Nov 092022
 
 November 9, 2022  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Rembrandt van Rijn Portrait of Rembrandt with gorget 1629

 

Super-States in Core Eurasian Geopolitics (Straight-Bat)
Moscow Suggests How Many Countries Want To Join BRICS (RT)
US and Russia To Hold Nuclear Talks (RT)
Why Does The Western Narrative Sound So Stupid And Unrealistic? (Romatzki)
American Pundits Have Got It Backwards About China (Blankenship)
American Voters Don’t Need Russian Trolls To Tell Them How Bad Things Are (RB)
Russian Oil Exports Surging (RT)
Poland Draws A Line In The Sand With The EU (Remix)
EU ‘Sucking Gas Away’ From Poorer Countries (RT)
What Do You Run On….. (Denninger)
Germany Faces Sharp Drop In Real Income (RT)
Polish Ex-PM Links Low Birth Rates To Women Drinking (RT)
Will You Survive The ‘Tripledemic’? (Mercola)
COVID-19 Conspiracies Are a Gateway to Other Conspiracy Theories (SAlert)

 

 

It didn’t seem useful to address the midterms here and now, given the time it will take to count the votes. But at the same time, the voting sucks almost all of the air out of the media. A strange feeling. Nobody talks about Ukraine today.

What I did gather so far is that there was no Red Wave, and Trump endorsements did poorly. While Ron DeSantis won bigly. Which will lead to some head scratching. But overall, prepare for a lot of speculation and likely court cases. The country is divided like never before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Von Der Leyen is under investigation

 

 

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
~ Dalai Lama

 

 

 

 

“..rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral..”

Super-States in Core Eurasian Geopolitics (Straight-Bat)

I have been deliberating on the question whether core Eurasia could really be treated as the ‘heartland’, control of which is a prerequisite to exercise total control over the world? Before one could sincerely take up the issue for a discussion, he/she must be able to grasp the definition of ‘core Eurasia’. Geologically, ‘Eurasia’ is a tectonic plate that lies under much of Europe and Asia. However, there is no well-defined geographic boundary of ‘core Eurasia’ in international politics. The European (geopolitical) strategists and Asian intellectuals converge on this subject remarkably well — the landmass that lies between Pacific Ocean in the east and river Vistula plus Carpathian mountain range in the west, and between Arctic Ocean in the north to the line joining Arabian Sea coast-Himalayan mountain range-South China Sea coast in the south can be termed as ‘core Eurasia’.

This particular question has a definite answer – ‘core Eurasia’ indeed can be assumed as heartland because of two reasons. Firstly, the countries that dot the entire landscape of core Eurasia are not only home to 25% of the global population currently but has enough arable land, water, and forest resources for a healthy and continuous population growth. Secondly, the entire landmass of core Eurasia hold deposits of minerals, fossil fuels, rare earth, and gems in disproportionately high quantities compared to its share of total surface area of earth. Hence, the human civilization can grow, sustain, and flourish as a stand-alone phenomenon in core Eurasia even if civilizations in other regions of the world fail to sustain – this, in my opinion, is the single most important characteristic of core Eurasia why it may be considered as the ‘heartland’.

Readers who are conversant with the works of geopolitics pundits like Brzezinski will easily conclude that I don’t subscribe to Brzezinski’s thought on this issue which was centred around ‘exercising power to control the world’ as he noted, “The control over Eurasia would almost automatically entails Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent.”

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More than a dozen. Among them: Algeria, Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt, Afghanistan.

Moscow Suggests How Many Countries Want To Join BRICS (RT)

More than a dozen countries have expressed an interest in joining the BRICS group, which incorporates some of the world’s major emerging economies, as the bloc gains more global standing, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. Speaking at a meeting with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Lavrov indicated that membership of the BRICS bloc is in high demand. “The interest in this global association is very, very high and continues to grow,”he said. He confirmed that “more than a dozen” countries are eager to join, including Algeria, Argentina, and Iran. However, Lavrov continued, before accepting any new members, BRICS intends to reach an agreement on criteria and principles for further potential expansion.


“Given that applications are already being submitted officially, we, of course, expect that harmonization of the criteria and principles for the expansion of BRICS won’t take too long,” he said. BRICS is an international socio-economic and political forum, which incorporates Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It accounts for over 40% of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP. The Russian Foreign Minister’s comments come after Algeria applied to become a member of the group, following applications by Iran and Argentina. Algeria’s bid came after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for stronger ties with Middle Eastern and North African countries, arguing that they are playing an “increasingly significant role” in the formation of the “multipolar system of international relations.” The bloc is also expected to consider adding Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt and Afghanistan.

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New START.

US and Russia To Hold Nuclear Talks (RT)

American and Russian diplomats will meet to discuss the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty “in the near future,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday. Earlier, Bloomberg and Kommersant cited sources to report that a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) may soon be held in Egypt. “We have agreed that the BCC will meet in the near future. Under the terms of the New START treaty, the work of the BCC is confidential, but we do hope for a constructive session,” Price said at a press briefing. The US believes in the “transformative power of diplomacy and dialogue” but is “clear-eyed and realistic” about what it can accomplish when it comes to Russia, Price added.

The conversations are “focused on risk-reduction” but Washington wants to ensure that the ability to pass messages back and forth with Moscow “does not atrophy.” “If there is, and it sounds like there will be, a meeting of the BCC, that is a good thing,” Price added, before correcting himself to say that the meeting will definitely happen. While Price would not name the venue for the meeting, Bloomberg mentioned Cairo as the neutral location more acceptable to Russia than Geneva, since Switzerland has joined the US and EU sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. The New START is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia, set to expire in 2026 unless renewed. The BCC last met in October 2021.

Moscow suspended the inspection regime under the treaty in August, citing Western sanctions that have prevented Russian inspectors from doing their work in the US, thus putting Washington at an unfair advantage. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the inspections would continue once the principle of parity and equality is restored. Inspections had previously been disrupted by lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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“They are just towing the line, even selling their souls and reputations just to prevent their cancellation.”

Why Does The Western Narrative Sound So Stupid And Unrealistic? (Romatzki)

Reference is constantly made to WW2 , the Cuban Missile Crises, etc. However that was a different world and era where people and leaders still had Values, Religions was strong, Families were strong, where Integrity, Honour, Patriotism, etc. … had meaning ….. a proper culture. This has all been destroyed. By whom? That is a debatable point, but it did happen. Society has been transformed and the Western Culture has been destroyed. There is now very little left of the original culture of the 1950/1960/1970/1980 and before. The family concept is being destroyed. Fewer Children are born, people marry less, Feminism is pushed, Affirmative actions is pushed, Homosexuality is rampant and encouraged, Gender identity is driven to the absurd.,

Science is destroyed by money, etc. Religion has been destroyed by the introduction of other cultures and religions into society. Inter-race marriages have been promoted and encouraged. And then … Wokeness and Cancel Culture has become dominant. With the loss in a stable anchor, derived from one’s family and culture, who can resist these dominant forces? People have become isolated and vulnerable and easy to manipulate. Integrity is thrown out of the window and now everybody is for himself. Gone are the days were one would stand up for his values and deny a job, money or position. All of it has now become monetised and self preservation is the order of the day. Money has played the corruptible factor.

