, publications, and university structures, but also international exchange, scholarship, and permissions. Chinese degrees, Benke, Shuoshi, Boshi, etc., on the other hand, are invalid.

An Englishman who carelessly studied in China on his own, with no UK governmental backing, is holding a worthless degree. UK universities, including Cambridge and Imperial College, prohibit their students from studying in mainland China unless they are part of their many state-supervised exchange programs. The entire West has huge barriers to its citizens learning in China unsupervised. This is also the reason why most British students miraculously end up in exchange years in pro-Western Hong Kong or Taiwan. British scholars are not free, and they are definitely not autarch. They are children of the Empire,… and suck their owners’ titinob.

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Canada is ruled by lapdogs.

US Officials Pressured Canada To Stop ‘Freedom Convoy’ (NYP)

Top Biden administration officials pressed their Canadian counterparts to clear truckers blockading parts of the United States’s northern border during protests in January. A public inquiry into the Canadian government’s decision to use emergency powers to clear the “Freedom Convoy” protesters revealed on Thursday that frantic phone calls were placed by Washington to Ottawa in an effort to open up choked-off supply lines. “They are very, very, very worried,” Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in an email to her staff after a Feb. 10 phone call from White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, according to Politico. s“If this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, all of their northeastern car plants will shut down,” Freeland continued in her email.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg phoned his Canadian counterpart, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, the same day Deese called Freeland, according to the report, and Buttigieg pressed Alghabra about Canada’s “plan to resolve” the protests. Alghabra told the commission that Buttigieg initiated the call and that the interaction was “unusual.” Brian Clow, deputy chief of staff to Canada’s prime minister, also heard from White House aides, including National Security Council director Juan Gonzalez, who wanted to connect Canadian national security officials with the US Department of Homeland Security. A phone call between President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took place the following day, on Feb. 11, where Trudeau conveyed to the commander-in-chief that Ottawa had a plan to end the blockades.

In his call with Trudeau, Biden reportedly alluded to trucker convoys rumored to be threatening to disrupt the Super Bowl in Los Angeles and streets in Washington. Freeland told staff in an email that the Deese wanted daily updates on the protests which never materialized because the Emergencies Act was invoked three days after Trudeau’s call with Biden. Freeland told Canadian investigators that she worried Canada was “in the process of doing long-term and possibly irreparable harm to our trading relationship with the United States” and feared DC politicians “who would love any excuse to impose more protectionist measures on us.”

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This is not much use anymore if you don’t include -and separate out- vaccine deaths.

The Vaccinated Now Account For A Majority Of Covid Deaths (Techno Fog)

There’s a remarkable concession appearing in The Washington Post today: “a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.” The latest data shows that 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August 2022 were from people who were vaccinated or boosted. Based on past figures and the current trends, we can reasonably estimate that the number of vaccinated/boosted COVID-19 deaths will only rise. (In September 2021, the vaccinated accounted for 23% of COVID-19 deaths; in January/February 2022, the vaccinated were 42%.) This is what happens when you rush ineffective and dangerous vaccines.

The FDA’s promises of efficacy – 91% for the Pfizer vaccine and 93% for the Moderna vaccine – were always based on hope, not data. So too were the promises of safety. At the time of the official approvals, both Pfizer and Moderna hadn’t submitted any type of long-term numbers on effectiveness. Their trials were polluted with the unblinding of participants and their safety studies are “ongoing.” Now, we’re seeing efficacy numbers plummet within months of vaccination. The pandemic is of the vaccinated. The boosters? They’re to the benefit of the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical companies, as they mask the true problems with the two-shot vaccines. Even with these numbers, the outgoing Anthony Fauci continues to vouch for the jab, stating the data “overwhelmingly show the effectiveness of vaccines.”

This is the same man who demanded school closures, inserted himself into the 2020 election by criticizing Trump’s COVID-19 response while complimenting China, and criticized Governor Ron DeSantis for reopening Florida’s schools. All the while, Fauci was lying to the public about COVID-19 origins. In May of 2020, he told National Geographic that COVID-19 “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” What he didn’t tell us was that he and US government clients were sabotaging and shutting down research and fact finding into the lab leak theory. What he didn’t say was that internal communications among himself and Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, revealed through a FOIA request by Jimmy Tobias, discussed “accidental lab passage in animals” and how the Wuhan lab was the “Wild West” and why the lab leak was a serious possibility.

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Cancer and plastic blood clots. What a future we have created for ourselves.

