Nov 282022
 


Pablo Picasso Still life with fruit basket 1942

 

It Seems Russia Won’t Require a Winter Offensive to Win the War (PCR)
Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’, or, Don’t Spit in the Well (Batiushka)
UK Confirms Transfer Of Advanced Weapons To Ukraine (RT)
Third Countries Secretly Arming Ukraine – Kiev (RT)
President of Hungary: ‘We Have 150,000 Reasons To Stop War In Ukraine’ (Az.)
The Suppression of Free Speech Has Close to Majority Support in America (PCR)
‘Hard Times’ Ahead For Europe – NATO (RT)
Sweden Faces Drastic Food Inflation (RT)
SEC Chair Gary Gensler Rushing To Unveil Big Changes Amid FTX Scandal (NYP)
Operation Claw-Sword: Erdogan’s Big New Game In Syria (Escobar)
John Bolton Assesses Trump’s 2024 Chances (RT)
Germany At Risk Of Mass Exodus Of Companies (RT)
European Leaders At Fault For Energy Crisis – Moscow (RT)
The European Union’s Misguided Energy Price Cap Proposal (Lacalle)
The Most Amazing Graph of the 21st Century (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

More lockdowns

 

 

 

 

Tucker Zel

 

 

 

 

Haven’t heard much from Paul Craig Roberts for a while.

“From Washington’s standpoint, the more Ukraine is destroyed the better.”

It Seems Russia Won’t Require a Winter Offensive to Win the War (PCR)

The eight-month old Kremlin policy of protecting Ukraine from attack, thus helping Ukraine to conduct war against the Russian forces, seems to have come to an end. The infrastructure–power, transportation, water–of Ukraine is being shut down. The real war Russian attacks on Ukraine’s ability to function have gradually escalated, resulting in wider and more serious damage. It seems that the Russians don’t want to destroy everything unless the West and its puppet Ukraine government fail to come to their senses. The Western whore media, of course, doesn’t report the true situation. The Western presstitutes are a propaganda ministry and have created a picture of Russian defeat. It would be difficult to identify the worst liar in the Western media as there are endless candidates, but the UK Telegraph’s Charles Moore is a leading candidate for posting the most far-fetched reports. [..]

American so-called “Russian experts” spread the same delusions. Consequently, the Western peoples have a totally false picture of the situation. Russia could destroy Ukraine in a day without using nuclear weapons. The Kremlin’s restraint–in my view a strategic blunder as it enabled the West to get involved and widen the war–in Ukraine has a number of legitimate reasons. Ukraine and the population there have been a part of Russia for centuries. There is much intermarriage. Most Ukrainians are not favorable to the neo-Nazis who have dominated Ukraine since the US overthrew the government in 2014 and have suffered at their hands. The Kremlin doesn’t want a poverty-stricken ruin of a country on its border, and the Kremlin doesn’t want the responsibility for rebuilding Ukraine’s infrastructure.

It is inconceivable to me that “experts” and “reporters” in the West are so stupid and corrupt to have written the ridiculous accounts of the conflict that bear their names. It is total nonsense and has encouraged the false belief that Russia can be defeated and that “Ukraine can be in Crimea by Christmas.” That such absurd propaganda can be effective can result in the US/NATO putting boots on the ground, and then we have World War III. From Washington’s standpoint, the more Ukraine is destroyed the better. If Putin finally abandons his half-way measures and gets down to real war, the war will soon be over. If Washington can prevent Zelensky from surrendering until Ukraine is destroyed, Washington gets the benefit of the economic and financial drain on Russia that rebuilding will impose. From Washington’s standpoint, the more problems for Russia the better regardless of the cost to Ukrainians.

What we are witnessing is the enormous inhumanity of Washington and the NATO capitals. It is unjust that it is Ukraine that is paying the cost of Western inhumanity and not Washington and the European capitals.

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‘This war is horrible. And it’s only going to get worse. There’s only one solution. We’ll line up all the politicians from the Rada (Parliament) and shoot them. Then peace will come immediately..’

Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’, or, Don’t Spit in the Well (Batiushka)

The US lost the war in the Ukraine the day it began. Russia had been preparing for it for eight years. Ever since, the US and its vassals have just been prolonging the agony by financing a Nazi regime, supplying it with arms, training its troops and sending it paid-for mercenaries. Pessimists see the agony now dragging on for years and years, whereas optimists think it will be much shorter, just a couple of months more. I would like to think the optimists are right, but I actually go along with a more pessimistic ‘another eighteen months’. I hope I am wrong. Every day is a day too long. The fact is the US elite will have to put a lot of effort into face-saving. They hate losing, even though they lost in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc.

Backing down from the confrontations they began and chaos they caused is not something they like doing. But when the last US helicopters take off from the roofs of the US embassies in Kiev and Lvov, we shall see. Last Friday an electrician near Kiev said to my friends there: ‘This war is horrible. And it’s only going to get worse. There’s only one solution. We’ll line up all the politicians from the Rada (Parliament) and shoot them. Then peace will come immediately’. I am told from Kiev that there are more and more Ukrainians saying the same thing: there must be a popular revolt to stop it all. Get ready for it there and, at the rate things are going, get ready for the same thing in Western countries as well.

In the longer term, however, there is the much more serious problem for the US of losing Europe. The national slogan of the Ukraine since 2014 has been: ‘The Ukraine is Europe’. This is of course nonsense. Geographically, the Ukraine, like the Russia where most Russians live, is obviously Europe. Indeed, most European territory is inside Russia. Of course, what the Kiev regime means is that the Ukraine belongs to Western Europe, the EU, only it does not say that. This is because it obviously does not belong there, apart from the small region of Galicia which is now in the far west of the present borders of the Ukraine, formerly Poland, formerly the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 2014 the EU actually dismissed the Kiev fantasy, telling it that Ukrainian membership of the EU might be considered in 25 years’ from then.

The nonsense about ‘the Ukraine is Europe’ reminds me of a visit to Moldova five years ago. All official buildings flew the EU flag and that was in a country that is not part of the EU and never will be. In other words, ‘The Ukraine is Europe’ is a political daydream, a fantasy. Today, as a result of US incompetence and its lickspittle poodle UK enthusiastically blowing up the Nordstream pipeline, as though that were a present to Germany, we can see that although the Ukraine is not Europe, Europe is fast becoming the Ukraine. In other words, Europe is being corrupted by US political intrigues, being sucked into the same black hole as the Ukraine, without finance, heating, lighting and sewerage. In the words of that old Eastern European joke: ‘Which are the two most corrupt countries in the world? Lithuania is first and the Ukraine is second. But only because the Ukraine bribed Lithuania to take first place, so that it could be second’. Well, today the whole of Europe is being Ukrainianised. Well done, US/UK/EU elite!

Beyond Western Europe, the US elite is also losing the rest of the world. At one time, the US was No 1. Today it is China. At one time Europe was the most populated area in the world. Today over one third of the world’s population is in China and India. At one time the G7 was respected. Today it is a ghetto, representing only a small and increasingly irrelevant part of the world. At one time the G20 represented twenty countries which were pro-Western or at least Western-controlled. Today, definitely not. The G-20 is being taken over by BRICS +.

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Remember “we” were not going to do this?

UK Confirms Transfer Of Advanced Weapons To Ukraine (RT)

The UK Defence Ministry has confirmed supplying Ukraine with modern laser-guided Brimstone 2 missiles, shrugging off Moscow’s repeated warnings about the risk of triggering a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. The ministry posted a video clip Sunday on Twitter, showing at least one pallet of the high-precision missiles being delivered from the Royal Air Force Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire to an undisclosed airfield. The missiles were part of a UK “aid package” for Ukraine, the ministry said, confirming earlier media reports of such deliveries taking place for some time. “This aid has played a crucial role in stalling Russian advancements,” the ministry claimed in its tweet. UK forces reportedly began supplying earlier versions of the Brimstone missile to Ukraine last spring.


The Brimstone 2 is far more advanced than its predecessor, offering about triple the range. It’s designed for firing from an aircraft to attack targets on the ground. However, Ukrainian ground troops have used the missile on adapted trucks, mostly targeting tanks and other armored vehicles. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled a new military aid package worth £50 million ($60 million) during his visit to Kiev earlier this month. Each Brimstone 2 missile reportedly costs about £175,000. The Kremlin has warned that as the US, the UK and other NATO members supply increasingly advanced weaponry to Ukraine, they are prolonging the conflict and risking a direct confrontation with Russia. Moscow characterizes the ongoing conflict as nothing short of a “proxy war” against the US and NATO, while President Putin has described Russia as fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

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“Most of these third countries publicly say that they do not supply anything, but everything is happening behind the scenes..”

Third Countries Secretly Arming Ukraine – Kiev (RT)

Certain nations are actually providing military aid to Kiev despite publicly denying doing so, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba revealed on Friday. In such cases, the arms are delivered through Ukraine’s partners, the top diplomat said. Kuleba made the remarks in an interview with France’s Le Parisien newspaper. “Most of these third countries publicly say that they do not supply anything, but everything is happening behind the scenes,” he said without going into specifics about which nations are purportedly secretly bolstering Kiev during its conflict with Moscow. Kuleba’s comments come amid mounting reports that Ukraine’s backers, including a number of NATO countries, are experiencing shortages of weaponry due to their continuous support for Kiev.