Money and wokeness has become the driving forces of the population. Cancel Culture and Social media have become the tools. Given the facts above, who can then NOT understand why the Western Commentators spew the fake news and ridiculous narratives? In my assessment I believe it is Selfish Interests, Lack of strong Values, Money, Fear of being Cancelled and a lack of proper Information derived from reality, that drives the Western commentators to create such “devoid of reality” narratives. They are just towing the line, even selling their souls and reputations just to prevent their cancellation.

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“The US is the most cartoonishly nationalistic country in the history of our species..”

American Pundits Have Got It Backwards About China (Blankenship)

In recent years, but notably in the wake of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) 20th National Congress that just concluded at the end of October, Western writers have rushed to accuse Beijing of becoming anti-Western. This is seen in several examples by Western writers, such as the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos or a quintessential China-blaming piece recently published by the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. In his article, titled “How China Lost America,” Friedman says that there are four trends in China that have soured the US-China relationship: market manipulation, hyper-nationalism, aggressive foreign policy and Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy. But he does not elaborate these points to any convincible degree and fails to acknowledge the extent to which Washington’s own policies are to blame for China’s perceived turn from the West.

First of all, a lot of what is called intellectual property theft (which Friedman mentions in his piece) is just ordinary intellectual diffusion. The FBI started an entire ‘China Initiative’ to investigate such instances in top US universities and companies – and it came up almost completely empty-handed to the point that it had to be shut down for devolving into a vehicle for anti-Asian racism. This also doesn’t even acknowledge the extent of the US’ own market manipulation, namely through the sheer influence that its multinationals have in creating trade and economic policy, or its promiscuous use of unilateral sanctions. The US also routinely violates its World Trade Organization (WTO) duties in its trade war against Beijing. The organization even allowedChina to impose duties on $645 million worth of imports over US trade malpractice in January.

For an American to call China hyper-nationalist is laughable. The US is the most cartoonishly nationalistic country in the history of our species: children in most public schools are required to swear a ‘pledge of allegiance’ to the flag every morning, Americans only know one language on average and the American flag is draped everywhere in the country. Chinese people are, on balance, much less chauvinistic and more open-minded. Likewise, it’s hard to take insinuations of Beijing’s supposed “aggressive” foreign policy seriously either. The People’s Republic of China has never started a war since its inception and has not been involved in a proxy war in decades. Compare that to the fact that the US has been at war for nearly every single year of its existence since 1776. It is actually America’s aggressive foreign policy that is prompting resistance from Beijing.

Finally, on the zero-Covid point, this is just sensible policy. Virtually every country in the world has caved into public pressure to relax Covid-related restrictions. That’s fairly understandable because of how ineffective they were in most countries. But that doesn’t change the fact that Covid-19 is an extremely deadly and debilitating disease that is continuing to kill many people and leave many more disabled. If one could choose to eliminate Covid-19 from society, then why wouldn’t they? Thankfully, China has effectively used its technology to do just this – and it works. A January report by Citigroup, based on three surveys conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce China, the EU Chamber of Commerce China and the Japan External Trade Organization, found that China is their favorite investment destination. Among the top reasons listed was the country’s supply-chain resilience and the effectiveness of its Covid-19 controls.

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Robert Bridge, published on RT and only RT. So for those who can’t access RT, the whole article.

American Voters Don’t Need Russian Trolls To Tell Them How Bad Things Are (RB)

As US voters head to the polls for the much-anticipated Midterms, talk of Russian trolls monkeying with US democracy is back in the news. But does the country really need Russia’s help in “stoking anger” among the electorate? If the hyper-liberal New York Times can be taken at face value just two days before an epic election, Russia’s underground army of trolls is, once again, attempting to seed the minds of malleable US voters to the Kremlin’s advantage. If those charges sounded outlandish in 2016, when the Democrats accused Russian ‘influencers’ of denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, they seem doubly so today. The Times reported that the goal of the reactivated Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg is to “stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system.

”Judging by the looks of things, the Russians are a bit late to the party. It would be hard to name another period in US politics when the level of anger and distrust has been so extreme, and that is something the Russian trolls, despite their supposed superhuman abilities, can’t take credit for. Take inflation, for example, the single most pressing issue among US voters. It doesn’t require any sort of Russian mind-bending operation to inform Americans that the economic situation is deteriorating before their eyes, and has been ever since Biden entered office. They only need to look at their food and utility bills each month, and the price at the gas pump, to feel fury for what the Biden administration has done to the economy in a shockingly short period of time. Any effort to blame these negative sentiments on “the Russians” is just another way of the Democrats saying that soaring prices is “disinformation”and unworthy of your attention.

The Times mentions another point of contention among US voters, particularly the Republicans, and that is the blank-check powers that have been awarded to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Citing the work of “cybersecurity researchers,” the article alleges that the Russian influence campaign “appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine.”Again, here is an issue that has already been undermined by the Republicans ever since the Democrats commenced with their proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a massively hazardous venture where no expense is considered too great. On this point, the Democrats are able to claim, much like in 2016, that the Russians and the Republicans are working in collusion, this time against Kiev. The Russians are anxious to see US military spending on Ukraine come to an end as all of those sophisticated weapons are only prolonging the conflict.

Meanwhile, some of the Republicans campaigned on promises to terminate funding to the Zelensky regime and divert those billions of dollars to national security projects, like fortifying their own border and fighting crime. It would be a mistake to think that Americans are not acutely aware of the issues now dividing the country. Every day, social media users can see for themselves everything they need to know about crime, inflation, transgender issues, and the border, to name just a few of the hot-button issues dividing the country. To suggest that Russian trolls are required to “stoke conservative anger” is to grossly underestimate the political intelligence of the average US voter, who appears better informed than ever before. The fact is, the Democrats are afraid of being wiped out in a landslide come Tuesday. Conjuring up the ghost of Russia interference at the 11th hour reveals their insecurity and will provide them some partial excuse in the event of a blowout.

With regards to these latest accusations of election interference, Moscow is understandably losing its patience. It requires either a certain lack of self-awareness, or an astonishing excess of arrogance, for the United States to lecture any country on the question of meddling. After all, in the case of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, we’re talking about a mere $150,000 spent on several thousand Facebook ads, many of which had no political message whatsoever. When it is considered that US presidential elections have turned into multi-billion-dollar pageants, with no expense spared on campaign attack ads, it is hard to imagine that Russia’s severely limited campaign had any effect whatsoever (it needs emphasis that not even Facebook is entirely sure where the posts originated from. Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, would only say they “likely operated out of Russia”).

Now compare that to the way the United States “meddles” in the affairs of foreign countries, like Ukraine. In November 2013, after the government of President Viktor Yanukovich opted in favor of closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union instead of the EU, protests broke out in the country. How did the United States respond? Not with internet trolls, that’s for sure. It dispatched high-ranking US officials to Kiev, like Senator John McCain and Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, where they agitated the masses against the democratically elected government. On the question of who would ultimately govern the splintered country, Nuland was overheard in a phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine handpicking the eligible candidates.

Once again, the United States proved that there are rules for itself and rules for the rest of the world, and increasingly it is the American people who must pay the price for that supreme arrogance.

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Seaborne, that is.

Russian Oil Exports Surging (RT)

Shipments of Russian seaborne crude surged to 3.6 million barrels per day last week, reaching the highest since early June, while the less volatile four-week average is the highest since August, Bloomberg reported on Monday. A total of 34 tankers were loaded with some 25.2 million barrels of Russian crude oil in the week to November 4, according to vessel-tracking data and port agent reports, as quoted by the media. That’s up by 3.2 million barrels. The exports were ramped up more than a month before the EU sanctions, supported by the G7 nations and Australia, kick in on December 5. The penalties will see Western companies banned from providing insurance and other services to vessels loaded with Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased below a yet-to-be-agreed price cap.