People With Stable Cancer Rapidly Progress After Having a Booster (Dalgleish)

A letter from Dr. Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St George’s University of London, to Dr. Kamran Abbasi, the Editor in Chief of the BMJ. It was written in support of a colleague’s plea to Dr. Abbasi that the BMJ make valid informed consent for Covid vaccination a priority topic.

Dear Kamran Abbasi, Covid no longer needs a vaccine programme given the average age of death of Covid in the U.K. is 82 and from all other causes is 81 and falling.vThe link with clots, myocarditis, heart attacks and strokes is now well accepted, as is the link with myelitis and neuropathy. (We predicted these side effects in our June 2020 QRBD article Sorensen et al. 2020, as the blast analysis revealed 79% homologies to human epitopes, especially PF4 and myelin.)vHowever, there is now another reason to halt all vaccine programmes. As a practising oncologist I am seeing people with stable disease rapidly progress after being forced to have a booster, usually so they can travel. Even within my own personal contacts I am seeing B cell-based disease after the boosters.

They describe being distinctly unwell a few days to weeks after the booster – one developing leukaemia, two work colleagues Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and an old friend who has felt like he has had Long Covid since receiving his booster and who, after getting severe bone pain, has been diagnosed as having multiple metastases from a rare B cell disorder.vI am experienced enough to know that these are not the coincidental anecdotes that many suggest, especially as the same pattern is being seen in Germany, Australia and the USA. The reports of innate immune suppression after mRNA for several weeks would fit, as all these patients to date have melanoma or B cell based cancers, which are very susceptible to immune control – and that is before the reports of suppressor gene suppression by mRNA in laboratory experiments. This must be aired and debated immediately.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Musk T0

 

 

Magic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1596193011309969411

 

 

Sting rays

 

 


Mt. Fuji. Instagram’s Taitan21

 

 

Owl petting

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 27 2022

Viewing 39 posts - 41 through 79 (of 79 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #122042
    hexadec
    Participant

    @John Day Personal anecdote. My father had a kidney removed for cancer maybe 6 years ago. He seemed to be doing ok afterward. Then covid and the shots and they found spots on his lung. After seemingly interminable discussion and flaws in the diagnosis, he decided to do immunotherapy. After complaining of back pain for a couple weeks he ended up in the hospital where they found a cracked vertebra, which they cemented and sent him to the nursing facility. He was up with a walker, looking promising, then bedridden and gone in about a week and a half.
    Six months or so later they somehow decided my mother had multiple myeloma. Tests were scheduled. She started complaining of back pain and my siblings and I were saying to each other this can’t be happening again can it. After a few weeks she was in the hospital where they found a compression fracture in a vertebra and some fractured ribs. She returned home and a few weeks later was gone, several days before the test that was going to prove the diagnosis. Both had four shots. I wish I’d tried harder to talk them out of the boosters. I want to blame the shots. They were in their late 80’s so it’s not so suspicious.

    #122043
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Seabirds: I think that the medical journal you mentioned is white-washing how things covidiotic are going down in Russia. The things they say are technically true but lack a ton of rather terrifying context. I think the article is intended to make Russia look medically stupid by the standards of Western covidiotic medicine.

    This guy does a good job of conveying unpleasant truths about Russia’s covid response and medical system in general. I don’t agree with his conclusions (‘it’s all a Davosian reset scam’!) but have never caught him lying.

    My answer to my own question is that Putin is too busy winning a war of existential survival against the NATOstan bloc to deal with that stuff. If what Russia has done with covid is as as bad as what most NATOstan nations have done to themselves, then Russia will have wide open arms for immigrants to Russia, cuz it will have lots of room. Russia seems likely to become the world’s Last Great Haven, containing a population of feisty independent thinkers and people with congenitally superior immune systems who survived their nation’s attempts to save them from s ghostly bogey-man disease.

    But that’s just my holding-place guess. Something we don’t know is going on, I believe. China has driven itself to the beginning of internally driven regime change by obsessing on covid above all other things. It’s insane, but insanity is symptomatic, not causative. Something about covid drives China NUTS, so I suspect it knows things about all this that we don’t.

    WHich is just another flimsy guess. I have no clue.

    ***

    Of course Elon is losing advertisers. Big company advertisers, those slow-moving behemoths, don’t want to taint their brand with Elon’s rogue tendencies, especially his de facto endorsement of Trump as a legitimate human being. Not to mention that Elon proved that half their target audience was a buncha bots.