According to a recent piece by the New York Times, for instance, only “larger” NATO allies, such as France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, still retain the capability to maintain or even potentially increase weapon shipments to Ukraine. “Smaller countries have exhausted their potential,” a NATO official told the newspaper, adding that at least 20 of the bloc’s 30 members are “pretty tapped out” already. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in late February, the US and its Western allies have showered Kiev with billions of dollars in military aid. Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against “pumping” Ukraine with weaponry, stating that it would only prolong the conflict rather than change its outcome, and would also increase the risks of a direct collision between Russia and the US-led military bloc.

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Forked tongue much?!

President of Hungary: ‘We Have 150,000 Reasons To Stop War In Ukraine’ (Az.)

Hungary has 150,000 reasons to end the war in Ukraine and achieve peace, Hungarian President Katalin Novak said during her Kyiv visit, Report informs via RBC-Ukraine. “The 150,000 reasons are 150,000 Hungarians living in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast. Many ethnic Hungarians have already given their lives to defend Ukraine,” Katalin Novak said. Novak noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s responsibility for the war against Ukraine is obvious. “Hungarians have always and everywhere opposed bloodshed. We are neighbors of Ukraine and our neighbors can count on our help,” she added. The Hungarian head of state stressed that the parties should return to the negotiating table, diplomatic channels should be opened, and the ultimate goal should be a fair peace.

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”Members of both political parties believe that free speech that challenges official narratives should be suppressed…”

The Suppression of Free Speech Has Close to Majority Support in America (PCR)

Almost every minute of every day I see overwhelming evidence of America’s collapse as a free country. Elon Musk conducted a poll on whether Twitter should allow President Trump to use the social media platform. Fifteen million people responded. 51.8% of the respondents said “yes,” but almost an equal number 48.2% said “no.” In other words, almost half of the 15 million social media users who responded to the poll oppose free speech for a former president of the United States. No doubt, being as indoctrinated as they are, they see Trump as a “pussy-grabber,” a Russian agent, and an insurrectionist and regard cancelling his First Amendment right as punishment. Many of the same crowd want pedophiles to be relabeled “minor-attracted persons,” a step toward removing limitations on sexual relations between adults and children.

They are content with the free speech right of pedophiles to advocate, but not for President Trump to express political views on Twitter. In the case of Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder who published the leaked information documenting US war crimes and lies to allies, my headline doesn’t go far enough. A large majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans in practically equal percentages, desire Assange to be prosecuted for doing what journalists are supposed to do. President Trump and his Secretary of State Pompeo denounced Assange with the same intensity as Nancy Pelosi. Members of both political parties believe that free speech that challenges official narratives should be suppressed. Even more stunning, almost 100% of American print and TV reporters want Assange prosecuted. Here we have the entirety of the US print and TV media renouncing their own profession.

Those who oppose free speech for President Trump probably think of themselves as virtuous, the salt of the earth. In fact, they are stupid, brainwashed people easily indoctrinated who are so badly educated that they do not understand that free speech is essential to the preservation of liberty. They are so utterly stupid that they do not understand the meaning for their own lives of the fact that the governing elite are doing everything possible to censor everyone, no matter how distinguished and expert, who dissents from the lies that comprise the official narratives. Throughout the Western World truth is being rapidly closed down. Honest journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are evicted from print and TV media.

Medical doctors who saved lives by treating Covid patients with Ivermectin and HCQ instead of following the murderous imposed protocol that let them die rather than to admit that there were cures, which would have threatened vaccine profits, are having their medical licenses confiscated as if they had committed a medical crime by saving lives. Scientists who don’t accept the Woke ideology that gender is self-declared, not biologically determined, are disciplined and fired as “transgender deniers.” Anthropologists and sociologists who understand that a diverse, multicultural Tower of Babel is not a country are demonized. Historians who understand that the United States is not based in “white racism” are branded “white supremacists” and “threats to democracy.”

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NATO’s only achievement.

‘Hard Times’ Ahead For Europe – NATO (RT)

Europeans are about to face numerous hardships due to Western support for Kiev, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Germany’s Welt an Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. Despite this, he insisted that the members of the US-led military bloc and their allies should boost their efforts to bolster Ukrainian forces. In his comments to the newspaper, Stoltenberg admitted that the citizens of Western countries are being negatively affected by the conflict in Ukraine. “Rising food and energy bills mean hard times for many households in Europe,” he said, adding, however, that Europeans “should remember that the people of Ukraine pay with their blood every day.”

The NATO chief also noted that the West could “strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table if we provide military support to the country.” “The best way to support peace is to support Ukraine,” he stated. He praised Germany for the weapons it is sending to Kiev, claiming that they “save lives.” According to Stoltenberg, Russia will try to use “winter as a weapon” against Ukraine. This statement echoes recent remarks in which he warned that the coming months would be difficult for Kiev. Russia started targeting Ukrainian energy facilities in early October after accusing Kiev of attacking its critical infrastructure, including the strategic Crimean Bridge.

Western nations imposed new sweeping sanctions on Russia in the wake of Moscow having launched its military operation in Ukraine. The restrictions led to skyrocketing gas prices, thus fueling the burgeoning energy crisis in the EU. This also came as the bloc announced plans to wean itself off of Russian energy. However, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, these policies will lead to “very deplorable consequences” for the EU, with up to 20 years of deindustrialization ahead. In early October, he also noted that by relying on expensive energy from the US, the bloc is making its economy “less competitive.”

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“..usually an increase in annual expenses is insignificant, while this year “we have seen numbers quickly lose relevance.”

Sweden Faces Drastic Food Inflation (RT)

Food prices in Sweden have jumped by 20% this year, while electricity bills have more than doubled, data released by the country’s Consumer Agency shows. The report is based on research of the Swedish consumer market throughout the year and analyzes food, energy, hygiene items, footwear and clothing prices. This data, together with consumer standards approved by the country’s government, is being used to determine an average level of income which requires social assistance. This year, the monthly consumer basket for one adult is estimated at 3,400 krona ($363).


For a family of two adults and two schoolchildren this figure stands at 10,700 krona ($1,142) and is based on a four-week nutrition plan recommended by Swedish diet experts “In our calculations we are taking into account only basic needs and not some luxurious consumption,” a manager from the Swedish Consumer Agency, Kristina Difs, said in a statement. She noted that usually an increase in annual expenses is insignificant, while this year “we have seen numbers quickly lose relevance.” The Agency recorded a particularly dramatic change in prices in Sweden due to extraordinary food and energy inflation.

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“Why the rush? The word inside the SEC is that Gensler wants to get much of the work on it done before the new GOP Congress takes over Jan. 3.”

SEC Chair Gary Gensler Rushing To Unveil Big Changes Amid FTX Scandal (NYP)

You would think that with the FTX scandal still brewing and investors missing billions of dollars from their supposedly secured crypto accounts, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler would have so much on his plate, he wouldn’t have time to muck around in our capital markets, which are working just fine. But sources tell me Gensler is doing just that — preparing to unveil plans for the biggest changes in about two decades to the way stocks are routed from buyers to sellers. If Gensler’s timing holds, he will announce (possibly this week) an open meeting for mid-December that will detail his plan to remake the nation’s $46 trillion stock market, as I first reported on Fox Business. The idea is to jam out his proposed changes — and they’re pretty significant — before year’s end.

Why the rush? The word inside the SEC is that Gensler wants to get much of the work on it done before the new GOP Congress takes over Jan. 3. While a probe of Hunter Biden’s swampy business dealings is high on the list of the incoming committee chairs, Gensler knows he also has a target on his back for his ambitious — some would say zealous — progressive agenda at an agency that has a core mission of protecting investors from being ripped off by scammers. The Gensler SEC has moved so far beyond this mission that he’s looking to score lefty points and join the Environmental Social Governance bandwagon by forcing companies to disclose non-financial metrics such as how they are reducing their carbon footprint. The House Financial Services Committee, meanwhile, is intent on grilling Gensler on what he knew about the shenanigans of Sam Bankman-Fried, the Democratic megadonor under criminal investigation over the implosion of the crypto exchange FTX. The company is now in bankruptcy, while SBF, as he’s known, remains in the Bahamas.

[..] Here’s where things get interesting: Gensler met with SBF months before the blowup. The SEC had additional meetings with the fallen crypto bro’s people and business partners who were looking to start a commission-approved exchange. GOPers want to hear how all this occurred under the nose of Wall Street’s so-called top cop. Market structure, meanwhile, hasn’t really caught the full attention of the incoming 118th Congress and its new GOP majority yet, but it should. The way we buy and sell stocks, the so-called plumbing of the market, is often taken for granted for the simple reason that it works pretty seamlessly even if the process is pretty complex. It’s more complicated than just a bunch of guys on the New York Stock Exchange screaming out bids to match buyers and sellers.

For starters, most of those guys are gone, replaced by computers that can match orders in nanoseconds. The main public stock markets, the NYSE and the Nasdaq, aren’t the only game in town and are in competition to match buyers and sellers with private exchanges and market makers, companies like Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial. They’re armed with highly efficient trading machines that can match orders cheaply and still skim a bit and make a profit. It’s why we have low-cost and, in the case of Robinhood, no-fee trading platforms.

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“The wily Sultan is caught between his electorate, which favors an invasion, and his extremely nuanced relations with Russia..”

Operation Claw-Sword: Erdogan’s Big New Game In Syria (Escobar)

There’s another Special Military Operation on the market. No, it’s not Russia “denazifying” and “demilitarizing” Ukraine – and, therefore, it’s no wonder that this other operation is not ruffling feathers across the collective West. Operation Claw-Sword was launched by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as revenge – highly emotional and concerted – for Kurdish terrorist attacks against Turkish citizens. Some of the missiles that Ankara launched in this aerial campaign carried the names of Turkish victims. The official Ankara spin is that the Turkish Armed Forces fully achieved their “air operation objectives” in the north of Syria and in Iraqi Kurdistan, and made those responsible for the terror attack against civilians in Istanbul’s Istiklal pedestrian street pay in “multitudes.”