The biggest increase, in both volume and percentage terms, was reportedly recorded in shipments from the Arctic terminal of Murmansk. Cargoes carrying Russian oil are becoming more cagey about their destinations, according to Bloomberg. The agency noted a big jump in vessels showing their next destination as Port Said or the Suez Canal, and a drop in the volume on tankers indicating that they’re headed to India. The media highlighted that many more ships carrying crude are leaving Russian ports without signaling a final port of discharge. Russia’s revenues from crude-export duty reportedly rose by $16 million to $149 million in the seven days to November 4, with the four-week average income also increasing, gaining $6 million to $134 million.

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“The National Recovery Fund for Poland involves €24 billion in grants and €11.5 billion in loans, but it is just one type of fund that Poland has yet to receive from Brussels.”

Poland Draws A Line In The Sand With The EU (Remix)

The Polish government says it will make no further concessions to the European Union in order to unlock tens of billions in EU funding, arguing that Poland has fulfilled all its obligations and Brussels owes them the money. “Poland fulfilled all conditions set by the European Commission regarding the payment of the Recovery Funds it is due,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said. He added that “he does not intend to answer any comments from Brussels on the matter.” Brussels, for its part, has threatened Poland with catastrophic funding cuts totaling up to €110 billion; this would hobble the Polish economy, which has suffered due to the global economic downturn, inflation, and the refugee crisis from Ukraine.

In an interview for the conservative Sieci, Duda admitted that he does not believe that trying to fulfill the expectations of “the other side” could bring any results. “I believe that a lot of good will was showcased from the Polish side,” he stated. “And we know very well that there is a group from Poland there that has a policy of contradicting the basic interests of the Polish state and is content when Poland is being harmed by Brussels,” said Poland’s president. He also mentioned the liberal-left representatives who “have seats in the European Commission and want to change the ruling party in Poland at all costs.” According to the latest statements of the Polish authorities, Poland has still not sent a request for a payment of the Recovery Funds to Brussels.

Meanwhile, information has appeared in the public space that the Commission confirmed that Warsaw has fulfilled 15 out of 20 milestones necessary for the payments of the first tranche of funds. The National Recovery Fund for Poland involves €24 billion in grants and €11.5 billion in loans, but it is just one type of fund that Poland has yet to receive from Brussels. In June, the European Commission finally accepted the Polish plan, however, it made the payment of the funds dependent on the fulfillment of the so-called milestones. In the case of Poland, those milestones concern mostly the judicial system. Brussels does not recognize that Poland fulfilled its obligations, so the payment of the National Recovery Fund remains frozen.

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“We are borrowing other people’s energy supplies,” Vitol Group Chief Executive Officer Russell Hardy told the media. “It’s not a great thing.”

EU ‘Sucking Gas Away’ From Poorer Countries (RT)

The EU energy crisis is inevitably leading to energy poverty in developing countries, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday citing an energy analyst at Credit Suisse. “Europe is sucking gas away from other countries whatever the cost,” Saul Kavonic told the media. Despite soaring energy bills, the EU is expected to survive the upcoming heating season, as the bloc members have purchased enough oil and natural gas. However, this comes with a high price tag for the world’s poorest nations that have been cut off from the gas market due to Europe’s ravenous demand. Emerging market countries are reportedly at serious risk of being unable to meet their energy needs. Factory shutdowns, more frequent and longer-lasting power shortages, as well as social unrests are the most likely consequences due to the energy security challenges.

Exporters across Qatar and the US are accepting bids from European buyers seeking to purchase as much fuel as possible to fill their storages. That leaves developing countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand unable to compete on price with Germany and other bigger economies. “We are borrowing other people’s energy supplies,” Vitol Group Chief Executive Officer Russell Hardy told the media. “It’s not a great thing.” According to traders cited by Bloomberg, soaring prices prompted some suppliers to South Asia to simply cancel long-scheduled deliveries in favor of better yields elsewhere. “Suppliers don’t need to focus on securing their LNG to low affordability markets,” Raghav Mathur, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie said, adding that the higher prices they can get on the spot market more than make up for whatever penalties they might pay for shirking planned shipments.

“LNG will belong first to the ‘developed,’ with the leftovers for the ‘developing.’”the expert said, adding that this dynamic is likely to hold for years. The European Union is struggling with an energy crisis as a result of the reduction of imports from Russia. Earlier, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that it took the bloc eight months to replace two-thirds of Russian gas supplies. She added that the EU had significantly diversified the range of foreign suppliers, but that had “been costly.”

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“Biden claims inflation is not his fault and he’s bringing it down by spending more deficit money. This is mathematically impossible, incidentally.”

What Do You Run On….. (Denninger)

…. when you have nothing to run on? Let’s just be straight here, ok — neither party, when you get down to it, has anything to run on. But: When you’re in the left seat, and the plane crashes, its your fault. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. Just as an example the “authorities” won’t release the surveillance or body camera tapes from the Paul Pelosi assault. Why not? The only reason not to is that what’s there renders irrevocably false the story told thus far. In what way? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. If the footage documents the affidavit “as told” then there’s no reason not to release it as it will cement the case not only in court but in public opinion as well. Therefore it clearly doesn’t. Biden claims inflation is not his fault and he’s bringing it down by spending more deficit money. This is mathematically impossible, incidentally.

He either doesn’t know this or he’s lying. It matters not which it is; he ran on and promoted blowing more money around so he has no place to hide. Biden told us all that if you took the Covid shots you would not get covid. He said that conclusively. He lied; his top advisor, Birx, has stated in public she knew this was not true before he took office. Therefore either he hired her and is responsible or she told him and he deliberately lied. Either way: He’s in the left seat, he had opportunity to not lie, thus he owns it. On Biden’s watch Ukraine and Russia went to war. Biden has poured tens of billions of dollars and weapons not only in munitions into Ukraine he’s paying the salaries of their people with our money. The total at this point is well over $100 billion, which is a quite-material part of the fiscal deficit.

By what authority? Well, Congress appears to be ok with it, aren’t they? Indeed. Who controls Congress? Uh huh. Oh, spending more money than you take in causes inflation? Well, prosecuting this war over there is part of it then, on purpose. Again, sit in the left seat, you’re responsible when there’s a smoking hole in the ground and nothing larger than a quarter can be identified. There have been a couple of million people streaming into our nation illegally over the last two years. Inflationary? You bet. What’s worse? The guy who is accused of attacking Pelosi is here illegally and has been for years. How many others have been victimized by criminals who were here illegally? Remember “A Girl in Iowa” anyone? Sit in the left seat, it’s your problem, especially when you sue, as Biden has done, to block Arizona and others from sealing said border.

Biden has declared war on carbon-based fuels. Refiners are closing and have on his watch and will not restart because he has made clear that any investment in them is a zero. It is his expressed intent to destroy said investment so nobody will make it. Do you light $100 bills on fire for fun? Neither does anyone else, so if you think gas or diesel prices are coming down on a durable basis exactly how when there is no increase in refining capacity coming online to meet demand? You can’t build an electric car without carbon-based fuels and in fact to build and operate one requires more carbon-based fuel than just refining and burning the gasoline. This is fact and yet Biden does not care if you get screwed.