    Advertisers will come back in hordes of droves once the new, post-covid, post-DNC, post-RINO paradigm emerges. FB is dying, and there really are no other internet giants that TPTB can control at this point. They shot their wad controlling the past 6 years’ lunatic narrative beginning with the Sanders/Trump standoff. They’re running out of media bullets. Their media currency is deflating faster than USA merchandise prices are rising. Elon should be doing swell a year from now, enjoying life without the headache of that ‘green car’ Tesla disaster sinking behind him.

    He and Trump should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit to them, altho Musk will have to slice Trump’s jugular when his erratic tendencies go too far.

    Musk is probably angling to field a candidate for the Oval Orifice. He’s smart enough to prefer being a puppet-master than a sock-puppet. I suspect that it won’t be long that he makes a vocal stand against the vakzines. Access to Twitter’s traffic alone should show him how much more opposition there is than official acknowledgments admit. He should be able to time it just swell, and then make those advertisers pay higher rates (if they’re still solvent; things are starting to crash fast. How would the average bloke know, seeing as how reality has been in freefall in the USA since we won most of Europe after WWII, and then enjoyed a few decades of global hegemony until 2014?) But the smoothness of acceleration in freefall only increases the suddenness of the speedy arrival of the ground below.

    ***

    “Well, that and the fact that she was 98 years old.”

    True, but it would have been just as true if you’d said ’96’ instead of “98”. No reason a person 98 yrs old can’t got for the big 1 Double-Ought.

    ***

    I’ll note that while covid has been associated with ““a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”” (David Rockefeller/Club of Rome quote from M Reid’s link about the Dark Origins of the Davos Great Reset)… we here all expected this to happen anyway per basic fundamentals that are larger than any Club of Rome rich man dream machine.

    Covid has become, for far too many (imo) a cause rather than a symptom of our modern dilemma. I feel horribly Boomeresque linking this song, but really, Klaus Didn’t Start the Fire… and he’s gonna lose his shirt during this massive reset of an entire civilizational paradigm.

    #122044
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #122045
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @John Day

    Extramedullary

    #122046
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Shit is popping off in China. The people are getting angry

    #122047
    Bill7
    Participant

    ‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity- The American computer scientist, who coined the term ‘virtual reality,’ cautions against online ‘psychological operatives’:

    “Jaron Lanier, the eminent American computer scientist, composer and artist, is no stranger to skepticism around social media, but his current interpretations of its effects are becoming darker and his warnings more trenchant.

    Lanier, a dreadlocked free-thinker credited with coining the term “virtual reality”, has long sounded dire sirens about the dangers of a world over-reliant on the internet and at the increasing mercy of tech lords, their social media platforms and those who work for them.
    Nothing about the last few weeks – of chaos on Twitter and the ever-increasing spread of conspiracy theory and disinformation – has changed that. The current state of the tech industry is ripe with danger and poses an existential threat, he believes.

    “People survive by passing information between themselves,” Lanier, 61, told the Guardian in an interview. “We’re putting that fundamental quality of humanness through a process with an inherent incentive for corruption and degradation. The fundamental drama of this period is whether we can figure out how to survive properly with those elements or not.” ..”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/27/jaron-lanier-tech-threat-humanity-twitter-social-media

    #122048
    zerosum
    Participant

    “Shit is popping off in China. The people are getting angry”

    The TV programs are pissing themselves silly with joy.
    Flag waving, calls for freedom, take down the gov.
    Geeeee, they reported the same thing in Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy.

    #122049
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    As if on cue…similar sentiment and slightly more pedantic:

    “In almost every state in the union there is a government agency or department with the name “Child Protective Services”. Its purported mission is to act as the long arm of a responsible community to protect children from their own parents or guardians when children are being mis-treated. Although vastly abusive in many, if not most, situations, there is, at least, a good faith argument for the existence of such agencies for extreme cases. Its aim is in part to protect the children; but it also aims to ensure that the children develop into adults that hopefully will not be as anti-social as their parents – in other words, to prevent the perpetuation of anti-social behaviour over multiple generations. Good luck! But, at least, the aim is sensible, even if not, in the main, achievable.

    Usually, the targets are lower class blacks and white goyim families, where lack of money exacerbates what mainstream “upper middles” would view as an anti-social lifestyle.