And this is supposed to be just the first stage. For the third time in 2022, Sultan Erdogan is also promising a ground invasion of Kurdish-held territories in Syria. However, according to diplomatic sources, that’s not going to happen – even as scores of Turkish experts are adamant that the invasion is needed sooner rather than later. The wily Sultan is caught between his electorate, which favors an invasion, and his extremely nuanced relations with Russia – which encompass a large geopolitical and geo-economic arc. He well knows that Moscow can apply all manner of pressure levers to dissuade him. For instance, Russia at the last minute annulled the weekly dispatch of a joint Russo-Turkish patrol in Ain al Arab that was taking place on Mondays.

Ain al Arab is a highly strategic territory: the missing link, east of the Euphrates, capable of offering continuity between Idlib and Ras al Ayn, occupied by dodgy Turkish-aligned gangs near the Turkish border. Erdogan knows he can’t jeopardize his positioning as potential EU-Russia mediator while obtaining maximum profit from bypassing the anti-Russian embargo-sanctions combo. The Sultan, juggling multiple serious dossiers, is deeply convinced that he’s got what it takes to bring Russia and NATO to the negotiating table and, ultimately, end the war in Ukraine. In parallel, he thinks he may stay on top of Turkey-Israel relations; a rapprochement with Damascus; the sensitive internal situation in Iran; Turkey-Azerbaijan relations; the non-stop metamorphoses across the Mediterranean; and the drive towards Eurasia integration. He’s hedging all his bets between NATO and Eurasia.

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John who?

John Bolton Assesses Trump’s 2024 Chances (RT)

Not only may former US President Donald Trump fail to win a second term, but he could also hurt many Republican Party candidates with his re-election bid, his one-time national security advisor, John Bolton, has warned. “There are a lot of reasons to be against Trump being the nominee but the one I’m hearing now…is the number of people who have just switched Trump off in their brain,” Bolton, a veteran diplomat who worked in the Trump White House between 2018 and 2019, told the Guardian newspaper on Saturday. Bolton argued that those who had passionately supported the 45th president in the past now have second thoughts, especially after the Republican Party’s underwhelming performance in the midterm elections this month.

They fear that “if he got the nomination, not only would he lose the general election, but he would take an awful lot of Republican candidates down with him,” he said. Although the former White House official thinks Trump’s endorsement could help a candidate win the primary, being associated with him would be “poisonous in the general election.” There’s no doubt Trump’s endorsement in the primary can be very valuable to a candidate in the Republican party. But relying on that endorsement or trumpeting yourself as the Trump-endorsed candidate is poisonous in the general election. So if you actually want to win elections, Trump is not the answer. Trump announced his re-election bid on November 15. The move came a week after Republicans failed to retake the Senate, despite favorable polls.

They also won control of the House of Representative by a margin much slimmer than many had anticipated. Bolton pointed to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the Republican Party who had won a second term despite being heavily criticized by Trump. “A lot of people look to him as the next generation candidate. That’s one of Trump’s biggest problems – his act is old and tired now,” he said. Billionaire and new Twitter owner Elon Musk said on Friday he would back DeSantis’ candidacy, adding that in 2024 he would vote for “someone sensible and centrist.” Bolton is just the latest former Trump administration figure to cast doubt on his re-election chances. Former Vice President Mike Pence said this month Americans were looking for “a new leadership” and that Republicans would have “better choices” for candidates in 2024.

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Go west, old man.

Germany At Risk Of Mass Exodus Of Companies (RT)

One in four German companies is considering moving production to other countries amid the energy crisis, Tanja Gönner, CEO of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), told Die Welt am Sonntag news outlet. “The high energy prices and the weakening economy are hitting the German economy with full force and are placing a great burden on our companies compared to other international locations. The German business model is under enormous stress…Every fourth German company is thinking about relocating production abroad,” Gönner stated. Germany’s energy-intensive chemical industry is particularly affected by the crisis, Wolfgang Grosse Entrup, CEO of the German chemical industry association (VCI), told the news outlet.

“The brutal energy prices are knocking us out…Without a functioning price brake, the government is willfully accepting deindustrialization,” he warned, adding that if the chemical industry fails, other industries will follow, which “could be the knockout for Germany as a business location.” The report says German companies are suffering a variety of problems, including high energy prices, disrupted supply chains, and even the aftershocks from China’s rigid crackdown on the Covid-19 pandemic. The US government’s recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $386 billion in subsidies for new technologies and a sustained expansion of American industry, is also seen as a major risk.

The German economic ministry recently warned that the unilateral US move demands a similar response from the EU. “We will have to give our own European response that puts our strengths forward,” the ministry said, adding that in addition to subsidies, the German industry needs “structural reforms, above all the acceleration of planning and approval procedures and de-bureaucratization.”

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“..European leaders have “pushed Europe, in particular the European Union, towards a global energy collapse.”

European Leaders At Fault For Energy Crisis – Moscow (RT)

European policymakers are to blame for the continent’s energy crisis, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday. But they have yet to sell the idea to their constituents that their economic woes are necessary, she said. Speaking to Russian news channel TV Center, Zakharova claimed European leaders have “pushed Europe, in particular the European Union, towards a global energy collapse.” According to her, they still need to convince their citizens that the crisis “is not just good and right, but is in their own interests.” “It’s a democracy test,” she added. Zakharova went on to say that European countries “did a good job” in the energy sphere – especially dealing with the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in late September.

“We are talking about the Baltic Sea, an area that is controlled by NATO countries… this is their area of responsibility,” she noted. Western countries declared the blasts acts of sabotage. However, they refrained from jumping to conclusions or pointing fingers – a practice they do not follow if there is “an order to accuse Russia,” Zakharova said. The pipelines were built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, but lost pressure abruptly on September 26, following a series of underwater explosions off Bornholm Island, located within the economic zones of Denmark and Sweden. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it had nothing to do with the incident. Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry accused the British Navy of taking part in “a terrorist attack” which destroyed the pipelines. The UK has denied the accusation.

Moscow also claimed that the US benefited the most from the disruption, since it undercut the EU’s ability to receive natural gas supplies from Russia. The Nord Stream incident only added to Europe’s energy woes, which started to take shape after Western countries imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine. The restrictions caused major disruptions to energy deliveries, triggering protests in a number of EU countries against skyrocketing energy prices and surging costs of living in recent months. Zakharova said last week that the EU has completely embraced the idea of isolating Russia, which will “only impose costs on EU countries and their citizens who are forced to pay out of their own pockets” for their leaders’ mistakes.

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“More than 60% of an average euro area country household bill is made up of taxes and regulated costs..”

The European Union’s Misguided Energy Price Cap Proposal (Lacalle)

Only 15 years ago, the European Union produced more natural gas than Russia exported, according to the EIA. Repeating past mistakes and maintaining a failed energetic interventionist policy would only worsen what is already a structural disaster. The prohibitive cost of electricity and gas in Europe is not a result of market flaws, but of a completely unsustainable cost structure where consumers are forced to pay escalating taxes, a hidden CO2 tax, subsidies, and other rising regulatory costs. More than 60% of an average euro area country household bill is made up of taxes and regulated costs, according to Eurostat. Brussels cannot turn water into wine, and, similarly, the European Union cannot “cap” the price of natural gas and oil.

It is almost ironic, but European leaders are spending days debating whether to impose a cap on Russian oil that would be set above the current Urals price and significantly above the five-year average levels. The only thing that these so-called “caps” would achieve in a global energy market is to provide a massive subsidy that would then have to be repaid with higher tariffs or taxes afterwards. In Spain they already made the horrifying mistake that led to what was called the tariff deficit: Putting a cap on a tariff and passing the difference with the actual price to the following year with added interest charges. What the tariff deficit mechanism did was perpetuate higher tariffs even in periods of low commodity prices as the tariff deficit ballooned. The proposed gas cap would produce a comparable tariff deficit but at an enormous level if implemented throughout Europe.

Additionally, in a globalized and international market, the cap would create enormous arbitrage incentives that would only benefit China, which would continue purchasing cheap Russian commodities and exporting to Europe its more competitive goods. We must not forget that the natural gas “cap” in Spain has been a genuine catastrophe. Elevating it to Europe would be worse. According to Enagas data, natural gas demand in Spain soared while it declined in the rest of Europe, due to the disguised subsidy that the “cap” entails. Additionally, the cost of the measure for the country has increased to 13 billion euros, according to the power sector, which all citizens will pay with higher taxes, and this has led to a massive transfer of funds to France, which benefits from purchasing subsidized energy from Spain at a discount price while Spanish consumers pay the cost in higher bills.

The total cost of exports to France has exceeded 715 million euros (from 15 June to 4th November, according to sources of the power sector). Additionally, a significant increase in tariffs (+98 €/MWh) is added for clients with fixed contracts, converting their fixed contracts into variable ones due to the subsidy of natural gas prices.

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“..those financial entities that provide money for oil exploration are part of a mix of interests that include the oil industry, the aerospace industry, and the military industry. This mix is what keeps the US economy alive.”