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Germany faces many problems. A drop in income is not the worst.

Germany Faces Sharp Drop In Real Income (RT)

The German economy is expected to lose billions of euros by the end of 2023 due to skyrocketing energy prices, the Ifo Center for Macroeconomics said in a report published on Tuesday. According to the forecast, real income loss will reach €110 billion ($110 billion) during the 2021-2023 period, which equals 3% of Germany’s annual economic output. “The only time this figure was higher was during the second oil crisis of 1979-81, when the loss in economic output was 4%,” said Timo Wollmershaeuser, senior economist at Ifo. The surge in energy prices is expected to take a heavy toll on the German economy this year, with an anticipated €64 billion loss, or 1.8% of the country’s output.


The estimated loss for 2021 exceeded €35 billion, and a €9 billion drop is expected for 2023, according to Ifo. German citizens will continue to feel the impact of the energy crisis over the next few years with a drop in real incomes, Wollmershaeuser warned, adding that losing Russia as the main energy supplier will result in long-term high oil and gas prices. He also predicted that Germany will not wean itself off energy imports “overnight” as the country has long been dependent on external supplies. In late October, Ifo predicted that the German economy would contract by 0.6% in the fourth quarter. According to an Economy Ministry forecast, Germany will see growth of 1.4% this year and a 0.4% slump next year.

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Stunning.

Polish Ex-PM Links Low Birth Rates To Women Drinking (RT)

The leader of Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice Party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has claimed that women are choosing not to have children because they drink too much. The former prime minister made the remarks on Saturday during a trip to Elk, a city in northeastern Poland. Reflecting on the country’s low birth rate, Kaczynski said “cultural factors”contribute to a woman’s decisions on childbearing, and “it is sometimes necessary to say bitter things openly.” “If, for example, it is maintained that, until the age of 25, young women drink as much as men of their age, there will be no children,” Kaczynski said. “Remember that a man, in order to become an alcoholic, has to drink excessively for 20 years on average… while a woman has to do it for only two years.” “I say this seriously,” the conservative politician stated, adding that he knew a doctor who “managed to cure a third of his male alcoholic patients, but no women.”


“I really am a sincere supporter of women’s equality, but I’m not in favor of women pretending to be men and men pretending to be women because it is something completely different,”Kaczynski said. “This is a typical statement from a patriarchal grandpa during a traditional Polish wedding,” said Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, a legislator from the New Left party, dismissing Kaczynski’s words as “foolish.” Her fellow MP Urszula Paslawska said she does not know “whether to laugh or to cry.” Another New Left lawmaker, Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak, argued that alcohol affects the fertility of both men and women. “In order to have children, other issues need to be solved, and Kaczynski is silent on them,” she said. “There is a shortage of two million housing units in Poland, so young people have to live with their parents.” She added that women, including mothers, need better protection in their jobs and in the labor market.

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RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] is the flavor of the day for Big Pharma.

Will You Survive The ‘Tripledemic’? (Mercola)

As predicted, “health experts” are starting to call for voluntary indoor masking again,(11) even though all the evidence garnered over the past three years confirms what we already knew in 2020, which is that face masks do nothing to stop viral infections. And, as before, in the absence of actual scientific evidence the narrative focuses instead on virtue. Masking up is said to be a way to protect everyone,(12) so just “do your part” and wear it, even though, in reality, it protects no one. The same goes for vaccination. Both the flu vaccine and the COVID shots are proven ineffective, yet the recommendation(13) to get them continues. And this season, you’re expected to get both! The fact that RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] is now being highlighted as a severe risk is understandable in light of the fact that the first-ever RSV vaccines are now in the pipeline.

According to CNN,(14) four different RSV shots are “nearing review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration” and more than a dozen others are in trials. This includes a “long-acting injection” specifically for babies, to be given “right after birth” to protect them from RSV “for as long as six months.” If that’s not a perfect example of how the media tries to change the perception of the basic meaning of a term, I don’t know what is. Six months is hardly long-acting! Historically, most vaccines have at least offered antibody-only “protection” for years, not months. Please recognize all vaccines fail to use cellular immunity to protect you, which is far more important than humoral antibody protection. This extremely short duration of antibody-only protection appears to be a hallmark of mRNA technology however, and indeed, at least some of these new RSV shots are mRNA based.

Moderna has announced it is working on an mRNA jab for RSV, which is scheduled for release in 2023.(15) They’re also working on a combination mRNA jab for COVID, RSV and the flu. (Ultimately, Moderna wants to create an annual mRNA shot that covers all of the top 10 viruses that result in hospitalizations each year.[16]) Janssen is also working on an RSV shot using an adenovirus vector, the same technology used in its COVID shot, while Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are testing “protein subunit” RSV vaccines for pregnant women and seniors.(17) According to Forbes,(18) Pfizer announced November 1, 2022, that it is ready to seek FDA authorization for its RSV vaccine. In clinical trials this shot was given to pregnant mothers and the efficacy was measured not by whether it prevented RSV, but by severity of the infection in hospitalized babies during their first months of life.(19)

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Pretend science. What insane nonsense.

COVID-19 Conspiracies Are a Gateway to Other Conspiracy Theories (SAlert)

Thinking that the COVID-19 pandemic is in some way a hoax could serve as a ‘gateway’ for individuals to engage with more complex conspiracy theories, claim a team of researchers from Ohio State University in the US. According to a recent analysis of two longitudinal studies that tracked participant beliefs in various theories, mistrust in expertise over real-world events can quickly bloom into a general acceptance of conspiracy theories that aren’t supported by robust evidence. The technical term here is conspiracist ideation, which measures someone’s confidence in explanations of events that rely on the power of groups to manipulate outcomes to an unlikely, if not near impossible degree.

For the study’s purpose, the researchers considered conspiracy theories to be beliefs that aren’t supported by any evidence – and which are actually contradicted by the evidence that does exist. These can be anything from believing the Moon landing was staged to thinking that legitimate elections are rigged. In the case of COVID-19, conspiracy theories include the idea that the pandemic was largely exaggerated by the government or the media, and the belief that the virus was released on purpose by a particular agency for sinister means. “It’s speculative, but it appears that once people adopt one conspiracy belief, it promotes distrust in institutions more generally – it could be government, science, the media, whatever,” says psychologist Russell Fazio, from The Ohio State University.

“Once you start viewing events through that distrustful lens, it’s very easy to adopt additional conspiracy theories.” Two different studies were the focus of the analysis. The first queried 107 participants about their beliefs in June 2020. In December of that year, a second study looked at how individuals who considered COVID-19 to be a hoax progressed in their conspiracist ideation. Statistical analysis showed that those who believed the SARS-CoV-2 virus was deliberately released or that the severity of the COVID-19 outbreaks was exaggerated were also more likely to distrust the official results of the 2020 US election. What’s more, members of the ‘conspiracy minded’ group also tended to show an increase in conspiratorial thinking between June and December.

The second study used publicly available data from 1,037 participants, surveyed between March 2020 and December 2020. Again, belief that the pandemic was a hoax predicted a rise in conspiracist ideation over the course of the year. “If you read interviews or forums frequented by conspiracy theorists, you see a phenomenon where people tend to go down the rabbit hole after something happens in their life that triggers general interest in conspiracy theories,” says psychologist Javier Granados Samayoa, from The Ohio State University. “With COVID-19, there was this large event that people could not control, so how could they make sense of it? One way is by adhering to conspiracy theories.”