    However, given the rise to prominence of a new kind of upper class over the last 50 years, the need for a new kind of child protective services – one might call it “goyim protective services” suggests itself. That upper class, of course, is the new Jewish elite that now rules the United States. And if you doubt me, make a couple of quick calls to “Ye”, yeah, who, until a few days ago, used to be worth over a billion dollars, or a certain Mr. Irving, who, until a couple of days ago, used to play professional basketball.

    Anti-social upbringing in a “super-class,” like the ruling Jews, would of course be far more damaging to society than the alcoholism and wife-beating typically passed from generation to generation by the “untermenschen” of our society. The latter affects only the immediate and unfortunate households and perhaps neighborhoods of such persons. The former, however, can have huge and devastating consequences to the entire nation.

    The need for such an agency raises its ugly head in what presumably was the completely anti-social upbringing of Sam Bankman-Fried, a child of enormous intellectual privilege, brought up in the most intellectually dominant of Jewish households. His case, sad to say, is simply a poster child for the upbringing of the children of powerful Jews who currently run our country, and whose children are presumably being prepared to continue to run – some might say ruin – our country. Sam’s shenanigans with FTX (a crypto exchange) and its related entity, Alemada Research, apparently a major crypto trader, may have resulted in hundreds of millions, and likely billions, of dollars of losses to FTX account holders and others, including left-wing charities and the Democrat Party, recipient of $40 million in the last election cycle. (As the poster boy for “effective altruism” said, “I wanted to get rich, not because I like money but because I wanted to give that money to charity””

    #122050
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr. D. Rich, who wrote “extramedullary”:
    Did Queen Elizabeth have the even-more-aggressive multiple myeloma which spreads outside the bone marrow?

    #122051
    Bill7
    Participant

    Mister Musk’s “purchase” of the Twit-twit seems more like a re-branding by its real owners: “you are Welcome Here, because we are the bastion of free speech!” More like their datamining has been going less well lately, I’d guess. One-way mirror..

    Here’s Y. Varoufakis’s very limited take:
    https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/musk-bought-twitter-to-get-cloud-capital-by-yanis-varoufakis-2022-11

    “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” -Lily Tomlin

    #122052
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Looks to me like a skilled archer using the right stuff can hold his own with a semi-automatic. All while not having to make a loud noisy and maybe fire-flashed glaring target of himself:

    Rapid Fire Archery

    Semi-Automatic Fire Speeds

    #122053
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Nice thing about bows and arrows is you can make your own ‘gun’ and ‘ammo’ from crude materials. Semi-autos and such, not so much.

    Me, I’m a major slingshot fan:

    The Slingshot Man

    #122054
    Redneck
    Participant

    “Monica Showalter: “China in fact is a giant prison, complete with slave labor, sweatshops, low wages, continuous lockdowns and actual laogai, or Gulags..”

    But how exactly is that different from the US? You know, once you incorporate 2-3 years of Fauci and Covid in your view.”

    Really , seriously , you truly beleive that Americans live under the same conditions as the Chinese? Are the Covid restriction in America now the same as in China? I don’t think so. Ask your readers here how many are locked in their homes unable to leave. That has already come and gone while China is still in very harsh lockdown mode. Cities of tens of millions are locked down because of “cases” of thirty thousand or so.
    .
    You should take a break from your anti-west echo chamber , get a flight to China , get a job there and live there for six months, then do the same in America. Try a taste of the ACTUAL world, not the pixalated one that is being seen with the eyes and then imagined in your consciousness , you obviously don’t understand that they are different . One is images appearing in your consciousness , a narrative with pictures and words that is telling a story , it is imagination only . You can’t visit the sweatshop in your mind. You can’t breath the smog of Chinese cities in your mind.
    I have a friend who sits in front of a huge smart TV screen that is the monitor for his computer. He sits there every day and drowns his mind in all the same stuff I see repeated here over and over every day and he really thinks he knows what is happening in the world. He has never left the shores of Australia , ever. He has only left the state maybe three times and yet he is an expert on every country , every religion , every political and social event in the world. He absolutely loves China he sees China as the great shining force that will eliminate all the evil of the West and erase all injustice. He is waiting for them to arrive in his small town so he can go out and shake their hands and welcome them as his friends. He has a anti-west website that is very extensive and he is commenting every day online. If he lived in China he would not be able to do what he does here ,that is , run an anti government website. He wants to live under Chinese social conditions and yet those conditions would totally prevent him from doing the very thing he loves most , criticising the powerful. There is this syndrome that comes from beleiving that being online and watching stuff is somehow the same as the actual physical world. I expressed the desire to him recently that I would like to go to Nepal some day and see the Himalayas. He looked at me in a confused sort of way and asked why I wanted to go there when I could see it a lot more easily and comfortably on line! Amazing!