The Most Amazing Graph of the 21st Century (Ugo Bardi)

There is an impressive example of rebound with the story of the US oil production. You probably know how, in 1956, Marion King Hubbert proposed his idea of the “bell-shaped” curve. He turned out to be approximately right in his prediction and the US oil production started to decline after 1970 in a trajectory that seemed to be irreversible. After nearly 40 years of decline, in the early 2000s, no geologist sane in his/her mind would bet that the decline could be stopped, to say nothing about reversing it. It was not a question of being catastrophist or cornucopian: the members of both categories would normally agree that extracting oil from shales was simply unthinkable in economic terms. Fracking was not really a new technology, it had been developed in the 1930s, yes, it could help, but it was complicated and expensive. No one would engage with that on a large scale.


And then, something happened that changed everything. It took a few years before the new trend was clear, but, by the mid-2010s, it couldn’t be ignored anymore. By 2018, the US production had returned to the levels of its 1970 peak. In 2019, it had overcome it, and it kept growing. The production of natural gas followed the same trend, shooting up rapidly to levels never seen before. The Covid crisis caused a new drop, at present now partially recovered. But, let’s forget the Covid story, for now. What happened that changed things so much in the US oil industry?

You probably know that the cause has a name and a story: it is called tight oil or “shale oil” extracted by “fracking”. It itself, it is nothing especially new, the concept was already known in the 1930s. The idea is to use high pressure to fracture the rock that contains the oil. That makes it possible for the liquid to flow to the surface. The problem with fracking is that it is expensive. So much that it is commonly said that nobody really made any money on it. In 2017, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal arrived at the conclusion that, since 2007, “energy companies have spent $280 billion more than they generated from operations on shale investments.” Other analysts arrived at the same conclusion: you can extract oil from shales, but don’t expect to make any money out of it. So, why are people insisting on pouring good money into bad wells?


There are good reasons. Very good reasons. What led the predictions astray was not that the geologists were not good at their job. They were, but they didn’t consider that the “market” is an abstraction that doesn’t always work, actually, almost never works. So, those financial entities that provide money for oil exploration are part of a mix of interests that include the oil industry, the aerospace industry, and the military industry. This mix is what keeps the US economy alive. But there would be no aerospace or military industries if the oil industry could not produce enough oil.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Despise Douglas Murray and Other Such Propagandists

 

 

12 years ago Wikileaks started publishing Cablegate. This is what Julian Assange is being prosecuted for. He hasn’t been free since.

 

 

 

 

Suns

 

 

 

 

Vogelkop

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle November 28 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 78 total)
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  • #122090

    Pablo Picasso Still life with fruit basket 1942   • It Seems Russia Won’t Require a Winter Offensive to Win the War (PCR) • Cruisin’ for a Bruisi
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 28 2022]

    #122091
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    I’m definitely suffering from Nazi-fatigue. And fascism-fatigue. And Scorpion-fatigue. Can’t wait for the bullshit artists to get their just rewards for years (decades) of deceit, propaganda and tyranny.

    I know, we all have to endure the corruption and lies and propaganda and tyranny a bit longer before their house-of-cards collapses as a natural consequence of all the deceit and fraud and fakery.

    For those interested in the concept of human cooperation versus competition, there is clear evidence that protohumans cooperated at least 1.8 million years ago. An almost toothless hominid lived long enough for gum sockets to close over, presumably because a close relative chewed food for that hominid well into old age.

    Also, the manufacture of tools going back at least 2 million years.

    Just think, 3 million years in the making, and just over 300 years to destroy those 3 million years of evolution. (65 million years if we start the count from the shrew-like mammals that lived through the aftermath of the asteroid impact; around 500 million years if we count from the first vertebrate species.)

    All taken down by corruption and greed and institutionalised evil.

    #122092
    oxymoron
    Participant

    The China situation interests me. The protests from a style or form point of view are a mutational adaptation to selection pressure. If a system (the hive or body politic) can’t risk the danger of individual suffering because it weakens the group morale then it creates non-protest for the group. It induces confusion in the minds of the oppressive external force.
    Individuals who act out are punished but groups are having success and I believe this may have real consequences for the Gov Mafia.
    There are so many people reaching breaking point that system change may bring novel and chaotic responses not able to be anticipated or acted upon by gov.
    What do you do when people walk in circles or wave pieces of white paper on mass? What do you prosecute when people are chanting for more of what you gave them. “MORE LOCKDOWNS, MORE MASKS, MORE DETENTION!!” This is apt to create fear in the party because this in some new cray cray type shit.
    This is not anticipated.

    Natural emergent systems are Mandelbrot sets baby and nature gunna do it’s thing.

    Let’s see how this plays out.

    #122093
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “ It Seems Russia Won’t Require a Winter Offensive to Win the War (PCR)”

    They’ve been saying Russia’s out of bullets since day 2 of the campaign. I guess we’ll find out.

    “The UK Defence Ministry has confirmed supplying Ukraine with modern laser-guided Brimstone 2 missiles,”

    But we’re not in the war.

    “Each Brimstone 2 missile reportedly costs about £175,000.”

    A pallet has what? Ten? £2M? Is that above or below the cost of the things they are blowing up?

    “Certain nations are actually providing military aid to Kiev despite publicly denying doing so”

    We know that because they spoke words. Why/how? U.S. money. They don’t hand out units of raw power, i.e. weapons for free. Still at the moment you can’t shut off the U.S. and the Neocons who captured it without shutting off the money.

    “The Hungarian head of state stressed that the parties should return to the negotiating table, diplomatic channels should be opened,”

    Notice it worked to have a mole in each organization. Hungary in the EU. Turkey in NATO. And others. Then it’s very hard to deny you their inside plans and conversations. Weird world, though.

    “They are content with the free speech right of pedophiles to advocate, but not for [former] Presidents”

    Yes. They do. Like the child-beings in “Brave New World,” they believe anything they are told. Then go back to porn. I mean phone, with the blue screen clicking.

    “almost 100% of American print and TV reporters want Assange prosecuted.”

    Which tells you how many are journalists: Zero. Or close to.

    “however, that Europeans “should remember that the people of Ukraine pay with their blood every day.”

    Who? What do I care? We never cared about Russia/Ukraine before.

    ““The best way to support peace is to support [war].”

    It’s now not a gob-smacker, they print it every day. Without irony.

    “weapons … save lives.”

    Go on…tell me more about how many people high explosives save. I’ll pass it on to the NRA and DNC Congress.

    ““very deplorable consequences” for the EU, with up to 20 years of deindustrialization ahead.”

    WEF/Davos/Europe have long declared this is their express goal, by express delivery, ASAP, “whatever it takes”. The faster they cease to be a country, the better they like it. They can indeed save the earth, and then China will conquer them with two jeeps and a catapult, just as Klaus advises. Run by their betters: anyone who isn’t “white.”

    “Food prices in Sweden have jumped by 20% this year, while electricity bills have more than doubled,”

    Annihilating the middle class, as the WEF demanded. If the European Middle Class isn’t destroyed, how can they “Build Back Better”? Why would they consent to universal social passports in a brutal, pan-national police state? This all worked so well in the USSR, they simply MUST continue the glorious revolution. A Worker’s Paradise.

    “The word inside the SEC is that Gensler wants to get much of the work on it done before the new GOP Congress takes over Jan. 3.”

    That’s because the new GOP Congress is going to pin the FTX collapse on him. Right where it belongs. But like all their initiatives, it depends on building an elaborate, multi-phase media story that culminates in “There Is No Alternative” (to giving regulators who caused it all more power) They do not have time to build that public fabrication, and it will collapse in failure.

    “Environmental Social Governance bandwagon by forcing companies to disclose non-financial metrics such as how they are reducing their carbon footprint.”

    Can you imagine the cost of compliance on this one? Another million a year to develop and keep records? Cost of another 20 employees you can’t hire? #Helping! Helping make sure NO ONE in the U.S. is employed. And doing a darn fine job of it!

    The way we buy and sell stocks, the so-called plumbing of the market, is often taken for granted for the simple reason that it works pretty seamlessly even if the process is pretty complex.”

    Yes, but here’s the bad part: IT’S MUCH WORSE THAN FTX. The NYSE has millions of “Fail to Delivers”, NEVER cured, NO stock certificates, dual ownership, and more stocks trading than exist. By hundred millions. This permits raw, naked shorting, to sell stock that you don’t own, and doesn’t exist, and if you’re an insider, vaporize companies illegally. The DTCC system makes Bankman Fried look like a piker. A carnival hack. With a NYSE system this bad, THERE IS NO CREDIBLE STOCK OWNERSHIP. Nor can the system be fixed – ever – as a dozen people probably own the same share, confounded 100x with daily trades over 40 years of open corruption, the insouciant indifference to any accuracy or records.

    THEY NEED THE SYSTEM TO COLLAPSE, even if it takes a nuclear exchange to do it. It can never be cleaned up, all the stocks – and US T Bonds – are gone, corrupted, counterfeited daily, triple-owned. Half the people who started it are dead of old age it’s gone on so long. They’re dancing in front of an empty vault to keep your attention off it. The only solution is a Casino fire and a reboot.

    Build. Back. Better. Where there IS no tracking of ownership because “You’ll own nothing”, and if you get saucy about it, we’ll cut off your food and water in the planet-wide social prison state.

    Here’s the weird part: all these systems will just go on, continue, as their arc carries them. Stocks, which no one under 40 own, and are entirely unreal become a video game casino trading like selling armor inside “World of Warcraft”. At the same time, the UN-real video game reality of Crypto, becomes the “Real” thing, a real market interfacing with trading goods and services, in the weirdest reversal imaginable. If there are two timelines, and one is funnier, stupider, and less likely, that’s the reality that will be true. At the same time, we will have banking as an islanded system, slowly fading, mortgages as a fire-walled system, fading, etc. Into a Jacksonian world of 1,000 currencies, each issued by a stand alone “bank”.