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 9 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 87 total)
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  • #120597
    Bishko
    Participant

    We in California had finally had it with our WEF minion Governor Gavin Newsom and made a referendum to throw him out. Poof, nothing burger. I feel like all the prison inmates stood up on their bunks and demanded a vote to change the Prison Warden and were all handed a piece of paper and a pencil. All the “votes” were collected by the laughing prison guards and brought to the Wardens office to “count”. How can anyone really believe that they have any effect in these farces?

    #120598
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
    ~ Dalai Lama

    Marvelous little proverb. I wonder if it’s an old folk proverb.

    #120599
    Mr. House
    Participant
    #120600
    Bishko
    Participant

    “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
    ~ Dalai Lama

    Unfortunately for us, we often end up like that mosquito. Squashed.

    #120601
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    The US midterms seem to have deftly circumvented and postponed kinetic ‘blood-in-the-streets’ open revolt for the time being. The new date for the dust up will be announced as long from now as humanly possible, but in the meantime everyone has plenty of time to do what they do best: being hopeful, afraid or unconscious. Only three more wars to go and survivors should be in the clear to get back to hunting and gathering.

    #120602
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Since I have attempted to pass myself off as a poet, I feel obligated to present an example:

    Table for One

    The world eats me, as words made flesh
    Digest themselves. As combines thresh
    The grain from stalk, so life by lives
    Divides itself with sentient knives.

    The big and little fish that eat
    The smaller of their kind, the meat
    That through the slaughterhouses flow,
    “All beasts and fowl”: these ones know

    The table spreads around the globe,
    That — “mindless” beast or soul in robe —
    Are scurried victuals, that all
    Must fight to lose, to founder, fall.

    This need to breathe and procreate,
    To relay signals passed by fate,
    Makes a communal house for us
    In one anothers’ bellies. Thus

    Womb by womb, we start to crawl.
    One by one we join the all.
    Through self and love, from soul to rind.
    Eat heartily, I do not mind.

    6-82 Charleston, S.C.

    As for mosquitoes and squishes: everyone’s arse is up for kicks. One either does or doesn’t, and the outcome of this does as it will.

    Take Your Partners Chances

    #120603
    jb-hb
    Participant

    @Dr D

    To the extent that Umberto Eco misses the mark (although he does pretty good, really) when he DOES miss, it is as if he is saying “When you look out your window and see goose-stepping soldiers parading in shiny high boots, then you have fascism, and when you look out the window and don’t, then you don’t have fascism”

    To SOME extent, he takes a particular external stylistic approach and assumes it is the underlying thing. Totalitarians gladly grab whatever gives leverage. So saying they have a taste for grasping a PARTICULAR thing for leverage would be wrong. Is he too naive to say fascism is beside the point? Tradition? You can make ANYTHING tradition with enough repetition.

    Maybe a simpler definition would be:

    1.) They’re good at gaining control
    2.) They’re bad at running anything (and think competence and good stewardship is beneath them?)
    3.) First they blame The Bad People for ruining their Brilliant Plans
    4.) Eventually – but without TOO much delay or hand-wringing – they say “Fine, we’ll just use slavery/forced labor to make our plans work”
    5.) Despite continually finding new enemies to eliminate and conscripting more forced labor, nothing works anyway.
    6.) Their security forces realize they are superfluous, given a long enough time frame.

    It’s interesting how Eco both predicts Wokeism and fails to predict Wokeism at the same time.

    I tend to get suspicious of people focusing specifically on fascism. YES 30-s-40s Germany was bad. Obviously. But just to the east you get the same methods being used for 70+ years without getting the same kind of attention. So if the methods are not objectionable, just the doctrine, then what’s his point? And if the methods ARE objectionable, why linger over the STYLE in which the same methods are used? Obsession with “fascism” tends to be a telltale sign of a still-butthurt internationalist socialist movement mad at the breakaway nationalist socialist movement. The nationalist flavor totally lost due to being more incompetent and it’s been over 75 years. I guess ideologies can get PTSD too.

    #120604
    Dora
    Participant

    Ed Dowd Exposes “Sudden Adult Deaths” Increase & New mRNA Data

    #120605
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The Babylon Bee: Nation Unsure Whether To Support Party That Runs Brain-Damaged Candidates Or Party That Loses To Brain-Damaged Candidates

    https://babylonbee.com/news/nation-unsure-whether-to-support-party-that-runs-brain-damaged-candidates-and-party-that-loses-to-brain-damaged-candidates

    #120606
    John Day
    Participant

    @Robin Morrison:
    Face-Dress in Vegas? Can’t tell if it’s day or night in there.

    #120607
    John Day
    Participant

    “Not Yet” post is up, with picture of gardener gazing expectantly at growing Nam-wah banana stalk above him. https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/not-yet

    US Nuclear Forces Chief Says ‘the Big One Is Coming’
    ​ ​The commander that oversees US nuclear forces delivered an ominous warning at a naval conference last week by calling the war in Ukraine a “warmup” for the “big one” that is to come.
    ​ ​“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”
    ​ ​Richard’s warning came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms that the US doctrine allows for the first use of nuclear weapons.

    US Nuclear Forces Chief Says ‘the Big One Is Coming’

    ​ Former Russian President Medvedev explains the reason behind the timing of the special-military-operation to eliminate elements hostile to Russian-speakers and Russia.​ Kiev’s nuclear ambitions spurred Moscow’s military operation
    ​ ​Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises from the US, Britain and Russia that they would “provide assistance” to the country in case of aggression. The three states also vowed not to attack Ukraine themselves.
    ​ ​However, Russian officials have repeatedly stated that this document was undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion, which threatened Moscow’s vital security interests. Moreover, prior to the start of the Ukraine conflict in late February, Zelenksy signaled that Kiev could give up its decades-old pledge to be a non-nuclear nation and reverse the decision it took to give up its atomic weapons.
    https://www.rt.com/russia/566062-medvedev-ukraine-nuclear-weapons/

    ​ War as a “lesser good” for the Godly, who prepare themselves to kill or to die for moral principles, to be judged by eternity.​ “The General” makes the case that only a Godly, morally intact army can excel. Anything else lacks the necessary foundation of certainty of conscience in each soldier. (Did Putin refer to this book?)
    While the Moscow military operation was taking place, in the author’s reading schedule it was turn for a book by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov entitled “Three Conversations on War, Progress and the End of World History“. The English translation, published in the second decade of the previous century, is entitled “War and Christianity from a Russian perspective“. “Three Conversations” is a philosophical work by Vladimir Solovyov, in which he addresses several important issues, by presenting his ideas in the form of a discussion among five characters.