    #122055
    Redneck
    Participant

    The Russian soldiers are turning to the civilian infrastructure for recognition and help from the incompetence of their military command.
    “Dear Oleg Nikolaevich. The Marines of the 155th Marine Brigade are addressing you. Once again, we were thrown into an incomprehensible offensive by General Muradov and his korefan fellow countryman Akhmedov in order for Muradov to earn bonuses over Gerasimov, and Muradov promised Akhmedov the “Hero of Russia”. As a result, we and the marines of Kamchatka are advancing on Pavlovka. As a result of the “carefully” planned offensive by the “great generals”, we lost about 4 people in 300 days killed, wounded and missing. 50 percent technology. This is just our team.

    The command of the district, together with Akhmedov, hide this and underestimate the official figures of losses, fearing responsibility. How they were going to capture the settlement, slipping through the landings, in which the enemy remained, now destroying ours on the routes of evacuation of the wounded and the supply of ammunition. In addition, Pavlovka is lower than Ugledar, from which they hit us. Oleg Nikolaevich, Primorye people! How long will such mediocrity as Muradov and Akhmedov plan military operations for the sake of their reports and receive awards at the cost of the lives of so many people.

    They don’t care about anything, just to show themselves. They call people meat. We ask you to turn to the Supreme to send a commission not from the Ministry of Defense, where Muradov is protected by Gerasimov, but an independent one. Let them be asked the purpose of such actions, their provision and the results without embellishment. How much can you endure!”
    https://en.topwar.ru/204674-gubernatory-protiv-generalov-minoborony.html

    #122056
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    US/UK/EU/NATO/Zelensky wanted war with Russia. Now they have it.

    #122057
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Denninger’s take on Died Suddenly https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=247494

    #122058
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Thank you, Vladimir Makei, Minister @BelarusMFA , for a constructive meeting on the #COVID19 situation, the global response, and #VaccinEquity. @WHO stands ready to support and partner with all countries to save lives & livelihoods.Together! !”

    Relevant to this:

    Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makey Dies Suddenly

    Doesn’t “die suddenly” mean triple-vaxxed?

    #122059
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #122060
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    @ Dr. Day – #122032
    ———
    Thanks a bunch, … I asked the question simply thinking out loud: Is this yet another inexpensive solution to the problem that being suppressed by pharma? You know, … say, ivermectin syndrome? Only $3.19, after all, … instead of expensive mainstream medical interventions!

    Since I had to convert my ‘registered retirement fund’ to a ‘registered income fund’ – my age issue and Government of Canada mandatory decree associated with it – I’m now being bombarded by health related vids specifically formulated for wrinclies, … i.e., prune-like types: dealing with prostate, heart, cataracts, et. al., hence this specific vid just popped.

    Anyway, … yes, I’m on regiment of Vitamin-D, fresh veggies, fish, … and since you mentioned B-complex vitamin, … I now will look into that, too.

    … thanks again,

    F.S.

    #122061
    BoomerDoomer2
    Participant

    There seems to be a trend amongst normally critical thinking folks to ignore Overshoot… The models developed by Meadows etal have been proven to be remarkably accurate. Direct observation of all current data confirms the same. One can question the motives of those who funded the Club of Rome study, but you would have to be living in a Hopey hole not to be aware that we are in Overshoot…

    #122062
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Nov 26 (Reuters) – The price for Russian seaborne oil should be capped at between $30 and $40 per barrel, lower than the level that Group of Seven nations have proposed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday.

    European Union governments, seeking to curb Moscow’s ability to fund the Ukraine war without causing an oil supply shock, are split over a G7 push that the cap be set at $65 to $70 per barrel. It is due to enter into force on Dec. 5.

    Ukraine wants lower cap on Russian oil, at $30-$40 per barrel
    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-wants-lower-cap-russian-oil-30-40-per-barrel-2022-11-26/

    F.S.

    #122063
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Russia stands for something, the traditional values regarding reality handed down by their ancestors, and they are willing to face off against the woke liberals in the west. Go Russia. https://www.rt.com/russia/567278-canada-lgbt-bill-russia/.

    We need more countries like Russia, prepared to stand up to the fraud of the woke liberal “professional” classes. Western professionals are afraid to contradict their employers for fear of being fired, so they adopt the crazy beliefs forced on them in their diversity training or LGBT training etc at work. If you are not a liberal at work, for example pretending that men dressed as women are not men, then you will not survive.