    Since this most-screwed-up of all possibilities is also the path of least resistance, it’s certain to happen. Why? Then no one has to “End the Fed”. It fades. No one has to take on JP Morgan, they end up in a niche. The government doesn’t fight or fall, it dissolves. This is the Age of Aquarius, of human information and distributed systems. I.e. the PC, not Mainframe.

    “There’s another Special Military Operation on the market.”

    A war, therefore the UN approves of it. As long as it’s against Syria, all wars are good!

    “They fear that “if he got the nomination, not only would he lose the general election, but he would take an awful lot of Republican candidates down with him,” Bolton said.

    …After an election where a million more Republicans voted than last time, mostly for Trump candidates. Well, like other good lies, you start with a kernel of truth. But if people have “Switched off Trump” then you have to stop calling them a “cult”. Pick one. They won’t. It’s all lies, everything, all at once, all the time. Lies a la carte, where you pick up the lies you like most like the buffet at Golden Corral.

    “Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the Republican Party who had won a second term despite being heavily criticized by Trump.” …Who publicly said he voted for DeSantis.

    Next! Next lie. …The one they really need is Lake. She comes off well on TV, but would need to be proven within government, so not until 2028, which is good.

    P.S. the Pro Se case in the Supreme Court passed without comment by the DNC and Congress. That’s odd. They always stall/delay/oppose/lie/murder about something. Because: Lawyers. But not this case that could topple the entire U.S. government? Okay then.

    “the government is willfully accepting deindustrialization,”

    Everyone wanted the end of Capitalism, here you are. With it goes the end of all the “Stuff” you hate so much. “Stuff” that includes food, water, and clothing. And yes, you are dependent now, part of a system and almost completely unable to survive without it.

    “More than 60% of an average euro area country household bill is made up of taxes and regulated costs,”

    Then it is more than 60% nationalized. Has it been better for the People? Or worse?

    After nearly 40 years of decline, in the early 2000s, no geologist sane in his/her mind would bet that the decline could be stopped, to say nothing about reversing it.”

    Yes, they believe that straight lines go on forever, and are always wrong. Like the backyard temperature chart at the top. You’d think being wrong 100% of the time would sink in after a while but it doesn’t. Western-mind thinking, in lines, instead of Eastern-mind thinking, in cycles.

    “And then, something happened that changed everything.”

    Capitalism and human ingenuity. Which you’d think would be predictable after 5,000 years, but apparently is a mystery to all PhDs. Who have never invented anything in their lives except problems for others. Now they will say – without evidence – that humans can and will never invent any more new things again. To make tar sands into oil. Whoops, already invented that. Or to drill 30,000 feet under 5,000 feet of ocean. Whoops! Did that too!

    “Germany Tees Up Windfall Tax on Solar and Wind”

    Government Nirvana!! We both subsidize AND tax it!

    …And you think the goal isn’t to funnel money to the “right people”? It’s the only reason you would do both.

    “The U.S. Needs More Housing Than Almost Anyone Can Imagine” –The Atlantic

    Because numbers larger than “Two”, she as a Leftist cannot count. (except for genders whose number is unknown, perhaps infinity) There are at least 15 million empty homes in the U.S. not counting MANY 2nd homes, provided free for all humans over 60 it seems.

    Thanks to their specific intentional POLICIES, those 15M homes are empty in all the states they totally devastated by “redistributing” all wealth to the wealthy coasts. “FROM each according to their poverty, TO each according to their Greed”. So you can have a thousand houses falling down in Allentown, Gary, and Detroit. Or West Prairie Dog, Kansas. But less than zero hosues in S.F. where they’re living in vans.

    The by line? “For Americans to live a productive, prosperous, happy life, homes need to be truly abundant.”

    That is, she says we must MUST construct and maintain MORE houses than we use. Kind of like shoes and blouses in Anne Lowrey’s wealthy Harvard, NYC closet. Build millions more houses than we use? Sounds inefficient. And anti-environmental in the extreme. And who pays for it? (Government, like all other actions in the Left universe.)

    2 houses? Snowbirds are difficult to categorize but perhaps 700k in Florida alone? 2.5M double-houses nationwide not including local cottages? So 20M extra houses already? or 1 in 10 vs American citizens? Not enough? MOAR!

    Her real fear as a New Yorker is that someone, somewhere, is growing food. Pave all the things!

    “The Club Q shooting was a predictable next phase of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric” –MSNBC

    This article is still up days after it was revealed to be complete, stark-raving bulls—t. As soon as it was shown to be a LGBT club member “They/Them”, all went silent. But it’s “NBC”, so like “CBS”, not news. No comment on how it was a CIS-Hetro Army Vet and father that saved their bacon by laying down his life.

    NBC article does end with this: “When the forces of hate come for us, we must always be ready to defend ourselves.” From her own words in the previous paragraphs, that “defending of themselves” is done by forswearing and by giving up their guns. To violent criminals who do not obey the law and to politicians that help them. LGBT people must be victims. It is their destiny in life. And “somebody else” must do something to stop it, not us, not Left Karens. That’s OUR destiny in life. “Know your place.” (That person that SHOULD solve it is described as Daddy government, although the article describes in detail how escalating “politicians have increasingly ramped up violent rhetoric” – approved by government for 150 years – is not just the solution but also the cause.)

    Daddy beats us. Daddy stop. Here’s a baseball bat and a belt I got for you. Stop harder.

    Of course the GOP is trying to arm the LGBT community so they can defend themselves as is the right of all U.S. Citizens, but helping the black and gay community not die is just part of what makes Republicans bad.

    “’Greater Idaho’ Moves Closer to Bi-State Referendum as Two More Oregon Counties Vote to Leave”

    Congratulations on your gun law, Oregon, where the people who commit crimes and don’t need them, have them, and the Cowboys who DO need them and don’t commit crimes, can’t. Follow it further like this and you’ll have the first Civil War and partition of the Nation. The “Greater Idaho” takes northern California too.

    Civil War? Harper’s Ferry? Whatever happened to the D.C. Bomber?

    “FBI waited over a year to begin a comprehensive investigation into the pipe bombs that were planted in front of both major parties’ headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021.”

    This is because “Democrats … claim that right-wing DVEs [Domestic Violence: Extremism is] one of the greatest threats Americans face.”

    Well when it’s that important, clearly we MUST wait a year before looking. …But only if you promise it’s a bomb.

    “At one point, then-Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris was even in the DNC building, meaning her life was imminently at risk.”

    …Well, that must be why.

    “Feb. 7, 2022—more than a month and a year after the incident—that the Washington Field Office of the FBI asked its national field offices to investigate and try to identify the man.”

    Still haven’t looked for his cell phone. Somehow, he was on the phone, and yet – aw shucks – didn’t use the cell tower router for the call! Happens every day. Calls are made without telephone lines! And telephones like that aren’t strange at all.

    “This is what Julian Assange is being prosecuted for.”

    Sort of. He got locked out for Vault 7, which he released when the NeoCons shut down his conversations with U.S. Congressmen. These were the master keys to all computers worldwide. Not only that, but the closing of these exploit built-in letter agency back doors (as slowly as Microsoft and others could do it) blinded the agency[s]. Of course if the CIA builds it, China ALSO uses it, and so China was ALSO blind when U.S. companies become secure, but they HATE that. Literally. They would rather have China and all our enemies read our every mail – the mail of every Senator – than to not be able to read it themselves. Illegally. (You need a specific warrant and cause).

    Because they are illegal from the first instant, everything they DO is illegal, they are mad at Assange who by releasing it, for a short time reinforced the Constitution and 4A.

    Here’s your next car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqErkcNWox4
    They can make it in 1940, but just can’t figure out how to make one now.

    #122094
    John Day
    Participant

    “Ente” or “duck” , is what the Germans call the 2CV.
    Cool cars.
    Not very safe in an 80 mph crash, but…

    #122095
    John Day
    Participant

    “Stopping” has some speculations that may be familiar and a picture of progress on the closet. Going down there to do some more work today. https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/stopping

    Thanks for this, Ricc. Katherine Watt has some very plain words, with which I agree.
    Stopping Conditions , There are no stopping conditions for the emergency COVID vaccination program.
    ​ ​There is widespread public perception that Covid-19 information campaigns, masks, diagnostic tests, treatments and injectables are components in a public health program using experimental but regulated, ‘safe and effective’ medical products for the purpose of saving lives during a public health emergency.
    ​ ​They are not.
    ​ ​Covid-19 information campaigns, Emergency Use Authorized masks, EUA diagnostic tests, EUA treatments and EUA injectables are components of a mass murder operation using fear-mongering, fraud, propaganda, censorship and unidentified biological and chemical weapons.
    ​ ​Popular misunderstanding is deliberately and forcefully maintained by the political power brokers running the operation.
    https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/stopping-conditions

    ​ Surplus Energy Economics points out that there is no fundamental economic support for the assumption that the growth trend of recent centuries will continue after a downturn. ​ The slope of economic growth has become more and more gradual in recent decades, and more falsified in its reporting.
    ​ ​What economies and markets are now experiencing is trend-inflexion. Cyclicality may indeed continue but, from here on, it will do so around downwards-inflected trends. This process of reversal can only be managed if it is recognized.
    ​ ​The consequences of trend inflexion are readily summarised. On an ex-inflation basis, economic output will deteriorate, whilst the real costs of necessities will carry on rising, even if there are some retreats from the severe spikes experienced in recent times.
    ​ ​The resulting process of affordability compression will drive contraction in discretionary (non-essential) activities. It will also undermine financial flows from households to the corporate and financial sectors. We can anticipate a rolling process of investment contraction, business failures, defaults and rising unemployment.
    #243. The Great Inflexion

    ​Climate Change Policy Makes Europe Too Expensive for Low Cost EV Manufacturing​
    ​ ​Signs of a global cleaving around the energy sector (are) taking place. Essentially, western governments’ following the “Build Back Better” climate change agenda which stops using coal, oil and gas to power their economic engine, while the rest of the growing economic world continues using the more efficient and traditional forms of energy to power their economies.