    Operation Z through the eyes of Vladimir Solov’ev

    After evacuating all civilians from Kherson 2 days ago, Russian troops are withdrawing to the east side of the Dnieper river. Ukrainian forces have been shelling the city, and the dam above it for weeks. It can’t be a killing-field until there are people in it. Ukrainian forces are not eager to occupy the regional capital city.
    Without holding Kherson, how can Russian forces take Odessa? But who wants to be in the way of a flood?
    ​ ​Both sides now appear to be scrambling to bolster manpower in the region, with Ukraine’s military vowing to keep up the pressure after pounding the Russian-held city with artillery for weeks:
    ​ ​A senior adviser to Ukraine’s president said on Wednesday it was too early to talk about a Russian troop pullout from the southern city of Kherson.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-orders-troops-leave-kherson-zelenskys-office-cautions-over-staged-retreat

    #120608
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ ​The United States and Russia are expected to meet soon and discuss resuming inspections under the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty that have been paused since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday.
    ​ ​Speaking at a daily press briefing, Price said the bilateral consultative commission (BCC), the mechanism for implementation of the last remaining arms control agreement between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, will meet “in the near future.”
    https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-us-discuss-first-nuclear-talks-since-ukraine-conflict-kommersant-2022-11-08/

    ​ Ugo Bardi and I see this the same way. The defense against lies is the unremitting attempt to fully and completely understand reality in our own way, in our own living minds. Easy answers tend to be lies, calculated to serve some interest, which pays to make them available to you.​
    How to Beat Propaganda: the Grokking Strategy
    ​ ​We can describe this attitude by the term “grokking,” invented by sci-fi author Robert Anson Heinlein to indicate the kind of in-depth understanding that professionals have of their field. In Heinlein’s fictional Mars, “to grok” also means “to drink.” You assimilate knowledge just like you assimilate the water you drink. It is strictly related to the concept of “empathy” as discussed by Chuck Pezeshky in his blog. (It is also part of the concept of “virtual holobiont,” but let me skip that, here).
    ​ ​The “grokking-style” learning is based on the idea that you don’t trust any source just because it is “authoritative.”
    https://www.senecaeffect.com/2022/11/how-to-beat-propaganda-grokking-strategy.html

    ​Another Michael Hudson interview transcript, from which I excerpt this pearl of wisdom:
    ​ ​So there are two economic philosophies and I began the book by contrasting the dynamics of industrial capitalism with finance capitalism. And industrial capitalism in the United States, Germany, England, and every country where it took off, was to promote a public investment in basic infrastructure monopolies in transportation, communication, education, healthcare.
    ​ ​The idea is that if the government would provide these basic services and basic human rights at subsidized rates – or freely, as in the case of education and healthcare – then employers would not have to pay labor a high enough basic wage to make labor pay for healthcare – as in the United States where 18% of GDP is for healthcare – or to pay for education, the 1.7 trillion that goes for student debt in the United States, not mentioning the education that is not debt-financed.
    ​ ​Finance capitalism basically sought to break away all of the public infrastructure. Most financial fortunes and financial fortunes in history were made just in the way that Zola had described, by prying thefts from the public domain.
    ​ ​But the financial capitalism doesn’t say… You don’t have to steal it; you actually make it your policy, giving away the financial domain in the way that President Yeltsin gave away all of Russia’s natural resources, public utilities, electric companies, anything that yields an economic rent that can be just easy income without any investment. And you financialize it.
    ​ ​You’ve had, for the last – really since the 1980s, but even since World War 1 – this movement to prevent industrial economies from being low cost. But the objective of finance capitalism, contrary to what’s taught in the textbooks, is to make economies high cost, to raise the cost every year.

    The Real Progressive interview of Michael Hudson (with transcript!)

    #120609
    John Day
    Participant

    ​I will make the case that the next default will be massive devaluation of the $US against gold, allowing all federal debts to be paid-off-in-gold at much reduced real value. Other deeply indebted countries will do the same, maybe first, or at the same time. Suddenly transitioning to Central Bank Digital Currency requires too much trust and agreement in our world.​ There is too much to read here. This is the nugget. Thanks Ilargi.
    Are You Ready for the Coming U.S. Government Default?
    ​ ​The popular American myth is that the U.S. government has never defaulted on its debt. Quite frankly, that’s an unadulterated lie. The U.S. government has (unofficially) defaulted on its debt twice within the last hundred years…
    ​ ​Executive Order 6102 of 1933, which forced all American citizens to turn in gold coins and bars, was, in fact, a default. Gold ownership in the United States, with some small limitations, was illegal for the next 40 years.
    ​ ​Under EO 6102, Americans were compensated $20.67 per troy ounce of gold. They were paid with paper dollars. Immediately following the government’s gold confiscation, the price of gold was raised by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 to $35 per ounce. Just like that, American citizens were robbed of over 40 percent of their wealth.
    ​ ​The second default occurred in 1971, when President Nixon “temporarily” suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold.​
    ​https://economicprism.com/are-you-ready-for-the-coming-u-s-government-default/

    ​ But they won’t say how they know these numbers. They may be confirming total sales, then looking at declared purchases, and declaring that central banks quietly bought the rest. That might be right. Somebody appears to have bought the most gold in history this year, and it’s a secret. One presumes they took possession, in the prevailing circumstances.​
    ​ ​“Global central bank purchases leapt to almost 400 tonnes in Q3 (+115% q-o-q). This is the largest single quarter of demand from this sector in our records back to 2000 and almost double the previous record of 241t in Q3 2018.
    It also marks the eighth consecutive quarter of net purchases and lifts the y-t-d total to 673 tonnes, higher than any other full year total since 1967.”
    Specifically, the World Gold Council claims that Q3 2022 central bank gold demand was 399.3 tonnes, which is a massive 340% higher than Q3 2021.
    https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/gold-establishment-supports-central-bank-secrecy-instead-of-exposing-it/#comments

    ​ Peter Schiff has good reason to push gold. ​Still, he makes a good case that something has fundamentally changed in the way gold “markets” are managed, to allow a $50 increase in the price of an ounce of gold Friday, then another $40 on Monday, when it had never been allowed to rise more than $20 (thanks Dr.D) before. This could be a signal that gold is the ordained next-bubble.
    As above, that would allow global central banks to get out of debt by massively devaluing against gold, then settling under a new global gold regime.
    Peter Schiff: The Gold Train Has Left the Station​
    ​https://schiffgold.com/peters-podcast/peter-schiff-the-gold-train-has-left-the-station/

    ​Charles Hugh Smith: The Unintended Consequences of Unintended Consequences
    ​ ​Decades of central bank distortions and regulatory / market-share capture by cartels and monopolies have completely gutted “markets,” destroying their self-correcting dynamics.​ ​
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-unintended-consequences-of.html

    #120610
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ The post-mortem analysis of midterm election results won’t be fully settled until the December 6 runoff election for US Senate seat in Georgia, but it appears that Republicans will take a narrow lead in the House, while the Senate is a toss-up, favoring the Democrats, since VP Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.​
    My view is that there will be another 2 years of gridlock, as the rest of the world, outside of NATO and other vassal-states, moves rapidly forward to bypass the $US in global trade. There is the splitting into 2 blocs, as Michael Hudson describes above, but the declining bloc is self-cannibalizing.
    There cannot be a power/leadership transition in the US/NATO/$US bloc until the current power elites capitulate in ultimate despair.
    The owners may kill a lot of their herds before they despair like that. It seems like a best-case-scenario that this bottom could be reached in 2024, blame dumped on “Joe Biden”, and some transitional-figure elected to walk the USA through chapter-11 bankruptcy.
    Power elites could really wait another 4 years, until 2028 to give-up-all-hope. That would imply horrific war in those years.
    I sincerely suggest that we turn our efforts and best-intentions towards hitting bottom by 2024.
    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/comprehending_the_underwhelming_performance_of_the_gop.html

    ​ Ben Davidson is a brilliant scientist and author of the textbook on Space Weather.
    From 2:30 he explains that all of the space agencies have clammed-up on magnetic field strength data in recent years.
    We are mainly looking at 6 year old data, which was showing rapid weakening of our protective fields.​ Thanks Red.