    Who is forcing large corporations to adopt this nonsense? The same people that use ESG blackmail to force companies to obey or lose all financial services if they do not profess the green agenda. Corruption is rife in the western world.

    #122064
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Seriously?

    Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) announced a successful demonstration of its first battery electric 793 large mining truck and a significant investment to transform its Arizona-based proving ground into a sustainable testing and validation hub of the future.

    Caterpillar Successfully Demonstrates First Battery Electric Large Mining Truck and Invests in Sustainable Proving Ground

    Caterpillar Successfully Demonstrates First Battery Electric Large Mining Truck and Invests in Sustainable Proving Ground

    F.S.

    #122065
    John Day
    Participant

    @FS: Most welcome. (Keep driving that Honda Fit sport model with 5 speed manual, but not in deep snow.)


    @Boscohorowitz
    : Thanks for the Slavsquat. He posts this https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/i-believe-we-are-facing-an-evil-that He makes a good case that Russia, with or without Putin’s complicity, is on-board with the vaccine-mandate global-health-passport initiative, and he leans away from giving Putin a walk on this one. People have been asking me, and I have been saying I don’t really know. Putin has advocated for choice, but gotten the shots early, himself. The Mayor of Moscow pushed a mandate, which was poorly attended by the non-trusting Russians. Other mandates have been declared for specific workers and businesses throughout Russia. Russians are under 50% COVID-vaccinated according to this, but Statista shows 55%, and just 2 jabs, not more.


    @Redneck
    : I’m not cut out to be a Russian soldier, or anybody’s soldier (Grew up on USMC & USN bases during Vietnam), and I’m not cut out to be a denizen of China, either.
    (I am decreasingly cut out to be an American Physician. I used to love it and thrive in the role.
    I have hope to reprise that role, but I know the times are changing for the worse everywhere.)


    @Hexadec
    : Sorry about your parents. They were a little older than I am.
    I’ve got some fight left in me…

    #122066
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant
    #122067
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The KMT won in the mayoral election in Taipei – no surprise there, the north is very KMT – and the great grandson of Chiang Kai Shek was their candidate, also no surprise as he was on TV so many times a day for the past four months that I, someone not involved in Taiwan politics, could not help but wonder who the hell was paying for his campaign. The hype behind this guy is amazing. It is a form of nepotism and the Chinese people walked into the trap, they are crazy voting for descendants but it happens all the time, and you just know the corruption will explode as he pays back all the people who funded his overwhelming campaign. https://www.rt.com/news/567286-taipei-elects-chiang-kai-shek-descendant/. Much like the US elections, the people do not get to vote for who should be the KMT candidate, so the game is rigged before the election. President Xi was another one who exploited, was exploited for, his ancestors’ fanchise.

    #122068
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @John Day

    Extra-medullary plasmacytoma (EMP) arises from plasma cells outside the bone marrow…multiple myeloma may follow from

    #122069
    oldandtired
    Participant

    @boscohorowitz
    Your first video is not an archer, but a bluesman. Intentional?

    #122070
    WES
    Participant

    About that CAT electric mining truck.
    Basically good to haul one load of rocks about 1 kilometer, then the battery needs to be recharged!
    Perfect union job!
    Very practical!

    The stupid thing about this battery powered truck is that there are already mining trucks being powered by electricity from the grid, using over head power lines, just like street cars! There are even electrically driven mine trains! Electrically driven conveyor belts! Electrically driven mine hoists! Every mining engineer studies electricity!

    The first thing one needs to understand about large mining trucks is that they all have electric motors in each wheel hub. This was the only way truck makers could make trucks larger than 85 tons because no one could build a mechanical transmission that would last for a truck any larger.

    So a typical large mining truck has a diesel engine driving an electrical generator to power the 4 electric wheel motors. So temporarily connecting to over head power lines like a street car is not new technology.

    The problem with most mining trucks is their routes are constantly changing.

    However, in one Zambian copper mine, I worked in 1980-1, all the mining trucks had to climb the same road out of the mining pit. So they installed overhead power lines so their trucks could use cheaper electricity, instead of imported and expensive diesel fuel, while climbing the steep pit road to the surface.

    Once at the surface the mining trucks then disengaged from the power lines and continued on their journey.