    ​ ​Within the BBB western group (identified on map in yellow), the logical consequences are increased living costs for those who live in the BBB zone, and increased prices for goods manufactured in the BBB zone. In the zone where traditional low-cost energy resources continue to be developed (grey on map), we would expect to see a lower cost of living and lower costs to create goods. Two divergent economic zones based on two different energy systems.
    ​ ​This potential outcome just seemed to track with the logical conclusion. The yellow zone also represented by the World Economic Forum, and the gray zone also represented by an expanding BRICS alliance.

    Cleaving Beginning? – Climate Change Policy Makes Europe Too Expensive for Low-Cost EV Manufacturing

    The U.S. Shale Boom Is Officially Over​
    ​ The days of explosive growth in U.S. shale oil production are over. American oil production is rising, but at a much slower pace than it did before the 2020 crash, and at lower rates than expected a few months ago.​..
    ​..OPEC has regained its position as the world’s swing producer.
    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-US-Shale-Boom-Is-Officially-Over.html

    #122096
    John Day
    Participant

    ​NATO is more self-destructing than “falling apart”:
    ​ Something quite amazing has just happened. Following the terrorist attack in Ankara which killed 34 people and injured another 125, Turkish authorities first declared that they will not accept US condolences. Then the Turks launched a military operation against “Kurdish terrorists in northern Syria“. Turkey then claimed to have neutralized 184 terrorists.
    What is not mentioned in those articles is that the target of the Turkish strike was the US-run center for the training and education of PKK militants in Rojava. There are rumors that the Turks gave the US enough warning time to evacuate most of its personnel.
    Does that sound familiar?
    If it does, it is because it is very similar to what the Iranians did when they hit US bases in Iraq following the murder of General Solemani in a US drone strike.
    If the above is true, and rumors are very much “if” and cannot be considered as proven fact, then that means that a NATO member state (Turkey) just attacked a US base and, like Iran, got away with it…
    ​..​What does all this mean practically?
    ​ ​It means that even if the Russians decided to strike at a NATO country, the tensions would go through the roof, but it is highly UN-likely that any US President would allow any action which could result in a full-scale nuclear war! Remember, for Russia, this is an existential war, no less than WWII, whereas no Anglo leader would ever dare launch a suicidal attack on Russian forces which would most likely result in the full obliteration of the US/UK and any other country participating (for example by hosting forward deployed standoff weapons) in such an attack.
    ​ ​Does that mean that we have to anticipate a Russian strike on Poland, Romania or the UK?
    ​ ​No, not at all. In fact, it would be very dangerous for the Russians to only leave a stark choice to the Hegemony: admit defeat or commit suicide. And since the Russians do have escalation dominance (that is to say that they have balanced capabilities from the small-arms fire level to a full intercontinental nuclear war, and with all the stages in between these two extremes) they, unlike the US/NATO. are not stuck between the choice of surrender or suicide.
    ​ ​That being said, it would also be misguided to assume that Russia “would never dare strike a NATO member state”

    Is NATO falling apart?

    ​Electric War, Russia fails to respect Napoleonic traditions of warfare. Pepe Escobar​
    ​ ​It’s always crucial to remember that between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting.
    ​ ​The difference is that the plan of using Ukraine as just a pawn in their game is not working.
    ​ ​On the ground, what has been going on so far are mostly skirmishes, and a few real battles. But with Moscow massing fresh troops for a winter offensive, the Ukrainian Army may end up completely routed.
    ​ ​Russia didn’t look so bad – considering the effectiveness of its mincing machine artillery strikes against Ukrainian fortified positions, and recent planned retreats or positional warfare, keeping casualties down while smashing Ukrainian withering firepower.
    ​ ​The collective West believes it holds the Ukraine proxy war card. Russia bets on reality, where economic cards are food, energy, resources, resource security and a stable economy.
    ​ ​Meanwhile, as if the energy-suicide EU did not have to face a pyramid of ordeals, they can surely expect to have knocking on their door at least 15 million desperate Ukrainians escaping from villages and cities with zero electrical power.

    Electric War

    ​ Queen Elizabeth II of England had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood-forming elements of bone-marrow, in her final years, according to this.
    ​ A future biography of Her Majesty authored by a close friend of Prince Philip stated that the Queen had bone marrow cancer, with bone pain being the most prevalent symptom.
    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/uk/queen-elizabeth-ii-fought-cancer-in-secret-during-her-final-years-reveals-prince-philips-friend-in-new-book/articleshow/95774879.cms

    ​ Angus Dalgleish MD, Professor of Oncology at St George’s, University of London, wrote this letter 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.
    ​ As an Oncologist I Am Seeing People With Stable Cancer Rapidly Progress After Being Forced to Have a Booster
    ​..​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.
    ​ ​I 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.

    As an Oncologist I Am Seeing People With Stable Cancer Rapidly Progress After Being Forced to Have a Booster

    #122097
    John Day
    Participant

    “And now for something completely different…”

    House cats carry Toxoplasma Gondii, and about 1/3 of humans are chronically infected. T.gondii infection in humans is linked to aberrant behaviors and some forms of mental illness. Thanks Ricc.
    ​ T. gondii is known to infect wildlife, but few studies have examined its behavioural effects. In one work, infected hyenas in Kenya became more likely to be eaten by lions2. Connor Meyer and Kira Cassidy, wildlife ecologists at the University of Montana in Missoula, thought of a rare opportunity to link infection with behaviour in wild wolves: data on grey wolves (Canis lupus) collected intensively in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, over nearly 27 years. Some wolves in Yellowstone live near, and sometimes steal prey from, cougars (Puma concolor), which are known to carry the parasite. Wolves could become infected by eating the cats — or their faeces.
    The team looked at 256 blood samples from 229 wolves, which had been carefully watched throughout their lives, and had their life histories and social status recorded. Meyer and Cassidy found that infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed.
    “We got that result and we just open-mouth stared at each other,” Meyer says. “This is way bigger than we thought it would be.”
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03836-9

    ​ ​Negative Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Mental Health​
    ​The typical symptom associated with toxoplasmosis was anxiety, and the typical toxoplasmosis-associated disorders were autism (OR = 4.78), schizophrenia (OR = 3.33), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (OR = 2.50), obsessive compulsive disorder (OR = 1.86), antisocial personality disorder (OR = 1.63), learning disabilities (OR = 1.59), and anxiety disorder (OR = 1.48).
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7040223/#:~:text=The%20typical%20symptom%20associated%20with,(OR%20%3D%201.63)%2C%20learning

    ​”Latent” toxoplasma infection is about 3 times as prevalent in people who are in car accidents as it is in the control-group, too.
    ​https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3488815/

    Treatment does not get rid of encysted Toxoplasma in the brain and other tissues. “Latent” Toxoplasmosis persists after treatment.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/latent-toxoplasmosis#:~:text=The%20standard%20therapeutic%20agent%20for,case%20of%20sulfonamide%20allergy%2C%20clindamycin.

    #122098
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @AFKTT

    Simple. Go back in time a dozen centuries and then come back forward making fewer mistakes.
    Alternately, one could genocide half a dozen billion people and continue forward making the same mistakes all over again.
    A third possibility, going forward from the way things actually are at the present moment (otherwise known as reality), is to learn from past mistakes such as atheistic materialism and its various forms of authoritarian monarchy and not make them quite so badly as the present and future unfold.

    Incidentally, which of my completely unfounded assertions do you object to? Was it that reality exists or that “overshoot” is a crock of propagandistic bull shit invented and asserted by moronic eugenicists?

    #122099
    DarkMatter
    Participant

    I found this very useful website that extracts the transcripts of Youtube videos, e.g. here is the Gonzalo Lira transcript from today
    Very useful if you want to understand a video without watching the whole thing.
    Here’s the essence of what Gonzalo is saying today:

    and so Douglas Murray is of a type a
    type of guy in the west that you should
    be aware of people like um I don’t know
    people like uh mataibi people like Ben
    Shapiro people like uh Sam Harris who
    pretend to be dissidents of the
    narrative in one little very narrow area
    but when it comes to war making when it
    comes to the serious stuff when it comes
    about protecting and looking after the
    best interests of the people of the West
    there with the narrative with that
    Cosmopolitan leadership class because
    people like Doug Murray care more about
    money and Prestige and being in good
    with the right crowd
    as opposed to actually helping people

    #122100
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @John Day

    ….in the eye.

    “Headlights in the fog”

    Necrotizing retinitis, chorioretinitis, vitritis

    Pregnant women stay away from cats

    #122101
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Before this latest piss fight about “overshoot” and the nature of nature gets too much further out of hand I would first like to make a statement.

    I believe that a good place to start any argument is to itemize, identify and clearly state (for all to see and consider) the assumptions/premises one is basing their argument on. Here are a few of mine.