    ​ If you mimic the trees, shrubs and herbs in a mature old-growth forest near you, or one that previously existed where you live, you can nurture that mix, planted fairly densely, for 3 years and it should self-sustain. This is significantly expensive, and in 100 years it will just look like something to log, if it is big enough.
    It’s not financially feasible, except as a gift to life, with an uncertain future.
    Imagining a Mini-Forest’s Potential: The Miyawaki Method

    Imagining a Mini-Forest’s Potential: The Miyawaki Method


    How to make a mini forest with Miyawaki method
    https://bengaluru.citizenmatters.in/how-to-make-mini-forest-miyawaki-method-34867

    #120611
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Before the advent of railways in England, those who wanted to move large quantities of raw materials and goods funded the construction of a huge system of canals that connected the numerous slow-moving rivers that cross the land.

    Barges were pulled by horses which moved along a towpath, towing a line attached to a barge. The horses had absolutely no choice i the matter and had to tow the line.

    Toeing the line, on the other hand, meant to prepared for a race.

    It’s weird how the English language has got so distorted and how the meanings of words and phrases has got utterly disconnected via misunderstanding, misspelling and misuse.

    One of my favourites is the combination soft/hard -which are clearly opposites.

    But softly/hardly???

    She spoke softly. She spoke hardly???

    She hardly spoke.

    From the linked item above:

    ‘Every institution, with the exception of the National Rifle Association and the 700 Club, now fall under the insidious sway of liberal ideology. How such a shocking thing came to pass in God’s Country is another question, but the reality remains: a battle is currently raging – call it a bloodless civil war – between the red-blooded American people, armed with nothing more than the Constitution and 6 million firearms, and ‘The Godforsaken System.’ Thus far, thanks to the power of censorship, deception and outright criminality, which defines the modus operandi of the Deep State, the latter is winning hands down.’

    Liberal??

    There’s another word that has had its meaning utterly twisted.

    There is nothing unusual about ‘Amerika’; Britian has been ruled by a succession of gangs of criminals for a thousand years, with possibly the exception of just one short-lived period, the Interegnum (the period in English history from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660) when Oliver Cromwell was nominally in charge, though I doubt he held much sway in the City of London, the real seat of power.

    NZ has been ruled by a succession of gangs of criminals since 1852, when the various regional companies got together and agreed that it would be easier to do business if they had a national system of theft.

    Ditto Canada and Australia, just different time frames.

    With all that is going on in Ukraine and Taiwan, the criminals must be working up to a new ‘coalition of the willing’, to defend their utterly corrupt system. They will fail, of course.

    Exponential growth -of population, of energy use, of extraction of resources, of extermination of nature- on a finite planet only works for a relatively short time.

    Luddite: a person who irrationally opposes progress.

    Luddite: a person who opposed the dehumanisation of life and the ravaging of nature in the early nineteenth century.

    The Empire of Lies prefers the first definition, of course.

    #120612
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    By the way, forget about blue and red. I’m pretty sure black will decide the fate of the US if Russia doesn’t.

    http://graphs.water-data.com/lakemead/

    #120613
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    I acquiesce.

    After observing for 30+ years “liberal” bullies attacking normal, peaceful hetero-family based humanity, crippling productive, stable homogeneous societies at every turn, the non-stop increase of in-your-face organized criminality at EVERY level of U$ .GOV (whom indubitably harms, intimidates, gaslights any & all whom advocate restoration of normalcy, prudence & the-rule-of-law), + NOW the total enterprise of depraved, degenerate, deficient & dissembling “leaders” (The Dreadful) selected for “positions-of-power” over (well essentially), all of humanity ~ I surrender. 😕

    I stand in awe of the sheer idiocy of The West, who have blundered into maladroit future where the innocent are fed to an Imperial nightmare (once again), due to the dearth of their Spiritual Awareness.

    I will, as has been my practice & course for almost a decade, continue to pray & meditate that all of The Infinite’s children come to know the Healing, Creative & Loving Power of the Universe, but I will no longer contradict The EG0ic Madness that the majority have feted as their fate, I acquiesce.

    All blessings,

    Gary

    #120614
    Bill7
    Participant

    I don’t know, myself.

    It’s good to see Mr. House around, and to see flora’s recent comment over at NC.

    #120615
    Polemos
    Participant

    I might not remember all of the details, but the part of Stranger in a Strange Land that stands out in my memory is when Michael Valentine Smith is in the zoo and sees the monkeys beat upon one another. He suddenly bursts into laughter, and tears, and as the story continues, he explains he now groks people, what Jubal means when he describes “Man” as the one who laughs. He laughs and cries and begins feeling more himself among the little nest and the rest of humanity, because he now knows why humans laugh. They laugh because of the hurt, the cruelty, everywhere and repeated from one onto another. One monkey bashes another monkey, who hurts and needs to beat another smaller monkey, who has no monkey to beat —and Michael sees this as the root of all comedy.

    Maybe this is why some people feel the need to spread pain and suffering onto others in the form of “humorous put downs,” insults told as jokes, as attempts to elicit laughter while also attempting humiliation. If you can make yourself laugh while you are trying to pull someone’s soul apart, you do not have to really own the cruelty. This is one stage on the way towards total indifference to the harm one causes: witness the commentary about being the mosquito. On the one hand, it’s commonplace to smash them and keep going, so the joke is shifting back on the recognition how much trouble one person can cause. On the other hand, the Buddhist Lama who values the subjectivity of a mosquito’s suffering situates her extinction of that suffering with respect to his own suffering at being bitten or annoyed through the night, so the joke goes to the heart of one’s own fixation on one’s own suffering. On the third hand, the transhumanist sees no value in a mosquito besides being another vector for antifertility vaccines for throttling the growth of populations causing damage to world resources, so the hidden joke is that no one survives the long night anyway. So, on the fourth hand, the chaotician remarks that telling jokes about mosquitos, like telling jokes about annoying people on the Internet, all comes back to what you let cause your suffering, as the more you suffer another, the greater they need to overcome the hurdle in mocking your suffering, and invariably the jokes get worse, less humorous, and all we’re left with is the naked cruelty of wanting to smash and squish another living being.

    #120616
    Bill7
    Participant

    Recently I’ve been looking for a few more recordings of Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass. I like Oxford Camerata / Summerly very much, but the sound is mid-rangey, and also has the “Naxos blur” (my term). Pro Cantione Antiqua / Bruno Turner has been a very pleasant surprise, even if the sound is similar to the previously-mentioned one. Earthy, soulful, joyous.. for those who like this kind of music. Not a “churchy” feeling to this one..

    One on Archiv with the Westminster Cathedral Choir / Simon Preston should arrive soon, and I’m looking forward to hearing it, too.

    #120617
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Veracious Poet said

    Truly surrealistic…a brain damaged person, who can hardly read/think, beat Dr. Oz in the home of the Continental Congress

    Brain damaged candidate versus the Israel candidate … Dr Oz was not popular with anybody, especially with the grass roots Trump supporters.

    #120618
    aspnaz
    Participant

    jb-hb said

    OF COURSE Americans love runaway inflation, not being able to afford a home, unemployment, weird fascist medical regimes that destroy lives, families, societies and cancel everything that is fun, demented presidents, brain-damaged senators, the threat of nuclear war, the inability to speak freely, sending billions and billions of dollars overseas while not spending billions to rebuild the small businesses that were destroyed by the policies they love, not spending billions to stop repeated shipments of enough fentanyl to kill the entire country, not spending billions to fix the mounting homeless or crime problems, not spending billions to fix the crumbling infrastructure.