    All of this sounds very simple but it wasn’t! The mine basically told all of it’s truck drivers that a truck climbing the pit road out of the mine, using electrical power lines, had right of way over trucks decending into the mining pit. Makes perfect sense!

    Oh yeah, I should tell you the climbing trucks drove on the side of the road closest to the mining pit walls, while the decending trucks drove on the side of the road at cliff’s edge.

    Everything is cool right. We’ll not quite!
    What happens when a truck driver panics? Why would he panic?
    Like maybe his truck suddenly looses power!
    No Zambian truck driver, worth his salt, wants to die with his 200 ton truck!
    If climbing fully loaded, first he will try to disengage from the overhead power lines and regain diesel motor power.
    OK, so while disengaging from the overhead power lines he accidently tears the overhead power lines to shreds, in his haste to save his own skin!

    Then there is the truck driver decending the pit road along the pit’s lip. He suddenly loses power.
    What would you do?
    He will steer into the pit’s wall to stop, never mind the climbing truck’s right-of-way!
    What does the climbing fully loaded truck driver do? Yeah, he panics!
    There goes the overhead power lines again!

    I give the Zambian mine electricians A+ for how quickly they could rebuild the overhead power lines!

    #122071
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    “Direct observation of all current data” . . . . . . is a self contradictory muddle of nonsense. There is ‘data’, as an abstracted representation of what has been (hopefully) directly observed, and there is ‘direct observation’, which can (with skill) be represented abstractly in the form of data. In other words, they are DISTINCTLY different things.

    It is common for spectacularly false conclusions to be drawn from equally spectacular vast heaps of data simply because the data was garbage. . . . which a modest amount of direct observation might have revealed if the student had extracted their nose from “the data” and pointed it at the real world for a little direct observation.

    The entire “overshoot” notion of there being too many people can be shot to smithereens in no time by a ten year old kid sitting in an airliner over any continent in the world and just looking down.

    “. . . you would have to be living in a Hopey hole not to be aware that we are in Overshoot…”

    Let’s get the kill shot over and done with first. “Overshoot” is not a science word. It’s a buzzword, and a bad one at that. Using it in relation to populations is simply logical fallacy, on it’s face, because to accept the word is to prejudicially accept the unproved notion that there can be “too many” individuals in a population. Absurd. The equivalent mistake in astronomy (for example) would be to say that there are too many stars in a galaxy. Silliness. The logical fallacy is called “begging the question”. Go look it up.

    Secondly, who gave ANYONE the authority to arbitrarily determine a “just right” size for the human population? Quite aside from the fact that such a determination is both impossible and unknowable, there is that other little thing about NO ONE has (nor could they be given) the right to impose arbitrary “solutions” based on that arbitrary number. Talk about over-the-top hubris. Don’t play God! I mean, give me a break! Just stop it. That sort of idiocy on TAE just embarrasses me.

    #122072
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Carrying capacity of the land: The number of consumers (animals) that can live indefinitely (multiple generations) on the output of the producers (plants).

    For England the sustainable population was around 3 million, achieved in the late medieval period.

    The carrying capacity of the land can be exceeded in the short term by importing food from elsewhere (a place with a low population density and a high carrying capacity and by drawing down natural resources.

    England did both, importing sugar and fruits, and then grains, and then canned or frozen meats, and then manufactured foodstuffs. And, having consumed most of its own natural resources, it began importing huge quantities or resources those from overseas, most notably guano, and then phosphate rock to maintain soil fertility, until the sources of those materials were seriously depleted/extinguished, oil, coal, timber, fish, vegetables……

    (We went through all this 6 or 8 weeks ago: my how quickly inconvenient facts are forgotten).

    Whether you call the 60 million extra people above the carrying capacity of the land in England overshoot or not is purely a matter of semantics.

    se·man·tics
    [sɪˈmantɪks]
    NOUN
    the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. The two main areas are logical semantics, concerned with matters such as sense and reference and presupposition and implication, and lexical semantics, concerned with the analysis of word meanings and relations between them.
    the meaning of a word, phrase, or text:

    One thing is absolutely certain. Once the imported food and imported energy stop arriving, around 60 million people in England will either starve to death or move to a place where the carrying capacity has not been exceeded.

    Russia comes to mind.

    Dotto every other major city and region where the carrying capacity of the land has been grossly exceeded and the population is maintained by huge imports of food (most of it produced commercially via the application of massive inputs of chemicals and energy) and direct imports of energy.

    Also worth considering is the fact that when nations last had sustainable populations there were forests and seashores where food could be gathered relatively easily.