    I assume as given that the Universe is created by an omnipotent God, whose exact nature I can only dimly discern but which could be better discerned if I put a bit more time and effort into it. I assume that my self is essentially (and merely) a figment of God’s imagination . . . and that I’m bucking for a promotion by sucking up to the Boss. God’s stuff is good, and contrary positions are bad. That’s non negotiable.

    I assume that since it is His universe, and that there is Life in it, that both the universe and the life that’s in it are, by definition, good. Therefore positions, actions, ideas, etc. which seek oblivion and death are bad. That’s non negotiable, too.

    I also believe (indeed I know) that such conversations can get rowdy and that on rare occasion I could be wrong in my beliefs (joke, people, JOKE) and that such an event is an opportunity to lose a lie and gain a truth. That’s wonderful, and makes TAE the sort of joint I like to hang out in.

    I also believe that there are a whole bunch of people out there (and even here on TAE (joke, people, JOKE !) who know stuff that I don’t, and that I might learn something by conversing with them. This is an environment rich in the “opportunity to be proven wrong, and thus learn something”.

    Nota Bene : That does not mean I will simply roll over and let someone casually drop an egregious and destructive lie into the conversation like a turd into the punch bowl. In that event I shall comment with all of the “due respect” that such a misdeed deserves.]

    I believe that the premise of “overshoot” of human population is just such an odious objective lie, and pretty damn evil be it’s very nature of oppositional disalignment with the universe and opposition to life. That’s God’s business, Bub. Above our pay grade.

    If anyone wants to go all “ad hominem” on me for my beliefs then feel free to have at it because there’s no reason for “me” to take it personal. It ain’t me you’re looking for, Babe. I might get snarky with you if you try it (“might?” Ha !! You can count on it) but in point of fact I do NOT take it personal. I just assume that you are doing the best you can with what you’ve got, and that we’ll have to work things out from that point forward.

    #122102

    Stand and fight? or run away?
    Stand and fight- but whom?
    Neighbors? siblings? parents? friends?
    This is how a nation ends.

    #122103
    zerosum
    Participant

    Illusions/lies/misinformation/disinformation/propaganda

    the Covid story
    the more problems for Russia, the better, regardless of the cost to Ukrainians.
    Ivermectin and HCQ
    free speech
    Honest journalists
    Ukraine is winning
    weapons for free
    sanctions on Russia
    food and energy inflation numbers
    The NYSE and the Nasdaq, are in competition to match buyers and sellers
    war makes peace
    RussiaRussiaRussia

    #122104
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @MyParentsSaidKnow

    Why does it take me nine long paragraphs to say half as much as you get said in four short lines?

    Must have something to do with how you are a poet.

    #122105
    riesterm
    Participant

    Headline over at Clusterfuck Nation this morning:

    “We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.” — Raul Ilargi Meier

    #122106
    redshift
    Participant

    I love this painting.

    #122107
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    James Kunstler just bounced one off the centerfield scoreboard with the power and finesse we’ve come to expect. The week doesn’t really start until his Monday edition, and knowing that a second dose awaits me on Friday is a part of what gets me through the week.

    Yeah, I know I rag on him from time to time, but that’s because we must hold our saints and heroes to a higher standard. That’s a price they have agreed to pay in order to go on earning our adoration.

    You’re on the right track, James. Now go get ’em, we’re cowering right behind you.

    #122108
    Noirette
    Participant

    UKR. Lavrov, interviewed for a film on Extremism, treats USSR/Russia – UKR. relations, nazism, etc. Worth a watch.

    26 mins, eng subs. https://bit.ly/3AQCrC3
    ———————————————————————————
    Bosco posted re. Putin-Russia following the plandemic playbook,

    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.

    Imho what happened in Russia is very much the same as all over the ‘developed world’, a belief and trust in the WHO declaring a pandemic, and Big Pharma jumping on the gravy train. (Sputnik vax is just as crap an any other, imho.)

    The WHO-declared pandemic prev. to COV19 was the Swine Flu.

    It certainly wasn’t a pandemic according to common sense, or basic nos.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html

    https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/influenza-a-(h1n1)-outbreak

    A vax scam was ready to go, but after under 50 deaths, the vax was banned. In France, the Health Minister, Bachelot, ‘quit’ as she had ordered X millions of vax doses, which had to be junked, were unpaid, etc. Her background: Pharmacist.

    When ‘branding’ and ‘promotion’ of vaccines resembles that for luxury handbags, or sexy pyjamas, supported moreover by Med. Authorities, and the State, it is the end of reasonable health policies, a give-over to Big Corps who count only profits.

    The authoritarian impulse of ‘officials’ to control the ‘plebs’, by forcing them to x or y, tracking them, and so on, works in many places.. The Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin, was, is, a huge supporter of testing, lockdowns, vax, etc.

    #122109
    Bill7
    Participant

    Hopkins on the situation at Twit-twit:

    “..Next week is going to be a celebration … a celebration of freedom, and “anti-Wokeness,” and the god-like power of Elon Musk!
    All of which has been highly entertaining, but forgive me if I don’t get all worked up. For one thing, I’ve seen this movie before, the one where the handsome new charismatic sheriff (who just happens to be a major GloboCap player, or puppet, or otherwise a member of “the club”) rides into town to set things right. No matter how many I watch it, it always seems to end the same..”

    The Emperor Elonicus

    #122110
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    OK, … hear this out, Lance Roberts have an “unfortunate situation” in his household. Yes, … it’s all to do with his wife! He explains this situation in following vid:

    … it starts at ~ 32:03 min. mark. [Hint: … it’s about retail sales numbers!]

    F.S.

    #122111
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    @Figmund: #122110 (starting at 32.03) … that was great – made a bundle of good points within minutes. Thank you. 🙂

    #122112
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Note: ft.com articles are normally behind a paywall, … but if you find it someone posting ft.com link on Twitter, most often article opens right out! Following is accessed via Art Berman Twitter posting.

    As an epic oil crash threatened more havoc on a pandemic-stricken global economy in April 2020, the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other G20 countries met to thrash out a solution. The co-operation helped end an Opec+ price war and restored stability to the market. Prices recovered.

    Two-and-a-half years later, and nine months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, such collaboration on energy between global powers seems a distant memory.

    Moscow has weaponised its natural gas supplies to Europe for months and is now actively trying to disable Ukraine’s electricity network. Consumer countries have become competitors as they race to secure scarce energy supplies. Fractures are visible in the decades-old Saudi-US oil relationship. Even in clean energy, leaders such as Joe Biden talk of a new battle to dominate supply chains.

    The potential unraveling of the old order in the global oil market will reach a defining moment over the next week when Europe starts to block Russian seaborne crude from the continent — one of the strongest responses yet to Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

    The new sanctions will also stop European companies from insuring vessels carrying Russian oil to third countries — unless those countries accept a price for the oil dictated by western powers. In other words, western countries will attempt to impose a cap on the price of oil sold by Russia.

    No one can say how disruptive these measures will be. Sanctions imposed on Russia since Putin ordered troops across Ukraine’s border on February 24 have barely dented the country’s oil exports or the Kremlin’s oil income.

    But the very principle that Moscow’s geopolitical foes will set the price at which Russia sells its crude is a humiliation for a petrostate that produces more than 10 per cent of the world’s oil and sits alongside Saudi Arabia at the top of the Opec+ cartel. A price-setter would become the ultimate price-taker.

    Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister, will have a chance to discuss Moscow’s response when he sits down with Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, at another Opec+ meeting in Vienna on Sunday, a day before the European embargo and price cap plan come into effect.

    For energy industry veterans, the coming days mark a moment of deep peril for the oil market — and a global economy that still depends heavily on the commodity. Established geopolitical norms have been eroded in the past year, they say, and supply chains that have existed for decades are now being upended.

    The week that could unravel the global oil market
    https://www.ft.com/content/3c15dd27-9b7a-4905-aaa6-f6009b1aec50

    F.S.

    #122113
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    ‘Incidentally, which of my completely unfounded assertions do you object to?’

    The assertion that UK is not in severe population overshoot (to the extent of around 60 million) and that the population can be maintained via domestic food production without the importation of ANY food, fertilisers and energy.

    That is high level bullshit, on a par with what fake leaders of NATOstan countries churn out on a daily basis.

    You still haven’t explained how 63 million people in the UK can be fed ONLY from domestic food production because you can’t.

    Same argument applies to all nations, regions and cities in severe population overshoot.

    I guess that you live in such a place and cannot cope with reality, so retreat into denial of reality.

    The reason I left Auckland 15 years ago was that it was abundantly clear that the population of Auckland as ay beyond the carrying capacity of the land, and the psychotic sociopath doing the so-called planning vvere insane.

    Damn, that second key no longer orks on my keyboard. guess I’ll have to give up riting comments or use vv for the one that no long vvorks.

    It’s one of the factors that I should have mentioned that vvil bring dovvn the house of cards. Things vvearing out. Technological failure. It’s coming to everyone in industrialised societies fairly soon.

    #122114
    Red
    Participant

    Not trying to compare guns to bows, just saying bows are something worth working with. Easier to build in the garage than a gun and with a little practice:

    #122115
    That Bloke
    Participant

    @ John Day

    On holiday with my family back in the ‘60s and ‘70s 2CVs were everywhere in France. My father despised them as they were very slow and he used to call them sardine cans because the roll back canvas roof reminded him those old cans where you used to use a ‘key’ to open them.

    Another gem of a hideous vehicle on the French roads back then was the Citroën H van.