    You can bet that a very large number of swing voters will have refused to vote Republican because the GOP candidate was for the USA leaving Ukraine. People are simply that stupid. They would rather live in poverty than abandon a war set up by their politicians that has destroyed half of Ukraine: the will vote for the same politicians again. Read the message boards, you will discover that people would not even consider a candidate who wanted peace instead of defending Ukraine. People are really, really dumb and at some stage you simply have to accept that fact and change your view of the world accordingly.

    #120619
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Veracious Poet said

    I will, as has been my practice & course for almost a decade, continue to pray & meditate that all of The Infinite’s children come to know the Healing, Creative & Loving Power of the Universe

    Continue to do nothing then?

    #120620
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Start just before minute 43. America’s secret wars

    #120621
    aspnaz
    Participant

    D Benton Smith said

    The US midterms seem to have deftly circumvented and postponed kinetic ‘blood-in-the-streets’ open revolt for the time being.

    The American people collude with their government in using the totally corrupt elections as an excuse to get on with business as usual. As with justice, elections have to be and be seen to be fair, but they are not fair in most countries. That the policians and their owners would corrupt the FBI, DoJ etc yet not corrupt the voting system seems to be an impossibility. That they would leave the voting system in such a dire state further emphasises that belief. I have no proof other than the fact that they cannot prove it was a fair election, and yes, the emphasis is on them proving it. But many American people will happily label you as a looney conspiracy theorist if you question the results. Interestingly most of those people are on the traditional left wing, the people who believe themselves to be morally superior, more caring, more human than the traditional right wing. They use their emotions to decide who they will vote for, they use their emotions to decide what policy to support, their emotions only exit the picture if the policy negatively impacts their own comfort. Mass self-deluded amorality with the people and their fleeing, transient pseudo-morality controlled by TV.

    #120622
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “You can bet that a very large number of swing voters will have refused to vote Republican because the GOP candidate was for the USA leaving Ukraine. People are simply that stupid.”

    Intrinsic to the Ukraine news are the Billions continually being added to that go over there. While these swing voters can check their own household and then step outside and take stock of their neighborhood with their own eyeballs.

    Did Carter do well during hostilities with Iran and a more hostile attitude towards the USSR?

    And Biden did better in the midterms than both Obama and Clinton?

    I would take the other side of that particular bet.

    #120623
    Bill7
    Participant

    As though eleck-shuns are anything other than a distraction, a misplaced hope, and a snare:
    “We’ll get ’em Next Time!”

    ok

    #120624
    jb-hb
    Participant

    aspnaz, you seem to have a peculiar habit of doing a quote of my posts, as if you are replying to me, while pretending what I said was never said. sort of refuting-by-not-refuting?

    I’ve noticed that each time you do it, my post PREVIOUS TO yours anticipated your fake-reply and already spoke to it. If I were replying in any detail, I could simply cut and paste my previous posts as a reply back to your quote “responding” to me. Which proves you are not conversing. Not a conversation. What is it you ARE doing?

    #120625
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “The American people collude with their government in using the totally corrupt elections as an excuse to get on with business as usual.”

    I like the sentence above. It reminds me of a thought I had today:

    Do the right thing now while you can (and the need is apparent: you may not get another chance).

    ***

    Elections are not a ruse. They’re a legitimate form of consensus assessment that people unfortunately expect to work all by themselves, with or without people bothering to vote much less supervise to make sure the results are counted honestly. And so they become exercises in corruption.

    But then, buying is how we get everything except air to breathe, gravitational attraction, and solar radiation. Other than grinding out mostly meaningless toil for a few increasingly meaningless dollars, we prefer not to get involved in reality beyond earning and spending money. We vote with our dollars, I suppose. From a staunch paleo-conservative view, that’s how it should be. Universal suffrage is bad for a healthy aristocracy. Pay-to-play is the essence of capitalism, which we long ago conflated with democracy. After all, I trust a dollar more than a politician’s promise or the will of our benighted electorate.

    If we charged people to vote we might get more results. People don’t believe in anything they don’t pay for, if said pay is only watching countless mind-harming commercials. Maybe if we put ballots on the backs of cereal boxes, we’d be more involved with these mysterious parades called “elections”, and they might begin to mean something congruent with their claimed purpose.

    Not that I believe in democracy as some proper form of government. Nor monarchy or what-have-you. I view humans as being incapable of governing ourselves rationally, fairly, and beneficially. Ultimately, large-scale governance comes from our inability to produce surplus without then fighting each other in groups over said surplus.

    The concept of the Individual has been reduced to the grinding abrasion of grains of sand upon each other. Standing alone on one’s convictions has become almost unimaginable to most people.

    The Apple in the Garden; Pandora’s Box… our older myths seem to reflect an understanding that we’re kinda messed up. It’s not our fault; it’s our nature, they say. I agree.

    Not Just Yet, Please: I prefer indefinitely forestalled consequences for my sins.

    #120626
    John Day
    Participant

    @Polemos: I’m mosquito-macho-man, so I didn’t use mosquito repellant while trekking through Thailand, so I came down with malaria in Laos…
    There are different kinds of mosquitoes in our grand world.

    #120627
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Face-Dress in Vegas? Can’t tell if it’s day or night in there.”

    It’s daytime in some lurid casino in rural Oregon. I don’t gamble but my wife does. I walk around and freak out at the whole thing until security gets nervous, and then I commandeer them and make them listen to me babble.

    Weirdo World

    You can smoke tobacco and drink booze in there, but you can’t smoke weed, which is what such places are obviously designed for. Can we get anything right? *sigh*

    #120628
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #120629
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Doug Casey on the World Economic Forum’s Plan for Mankind and What Comes Next

    Doug Casey on the World Economic Forum’s Plan for Mankind and What Comes Next

    #120630
    chooch
    Participant

    September 30

    “I want the Kyiv government and their real bosses in the west to hear me … Residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson are becoming our citizens forever.”

    November 9

    #120631
    chooch
    Participant

    #120632
    chooch
    Participant

    Another odd development. Not quite as odd as the ruddy face of the Darya Dugina in the open coffin, even though it had been announced only the day before that after the explosion the victim’s body had been almost completely burned beyond recognition.

    #120633
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Biden, Putin, Xi and WEF are united on one thing: Lula. Why are they are all so happy with the Brazil election?

    #120634
    chooch
    Participant

    Feeling a Kinison vibe tonight.

    #120635
    those darned kids
    Participant
    #120636
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    The Times They Are A-Changin’, … it’s true!

    The shrinking of the middle class is accompanied by an increase in the share of adults in the upper-income tier which increased from 14% in 1971 to 21% in 2021. At the same time, there was an increase in the share who are in the lower-income tier, from 25% to 29%. These changes have occurred gradually, as the share of adults in the middle class decreased in each decade from 1971 to 2011, but then held steady through 2021. […]

    … The reality is that middle-class America continues to shrink as the rich-get-richer and the poor-get-poorer. The rich can invest, save and use very little debt to sustain their living standard, while the poor rely on debt, making long-term prosperity an impossible goal. […]

    There Really Is No Middle Class Any Longer
    https://realinvestmentadvice.com/there-really-is-no-middle-class-any-longer/

    F.S.

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