    Most of those sources of food have been destroyed/exterminated.

    42 years down the track people are still denying the obvious.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Catton_Jr.

    #122073
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Thanks for nothing!

    ‘APOLOGY FROM A CENTRAL BANKER

    At and Australian Senate hearing, RBA governor Philip Lowe has offered an unprecedented apology to Australians who took out home loans based on the central bank’s failed guidance that interest rates were unlikely to rise until 2024.’

    #122074
    zerosum
    Participant

    The Rise and Fall of FTX (Part 2 of 3)


    The Rise and Fall of FTX (Part 2 of 3)
    BY SCOTT HILL November 27, 2022

    #122075
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Just because an academic authority (such as Catton) coins a clever (and fallaciously misleading) buzzword like “overshoot” does not magically set aside the rules of logic, nor does it make him right in his conclusions. Appeal to authority is not merely a fallacy of logic, it is avoidance of the issue (which will thereby continue to be unsolved). Most importantly, it does not justify democidal “solutions” to what is essentially the WRONG PROBLEM.

    The problem is not too much life. The problem is too little knowledge, wisdom and competence.

    Since the objective of life is more life how could there possibly be too much life? To even start down that road of mis-reasoning guarantees two things: failure and monstrous crimes against life.

    The solution to suffering, bad life choices, ignorance and incompetence is NOT euthanasia in any of its cleverly (or lazily) promoted forms. The solution is to relieve suffering, make wiser choices, and to learn and practice competent action. This does not , of course, guarantee success, but to do otherwise certainly DOES guarantee failure.

    Perhaps (for example) packing incompetent and unlearned people into megacities and supporting them by institutionalized lying, cheating, stealing and killing as a “Ideal Civilization Model” was not such a good solution. Maybe learning how to plant potatoes would work a little better.

    #122076
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    The Climate Baby Dilemma.

    I just watched this doc. Intriguing dilemma. Following is article on it:

    The World Is Burning. Should We Have a Baby?
    https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/11/25/World-Burning-Should-We-Have-Baby/

    … snip:

    We are living in a rising tide of catastrophic change. Whether people can find a way to work together and create means of active resistance, action and communal resilience remains to be seen. But the old adage that children are the future doesn’t have quite the same ring to it any longer.

    F.S.

    #122077
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Demolition of USA 2022 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmsOPAkyCzM.

    #122078
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    DBS

    You have not addressed any of the points made but have just restated your completely unfounded assertion.

    Please explain how Britian will feed 63 million people without imports of food, fertiliser and oil.

    #122079
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    “It’s getting to the point of seriously wanting to leave the country [Canada]”

    #122130
    Redneck
    Participant

    “The first thing one needs to understand about large mining trucks is that they all have electric motors in each wheel hub. This was the only way truck makers could make trucks larger than 85 tons because no one could build a mechanical transmission that would last for a truck any larger.”

    Actually CAT moved away from electric wheel trucks to all mechanical drive trucks some decades ago now.

    Details on 793 F
    FINAL DRIVES
    Differential Ratio 1.8:1
    Planetary Ratio 16:1
    Total Reduction Ratio

    Transmission
    – 6-speed, Automatic Powershift with Electronic Control (ECPC)
    – Body-up Reverse Neutralizer
    – Body-up Shift Inhibitor
    – Controlled Throttle Shifting
    – Directional Shift Management
    – Downshift/Reverse Shift Inhibitor
    – Individual Clutch Modulation
    – Lock-up Torque Converter
    – Neutral Coast Inhibitor
    – Neutral Start Switch
    – Programmable Top Speed
    – 6-speed, Automatic Powershift with Electronic Control (ECPC)
    – Body-up Reverse Neutralizer
    – Body-up Shift Inhibitor
    – Controlled Throttle Shifting
    – Directional Shift Management
    – Downshift/Reverse Shift Inhibitor
    – Individual Clutch Modulation
    – Lock-up Torque Converter
    – Neutral Coast Inhibitor
    – Neutral Start Switch
    – Programmable Top Speed

    As you know electric wheels do not run diffs and torque converters.

    CAT are very cagey about the distance the test truck actually hauled it’s load during the test.
    “The truck also performed a one kilometer (0.62 mile) run on a 10% downhill grade, capturing the energy that would normally be lost to heat and regenerating that energy to the battery. Upon completing the entire run, the truck maintained enough battery energy to perform additional complete cycles.”
    “additional complete cycles”………….how many?

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