    Citroën H Van

    I never saw one looking clean and shiny like that one, though, they were always covered in rust.

    #122116
    That Bloke
    Participant

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_H_Van

    #122117
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

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

    Just as I yearn to be able to control my flatulence and fart at will to great strategic effect, so do I wish I could control when and how my brain farts. The blues dude came from an unintended brain fart. I’ll see if I can fix.

    Fix

    More Fix

    I believe that our modern faith in guns has become more than not like our modern dependence on bots to flush our toilets.

    ***

    “Imho what happened in Russia is very much the same as all over the ‘developed world’, a belief and trust in the WHO declaring a pandemic, and Big Pharma jumping on the gravy train. (Sputnik vax is just as crap an any other, imho.)”

    I agree. What I’m implying is that Putin would normally not fall for this stuff, imo, if he wasn’t busy saving Russia and the world from nuclear annihilation. Just a personal projection of high respect for Putin’s ability to see through bullshit. That, and my niggling wonder if there wasn’t a really nasty lab pathogen that Russia/China were aware of, or if there isn’t a really nasty lab pathogen they feared would be released, and this increased the irrational part of their reactions to things covid.

    ***

    a) what is a “science word”?

    b) “Overshoot” is a word found ins textbooks for college/university classes addressing the eco/bio-logical spectrum of scientific study. Colleges/universities are deemed by most folks as the sanctus firmus of “science”, whatever the fuck that shiot is. ‘Science! Gitchyer red hot science here!Science!’

    ***

    Back in the wild-eyed 70s-90s, batteries as green energy solutions were to be giant lightning-harvesting wonders, not energy-burning capsules filled with toxic chemicals. Not technically very feasible, to say the least, but the basic conceopt still has potential if we bypass grid/electricity thinking.

    Imagine using natural geology and a whole lotta lightning rods grounding electricity into large underground reservoirs of saline water, setting it up so there’s enough resistence to heat the water as the juice flows through it. Sort of a home-made geothermal energy source.

    And then, imagine us not using aid energy to run machines or even simple water pumps, but “merey to keep a large chunk of acreage significantly warmer through the winter months after charging up on summer t-storms.

    “Scienttifically” feasible? Me no know. But thinking outside the concept ‘energy-runs-machines-that-replace-slaves makes sense both morally and functionally.

    ***

    Today’s Yogi tea bag string tag proverb: “Relate to your greatness not your weakness.”

    Relevant song: htIn which David Spade channels Napoleon Dynamite channeling Neil Diamond channeling

    ***

    The ongoing Xmas musical slaughter: Slumber My Darling

    ***

    Today’s Picasso is spell-blinding. When he wanted to explore an optical phenomenon, he tended to dive in deep.

    ***

    Cheesy ego display on my part, but my take on China since TAE taught me, many years ago, how baroque& ly incestuously rotten the Chinese financial economy is.before covid was that it’s current paradigm/regime would not survive this decade. There’s a Japanese proverb that says that the greatest thrill is to do a good deed in secret and have it found out. (One can imagine the”inadvertant” trail of clues this invites us to “unknowingly” leave.) I agree with the Japanese, but let us not gainsay the ever popular thrill of cashing in our “told-you-so”s. Not much pf a thrill, really, and kind of a bitter cash-out (‘I told you we were all gonna die!’) but as popular as a Black Friday deal the Monday after.

    ***

    “Is NATO falling apart?”

    Is NATO is falling apart.

    That’s what they get for relying on a school-systemactically brain-damaged human being to edit/proofread. Shoulda hired a bot.

    Well, It’s Over

    #122118
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    @ upstateNYer – Thank you. 🙂
    —————-

    … no trouble whatsoever! As a very, very amateur dabbler in financial markets, I find Lance’s harangues quite informative, … educational. Profitable, in fact! His daily podcasts, his numerous postings – newsletters – at his website, … are simply the best place for one to get free education about financial machinations in my opinion. For example, … here is his latest: …. https://realinvestmentadvice.com/newsletter/

    Best,

    F.S.

    #122119
    Red
    Participant

    @afewknowthetruth
    No W the V works nicely in its place. It’s like reading the script for Kernel Klink or Scholtzy on Hogans Heroes. Nice bit of humour in these times. You do some verbatim of Schwab.

    #122120
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @AFKTT

    Do you have a checklist of the logical fallacies and are going down the list checking them off one by one?

    Asserting that I made statements which I most definitely did NOT make, and then proving the statements to be wrong, and thereby concluding that I am wrong about my actual statement (i.e. “population overshoot” is propaganda bullshit based on a logical fallacy) is the logical fallacy known as “the straw man argument”.

    Furthermore, my declining to comply with your command to answer questions to the wrongly stated problem is not an error. Ask me properly framed questions about the CORRECTLY identified and stated problem and I would be happy to answer at length.

    Let’s compare to a made-up analogous problem. A man jumps off a cliff and is on his way down raising all kinds of racket but still alive. State the problem. Is it: “cliffs are dangerous” (and must therefore be be fenced off?”) Or is it : “Crazy people jump off cliffs” (and must be prevented from doing so at all costs, like drugs, incarceration, physical restraints, etc.) Or perhaps the problem is : that man is about to die (therefore save by whatever means possible and failing that, protect anyone else in immediate risk from his fall.)

    It’s all a matter of identifying the CORRECT problem, which so far you have not done. You are framing the problem of food in the UK as one of “too many people”, which cannot be the case because the whole notion of doing ANYTHING about it is premised on the belief that people are VALUABLE. Well, in that case, a solution that proposes LESS people is internally contradictory.

    #122121
    zerosum
    Participant

    Is the solution a problem

    deprogramming:

    release (someone) from apparent brainwashing, typically that of a religious cult, by the systematic reindoctrinating into conventional values:

    #122122
    zerosum
    Participant

    Fiction/projection/peace/guessing

    UKRAINE ARMISTICE – HOW THE UDZ OF 2023 WILL SEPARATE THE ARMIES LIKE THE KOREAN DMZ OF 1953


    UKRAINE ARMISTICE – HOW THE UDZ OF 2023 WILL SEPARATE THE ARMIES LIKE THE KOREAN DMZ OF 1953

    #122123
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ‘incestuously rotten the Chinese financial economy is.before covid was was even before covid, that was that it’s current paradigm/regime would not survive this decade.’

    Hopelessly convulsed irreparable syntax on my part. Oh well.

    #122124
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    A fairly savvy substacker named eugyppius wrote:

    “New York Time Decides Lockdowns are Actually Draconian and Economically Destructive when China Does Them “Many were fed up with Mr. Xi … and his ‘Zero-Covid’ policy, which continues to disrupt everyday life, hurt livelihoods and isolate the country,” writes the Times in pacific unselfawareness.”

    “Right-wing conspiracy theorists with ties to anti-Xi opposition elements spread baseless rumours, deny science, and endanger lives” – strangely not how the New York Times chose to caption this image.”

    How much of the NYT’s piece is unawareness and how much is knowing deliberate use of China’s problems as a smoke-screen for USA’ creeps-in-charge dissolving our covid program as quietly and sneakily as possible?

    #122125
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I have to point out, regarding the David Spade does Neil Diamond video, that the humble Just Be Yourself stuff unfortunately features our society’s obsessions with violence. Being Oneself must always mean Kicking Ass.

    Sadly, that is how must of us relate to it because that is out experience: you gotta fight for your right to be free.

    I’m striving for the (I will call it) DaoZenist approach of bypassing all that win/lose-do right/do wrong-you’re either bad or good that homo civilization always self-inflicts on its members (cuz that’s how we’re evolutionarily wired). Nobody wins; nobody loses, says I. The only choice we have is to live until we die: the rest just happens, much not all of it under the illusion that we control our destiny more than our destiny controls us.

    Relevant to that is this wunnaful wunnaful book Raul hipped me to a few years ago.

    Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals He rightly surmised that it would resonate with me.

    Dogs

    #122126
    oldandtired
    Participant
    #122127
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    DBS

    You can play vvith semantics and pontificate on abstractions for as long as you like. None of it affects anything in the real vvorld.

    In the real vvorld, my lack of the second letter does have an affect.

    You still haven’t ansvvered the question because you can’t.

    Overshoot, the predicament vvhen a population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land it lives on [temporarily by importing food and energy].

    vve’ll see vvho gets proven right over the next year or to.

    By te vvy, rsrch hs shn tht splng s nt imprtt bcse th hmn mnd lks fr mnng rthr thn lttrs. Th fst ad lst lttrs r usly te mst imptnt bt nt alys.

    #122128
    WES
    Participant

    Poisoning of the Queen.

    OK so an impatient Prince Charles has bumped off the Queen by poisoning her.
    Historically poisonings have been a favorite way to shorten the reign of ruling Kings or Queens.
    Since Prince Charles is a known WEF member, it stands to reason that the Queen had to go.
    Since the Queen had cancer, the fastest way to end her reign was to give her the covid kill shots.
    This “suddenly and unexpectedly” speeded up the spread of the Queen’s existing cancer by many years.
    The Queen died of old age.
    Nothing to see here, so move along now.

    #122129
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    @ zerosum – Fiction/projection/peace/guessing
    ————————————

    Fully agree, … all gibberish stuff in that article! Russia can only win, ( … er, must win!), if Russia gets all their red lines fully satisfied as declared to the U.S. in their December proposals, and be guaranteed to stay as such! Otherwise, they will forever be designated as looser and a subject to continued attacks.

    The buck stops at this junction in time, … or we facing a nuclear war soon!

    F.S.

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